Publications

Abstract

Human speakers often produce sentences incrementally. They can start speaking having in mind only a fragmentary idea of what they want to say, and while saying this they refine the contents underlying subsequent parts of the utterance. This capability imposes a number of constraints on the design of a syntactic processor. This paper explores these constraints and evaluates some recent computational sentence generators from the perspective of incremental production.

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Essays van psychologen en linguı̈sten over de relatie hersens-computers.

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In the first, critical part of this study, a small sample of simple German sentences with their empirically determined pitch contours is used to demonstrate the incorrectness of numerous currently hold views of German sentence intonation. In the second, more constructive part, several interrogative sentence types are analysed and an attempt is made to show that intonation, besides other functions, indicates the permantently changing 'thematic score' in on-going discourse as well as certain validity claims.

Abstract

The German Perfekt has two quite different temporal readings, as illustrated by the two possible continuations of the sentence Peter hat gearbeitet in i, ii, respectively: (i) Peter hat gearbeitet und ist müde. Peter has worked and is tired. (ii) Peter hat gearbeitet und wollte nicht gestört werden. Peter has worked and wanted not to be disturbed. The first reading essentially corresponds to the English present perfect; the second can take a temporal adverbial with past time reference ('yesterday at five', 'when the phone rang', and so on), and an English translation would require a past tense ('Peter worked/was working'). This article shows that the Perfekt has a uniform temporal meaning that results systematically from the interaction of its three components-finiteness marking, auxiliary and past participle-and that the two readings are the consequence of a structural ambiguity. This analysis also predicts the properties of other participle constructions, in particular the passive in German.

Abstract

Chinese has a number of particles such as le, guo, zai and zhe that add a particular aspectual value to the verb to which they are attached. There have been many characterisations of this value in the literature. In this paper, we review several existing influential accounts of these particles, including those in Li and Thompson (1981), Smith (1991), and Mangione and Li (1993). We argue that all these characterisations are intuitively plausible, but none of them is precise.We propose that these particles serve to mark which part of the sentence''s descriptive content is asserted, and that their aspectual value is a consequence of this function. We provide a simple and precise definition of the meanings of le, guo, zai and zhe in terms of the relationship between topic time and time of situation, and show the consequences of their interaction with different verb expressions within thisnew framework of interpretation.

Abstract

The KE family is a large three-generation pedigree in which half the members are affected with a severe speech and language disorder that is transmitted as an autosomal dominant monogenic trait. In previously published work, we localized the gene responsible (SPCH1) to a 5.6-cM region of 7q31 between D7S2459 and D7S643. In the present study, we have employed bioinformatic analyses to assemble a detailed BAC-/PAC-based sequence map of this interval, containing 152 sequence tagged sites (STSs), 20 known genes, and >7.75 Mb of completed genomic sequence. We screened the affected chromosome 7 from the KE family with 120 of these STSs (average spacing <100 kb), but we did not detect any evidence of a microdeletion. Novel polymorphic markers were generated from the sequence and were used to further localize critical recombination breakpoints in the KE family. This allowed refinement of the SPCH1 interval to a region between new markers 013A and 330B, containing ∼6.1 Mb of completed sequence. In addition, we have studied two unrelated patients with a similar speech and language disorder, who have de novo translocations involving 7q31. Fluorescence in situ hybridization analyses with BACs/PACs from the sequence map localized the t(5;7)(q22;q31.2) breakpoint in the first patient (CS) to a single clone within the newly refined SPCH1 interval. This clone contains the CAGH44 gene, which encodes a brain-expressed protein containing a large polyglutamine stretch. However, we found that the t(2;7)(p23;q31.3) breakpoint in the second patient (BRD) resides within a BAC clone mapping >3.7 Mb distal to this, outside the current SPCH1 critical interval. Finally, we investigated the CAGH44 gene in affected individuals of the KE family, but we found no mutations in the currently known coding sequence. These studies represent further steps toward the isolation of the first gene to be implicated in the development of speech and language.

