Atomic Plurals: Partee's Puzzle and the Decomposition of Grammatical Number, 2026, Journal of Semantics.
In most contexts bare plurals in English are confined to narrowest scope (Carlson 1977, 1980). Partee (1985) noticed, however, that wide-scope readings become possible when bare plurals function as dependent plurals in the scope of a plural licensor. In this paper I propose an analysis of this observation couched within a semantic framework that implements interpretation relative to a set of assignments (cf. e.g. van den Berg 1994, 1996, Nouwen 2003, Brasoveanu 2007, 2008, Minor 2017, 2022). The proposed account postulates an ambiguity in the underlying structure of bare plurals, which in turn stems from a decomposition of grammatical number into two independent features – encoding assignment-level atomicity and assignment-set-level uniqueness. It predicts the existence of atomic plurals, i.e. plural forms that carry an atomicity feature, but lack a uniqueness feature, and are predicted to pattern with singular indefinites in terms of their scopal properties. I demonstrate how the limited distribution of atomic plurals can be derived as an effect of mandatory blind exhausitifcation (Magri 2009, 2010) – specifically, atomic plurals are predicted to be blocked in competition with the corresponding singular forms whenever they occur outside the scope of plural (weakly distributive) items. The analysis is implemented within a static compositional system incorporating the notion of context as a set of assignments.
Comparing effect latencies in the visual world paradigm: Monte Carlo simulations to assess resampling-based procedures. 2026. Behavior Research Methods, 58.
In a series of Monte Carlo simulation studies, I evaluated the power and Type I error rates of resampling-based procedures for comparing effect latencies between groups in the visual world paradigm (VWP). Resampling-based methods, while versatile, are known to fail in certain cases. Therefore, validation of such methods through simulation is crucial. I compared permutation- and bootstrapping-based tests combined with different methods for measuring effect latency while manipulating sample size and true effect size. Alongside previously used latency measures, I tested new measures involving the application of an effect size threshold. Simulations were based on existing VWP datasets representing different effect types (preferential looks triggered by lexical vs. grammatical cues, cohort competitor effects in word recognition) and data collection methods (infrared- vs. webcam-based eye tracking). A total of 156,000 simulations were conducted across five studies, involving 548 million resampled datasets. The main findings are as follows: (1) With sufficient sample sizes, tests were effective in detecting latency differences of 200–300 ms in sentence processing tasks, and as small as 100 ms in word recognition. (2) The permutation test and bootstrapped percentile CIs exhibited the highest overall power without inflation of Type I error rates. (3) Applying an effect size threshold in latency estimation led to consistent increases in statistical power. (4) Resampling by participant was robust to increases in cross-subject variability;in contrast, bootstrapping within participants and time bins led to elevated Type I error rates. Based on these results, I offer recommendations for using non-parametric resampling-based procedures to compare group latencies in VWP experiments.
Cross-linguistic influence in the processing of aspect in L2 English: Slavic, but not Norwegian L1 speakers associate past simple with completion, 2026, Frontiers in Language Sciences (Kamenetski A., Mitrofanova N., Ermolina J., and Minor S .)
This study investigated the role of L1 influence on how L2 speakers interpret aspectual semantics of English past simple accomplishments. English past simple is aspectually underspecified and is thus vulnerable to the transfer of L1 aspectual representations. Slavic languages (Russian, Polish) grammaticalize dual perfective-imperfective aspect. Norwegian does not grammaticalize aspect. L1 Polish (n = 57), Russian (n = 20), and Norwegian (n = 50) speakers participated in two web-based Visual World Paradigm eyetracking experiments. Offline judgments and online gaze preferences from both experiments showed that L1 Slavic speakers associated English past simple with completed event pictures. This categorical association strengthened in offline judgments with higher L2 proficiency. L1 Norwegian speakers associated English past simple with ongoing events both online and offline. This association weakened in offline judgments with higher L2 proficiency. These findings provide evidence of L1 transfer during L2 aspectual interpretation and elucidate the interaction between crosslinguistic influence and L2 proficiency. Implications for theoretical models of cross-linguistic influence are discussed.
The simple past versus perfect in English: evidence from Visual World eye tracking. 2025. English Language and Linguistics. (Vos M., Minor S., Ramchand G.)
We present research from Visual World eye tracking to show that, contrary standard assumptions in the formal semantics literature, the English past tense does not reliably trigger entailments of completion on accomplishments in neutral contexts. We contrast it with the perfect construction in English (both present and past tense versions) which does reliably draw attention to the result state; furthermore, we tested the simple past in more narrative contexts (using adverbial clauses to create a narrative sequence) and found that this did not induce a stronger resultative interpretation. We discuss the formal proposals for analysis of these tense/aspect forms in the language, and the consequences this new data has for theories of the tense/aspect system of English.
