Matthew Husband

matthew husband
Professor, University Lecturer in Psycholinguistics

I am an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Linguistics, Philology, and Phonetics at the University of Oxford and a Tutorial Fellow at St. Hugh’s College.

My research interests are in the syntax-semantics interface and language processing. For example, my work explores questions such as:  

- What is the representation of a sentence meaning?
- How are sentence meanings composed online?
- What network of brain regions supports the composition of sentence meanings?

To address these and other related questions, my research makes use of behavioural and neurophysiological techniques, from grammaticality judgments and eye movements to electroencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Personal website: 

For further information

Forthcoming publications:

  • Bovolenta, G. and Husband, E.M. Structural prediction during language comprehension revealed by electrophysiology: Evidence from Italian auxiliaries. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.
  • Husband, E.M. and Patson, N. Do Scalar Implicatures Prime? The Case of Exclusive 'or'. Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society.

 

Selected publications:

  • Nieuwland, M. S., Barr, D. J., Bartolozzi, F., Busch-Moreno, S., Darley, E., Donaldson, D. I., Ferguson, H. J., Fu, X., Heyselaar, E., Huettig, F., Husband, E. M., Ito, A., Kazanina, N., Kogan, V., Kohút, Z., Kulakova, E., Mézière, D., Politzer-Ahles, S., Rousselet, G., Rueschemeyer, S.-A., Segaert, K., Tuomainen, J., & Von Grebmer Zu Wolfsthurn, S. (2020). Dissociable effects of prediction and integration during language comprehension: Evidence from a large-scale study using brain potentials. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B: Biological Sciences, 375(1791). DOI:10.1098/rstb.2018.0522.
  • Husband E.M. and Bovolenta, G. (2020). Prediction failure blocks the use of local semantic context. Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience, 35:3, 273-291. DOI:10.1080/23273798.2019.1651881.
  • Nieuwland, M. S., Politzer-Ahles, S., Heyselaar, E., Segaert, K., Darley, E., Kazanina, N., Von Grebmer Zu Wolfsthurn, S., Bartolozzi, F., Kogan, V., Ito, A., Meziere, D., Barr, D., Rousselet, G., Ferguson, H., Busch-Moreno, S., Fu, X., Kulakova, E., Tuomainen, J., Husband, E. M., Donaldson, D., Kohút, Z., Rueschemeyer, S.-A., and Huettig, F. (2018). Large-scale replication study reveals a limit on probabilistic prediction in language comprehension. eLife, 7:e33468 DOI:10.7554/eLife.33468.
  • Politzer-Ahles, S. and Husband, E.M. (2018). Eye movement evidence for context-sensitive derivation of scalar inferences. Collabra: Psychology, 4(1), 3.
  • Husband, E.M. and Ferreira, F. (2015) The role of selection in the comprehension of focus alternatives. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience. doi:10.1080/23273798.2015.1083113.
  • Patson, N.D. and Husband, E.M. (2015) Misinterpretations in agreement and agreement attraction. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. doi:10.1080/17470218.2014.992445.
  • Husband, E.M. (2015) Self-repairs as right node raising constructions. Lingua 160, 20-37. doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2015.03.007.
  • Husband, E.M. and Stockall, L. (2014) Building aspectual interpretations online. In C. Manouilidou and R. de Almeida (eds) Cognitive Science Perspectives on Verb Representation and Processing (pp. 157-186). Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-10112-5_8.
  • Stockall, L. and Husband, E.M. (2014) Processing (the) events: Lexical and structural ingredients of inner aspect. In C.T. Schutze and L. Stockall (eds) Connectedness: Papers by and for Sarah VanWagenen, UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics, 18, 275-291.
  • Husband, E.M. (2014) A subclinical study of the cognitive resources underlying scalar implicature: A focus on scalar adjectives. In C.T. Schutze and L. Stockall (eds) Connectedness: Papers by and for Sarah Van Wagenen, UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics, 18, 189-211.

 

Invited lectures:

  • Husband, E.M. (2015) Prediction during real-time language comprehension: Consequences and extensions. Talk given at the University of South Carolina, September 22nd, Columbia, SC.
  • Husband, E.M. (2015) Mechanisms underlying scalar implicature. Talk given at the University of Cambridge, April 28th, Cambridge, UK.

 

Public talks:

  • Husband, E.M. (2014) Words: Are there any?! Talk given at Science Cafe, April 8th, Columbia, SC.
  • Husband, E.M. (2014) Words: Are there any?! Talk given at St. Hugh's College, February 19th, Oxford, UK.

