Papers by Jorie Koster-Hale
Blind people’s inferences about how other people see provide a window into fundamental questions ... more Blind people’s inferences about how other people see provide a window into fundamental questions about the human capacity to think about one another’s thoughts. By working with blind individuals, we can ask both what kinds of representations people form about others’ minds, and how much these representations depend on the observer having had similar mental states themselves. Thinking about others’ mental states depends on a spe- cific group of brain regions, including the right temporo-parietal junction (RTPJ). We inves- tigated the representations of others’ mental states in these brain regions, using multivoxel pattern analyses (MVPA). We found that, first, in the RTPJ of sighted adults, the pattern of neural response distinguished the source of the mental state (did the protagonist see or hear something?) but not the valence (did the protagonist feel good or bad?). Second, these neural representations were preserved in congenitally blind adults. These results suggest that the temporo-parietal junction contains explicit, abstract representations of features of others’ mental states, including the perceptual source. The persistence of these represen- tations in congenitally blind adults, who have no first-person experience with sight, provides evidence that these representations emerge even in the absence of relevant first-person perceptual experiences.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Apr 2013
Conventional analyses of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data compare the brain's re... more Conventional analyses of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data compare the brain's response to stimulus categories (eg, pictures of faces, stories about beliefs) across participants.
Abstract Quantifiers, unlike proper names or definite descriptions, cannot be given the semantics... more Abstract Quantifiers, unlike proper names or definite descriptions, cannot be given the semantics of referring expressions. This fact has triggered a long-standing debate in formal semantics and syntax as to the combinatorial means by which quantifiers are integrated into a sentence. The present paper contributes to this debate through an investigation of quantifier comprehension during real-time sentence processing.
Abstract A distinct group of brain regions, the 'Theory of Mind (ToM) network', is implicated in ... more Abstract A distinct group of brain regions, the 'Theory of Mind (ToM) network', is implicated in representing other people's mental states, yet we currently know little about which aspects of mental state attribution are represented or processed in these regions. Using fMRI, we investigated whether ToM regions, compared to language-processing regions, are sensitive to two dimensions along which mental state attributions vary:(1) structural complexity and (2) social content of the attributed thought.
In this paper, I show that restrictive relative clauses can be internally headed by a DP, not, as... more In this paper, I show that restrictive relative clauses can be internally headed by a DP, not, as is standardly assumed, an NP. Syntactically, the internal copy of a relative clause head licenses constructions that I show can only be licensed by a full DP: movement out of weak islands and parasitic gapping. Semantically, relative clause heads hosting ACD sites show scopal sensitivity to elements inside the relative clause, which requires an analysis with a full copy of the DP head originating inside the relative clause.
Abstract Objects of intensional transitive verbs (ITVs) can be in interpreted transparently or op... more Abstract Objects of intensional transitive verbs (ITVs) can be in interpreted transparently or opaquely. How to represent this ambiguity has been of considerable interest to the field over the years. This paper presents evidence from real time sentence processing to weigh in on that debate. Our evidence supports approaches that rely in an essential way on a syntactic scoping mechanism to explain the ambiguity. Specifically, our evidence suggests that the object of an ITV is interpreted transparently only if it takes syntactic scope over the ITV.
This paper presents two experimental studies of verification procedures for the modified numeral ... more This paper presents two experimental studies of verification procedures for the modified numeral quantifiers more than k, at least k, at most k, and fewer than k in order to investigate to what extent the form of a particular quantifier determines its associated verification strategies. We show that the numeral n affects the counting component of the verification process, that the modifier (more than, at least,…) affects the decision stage, and that these two factors don't interact.
This paper argues that two combinatorial processes, resolving antecedent contained deletion and r... more This paper argues that two combinatorial processes, resolving antecedent contained deletion and resolving the problem of quantifiers in object position, are intimately linked and then discusses the theoretical implications that this hypothesis carries. The evidence that we use to support this claim comes from a series of sentence processing studies that investigate real time effects of processing quantificational and definite DPs.
Abstract In this thesis, I argue for a novel analysis of modified concealed questions (MCQs) larg... more Abstract In this thesis, I argue for a novel analysis of modified concealed questions (MCQs) largely based on Nathan (2005). Concealed questions are determiner phrases (DPs) that give rise to a question-like meaning when embedded under some question-embedding verbs. MCQs are specifically those DPs that require a modifier, such as a relative clause, in order to give rise to this question-like denotation.
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Papers by Jorie Koster-Hale