John T. Beavers
Associate Professor — Ph.D., Stanford University
Associate Professor and Undergraduate Faculty Advisor

Contact
- E-mail: jtbeavers@utexas.edu
- Phone: +1-512-232-7683
- Office: RLP 4.706
- Campus Mail Code: B5100
Interests
Syntax, Semantics, Lexical Semantics
Biography
John Beavers is an Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics at The University of Texas at Austin. He earned his Ph.D. in Linguistics from Stanford University in 2006. His research areas are formal syntax and semantics, lexical semantics, and linguistic typology. He is primarily interested the nature of word meanings, including how word meanings are decomposed into more basic semantic primitives, how these primitives are interpreted truth conditionally, and how a word’s meaning correlates with and ultimately determines its grammatical behavior. He has a specific focus on verbal semantics and the linguistic representation of events, with ongoing projects on argument realization, lexical aspect, affectedness and result encoding, the relationship of regular and idiosyncratic meaning in a verb's semantics, and the encoding of motion events, including studies on English, Indonesian, Japanese, Spanish, and Colloquial Sinhala.
Courses
LIN 372L • Syntx/Sem: Strc/Mean Uttrnc-Wb
40430 • Spring 2021
Meets TTH 3:30PM-5:00PM
Internet; Synchronous
Wr
LIN 398T • Supv Teaching In Linguistcs-Wb
40545 • Spring 2021
Meets W 3:00PM-6:00PM
Internet; Synchronous
LIN 380L • Syntax I-Wb
39180 • Fall 2020
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM
Internet; Synchronous
LIN 372L • Syntax/Sem: Struc/Mean Utternc
39750 • Spring 2020
Meets TTH 3:30PM-5:00PM RLP 0.104
Wr
LIN 398T • Supv Teaching In Linguistics
39890 • Spring 2020
Meets T 9:30AM-12:30PM RLP 4.710
LIN 380L • Syntax I
39380 • Fall 2019
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM RLP 4.710
LIN 393S • Word Meaning And Syntax
39450 • Fall 2019
Meets F 9:00AM-12:00PM RLP 4.710
LIN 372L • Syntax/Sem: Struc/Mean Utternc
40120 • Spring 2019
Meets TTH 9:30AM-11:00AM RLP 0.106
LIN 398T • Supv Teaching In Linguistics
40230 • Spring 2019
Meets M 12:00PM-3:00PM RLP 4.710
LIN 380L • Syntax I
40320 • Fall 2018
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM RLP 4.710
LIN 393S • Minimalist Program
40385 • Fall 2018
Meets M 9:00AM-12:00PM RLP 4.710
LIN 380L • Syntax I
40900 • Fall 2017
Meets TTH 11:00AM-12:30PM CLA 4.710
LIN 398T • Supv Teaching In Linguistics
41007 • Fall 2017
Meets T 1:00PM-4:00PM CLA 4.710
LIN 372L • Syntax/Sem: Struc/Mean Utternc
40995 • Spring 2017
Meets TTH 11:00AM-12:30PM PAR 306
LIN 389S • Rsch In Syntax And Semantics
41060 • Spring 2017
Meets T 2:00PM-5:00PM CLA 4.710
LIN 380L • Syntax I
40860 • Fall 2016
Meets TTH 9:30AM-11:00AM MEZ B0.302
LIN 398T • Supv Teaching In Linguistics
40935 • Fall 2016
Meets W 12:00PM-3:00PM CLA 4.710
LIN 380L • Syntax I
40070 • Fall 2015
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM CLA 1.108
LIN 398T • Supv Teaching In Linguistics
40150 • Fall 2015
Meets T 3:30PM-6:30PM GAR 2.124
LIN 372L • Syntax/Sem: Struc/Mean Utternc
40105 • Spring 2015
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM SAC 5.102
LIN 393S • Lexical Semantics
40175 • Spring 2015
Meets M 12:00PM-3:00PM CLA 4.710
LIN 380L • Syntax I
41165 • Fall 2014
Meets TTH 11:00AM-12:30PM GDC 5.304
LIN 398T • Supv Teaching In Linguistics
41265 • Fall 2014
Meets W 3:00PM-6:00PM PAR 305
LIN 380L • Syntax I
41395 • Fall 2013
Meets TTH 3:30PM-5:00PM CLA 0.106
LIN 398T • Supv Teaching In Linguistics
41465 • Fall 2013
Meets W 3:00PM-6:00PM CBA 4.338
LIN 372L • Syntax/Sem: Struc/Mean Utternc
40995 • Spring 2013
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM CBA 4.326
LIN 393S • Lexical Semantic Typology
41065 • Spring 2013
Meets W 9:00AM-12:00PM WEL 3.260
LIN 380L • Syntax I
40835 • Fall 2012
