Publications

Abstract

Two Event-Related Potential (ERP) studies contrast the processing of locally ambiguous sentences in the visual and the auditory modality. These sentences are disambiguated by a lexical element. Before this element appears in a sentence, the sentence can also be disambiguated by a boundary marker: a comma in the visual modality, or a prosodic break in the auditory modality. Previous studies have shown that a specific ERP component, the Closure Positive Shift (CPS), can be elicited by these markers. The results of the present studies show that both the comma and the prosodic break disambiguate the ambiguous sentences before the critical lexical element, despite the fact that a clear CPS is only found in the auditory modality. Comma and prosodic break thus have parallel functions irrespective of whether they do or do not elicit a CPS.

Abstract

Functional imaging studies have demonstrated involvement of the anterior temporal cortex in sentence comprehension. It is unclear, however, whether the anterior temporal cortex is essential for this function.We studied two aspects of sentence comprehension, namely syntactic and prosodic comprehension in temporal lobe epilepsy patients who were candidates for resection of the anterior temporal lobe. Methods: Temporal lobe epilepsy patients (n = 32) with normal (left) language dominance were tested on syntactic and prosodic comprehension before and after removal of the anterior temporal cortex. The prosodic comprehension test was also compared with performance of healthy control subjects (n = 47) before surgery. Results: Overall, temporal lobe epilepsy patients did not differ from healthy controls in syntactic and prosodic comprehension before surgery. They did perform less well on an affective prosody task. Post-operative testing revealed that syntactic and prosodic comprehension did not change after removal of the anterior temporal cortex. Discussion: The unchanged performance on syntactic and prosodic comprehension after removal of the anterior temporal cortex suggests that this area is not indispensable for sentence comprehension functions in temporal epilepsy patients. Potential implications for the postulated role of the anterior temporal lobe in the healthy brain are discussed.

Abstract

The present article reports on an investigation of one child's acquisition of the multiple senses of the preposition with from 2;0–4;0. Two competing claims regarding children's early representation and subsequent acquisition of with were investigated. The “multiple meanings” hypothesis predicts that children form individual form-meaning pairings for with as separate lexical entries. The “monosemy approach” (McKercher 2001) claims that children apply a unitary meaning by abstracting core features early in acquisition. The child's (“Brian”) speech and his input were coded according to eight distinguishable senses of with. The results showed that Brian first acquired the senses that were most frequent in the input (accompaniment, attribute, and instrument). Less common senses took much longer to emerge. A detailed analysis of the input showed that a variety of clues are available that potentially enable the child to distinguish among high frequency senses. The acquisition data suggested that the child initially applied a restricted one-to-one form-meaning mapping for with, which is argued to reflect the spatial properties of the preposition. On the basis of these results it is argued that neither the monosemy nor the multiple meanings approach can fully explain the data, but that the results are best explained by a combination of word learning principles and children's ability to categorize the contextual properties of each sense's use in the ambient language.

Abstract

Hartshorne and Ullman (2006) presented naturalistic language data from 25 children (15 boys, 10 girls) and showed that girls produced more past tense overregularization errors than did boys. In particular, girls were more likely to overregularize irregular verbs whose stems share phonological similarities with regular verbs. It was argued that the result supported the Declarative/Procedural model of language, a neuropsychological analogue of the dual-route approach to language. In the current study we present experimental data that are inconsistent with these naturalistic data. Eighty children (40 males, 40 females) aged 5;0–6;9 completed a past tense elicitation task, a test of declarative memory, and a test of non-verbal intelligence. The results revealed no sex differences on any of the measures. Instead, the best predictors of overregularization rates were item-level features of the test verbs. We discuss the results within the context of dual versus single route debate on past tense acquisition

Abstract

To segment continuous speech into its component words, listeners make use of language rhythm; because rhythm differs across languages, so do the segmentation procedures which listeners use. For each of stress-, syllable-and mora-based rhythmic structure, perceptual experiments have led to the discovery of corresponding segmentation procedures. In the case of mora-based rhythm, similar segmentation has been demonstrated in the otherwise unrelated languages Japanese and Telugu; segmentation based on syllable rhythm, however, has been previously demonstrated only for European languages from the Romance family. We here report two target detection experiments in which Korean listeners, presented with speech in Korean and in French, displayed patterns of segmentation like those previously observed in analogous experiments with French listeners. The Korean listeners' accuracy in detecting word-initial target fragments in either language was significantly higher when the fragments corresponded exactly to a syllable in the input than when the fragments were smaller or larger than a syllable. We conclude that Korean and French listeners can call on similar procedures for segmenting speech, and we further propose that perceptual tests of speech segmentation provide a valuable accompaniment to acoustic analyses for establishing languages' rhythmic class membership.

Abstract

There are two core phenomena which any empirical investigation of beauty must account for: the existence of aesthetical experience, and the enormous variability of this experience across times, cultures, people. Hence, it would seem a hopeless enterprise to determine ‘the very nature’ of beauty, and in fact, none of the many attempts from the Antiquity to present days found general acceptance. But what we should be able to investigate and understand is how properties of people, for example their varying cultural experiences, are correlated with the properties of objects which we evaluate. Beauty is neither only in the eye of the observer nor only in the objects which it sees - it is in the way in which specific observers see specific objects.

Abstract

All disciplines depend on language; but two of them also have language as an object – literary studies and linguistics. Their objectives are not the same – but they are sufficiently similar to invite close cooperation. This is not what we find; in fact, the development of research over the last decades has led to a relationship which is, in the typical case, characterised by friendly, and sometimes less friendly, ignorance and indifference. This article discusses some of the reasons for this development, and it suggests some conditions under which both sides would benefit from more cooperation.

