About

Jesse Harris is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at UCLA, where he also advises the UCLA Language Processing Lab. His research investigates how language users develop sufficiently rich linguistic meaning during online comprehension, focusing on topics such as the processing of ellipsis, the assignment of focus, and the role of semantic, pragmatic, and prosodic defaults in sentence interpretation. Harris employs experimental methods including Internet-based questionnaires, corpora, self-paced reading, and eye tracking to explore these phenomena. He is committed to understanding how the language processing system efficiently utilizes multiple sources of information to produce detailed representations, and how grammatical knowledge constrains online sentence processing. Harris has contributed to the field through his involvement in organizing the California Meeting on Psycholinguistics (CAMP) and serving on editorial boards such as Language and Language and Linguistics Compass. His research interests encompass psycholinguistics, experimental linguistics, formal semantics and pragmatics, and the processing of ellipsis structures, focus, and information structure. Harris holds a PhD in Linguistics from UMass Amherst, an MSc in Logic from the University of Amsterdam, an MA in Linguistics from the University of Chicago, and a BA in Linguistics from the University of Chicago. His ongoing research includes studies on implicit prosody, sluicing ellipsis, relative clause attachment, and the interaction of gender marking and perspective-taking, among others.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Linguistics
• Psychology
• Cognitive psychology
• Natural Language Processing
• Speech recognition
• Social psychology
• Mathematics
• Philosophy

Selected publications

• Constructing focus alternatives from context and the limits of semantic priming

  Experiments in Linguistic Meaning · 2025-01-24 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Interpreting focus requires a comprehender to identify the set of alternatives intended by the speaker. Previous psycholinguistic research has characterized this process in terms of a two-stage model that initially forms an alternative set via the context-insensitive mechanism of semantic priming (Gotzner et al. 2016, Husband & Ferreira 2016). We have instead advanced a one-stage immediate-access model, in which alternatives are immediately constructed from the discourse context (Muxica & Harris to appear). In two cross-modal probe recognition task experiments, we further test our prediction that the discourse context strongly influences response speed at early moments of focus interpretation. The results are interpreted as uniquely supporting the immediate-access model.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Constructing Alternatives: Evidence for the Early Availability of Contextually Relevant Focus Alternatives

  Palgrave studies in pragmatics, language and cognition · 2024-01-01 · 2 citations

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Introduction

  Palgrave studies in pragmatics, language and cognition · 2024-01-01

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The enduring effects of default focus in let alone ellipsis: Evidence from pupillometry.

  Experiments in Linguistic Meaning · 2023-01-27

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The study of clausal ellipsis in sentence processing has revealed that comprehenders are sensitive to multiple, sometimes conflicting, pressures when recovering elided content. This paper presents a pupillometry experiment investigating how the human language processing system responds to sentences in which the location of a pitch accent clashes with global preferences for local correlates. The results are discussed in light of existing literature, including the Enduring Focus Principle, in which locations for default pitch accent continue to influence focus-sensitive processes regardless of overt markers of focus.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Global expectations mediate local constraint: evidence from concessive structures

  Language Cognition and Neuroscience · 2022-09-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Numerous studies have found facilitation for lexical processing in highly constraining contexts. However, less is known about cases in which immediately preceding (local) and broader (global) contextual constraint conflict. In two eye-tracking while reading experiments, local and global context were manipulated independently, creating a critical condition where local context biases towards a word that is incongruent with global context. Global context consisted of a clause introduced by a concessive marker generating broad expectations about upcoming material. Experiment 1 compared high- and low-predictability critical words, whereas Experiment 2 held the critical word constant and manipulated the preceding verb to impose different levels of local constraint. Facilitation from local context was reduced when it was incongruent with global context, supporting models in which information from global and local context is rapidly integrated during early lexical processing over models that would initially prioritise only local or only global context.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Impact of Established and Emerging Software Tools on the Metabolite Identification Landscape

  Frontiers in Toxicology · 2022-06-21 · 5 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Scientists’ ability to detect drug-related metabolites at trace concentrations has improved over recent decades. High-resolution instruments enable collection of large amounts of raw experimental data. In fact, the quantity of data produced has become a challenge due to effort required to convert raw data into useful insights. Various cheminformatics tools have been developed to address these metabolite identification challenges. This article describes the current state of these tools. They can be split into two categories: Pre-experimental metabolite generation and post-experimental data analysis. The former can be subdivided into rule-based, machine learning-based, and docking-based approaches. Post-experimental tools help scientists automatically perform chromatographic deconvolution of LC/MS data and identify metabolites. They can use pre-experimental predictions to improve metabolite identification, but they are not limited to these predictions: unexpected metabolites can also be discovered through fractional mass filtering. In addition to a review of available software tools, we present a description of pre-experimental and post-experimental metabolite structure generation using MetaSense. These software tools improve upon manual techniques, increasing scientist productivity and enabling efficient handling of large datasets. However, the trend of increasingly large datasets and highly data-driven workflows requires a more sophisticated informatics transition in metabolite identification labs. Experimental work has traditionally been separated from the information technology tools that handle our data. We argue that these IT tools can help scientists draw connections via data visualizations and preserve and share results via searchable centralized databases. In addition, data marshalling and homogenization techniques enable future data mining and machine learning.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• How to approach the study of syndromes in macroevolution and ecology

