Hammerly in Cognition

Christopher Hammerly (2020) has published a paper with Brian Dillon and Adrian Staub entitled ‘Person-based prominence guides incremental interpretation: Evidence from obviation in Ojibwe‘ in Cognition. Using visual world eye-tracking with first speakers of Border Lakes Ojibwe, Chris discovered that Border Lakes Ojibwe speakers preferentially interpret proximate nouns as agents in real-time processing, even in situations of temporary ambiguity. He interprets these findings as a reflection of a cross-linguistically observed pressure to align more prominent personhood categories with more prominent thematic roles. Congratulations, Chris!