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between the acoustic duration of phonemic sequences and their frequencies of occurrence. The data were obtained from large (sub)corpora of spontaneous speech in Dutch, English, German, and Italian. Acoustic duration of an n-phone is shown to codetermine the n-phone's frequency of use, such that languages preferentially use diphones and triphones that are neither very long nor very short. The observed distributions are well approximated by a theoretical function that quantifies the concurrent action of the self-regulatory processes of minimization of articulatory effort and minimization of perception effort

Abstract

How humans understand the intention of others’ actions remains controversial. Some authors have suggested that intentions are recognized by means of a motor simulation of the observed action with the mirror-neuron system [1–3]. Others emphasize that intention recognition is an inferential process, often called ‘‘mentalizing’’ or employing a ‘‘theory of mind,’’ which activates areas well outside the motor system [4–6]. Here, we assessed the contribution of brain regions involved in motor simulation and mentalizing for understanding action intentions via functional brain imaging. Results show that the inferior frontal gyrus (part of the mirror-neuron system) processes the intentionality of an observed action on the basis of the visual properties of the action, irrespective of whether the subject paid attention to the intention or not. Conversely, brain areas that are part of a ‘‘mentalizing’’ network become active when subjects reflect about the intentionality of an observed action, but they are largely insensitive to the visual properties of the observed action. This supports the hypothesis that motor simulation and mentalizing have distinct but complementary functions for the recognition of others’ intentions.

Abstract

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a disabling disorder, characterized by persistent or relapsing fatigue. Recent studies have detected a decrease in cortical grey matter volume in patients with CFS, but it is unclear whether this cerebral atrophy constitutes a cause or a consequence of the disease. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is an effective behavioural intervention for CFS, which combines a rehabilitative approach of a graded increase in physical activity with a psychological approach that addresses thoughts and beliefs about CFS which may impair recovery. Here, we test the hypothesis that cerebral atrophy may be a reversible state that can ameliorate with successful CBT. We have quantified cerebral structural changes in 22 CFS patients that underwent CBT and 22 healthy control participants. At baseline, CFS patients had significantly lower grey matter volume than healthy control participants. CBT intervention led to a significant improvement in health status, physical activity and cognitive performance. Crucially, CFS patients showed a significant increase in grey matter volume, localized in the lateral prefrontal cortex. This change in cerebral volume was related to improvements in cognitive speed in the CFS patients. Our findings indicate that the cerebral atrophy associated with CFS is partially reversed after effective CBT. This result provides an example of macroscopic cortical plasticity in the adult human brain, demonstrating a surprisingly dynamic relation between behavioural state and cerebral anatomy. Furthermore, our results reveal a possible neurobiological substrate of psychotherapeutic treatment.

Abstract

Kanazawa (2007) proposes the ‘evolutionary psychological imagination’ (p.7) as an authoritative framework for understanding complex social and public issues. As a case study of this approach, Kanazawa addresses acts of international terrorism, specifically suicide bombings committed by Muslim men. It is proposed that a comprehensive explanation of such acts can be gained from taking an evolutionary perspective armed with only three points of cultural knowledge: 1. Muslims are exceptionally polygynous, 2. Muslim men believe they will gain reproductive access to 72 virgins if they die as a martyr and 3. Muslim men have limited access to pornography, which might otherwise relieve the tension built up from intra-sexual competition. We agree with Kanazawa that evolutionary models of human behaviour can contribute to our understanding of even the most complex social issues. However, Kanazawa’s case study, of what he refers to as ‘World War III’, rests on a flawed theoretical argument, lacks empirical backing, and holds little in the way of explanatory power.

Abstract

This paper describes the descriptive landscape and seascape terminology of an isolate language, Yélî Dnye, spoken on a remote island off Papua New Guinea. The terminology reveals an ontology of landscape terms fundamentally mismatching that in European languages, and in current GIS applications. These landscape terms, and a rich set of seascape terms, provide the ontological basis for toponyms across subdomains. Considering what motivates landscape categorization, three factors are considered: perceptual salience, human affordance and use, and cultural ideas. The data show that cultural ideas and practices are the major categorizing force: they directly impact the ecology with environmental artifacts, construct religious ideas which play a major role in the use of the environment and its naming, and provide abstract cultural templates which organize large portions of vocabulary across subdomains.

Abstract

In the current study we investigated whether 12-month-old infants gesture appropriately for knowledgeable versus ignorant partners, in order to provide them with needed information. In two experiments we found that in response to a searching adult, 12-month-olds pointed more often to an object whose location the adult did not know and thus needed information to find (she had not seen it fall down just previously) than to an object whose location she knew and thus did not need information to find (she had watched it fall down just previously). These results demonstrate that, in contrast to classic views of infant communication, infants’ early pointing at 12 months is already premised on an understanding of others’ knowledge and ignorance, along with a prosocial motive to help others by providing needed information.

Abstract

This paper investigates the social-cognitive and motivational complexities underlying prelinguistic infants' gestural communication. With regard to deictic referential gestures, new and recent experimental evidence shows that infant pointing is a complex communicative act based on social-cognitive skills and cooperative motives. With regard to infant representational gestures, findings suggest the need to re-interpret these gestures as initially non-symbolic gestural social acts. Based on the available empirical evidence, the paper argues that deictic referential communication emerges as a foundation of human communication first in gestures, already before language. Representational symbolic communication, instead, emerges as a transformation of deictic communication first in the vocal modality and, perhaps, in gestures through non-symbolic, socially situated routines.

Abstract

The cross-linguistic investigation of semantic categories has a long history, spanning many disciplines and covering many domains. But the extent to which semantic categories are universal or language-specific remains highly controversial. Focusing on the domain of events involving material destruction (“cutting and breaking” events, for short), this study investigates how speakers of different languages implicitly categorize such events through the verbs they use to talk about them. Speakers of 28 typologically, genetically and geographically diverse languages were asked to describe the events shown in a set of videoclips, and the distribution of their verbs across the events was analyzed with multivariate statistics. The results show that there is considerable agreement across languages in the dimensions along which cutting and breaking events are distinguished, although there is variation in the number of categories and the placement of their boundaries. This suggests that there are strong constraints in human event categorization, and that variation is played out within a restricted semantic space.

Abstract

Coherent covariation appears to be a powerful explanatory factor accounting for a range of phenomena in semantic cognition. But its role in accounting for the crosslinguistic facts is less clear. Variation in naming, within the same semantic domain, raises vexing questions about the necessary parameters needed to account for the basic facts underlying categorization.

Abstract

Recurrent lexicalization patterns across widely different cultural contexts can provide a window onto common conceptualizations. The cross-linguistic data support the idea that sweet, salt, sour, and bitter are basic tastes. In addition, umami and fatty are likely basic tastes, as well.

