Publications

Abstract

Recent event-related FMRI studies indicate that the prefrontal (PFC) and the medial temporal lobe (MTL) regions are more active during effective encoding than during ineffective encoding. The within-subject design and the use of well-educated young college students in these studies makes it important to replicate these results in other study populations. In this PET study, we used an auditory word-pair association cued-recall paradigm and investigated a group of healthy upper middle-aged/older illiterate women. We observed a positive correlation between cued-recall success and the regional cerebral blood flow of the left inferior PFC (BA 47) and the MTLs. Specifically, we used the cuedrecall success as a covariate in a general linear model and the results confirmed that the left inferior PFC and the MTLare more active during effective encoding than during ineffective encoding. These effects were observed during encoding of both semantically and phonologically related word pairs, indicating that these effects are robust in the studied population, that is, reproducible within group. These results generalize the results of Brewer et al. (1998, Science 281, 1185– 1187) and Wagner et al. (1998, Science 281, 1188–1191) to an upper middle aged/older illiterate population. In addition, the present study indicates that effective relational encoding correlates positively with the activity of the anterior medial temporal lobe regions.

Abstract

Literacy and education represent essential aspects of contemporary society and subserve important aspects of socialization and cultural transmission. The study of illiterate subjects represents one approach to investigate the interactions between neurobiological and cultural factors in cognitive development, individual learning, and their influence on the functional organization of the brain. In this chapter we review some recent cognitive, neuroanatomic, and functional neuroimaging results indicating that formal education influences important aspects of the human brain. Taken together this provides strong support for the idea that the brain is modulated by literacy and formal education, which in turn change the brains capacity to interact with its environment, including the individual's contemporary culture. In other words, the individual is able to participate in, interact with, and actively contribute to the process of cultural transmission in new ways through acquired cognitive skills.

Abstract

The irrelevant speech effect illustrates that sounds that are irrelevant to a visually presented short-term memory task still interfere with neuronal function. In the present study we explore the functional and effective connectivity of such interference. The functional connectivity analysis suggested an interaction between the level of irrelevant speech and the correlation between in particular the left superior temporal region, associated with verbal working memory, and the left medial temporal lobe. Based on this psycho-physiological interaction, and to broaden the understanding of this result, we performed a network analysis, using a simple network model for verbal working memory, to analyze its interaction with the medial temporal lobe memory system. The results showed dissociations in terms of network interactions between frontal as well as parietal and temporal areas in relation to the medial temporal lobe. The results of the present study suggest that a transition from phonological loop processing towards an engagement of episodic processing might take place during the processing of interfering irrelevant sounds. We speculate that, in response to the irrelevant sounds, this reflects a dynamic shift in processing as suggested by a closer interaction between a verbal working memory system and the medial temporal lobe memory system.

Abstract

A fundamental problem in the study of learning is that learning-related changes may be confounded by nonspecific time effects. There are several strategies for handling this problem. This problem may be of greater significance in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) compared to positron emission tomography (PET). Using the general linear model, we describe, compare, and discuss two approaches for separating learning-related from nonspecific time effects. The first approach makes assumptions on the general behavior of nonspecific effects and explicitly models these effects, i.e., nonspecific time effects are incorporated as a linear or nonlinear confounding covariate in the statistical model. The second strategy makes no a priori assumption concerning the form of nonspecific time effects, but implicitly controls for nonspecific effects using an interaction approach, i.e., learning effects are assessed with an interaction contrast. The two approaches depend on specific assumptions and have specific limitations. With certain experimental designs, both approaches may be used and the results compared, lending particular support to effects that are independent of the method used. A third and perhaps better approach that sometimes may be practically unfeasible is to use a completely temporally balanced experimental design. The choice of approach may be of particular importance when learning related effects are studied with fMRI.

