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I was born in Jerusalem, a city which is as troubled as it is ancient, but found myself much more at home in Tel-Aviv, where I did my BA in Linguistics. After completing my BA I spent a magical year in Edinburgh, doing an MSc in psycholinguistics under the supervision of Martin Pickering and Holly Branigan. I am currently a fifth year PhD student in the Linguistics department at Stanford University, exchanging the grey Scottish sky for some California sunshine... You can find my CV here Research My research is motivated by two fundamental questions: How is grammatical knowledge represented, and how is it acquired. Those questions are closely linked - models of representation are constrained by what children can learn; models of acquisition are guided by what we think adults know. I use psycholinguistic findings from both development and processing to investigate the nature of linguistic knowledge. I focus on the acquisition and processing of syntactic and morpho-syntactic relations (e.g. unbounded dependencies, grammatical gender), and am especially interested in the way grammatical relations emerge, and are learned, from patterns of usage. The role of multi-word phrases in learning and use. My dissertation focuses on the role of multi-word phrases in the process of language learning and use. Despite doing worse than adults on various cognitive tasks, children seem to be better language learners. Previous accounts have focused on cognitive or biological differences between children and adults. In my research, I focus instead on the linguistic units children learn from to argue that they are better at certain aspects of language learning because they are ‘Starting Big’ - children, more than adults, rely on multi-word chunks (like what-is-that) in learning and this leads to a better learning of grammar.I use studies of child production, adult processing, and adult artificial language learning to investigate these ideas. Continuity of processing: children's use of disributional cues. I use naturalistic speech and experiments with children and adults to ask whether children are affected by the same factors influence adult processing. My work on Hebrew shows that children, like adults, are sensitive to the distributional properties of relative clauses. Together with Marie-Catherine de Marneffe, Scott Grimm and Joan Bresnan we are looking at the factors that govern children's dative alternations. Expectations in language processing. I'm currently working with Hal Tily, Joan Bresnan, Neal Snider and Ahubha Kothari on the way syntactic probabilities influence articulation, and with Barbara Hemforth, Neal Snider, Hal Tily, and Tom Wasow on how those expectations influence online processing. I've also worked with the wh-group at Stanford (Philip Hoffmeister, Florian Jaeger, Ivan Sag, and Neal Snider) investigating the nature and source of Superiority effects. I recently co-organizied (with Eve Clark) the 33rd Child Language Research Forum. The topic was: Experience and Variation in Learning a First Language.You can find more details here teaching Spring 2008, TA for Ling 144: Introduction to Cognitive and Information Sciences (Instructor Todd Davies) Fall 2007,TA for Ling240: First Language Acquisition (Instructor Eve Clark) syllabus Fall 2006,TA for Ling1: Introduction to Linguistics (Instructors Penny Eckert and Ivan Sag) education 2004-now: PhD Linguistics, Cognitive Science designation, Stanford University 2003-2004: MSc Psycholinguistics, with distinction, Edinburgh University 2000-2003: B.A. Linguistics, Summa cum Laude, Tel-Aviv University, Israel scholarships and awards 2004-2009: PhD funding, Stanford University 2003-2004: British Council Chevening Award 2001: Dean Award, Tel-Aviv University 2000: Honorary scholarship for academic excellence, Tel- Aviv University publications Arnon, i. & Ramscar, M. (in press). Granularity and the acquisition of grammatical gender: How order-of-acquisition affects what gets learned. Proceedings of the 31st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Amsterdam, pp xx-xx. Arnon, I. & Snider, N. (in press). More than words: frequency effects for multi-word phrases. Journal of Memory and Language Arnon, I (in press). Re-thinking child difficulty: The effect of NP type on child processing of relative clauses in Hebrew.Journal of Child Language Tily, H., Gahl, S., Arnon, I., Kothari, A., Snider, N., & Bresnan, J. (to appear). Pronunciation reflects syntactic probabilities: Evidence from spontaneous speech. Language and Cognition 2(1) Sag, Ivan A., Inbal Arnon, Bruno Estigarribia, Philip Hofmeister, T. Florian Jaeger, Jeanette Pettibone, and Neal Snider. Processing Accounts for Superiority Effects. Under review Arnon, I., Snider, N., Hofmeister, P., Jaeger, T. F., & Sag, I. A. (to appear). Cross-linguistic variation in a processing account: The case of multiple wh-qustions. To appear in Proceedings of BLS 32 Hofmeister, P., Jaeger, F., Arnon, I., Sag, I., & Snider, N. (2007).Locality and Accessibility in Wh-questions. In Linguistic Evidence: Empirical, Theoretical, and Computational Perspectives. