María Biezma

María Biezma received a Licenciatura in Hispanic Philology from Universidad Complutense de Madrid in 2003 with a specialization in Spanish Grammar and a specialization in Spanish as a Second Language, an M.A. in Linguistics from the University of Ottawa in 2005, and a Ph.D. in Linguistics from UMass Amherst in 2011. 

María's research is focused on how meanings are assembled and how pragmatic inferences are made. Her main interests are in formal pragmatics, formal semantics and psycholinguistics. In understanding the construction of meaning in natural language, her work tries to understand how different components interact. María's research often cuts across traditional categories, bringing together syntax, semantics, pragmatics, discourse theory, prosody and psycholinguistics. She often focuses on constructions in which there is an apparent mismatch between structure and meaning, with the belief that such constructions can give us a special insight into the richness and complexity of the mechanisms that generate meaning in language.

María arrived at UMass Amherst in the winter of 2019 from the University of Konstanz, where she was assistant professor (Juniorprofessorin) in general linguistics (2014-2019). In Konstanz María was PI of two DFG grants focusing on conditionals and on questions. She continues in close contact with colleagues in Konstanz and is now Mercator Fellow in the Research Unit Questions at the Interfaces.

For more information on María's work, please visit her website.