Sarah VanWagenen UCLA Linguistics Dept. 3125 Campbell Hall Los Angeles CA 90095-1543 sarahvw AT humnet DOT ucla DOT edu

Interests

• Morphology
• Lexical Representations
• Learnability and Mechanisms of Acquisition
• Probabilistic Inference
• Experimental Semantics

Current Projects

• A Symbolic Probabilistic Morphological Learner. Advisor: Ed Stabler.
• Representation of semantically opaque words. Advisor: Professor Carson Schutze.
• Syncretism: Accidental or Systematic Homophony? with Katya Pertsova.
• MEG studies of lexical representation with Linnaea Stockall and Alec Marantz.
• Experimental investigation of presupposition computation with Christina Kim

Manuscripts

• The Morphologically Organized Mental Lexicon: Further Experimental Evidence. Master's thesis. University of California, Los Angeles. [pdf][abstract][bibtex]

Talks/Posters

• 2005. A Probabilistic Segmenter based on Phonotactics. Architectures and Mechanisms of Language Processing, Ghent, Belgium. [handout][bibtex]

2005. The Morphologically Organized Mental Lexicon. (poster) Architectures and Mechanisms of Language Processing, Ghent, Belgium. [handout][bibtex]

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Research

• 2001 (spring)- present. Psycholinguistic research on morphological representations with Professor Carson Schutze.
• 2003 - 2004. Aiding the development of databases for Professor Russel Schuh for the Yobe Language Project.
• 2002. Research on learning in the context of the `lack of invariance' problem with Professor John Hummel.
• 2002. Conducting fieldwork in Tongan (Austronesian) with a native speaker.
• 2001 - 2002. Research on lateralization of grammaticality judgments with Professor Eran Zaidel and Professor Carson Schutze.

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  Teaching

  • 2005 (spring). Teaching Assistant to Prof. Carson Schutze: Language Processing.
  • 2005 (winter). Teaching Assistant to Prof. Susan Curtiss: Neurolinguistics.
  • 2004 (fall). Teaching Assistant to Prof. Marcus Kracht: Introduction to Linguistics.
  • 2003 (fall). Teaching Assistant to Prof. Dominique Sportiche: Syntax I.

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  Education

  • 2002 - present. PhD program, University of California, Los Angeles.
  • 2002. BA, Linguistics, University of California, Los Angeles. Summa cum laude.

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  Service

  • 2004-2005. Graduate Linguistics Circle representative to the Graduate Student Association Council.
  • 2004-2005. Graduate Student Association Council Treasurer.
  • 2005. Organizing committee member. The Fifteenth Semantics and Linguistic Theory conference (SALT 15).

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  Honors/Awards

  • 2005-2006. UCLA Graduate Research Mentorship
  • 2005. UCLA Summer Graduate Research Mentorship

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