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A recurrently connected attractor neural network with a Hebbian learning rule is currently our best ANN analogy for a piece cortex. Functionally biological memory operates on a spectrum of time scales with regard to induction and retention, and it is modulated in complex ways by sub-cortical neuromodulatory systems. Moreover, biological memory networks are commonly believed to be highly distributed and engage many co-operating cortical areas. Here we focus on the temporal aspects of induction and retention of memory in a connectionist type attractor memory model of a piece of cortex. A continuous time, forgetful Bayesian-Hebbian learning rule is described and compared to the characteristics of LTP and LTD seen experimentally. More generally, an attractor network implementing this learning rule can operate as a long-term, intermediate-term, or short-term memory. Modulation of the print-now signal of the learning rule replicates some experimental memory phenomena, like e.g. the von Restorff effect.

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The topic of this paper is the way in which speakers order information in discourse. I will refer to this issue with the term "linearization", and will begin with two types of general remarks. The first one concerns the scope and relevance of the problem with reference to some existing literature. The second set of general remarks will be about the place of linearization in a theory of the speaker. The following, and main part of this paper, will be a summary report of research of linearization in a limited, but well-defined domain of discourse, namely the description of spatial networks.

Abstract

In their comment, Dell and O'Seaghdha (1991) adduced any effect on phonological probes for semantic alternatives to the activation of these probes in the lexical network. We argue that that interpretation is false and, in addition, that the model still cannot account for our data. Furthermore, and different from Dell and O'seaghda, we adduce semantic rebound to the lemma level, where it is so substantial that it should have shown up in our data. Finally, we question the function of feedback in a lexical network (other than eliciting speech errors) and discuss Dell's (1988) notion of a unified production-comprehension system.

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In this article, we present an account of developmental data regarding the acquisition of syllable types. The data come from a longitudinal corpus of phonetically transcribed speech of 12 children acquiring Dutch as their first language. A developmental order of acquisition of syllable types was deduced by aligning the syllabified data on a Guttman scale. This order could be analyzed as following from an initial ranking and subsequent rerankings in the grammar of the structural constraints ONSET, NO-CODA, *COMPLEX-O, and *COMPLEX-C; some local conjunctions of these constraints; and a faithfulness constraint FAITH. The syllable type frequencies in the speech surrounding the language learner are also considered. An interesting correlation is found between the frequencies and the order of development of the different syllable types.

Abstract

Speakers tend to repeat materials from previous talk. This tendency is experimentally established and manipulated in various question-answering situations. It is shown that a question's surface form can affect the format of the answer given, even if this form has little semantic or conversational consequence, as in the pair Q: (At) what time do you close. A: “(At)five o'clock.” Answerers tend to match the utterance to the prepositional (nonprepositional) form of the question. This “correspondence effect” may diminish or disappear when, following the question, additional verbal material is presented to the answerer. The experiments show that neither the articulatory buffer nor long-term memory is normally involved in this retention of recent speech. Retaining recent speech in working memory may fulfill a variety of functions for speaker and listener, among them the correct production and interpretation of surface anaphora. Reusing recent materials may, moreover, be more economical than regenerating speech anew from a semantic base, and thus contribute to fluency. But the realization of this strategy requires a production system in which linguistic formulation can take place relatively independent of, and parallel to, conceptual planning.

Abstract

PdR Press publications in cognition ; 1

Abstract

It is quite normal for us to produce one or two million word tokens every year. Speaking is a dear occupation and producing words is at the core of it. Still, producing even a single word is a highly complex affair. Recently, Levelt, Roelofs, and Meyer (1999) reviewed their theory of lexical access in speech production, which dissects the word-producing mechanism as a staged application of various dedicated operations. The present paper begins by presenting a bird eye's view of this mechanism. We then square the complexity by asking how speakers control multiple access in generating simple utterances such as a table and a chair. In particular, we address two issues. The first one concerns dependency: Do temporally contiguous access procedures interact in any way, or do they run in modular fashion? The second issue concerns temporal alignment: How much temporal overlap of processing does the system tolerate in accessing multiple content words, such as table and chair? Results from picture-word interference and eye tracking experiments provide evidence for restricted cases of dependency as well as for constraints on the temporal alignment of access procedures.