Abstract

We present a computational model that provides a unified account of inference, coherence, and disambiguation. It simulates how the build-up of coherence in text leads to the knowledge-based resolution of referential ambiguity. Possible interpretations of an ambiguity are represented by centers of gravity in a high-dimensional space. The unresolved ambiguity forms a vector in the same space. This vector is attracted by the centers of gravity, while also being affected by context information and world knowledge. When the vector reaches one of the centers of gravity, the ambiguity is resolved to the corresponding interpretation. The model accounts for reading time and error rate data from experiments on ambiguous pronoun resolution and explains the effects of context informativeness, anaphor type, and processing depth. It shows how implicit causality can have an early effect during reading. A novel prediction is that ambiguities can remain unresolved if there is insufficient disambiguating information.

Abstract

What drives humans around the world to converge in certain ways in their naming while diverging dramatically in others? We studied how naming patterns are constrained by investigating whether labeling of human locomotion reflects the biomechanical discontinuity between walking and running gaits. Similarity judgments of a student locomoting on a treadmill at different slopes and speeds revealed perception of this discontinuity. Naming judgments of the same clips by speakers of English, Japanese, Spanish, and Dutch showed lexical distinctions between walking and running consistent with the perceived discontinuity. Typicality judgments showed that major gait terms of the four languages share goodness-of-example gradients. These data demonstrate that naming reflects the biomechanical discontinuity between walking and running and that shared elements of naming can arise from correlations among stimulus properties that are dynamic and fleeting. The results support the proposal that converging naming patterns reflect structure in the world, not only acts of construction by observers.

Abstract

Interpreting a verb-phrase ellipsis (VP ellipsis) requires accessing an antecedent in memory, and then integrating a representation of this antecedent into the local context. We investigated the online interpretation of VP ellipsis in an eye-tracking experiment and four speed–accuracy tradeoff experiments. To investigate whether the antecedent for a VP ellipsis is accessed with a search or direct-access retrieval process, Experiments 1 and 2 measured the effect of the distance between an ellipsis and its antecedent on the speed and accuracy of comprehension. Accuracy was lower with longer distances, indicating that interpolated material reduced the quality of retrieved information about the antecedent. However, contra a search process, distance did not affect the speed of interpreting ellipsis. This pattern suggests that antecedent representations are content-addressable and retrieved with a direct-access process. To determine whether interpreting ellipsis involves copying antecedent information into the ellipsis site, Experiments 3–5 manipulated the length and complexity of the antecedent. Some types of antecedent complexity lowered accuracy, notably, the number of discourse entities in the antecedent. However, neither antecedent length nor complexity affected the speed of interpreting the ellipsis. This pattern is inconsistent with a copy operation, and it suggests that ellipsis interpretation may involve a pointer to extant structures in memory.

Abstract

Although spontaneous speech occurs more frequently in most listeners’ experience than read speech, laboratory studies of human speech recognition typically use carefully controlled materials read from a script. The phonological and prosodic characteristics of spontaneous and read speech differ considerably, however, which suggests that laboratory results may not generalize to the recognition of spontaneous and read speech materials, and their response time to detect word-initial target phonemes was measured. Response were, overall, equally fast in each speech mode. However analysis of effects previously reported in phoneme detection studies revealed significant differences between speech modes. In read speech but not in spontaneous speech, later targets were detected more rapidly than earlier targets, and targets preceded by long words were detected more rapidly than targets preceded by short words. In contrast, in spontaneous speech but not in read speech, targets were detected more rapidly in accented than unaccented words and in strong than in weak syllables. An explanation for this pattern is offered in terms of characteristic prosodic differences between spontaneous and read speech. The results support claim from previous work that listeners pay great attention to prosodic information in the process of recognizing speech.

Abstract

The authors investigated whether speakers who named several objects processed them sequentially or in parallel. Speakers named object triplets, arranged in a triangle, in the order left, right, and bottom object. The left object was easy or difficult to identify and name. During the saccade from the left to the right object, the right object shown at trial onset (the interloper) was replaced by a new object (the target), which the speakers named. Interloper and target were identical or unrelated objects, or they were conceptually unrelated objects with the same name (e.g., bat [animal] and [baseball] bat). The mean duration of the gazes to the target was shorter when interloper and target were identical or had the same name than when they were unrelated. The facilitatory effects of identical and homophonous interlopers were significantly larger when the left object was easy to process than when it was difficult to process. This interaction demonstrates that the speakers processed the left and right objects in parallel.

Abstract

When the perceptual system uses color to facilitate object recognition, it must solve the color-constancy problem: The light an object reflects to an observer's eyes confounds properties of the source of the illumination with the surface reflectance of the object. Information from the visual scene (bottom-up information) is insufficient to solve this problem. We show that observers use world knowledge about objects and their prototypical colors as a source of top-down information to improve color constancy. Specifically, observers use world knowledge to recalibrate their color categories. Our results also suggest that similar effects previously observed in language perception are the consequence of a general perceptual process.

Abstract

This study reports a shadowing experiment, in which one has to repeat a speech stimulus as fast as possible. We tested claims about a direct link between perception and production based on speech gestures, and obtained two types of counterevidence. First, shadowing is not slowed down by a gestural mismatch between stimulus and response. Second, phonetic detail is more likely to be imitated in a shadowing task if it is phonologically relevant. This is consistent with the idea that speech perception and speech production are only loosely coupled, on an abstract phonological level.

Abstract

In four experiments, we investigated how listeners compensate for reduced /t/ in Dutch. Mitterer and Ernestus [Mitterer,H., & Ernestus, M. (2006). Listeners recover /t/s that speakers lenite: evidence from /t/-lenition in Dutch. Journal of Phonetics, 34, 73–103] showed that listeners are biased to perceive a /t/ more easily after /s/ than after /n/, compensating for the tendency of speakers to reduce word-final /t/ after /s/ in spontaneous conversations. We tested the robustness of this phonological context effect in perception with three very different experimental tasks: an identification task, a discrimination task with native listeners and with non-native listeners who do not have any experience with /t/-reduction,and a passive listening task (using electrophysiological dependent measures). The context effect was generally robust against these experimental manipulations, although we also observed some deviations from the overall pattern. Our combined results show that the context effect in compensation for reduced /t/ results from a complex process involving auditory constraints, phonological learning, and lexical constraints.

