about us
The Experimental Meaning Group is associated with the Department of Linguistics at Northwestern University. We use behavioral experiments to investigate semantic-pragmatic questions in the domains of both theoretical linguistics and psycholinguistic processing.
Those interested in our work should reach out to Eszter; prospective PhD students can find more information here.
contact
Department of Linguistics
Northwestern University
2016 Sheridan Rd
Evanston, IL 60208
ronai@northwestern.edu
lab news
NSF DDRI for Cassie Davenport
Cassie has been awarded an NSF DDRI for her dissertation research “The role of social information in sentence processing: Adjectives, nouns, and contextual cues” (NSF BCS #2438973, PI: Eszter Ronai, Co-PI: Cassie Davenport).
Two upcoming proceedings papers
To appear in the SALT and ELM proceedings.
Eszter Ronai. Embedded scalar diversity. In Proceedings of the 34th Semantics and Linguistic Theory Conference. [paper]
Thomas Sostarics, Eszter Ronai & Jennifer Cole. Relating Scalar Inference and Alternative Activation: A view from the Rise-Fall-Rise Tune in American English. Proceedings of Experiments in Linguistic Meaning: Volume 3. [paper]
output
publications
Peer-reviewed journal articles
accepted. Helena Aparicio & Eszter Ronai. Scalar implicature rates vary within and across adjectival scales. Journal of Semantics.
2025. Eszter Ronai & Lucas Fagen. Experimental evidence for variation across exclusive modifiers. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 10(1). DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.16797. [paper] (open access)
2025. Eszter Ronai & Ming Xiang. Scalar inference calculation through the lens of degree estimates. Language and Cognition, 17, e17, 1–26. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2024.55. [paper] (open access)
2024. Eszter Ronai & Alexander Göbel. Watch your tune! On the role of intonation for scalar diversity. Glossa Psycholinguistics, 3(1): 26, pp. 1–34. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5070/G60114911. [paper] (open access)
2024. Eszter Ronai & Ming Xiang. What could have been said? Alternatives and variability in pragmatic inferences. Journal of Memory and Language, 136: 104507. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2024.104507 [accepted manuscript]
Conference proceedings
to appear. Eszter Ronai. Embedded scalar diversity. In Proceedings of the 34th Semantics and Linguistic Theory Conference. [paper]
2025. Thomas Sostarics, Eszter Ronai & Jennifer Cole. Relating Scalar Inference and Alternative Activation: A view from the Rise-Fall-Rise Tune in American English. In Tyler Knowlton et al. (eds.), Proceedings of Experiments in Linguistic Meaning: Volume 3, pp. 383-394. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3765/elm.3.5768 [paper]
2023. Helena Aparicio & Eszter Ronai. Scalar implicature rates vary within and across adjectival scales. In Juhyae Kim et al. (eds.), Proceedings of the 33rd Semantics and Linguistic Theory Conference, pp. 110-130. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3765/t7t8pn98 [paper]
2023. Alexander Göbel & Eszter Ronai. On the meaning of intonational contours: a view from scalar inference. In Juhyae Kim et al. (eds.), Proceedings of the 33rd Semantics and Linguistic Theory Conference, pp. 439-459. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3765/dnsw0s29 [paper]
2023. Eszter Ronai & Ming Xiang. Degree estimates as a measure of inference calculation. In Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America 8(1), 5537. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v8i1.5537 [paper]
2023. Eszter Ronai & Ming Xiang. Tracking the activation of scalar alternatives with semantic priming. In Tyler Knowlton et al. (eds.), Proceedings of Experiments in Linguistic Meaning: Volume 2, pp. 229-240. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3765/elm.2.5371 [paper]
2022. Eszter Ronai & Lucas Fagen. Exclusives vary in strength and scale structure: experimental evidence. In Marco Degano et al. (eds.), Proceedings of the 23rd Amsterdam Colloquium, pp. 258-266. [paper]
presentations
2024