The Interaction of Linguistic and Visual Cues for the Processing of Case in Russian by Russian-German Bilinguals: An Eye Tracking Study. 2024. Topics in Cognitive Science. (Minor S., Mitrofanova N., Westergaard M.)
In this study, we investigated the relationship between comprehension and prediction by testing how subtle changes in visual representations can affect the processing of grammatical case cues in Russian by Russian-German bilingual children (n = 49, age 8−13). The linguistic manipulation followed previous designs, contrasting SVO and OVS sentences, where the first NP (NP1) was marked with nominative or accusative case, respectively. Three types of visual displays were compared: (i) individual referents (potential agent/theme); (ii) pairs of referents (NP1 + potential agent/theme); and (iii) events (representing interactions between the referents). Participants were significantly more sensitive to the case manipulation when presented with events compared to the other two types of visual display. This suggests that they were able to quickly integrate the thematic role information signaled by grammatical case in the event representations. However, they were less likely to use the case information to anticipate upcoming arguments when the target pictures represented individual referents or pairs of noninteracting referents. We hypothesize that the process of argument anticipation is mediated by the activation of syntactic templates (SVO or OSV, depending on the case marking on NP1). The relatively weak anticipation effect observed may be attributed to the absence, or weak representation, of the noncanonical OVS template in the bilingual children's long-term memory.
Aspect processing across languages: A visual world eye-tracking study. 2023. Frontiers in Language Sciences, 1 (Minor S., Mitrofanova N., Guajardo G., Vos M., Ramchand G.)
The study employed a combination of a picture selection task and Visual World eye-tracking to investigate the processing of grammatical aspect (perfective vs. imperfective) in three languages: Russian, Spanish and English. In order to probe into the cognitive representations triggered by the aspectual forms we contrasted visual representations of different temporal portions of telic events—a snapshot of the process stage (ongoing event) and a snapshot of the immediate aftermath of the event/the result state (completed event). In all three languages, the gaze patterns and offline responses revealed a strong preference for representations of ongoing events in the imperfective condition. This confirms that the imperfective forms in all the three languages draw attention to the in-progress portion of a telic event. In the perfective condition, however, we found robust differences. Russian uses verbal prefixes to mark perfective aspect, and our results suggest that perfective telic verbs in Russian strongly highlight the result state of an event. In Spanish, the perfective past tense form (Preterite) also highlights event completion, but to a lesser extent than in Russian—in line with its less restrictive semantics in not requiring an inherent boundary. In contrast to Russian and Spanish, English speakers did not show a preference for representations of completed events in the perfective (Simple Past) condition. This suggests that the English Simple Past form does not encode a preferential cognitive salience for either the activity portion of an event or its result state, and lends support to the analysis of the English Simple Past as a non-aspectual tense form.
Dependent plurals and three levels of multiplicity, 2022, Linguistics and Philosophy 45, 431-509.
This paper presents a slightly updated version of the analysis of dependent plurals, distributivity and grammatical number developed in my PhD dissertation. It focuses on constructions involving so-called ‘dependent plurals’, i.e. bare plurals occurring in the scope of certain quantificational items such as all and most (e.g. All the girls were wearing hats). I argue that none of the existing approaches to such constructions are fully successful, and that dependent plural readings should be analyzed as distinct both from cumulative readings and distributive readings, in the classical sense. I demonstrate how this can be accomplished in a semantic framework where expressions are evaluated relative to sets of assignments, or plural info states (van den Berg 1990, 1994, 1996). Specifically, I present an account of the semantics of grammatical number, quantificational items, and cardinality predicates couched within a modified version of Brasoveanu's (2007, 2008) Plural Compositional DRT. The analysis relies on two core distinctions: a) a distinction between weak distributivity across the assignments within a plural info state and strong distributivity across multiple info states; and b) a distinction between assignment-level and state-level plurality. Together, these distinctions give rise to three ways of representing the notion of multiplicity in the semantics of natural language, and are sufficient to account for the interpretations that arise in the interaction of different types of plural and quantificational noun phrases.
Temporal information and event bounding across languages: Evidence from visual world eyetracking. 2022. Proceedings of SALT 32. (Minor S., Mitrofanova N., Guajardo G., Vos M., Ramchand G.)
Comparing infrared and webcam eye tracking in the Visual World Paradigm. 2022. Glossa Psycholinguistics, 1(1), (Vos M., Minor S., Ramchand G.)