Abstract

In two experiments, we investigated the processing of extrafoveal objects in a double-object naming task. On most trials, participants named two objects; but on some trials, the objects were replaced shortly after trial onset by a written word probe, which participants had to name instead of the objects. In Experiment 1, the word was presented in the same location as the left object either 150 or 350 msec after trial onset and was either phonologically related or unrelated to that object name. Phonological facilitation was observed at the later but not at the earlier SOA. In Experiment 2, the word was either phonologically related or unrelated to the right object and was presented 150 msec after the speaker had begun to inspect that object. In contrast with Experiment 1, phonological facilitation was found at this early SOA, demonstrating that the speakers had begun to process the right object prior to fixation.

Abstract

Two experiments were conducted with younger and older speakers. In Experiment 1, participants named single objects that were intact or visually degraded, while hearing distractor words that were phonologically related or unrelated to the object name. In both younger and older participants naming latencies were shorter for intact than for degraded objects and shorter when related than when unrelated distractors were presented. In Experiment 2, the single objects were replaced by object triplets, with the distractors being phonologically related to the first object's name. Naming latencies and gaze durations for the first object showed degradation and relatedness effects that were similar to those in single-object naming. Older participants were slower than younger participants when naming single objects and slower and less fluent on the second but not the first object when naming object triplets. The results of these experiments indicate that both younger and older speakers plan object names sequentially, but that older speakers use this planning strategy less efficiently.

Abstract

In expressing rich, multi-dimensional thought in language, speakers are influenced by a range of factors that influence the ordering of utterance constituents. A fundamental principle that guides constituent ordering in adults has to do with information status, the accessibility of referents in discourse. Typically, adults order previously mentioned referents (“old” or accessible information) first, before they introduce referents that have not yet been mentioned in the discourse (“new” or inaccessible information) at both sentential and phrasal levels. Here we ask whether a similar principle influences ordering patterns at the phrasal level in children who are in the early stages of combining words productively. Prior research shows that when conveying semantic relations, children reproduce language-specific ordering patterns in the input, suggesting that they do not have a bias for any particular order to describe “who did what to whom”. But our findings show that when they label “old” versus “new” referents, 3- to 5-year-old children prefer an ordering pattern opposite to that of adults (Study 1). Children’s ordering preference is not derived from input patterns, as “old-before-new” is also the preferred order in caregivers’ speech directed to young children (Study 2). Our findings demonstrate that a key principle governing ordering preferences in adults does not originate in early childhood, but develops: from new-to-old to old-to-new.

Abstract

It was recently suggested that the Kibra polymorphism rs17070145 has a strong effect on multiple episodic memory tasks in humans. We attempted to replicate this using two cohorts of European genetic origin (n = 319 and n = 365). We found no association with either the original SNP or a set of tagging SNPs in the Kibra gene with multiple verbal memory tasks, including one that was an exact replication (Auditory Verbal Learning Task, AVLT). These results suggest that Kibra does not have a strong and general effect on human memory.

Abstract

Referential ambiguity arises whenever readers or listeners are unable to select a unique referent for a linguistic expression out of multiple candidates. In the current article, we review a series of neurocognitive experiments from our laboratory that examine the neural correlates of referential ambiguity, and that employ the brain signature of referential ambiguity to derive functional properties of the language comprehension system. The results of our experiments converge to show that referential ambiguity resolution involves making an inference to evaluate the referential candidates. These inferences only take place when both referential candidates are, at least initially, equally plausible antecedents. Whether comprehenders make these anaphoric inferences is strongly context dependent and co-determined by characteristics of the reader. In addition, readers appear to disregard referential ambiguity when the competing candidates are each semantically incoherent, suggesting that, under certain circumstances, semantic analysis can proceed even when referential analysis has not yielded a unique antecedent. Finally, results from a functional neuroimaging study suggest that whereas the neural systems that deal with referential ambiguity partially overlap with those that deal with referential failure, they show an inverse coupling with the neural systems associated with semantic processing, possibly reflecting the relative contributions of semantic and episodic processing to re-establish semantic and referential coherence, respectively.

Abstract

In this event-related brain potential (ERP) study, we examined how semantic and referential aspects of anaphoric noun phrase resolution interact during discourse comprehension. We used a full factorial design that crossed referential ambiguity with semantic incoherence. Ambiguous anaphors elicited a sustained negative shift (Nref effect), and incoherent anaphors elicited an N400 effect. Simultaneously ambiguous and incoherent anaphors elicited an ERP pattern resembling that of the incoherent anaphors. These results suggest that semantic incoherence can preclude readers from engaging in anaphoric inferencing. Furthermore, approximately half of our participants unexpectedly showed common late positive effects to the three types of problematic anaphors. We relate the latter finding to recent accounts of what the P600 might reflect, and to the role of individual differences therein.

Abstract

Our brains rapidly map incoming language onto what we hold to be true. Yet there are claims that such integration and verification processes are delayed in sentences containing negation words like not. However, studies have often confounded whether a statement is true and whether it is a natural thing to say during normal communication. In an event-related potential (ERP) experiment, we aimed to disentangle effects of truth value and pragmatic licensing on the comprehension of affirmative and negated real-world statements. As in affirmative sentences, false words elicited a larger N400 ERP than did true words in pragmatically licensed negated sentences (e.g., “In moderation, drinking red wine isn't bad/good…”), whereas true and false words elicited similar responses in unlicensed negated sentences (e.g., “A baby bunny's fur isn't very hard/soft…”). These results suggest that negation poses no principled obstacle for readers to immediately relate incoming words to what they hold to be true.

Abstract

A Bayesian model of continuous speech recognition is presented. It is based on Shortlist ( D. Norris, 1994; D. Norris, J. M. McQueen, A. Cutler, & S. Butterfield, 1997) and shares many of its key assumptions: parallel competitive evaluation of multiple lexical hypotheses, phonologically abstract prelexical and lexical representations, a feedforward architecture with no online feedback, and a lexical segmentation algorithm based on the viability of chunks of the input as possible words. Shortlist B is radically different from its predecessor in two respects. First, whereas Shortlist was a connectionist model based on interactive-activation principles, Shortlist B is based on Bayesian principles. Second, the input to Shortlist B is no longer a sequence of discrete phonemes; it is a sequence of multiple phoneme probabilities over 3 time slices per segment, derived from the performance of listeners in a large-scale gating study. Simulations are presented showing that the model can account for key findings: data on the segmentation of continuous speech, word frequency effects, the effects of mispronunciations on word recognition, and evidence on lexical involvement in phonemic decision making. The success of Shortlist B suggests that listeners make optimal Bayesian decisions during spoken-word recognition.