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM CBA 4.326
LIN 398T • Supv Teaching In Linguistics
40930 • Fall 2012
Meets T 3:30PM-6:30PM PAR 10
LIN 372L • Syntax/Sem: Struc/Mean Utternc
40825 • Spring 2012
Meets MWF 10:00AM-11:00AM CBA 4.326
LIN 393S • The Minimalist Program
40925 • Spring 2012
Meets W 12:00PM-3:00PM PAR 310
LIN 380L • Syntax I
40765 • Fall 2011
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM CBA 4.326
LIN 398T • Supv Teaching In Linguistics
40855 • Fall 2011
Meets TH 3:00PM-6:00PM PAR 10
LIN 372L • Syntax/Sem: Struc/Mean Utternc
41160 • Spring 2011
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM CBA 4.326
LIN 393S • Lexical Semantic Typology
41265 • Spring 2011
Meets TTH 9:30AM-11:00AM CBA 4.340
LIN 380L • Syntax I
40790 • Fall 2010
Meets MWF 10:00AM-11:00AM CBA 4.326
LIN 398T • Supv Teaching In Linguistics
40880 • Fall 2010
Meets W 3:00PM-6:00PM PAR 10
LIN 380L • Syntax I
41560 • Fall 2009
Meets TTH 2:00PM-3:30PM CBA 4.326
LIN 398T • Supv Teaching In Linguistics
41670 • Fall 2009
Meets W 3:00PM-6:00PM PAR 10
LIN 372L • Syntax/Sem: Struc/Mean Utternc
40575 • Spring 2009
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM JES A215A
LIN 392 • Minimalist Syntax
40650 • Spring 2009
Meets TTH 9:30AM-11:00AM BUR 128
LIN 380L • Syntax I
41770 • Fall 2008
Meets TTH 11:00AM-12:30PM CBA 4.326
LIN 398T • Supv Teaching In Linguistics
41875 • Fall 2008
Meets M 5:00PM-8:00PM JES A205A
LIN 372L • Syntax/Sem: Struc/Mean Utternc
41650 • Spring 2008
Meets TTH 9:30AM-11:00AM CBA 4.326
LIN 393S • Lexical Semantic Typology
41740 • Spring 2008
Meets W 2:00PM-5:00PM UTC 1.142
LIN 380L • Syntax I
42310 • Fall 2007
Meets MWF 11:00AM-12:00PM CBA 4.326
Selected Publications
I do not keep this page regularly updated, and probably haven't updated it since around 2015. Please see my personal webpage for a more updated list and also downloadable papers and handouts.
Books:
Beavers, John and Andrew Koontz-Garboden. (In prep). The Roots of Verbal Meaning and the Meaning of Verbal Roots. Ms., The University of Texas at Austin and The University of Manchester.
Peer-reviewed journal articles:
Beavers, John and Andrew Koontz-Garboden. (Under review). Scalar Change and Manner/Result Complementarity in Manner of Motion Verbs. Ms., The University of Texas at Austin and The University of Manchester.
Beavers, John and Andrew Koontz-Garboden. (2013). Complications in Diagnosing Lexical Meaning: A Rejoinder to Horvath and Siloni (2013). Lingua. 134:210-218.
Beavers, John. (2013). Aspectual Classes and Scales of Change. Linguistics (special issue), 54: 681-706.
Beavers, John and Andrew Koontz-Garboden. (2013). In Defense of the Reflexivization Analysis of Anticausativization. Lingua, 131: 199-216. [Reply to Horvath and Siloni 2011].
Beavers, John and Cala Zubair. (2013). Anticausatives in Sinhala:Involitivity and Causer Suppression.Natural Language and Linguistic Theory. 46 pages. (Anticipated 2013.)
Beavers, John and Andrew Koontz-Garboden. (2012). Manner and Result in theRoots of Verbal Meaning. Linguistic Inquiry. 43: 331-369.
Beavers, John. (2011). On Affectedness. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory. 29: 335-370.
Beavers, John. (2011). An Aspectual Analysis of Ditransitive Verbs of Caused Possession in English. Journal of Semantics. 28: 1-54.
Beavers, John. (2010). The Structure of Lexical Meaning: Why SemanticsReally Matters. Language. 86: 821-864.
Beavers, John, Beth Levin, and Shiao Wei Tham. (2010). The Typology of Motion Expressions Revisited. Journal of Linguistics. 46: 331-377.
Beavers, John. (2008).On the Nature of Goal Marking and Delimitation: Evidence from Japanese. Journal of Linguistics. 44: 283-316.
Beavers, John and Andrew Koontz-Garboden. (2006). A Universal Pronoun in English?Linguistic Inquiry. 37: 503-513.
