I am a Professor and the Undergraduate Chair in the Linguistics department at UPenn. I am also the Associate Director for Education of mindCORE, Penn’s hub for the integrative study of the mind.  In addition, I am a member of the Graduate Group in Psychology. My research and teaching is concerned with the study of meaning, combining formal tools from semantics and pragmatics in theoretical linguistics with experimental methods from psycholinguistics. Under the lead of Jeremy Zehr, my lab has developed PCIbex, a tool for implementing and hosting experiments online.


Upcoming presentations & events:

Representative Publications & New Manuscripts
(full list of papers and talks here)

Lakhani, Nikhil & Florian Schwarz. 2023. Covariation in processing: grammar vs. context. Glossa Psycholinguistics. Cite Download
Kalomoiros, Alexandros & Florian Schwarz. 2023. Presupposition projection from ‘and’ vs. ‘or’: Experimental data and theoretical implications. Journal of Semantics. Cite Download
Beltrama, Andrea & Florian Schwarz. 2023. Social identity affects imprecision resolution – and in different ways for different tasks. 26. Cite Download
Schwarz, Florian. 2022. Increasing Inclusion Through Structured Active Learning – A Case Study of Curriculum Changes in an Introduction to Formal Linguistics. In Anne Charity Hudley, Christine Mallinson & Mary Bucholtz (eds.), Inclusion in Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cite Download
Schwarz, Florian & Jérémy Zehr. 2022. Pragmatics and the Lexicon. In Lila Gleitmann, Anna Papafragou & John Trueswell (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Mental Lexicon. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cite Download
Beltrama, Andrea & Florian Schwarz. 2022. (Im)precise personae: The effect of socio-indexical information on semantic interpretation. 32. Cite Download
Schwarz, Florian. 2021. Intensional transitive verbs: I owe you a horse. In Lisa Matthewson, Cécile Meier, Hotze Rullmann & Thomas Ede Zimmermann (eds.), The Companion to Semantics. Wiley. Cite Download
Schwarz, Florian & Jeremy Zehr. 2021. Tutorial: Introduction to PCIbex – An Open-Science Platform for Online Experiments: Design, Data-Collection and Code-Sharing. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society 43(43). (24 March, 2022). Cite Download
Mandelkern, Matthew, Jérémy Zehr, Jacopo Romoli & Florian Schwarz. 2020. We've discovered that projection across conjunction is asymmetric (and it is!). Linguistics and Philosophy. https://doi.org/ Cite Download
Schwarz, Florian. 2019. Weak vs. strong definite articles: Meaning and form across languages. In Ana Aguilar-Guevara, Julia Pozas Loyo & Violeta Vázquez-Rojas Maldonado (eds.), Definiteness Across Languages, 1–37. Berlin: Language Sciences Press. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.3252012. Cite Download
Keshet, Ezra & Florian Schwarz. 2019. De Re / De Dicto. In Barbara Abbott & Jeanette Gundel (eds.), The Oxford Handbook on Reference, 168–202. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cite Download
Schwarz, Florian. 2019. Definites, domain restriction, and discourse structure in online processing. In Charles Jr. Clifton, Katy Carlson & Janet Dean Fodor (eds.), Grammatical Approaches to Language Processing - Essays in Honor of Lyn Frazier, 187–208. Cham: Springer International Publishing. Cite Download
Schwarz, Florian. 2019. Presuppositions, Projection, and Accommodation - Theoretical Issues and Experimental Approaches. In Chris Cummins & Napoleon Katsos (eds.), Handbook of Experimental Semantics and Pragmatics, 83–113. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cite Download
Bacovcin, Hezekiah Akiva, Jeremy Zehr & Florian Schwarz. 2018. To accommodate or to ignore?: The presuppositions of again and continue across contexts. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 3(1). 16. https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.402. Cite Download
Siegel, Muffy, Jérémy Zehr, Hezekiah Akiva Bacovcin, Lynne Steuerle Schofield & Florian Schwarz. 2018. The verbatim access effect: implicature in experimental context. Language and Cognition 10(4). 595–625. https://doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2018.18. Cite Download
Schwarz, Florian & Sonja Tiemann. 2017. Presupposition Projection in Online Processing. Journal of Semantics 34(1). 61–106. https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffw005. Cite Download
Schwarz, Florian. 2016. False but Slow: Evaluating Statements with Non-referring Definites. Journal of Semantics 33(1). 177–214. https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffu019. Cite Download
Schwarz, Florian. 2015. Presuppositions vs. Asserted Content in Online Processing. In Florian Schwarz (ed.), Experimental Perspectives on Presuppositions (Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics 45), 89–108. Cham: Springer International Publishing. Cite Download
Romoli, Jacopo & Florian Schwarz. 2015. An Experimental Comparison between Presupposition and Indirect Scalar Implicatures. In Florian Schwarz (ed.), Experimental Perspectives on Presuppositions (Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics 45), 215–240. Cham: Springer International Publishing. Cite Download
Schwarz, Florian (ed.). 2015. Experimental Perspectives on Presuppositions (Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics 45). Cham: Springer International Publishing. (20 January, 2016). Cite
Schwarz, Florian. 2014. How weak and how definite are Weak Definites? In Ana Aguilar-Guevara, Bert Le Bruyn & Joost Zwarts (eds.), Weak Referentiality (Linguistics Today Series 219), 213–235. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Cite Download
Schwarz, Florian. 2012. Situation pronouns in determiner phrases. Natural Language Semantics 20(4). 431–475. Cite Download
Schwarz, Florian. 2009. Two Types of Definites in Natural Language. Amherst, MA: GLSA Publications. Cite
Schwarz, Florian. 2007. Processing Presupposed Content. Journal of Semantics 24(4). 373–416. https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffm011. Cite Download