Abstract

Previous research comparing detection times for syllables and for phonemes has consistently found that syllables are responded to faster than phonemes. This finding poses theoretical problems for strictly hierarchical models of speech recognition, in which smaller units should be able to be identified faster than larger units. However, inspection of the characteristics of previous experiments’stimuli reveals that subjects have been able to respond to syllables on the basis of only a partial analysis of the stimulus. In the present experiment, five groups of subjects listened to identical stimulus material. Phoneme and syllable monitoring under standard conditions was compared with monitoring under conditions in which near matches of target and stimulus occurred on no-response trials. In the latter case, when subjects were forced to analyze each stimulus fully, phonemes were detected faster than syllables.

Abstract

Speech comprehension has been shown to be a strikingly bilateral process, but the differential contributions of the subfields of left and right auditory cortices have remained elusive. The hypothesis that left auditory areas engage predominantly in decoding fast temporal perturbations of a signal whereas the right areas are relatively more driven by changes of the frequency spectrum has not been directly tested in speech or music. This brain-imaging study independently manipulated the speech signal itself along the spectral and the temporal domain using noise-band vocoding. In a parametric design with five temporal and five spectral degradation levels in word comprehension, a functional distinction of the left and right auditory association cortices emerged: increases in the temporal detail of the signal were most effective in driving brain activation of the left anterolateral superior temporal sulcus (STS), whereas the right homolog areas exhibited stronger sensitivity to the variations in spectral detail. In accordance with behavioral measures of speech comprehension acquired in parallel, change of spectral detail exhibited a stronger coupling with the STS BOLD signal. The relative pattern of lateralization (quantified using lateralization quotients) proved reliable in a jack-knifed iterative reanalysis of the group functional magnetic resonance imaging model. This study supplies direct evidence to the often implied functional distinction of the two cerebral hemispheres in speech processing. Applying direct manipulations to the speech signal rather than to low-level surrogates, the results lend plausibility to the notion of complementary roles for the left and right superior temporal sulci in comprehending the speech signal.

Abstract

Language is an intrinsically open-ended system. This fact has led to the widely shared assumption that readers and listeners do not predict upcoming words, at least not in a way that goes beyond simple priming between words. Recent evidence, however, suggests that readers and listeners do anticipate upcoming words “on the fly” as a text unfolds. In 2 event-related potentials experiments, this study examined whether these predictions are based on the exact message conveyed by the prior discourse or on simpler word-based priming mechanisms. Participants read texts that strongly supported the prediction of a specific word, mixed with non-predictive control texts that contained the same prime words. In Experiment 1A, anomalous words that replaced a highly predictable (as opposed to a non-predictable but coherent) word elicited a long-lasting positive shift, suggesting that the prior discourse had indeed led people to predict specific words. In Experiment 1B, adjectives whose suffix mismatched the predictable noun's syntactic gender elicited a short-lived late negativity in predictive stories but not in prime control stories. Taken together, these findings reveal that the conceptual basis for predicting specific upcoming words during reading is the exact message conveyed by the discourse and not the mere presence of prime words.

Abstract

The way adults express manner and path components of a motion event varies across typologically different languages both in speech and cospeech gestures, showing that language specificity in event encoding influences gesture. The authors tracked when and how this multimodal cross-linguistic variation develops in children learning Turkish and English, 2 typologically distinct languages. They found that children learn to speak in language-specific ways from age 3 onward (i.e., English speakers used 1 clause and Turkish speakers used 2 clauses to express manner and path). In contrast, English- and Turkish-speaking children’s gestures looked similar at ages 3 and 5 (i.e., separate gestures for manner and path), differing from each other only at age 9 and in adulthood (i.e., English speakers used 1 gesture, but Turkish speakers used separate gestures for manner and path). The authors argue that this pattern of the development of cospeech gestures reflects a gradual shift to language-specific representations during speaking and shows that looking at speech alone may not be sufficient to understand the full process of language acquisition.

Abstract

Background: Growing evidence for overlap in the syntactic processing of language and music in non-brain-damaged individuals leads to the question of whether aphasic individuals with grammatical comprehension problems in language also have problems processing structural relations in music.

Aims: The current study sought to test musical syntactic processing in individuals with Broca's aphasia and grammatical comprehension deficits, using both explicit and implicit tasks.

Methods & Procedures: Two experiments were conducted. In the first experiment 12 individuals with Broca's aphasia (and 14 matched controls) were tested for their sensitivity to grammatical and semantic relations in sentences, and for their sensitivity to musical syntactic (harmonic) relations in chord sequences. An explicit task (acceptability judgement of novel sequences) was used. The second experiment, with 9 individuals with Broca's aphasia (and 12 matched controls), probed musical syntactic processing using an implicit task (harmonic priming).

Outcomes & Results: In both experiments the aphasic group showed impaired processing of musical syntactic relations. Control experiments indicated that this could not be attributed to low-level problems with the perception of pitch patterns or with auditory short-term memory for tones.

Conclusions: The results suggest that musical syntactic processing in agrammatic aphasia deserves systematic investigation, and that such studies could help probe the nature of the processing deficits underlying linguistic agrammatism. Methodological suggestions are offered for future work in this little-explored area.

Abstract

Randomization performance was studied using the "Mental Dice Task" in 20 patients with aphasia (APH) and 101 elderly normal control subjects (NC). The produced sequences were compared to 100 computer-generated pseudorandom sequences with respect to 7 measures of sequential bias. The performance of APH differed significantly from NC participants, according to all but one measure, i.e. Turning Point Index (points of change between ascending and descending sequences). NC participants differed significantly from the computer generated sequences, according to all measures of randomness. Finally, APH differed significantly from the computer simulator, according to all measures but mean Repetition Gap score (gap between a digit and its reoccurrence). Despite the heterogeneity of our APH group, there were no significant differences in randomization performance between patients with different language impairments. All the APH displayed a distinct performance profile, with more response stereotypy, counting tendencies, and inhibition problems, as hypothesised, while at the same time responding more randomly than NC by showing less of a cycling strategy and more number repetitions.