Peer-reviewed book chapters:
Beavers, John. (To appear). The Spray/Load Alternation. In Martin Everaert, Henk van Rimsdijk, Rob Goedemans, and Bart Hellebrandse, eds., The Blackwell Companion to Syntax. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Beavers, John and Peter Sells. (2013). Constructing and Supporting a Linguistic Analysis. In Robert J. Podesva and Devyani Sharma, eds., Research Methods in Linguistics, 403-427. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Beavers, John. (2012). Lexical Aspect and Multiple Incremental Themes. In Violeta Demonte and Louise McNally, eds., Telicity, Change, and State: A Cross-Categorial View of Event Structure, 23-59.Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Beavers, John. (2012). Resultative Constructions. In Robert I. Binnick, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Tense and Aspect, 908-933. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Beavers, John and Chiyo Nishida. (2010). The Spanish Dative Alternation Revisited. In Sonia Colina, Antxon Olarrea, and Ana Carvalho, eds., Romance Linguistics 2009: Selected Papers from the 39th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, 217-230. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Beavers, John and Cala Zubair. (2010). The Interaction of Transitivity Features in the Sinhala Involitive. In Patrick Brandt and Marco Garcia, eds., Transitivity. Form, Meaning, Acquisition, and Processing, 69-94. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Beavers, John. (2009). Predicting Argument Realization from Oblique Marker Semantics. In Ronald P. Leow, Hector Campos, and Donna Lardiere, eds., Little Words: Their History, Phonology, Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics, and Acquisition, 121-130. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.
Beavers, John. (2008). Scalar Complexity and the Structure of Events. In Johannes Dölling, Tatjana Heyde-Zybatow, and Martin Schäfer, eds., Event Structures in Linguistic Form and Interpretation, 245-265. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Baldwin, Timothy, John Beavers, Leonoor van der Beek, Francis Bond, Dan Flickinger, and Ivan A. Sag. (2006). In Search of a Systematic Treatment of Determinerless PPs. In Patrick Saint-Dizier, ed., Syntax and Semantics of Prepositions, 163-180. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.
Baldwin, Timothy, John Beavers, Emily M. Bender, Dan Flickinger, Ara Kim, and Stephan Oepen. (2005). Beauty and the Beast: What Running a Broad-Coverage Precision Grammar over the BNC Taught Us about the Grammar – and the Corpus. In Stephan Kepser and Marga Reis, eds., Linguistic Evidence: Empirical, Theoretical, and Computational Perspectives, 49-70. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Peer-reviewed conference papers:
Beavers, John and Itamar Francez. (2012). Several problems for Predicate Decompositions. In Zhenya Anti, Charles B. Chang, Emily Cibelli, Jisup Hong, Michael J. Houser, Clare S. Sandy, Maziar Toosarvandani, Yao Yao,Proceedings of Berkeley Linguistics Society 32, Berkeley: University of California at Berkeley, 37-48.
Beavers, John. (2009). Multiple Incremental Themes and Figure/Path Relations. In Tova Friedman and Satoshi Ito, eds., Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory XVIII, 90-107. Ithaca: Cornell University, http://hdl.handle.net/1813/13028.
Beavers, John, Elias Ponvert, and Stephen Wechsler. (2009). Possession of a Controlled Substantive: Light ‘have’ and Other Verbs of Possession. In Tova Friedman and Satoshi Ito, eds., Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory XVIII, 108-125. Ithaca: Cornell University, http://hdl.handle.net/1813/13029.
Beavers, John. (2006). Semantic Underspecificity in English Argument/Oblique Alternations. In Michal Temkin Martínez, Asier Alcázar, and Roberto Mayoral Hernández, eds., Proceedings of Western Conference on Linguistics 2004, 26-37. Los Angeles: University of Southern California.
Beavers, John. (2005). Towards a Semantic Analysis of Argument/Oblique Alternations in HPSG. In Stefan Müller, ed., Proceedings of the 2005 Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar Conference, 28-48. Stanford: CSLI Publications.
Beavers, John. (2004). Type-Inheritance Combinatory Categorial Grammar. In Proceedings of 20th International Conference on Computational Linguistics, 57-63. Geneva: University of Geneva.
Beavers, John and Ivan A. Sag. (2004). Coordinate Ellipsis and Apparent Non-Constituent Coordination. In Stefan Müller, ed., Proceedings of the 2004 Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar Conference, 48-69. Stanford: CSLI Publications.
Beavers, John. (2003). More Head and Less Categories: A New Look at Noun Phrase Structure. In Stefan Müller, ed., Proceedings of the 2003 Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar Conference, 47-67. Stanford: CSLI Publications.
Beavers, John and Andrew Koontz-Garboden. (2003). The Proper Treatment of Your Ass in English. In Balder ten Cate, ed., Proceedings of the Student Workshop at the 2003 European Summer School of Logic, Language, and Information, 1-11. Vienna.
Working papers:
Beavers, John. (2002). Aspect and the Distribution of Prepositional Resultative Phrases in English. LinGO Working Paper No. 2002-07. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University, http://lingo.stanford.edu/working-papers.html.
Beavers, John. (2002). Documentation: A CCG Implementation for the LKB.LinGO Working Paper No. 2002-08. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University, http://lingo.stanford.edu/working-papers.html.