# Gennaro Chierchia Haas Foundations Professor of Linguistics Department of Linguistics ![gennaro_chierchia.jpg](/sites/g/files/omnuum4436/files/styles/hwp_4_5__480x600/public/phildept/files/gennaro_chierchia.jpg?itok=_Meo3rdu) smartphone [617-495-8181](tel:617-495-8181) email laptop\_windows [Personal website](http://scholar.harvard.edu/chierchia) Gennaro Chierchia has spent his intellectual life studying how meaning takes shape in language. A common thread in his work is the idea/claim/speculation that a logic (a way of drawing inferences) spontaneously grows and latches on to the syntactic structures produced by our capacity for recursive computation. This ‘natural logic’ gives a special power to our ability to use language to communicate and refer, a power not found in other species. Some more specific recurring themes/obsessions are properties and predication (control/raising/ de se attributions), Noun Phrase structure (quantified vs. ‘bare’ nominals, mass vs. count), anaphora and presuppositions, implicatures and polarity phenomena. He is also very interested in pursuing these topics by experimental means. - ## Person Categories [Affiliated Faculty](/taxonomy/term/125846) - ## Research Interests [Philosophy of language](/research-interests/philosophy-language)