 

​​Selected conference presentations:

  • Husband, E.M. and Ferreira, F. (2014) Distinguishing two routes to silent meaning in the brain. Talk given at the 11th Chronos Conference, Pisa, Italy. 
  • Husband, E.M. and Ferreira, F. (2012) Generating Contrastive Alternatives: Activation and Suppression Mechanisms. Talk given at the 25th CUNY Human Sentence Processing Conference, New York, NY.
  • Husband, E.M. and Ferreira, F. (2012) Activation and Suppression of Focus Alternatives. Talk given at the North Carolina Conference on Cognition, Chapel Hill, NC.
  • Husband, E.M. (2011) The Structure of Disfluency Repairs. Talk given at the Midwest Cognitive Science Meeting, Lasning, MI.
  • Husband, E.M. (2011) Rescuing Manner/Result Complementarity from Certain Death. Talk given at the 47th Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society, Chicago, IL.
  • Husband, E.M. (2011) Severing Scale Structure from the Adjective. Talk given at the 85th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Pittsburgh, PA.
  • Husband, E.M. (2010) Argument Structure and State Composition. Talk given at the End of Argument Structure workshop, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.
  • Husband, E.M. (2010) Compositional States. Talk given at the 20th annual Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) Conference, University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada.
  • Husband, E.M. (2010) State Composition. Talk given at the 33rd annual Generative Linguistics in the Old World (GLOW) Colloquium, University of Wrocław, Wrocław, Poland.

 

Selected poster presentations:

  • Husband, E.M. (2015) Inhibition in the computation of scalar implicature. Poster given at the 28th CUNY Human Sentence Processing Conference, Los Angeles, CA.
  • Bovolenta, G., Gansonre, C., and Husband, E.M. (2015) Failures during structural prediction: Distinguishing “what” vs. “when” errors. Poster given at the 28th CUNY Human Sentence Processing Conference, Los Angeles, CA.
  • Husband, E.M. and Gansonre, C. (2014) Direct evidence for structural prediction from the processing of auxiliary dependencies: An ERP investigation in French. Poster given at the 6th annual Society for the Neurobiology of Language conference, Amsterdam, Netherlands. 
  • Husband, E.M. and Angelides, N. (2014) Cognitive resources underlying scalar implicature: A subclinical study. Poster given at the 27th CUNY Human Sentence Processing Conference, Columbus, OH.
  • Patson, N. and Husband, E.M. (2014) Misinterpretation in agreement and agreement attraction. Poster given at the 27th CUNY Human Sentence Processing Conference, Columbus, OH. 
  • Husband, E.M. and Ferreira, F. (2013) Distinguishing two routes to silent meaning in the brain. Poster given at the 26th CUNY Human Sentence Processing Conference, Columbia, SC. 
  • VanDyke-Lyon, J., Husband, E.M., Ferreira, F., and Maxfield, N.D. (2013) Contextual effects on the comprehension of speaker corrections: An ERP Study. Poster given at the 26th CUNY Human Sentence Processing Conference, Columbia, SC. 
  • Husband, E.M. and Ferreira, F. (2012) Two routes to silent meaning distinguished in the brain. Poster given at the 4th Neurobiology of Language Conference, San Sebastian, Spain. 
  • Lyon, J.M., Husband, E.M., and Ferreira, F. (2012) Shared processes in passives and unaccusatives: Evidence from ERPs. Poster given at the 25th CUNY Human Sentence Processing Conference, New York, NY. 
  • Nye, J., Ferreira, F., Husband, E.M., and Lyon, J.M. (2012) Reconstruction of censored taboo in sentence processing.  Poster given at the 25th CUNY Human Sentence Processing Conference, New York, NY. 
  • Lyon, J.M., Husband, E.M., and Ferreria, F. (2012) Contextual and lexical influences on the comprehension of self-corrections: An ERP study. Poster given at the North Carolina Conference on Cognition, Chapel Hill, NC. 
  • Nye, J., Ferreira, F., Husband, E.M., and Lyon, J.M. (2012) Reconstruction of censored profanity in sentence processing.  Poster given at the North Carolina Conference on Cognition, Chapel Hill, NC. [abstract] [poster]
  • VanDyke-Lyon, J.M., Husband, E.M., and Ferreria, F. (2011) Inanimacy as a cue to derived subjects: Evidence from the development of the "semantic" P600. Poster given at the 17th Annual Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing Conference, Paris, France.
  • Stockall, L., Husband, E.M., and Benatar, A. (2010) Retrieving and processing the syntax and semantics of the mass/count distinction. Poster given at the 23rd Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, New York, NY. 
  • Husband, E.M. and Stockall, L. (2010) Lexical telicity?: Processing evidence for and against verbal telicity. Poster given at the 23rd Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, New York, NY.