She is the author of a theory of discourse interpretation, default semantics. This theory breaks away from the tradition of modelling utterance meaning by means of a sentence-based proposition and proposes instead so-called 'merger representations' – conceptual representations which combine the output of various linguistic and non-linguistic sources of information leading to the recovery of speaker meaning, shifting compositionality from the level of syntactic structures to the level of the merger.[4][5]
She has published widely on various topics in philosophy of language, semantics and pragmatics, including representing time in language and mind, ambiguity and underdetermination of meaning, propositional attitudes, and representing the self.
Kasia Jaszczolt received her D.Phil. from the University of Oxford.[2] Her academic career combines interests in meaning in natural language and in communication with interests in philosophy of language and mind, epistemology and metaphysics.[2]
She took up the position of assistant lecturer at the University of Cambridge in 1995, followed by posts as Lecturer and Reader.[2] Since 2010 she has been full Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy of Language at the University of Cambridge.[2] Jaszczolt has been a Fellow of Newnham College since 1995.[6]
As of 2018, she is general editor of a book series Oxford Studies of Time in Language and Thought, Oxford University Press and member of several editorial boards of linguistics journals, including Journal of Pragmatics, Intercultural Pragmatics and Belgian Journal of Linguistics, and book series, including Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy and Psychology, Springer, and Studies in Pragmatics, Elsevier.[2]
From 1996 to 2008 she was principal editor of a book series Current Research in the Semantics/Pragmatics Interface, Elsevier. She was also a member of the Committee of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain (LAGB).[7]
