Lattimore Eye Tracking Lab

Jeffrey T. Runner, director

I am interested in the role that syntactic structural information plays in language processing, and also in how experimental psycholinguistic tools can be applied to classic problems within formal linguistics. The former means that much of my research examines the syntax/semantics/discourse interfaces; the latter means I use experimental methodologies to examine these questions. We currently have projects going investigating the constraints on reference resolution of various sorts, including the binding of reflexives and pronouns, as well as VP ellipsis, using an array of methodologies, such as visual world eye-tracking, scene verification, magnitude estimation, self-paced reading and various other questionnaire and web-based methods. I welcome students interested in these and other questions. To get an idea of some of the specific projects, please see the descriptions and some of the resulting presentations and publications below.

Main Methodologies

Head-mounted eye-tracking experiments monitoring participants' eye movements while they listen to pre-recorded auditory stimuli either to manipulate real world objects or to click on items in visual scenes displayed on a computer monitor.

Scene verification experiments probing participants' interpretations of pre-recorded auditory stimuli using visual scenes displayed on a monitor.

Magnitude estimation experiments examining participants' judgments of the acceptability of linguistic stimuli.

Equipment

Eye-tracking

Eyelink II head-mounted eye-tracker with scene camera
Tobii 1750 portable eye-tracker
I-Scan ETL-500 system head-mounted eye-tracker

Audio and Video

Sony Digital 8 Video Camera Recorder
Sony DSR-30 Digital VCR
Samsung Color Television with built in VCR
Marantz PMD 671 solid state audio recorder

Computers

4 PCs running Windows XP
2 Macs running OSX, 2 Macs running OS9

Current Lattimore Lab People

Alex Fine, PhD student, Brain & Cognitive Sciences and Linguistics 2013
Christina Kim, PhD student, Brain & Cognitive Sciences and Linguistics 2011
Sharese King, Lab Research Assistant, McNair Scholar, Linguistics and American Sign Language 2011
Seth Rosenblatt, Lab Research Assistant, Brain & Cognitive Sciences and Philosophy 2011

Lattimore Lab Alumni

Carlos Gómez Gallo, Rochester Computer Science and Linguistics PhD 2010, Harvard Linguistics Postdoc
Micah Goldwater, Rochester Linguistics BA 2003, UT Austin Cognitive Psychology PhD 2009, Northwestern Psychology Postdoc
Stephanie Huston, Rochester Linguistics BA 2010, Linguistic Analyst, Verilogue, Inc.
Elsi Kaiser, Center for Language Sciences postdoc (2003-2005), assistant professor of Linguistics, University of Southern California
Kim Leiken, Rochester Linguistics MA 2009, NYU Linguistics PhD student
Rebekka Puderbaugh, Rochester Linguistics BA 2006, Alberta Linguistics PhD student
Kyle Richardson, Rochester Linguistics BA 2010, Intern, Intelligent Systems Laboratory, PARC
Neal Snider, Rochester Center for Language Sciences postdoc 2008-2010, Senior NLP Research Engineer, Nuance Communications, Inc.
Rachel Sussman, Rochester Linguistics and Brain & Cognitive Sciences PhD 2006, Wisconsin-Madison Psychology Postdoc 2006-2008

Projects

Ellipsis, binding, 'picture' NPs and "statue" interpretations.

The role of syntactic structure in the interpretation of elided anaphors, testing theories of binding and theories of ellipsis. The role of the representational nature of PNPs and parallels with other types of representational interpretations, namely 'statue' interpretations of nominals; investigating conceptual versus structural characteristics of anaphora.

Goldwater, Micah & Jeffrey T. Runner (2008) The Representational Nature of Representational NP's: Using the Visual World Eye-Tracking Paradigm, poster presented at the 21st annual CUNY conference on human sentence processing, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Goldwater, Micah & Jeffrey T. Runner (2007). An Experimental Investigation of the Representational Nature of Representational NPs. Talk presented at Texas Linguistic Society, UT Austin.

Goldwater, Micah & Jeffrey T. Runner (2007). Reference transfer and reflexive interpretation in representational noun phrases. Talk presented at the 81st Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Anaheim, California.

Goldwater, Micah B. & Runner, Jeffrey T. (2006). Coreferential interpretations of reflexives in picture noun phrases: an experimental approach. In P. Denis, E. McCready, A. Palmer & B. Reese (Eds.) Proceedings of the 2004 Texas Linguistics Society Conference. 28-34. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.

Goldwater, Micah & Jeffrey T. Runner (2006). The Role of Representation in Representational Noun Phrases, poster presented at the 19th annual CUNY conference on human sentence processing, City University of New York.