Visual World eye tracking is a temporally fine-grained method of monitoring attention, making it a popular tool in the study of online sentence processing. Recently, while infrared eye tracking was mostly unavailable, various web-based experiment platforms have rapidly developed webcam eye tracking functionalities, which are now in urgent need of testing and evaluation. We replicated a recent Visual World study on the incremental processing of verb aspect in English using ‘out of the box’ webcam eye tracking software (jsPsych; de Leeuw, 2015) and crowdsourced participants, and fully replicated both the offline and online results of the original study. We furthermore discuss factors influencing the quality and interpretability of webcam eye tracking data, particularly with regards to temporal and spatial resolution; and conclude that remote webcam eye tracking can serve as an affordable and accessible alternative to lab-based infrared eye tracking, even for questions probing the time-course of language processing.
Fine-grained time course of verb aspect processing, 2022, PLOS One, 17(2), (Minor S., Mitrofanova N., & Ramchand G.)
Sentence processing is known to be highly incremental. Speakers make incremental commitments as the sentence unfolds, dynamically updating their representations based on the smallest pieces of information from the incoming speech stream. Less is known about linguistic processing on the sub-word level, especially with regard to abstract grammatical information. This study employed the Visual World Paradigm to investigate the processing of grammatical aspect by Russian-speaking adults (n=124). Aspectual information is encoded relatively early within the Russian verb which makes this an ideal testing ground to investigate the incrementality of grammatical processing on the sub-word level. Participants showed preference for pictures of ongoing events when they heard sentences involving Imperfective verbs, and for pictures of completed events when they heard sentences involving Perfective verbs. Crucially, the analysis of the participants' eye-movements showed that they exhibited preference for the target picture already before they heard the end of the verb. Moreover, the latency of this effect depended on where the aspectual information was encoded within the verb. These results indicate that the processing and integration of grammatical aspect information can happen rapidly and incrementally on a fine-grained word-internal level. Methodologically, the study draws together a set of analytical techniques which can be fruitfully applied to the analysis of effect latencies in a wide range of studies within the Visual World eye-tracking paradigm.
Comparing Infrared and Webcam-based Eye Tracking in the Visual World Paradigm, 2021, talk, AMLaP 27, (Vos M., Minor S., & Ramchand G.)
The Processing and Acquisition of Russian Aspect: Evidence from VW Eye-Tracking, 2020, talk, AMLaP 26, (Minor S., Mitrofanova N., & Ramchand G.)
Processing of Grammatical Aspect in a Visual World: English vs Russian, 2020, poster presentation, AMLaP 26, (Minor S., Mitrofanova N., Vos M., & Ramchand G.)
The Processing of Grammatical Aspect by Russian-speaking Adults and Children: A VW Eye-Tracking Study, 2020, poster presentation, CUNY 33, (Minor S., Mitrofanova N., & Ramchand G.)
Processing Aspect in Russian and English: Evidence from Visual World Eye-Tracking, 2020, poster presentation, CUNY 33, (Minor S., Mitrofanova N., Vos M., & Ramchand G.)
Dependent Plurals and the Semantics of Distributivity, PhD dissertation, 2017, University of Tromsø.
My PhD thesis focuses on the semantics of distributivity, grammatical number, and cardinality predicates (i.e. numerals and quantity modifiers such as 'several'), and more generally on the way the concept of multiplicity is represented in the semantics of natural language. I argue that constructions involving so-called 'dependent plurals', i.e. plurals lacking numerals or quantity modifiers occurring in the scope of certain quantificational items such as all and most, pose a challenge to the classical semantic framework that distinguishes between two sources of multiplicity: domain-level plurality and distributive quantification. Instead, I argue that dependent plural readings should be analysed as distinct both from cumulative readings and distributive readings, in the classical sense. I demonstrate how this can be accomplished in a semantic framework where expressions are evaluated relative to sets of assignments, or plural info states, as originally proposed by van den Berg (1990, 1994, 1996). The specific formal implementation that I propose, PCDRT*, is based on Brasoveanu’s (2007, 2008) Plural Compositional DRT, with a number of significant modifications. I show how in this framework we are able to capture the contrast between ‘singular quantifiers’, such as each and every, and ‘plural quantifiers’, such as all and most, on the one hand, and between bare plurals and plurals involving cardinality modifiers, on the other. I further argue that the proposed theory is able to handle a range of phenomena particularly problematic for previous approaches, including intervention effects in dependent plural constructions, long-distance dependent plurals, and the contrast between dependent and non-dependent bare plurals in English with respect to their scopal properties.
Dependent Plurals and Two Types of Distributivity, 2016, presentation, (Co)-Distributivity Workshop.
