Agnès Celle

Agnès Celle is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Paris since 2004. She holds a prominent position in the field of linguistic research, particularly focusing on the intersection of semantics and pragmatics with cross-linguistic perspectives between English and French.

Her research interests span across multiple dimensions of linguistic theory and application. Specializing in Time, Aspect, Modality, and Evidentiality, Professor Celle has made significant contributions to understanding how surprise is linguistically expressed and the phenomenon of mirativity. Her recent work has expanded to examine non-canonical questions and the intricate relationship between modality and speech acts, revealing how grammatical structures shape communicative functions in everyday discourse.

Professor Celle's publications demonstrate a clear trajectory toward understanding questioning patterns in digital discourse, particularly through analysis of TED Talks. Her recent work explores how question sequences function in knowledge transmission, how epistemic conditionals operate as argumentative tools in polar questions, and how modal verbs contribute to the pragmatic force of questions in public speaking contexts. This research reveals important connections between grammatical structures and their pragmatic functions in real-world communication.

Award:

• Best paper award for Post-Doc researcher at SLE Conference, Helsinki 2024

Professor Celle has supervised 11 PhD students to completion across diverse topics including political discourse, temporal deixis, documentary discourse, and question sequences, with two additional students currently working under her supervision. She has secured significant research funding including a Marie Curie Prestige Project (2017-2018) on surprise-induced questions conducted at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and has been the Principal Investigator for the TransQuest project (2022-2024) on knowledge transmission in questions.

Currently leading multiple collaborative research initiatives including TransQuest (2022-2024) and previously directing studies on surprise questions from a comparative perspective (2019-2022), Professor Celle works within a robust research network involving scholars from institutions across Europe including the University of Tartu and University of Constance.