Penny Pan

PhD Student in Linguistics

Research Interests

Pragmatics, Psycholinguistics, Cognitive Science

Peer-reviewed Papers

*: Equal contribution

  • Lu, J.*, Pan, D.*, & Degen, J. (to appear). Discourse Effects on the Manner-of-Speaking Island. Language. [link]

  • Pan, D., & Kehler, A. (2025). Do Large Language Models Recognize and Utilize Non-Mandated Pragmatic Enrichments? In Proceedings of the 47th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. [link]

  • Pan, D., & Kehler, A. (2025). Pragmatic Competence in LLMs: The Case of Eliciture. Society for Computation in Linguistics. 8(1): 43. [link]

  • Pan, D., & Bergen, B. (2025). Are explicit belief representations necessary? A comparison between Large Language Models and Bayesian probabilistic models. In Proceedings of the 2025 Annual Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the ACL. [pdf]

  • Pan, D., & Degen, J. (2023). Towards a computational account of projection inferences in polar interrogatives with clause-embedding predicates. In Proceedings of the 45th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. [pdf]

Unpublished Manuscripts

  • Are There Roses in the Maze?: Auditory word recognition in Mandarin-English bilinguals. B.A. Thesis, Vassar College. Advised by Prof. Janet Andrews. Second reader: Prof. John Long.

  • Projection inferences with clause-embedding predicates in RSA models. M.S. Thesis, Stanford University. Advised by Prof. Judith Degen. Second reader: Prof. Chris Potts.

Conference Presentations

  • Pan, D., & Kehler, A. (2025). Do Large Language Models Recognize and Utilize Non-Mandated Pragmatic Enrichments? Poster presented at the 47th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. San Francisco, CA.

  • Pan, D., & Kehler, A. (2025). Pragmatic Competence in LLMs: The Case of Eliciture. Poster presented at SCiL 2025. Eugene, OR.

  • Pan, D., & Bergen, B. (2025). Are explicit belief representations necessary? A comparison between Large Language Models and Bayesian probabilistic models. Poster presented at NAACL 2025. Albuquerque, NM.

  • Pan, D., & Kehler, A. (2024). Can LLMs draw conversational elicitures and put them to use? Talk presented at CAMP 7. La Jolla, CA.

  • Pan, D., & Degen, J. (2024). A computational model for projection inferences in clause-embedding predicates. Poster presented at CAMP 2024. Stanford, CA.

  • Lu, J., Pan, D., and Degen, J. (2024). Evidence for a discourse account of Manner-of-Speaking islands. Talk presented at LSA 2024. New York, NY.

  • Pan, D., & Degen, J. (2023). Towards a computational account of projection inferences in clause-embedding predicates. Talk presented at the 45th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Sydney, Australia.

  • Pan, D., Lu, J., & Degen, J. (2023). Can Manner-of-Speaking Islands be Rescued Through Discourse Foregrounding? Short talk presented at CAMP 2023. Los Angeles, CA.

  • Pan, D., Lu, J., & Degen, J. (2023). Discourse Foregrounding Ameliorates Manner-of-Speaking Islands. Poster presented at HSP 2023. Pittsburgh, PA.