Abstract

This article takes an interdisciplinary route towards explaining the complex history of Hai//om culture and language. We begin this article with a short review of ideas relating to 'origins' and historical reconstructions as they are currently played out among Khoekhoe groups in Namibia, in particular with regard to the Hai//om. We then take a comparative look at parts of the kinship system and the tonology of ≠Âkhoe Hai//om and other variants of Khoekhoe. With regard to the kinship and naming system, we see patterns that show similarities with Nama and Damara on the one hand but also with 'San' groups on the other hand. With regard to tonology, new data from three northern Khoekoe varieties shows similarities as well as differences with Standard Namibian Khoekhoe and Ju and Tuu varieties. The historical scenarios that might explain these facts suggest different centres of innovations and opposite directions of diffusion. The anthropological and linguistic data demonstrates that only a fine-grained and multi-layered approach that goes far beyond any simplistic dichotomies can do justice to the Hai//om riddle.

Abstract

This study investigates whether advanced second language (L2) learners of a nonnull subject language (Dutch) are influenced by their null subject first language (L1) (Turkish) in their offline and online resolution of subject pronouns in L2 discourse. To tease apart potential L1 effects from possible general L2 processing effects, we also tested a group of German L2 learners of Dutch who were predicted to perform like the native Dutch speakers. The two L2 groups differed in their offline interpretations of subject pronouns. The Turkish L2 learners exhibited a L1 influence, because approximately half the time they interpreted Dutch subject pronouns as they would overt pronouns in Turkish, whereas the German L2 learners performed like the Dutch controls, interpreting pronouns as coreferential with the current discourse topic. This L1 effect was not in evidence in eye-tracking data, however. Instead, the L2 learners patterned together, showing an online processing disadvantage when two potential antecedents for the pronoun were grammatically available in the discourse. This processing disadvantage was in evidence irrespective of the properties of the learners' L1 or their final interpretation of the pronoun. Therefore, the results of this study indicate both an effect of the L1 on the L2 in offline resolution and a general L2 processing effect in online subject pronoun resolution.

Abstract

he present study investigated the referential communication skills of children with imaginary companions (ICs). Twenty-two children with ICs aged between 4 and 6 years were compared to 22 children without ICs (NICs). The children were matched for age, gender, birth order, number of siblings, and parental education. All children completed the Test of Referential Commu- nication (Camaioni, Ercolani & Lloyd, 1995). The results showed that the children with ICs performed better than the children without ICs on the speaker component of the task. In particular, the IC children were better able to identify a specific referen t to their interlocutor than were the NIC children. Furthermore, the IC children described less redundant features of the target picture than did the NIC children. The children did not differ in the listening comprehension component of the task. Overall, the results suggest that the IC children had a better understanding of their interlocutor’s information requirements in convers ation. The role of pretend play in the development of communicative competence is discussed in light of these results.

Abstract

Remembering complex, multidimensional information typically requires strategic memory retrieval, during which information is structured, for instance by spatial- or temporal associations. Although brain regions involved in strategic memory retrieval in general have been identified, differences in retrieval operations related to distinct retrieval strategies are not well-understood. Thus, our aim was to identify brain regions whose activity is differentially involved in spatial-associative and temporal-associative retrieval. First, we showed that our behavioral paradigm probing memory for a set of object-location associations promoted the use of a spatial-associative structure following an encoding condition that provided multiple associations to neighboring objects (spatial-associative condition) and the use of a temporal- associative structure following another study condition that provided predominantly temporal associations between sequentially presented items (temporal-associative condition). Next, we used an adapted version of this paradigm for functional MRI, where we contrasted brain activity related to the recall of object-location associations that were either encoded in the spatial- or the temporal-associative condition. In addition to brain regions generally involved in recall, we found that activity in higher-order visual regions, including the fusiform gyrus, the lingual gyrus, and the cuneus, was relatively enhanced when subjects used a spatial-associative structure for retrieval. In contrast, activity in the globus pallidus and the thalamus was relatively enhanced when subjects used a temporal-associative structure for retrieval. In conclusion, we provide evidence for differential involvement of these brain regions related to different types of strategic memory retrieval and the neural structures described play a role in either spatial-associative or temporal-associative memory retrieval.

Abstract

The present study aims to investigate the extent to which the process of lexical interpretation is context dependent. It has been uncontroversially agreed in psycholinguistics that interpretation is always affected by sentential context. The major debate in lexical processing research has revolved around the question of whether initial semantic activation is context sensitive or rather exhaustive, that is, whether the effect of context occurs before or only after the information associated to a concept has been accessed from the mental lexicon. However, within post-lexical access processes, the question of whether the selection of a word's meaning components is guided exclusively by contextual relevance, or whether certain meaning components might be selected context independently, has not been such an important focus of research. I have investigated this question in the two experiments reported in this paper and, moreover, have analysed the role that context-independent information in concepts might play in word interpretation. This analysis differs from previous studies on lexical processing in that it places experimental work in the context of a theoretical model of lexical pragmatics.

Abstract

Universal Grammar (UG) is indeed evolutionarily implausible. But if languages are just “adapted” to a large primate brain, it is hard to see why other primates do not have complex languages. The answer is that humans have evolved a specialized and uniquely human cognitive architecture, whose main function is to compute mappings between arbitrary signals and communicative intentions. This underlies the development of language in the human species.

Abstract

We used simultaneously recorded EEG and fMRI to investigate in which areas the BOLD signal correlates with frontal theta power changes, while subjects were quietly lying resting in the scanner with their eyes open. To obtain a reliable estimate of frontal theta power we applied ICA on band-pass filtered (2–9 Hz) EEG data. For each subject we selected the component that best matched the mid-frontal scalp topography associated with the frontal theta rhythm. We applied a time-frequency analysis on this component and used the time course of the frequency bin with the highest overall power to form a regressor that modeled spontaneous fluctuations in frontal theta power. No significant positive BOLD correlations with this regressor were observed. Extensive negative correlations were observed in the areas that together form the default mode network. We conclude that frontal theta activity can be seen as an EEG index of default mode network activity.

