Marie-Eve Ritz

PhD (Linguistics):
University of Paris-Sorbonne, Paris IV.

Research grants:
2009:
Programme “Marie Curie International Research Staff Exchange
Scheme” – Call identifier: FP7–PEOPLE–IRSES–2008
Proposal N° 230818 – TAMEAL
Title of project: The interrelation of Tense, Aspect and Modality with Evidentiality in Australian Aboriginal languages.
Estimated amount to fund European partners: € 82.800
Duration: four years

UWA International Collaboration Award (with Alan Dench)

2008:
CNRS grant for international collaboration (Chief Investigator with Dr Patrick Caudal, Paris 7): Formal treatment of aspectual, temporal and modal phenomena in two aboriginal languages of the North West of Australia: Martuthunira and Panyjima.

2001:
UWA small grant of a value of $11,289.00
Title of the project: Understanding the meaning of the present perfect: a comparative study of its uses in English dialects around the world and in some Romance and Germanic languages.

2000:
Australian Research Council (ARC) small grant of the value of $8,051.00
Title of the project: The Use of the Present Perfect in Australian English. with Dr D. Engel from the University of Wales, Swansea.

1997-1998:
ARC small grant of the value of $7,029.00 and Initial Research Grant (IRG) of the value of $4000
Title of the project: The Semantic Representation of Tense, Aspect and Mood: a Formal Model for Translation between English and French.

Teaching and learning grants:

May 1998:
Teaching and Learning grant (faculty of Economics, commerce, education & law): value $5000
Title of the project: Flexible Delivery of Academic Writing Tuition.
with Associate Professor Keith Punch and Dr Judith Rochecouste.

November 1998:
Teaching and Learning grant (faculty of Economics, commerce, education & law): value $5000
Continuation of the above project.

1998-1999:
Participation in a Murdoch-UWA CUTSD teaching and learning project.

Teaching undergraduate linguistics (introduction to linguistics, syntax, semantics), including Honours level units (research in linguistics, advanced topics in semantics and pragmatics); past teaching in applied linguistics (second language acquisition, sociolinguistics, research methods) and educational linguistics (LOTE/TESOL curriculum, introduction to linguistics and its applications).

Supervision of HDR students:

Supervision to successful completion 39 HDR students in the past 15 years, in both theoretical and applied linguistics (topics include tense and aspect, language teaching, second language acquisition, literacy, translation, academic writing, discourse analysis, multi-word expressions/phraseology).

Presentations: International conferences (past five years)

Invited papers/keynotes
2012: Ritz, Marie-Eve. “So what’s new? The linguistic expression of temporal change: ‘hot-news’ perfect, now and other temporal markers”. Keynote address, colloque Autour du verbe (“Around the Verb”), Université Paris III (Sorbonne Nouvelle), 21-22 September 2012.

2008: Ritz, Marie-Eve & Dench, Alan: “From past to future: a study of tense, aspect and narrative progression in Martuthunira and Panyjima, two languages of the northwest of Australia.” Presented (by invitation) at Paris 3 sesylia colloquium, Arcachon (France), 25-26 September 2008.

Presentations:
2012: Ritz, Marie-Eve & Schultze-Berndt, Eva. “Time for a change? The clitic =biyang in Jaminjung.” Australian Linguistics Society Conference, UWA, Perth, 5-7 December 2012.

Ngo, Thanh & Ritz, Marie-Eve. “The marker đã in Vietnamese: aspectual meaning and discourse functions.” Australian Linguistics Society Conference, UWA, Perth, 5-7 December 2012.

Rodriguez-Louro, Celeste & Ritz, Marie-Eve. “Stories Down Under: Tense variation at the heart of Australian English narratives.” Australian Linguistics Society Conference, UWA, Perth, 5-7 December 2012.

Schultze-Berndt, Eva, Ritz, Marie-Eve & Simard, Candide. “And NOW, for something completely different!” Seventh European Australianist Workshop, School of Oriental and African Languages (SOAS), University of London, 3-4 April 2012.

2011: Ritz, Marie-Eve. “The ‘hot-news’ perfect: new information and the semantics/pragmatics interface.” International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) conference, Manchester (UK), July 2011.

Ritz, Marie-Eve & Stirling, Lesley. “Temporal distinctions around the present in Kala Lagaw Ya.” The Australian Linguistics Society (ALS) annual conference, Canberra, December 2011.

2009: Ritz, Marie-Eve & Rodriguez-Louro, Celeste. Against the mainstream: Changes in present perfect usage in Australian English
and Argentinian Spanish. Paper presented at the Free Linguistics Conference, Sydney, October 2009.

2009: Ritz, Marie-Eve, Caudal, Patrick & Dench, Alan . “Past time and present relevance in Panyjima: uses of the past, perfect and passive perfect in discourse.” Paper presented at the International Pragmatics Conference (IPrA), July 2009, Melbourne.

2009: Ritz, Marie-Eve & Caudal, Patrick. “The perfect in Middle French.” presented at the Romance workshop, Australian Linguistics Society conferences, Melbourne, July 2009. (By invitation).

2009: Roussarie, Laurent, Caudal, Patrick, Dench, Alan & Ritz, Marie-Eve. “Panyjima aspectual classes: new perspectives on formal models for event structure.” Chronos 2009, Université Paris 7, September 2009, and Journées de Sémantique et modelisation (JSM), Paris, April 2009.

2009: Dench, Alan & Ritz, Marie-Eve. Now and then: an analysis of the semantics of three temporal clitics in Panyjima. European Australianists workshop, Leuven, November 2009.

Keywords: Semantics, pragmatics, tense and aspect, semantic change, Australian English, French, Australian Aboriginal languages.

Associate Professor Ritz’ research is situated in the broad field of linguistic semantics. Her current work focuses on the semantic analysis of temporal categories, but also involves theoretical developments in historical linguistics, analysis of language variation and of change in progress, and the semantics/pragmatics interface. She has published a number of papers and book chapters within the framework of different projects: an international collaborative project supported by an EU FP7 Marie Curie International Research Staff Exchange Scheme (The interrelation of Tense, Aspect and Modality with Evidentiality in Australian Aboriginal languages (TAMEAL). Further support was provided by a UWA International Collaboration Award won in collaboration with Alan Dench. The project arose out of an earlier intitiative to pilot work on TAME categories in Australian languages, supported by a grant from the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) (with Patrick Caudal, Paris 7, Laurent Roussarie, Paris 8 and Alan Dench, UWA) and which concentrated on languages spoken in Western Australia. The TAMEAL project involves a team of researchers from France, the UK, Belgium and Australia. Prior to this work, Professor Ritz worked on a project that involved Dr Dulcie Engel (University of Wales, Swansea) as a co-researcher in the early stages. The project was supported by two ARC small grants and one UWA Research Grant. The primary focus of the investigation was on innovating uses of the present perfect in Australian English. Professor Ritz’ long-term research objectives are to contribute more broadly to the refinement of our understanding of temporal and aspectual categories in a range of languages; to use such data to empirically test formal models and concepts with a view to refining formal models of the categories investigated. She is also interested in developing a general theory accounting for semantic creativity and methods of analysis that may shed further light on this uniquely human capacity, the investigation of which has so far been quite limited.

French: native speaker

English: native fluency in spoken and written English

German: spoken and written: intermediate to advanced level

Spanish: spoken and written: intermediate level (getting basic!)