Abstract

The objective of this study was to investigate the central processing of dynamic mechanical allodynia in patients with mononeuropathy. Regional cerebral bloodflow, as an indicator of neuronal activity, was measured with positron emission tomography. Paired comparisons were made between three different states; rest, allodynia during brushing the painful skin area, and brushing of the homologous contralateral area. Bilateral activations were observed in the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) and the secondary somatosensory cortex (S2) during allodynia compared to rest. The S1 activation contralateral to the site of the stimulus was more expressed during allodynia than during innocuous touch. Significant activations of the contralateral posterior parietal cortex, the periaqueductal gray (PAG), the thalamus bilaterally and motor areas were also observed in the allodynic state compared to both non-allodynic states. In the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) there was only a suggested activation when the allodynic state was compared with the non-allodynic states. In order to account for the individual variability in the intensity of allodynia and ongoing spontaneous pain, rCBF was regressed on the individually reported pain intensity, and significant covariations were observed in the ACC and the right anterior insula. Significantly decreased regional blood flow was observed bilaterally in the medial and lateral temporal lobe as well as in the occipital and posterior cingulate cortices when the allodynic state was compared to the non-painful conditions. This finding is consistent with previous studies suggesting attentional modulation and a central coping strategy for known and expected painful stimuli. Involvement of the medial pain system has previously been reported in patients with mononeuropathy during ongoing spontaneous pain. This study reveals a bilateral activation of the lateral pain system as well as involvement of the medial pain system during dynamic mechanical allodynia in patients with mononeuropathy.

Abstract

Doubts have been cast on the strict dissociation between short- and long-term memory systems. Specifically, several neuroimaging studies have shown that the medial temporal lobe, a region almost invariably associated with long-term memory, is involved in active short-term memory maintenance. Furthermore, a recent study in hippocampally lesioned patients has shown that the hippocampus is critically involved in associating objects and their locations, even when the delay period lasts only 8 s. However, the critical feature that causes the medial temporal lobe, and in particular the hippocampus, to participate in active maintenance is still unknown. This study was designed in order to explore hippocampal involvement in active maintenance of spatial and non-spatial associations. Eighteen participants performed a delayed-match-to-sample task in which they had to maintain either object–location associations, color–number association, single colors, or single locations. Whole-brain activity was measured using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging and analyzed using a random effects model. Right lateralized hippocampal activity was evident when participants had to maintain object–location associations, but not when they had to maintain object–color associations or single items. The present results suggest a hippocampal involvement in active maintenance when feature combinations that include spatial information have to be maintained online.

Abstract

In this study we test a number of different claims about the nature of stylistic variation at the “single-word” stage by examining the relation between variation in early vocabulary composition, variation in early language use, and variation in the structural and functional propreties of mothers' child-directed speech. Maternal-report and observational data were collected for 26 children at 10, 50, and 100 words, These were then correlated with a variety of different measures of maternal speech at 10 words, The results show substantial variation in the percentage of common nouns and unanalyzed phrases in children's vocabularies, and singficant relations between this variation and the way in which language is used by the child. They also reveal singficant relations between the way in whch mothers use language at 10 words and the way in chich their children use language at 50 words and between certain formal properties of mothers speech at 10 words and the percentage of common nouns and unanalyzed phrases in children's early vocabularies, However, most of these relations desappear when an attempt is made to control for ossible effects of the child on the mother at Time 1. The exception is a singficant negative correlation between mothers tendency to produce speech that illustrates word boundaries and the percentage of unanalyzed phrases at 50 and 100 words. This suggests that mothers whose sprech provides the child with information about where new words begin and end tend to have children with few unanalyzed. phrases in their early vocabularies.

Abstract

This study investigates whether the acoustic durations of derivational affixes in Dutch are affected by the frequency of the word they occur in. In a word naming experiment, subjects were presented with a large number of words containing one of the affixes ge-, ver-, ont, or -lijk. Their responses were recorded on DAT tapes, and the durations of the affixes were measured using Automatic Speech Recognition technology. To investigate whether frequency also affected durations when speech rate was high, the presentation rate of the stimuli was varied. The results show that a higher frequency of the word as a whole led to shorter acoustic realizations for all affixes. Furthermore, affixes became shorter as the presentation rate of the stimuli increased. There was no interaction between word frequency and presentation rate, suggesting that the frequency effect also applies in situations in which the speed of articulation is very high.

