Department of Psychology
Northeastern University
Boston, MA 02115
(617) 373-3077 (office)
(617) 373-8714 (fax)
argaman@neu.edu

Research Interests

Sentence Processing:
       Lexical semantics
       Syntactic ambiguity resolution
       Production and comprehension

Within the framework of constraint-satisfaction models of sentence processing, I study the role of lexical semantics and frequency information in syntactic ambiguity resolution and production of syntactic alternatives. I am interested in how the system keeps track and uses frequency information, and whether that information could be reduced to lexical semantics. Also, I study the relationship between production and comprehension by looking at the role of punctuation and prosody in processing of the written and spoken forms of closure ambiguities.

Education

B.A.
  University of Tel Aviv, 1992

M.A.
  University of Haifa, 1996

Ph.D.
Northeastern Univesity, 2003

Teaching

Statistics in Behavioral Science

Publications

Argaman, V. (2003). Lexical semantics and argument structure in sentence processing. Dissertation. [PDF] [PS]

Argaman, V. & Pearlmutter, N. J. (2002). Lexical semantics as a basis for argument structure frequency biases. In P. Merlo & S. Stevenson (Eds.), The lexical basis of sentence processing: Formal, computational and experimental perspectives (pp. 303-324). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. [PDF] [PS]

Grodner, D., Gibson, E., Argaman, V., & Babyonyshev, M. (2003). Against repair-based reanalysis in sentence comprehension. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 32, 141-166.

Conference Abstracts

Argaman, V. & Mendelsohn, A. (2000). The role of the comma in the resolution of Closure Ambiguities. Presented at the 13th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, San Diego, CA.

Argaman, V., Mendelsohn, A. & Joey N. Pasquino (2001). Comparing spoken and written production of the object/subject closure ambiguity. Presented at the 14th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, Philadelphia, CA.

Argaman, V. & Pearlmutter, N. J. (2004). Semantic category effects in sentence production. Presented at the 17th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, College Park, Maryland.

Argaman, V. & Pearlmutter, N. J. (2002). Lexical semantics in sentence processing: The status of semantic category. Presented at the 15th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, New York, NY.

Argaman, V. & Pearlmutter, N. J. (1999). Verb semantic category and argument structure frequency biases in syntactic ambiguity resolution. Presented at the 12th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, New York, NY.

Argaman, V., Pearlmutter, N. J., Garnsey, S. M., Mendelsohn, A. A., Randall, J. H., & Meyers, E. (1998). Lexical semantics as a basis for argument structure frequency biases. Presented at the 39th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Dallas, TX.

Grodner, D., Gibson, E., & Argaman, V. (2002). Against repair-based reanalysis. Presented at the 15th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, New York, NY.

Mendelsohn, A. & Argaman, V. (1999). Disambiguation of closure ambiguities in written production. Presented at the USC Speech Production Conference, Los Angeles, CA.