I am interested in what people know about the structures of the languages that they speak and how this knowledge is represented in the brain.

Recent Projects

• Event Structure and Psychological Correlates of Event Composition
• Pronouns, Agreement, and Irish Prepositions
• Neural Correlates of Naturalistic Language Processing
• Syntax/Semantics of Focus Particles

Output

Papers & Manuscripts

• Brennan, J., Nir, Y., Hasson, U., Malach, R., Heeger, D.J. & Pylkkänen, L. (submitted) Language in the looking glass: Linguistic processing during natural story listening
• Brennan, J. & Pylkkänen, L. (2008) Processing Events: Behavioral and Neuromagnetic Correlates of Aspectual Coercion. Brain and Language, 106(2): 132-143. doi: 10.1016/jbandl2008.04.003 [download preprint]
• Brennan, J. (2008) Prepositions in Modern Irish: Agreement and Impoverishment. in Proceedings of WCCFL 26, C. Chang & H. Haynie, eds., 105-113. [download paper]
• Brennan, J. (2008) Only Finally in Proceedings of NELS 37, E. Elfner & M. Wakow, eds. [download paper] A slight longer version appears in NYUWPL Vol. 1 (O. S. Ciucivara & L. Levinson, eds.)
• Heycock, C. et al. (2003) Verb Movement and the Philosopher's Stone: Some comparative data from Faroese, Danish, and Swedish. Ms., University of Edinburgh. [download manuscript]

Presentations

• Indefinites, Choice Functions, and Discourse Anaphora, talk presented at NELS 39, Cornell University, November 7-9, 2008. [download handout]
• Semantic Composition and Inchoative Coercion: An MEG Study. (with Liina Pylkkänen), Poster presented at the 21st Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, March 13-15, 2008. [download poster]
• Neuromagnetic Correlates of Event Composition. CUNY Psycholinguistics Supper (invited talk), December, 2007.
• Language in Wonderland: Linguistic processing during natural story listening. (with Yuval Nir, Uri Hasson, Rafael Malach, David Heeger, and Liina Pylkkänen), Poster presented at the 2007 annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, New York NY, May 5-6, 2007. [download poster]
• Prepositions in Modern Irish: Agreement and Impoverishment. Paper presented at the 26th Annual West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley, April 27-29, 2007.
• Processing Events: Aspectual Coercion in Self-Paced Reading and Magnetoencephalography. (with Liina Pylkkänen), Poster presented at the 20th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, University of California, San Diego, March 29-31, 2007.
• Only, Finally. Poster presented at the 2007 annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Anaheim CA, Jan 4-7, 2007. [download poster]
• A Weight Problem: Vowel Length in Classical Latin. Talk presented at the 8th Annual SUNY/CUNY/NYU Miniconference, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Nov 18, 2006 [download handout]
• Only, Finally. Poster presented at NELS 37, University of Illinoise at Urbana-Champaigne, Oct 13-15, 2006.

Teaching

• Teaching Assistant, Language and Mind, taught by Professor Lisa Davidson and Professor Brian McElree, Spring 2008
• Teaching Assistant, The Neural Bases of Language, taught by Professor Liina Pylkkänen, Fall 2007
• Teaching Assistant, Introdution to Linguistics, taught by Professor Chris Barker, Spring 2007
• Teaching Assistant, Cognition, taught by Professor Gregory Murphy, Fall 2006

Academic Service

• President, Linguistics Association of NYU, 2007 - 08
• Treasurer, Linguistics Association of NYU, 2006 - 07
• Reviewer, SUNY/CUNY/NYU Miniconference, March 2006
• Linguistics Department Webmaster, January 2006 - present
• Lab Manager, NYU Neurolinguistics Lab, June 2006 - September 2006

Miscellaneous Links

• NYU Neurolinguistics Lab
• KIT / NYU MEG Joint Research Lab
• Vassar College Cogsci and Classics
• Edinburgh Linguistics

Last Updated: November 10, 2008