Runner, Jeffrey T. (2005) Coreferential and Bound Variable Interpretations: an Experimental Investigation, keynote address presented at HPSG 2005, Lisbon.

Ellipsis, discourse coherence and structure

The structural and discourse relations between elided material and its linguistic antecedent, focusing on the interaction of structural form and discourse parallelism.

Kim, Christina & Jeffrey T. Runner (2009). When syntactic parallelism is really discourse parallelism in VP ellipsis. Poster to be presented at the 83rd Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America.

Runner, Jeffrey T. & Christina Kim (2008) Are syntactic effects in VP ellipsis really discourse effects? Invited talk, Workshop "Language, Linguistics & Neurocognition," Utrecht University, UIL OTS.

Kobele, Gregory, Christina Kim, John Hale & Jeffrey T. Runner (2008). A processing model for ungrammatical verb phrase ellipsis. Talk presented at the 21st annual CUNY human sentence processing conference, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Focus sensitive particles

Testing the effects of 'only' on interpretation of elided anaphors. Contextual factors on the interpretation of focus sensitive 'only' and 'also'

Kim, Christina, Christine Gunlogson, Michael K. Tanenhaus & Jeffrey T. Runner (2008). Focus Alternatives and Contextual Domain Restriction: a Visual World Eye-tracking Study on the Interpretation of Only. Paper presented at Sinn und Bedeutung, Stuttgart University.

Kim, Christina, Christine Gunlogson, Michael K. Tanenhaus & Jeffrey T. Runner (2008). Focus alternatives and contextual domain restriction: an eye-tracking study on the interpretation of "only". Poster presented at Architectures and Mechanisms of Language Processing Conference, Cambridge University.

Kim, Christina, Christine Gunlogson, Michael K. Tanenhaus & Jeffrey T. Runner (2008). Information integration and domain restriction: Interpreting 'only' in context, poster presented at the 27th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, UCLA.

Kim, Christina, Christine Gunlogson, Michael K. Tanenhaus & Jeffrey T. Runner (2008) Domain narrowing: Interpreting 'only' in context, poster presented at the 21st annual CUNY conference on human sentence processing, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Pronouns and reflexives influenced by verbal semantics and pragmatics

The effects of verbal semantics and pragmatics on the interpretation of pronouns and reflexives in PNPs in English, Finnish, German and Dutch.

Kaiser, Elsi & Jeffrey T. Runner. (2008). Intensifiers in German and Dutch Anaphor Resolution. In Proceedings of the 27th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, ed. Natasha Abner and Jason Bishop, 265-273. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.

Kaiser, Elsi & Jeffrey T. Runner (2008). A comparative investigation of anaphor resolution in German and Dutch, poster presented at the 21st annual CUNY conference on human sentence processing, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Kaiser, Elsi, Runner, Jeffrey T., Sussman, Rachel S. & Tanenhaus, Michael K. (in press). The interpretation of pronouns and reflexives in picture noun phrases: effects of non-structural factors. In A. Alcazar, R. Mayoral Hernandez and M. Temkin Martinez (Eds.), Proceedings of the Western Conference on Linguistics 2004. Fresno, CA: California State University at Fresno.

Kaiser, Elsi, Jeffrey T. Runner, Rachel S. Sussman and Michael K. Tanenhaus (2007). Picturing the syntax/semantics interface during on-line processing. Talk presented at the On Linguistic Interfaces conference, University of Ulster, Jordanstown campus, N. Ireland.

Kaiser, Elsi, Jeffrey T. Runner, Rachel S. Sussman and Michael K. Tanenhaus (2007). On the interplay of syntactic and semantic effects on anaphor resolution. Talk presented at the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, University of Chicago.

Kaiser, Elsi, Runner, Jeffrey T., Sussman, Rachel S. & Tanenhaus, Michael K. (2007). The real-time interpretation of pronouns and reflexives: Structural and semantic information. In Proceedings of North Eastern Linguistic Society Conference 37.

Kaiser, Elsi, Jeffrey T. Runner, Rachel S. Sussman and Michael K. Tanenhaus (2007). Pronouns as reflexives? A look at prenominal possessive pronouns. Talk presented at the 81st Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Anaheim, California.

Kaiser, Elsi, Jeffrey T. Runner, Rachel S. Sussman & Michael K. Tanenhaus (2005). What influences the referential properties of reflexives and pronouns in Finnish? In Christian Ebert & Cornelia Endriss (Eds.) Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 10. 155-169, ZAS Working Papers in Linguistics No. 44 Vol. 1, Berlin.

