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 grant for Eszter
Eszter has been awarded an NSF grant (#2518581) for her project “Collaborative Research: LangDiv: The relationship between information structure and syntax”. In collaboration with Jessica Kantarovich (Ohio State, #2518582), this work will be a psycholinguistic investigation of how focus is represented in languages where it’s primarily cued by syntactic means and how information structure conditions word order. The project will look at English, Hungarian and West Greenlandic.
3 presentations at XPrag 11
We’re looking forward to XPrag in Cambridge, where we’ll be presenting three posters:
Cassandra Davenport, Sophie Schaeffer, Eszter Ronai: The interaction of gender biased nouns and implicit causality in pronoun resolution
Eszter Ronai, Michael Tabatowski: Numerals under disjunction prefer exact readings
Raef Khan, Annette DOnofrio: Who’s in Extreme Pain?: Social Information Modulates Intensifier Interpretation
output
publications
Peer-reviewed journal articles
2025. Helena Aparicio & Eszter Ronai. Scalar implicature rates vary within and across adjectival scales. Journal of Semantics, 42(1-2), pp. 97-126. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffaf002 [paper] (open access)
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
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]
2024. Eszter Ronai. Embedded scalar diversity. In Yao Zhang et al. (eds.), Proceedings of the 34th Semantics and Linguistic Theory Conference, pp. 110-131. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3765/dtzaqt95 [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
2025
Cassie Davenport, Sophie Schaeffer & Eszter Ronai. The interaction of gender biased nouns and implicit causality in pronoun resolution. Poster at XPrag 11. [poster]
Eszter Ronai & Michael Tabatowski. Numerals under disjunction prefer exact readings. Poster at XPrag 11. [poster]
Eszter Ronai. Scalar implicature variability in non-monotonic environments. Talk at XPRAG Fest. [slides]
Cassie Davenport & Eszter Ronai. Pretty Plumbers to the Rescue: Adjectives Aid in Gender Mismatch Recovery. Poster at HSP 38. [poster]
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. She enjoys working on topics such as implicature, focus, QUDs, adjectival semantics, and information structure. [personal website] [email]
Raef Khan
Graduate Student
Raef is a fourth-year graduate student broadly interested in linguistic bias and discrimination. His qualifying paper focuses on how a patient’s intensifier usage impacts physician perceptions of pain and social evaluations, modulated by the patient’s social information. He primarily works with Annette D’Onofrio and is also affiliated with SocioGroup. [email]
Cassie Davenport
Graduate Student
Cassie is a fifth-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 fourth-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]
Jiaming Feng
Graduate Student
Jiaming is a first-year graduate student interested in pragmatics, philosophy of language, psycholinguistics and real-time language processing. [email]
Anzi Wang
Graduate Student
Anzi is a first-year graduate student with research interests in computational linguistics, psycholinguistics, and computational psycholinguistics. [email]