Abstract

Cette étude traite de la question de savoir s’il y a une relation entre les équivalents des particules additives ‘aussi’ et ‘de nouveau’ portant sur le topique et la finitude dans la variété des apprenants turcophones du néerlandais et de l’allemand. Dans les données obtenues avec une tâche contrôlée, nous observons que la finitude est moins fréquemment marquée dans les énoncés contenant ces particules que les énoncés comparables qui ne contiennent pas ces particules. Ceci est vrai pour le marquage de la finitude sur les verbes lexicaux ainsi que pour la présence de verbes conjugués sans contenu lexical comme la copule. De plus, nous montrons que les particules peuvent précéder le verbe conjugué dans la langue des apprenants. Ces résultats peuvent être expliqués par la similarité fonctionnelle entre la finitude et les particules portant sur le topique.

Abstract

Rhythmic synchronization likely subserves interactions among neuronal groups. One of the best studied rhythmic synchronization phenomena in the human nervous system is the beta-band (15-30 Hz) synchronization in the motor system. In this study, we imaged structures across the human brain that are synchronized to the motor system's beta rhythm. We recorded whole-head magnetoencephalograms (MEG) and electromyograms (EMG) of left/right extensor carpi radialis muscle during left/right wrist extension. We analyzed coherence, on the one hand between the EMG and neuronal sources in the brain, and on the other hand between different brain sources, using a spatial filtering approach. Cortico-muscular coherence analysis revealed a spatial maximum of coherence to the muscle in motor cortex contralateral to the muscle in accordance with earlier findings. Moreover, by applying a two-dipole source model, we unveiled significantly coherent clusters of voxels in the ipsilateral cerebellar hemisphere and ipsilateral cerebral motor regions. The spatial pattern of coherence to the right and left arm EMG was roughly mirror reversed across the midline, in agreement with known physiology. Subsequently, we analyzed the brain-wide pattern of beta-band coherence to the motor cortex contralateral to the contracting muscle. This analysis did not reveal any convincing pattern. Because the prior cortico-muscular analysis had demonstrated the expected pattern in our data, this negative finding demonstrates a current limitation of the applied method for cortico-cortical coherence analysis. We conclude that during an isometric muscle contraction, several distributed brain regions form a brain-wide beta-band network for motor control.

Abstract

This study investigates the roles of phonetic analogy and lexical frequency in an ongoing sound change, the devoicing of fricatives in Dutch, which occurs mainly in the Netherlands and to a lesser degree in Flanders. In the experiment, Dutch and Flemish students read two variants of 98 words: the standard and a nonstandard form with the incorrect voice value of the fricative. Dutch students chose the non-standard forms with devoiced fricatives more often than Flemish students. Moreover, devoicing, though a gradual process, appeared lexically diffused, affecting first the words that are low in frequency and phonetically similar to words with voiceless fricatives.

Abstract

This article presents a study to distinguish and quantify the various types of semantic associations provided by humans, to investigate their properties, and to discuss the impact that our analyses may have on NLP tasks. Specifically, we concentrate on two issues related to word properties and word relations: (1) We address the task of modelling word meaning by empirical features in data-intensive lexical semantics. Relying on large-scale corpus-based resources, we identify the contextual categories and functions that are activated by the associates and therefore contribute to the salient meaning components of individual words and across words. As a result, we discuss conceptual roles and present evidence for the usefulness of co-occurrence information in distributional descriptions. (2) We assume that semantic associates provide a means to investigate the range of semantic relations between words and contexts, and we provide insight into which types of semantic relations are treated as important or salient by the speakers of the language.

Abstract

The topic of word classes remains curiously under-represented in the sign language literature due to many theoretical and methodological problems in sign linguistics. This article focuses on language-specific classifications of signs into word classes in two different sign languages: German Sign Language and Kata Kolok, the sign language of a village community in Bali. The article discusses semantic and structural criteria for identifying word classes in the target sign languages. On the basis of a data set of signs, these criteria are systematically tested out as a first step towards an inductive classification of signs. Approaches and analyses relating to the problem of word classes in linguistic typology are used for shedding new light on the issue of word class distinctions in sign languages

Abstract

Recent research in speech production has shown that syntactic structure is reflected in segmental phonology--the application of certain phonological rules of English (e.g., palatalization and alveolar flapping) is inhibited across phrase boundaries. We examined whether such segmental effects can be used in speech perception as cues to syntactic structure, and the relation between the use of these segmental features as syntactic markers in production and perception. Speakers of American English (a dialect in which the above segmental effects occur) could indeed use the segmental cues in syntax perception; speakers of British English (in which the effects do not occur) were unable to make use of them, while speakers of British English who were long-term residents of the United States showed intermediate performance.

Abstract

Previous research has shown that the weighting of, or attention to, acoustic cues at the level of the segment changes over the course of development (Nittrouer & Miller, 1997; Nittrouer, Manning & Meyer, 1993). In this paper we examined changes over the course of development in weighting of acoustic cues at the suprasegmental level. Specifically, we tested English-learning 4-month-olds’ performance on a clause segmentation task when each of three acoustic cues to clausal units was neutralized and contrasted it with performance on a Baseline condition where no cues were manipulated. Comparison with the reported performance of 6-month-olds on the same task (Seidl, 2007) reveals that 4-month-olds weight prosodic cues to clausal boundaries differently than 6-month-olds, relying more heavily on all three correlates of clausal boundaries (pause, pitch and vowel duration) than 6-month-olds do, who rely primarily on pitch. We interpret this as evidence that 4-month-olds use a holistic processing strategy, while 6-month-olds may already be able to attend separately to isolated cues in the input stream and may, furthermore, be able to exploit a language-specific cue weighting. Thus, in a way similar to that in other cognitive domains, infants begin as holistic auditory scene processors and are only later able to process individual auditory cues.

Abstract

This paper addresses a set of issues related to language documentation that are not often explicitly dealt with in academic publications, yet are highly important for the development and success of this new discipline. These issues include embedding language documentation in the socio-political context not only at the community level but also at the national level, the ethical and technical challenges of digital language archives, and the importance of regional and international cooperation among documentation activities. These issues play a major role in the initiative to set up a network of regional language archives in three South American countries, which this paper reports on. Local archives for data on endangered languages have recently been set up in Iquitos (Peru), Buenos Aires (Argentina), and in various locations in Brazil. An important feature of these is that they provide fast and secure access to linguistic and cultural data for local researchers and the language communities. They also make data safer by allowing for regular update procedures within the network.

