I am a senior researcher in the laboratory Structures Formelles du Langage (CNRS/Université Paris 8). I study meaning.

I’m particularly interested in how we talk about what happens next. So I spend much of my time thinking about:

  • causation, force dynamics, and culmination
  • agency, volition, ability, and dispositions
  • aspect and eventuality type
  • future reference, conditionals, and metaphysical modality, especially within the verb phrase

I take the perspective that meaning is contributed both at a generative, syntax-visible, semantic level (i.e., logical form), as well as at a non-generative, conceptual level, and that the division of labor between these levels is testable using the methods of model-theoretic compositional semantics, syntactic theory, and cognitive psychology.

I coordinate the OASIS international research network (2018-2021): Ontology As Structured by the Interfaces with Semantics and am involved with the DFG project Composing events in Romance causative constructions and the semantics of causation.

I am neurodivergent and have a dynamic disability.

Sometimes people ask how to pronounce my last name. It’s pronounced /koʊpli/. Though in Boston I answer to /kɑpli/ and in Paris to /kople/.

Write to me at my given name dot the name whose pronunciation is above and cnrs.fr.