  2021-09-01 · 3 citations

  preprintOpen access

  Syndromes, wherein multiple traits evolve convergently in response to a shared selective driver, form a central concept in ecology and evolution. Recent work has questioned the existence of some classic syndromes, such as pollination and seed dispersal syndromes. Here, we discuss some of the major issues that have afflicted research into syndromes in macroevolution and ecology. First, correlated evolution of traits and hypothesized selective drivers is often relied on as the only evidence for adaptation of those traits to those hypothesized drivers, without supporting evidence. Second, the selective driver is often inferred from a combination of traits without explicit testing. Third, researchers often measure traits that are easy for humans to observe rather than measuring traits that are suited to testing the hypothesis of adaptation. Finally, species are often chosen for study because of their striking phenotypes, which leads to the illusion of syndromes and divergence. We argue that these issues can be avoided by combining studies of trait variation across entire clades or communities with explicit tests of adaptive hypotheses and that taking this approach will lead to a better understanding of syndrome-like evolution and its drivers.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Resolving ambiguous polarity stripping ellipsis structures in Persian

  Glossa a journal of general linguistics · 2021-10-07 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Previous studies have shown that English speakers use a range of factors including locality, information structure, and semantic parallelism to interpret clausal ellipsis structures. Yet, the relative importance of each factor is currently underexplored. As cues to information structure and semantic parallelism are often implicit in English, we turned to Persian which marks information structure overtly via word order scrambling and uses the -rā morpheme to indicate definiteness/specificity on direct objects. To determine what strategies Persian speakers use to disambiguate clausal ellipsis, we conducted a naturalness rating study and sentence completion task on polarity stripping structures. Our results show that information structure and parallelism strongly influence correlate resolution in both tasks, but that a weaker preference for a local correlate emerges in scrambling in the sentence completion task. As these results diverge from those obtained in English studies, we speculate that the morphosyntactic properties of Persian constrain the strategies the processer uses in selecting a contrastive correlate and resolving ambiguity in stripping ellipsis.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Integrating prosody in anticipatory language processing: how listeners adapt to unconventional prosodic cues

  Language Cognition and Neuroscience · 2021 · 9 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Psychology
  • Computer Science

  A growing body of research suggests that language users integrate diverse sources of information in processing and adapt to the variability of language at multiple levels. In two visual-world paradigm studies, we explored whether listeners use prosody to predict a resolution to structures with a PP that is structurally ambiguous between a modifier and an instrument interpretation. The first study revealed that listeners predict a referent that is most compatible with the location of a prosodic boundary, casting anticipatory looks to the appropriate object even before the onset of a disambiguating word. The second study indicated that listeners failed to anticipate instrument resolutions when the prosody of non-experimental filler items was unconventional, even though experimental items remained identical to the first study. The results suggest that listeners adjust their predictive processing to the utility of prosodic information according to whether a speaker reliably conforms to the conventional use of prosody.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Unexpected guests: When disconfirmed predictions linger

  eScholarship (California Digital Library) · 2021-01-01 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Previous literature suggests that the language processor generates expectations about upcoming material. Several studies have found evidence for a prediction error cost in cases where the comprehender encountered not the predicted word but a plausible unexpected continuation instead. This cost is argued to be a result of an inhibitory process that suppresses activation of the originally predicted word. Others have found no such evidence for a prediction cost. In a probe recognition memory task, we find evidence for interference from an incorrectly predicted word, and in a self-paced reading study, we find evidence for facilitation when the originally predicted word is encountered later on. Taken together, our results provide evidence against a strong version of the suppression account, in which incorrectly predicted words are fully inhibited. Instead we argue in favor of a passive lingering activation account, in which activation for the disconfirmed prediction gradually decays over time.

  Publisher

Frequent coauthors

• Francis Rackemann

  Jewish Hospital

  100 shared

• In Boston

  Jewish Hospital

  100 shared

• B. Cohen

  100 shared

• Benjamin L. Cohen

  Cleveland Clinic

  100 shared

• Stephanie Rich

  University of California, Santa Cruz

  7 shared

• Katy Carlson

  Morehead State University

  5 shared

• Sun‐Ah Jun

  University of California, Los Angeles

  4 shared

• Rocío Deanna

  Finnish Museum of Natural History

  4 shared

Education

• PhD, Linguistics

  University of Massachusetts Amherst

  2012

• MsC, Institute for Logic, Language, and Computation

  Universiteit van Amsterdam

  2007

• MA, Linguistics

  University of Chicago

  2003

• BA, Linguistics

  University of Chicago

  2003