Jessica Rett

Jessica Rett is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles. She received her PhD from Rutgers University in 2008 and her BA from the University of Michigan in 2001. She was born and raised in and near Holland, Michigan.

Professor Rett's research is in theoretical linguistics, the study of the subconscious rules users of all languages learn and employ. Her focus is in the interconnected subfields of semantics, pragmatics, and the philosophy of language. In particular, she is interested in understanding what speakers know that allows them to calculate the meaning of a sentence (and, further, its meaning in a specific context).

Professor Rett's recent book, _The Semantics of Evaluativity_, deals specifically with the semantics of adjectives and other gradable expressions. She discusses a phenomenon previously addressed in compositional semantic theory -- evaluativity, or the requirement that a degree exceed a contextually-valued standard -- and argues that it is better characterized as a pragmatic phenomenon (the result of Grice's Maxims of Manner and Quantity).