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter Arnon, I. (2005). Relative clause acquisition in Hebrew: Toward a processing-oriented account. In A. Brugos, M. R. Clark-Cotton & S. Ha (eds.), Proceedings of the Twenty-ninth Boston University Conference on Language Development. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press presentations Arnon, I. & Clark, V. E. (2009). Words in frames: why on your feet is better than feet. The 83rd Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, SF Arnon, I. & Snider, N. (2009). More than words: speakers are sensitive to the frequency of multi-word sequences. The 83rd Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, SF Arnon, I. & Ramscar, M. (2009). How order-of-acquisition shapes learning: the case of grammatical gender. The 33rd Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston. Tily, H., Hemforth, B., Arnon, I., Shuval, N., Snider, N. & Wasow, T. (2008).Eye movements reflect comprehenders' knowledge of syntactic structure probability. The 14th Annual Conference on Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing, Cambridge, UK. Arnon, I. & Clark, E. V. (2008). Learning irregular plurals - why irregulars are like regulars. The 11th International Association of Child Language, Edinburgh, UK. Arnon, I. (2008). Children's sensitivity to distributional patterns: re-thinking the path of relative clause acquisition. Special workshop on Language and Cognition in the Third International Conference on Cognitive Science, Moscow, Russia. Tily, H., Arnon, I., Bresnan, J., Kothari, A., & Snider, N. (2007). What makes a construction predictable? Using semantic and contextual cues to better model phonetic reduction. Paper presented at The 20th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, San-Diego M\ arch 2007 Arnon, I. (2006). Re-thinking child difficulty: The effect of NP type on child processing of relative clauses in Hebrew. Paper presented at The 12th Annual Conference on Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing, Nijmegen, August, 2006 Arnon, I. (2006). Re-thinking child difficulty: The effect of NP type on child processing of relative clauses in Hebrew. Poster presented at The 19th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, CUNY, March 2006 Hofmeister, P., Jaeger, T. F., Arnon, I., Sag, I. A, & Snider, N. (2006). Locality and accessibility in wh-questions. International Conference on Linguistic Evidence. 2006. Feb. 1-4. University of Tubingen, Germany. Snider, N., Arnon, I., Hofmeister, P., Jaeger, F. T., & Sag, I. A. (2006). Processing accounts for gradience in acceptability: The case of multiple wh-questions. BLS. 2006. Feb. 10-12. Arnon, I. (2005). The processing of object relative clauses in young Hebrew speakers. Poster presented at the Xth International Congress for the Study of Child Language, Berlin, July, 2005 Arnon, I. (2005). On the use of resumptive pronouns in child and adult Hebrew. Talk given at the Xth International Congress for the Study of Child Language, Berlin, July, 2005 Hofmeister, P., Snider, N., Arnon, I., Estigarribia, B., Hofmeister, P., Jaeger, F., Pettibone, J., & Sag, I (2005). Processing Accounts for Superiority. Talk given at the S-TREND conference, Stanford University, April 2005 Arnon, I., Pickering, M. J., & Branigan, H. (2005). Passives are not always harder: On the interaction of syntactic structure and thematic fit. Poster presented at The 18th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, University of Arizona, March 2005 Arnon, I., Estigarribia, B., Hofmeister, P., Jaeger, F., Pettibone, J., Sag, I. & Snider, N. (2005). Rethinking Superiority effects – A processing model. Poster at The 18th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, University of Arizona, March 2005 Arnon, I., Estigarribia, B., Hofmeister, P., Jaeger, F., Pettibone, J., Sag, I. & Snider, N. (2005). Processing explains Superiority effects. Poster presented at HOWL 3: Hopkins Workshop on Language. John Hopkins University, January, 2005 Arnon, I. (2004). Relative clause acquisition in Hebrew: Toward a processing-oriented account. Talk given at the 29th Boston University Conference on Langauge Development, Boston, USA, November, 2004 Arnon, I. (2004). The processing of object relative clauses in young Hebrew speakers. Poster presented at AMLAP-2004, Aix-en-Provence, France, September, 2004 Arnon, I. (2004). Child Acquisition of Relative Clauses in Hebrew. Talk given at the Postgraduate Conference, Linguistics department, Edinburgh University, May 2004 Arnon, I. (2004). Is movement all it’s about? The acquisition of relative clauses in Hebrew. Talk given at the Interdisciplinary Tea, School of Informatics, Edinburgh University, May 2004 other Family My dad Arie Arnon When my mom, Ruth Butler, finally gets a webpage she'll be added on... Some politics Reports of Machsom Watch on human rights violations in checkpoints in the occupied territories Support Israeli refusniks: Refusal Solidarity Network Follow La Otra Campana (the Other Campaign) the new phase in the Zapatista struggle in Mexico.	Inbal Arnon Stanford Department of Linguistics Margaret Jacks Hall Building 460 Stanford CA 94305-2150 (650) 723-9019 inbalar at stanford dot edu