Abstract

This study investigated characteristics of motor cortex activation and response generation in Parkinson's disease with measures of electrocortical activity (lateralized readiness potential [LRP]), electromyographic activity (EMG), and isometric force in a noise-compatibility task. When presented with stimuli consisting of incompatible target and distracter elements asking for responses of opposite hands, patients were less able than control subjects to suppress activation of the motor cortex controlling the wrong response hand. This was manifested in the pattern of reaction times and in an incorrect lateralization of the LRP. Onset latency and rise time of the LRP did not differ between patients and control subjects, but EMG and response force developed more slowly in patients. Moreover, in patients but not in control subjects, the rate of development of EMG and response force decreased as reaction time increased. We hypothesize that this dissociation between electrocortical activity and peripheral measures in Parkinson's disease is the result of changes in motor cortex function that alter the relation between signal-related and movement-related neural activity in the motor cortex. In the LRP, this altered balance may obscure an abnormal development of movement-related neural activity.

Abstract

Greek is a language with lexical stress that marks stress orthographically with a special diacritic. Thus, the orthography and the lexicon constitute potential sources of stress assignment information in addition to any possible general default metrical pattern. Here, we report two experiments with secondary education children reading aloud pseudo-word stimuli, in which we manipulated the availability of lexical (using stimuli resembling particular words) and visual (existence and placement of the diacritic) information. The reliance on the diacritic was found to be imperfect. Strong lexical effects as well as a default metrical pattern stressing the penultimate syllable were revealed. Reading models must be extended to account for multisyllabic word reading including, in particular, stress assignment based on the interplay among multiple possible sources of information.

Abstract

Previous work has shown that illiterate subjects are better at naming two-dimensional representations of real objects when presented as colored photos as compared to black and white drawings. This raises the question if color or textural details selectively improve object recognition and naming in illiterate compared to literate subjects. In this study, we investigated whether the surface texture and/or color of objects is used to access stored object knowledge in illiterate subjects. A group of illiterate subjects and a matched literate control group were compared on an immediate object naming task with four conditions: color and black and white (i.e., grey-scaled) photos, as well as color and black and white (i.e., grey-scaled) drawings of common everyday objects. The results show that illiterate subjects perform significantly better when the stimuli are colored and this effect is independent of the photographic detail. In addition, there were significant differences between the literacy groups in the black and white condition for both drawings and photos. These results suggest that color object information contributes to object recognition. This effect was particularly prominent in the illiterate group

Abstract

A case of a word/letter dissociation is described. The present patient has a quasi-normal word reading performance (both at the level of speed and accuracy) while he has major problems in nonword and letter reading. More specifically, he has strong difficulties in retrieving letter names but preserved abilities in letter identification. This study complements previous cases reporting a similar word/letter dissociation by focusing more specifically on word reading and letter naming latencies. The results provide new constraints for modeling the role of letter knowledge within reading processes and during reading acquisition or rehabilitation.

Abstract

Rotokas is famous for possessing one of the world’s smallest phoneme inventories. According to one source, the Central dialect of Rotokas possesses only 11 segmental phonemes (five vowels and six consonants) and lacks nasals while the Aita dialect possesses a similar-sized inventory in which nasals replace voiced stops. However, recent fieldwork reveals that the Aita dialect has, in fact, both voiced and nasal stops, making for an inventory of 14 segmental phonemes (five vowels and nine consonants). The correspondences between Central and Aita Rotokas suggest that the former is innovative with respect to its consonant inventory and the latter conservative, and that the small inventory of Central Rotokas arose by collapsing the distinction between voiced and nasal stops.

Abstract

Does the spelling of a word mandatorily constrain spoken word production, or does it do so only
when spelling is relevant for the production task at hand? Damian and Bowers (2003) reported spelling
effects in spoken word production in English using a prompt–response word generation task. Preparation
of the response words was disrupted when the responses shared initial phonemes that differed
in spelling, suggesting that spelling constrains speech production mandatorily. The present experiments,
conducted in Dutch, tested for spelling effects using word production tasks in which spelling
was clearly relevant (oral reading in Experiment 1) or irrelevant (object naming and word generation
in Experiments 2 and 3, respectively). Response preparation was disrupted by spelling inconsistency
only with the word reading, suggesting that the spelling of a word constrains spoken word production
in Dutch only when it is relevant for the word production task at hand.

