Baptiste Loreau-Unger’s homepage
PhD candidate

About

Hi! I am Baptiste Loreau-Unger, a first-year PhD candidate (from the 5-year FrontCog graduate program) at École normale supérieure (Paris, France), in the Department of Cognitive Studies. Before that, I studied mathematics and linguistics at École normale supérieure Paris–Saclay and Université Paris Cité (including the Logos Master’s program).

My current research is in formal semantics of natural language, with Salvador Mascarenhas. Some of my interests:

I also have a foot in formal inflectional morphology, from my time working with Berthold Crysmann at Université Paris Cité.

Disentangling morphomic splits in Limbu. With Berthold Crysmann. Lingue e linguaggio, Rivista semestrale XXIII.2/2024, pp. 267-290. [lingbuzz] [official]
Toward a topological theory of the aspectual conceptualization of events. Master’s thesis in mathematics and linguistics, Université Paris Cité. [lingbuzz]
- This thesis uses mathematical objects from general topology to formalize lexical aspect in linguistics – the fact that we can present events as unfolding in different ways.

Too much and too little in Limbu conjugation: Syncretism, uninflectedness and dependent multiple exponence in Information-based Morphology. Master’s thesis in linguistics, Université Paris Cité. [lingbuzz]
- This thesis uses logical tools to analyze conjugation patterns in Limbu, a Kiranti language from Nepal. Limbu conjugation is interesting because it uses certain markers in unexpected places (syncretism), and does not use certain markers in expected places (uninflectedness). But those irregularities hide important regularities, which theories of conjugations are not always equipped to do justice to. I show that the Limbu irregularities are principled enough, and our logical tools (HPSG-style feature structures with several abstraction mechanisms) flexible enough, as to allow for an analysis that directly captures the hidden regularities.

Pseudo-Pāṇinian splits. 28–30 Aug 2024. Joint work presented by Berthold Crysmann. 21^th International Morphology Meeting (IMM 21), Vienna, Austria.
The interplay of morphotactics and underspecification: Overabundance in Athpare. 21–24 Aug 2024. Joint work presented by Berthold Crysmann. “Determinism Assumption in Morphology” workshop at the 57^th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE 2024), Helsinki, Finland.

Disentangling morphomic splits in Limbu. 13–15 Sep 2023. With Berthold Crysmann. International Symposium of Morphology 2023 (ISMo 2023), Nancy, France.
Systematically investigating syncretism in multidimensional inflectional systems: generating views into transitive verb paradigms. 4–6 Sep 2023. 26^th Himalayan Languages Symposium (HLS 26), Paris, France.

My first name is Baptiste and my last names are Loreau-Unger.

French pronunciation: /batist loʁo œ̃ʒɛʁ/
Possible anglicization: bə-TEEST lə-ROH ən-ZHAIR (or ən-JAIR) /bəˈtiːst ləˈɹoʊ ənˈ(d)ʒɛəɹ/