[1] She has also done significant work with semantic fieldwork and in the preservation and oral history of First Nations languages, especially St'át'imcets and Gitksan.
[2] Matthewson's appointment at UBC was notable because she was the first female full professor in the department's history.
[4] In 1998, her PhD thesis, "Determiner Systems and Quantificational Strategies: Evidence from Salish," was awarded the E. W. Beth Dissertation Prize,[5] given to outstanding PhD theses in the fields of Logic, Language, and Information.
Matthewson's research explores how variation in semantics and pragmatics among languages can provide insight into the proposal of a Universal Grammar.
[7] Matthewson co-edited the 2015 book Methodologies in Semantic Fieldwork from Oxford University Press.
[8] Matthewson also co-developed the Totem Field Storyboards project, which seeks to gather linguistic information from speakers without direct interviews.
The Linguistic Variation Yearbook 7. von Fintel, Kai and Lisa Matthewson 2008.