Veena D. Dwivedi

Rank: Assistant Professor
Department: Applied Linguistics
Ext. 5389
E-mail: veena.dwivedi@brocku.ca

Work currently in progress, or about to be begun, along with indication of when the project is likely to culminate and what form it will take:

My long-term research objective is to explore how grammatically encoded principles of sentence interpretation interact with contextual processing on-line. To this end, I have conducted a series of studies that investigate the linguistic properties of quantifiers (modal auxiliaries, and quantificational determiners such as “every”, “many”, “all” etc.). Thus, my current research focuses on electrophysiological and psycholinguistic investigation of quantifier ambiguity as well as the context dependencies of quantification. Furthermore, as I am a near-native speaker of Hindi, eventually, psycholinguistic investigations of this understudied language would be of interest, where both unilingual and bilingual processing of this language would be studied.

Work previously undertaken, research achievements or projects completed:

Recent Publications:

• Dwivedi, V., Phillips, N. Einagel, S., & Baum, S. (in press). The neural underpinnings of linguistic ambiguity. Brain Research.
   
• De Almeida, R. G. & Dwivedi, V. (2008). Coercion without lexical decomposition: Type-shifting effects revisited. Canadian Journal of Linguistics, 53, 301-326.
   
• Drury, J., Steinhauer, K., & Dwivedi, V. (2008). Logical semantics in language processing: An ERP study. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience supplement, 26.
   
• Dwivedi, V., Phillips, N. Einagel, S., & Baum, S. (2008). The neurophysiology of scope ambiguity. Proceedings of the Canadian Linguistics Association, 15pp.
   
• Dwivedi, V., Phillips, N. Einagel, S., & Baum, S. (2007). An ERP Study of Noun Phrase Interpretation. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience supplement, 25.
   
• Dwivedi, V., Phillips, N.A., Lague-Beauvais, M., Baum, S. (2006). An electrophysiological investigation of mood, modal context and anaphora. Brain Research, 1117, 135-153.
   
• Dwivedi,V., Phillips, N.A.,Einagel, S., & Baum, S. (2006) An EEG response to linguistic ambiguity. Psychophysiology, 43, Suppl. 1, S35.
   
• Shah, A., Baum, S. and Dwivedi, V. (2006). Neural substrates of linguistic prosody: evidence from syntactic disambiguation in the productions of brain-damaged patients. Brain and Language, 96, 78-89.
   
• Dwivedi, V., Phillips, N., Laguë-Beauvais, M., and Baum, S. (2005). The interface of syntax, semantics and psycholinguistics: an investigation of operator scope. In J. Alderete et al., (Eds.) Proceedings of the 24th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (pp. 112-119). Somerville, Mass.: Cascadilla Press.
   
• Baum, S., Dwivedi, V, and Shah, A. (2004). Prosodic production and domain sensitivity in brain-damaged patients. Brain and Language, 91, 56-57.
   
• Dwivedi, V. and Baum, S. (2004). Cerebral lateralization of prosodic processing. Brain and Cognition, 56, 119.
   
• Dwivedi, V. (2003). The view from the periphery: the Hindi right-adjoined relative. In. J. Cihlar, A. Franklin, D. Kaiser, I. Kimbara (Eds.), Chicago Linguistics Society 39-1: The main session (pp. 32-48). Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse.
   
• Baum, S. and Dwivedi, V. (2003). Sensitivity to prosodic structure in left- and right-hemisphere-damaged individuals. Brain and Language, 87, 278-289.
   

Recent conferences:

• Dwivedi, V., & Goldhawk, M. (May 2009). Semantic underspecification and anaphora Presentation for the annual meeting of the Canadian Linguistics Association. Carleton University, Ottawa, CA.
   
• Dwivedi, V., & Goldhawk, M. (May 2009). The role of semantic context in anaphora. Presentation at the Meeting of Semanticists Active in Canada Workshop, Department of Linguistics, University of Ottawa.
   
• Dwivedi, V., Phillips, N., Baum, S., Drury, J., Steinhauer, K. (March 2009). ERP evidence for modal subordination in spoken speech. Poster presentation for the annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. San Francisco, USA.
   
• Dwivedi, V., & Goldhawk, M. (March 2009). Underspecification of scope ambiguity and anaphora: Evidence from self-paced reading. Poster presentation for the 22nd annual meeting of the CUNY Sentence Processing Conference, University of California, Davis, USA.
   
• Di Sciullo, A., De Almeida, R., Manouilidou, C., & Dwivedi, V. (August 2008). This poster reads clearly: Processing English middle constructions. Poster presentation for the 13th Annual Conference on Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing. Turku, Finland
   
• Dwivedi, V., Phillips, N. Einagel, S., & Baum, S. (May 31-June 2, 2008). The neurophysiology of scope ambiguity. Presentation for the annual meeting of the Canadian Linguistics Association. Vancouver, BC.
   
• Drury, J., Dwivedi, V, & Steinhauer, K. (April 2008). Logical semantics in language processing: An ERP study. Poster presentation for the annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. San Francisco, CA.
   
• Dwivedi, V., Phillips, N. Einagel, S., & Baum, S. (May 2007). An ERP Study of Noun Phrase Interpretation. Presentation for the annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. New York City, USA.
   
• Dwivedi, V., Phillips, N., Einagel, S., & Baum, S. (October 2006). An electrophysiological investigation of quantificational ambiguity. Presentation for the Fifth International Conference on the Mental Lexicon, McGill University, Montréal, Qc.

   
• De Almeida, R.G., & Dwivedi, V. (October 2006). Are lexical causatives semantically complex? Evidence from sentence recall and acceptability judgments. Presentation for the Fifth International Conference on the Mental Lexicon, McGill University, Montréal, Qc.
   
• Dwivedi, V., Phillips, N., Einagel, S., & Baum, S. (October 2006). An EEG response to linguistic ambiguity. Presentation for the Society for Psychophysiological Research 46th Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC.
   
• Dwivedi, V., Phillips, N. Laguë-Beauvais, M., & Baum, S. (March 2005). The interface of syntax, semantics and psycholinguistics: an investigation of operator scope. Paper presented at the 24th meeting of the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC.
   

Research Grants held (including dates) and Research Awards or Honours:

2007: Canada Foundation for Innovation Leaders Opportunity Fund

Title: A neurophysiological investigation of language processing
Amount: $212, 332.00

2007-10: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Standard Research Grant

Title: Locating logical semantics in the temporal dynamics of language comprehension
(Co-applicant with Karsten Steinhauer [PI] and John Drury)
Amount: $124, 288.00

2006-9: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Standard Research Grant

Title: An electrophysiological investigation of processing quantifier ambiguity in discourse.
(Co-applicant with Natalie Phillips [PI] and Shari Baum)

Amount: $145, 627.00
 

Areas of Research Interest (in brief):

Neurocognition of language, esp. with respect to semantics and syntax; psycholinguistic theories of language processing, quantification; prosodic processing; working memory and language processing; bilingual syntactic processing, syntax and semantics of Hindi.