Research

Our research addresses multiple aspects of language use and comprehension, focusing on real-time language processing, with the aim of better understanding what kinds of linguistic and non-linguistic information is recruited during the interpretation process.

Much of our work deals with the kinds of default processing mechanisms that are used to assign some initial structure to linguistic input, and the extent to which those mechanisms are under automatic or strategic control.

We are particularly concerned with how such processing mechanisms might be integrated with representations and processes posited by current theory in linguistics and cognitive science. Examples of recent output can be found below.

Recent Presentations

Talks

Kaps, Marju (2019). Processing coordination ambiguity in context: Eye-tracking evidence from Estonian. Talk presented at the 33rd Annual CUNY Human Sentence Processing Conference 2020. Amherst, Ma, March 19-21, 2020.

Nakamura, Chie, Jesse A. Harris, & Sun-Ah Jun (2019). Listeners’ beliefs influence prosodic adaptation: Anticipatory use of contrastive accent during visual search. Talk presented at the International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS) 2019. Melbourne, Australia, August 5–9, 2019.

Kaps, Marju, John Gluckman & Jesse A. Harris (2019) Resolving ambiguous VP ellipsis in eye tracking: A case for underspecification. Talk presented at Experimental and Corpus-based Approaches to Ellipsis 2019. UC Davis, CA, July 14 2019.

Rasekhi, Vahideh, & Jesse A. Harris (2019) Interpreting Ambiguous Stripping Sentences in Persian: A Naturalness Rating Study. Talk presented at Experimental and Corpus-based Approaches to Ellipsis 2019. UC Davis, CA, July 14 2019.

Rich, Stephanie, & Jesse A. Harris (2019). The limits of forward thinking: Structural prediction with correlative and quantificational ’both’. Talk presented at the Psycholinguistics in Iceland — Parsing and Prediction (PIPP). Veröld, University of Iceland, Reykjavík, June 19& ndash;20, 2019.

Harris, Jesse A., & Sun-Ah Jun. (2019). Online closure mismatches between prosody and syntax: A pupillometry study. Talk presented at the Experimental Psycholinguistics Conference (EPC). Mallorca, Spain, June 26–29,2019.

Kaps, Marju, Alexandra Lawn, & Jesse A. Harris. (2019). Delayed attachment commitments for parenthetical relative clauses: An eye-tracking study. Talk presented at the 32nd Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing (CUNY). University of Colorado, Boulder, March 29–31, 2019

Harris, Jesse A., & Natasha Korotkova (2018). Preference for single events guides perception in Russian: A phoneme restoration study. Talk presented at 54th Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, April 26–April 28, 2018.

Kaps, Marju. (2018). Licensing SOV in Estonian: A naturalness rating study. Talk presented at 54th Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, April 26–April 28, 2018.

Harris, Jesse A. (2018). Correlative adverbs mark not only scope but also contrast: Corpus and eye tracking data.. Talk at the 31st Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, UC Davis, CA, March 15–17, 2018.

Nakamura, Chie, Jesse A. Harris, & Sun-Ah Jun (2018). Cue reliability affects anticipatory use of prosody in processing globally ambiguous sentences. Talk at the 31st Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, UC Davis, CA, March 15–17, 2018.

Kaps, Marju, John Gluckman, Jesse A. Harris (2017). Stereotypical gender in resolving ambiguous VP ellipsis: Evidence from eye tracking. Talk at the California Meeting on Psycholinguistics, UCLA, Los Angeles, December 2–3, 2017.

Lawn, Allie & Jesse A. Harris (2017). Structural bias, cue-relevancy and similarity-based interference in Spanish sluiced sentences. Talk at the California Meeting on Psycholinguistics, UCLA, Los Angeles, December 2–3, 2017.

Rich, Stephanie & Jesse A. Harris (2017). Disconfirmed lexical predictions linger in highly constraining contexts. Talk at the California Meeting on Psycholinguistics, UCLA, Los Angeles, December 2–3, 2017.

Nakamura, Chie, Jesse A. Harris, & Sun-Ah Jun (2017). Anticipatory effects and the reliability of prosody in processing globally ambiguous structures. Talk with Chie Nakamura and Sun-Ah Jun at the California Meeting on Psycholinguistics, UCLA, Los Angeles, December 2–3, 2017.

