 My CV
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Joshua K. Hartshorne Current research interests My current research interests center primarily on inference and language. To understand an utterance or a written passage, we often have to make a number of assumptions. One of the best-known examples comes from H. Paul Grice. Suppose you get a letter of reference for a job applicant. The letter reads: Dear Sir/Madame, I write to recommend John for your job. He is very punctual, and his handwriting is very neat. Sincerely... The implication of this letter -- namely, don't hire John -- is clear, even though the letter doesn't say it. Examples like this may make inference in language seem very exotic -- a special case. It is not. Consider the following exchange: Mary: How many children does John have? Sarah: 3. Mary: What are their names? Sarah: John, April, Susan, Alfred and James. Notice that when Sarah said John has 3 children, she was telling the truth. However, we assume that she meant "3 and no more than 3." This type of inference, called a "scalar implicature" is actually very common. There are many other examples as well. These are types of inferences that I am interested in studying. However, I am interested in human behavior broadly, which means that I occasionally get involved in other topics. I continue to be interested in the nature of writing systems and the ultimate causes of Dyslexia. I am also interested in the origin of the variability in behavior. That is, two different people in the same situation won't necessarily behave the same way. Why is that? Is it due to their upbringing? Is it due to genetics? Is it due to random chance? Some might add the possibility it is due to their "soul," which I won't dismiss out of hand, but it's a very difficult hypothesis to test! These question have led to my involvement in the Birth Order project. Previous Research Interests I have previously studied inflectional morphology. There are several projects that I remain interested in, and it is possible that I will eventually pick it up again. I am particularly interested in the generative abilities of inflectional morphology. That is, you know that the past tense of walk is walked and the plural of boy is boys. That makes sense, since you have encountered these items many times. But when I give you a novel word like dax and ask you what its plural is, you probably have no difficulty answering daxes. What are the processes involved? I have also studied visual short term memory, visual long-term memory, visual attention, visual search and perceptual grouping. . |