[1] From 1976 to 2006, she was a professor in the department of linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African languages at Michigan State University, with a joint appointment in philosophy.
Abbott's semantics and pragmatics research examines topics in reference and noun phrase interpretation, focusing on philosophically influenced aspects of word meaning, presupposition, and conditional sentences.
[8] In 1993, Abbott received an Outstanding Faculty & Staff Award at MSU for "contributions to equal opportunities for achievement and providing an environment that encourages excellence".
[11] In 2009, she was an invited speaker at the Second Conference on Concept Types and Frames in Language, Cognition, and Science at the Heinrich-Heine-University of Duesseldorf.
[12] Abbott has served on the editorial board of academic journals including The Journal of Pragmatics,[13] Natural Language and Linguistic Theory,[14] and Intercultural Pragmatics,[15] as well as serving as a referee for articles in Philosophy of Science[16] and in Language.