Andrew Devine

Prof. Devine's current work is in Latin semantics and pragmatics. Students often ask why Latin has so many inflectional endings and why its word order is so variable. With the development in the second half of the twentieth century of formal techniques of analysis for syntax, semantics and their interface, it has become possible to provide more precise and explanatory answers to these questions than were offered by the traditional grammar used in our classroom textbooks. Semantics for Latin (OUP, 2013) analyzes the meanings of the Latin grammatical categories in the framework of formal semantics, and Latin Word Order (OUP, 2006) shows how pragmatic meaning is expressed by Latin syntax.