Pragmatics & social inference
Common ground, perspective-taking, nonliteral interpretation, and the representation of meaning in discourse.
Common ground and perspective-taking
This research examines how common ground and perspective information contribute to discourse interpretation. Studies address the conditions under which information about an interlocutor’s knowledge and perspective is incorporated into comprehension.
Current work distinguishes personal from informational common ground in verbal-irony comprehension. Related research examines perspective-taking and the prominence of supplementary content in discourse.
Related publications →Nonliteral and scalar interpretation
We investigate how linguistic, prosodic, and contextual cues constrain interpretations that extend beyond literal sentence meaning. Topics include sarcasm processing, the production of sarcastic prosody, and language experience in nonliteral comprehension.
Related work addresses scalar diversity, negative strengthening, and adjectival semantics, connecting pragmatic inference with lexical and discourse-level constraints.
Related publications →