Rich, Stephanie & Jesse A. Harris (2017). Predictions in sentence processing: Words to structure. Invited talk at University of Southern California, Department of Linguistics; Psycholinguistics group. May 2017.

Harris, Jesse A. (2017). Thematic assignment before repair: Syntactic and prosodic cues in reanalysis. Talk at The Experimental Psycholinguistics Conference, Menorca, Spain, June 28–30, 2017.

Harris, Jesse A. & Katy Carlson. (2017) Association with focus for focus-sensitive particles: Differences between only and even in silent reading. LSA Annual Meeting, University of Austin, TX, January 5-8, 2017.

Harris, Jesse A. & Katy Carlson. Remnant seeks correlate for contrastive relationship. Locals preferred. Ellipsis across Borders, University of Sarajevo, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, June 20-21, 2016.

Harris, Jesse A. Commitment by proxy: Perspective management with transparent free relatives. Invited talk at the Generative Linguistics of the Old World (GLOW) Workshop on Perspectivization. University of Göttingen, Germany. April 8, 2016.

Carlson, Katy & Jesse A. Harris. When structure isn't enough: Discourse contrast in resolving focus-sensitive coordination. Talk with Katy Carlson at DETEC 2015: Discourse Expectations: Theoretical, Experimental, and Computational Perspectives, University of Alberta, Canada. June 17-19, 2015.

Carlson, Katy & Jesse A. Harris. Favoring a broad QUD in focus sensitive coordination. Talk at Grasping Ellipsis: its syntax, semantics, acquisition and processing, University of Campinas, Brazil. May 4-5, 2015.

Processing Preferences in Focus-Sensitive Coordination: Locality and Parallelism. Invited colloquium talk at University of California, San Diego, Department of Linguistics. April 13, 2015.

Processing Preferences in Focus-Sensitive Coordination: Locality and Parallelism. Keynote address at the 38th Annual Linguistics Spring Colloquium at the San Diego State University, Department of Linguistics. April 11, 2015.

Harris, Jesse A. & Katy Carlson. Preferences for focus particle placement: Two experiments. Talk at the 2nd Conference of the American Pragmatics Association (AMPRA). University of California, Los Angeles. October 17-19, 2014.

Harris, Jesse A. & Danielle Holstein. Biscuit conditionals as indirect offers. Talk at the 2nd Conference of the American Pragmatics Association (AMPRA). University of California, Los Angeles. October 17-19, 2014.

Carlson, Katy & Jesse A. Harris Adjective sprouting in much-less ellipsis. Talk at the 20th Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing (AMLaP). University of Edinburgh, Scotland. September 3-6, 2014.

Harris, Jesse A. Commitment by proxy. Invited talk at University of California, San Diego, Department of Linguistics; Semantics Babble group. June 6, 2014.

Harris, Jesse A. & Katy Carlson. The local contrast expectation in let alone coordination. Talk at 27th Annual CUNY Human Sentence Processing Conference. The Ohio State University. March 13-15, 2014.

Harris, Jesse A. Processing expectations for focus sensitive coordinations. Invited talk at University of Southern California, Department of Linguistics; Psycholinguistics group. November 22, 2013.

Harris, Jesse. A. Generating alternatives on demand: Processing sluices with d-linked remnants. Invited colloquium talk at University of California, Santa Cruz, Department of Linguistics. April 5, 2013.

Fishbein, Joel & Harris, Jesse A. Voltaire was More Easily Duped than Forged: Structural Cues in Processing Polysemy. Talk at Experimental Psycholinguistics Conference (ERP), Madrid, Spain. November 7-9, 2012.

Harris, Jesse A. Fast, cheap, but totally in control: Using Amazon's Mechanical Turk for Psycholinguistics Experiments. Invited tutorial at University of Southern California, Department of Linguistics. October 5, 2012.

Posters

Marju Kaps (2020). Information structure facilitates pairing contrastive ellipsis remnants with non-local correlates. Poster at the 33rd Annual CUNY Human Sentence Processing Conference. Amherst, Ma, March 19-21, 2020.

Lawn., Alexandra (2020). Not all cues are created equal: Retrieving gender and number in Portuguese relative clauses. Poster at the 33rd Annual CUNY Human Sentence Processing Conference. Amherst, Ma, March 19-21, 2020.

Harris, Jesse A. & Adrian Brasoveanu (2020). Morphological identity and voice mismatch in VP ellipsis: An interference-based account. Poster at the 33rd Annual CUNY Human Sentence Processing Conference. Amherst, Ma, March 19-21, 2020.