Abstract

In five language production experiments it was examined which aspects of words are activated in memory by context pictures and words. Context pictures yielded Stroop-like and semantic effects on response times when participants generated gender-marked noun phrases in response to written words (Experiment 1A). However, pictures yielded no such effects when participants simply read aloud the noun phrases (Experiment 2). Moreover, pictures yielded a gender congruency effect in generating gender-marked noun phrases in response to the written words (Experiments 3A and 3B). These findings suggest that context pictures activate lemmas (i.e., representations of syntactic properties), which leads to effects only when lemmas are needed to generate a response (i.e., in Experiments 1A, 3A, and 3B, but not in Experiment 2). Context words yielded Stroop-like and semantic effects in picture naming (Experiment 1B). Moreover, words yielded Stroop-like but no semantic effects in reading nouns (Experiment 4) and in generating noun phrases (Experiment 5). These findings suggest that context words activate the lemmas and forms of their names, which leads to semantic effects when lemmas are required for responding (Experiment 1B) but not when only the forms are required (Experiment 4). WEAVER++ simulations of the results are presented.

Abstract

Cognitive control includes the ability to formulate goals and plans of action and to follow these while facing distraction. Previous neuroimaging studies have shown that the presence of conflicting response alternatives in Stroop-like tasks increases activity in dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), suggesting that the ACC is involved in cognitive control. However, the exact nature of ACC function is still under debate. The prevailing conflict detection hypothesis maintains that the ACC is involved in performance monitoring. According to this view, ACC activity reflects the detection of response conflict and acts as a signal that engages regulative processes subserved by lateral prefrontal brain regions. Here, we provide evidence from functional MRI that challenges this view and favors an alternative view, according to which the ACC has a role in regulation itself. Using an arrow–word Stroop task, subjects responded to incongruent, congruent, and neutral stimuli. A critical prediction made by the conflict detection hypothesis is that ACC activity should be increased only when conflicting response alternatives are present. Our data show that ACC responses are larger for neutral than for congruent stimuli, in the absence of response conflict. This result demonstrates the engagement of the ACC in regulation itself. A computational model of Stroop-like performance instantiating a version of the regulative hypothesis is shown to account for our findings.

Abstract

Five chronometric experiments examined the functional architecture of naming dice, digits, and number words. Speakers named pictured dice, Arabic digits, or written number words, while simultaneously trying to ignore congruent or incongruent dice, digit, or number word distractors presented at various stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs). Stroop-like interference and facilitation effects were obtained from digits and words on dice naming latencies, but not from dice on digit and word naming latencies. In contrast, words affected digit naming latencies and digits affected word naming latencies to the same extent. The peak of the interference was always around SOA = 0 ms, whereas facilitation was constant across distractor-first SOAs. These results suggest that digit naming is achieved like word naming rather than dice naming. WEAVER++simulations of the results are reported.

Abstract

Phonological encoding is the process by which speakers retrieve phonemic segments for morphemes from memory and use
the segments to assemble phonological representations of words to be spoken. When conversing in one language, bilingual
speakers have to resist the temptation of encoding word forms using the phonological rules and representations of the other
language. We argue that the activation of phonological representations is not restricted to the target language and that the
phonological representations of languages are not separate. We advance a view of bilingual control in which condition-action
rules determine what is done with the activated phonological information depending on the target language. This view is
computationally implemented in the WEAVER++ model. We present WEAVER++ simulations of the cognate facilitation effect
(Costa, Caramazza and Sebasti´an-Gall´es, 2000) and the between-language phonological facilitation effect of spoken
distractor words in object naming (Hermans, Bongaerts, de Bot and Schreuder, 1998).

