Academic Appointments


Administrative Appointments


  • Chair, Department of Linguistics, Stanford University (2020 - Present)
  • Professor, Department of Linguistics, Stanford University (2016 - Present)
  • Associate Professor (tenured), Department of Linguistics, Stanford University (2009 - 2016)
  • Associate Professor (untenured), Department of Linguistics, University of Massachusetts Amherst (2008 - 2009)
  • Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics, University of Massachusetts Amherst (2003 - 2008)

Program Affiliations


  • Symbolic Systems Program

Professional Education


  • B.A., New York University, Linguistics Major, German Minor (1999)
  • M.A., University of California, Santa Cruz, Linguistics (2000)
  • Ph.D., University of California, Santa Cruz, Linguistics (2003)

2023-24 Courses


Stanford Advisees


All Publications


  • A data-driven framework for mapping domains of human neurobiology Nature Neuroscience Beam, E., Potts, C., Poldrack, R. A., Etkin, A. 2021
  • A case for deep learning in semantics: Response to Pater LANGUAGE Potts, C. 2019; 95 (1): E115–E124
  • Enculturation Trajectories: Language, Cultural Adaptation, and Individual Outcomes in Organizations MANAGEMENT SCIENCE Srivastava, S. B., Goldberg, A., Manian, V., Potts, C. 2018; 64 (3): 1348–64
  • Fitting In or Standing Out? The Tradeoffs of Structural and Cultural Embeddedness AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW Goldberg, A., Srivastava, S. B., Manian, V. G., Monroe, W., Potts, C. 2016; 81 (6): 1190-1222
  • Embedded Implicatures as Pragmatic Inferences under Compositional Lexical Uncertainty JOURNAL OF SEMANTICS Potts, C., Lassiter, D., Levy, R., Frank, M. C. 2016; 33 (4): 755-802

    View details for DOI 10.1093/jos/ffv012

    View details for Web of Science ID 000393183900004

  • Bringing Machine Learning and Compositional Semantics Together ANNUAL REVIEW OF LINGUISTICS, VOL 1 Liang, P., Potts, C. 2015; 1: 355-376
  • Modeling the Lifespan of Discourse Entities with Application to Coreference Resolution JOURNAL OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH de Marneffe, M., Recasens, M., Potts, C. 2015; 52: 445-475
  • That straight talk: Sarah Palin and the sociolinguistics of demonstratives JOURNAL OF SOCIOLINGUISTICS Acton, E. K., Potts, C. 2014; 18 (1): 3-31

