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Projects

Referential expressions

In any given language, reference to an entity can involve a number of forms: a pronoun like she, a definite description like the linguist, and a demonstrative description like that linguist. The choice of an expression that the speaker uses depends on a number of factors such as context, politeness, and the presence of other potential referents. In this project, we try to identify these factors. In one study, we looked at how the age of the addressee affects the kinds of referential expressions a speaker uses by running a production study where participants were asked to narrate a story to an imaginary addressee of different ages. In another study, we are looking at how the way a story is narrated affects the naturalness of different referential expressions in the same sentence.

RAs: Jasmine Ferrer, Nicole Hsieh, Samantha Zielinski

 

Meaning composition with gesture

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It is known that gestures and speech work together to convey meaning. In this project, we are investigating the kinds of gestures that can be used with or in place of speech, and what the result of the meaning is. In a recent study, we asked how natural it is to replace a verbal word (a verb, a noun, or an adjective) with a gesture, and whether this naturalness rating is affected by how marked or exaggerated the gesture is. We found that gesture replacing words is rated lower than gesture accompanying words, and that when gestures replace words, rating is higher if they are marked.

RA: Sahana Iyer

 

Bridging

  • Ziling Zhu and Dorothy Ahn, 2023. Status of Mandarin demonstrative na: evidence from bridging. ICTEAP-4, August 17, 2023, Dongguk University, Korea. [slides]
  • Ziling Zhu and Dorothy Ahn, 2022. Mandarin bridging: experimental data and theoretical implications. Proceedings of the 13th GLOW in Asia, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. [proceedings]

 

R2D2

  • Chaoyi Chen and Dorothy Ahn, 2023. The antecedent preferences for Mandarin reflexive ziji and ta-ziji. ICTEAP-4, August 18, 2023, Dongguk University, Korea. [poster]