Kaiser, Elsi, Jeffrey T. Runner, Rachel S. Sussman & Michael K. Tanenhaus (2005).Whose picture? Reference resolution in and out of picture NPs, poster presented at the 18th annual CUNY conference on human sentence processing, University of Arizona.

Kaiser, Elsi, Jeffrey T. Runner, Rachel S. Sussman & Michael K. Tanenhaus (2005). Reference resolution for reflexives and pronouns in Finnish, poster presented at the 18th annual CUNY conference on human sentence processing, University of Arizona.

Kaiser, E., Runner, J.T., Sussman, R.S. & Tanenhaus, M.K. (2004), Pronouns, reflexives, Binding Theory, and information flow, poster presented at Architectures and Mechanisms of Language Processing (AMLaP), Aix-en-Provence, France.

Kaiser, E., Runner, J.T., Sussman, R.S. & Tanenhaus, M.K. (2004). An experimental approach to short-distance pronouns and logophoric reflexives, paper presented at the Workshop on Semantic Approaches to Binding Theory, Nancy, France.

'Picture' noun phrase structure and interpretation

The structure and interpretation of picture NPs with and without possessor phrases (e.g., 'Harry's picture of himself/him', 'a picture of her/herself').

Runner, Jeffrey T. (2007) Free Picture NPs from Binding Theory, in Jill Thorson & Lynsey Wolter, eds., University of Rochester Working Papers in the Language Sciences, 3.1, 57-90.

Runner, Jeffrey T., Rachel S. Sussman & Michael K. Tanenhaus (2006). Assigning Reference to Reflexives and Pronouns in Picture Noun Phrases, Cognitive Science 30, 1-49.

Runner, J. T., Sussman, R.S. & Tanenhaus, M. K. (2006). Reflexives and pronouns in picture noun phrases: using eye movements as a source of linguistic evidence. In S. Kepser & M. Reis (Eds.) Linguistic Evidence. Mouton de Gruyter.

Runner, Jeffrey T. and Elsi Kaiser. (2005). Binding in Picture Noun Phrases: Implications for Binding Theory. In Stefan Müller, editor, The Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Department of Informatics, University of Lisbon. 594-613. Stanford: CSLI Publications. URL: http://cslipublications.stanford.edu/HPSG/6/.

Runner, Jeffrey T. (2004) Insights into Binding and Ellipsis from Head-mounted Eye-tracking Experiments, in Jonathon E. Cihlar, David W. Kaiser, Irene Kimbara, and Amy Franklin (eds.), CLS 39 The Panels: Proceedings from the Panels of the Thirty-Ninth Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society.

Runner, Jeffrey T., Sussman, Rachel S. and Tanenhaus, Michael K. (2004). The Influence of Binding Theory on the On-Line Reference Resolution of Pronouns. In M. Wolf & K. Moulton (Eds.) Proceedings of North Eastern Linguistic Society 34.

Runner, Jeffrey T., Rachel S. Sussman and Michael K. Tanenhaus (2003) Assignment of Reference to Reflexives and Pronouns in Picture Noun Phrases: Evidence from Eye Movements, Cognition 89, B1-B13.

Runner, Jeffrey T., Rachel S. Sussman and Michael K. Tanenhaus (2003) The Influence of Binding Theory on the On-Line Reference Resolution of Pronouns, poster presented at North Eastern Linguistic Society 34, SUNY Stony Brook.

Runner, Jeffrey T., Rachel S. Sussman and Michael K. Tanenhaus (2002) Binding Reflexives and Pronouns in Picture Noun Phrases, 8th Annual Conference on Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing, Tenerife, Spain.

Runner, Jeffrey T., Rachel S. Sussman and Michael K. Tanenhaus (2002) Logophors in Possessed Picture Noun Phrases, in L. Mikkelsen and C. Potts, eds., WCCFL 21 Proceedings, pp. 401-414. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.

Runner, Jeffrey T. (2002) When Minimalism isn't Enough: an Argument for Argument Structure, Linguistic Inquiry 33.1.

Runner, Jeffrey T., Rachel S. Sussman & Michael K. Tanenhaus (2001) The Role of Binding Theory in the On-line Reference Resolution of Reflexives, poster presented at CUNY Human Sentence Processing Conference, U. Penn.

Runner, Jeffrey T., Rachel S. Sussman and Michael K. Tanenhaus (2000) Binding Reflexives and Pronouns in Real-time Processing, poster presentation at the CUNY Human Sentence Processing Conference, San Diego.