The presentations from my talk at (Co)-Distributivity Workshop held in Paris in February, 2016. In this talk, I propose a distinction between weak and strong distributivity couched within a dynamic semantic framework with plural information states. I argue that this distinction, coupled with a two-component approach to the semantics of grammatical number, allows us to correctly account for the properties of dependent plurals and related constructions, while avoiding some of the problems faced by previous analyses. Furthermore, I demonstrate how the proposed system opens the way for an account of Partee’s Generalization concerning the scopal properties of English dependent and non-dependent bare plurals.
An Alternatives-based Semantics for Dependent Plurals, 2014, handout, (Co-)Distributivity Workshop.
The handout from my talk at the (Co)-Distributivity Workshop held in Paris in February, 2014. I focus on cases of long-distance interactions between a dependent plural and its licensor. I demonstrate that in some cases this dependency crosses clausal, finite-clause, and even island boundaries. To account for these facts, I develop an approach based on the mechanism of expanding Hamblin alternatives, modified to capture the semantics of dependent plurals.
Dependent Plurals are not Cumulative, 2013, handout, SALT 23.
The handout from my talk at SALT 23 (Santa-Cruz), where I point out a number of problems with the cumulativity-based analysis of dependent plurals (e.g. Zweig 2008, 2009), and propose an alternative approach based on choice-functions.
Controlling the Hidden Restrictor: A Puzzle with Control in Russian, 2013, published in Proceedings of the 42nd Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society (NELS 42), eds. S. Keine & S. Sloggett.
The Syntax and Semantics of Directional Axial Expressions in Russian (with Natalia Mitrofanova), 2013, published in Formal Description of Slavic Languages: The Ninth Conference. Proceedings of FDSL 9, eds. U. Junghanns et al.
The pre-publication version of our joint paper with Natalia Mitrofanova presented at FDSL-9 in 2011. We argue that directional adverbs in Russian have syntactic and semantics properties which distinguish them from directional expressions involving prepositions in e.g. English. We propose an analysis of this class of expression which introduces a new type of directive functional heads.
Phi-features as Complex Indices, 2013, handout, 87th Annual Meeting of the LSA.
A handout from my talk at the 2013 LSA meeting (Boston) where I develop some of the ideas concerning the interpretation of phi-features proposed in my 2011 indexality paper. I focus on gender features, and argue that they too should be interpreted as part of a complex index of pronouns, on a par with person features.
Low Locatives and the function of verbal prefixes in Russian (with Natalia Mitrofanova), 2013, poster, 87th Meeting of the LSA.
A poster presenting joint work with Natalia Mitrofanova on locative modifiers in Russian. We argue that there are two distinct types of locatives PPs in Russian which differ with respect to their possible hight of attachment within the decomposed VP. Based on the compatibility of these modifiers with various verb classes, we further argue that locative verbal prefixes in Russian introduce a telos without introducing a result sub-event.
Tenses and their Binders: SOT and DAR in English and Russian, 2012, handout, CASTL Workshop.
A handout from my talk at a mini-workshop held at CASTL (Tromsø) in connection with Éva Dékány's defense. I develop some of the ideas from my 2011 indexality paper concerning the interpretation of absolute and relative tenses in SOT and non-SOT languages.
Syntax and Semantics of Axial Expressions in Russian (with Natalia Mitrofanova), 2011, handout, FDSL-9.
The handout from our joint presentation with Natalia Mitrofanova at FDSL-9 in December, 2011. We investigate the syntactic and semantic properties of directional adverbs in Russian, and propose to extend the inventory of functional heads used in the formation of directional expressions.
Complex Indices and a Blocking Account of the Sequence of Tenses, 2011, ms.
The course paper I wrote for the advanced seminar on Indexality taught at CASTL by Gillian Ramchand in the fall, 2011. It has two parts: the first part addresses the issue of bound (or 'fake') indexicals, and proposes a semantic mechanism for their analysis. The second part contains a proposal for reducing the contrast between SoT and non-SoT languages to the inventory of Tense heads. To make this work, I propose that a competition exists between Tense heads which is governed by the same economy conditions as the competition between different types of pronouns.
Control and ECM Combined: A Unusual Control Pattern in Russian, 2011, handout.
This is the handout from my presentation at the CASTL Colloquium in November, 2011. It contains the latest results of my research on a puzzling control construction in Russian which appears to combine properties of ECM and Object Control. Earlier versions of this work were presented at a number of conferences including FASL 18 and NELS 42.
Kabardian as a Polysynthetic Language, 2005, M.A. Thesis.
This is a translation of my M.A. Thesis at the Moscow State University. It contains a study of configurationality in Kabardian, a Northwest Caucasian language, and an investigation of Backward Control in Kabardian.