Rasekhi, Vahideh & Jesse A. Harris (2020). Disambiguating stripping ellipsis in Persian: How parallelism and locality interact. Poster at the 33rd Annual CUNY Human Sentence Processing Conference. Amherst, Ma, March 19-21, 2020.

Breiss, Canaan, Jesse Harris & Amanda Rysling (2020). The online advantage of repairing metrical structure: Stress shift in pupillometry. Poster at the 33rd Annual CUNY Human Sentence Processing Conference. Amherst, Ma, March 19-21, 2020.

Lawn, Alexandra & Jesse A. Harris (2019). Not all cues are equal: retrieving gender and number in Brazilian Portuguese sluiced sentences. Poster to be presented at Going Romance XXXIII. Leiden, The Netherlands. November, 28–29, 2019.

Harris, Jesse A., & Sun-Ah Jun (2019). Using pupillometry to assess prosodic alignment in language comprehension. Poster presented at the International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS) 2019. Melbourne, Australia, August 5–9, 2019.

Harris, Jesse A., Alexandra Lawn, & Marju Kaps (2019). Investigating sound and structure in concert: A pupillometry study of relative clause attachment. Poster presented at The 41st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Montreal, Canada, July 24–27, 2019.

Harris, Jesse A., & Rich, Stephanie (2019). Evidence for lingering structural prediction in 'either-or' structures. Poster presented at the Psycholinguistics in Iceland -– Parsing and Prediction (PIPP). Veröld, University of Iceland, Reykjavík, June 19–20, 2019.
Rich, Stephanie, & Jesse A. Harris. (2019). Thinking ahead has its limits: Structural prediction with correlative and quantificational "both". Poster presented at the 32nd Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing (CUNY). University of Colorado, Boulder, March 29–31, 2019.

Lawn, Alexandra & Jesse A. Harris. (2019). Similarity-based interference and morphological retrieval in Portuguese sluiced sentences. Poster presented at the 32nd Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing (CUNY). University of Colorado, Boulder, March 29–31, 2019.

Nakamura, Chie, Jesse A. Harris, & Sun-Ah Jun. (2019). Listeners’ beliefs about the speaker and adaptation to the deviant use of prosody.Poster presented at the 32nd Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing (CUNY). University of Colorado, Boulder, March 29–31, 2019

Harris, Jesse A., Chie Nakamura, Bethany Sturman, & Sun-Ah Jun. (2019). Prosody-meaning mismatches in PP ambiguity: Incremental processing with pupillometry. Poster presented at the 32nd Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing (CUNY). University of Colorado, Boulder, March 29–31, 2019.

Nakamura, Chie, Jesse A. Harris, Sun-Ah Jun, & Yuki Hirose. (2018). L2 Adaptation to unreliable prosody during structural analysis: A visual world study. Poster presented at the 43rd Boston University Conference on Language Development, November 2–4, 2018.

Harris, Jesse A., & Sun-Ah Jun. (2018). Pupil dilation indexes closure mismatches between prosody and syntax. Poster presented at the 4th Experimental and Theoretical Approaches to Prosody, University of Massachusetts Amherst, October 11–13, 2018.

Kaps, Marju, Alexandra Lawn, & Jesse A. Harris. (2018). Online processing asymmetries in restrictive and parenthetical relative clause attachment. Poster presented at 24th Annual Conference on Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing, Berlin, Germany, September 6–8, 2018.

Harris, Jesse A. (2018). Complement coercion induces greater garden path cost: Two eye tracking studies. The 31st Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, UC Davis, CA, March 15–17, 2018.

Nakamura, Chie, Jesse A. Harris, Sun-Ah Jun, and Yuki Hirose. (2018). Predictive processing and reliability in the influence of prosody in L2 structural analysis. The 31st Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, UC Davis, CA, March 15–17, 2018.

Rich, Stephanie & Jesse A. Harris (2018). Disconfirmed lexical predictions linger in highly constraining contexts. The 31st Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, UC Davis, CA, March 15–17, 2018.

Rich, Stephanie & Jesse A. Harris (2018). Local constraint is inhibited by global context in concessive structures. The 31st Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, UC Davis, CA, March 15–17, 2018.

Harris, Jesse, A., Stephanie Rich, & Ian Rigby. Predictability and misperception: An eye movement and ex-Gaussian analysis. The 30th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, Boston, MA, March 30–April 1, 2017.