Abstract

Lexical access in speaking consists of two major steps: lemma retrieval and word-form encoding. In Roelofs (Roelofs, A. 1992a. Cognition 42. 107-142; Roelofs. A. 1993. Cognition 47, 59-87.), I described a model of lemma retrieval. The present paper extends this work by presenting a comprehensive model of the second access step, word-form encoding. The model is called WEAVER (Word-form Encoding by Activation and VERification). Unlike other models of word-form generation, WEAVER is able to provide accounts of response time data, particularly from the picture-word interference paradigm and the implicit priming paradigm. Its key features are (1) retrieval by spreading activation, (2) verification of activated information by a production rule, (3) a rightward incremental construction of phonological representations using a principle of active syllabification, syllables are constructed on the fly rather than stored with lexical items, (4) active competitive selection of syllabic motor programs using a mathematical formalism that generates response times and (5) the association of phonological speech errors with the selection of syllabic motor programs due to the failure of verification.

Abstract

Studies based on naturalistic data are a core tool in the field of language acquisition research and have provided thorough descriptions of children's speech. However, these descriptions are inevitably confounded by differences in the relative frequency with which children use words and language structures. The purpose of the present work was to investigate the impact of sampling constraints on estimates of the productivity of children's utterances, and on the validity of error rates. Comparisons were made between five different sized samples of wh-question data produced by one child aged 2;8. First, we assessed whether sampling constraints undermined the claim (e.g. Tomasello, 2000) that the restricted nature of early child speech reflects a lack of adultlike grammatical knowledge. We demonstrated that small samples were equally likely to under- as overestimate lexical specificity in children's speech, and that the reliability of estimates varies according to sample size. We argued that reliable analyses require a comparison with a control sample, such as that from an adult speaker. Second, we investigated the validity of estimates of error rates based on small samples. The results showed that overall error rates underestimate the incidence of error in some rarely produced parts of the system and that analyses on small samples were likely to substantially over- or underestimate error rates in infrequently produced constructions. We concluded that caution must be used when basing arguments about the scope and nature of errors in children's early multi-word productions on analyses of samples of spontaneous speech.

Abstract

A key mechanism in the organization of turns at talk in conversation is the ability to anticipate or PROJECT the moment of completion of a current speaker’s turn. Some authors suggest that this is achieved via lexicosyntactic cues, while others argue that projection is based on intonational contours. We tested these hypotheses in an on-line experiment, manipulating the presence of symbolic (lexicosyntactic) content and intonational contour of utterances recorded in natural conversations. When hearing the original recordings, subjects can anticipate turn endings with the same degree of accuracy attested in real conversation. With intonational contour entirely removed (leaving intact words and syntax, with a completely flat pitch), there is no change in subjects’ accuracy of end-of-turn projection. But in the opposite case (with original intonational contour intact, but with no recognizable words), subjects’ performance deteriorates significantly. These results establish that the symbolic (i.e. lexicosyntactic) content of an utterance is necessary (and possibly sufficient) for projecting the moment of its completion, and thus for regulating conversational turn-taking. By contrast, and perhaps surprisingly, intonational contour is neither necessary nor sufficient for end-of-turn projection.

Abstract

As Rose (2006) discusses in the lead article, two camps can be identified in the field of gesture research: those who believe that gesticulation enhances communication by providing extra information to the listener, and on the other hand those who believe that gesticulation is not communicative, but rather that it facilitates speaker-internal word finding processes. I review a number of key studies relevant for this controversy, and conclude that the available empirical evidence is supporting the notion that gesture is a communicative device which can compensate for problems in speech by providing information in gesture. Following that, I discuss the finding by Rose and Douglas (2001) that making gestures does facilitate word production in some patients with aphasia. I argue that the gestures produced in the experiment by Rose and Douglas are not guaranteed to be of the same kind as the gestures that are produced spontaneously under naturalistic, communicative conditions, which makes it difficult to generalise from that particular study to general gesture behavior. As a final point, I encourage researchers in the area of aphasia to put more emphasis on communication in naturalistic contexts (e.g., conversation) in testing the capabilities of people with aphasia.