    View details for DOI 10.1111/josl.12062

    View details for Web of Science ID 000332844800001

  • A computational approach to politeness with application to social factors Proceedings of the 2013 Annual Conference of the Association for Computational Linguistics Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, C., Sudhof, M., Jurafsky, D., Lescovec, J., Potts, C. 2013: 250–59
  • Emergence of Gricean maxims from multi-agent decision theory Human Language Technologies: The 2013 Annual Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics Vogel, A., Bodoia, M., Jurafsky, D., Potts, C. 2013: 1072–81
  • The life and death of discourse entities: identifying singleton mentions Human Language Technologies: The 2013 Annual Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics Recasens, M., de Marneffe, M., Potts, C. 2013: 627–33
  • Presupposition and implicature The Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory Potts, C. edited by Lappin, S., Fox, C. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. 2013; 2
  • No country for old members: user lifecycle and linguistic change in online communities Proceedings of the 22nd World Wide Web Conference Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, C., West, R., Jurafsky, D., Lescovec, J., Potts, C. 2013: 307–17
  • Implicatures and nested beliefs in approximate decentralized-POMDPs Proceedings of the 2013 Annual Conference of the Association for Computational Linguistics Vogel, A., Jurafsky, D., Potts, C. 2013: 74–80
  • Did It Happen? The Pragmatic Complexity of Veridicality Assessment COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS de Marneffe, M., Manning, C. D., Potts, C. 2012; 38 (2): 301-333
  • Trust propagation with mixedeffects models Proceedings of the 6th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media Overgoor, J., Wulczyn, E., Potts, C. 2012
  • Goal-driven answers in the Cards dialogue corpus Potts, C. edited by Arnett, N., Bennett, R. 2012: 1–20
  • Corpus evidence for preference-driven interpretation Proceedings of the 18th Amsterdam Colloquium: Revised Selected Papers Djalali, A., Lauer, S., Potts, C. edited by Aloni, M., Kimmelman, V., Roelofsen, F., Sassoon, G. W., Schulz, K., Westera, M. 2012
  • Teaching pragmatics Teaching Linguistics Potts, C. edited by Kuiper, K. London: Equinox Publishing. 2011: 51–65
  • On the negativity of negation Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory Potts, C. 2011: 636–59
  • Modeling expert effects and common ground using Questions Under Discussion Proceedings of the AAAI Workshop on Building Representations of Common Ground with Intelligent Agents Djalali, A., Clausen, D., Lauer, S., Schultz, K., Potts, C. 2011
  • Learning word vectors for sentiment analysis Proceedings of the 49th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics Maas, A. L., Daly, R. E., Pham, P. T., Huang, D., Ng, A. Y., Potts, C. 2011
  • Veridicality and utterance meaning Proceedings of the Fifth IEEE International Conference on Semantic Computing: Workshop on Semantic Annotation for Computational Linguistic Resources de Marneffe, M., Manning, C. D., Potts, C. 2011
  • Pragmatics The Oxford Handbook of Computational Linguistics Potts, C. edited by Mitkov, R. Oxford University Press. 2011; 2nd
  • Sentiment flow through hyperlink networks Proceedings of the 5th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media Miller, M., Sathi, C., Wiesenthal, D., Leskovec, J., Potts, C. 2011
  • Harmonic Grammar with linear programming: from linear systems to linguistic typology PHONOLOGY Potts, C., Pater, J., Jesney, K., Bhatt, R., Becker, M. 2010; 27 (1): 77-117
  • Affective ‘this’ Linguistic Issues in Language Technology Potts, C., Schwarz, F. 2010; 3 (5): 1 - 30
  • “Was it good? It was provocative.” Learning the meaning of scalar adjectives Proceedings 48th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics de Marneffe, M., Manning, C. D., Potts, C. 2010: 167–76
  • Semantics–pragmatics interactions The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Language Sciences Potts, C. edited by Hogan, P. C. Cambridge University Press. 2010: 758–759
  • Affective demonstratives and the division of pragmatic labor Logic, Language, and Meaning: 17th Amsterdam Colloquium Revised Selected Papers Davis, C., Potts, C. edited by Aloni, M., Bastiaanse, H., Jager, T., Schulz, K. 2010: 42–52
  • Crowdsourcing and language studies: The new generation of linguistic data Proceedings of the NAACL 2010 Workshop on Creating Speech and Language Data With Amazons Mechanical Turk Munro, R., Bethard, S., Kuperman, V., Lai, V. T., Melnick, R., Potts, C., Schnoebelen, T., Tily, H. 2010: 122–30
