I recently completed my Ph.D. in Linguistics at the University of
Southern California.
My areas of specialization are
psycholinguistics,
computational linguistics, and pragmatics / semantics.
Ph.D. Linguistics, University of Southern California, 2010
M.A. Linguistics, University of Southern California, 2007
B.S. Computer science, Northeastern University, 1998
Email: emtavano at gmail dot com
Phone: 818-613-1175
Dissertation title: The balance of scalar implicature
PDF
Abstract
This dissertation aims to provide new insight into the properties that
underlie scalar implicature (SI) processing. Previous experiments have
investigated the time course of SI processing and whether or not it is a
costly, resource-demanding process, but not what the resources have been
specifically used to do, and when. Additionally, word scales used in SI
research have been treated as interchangeable variations on a type,
without systematic evaluation of that assumption. This dissertation
investigates these questions via a computational model and several
experiments using highly sensitive methodologies, including eyetracking.
It concludes that scalar implicature is a costly, effortful process,
though that effort is easily affected by task or other experimental
factors. Specifically, processing difficulty appears to arise locally (as
the scalar term is encountered) and the effort put towards a scalar
inference, where the higher term(s) on the scale are negated. This
negation appears to lead to reduced accessibility of the term.
Additionally, it is not clear that the scales must be represented as such in the lexicon, or that they should be treated uniformly regardless of the words that compose them. Rather, this research shows that "typical" scales, the ones most often discussed in SI research, are composed of words that are both strongly and unidirectionally connected in the mental lexicon, in the order of the scale. In comparing many scales, I conclude that entailment is neither necessary nor sufficient in a scale, and scalar implicature may involve any set of related and sufficiently frequent words. This points toward a future unification account of particularized and generalized scalar implicature.
Finally, my findings also have methodological implications for experimental work in scalar implicature. The results suggest that participants. responses in typical experimental tasks, such as judging whether a sentence is true or appropriate, can be delayed not only by implicature processing but also (for example) participants. evaluation what the experimenter considers to be appropriate.
Research
My current work in psycholinguistics is in experimental pragmatics, specifically on processing of scalar implicature, for which I do a fair amount of eyetracking and eyetracking methodology research. CUNY 09 / XPRAG 09 poster
I also study pronouns and did a another eyetracking experiment on interpretation of stressed and unstressed pronouns under varying discourse coherence relations (based on Andrew Kehler's work) Abstract CUNY 08 Poster
Emphatic reflexives are also a good time.
In computational linguistics, I have worked with the Pedagogical Discourse Project (PedDiscourse) group at ISI, and in Andrew Gordon's group at ICT studying commonsense psychology among other things. I believe strongly that working NLP applications based on psycholinguistics study and brain models are desirable and possible, and I am working on implementing one using Wordnet that originated as a project for CSCI 564 Brain Theory and Artificial Intelligence, taught by Prof. Arbib.
Non-research
My husband, James Honaker, wrote Amelia. You know how you never answer that question on surveys? He knows what you would have said. Also, if you are a dinosaur, he knows what bone that was.
You can hear me read some public domain audiobooks at Librivox.
Inevitable cat picture. More evitable cow picture.
I like sad sci-fi movies, and making pies.
last updated 1/1/2011
