❁ Psycholinguistics
Higher-order linguistic units in memory
Through my dissertation work, and in joint work with several colleagues, I'm currently experimentally investiagting the relationship between higher-order (i.e., prosodic or discourse) structures and memory for syntactic content. Extending work on how prosodic chunks and discourse segments relate to units in memory, a large portion of my work focuses on (i) what types of cognitive operations apply at "significant" linguistic boundaries, and (ii) how memory retrieval operates across these domains.
Four lines of ongoing, related work investigate the following:
- The relationship between memory and metacognitive processes in clause wrap-up effects (with Matt Wagers)
- The effect of prosodic boundaries on syntactic reanalysis (with Matt Wagers)
- Contiguity effects and encoding interefence between linguistic domains (with Stephanie Rich & Matt Wagers) [poster]
- Memory retrieval at the prosody-discourse interface in appositive relative clause constructions (with Jack Duff, Pranav Anand, & Amanda Rysling) [poster]
Focus-prosody interactions in memory
Through a series of auditory recognition memory studies, I'm exploring how memory for focus structure and memory for prosodic detail interact at a delay, following a large body of work on the deeper encoding of foci compared to non-foci in memory. (with Morwenna Hoeks, Nick Van Handel, Cal Boye-Lynn, and Amanda Rysling) [poster]
❁ Formal semantics & pragmatics
Ellipsis & the structure of discourse
I've investigated a type of pragmatics-sensitive ellipsis termed argument-reversing verb phrase ellipsis (e.g. A: I1 love you2. B: I2 do, <love you1>, too.), where pairs of participants intuitively reverse roles across the antecedent and ellipsis clauses. I argue that these mismatches of argument structure are possible only when the context allows for accommodation of a reciprocal Question Under Discussion structure (Do A and B love each other?). [SuB handout & talk] [paper]
Aligning outlooks in discourse
I've worked on other topics in semantics and pragmatics, including attitude ascriptions in contexts with subjective and objective Questions Under Discussion (QUDs). Using naturally-occurring data from a corpus of dyadic conversations, we argue that conversational partners pursue the strategy of contributing non-comittal stances in order to align outlooks, even in response to objective QUDs. (with Jack Duff) [paper]
❁ Pedagogy
Equity in online course outcomes
Along with collaborators at UCSC's Teaching & Learning Center, I've investigated the effect of participation in online pre-requisite courses on student outcomes in post-requisite courses. Our investigation reveals that online pre-requisite completion does not negatively impact post-requisite grades; furthermore, online pre-requisite completion does not exacerbate equity gaps in downstream outcomes. Taken together, our results suggest that intentionally designed online courses are equally as effective at contributing to equitable educational outcomes for marginalized students. (with Megan McNamara, Herbie Lee, and Michael Tassio) [pre-print, submitted for publication]