FROM LANGUAGE LEARNER TO LINGUISTIC INNOVATOR

Angelica “Jelly” Hill has always been an avid language learner. By the age of ten, she had already created her own language, complete with a unique vocabulary and grammatical rules. This came in addition to the French and Spanish she had been immersed in since kindergarten through her school in Rochester, New York, where she grew up.

It was little surprise when she decided to go to Fordham University to study interpretation and translation. Despite her early passion, Hill’s path wasn’t always clear-cut. While in undergrad, a job as an interpreter at Fordham Law School left her feeling drained and prompted her to question her initial intended career path. A particularly decisive moment came when she was interpreting for a young Guatemalan child for an asylum case. “It was horrendous,” Hill recalls, describing the emotional toll of listening to heartbreaking stories for hours on end.

This difficult experience, however, did not deter Hill from pursuing her passion. She continued to be what you might call a language collector. “I started learning all of them,” she says, taking French, Italian, and Spanish classes before deciding on a double major in Spanish Language and Literature and Philosophy.

Hill’s love for language was never limited to communicating with people and connecting with different cultures, though that has certainly been a benefit. “I’ve always been intrigued by the complex parts of language,” she says, recalling her early fascination with intricate grammar rules and structures that make languages work. This interest was only reinforced through her work as a Spanish tutor, prompting her to wonder why English speakers struggle with certain grammar concepts, like the subjunctive and conditional tenses. This curiosity would eventually lead her to study formal semantics, a field that uses math to dig into how language really works.

“Humans can talk about possibilities and things that aren’t right in front of us. That’s what makes human language special.”

But her path to academia was really paved while studying abroad in Seville, Spain, where she took a class on the philosophy of science and language. There, Hill’s professor recognized her potential and suggested she attend a summer school for women interested in mathematical logic in Munich, Germany. That summer in Munich was “transformative,” Hill explained, noting that it was incredible to be a part of such a program, especially considering how male-dominated the field of mathematical logic historically has been.

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Further, it was there that she met Katrin Schultz from the University of Amsterdam. Schultz encouraged her to pursue a graduate degree in her department, and Hill then went on to earn an MSc in Logic at Amsterdam.

From Amsterdam, she moved to Amherst, to pursue her PhD in Linguistics. At UMass, Hill’s research interrogates the connection between two subfields which have historically seen little crossover – formal semantics and psycholinguistics. She focuses specifically on how people think about possibilities and cause-and-effect relationships in language, using a math-based approach to show that these two aspects of language are much more closely related than previously believed.

To dig into this, Hill uses a method called “priming.” In priming experiments, participants might be shown a picture of a dog, quickly followed by a related image, like a cat, or something totally different, like a flower. This helps researchers see how we form cognitive connections. Hill uses this technique to determine if understanding one kind of phrase can make it easier to understand another.

“Humans can talk about possibilities and things that aren’t right in front of us. That’s what makes human language special,” Hill explains. Her research aims to uncover how we use this unique ability, especially concerning causality. Even though causal events are based on real-life experiences, modal language lets us talk about hypotheticals and possibilities, like saying, “If my hair were red, you might think I’d be super feisty.”

Hill’s dissertation also tackles some big theoretical questions about the connection between modal language and causation, a debate that goes back to the 18th-century philosopher David Hume. She proposes a new way to look at this, using psycholinguistic experiments to reveal the cognitive links between these types of language. Her work suggests that priming techniques could help us understand how our minds process these kinds of expressions.

At UMass, Hill feels lucky to be guided by top-notch faculty known for their formal semantics and psycholinguistics expertise. “Doing research in my area at UMass is an incredible blessing. I’m so grateful to be working with them,” she says of her co-supervisors, Ana Arregui and Shota Momma. Hill has been further supported by a prestigious dissertation grant from the National Science Foundation.

As Hill enters the final year of her Ph.D. program, she’s reflecting on the bigger picture of her work. “Understanding how these things are connected helps us understand how we navigate the world,” she says. Her research not only pushes forward theoretical debates but also offers insights into how we think and use language.

Written by Eric Ross, PhD student in History, as part of the Graduate School's Public Writing Fellows Program.