Harris, Jesse, A., & Stephanie Rich. Predicted analyses linger: The case for structural prediction with either-or structures. Poster: Jesse Harris and Stephanie Rich. The 30th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, Boston, MA, March 30–April 1, 2017.

Harris, Jesse A., John Gluckman, and Marju Kaps. Sloppy on the road to strict? Stereotypical gender and the interpretation of VP Ellipsis. The 30th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, Boston, MA, March 30–April 1, 2017.

Harris, Jesse A. Semantic selectivity in the retrieval of sluiced sentences: An eye movement study. The 30th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, Boston, MA, March 30–April 1, 2017.

Harris, Jesse A. Implicit prosody and thematic assignment in garden-path recovery. The 30th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, Boston, MA, March 30–April 1, 2017.

Harris, Jesse A., Sun-Ah Jun, & Adam Royer. Implicit prosody pulls its weight: Recovery from garden path sentences. The 8th Meeting of the Speech Prosody International Conference, Boston, MA. May 31 – June 3, 2016.

Harris, Jesse A.,Sun-Ah Jun, & Adam Royer (2016). Implicit prosody pulls its weight: Recovery from garden path sentences. The 8th Meeting of the Speech Prosody International Conference, Boston, MA. May 31 – June 3, 2016.

Harris, Jesse A. & Natasha Korotkova. Preference for single events guides perception in Russian: A phoneme restoration study. Poster at The Events in Language and Cognition Workshop. Gainesville, Fl. March 2, 2016.

Harris, Jesse A. & Katy Carlson. Correlate not optional: PP sprouting in 'much less' ellipsis. Poster at the 29th Annual CUNY Human Sentence Processing Conference. Gainesville, Fl. March 3-5, 2016

Harris, Jesse A. Structure modulates similarity-based interference in sluicing: An eye movement study. Poster at the 28th Annual CUNY Human Sentence Processing Conference. University of Southern California. March 19-21, 2015.

Harris, Jesse A. & Katy Carlson. Focus particles in context: Support for the Broadest Focus Principle. Poster at the 28th Annual CUNY Human Sentence Processing Conference. University of Southern California. March 19-21, 2015.

Harris, Jesse A. & Katy Carlson. Focus marking isn't enough: The role of structural bias in focus-sensitive coordination. Poster at the 28th Annual CUNY Human Sentence Processing Conference. University of Southern California. March 19-21, 2015.

Harris, Jesse A. & Lindsey Meyer. Lexical decision in real time: A mouse tracking study. Poster with Lindsey Meyer at the 55th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society. Long Beach, CA. November 20-23, 2014.

Harris, Jesse A. & Katy Carlson. What was the question? Broad focus in focus-sensitive coordination. Poster at the 20th Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing (AMLaP). University of Edinburgh, Scotland. September 3-6, 2014.

Harris, Jesse A. & Katy Carlson. Focus preferences for focus-sensitive particles (and why). Poster at the 27th Annual CUNY Human Sentence Processing Conference. The Ohio State University. March 13-15, 2014.

Harris, Jesse A. Shifting viewpoints and discourse economy. Poster at the 27th Annual CUNY Human Sentence Processing Conference. The Ohio State University. March 13-15, 2014.

Fishbein, Joel & Harris, Jesse A. Figuring out Kafka: structural biases induce early sense commitment for metonyms. Poster at the 26th Annual CUNY Human Sentence Processing Conference. University of South Carolina. March 21-23, 2013.

Harris, Jesse A. The cost of unexpected contrast: processing `let alone'. Poster at the 26th Annual CUNY Human Sentence Processing Conference. University of South Carolina. March 21-23, 2013.

Harris, Jesse A. Discourse accessibility and structural bias: Processing d-linked phrases in sluices. Poster at the 26th Annual CUNY Human Sentence Processing Conference. University of South Carolina. March 21-23, 2013.

Fishbein, Joel & Harris, Jesse A. Using Structural Cues in Processing Polysemes. Poster at the 87th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA), Boston, MA. January 3-6, 2013.

Harris, Jesse A. Alternatives on demand: Processing d-linked phrases in sluice structures. Poster at Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing (AMLaP). Riva del Garda, Italy. September 6-8, 2012.

Research

Recent Presentations

Recent Papers

Talks

Posters