  • Perspective-shifting with appositives and expressives LINGUISTICS AND PHILOSOPHY Harris, J. A., Potts, C. 2009; 32 (6): 523-552
  • Not a simple yes or no: Uncertainty in indirect answers Proceedings of the 10th Annual SIGDIAL Meeting on Discourse and Dialogue de Marneffe, M., Grimm, S., Potts, C. 2009: 136–43
  • Predicting perspectival orientation for appositives Proceedings of the 45th Annual Chicago Linguistic Society Meeting Harris, J. A., Potts, C. 2009
  • The pragmatics of expressive content: Evidence from large corpora Sprache und Datenverarbeitung Constant, N., Davis, C., Potts, C., Schwarz, F. 2009; 33 (1 - 2): 5 - 21
  • Formal pragmatics The Routledge Encyclopedia of Pragmatics Potts, C. edited by Cummings, L. London: Routledge. 2009: 167–170
  • Review Article: Hagit Borer’s Structuring Sense Vol I-II Language Potts, C. 2008; 82 (2): 348 - 369
  • The pragmatics of conventional implicature and expressive content Semantics: An International Handbook of Natural Language Meaning Potts, C. edited by Maienborn, C., Portner, P. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 2008
  • Expressives and identity conditions Linguistic Inquiry Potts, C., Alonso-Ovalle, L., Asudeh, A., Cable, R. S., Davis, C., Hara, Y., Kratzer, A., McCready, E., Roeper, T., Walkow, M. 2008; 40 (2): 356–366
  • The expressive dimension (The theory is multidimensional in the sense that descriptives and expressives are fundamentally different but receive a unified logical treatment) THEORETICAL LINGUISTICS Potts, C. 2007; 33 (2): 165-198
  • Conventional implicatures, a distinguished class of meanings The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Interfaces Potts, C. edited by Ramchand, G., Reiss, C. Oxford University Press. 2007: 475–501
  • Into the conventional-implicature dimension Philosophy Compass Potts, C. 2007; 4 (2): 665–679
  • The pragmatic values of evidential sentences Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory Davis, C., Potts, C., Speas, M. edited by Gibson, M., Friedman, T. 2007: 71–88
  • The dimensions of quotation Direct Compositionality Potts, C. edited by Baker, C., Jacobson, P. Oxford University Press. 2007: 405–431
  • The centrality of expressive indices THEORETICAL LINGUISTICS Potts, C. 2007; 33 (2): 255-268
  • Paul Grice: Philosopher and linguist (Book Review) MIND Book Review Authored by: Potts, C. 2006; 115 (459): 743-747
  • How far can pragmatic mechanisms take us? THEORETICAL LINGUISTICS Potts, C. 2006; 32 (3): 307-320
  • Conversational implicatures via general pragmatic pressures Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence Potts, C. edited by Washio, T., Sakurai, A., Nakajima, K., Takeda, H., Tojo, S., Yokoo, M. Berlin: Springer. 2006
  • The narrowing acquisition path: From expressive small clauses to declaratives The Syntax of Nonsententials: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives Potts, C., Roeper, T. edited by Progovac, L., Paesani, K., Casielles, E., Barton, E. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 2006: 183–201
  • The Logic of Conventional Implicatures Potts, C. Oxford University Press. 2005
  • Lexicalized intonational meaning University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers Potts, C., Kawahara, S. Amherst, MA: GLSA.. 2005: 129–146
  • Japanese honorifics as emotive definite descriptions Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory Potts, C., Kawahara, S. edited by Watanabe, K., Young, R. B. 2004: 235–54
  • Expressive content as conventional implicature Potts, C. edited by Kadowaki, M., Kawahara, S. 2003: 303–22
  • The syntax and semantics of As-parentheticals NATURAL LANGUAGE & LINGUISTIC THEORY Potts, C. 2002; 20 (3): 623-689
  • The lexical semantics of parenthetical-as and appositive-which Syntax Potts, C. 2002; 5 (1): 55 - 88
  • NELS 33 conference report Glot International Potts, C. 2002
  • Model theory and the content of OT constraints Phonology Potts, C., Pullum, G. K. 2002; 19 (3): 361–393
  • WCCFL 21 conference report Glot International Potts, C. 2002; 5 (5)
  • Proceedings of the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics edited by Mikkelsen, L., Potts, C. 2002
  • No vacuous quantification constraints in syntax Potts, C. 2001: 451–70
  • Three types of transderivational constraint Syntax at Santa Cruz Potts, C. edited by Bhloscaidh, S. M. 2001: 21–40
  • (Only) some weak crossover effects repaired Snippets Potts, C. 2000; 1 (3)