Jennifer Cole, Kate Sandberg, Thomas Sostarics, Rebekah Stanhope & Eszter Ronai. Intonation and its meaning: Beyond essential differences. Poster at CROSSIN: Intonation at the crossroads. [poster]
Thomas Sostarics, Eszter Ronai & Jennifer Cole. Relating Scalar Inference and Alternative Activation: A view from the Rise-Fall-Rise Tune in American English. Talk at ELM 3. [slides]
Eszter Ronai. Embedded scalar diversity. Poster at SALT 34. [poster]
Cassie Davenport & Eszter Ronai. How many Selves are Bound? Distributivity and Number Effects in Bound Reflexives. Poster at HSP 37. [poster]
2023
Thomas Sostarics, Eszter Ronai & Jennifer Cole. Scalar Inference and Rise-Fall-Rise in American English: Towards a Priming Perspective. Talk at Voices in Context. [slides]
Radim Lacina, Stavroula Alexandropoulou, Eszter Ronai & Nicole Gotzner. The Priming of Informationally Weaker Alternatives: Antonyms and Negation. Poster at XPrag 10. [poster]
Radim Lacina, Stavroula Alexandropoulou, Eszter Ronai & Nicole Gotzner. Priming Scalar Alternatives under Negation and by Antonyms in Lexical Decision. Poster at AMLaP 29. [poster]
Radim Lacina, Stavroula Alexandropoulou, Eszter Ronai & Nicole Gotzner. Which alternatives are relevant in scalar implicature processing? A priming study with antonyms and negation. Poster at CogSci 45. [slides]
Alexander Göbel & Eszter Ronai. On the meaning of intonational contours: a view from scalar inference. Poster at SALT 33. [poster]
Helena Aparicio & Eszter Ronai. Scalar implicature rates vary within and across adjectival scales. Poster at SALT 33. [poster]
Eszter Ronai & Alexander Göbel. Intonation affects rate of scalar inferences: production and perception data from English. Poster at HSP 36. [poster]
Lucas Fagen & Eszter Ronai. Testing variation across exclusive modifiers. Talk at LSA 97. [slides]
Eszter Ronai & Ming Xiang. Degree estimates as a measure of inference calculation. Talk at LSA 97. [slides]
2022
Eszter Ronai & Lucas Fagen. Exclusives vary in strength and scale structure: experimental evidence. Poster at Amsterdam Colloquium 23. [poster]
people
Eszter Ronai
Principal Investigator
Eszter is an Assistant Professor, with primary research interests in psycholinguistics and experimental semantics-pragmatics. Her work largely focuses on the comprehension and processing of non-literal meaning such as scalar implicature. She is also interested in the role of discourse contexts in pragmatics, adjectival semantics, information structure, and intonational meaning. [personal website] [email]
Thomas Sostarics
Graduate Student
Thomas is a sixth-year graduate student working on intonational meaning in English. His dissertation research looks at how variation in intonational tunes relates to distinctions in speech acts as well as the processing of alternatives in scalar inference derivation. [personal website] [email]
Cassie Davenport
Graduate Student
Cassie is a fourth-year graduate student primarily interested in psycholinguistic investigations of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic phenomena. She is also interested in sociolinguistics and how social information impacts sentence processing and comprehension. Her ongoing dissertation work focuses on how gender information in biased nouns and adjectives in English impacts language processing, and how this gender information interacts with other contextual cues. [personal website] [email]
Rebekah Stanhope
Graduate Student
Rebekah is a third-year graduate student interested in intonational meaning. Her qualifying paper examined listeners’ perceptions of prosodic prominence in relation to focus, specifically the cardinality of the focus alternative set evoked in a discourse context. She is also affiliated with the ProSD Lab. [email]
Raef Khan
Graduate Student
Jingyi Wu
Graduate Student
Jingyi is a second-year graduate student primarily interested in the processing of pragmatic implicature and the influence of information structure on scalar implicature. The current topic of her qualifying paper is exploring the processing of pragmatic terms under the listener’s privileged knowledge condition, particularly the relationship and interaction between communication situations and perspective-taking strategy. [email]