Focus and alternatives in sentence processing
In a project with Amanda Rysling and Maziar Toosarvandani, we investigage the effect of focus on online sentence comprehension. Studies that have investigated the processing of linguistic focus and its effects in reading have found mixed results: Some report a decrease inreading times on focused material, while others report an increase. The aim of this project is to show that the inconsistencies in this literature can be explained if notion of focus is adopted that is more in line with the theoretical semantics literature on focus. In several experiments we show this by demonstrating the role of preceding linguistic context in the comprehension of foci.
In ongoing work I also investigate:
- The nature of alternative set construction as a context-sensitive process. [abstract]
- How expectations about contextually salient scales affect the processing of scalar focus particles and their associates.
- How the processing of broad foci is different from that of narrow foci.
- How representations of focus prosody might be encoded in memory (with Lalitha Balachandran, Nick Van Handel and Amanda Rysling). [materials]
Cross-clausal scope and event structure
In an ongoing project with Jonathan Pesetsky, Deniz Ozyildiz and Tom Roberts, we look into the availability of cross-clausal scope (CCS) readings—i.e., readings in which a universal quantifier in a finite embedded clause takes scope over an existential quantifier in the matrix clause. We argue that such readings are indeed possible in general, though also generally dispreferred. We show that such CCS readings can be brought out with certain embedding predicates (like ensure), and in the presence of adverbial phrases which presuppose an interval of time during which there is a rising expectation that some event will culminate (e.g. eventually, by midnight), and that these readings may be easier to get when the matrix embedding predicate is in the perfect. CCS seems facilitated in contexts where these adverbs or the embedding predicate itself require the matrix predicate to denote a complex event. We argue that CCS readings give us exactly such a complex event, because a high-scoping universal will interact with the matrix event by giving rise to subevents for each individual in the relevant domain. We argue that the interpretation of quantifiers interacts with event-structural properties previously neglected. [paper] [handout]
Focus marking in questions
This project aims to develop a better understanding of the interaction between the alternatives often assumed to be generated by disjunction, question alternatives and focus alternatives.
As a case study, I look into the different interpretations of disjunctive questions, and how they are disambiguated by their prosody. I investigate to what extent the different interpretations of these questions can really be derived from differences in their underlying syntactic structure—as is often assumed, and I look into the possibility of deriving these interpretations from differences in focus marking in a more direct way. [poster] [paper] [handout]
Coordinating questions
In my MSc thesis (written in the inquisitive semantics group, supervised by Floris Roelofsen), I looked into several puzzles concerning the interaction between questions on the one hand, and conjunction and disjunction on the other.
In this paper with Floris Roelofsen, we focus on one of those puzzles: we show that a conjunction of two polar interrogative clauses is interpreted so that each conjunct involves a polar question operator and the conjunction takes scope over these, whereas a disjunction of two polar interrogative clauses can only be interpreted as involving a single polar question operator scoping over the disjunction. In other words, two full-fledged polar questions each including their own question operator can be conjoined, but cannot be disjoined. We argue that the source of this contrast is semantic (rather than syntactic, pragmatic, or other), and we formulate two general constraints on question meanings which can each account for it.
Anaphora resolution in discourse
While cue-based retrieval became well accepted and maybe even the default model in case of agreement resolution and other intra-clausal dependencies, very little is known about dependents that operate across a discourse.
In this joint project with Jakub Dotlačil, we therefore investigate memory retrieval needed for pronoun resolution in short discourses. In particular, we use the notion of accessibility as introduced in Discourse Representation Theory to look into the resolution of cross-sentential anaphora. [poster]
Experimenting with Free Choice disjunction
In this project with Jonathan Pesetsky, Grzegorz Lisowski and Alexandre Cremers, we look into the availability of free choice readings of sentences with a disjunction and a deontic modal. Most importantly, we show that free choice readings are also available for disjunctions that take wide scope over the modal, but only when the context specifies the speaker as being knowledgeable of what is allowed and what is not allowed. [manuscript] [slides]