Abstract

Previous studies of the development of gestures have examined gestures in infants. In recent years, together with the rise of interest in spontaneous gestures accompanied by speech, research on spontaneous gestures in preschool-age children has increased. But little has been reported in terms of systematic developmental changes in children's spontaneous gestures, especially with respect to preschool-age children. The present paper surveys domestic and international research on the development of spontaneous gestures in preschoolers. When gestures seen in infants and preschool-age and older children were categorized, it was found that spontaneous gestures begin to appear together with speech semantically and temporarily by the end of the one-word period; during this same period, gestures that were seen earlier gradually decrease. It is suggested that the development of spontaneous gestures relates to a sentence level, not to a vocabulary level. Based on growth point theory (McNeill, 1992), it is also argued that spontaneous gestures develop with “thinking for speaking” and symbol ability.

Abstract

The Gricean maxim of Quality “Try to make your contribution one that is true” and his maxim of Manner “Be perspicuous” are not observed in Kilivila, the Austronesian language of the Trobriand Islanders of Papua New Guinea. Speakers of Kilivila metalinguistically differentiate registers of their language. One of these varieties is called biga sopa. This label can be glossed as “joking or lying speech, indirect speech, speech which is not vouched for.” The biga sopa constitutes the default register of Trobriand discourse. This article describes the concept of sopa, presents its features, and discusses and illustrates its functions and use within Trobriand society. The article ends with a discussion of the relevance of Gricean maxims for the research of everyday verbal interaction in Kilivila and a general criticism of these maxims, especially from an anthropological linguistic perspective. [Trobriand Islanders, Gricean maxims, varieties of Kilivila, Kilivila sopa, un-plain speaking]

Abstract

After a brief introduction to the topic the paper first gives an overview of Kilivila landscape terms and then presents the inventory of names for villages, wells, island points, reef-channels and gardens on Kaile’una Island, one of the Trobriand Islands in the Milne Bay Province of Papua New Guinea. The data on the meaning of the place names presented were gathered in 2004 with six male consultants (between the age of 36 and 64 years) living in the village Tauwema on Kaile’una Island. Thus, the list of place names is quite possibly not the complete sample, but it is reasonably representative of the types of Kilivila place names. After discussing the meaning of these terms the paper presents a first attempt to typologically classify and categorize the place names. The paper ends with a critical discussion of the landscape terms and the proposed typology for place names.

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to show that given the available observations on the behaviour of negation and presuppositions there is no simpler explanation than to assume that natural language has two distinct negation operators, the minimal negation which preserves presuppositions and the radical negation which does not. The three-valued logic emerging from this distinction, and especially its model-theory, are discussed in detail. It is, however, stressed that the logic itself is only epiphenomenal on the structures and processes involved in the interpretation of sentences. Horn (1985) brings new observations to bear, related with metalinguistic uses of negation, and proposes a “pragmatic” ambiguity in negation to the effect that in descriptive (or “straight”) use negation is the classical bivalent operator, whereas in metalinguistic use it is non-truthfunctional but only pragmatic. Van der Sandt (to appear) accepts Horn's observations but proposes a different solution: he proposes an ambiguity in the argument clause of the negation operator (which, for him, too, is classical and bivalent), according to whether the negation takes only the strictly asserted proposition or covers also the presuppositions, the (scalar) implicatures and other implications (in particular of style and register) of the sentence expressing that proposition. These theories are discussed at some length. The three-valued analysis is defended on the basis of partly new observations, which do not seem to fit either Horn's or Van der Sandt's solution. It is then placed in the context of incremental discourse semantics, where both negations are seen to do the job of keeping increments out of the discourse domain, though each does so in its own specific way. The metalinguistic character of the radical negation is accounted for in terms of the incremental apparatus. The metalinguistic use of negation in denials of implicatures or implications of style and register is regarded as a particular form of minimal negation, where the negation denies not the proposition itself but the appropriateness of the use of an expression in it. This appropriateness negation is truth-functional and not pragmatic, but it applies to a particular, independently motivated, analysis of the argument clause. The ambiguity of negation in natural language is different from the ordinary type of ambiguity found in the lexicon. Normally, lexical ambiguities are idiosyncratic, highly contingent, and unpredictable from language to language. In the case of negation, however, the two meanings are closely related, both truth-conditionally and incrementally. Moreover, the mechanism of discourse incrementation automatically selects the right meaning. These properties are taken to provide a sufficient basis for discarding the, otherwise valid, objection that negation is unlikely to be ambiguous because no known language makes a lexical distinction between the two readings.

Abstract

When speakers detect a problem in what they are saying, they must decide whether or not to interrupt themselves and repair the problem, and if so, when. Speakers will maximize accuracy if they interrupt themselves as soon as they detect a problem, but they will maximize fluency if they go on speaking until they are ready to produce the repair. Speakers must choose between these options. In a corpus analysis, we identified 448 speech repairs, classified them as major (as in a fresh start) or minor (as in a phoneme correction), and measured the interval between suspension and repair. The results showed that speakers interrupted themselves not at the moment they detected the problem but at the moment they were ready to produce the repair. Speakers preferred fluency over accuracy.

Abstract

The present experiment tested the suggestion that human listeners may exploit durational information in speech to parse continuous utterances into words. Listeners were presented with six-syllable unpredictable utterances under noise-masking, and were required to judge between alternative word strings as to which best matched the rhythm of the masked utterances. For each utterance there were four alternative strings: (a) an exact rhythmic and word boundary match, (b) a rhythmic mismatch, and (c) two utterances with the same rhythm as the masked utterance, but different word boundary locations. Listeners were clearly able to perceive the rhythm of the masked utterances: The rhythmic mismatch was chosen significantly less often than any other alternative. Within the three rhythmically matched alternatives, the exact match was chosen significantly more often than either word boundary mismatch. Thus, listeners both perceived speech rhythm and used durational cues effectively to locate the position of word boundaries.