talks

Invited Talks

  • November 2025 (upcoming). Discourse Reasoning in Humans and Artificial Language Systems. University of Pennsylvania. November 19, 2025.
  • November 2025 (upcoming). From Humans to Language Models: Testing the Boundaries of Pragmatic Understanding. Language & Cognition Seminar, Harvard University. November 11, 2025.
  • October 2025. Bridging Modalities: Tracking Reference in Discourse Across Spoken and Sign Language. Linguistic Meaning Lab, Cornell University. October 10, 2025.
  • November 2021. The typology of free choice and polarity in Bangla. Semantics Reading Group, Yale University.

Conference Presentations

  • Wang, Xiaotian, Ankana Saha & Kathryn Davidson. (upcoming). Code-switching in Mandarin and English Definite Noun Phrases. Talk at the 2026 LSA Annual Meeting, New Orleans, Louisiana.
  • Hu, Jennifer¹, Ankana Saha¹ & Kathryn Davidson. 2025. The or That? Evaluating language models’ sensitivity to discourse structure in anaphora. Spotlight talk at the Conference on Language Modeling (COLM 2025) Pragmatic Reasoning in Language Models Workshop, Montreal, Canada. [Link]
  • Wang, Xiaotian, Ankana Saha & Kathryn Davidson. 2025. The Expression of Strong Definiteness in Code-switched Context. Poster at the 15th International Symposium on Bilingualism (ISB15), Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain.
  • Saha, Ankana. 2024. Demonstratives and alternatives. Talk at Sinn und Bedeutung 29, Noto, Italy.
  • Saha, Ankana & Kathryn Davidson. 2024. Distinctions in anaphoricity: German strong definites vs. demonstratives. Poster at the 5th Experimental Pragmatics in Italy Conference (XPRAG.it 2024), Venice, Italy. [Link]
  • Saha, Ankana, Yağmur Sağ, Jian Cui & Kathryn Davidson. 2024. Mandarin demonstratives as strong definites: An experimental investigation. Talk at Experiments in Linguistic Meaning (ELM 3), University of Pennsylvania, PA. [Link]
  • Saha, Ankana, Yağmur Sağ, Jian Cui & Kathryn Davidson. 2024. Mandarin demonstratives as strong definites. Poster at Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 34, University of Rochester, NY. [Link]
  • Schwarz, Florian, Agata Renans, Hasiyatu Abubakari, Dorothy Ahn, Fenna Bergsma, Nattanu Chanchaochai, Reginald Duah, Imke Driemel, Ljudmila Geist, Mira Grubic, Sampson Korsah, Suet-Ying Lam, Cecile Meier, Yağmur Sağ, Ankana Saha, Radek Šimík, and Alexandra Simonenko. 2023. Two types of definites – cross-linguistic experimental study. Talk at Cross-linguistic Perspectives on Processing and Learning (X-PPL 2023), University of Zurich. [Link]
  • Saha, Ankana, Yağmur Sağ & Kathryn Davidson. 2023. Focus on demonstratives: Experiments in English and Turkish. Poster at Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 33, Yale University, CT. [Link]
  • Saha, Ankana. 2023. Reference to kinds: the perspective from Bangla. Talk at West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL) 41, UC Santa Cruz, CA. [Link]
  • Saha, Ankana. 2023. Reference to kinds: the perspective from Bangla. Poster at the Workshop on (In)definiteness and Genericity across Languages, Yale University. [Link]
  • Saha, Ankana. 2022. Free choice and epistemicity in Bangla: A test for exhaustification-based approaches. Talk at 46th Annual Penn Linguistics Conference (PLC 46), University of Pennsylvania, PA.
  • Saha, Ankana. 2022. The typology of free choice and polarity in Bangla. Talk at 14th Annual Western Interdisciplinary Student Symposium on Language Research (WISSLR 2022), Western University, Ontario, Canada.
  • Saha, Ankana. 2022. Free choice and epistemicity in Bangla. Poster at 12th Formal Approaches to South Asian Languages (FASAL 12), University of Utah, UT. [Link]
  • Saha, Ankana. 2022. The puzzle of kind reference in Bangla. Talk at the Southern New England Workshop in Semantics (SNEWS), Yale University, CT.
  • Ahn, Dorothy, Ankana Saha & Uli Sauerland. 2020. Positively Polar Plurals. Poster at Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 30, Cornell University, NY. [Link]