Valentine Hacquard

Valentine Hacquard is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Maryland, affiliated with the College of Arts and Humanities. She holds an additional affiliation as Affiliate Professor in Philosophy. Her research focuses on formal semantics, syntax, and pragmatics, with a particular emphasis on modality, attitude reports, and their acquisition. She has supervised numerous PhD students, including notable alumni such as Alexis Wellwood and Aaron Steven White. Hacquard’s work bridges theoretical linguistics and experimental research, investigating how children learn complex linguistic concepts like modal verbs and attitude predicates.

Her research interests include the syntax-semantics interface of modals, the role of syntactic and pragmatic cues in language acquisition, and cross-linguistic variation in modal systems. She has received funding from NSF grants for projects on modality and attitude verb acquisition. Hacquard has taught courses such as 'Language and Theory of Mind' and 'Semantics and Pragmatics,' reflecting her interdisciplinary approach to language study.

Hacquard’s recent work examines how children discern modal force (possibility vs. necessity) and interpret syntactic structures in attitude reports. Her lab, supported by NSF grants, investigates language acquisition through behavioral experiments and corpus analyses. She collaborates with researchers on projects like the ModSquad, exploring modal variation and change. Hacquard’s contributions have been published in top journals like Journal of Child Language and Natural Language Semantics.