Abstract

The ultimate goal of our research is to develop a computational model of human speech recognition that is able to capture the effects of fine-grained acoustic variation on speech recognition behaviour. As part of this work we are investigating automatic feature classifiers that are able to create reliable and accurate transcriptions of the articulatory behaviour encoded in the acoustic speech signal. In the experiments reported here, we compared support vector machines (SVMs) with multilayer perceptrons (MLPs). MLPs have been widely (and rather successfully) used for the task of multi-value articulatory feature classification, while (to the best of our knowledge) SVMs have not. This paper compares the performances of the two classifiers and analyses the results in order to better understand the articulatory representations. It was found that the MLPs outperformed the SVMs, but it is concluded that both classifiers exhibit similar behaviour in terms of patterns of errors.

Abstract

An event-related brain potentials (ERP) experiment was carried out to investigate the influence of semantic category membership on syntactic decision-making. Native speakers of German viewed a series of words that were semantically marked or unmarked for gender and made go/no-go decisions about the grammatical gender of those words. The electrophysiological results indicated that participants could make a gender decision earlier when words were semantically gender-marked than when they were semantically gender-unmarked. Our data provide evidence for the influence of semantic category membership on the decision of the syntactic gender of a visually presented German noun. More specifically, our results support models of language comprehension in which semantic information processing of words is initiated prior to syntactic information processing is finalized.

Abstract

Freestanding and bound morphemes differ in many (psycho)linguistic aspects. Some theorists have claimed that the representation and retrieval of freestanding and bound morphemes in the course of language production are governed by similar processing mechanisms. Alternatively, it has been proposed that both types of morphemes may be selected for production in different ways. In this article, the authors first review the available experimental evidence related to this topic and then present new experimental data pointing to the notion that freestanding and bound morphemes are retrieved following distinct processing principles: freestanding morphemes are subject to competition, bound morphemes not.

Abstract

An event-related brain potentials (ERPs) experiment was carried out to investigate the time course of lexical stress encoding in language production. Native speakers of Dutch viewed a series of pictures corresponding to bisyllabic names which were either stressed on the first or on the second syllable and made go/no-go decisions on the lexical stress location of those picture names. Behavioral results replicated a pattern that was observed earlier, i.e. faster button-press latencies to initial as compared to final stress targets. The electrophysiological results indicated that participants could make a lexical stress decision significantly earlier when picture names had initial than when they had final stress. Moreover, the present data suggest the time course of lexical stress encoding during single word form formation in language production. When word length is corrected for, the temporal interval for lexical stress encoding specified by the current ERP results falls into the time window previously identified for phonological encoding in language production.

Abstract

This study investigated the monitoring of metrical stress information in internally generated speech. In Experiment 1, Dutch participants were asked to judge whether bisyllabic picture names had initial or final stress. Results showed significantly faster decision times for initially stressed targets (e.g., KAno ‘‘canoe’’) than for targets with final stress (e.g., kaNON ‘‘cannon’’; capital letters indicate stressed syllables). It was demonstrated that monitoring latencies are not a function of the picture naming or object recognition latencies to the same pictures. Experiments 2 and 3 replicated the outcome of the first experiment with trisyllabic picture names. These results are similar to the findings of Wheeldon and Levelt (1995) in a segment monitoring task. The outcome might be interpreted to demonstrate that phonological encoding in speech production is a rightward incremental process. Alternatively, the data might reflect the sequential nature of a perceptual mechanism used to monitor lexical stress.

Abstract

In this study, we investigated grammatical feature selection during noun phrase production in Dutch. More specifically, we studied the conditions under which different grammatical genders select either the same or different determiners. Pictures of simple objects paired with a gender-congruent or a gender-incongruent distractor word were presented. Participants named the pictures using a noun phrase with the appropriate gender-marked determiner. Auditory (Experiment 1) or visual cues (Experiment 2) indicated whether the noun was to be produced in its standard or diminutive form. Results revealed a cost in naming latencies when target and distractor take different determiner forms independent of whether or not they have the same gender. This replicates earlier results showing that congruency effects are due to competition during the selection of determiner forms rather than gender features. The overall pattern of results supports the view that grammatical feature selection is an automatic consequence of lexical node selection and therefore not subject to interference from incongruent grammatical features. Selection of the correct determiner form, however, is a competitive process, implying that lexical node and grammatical feature selection operate with distinct principles.

Abstract

A series of experiments was carried out to investigate the syllable affiliation of intervocalic consonants following short vowels, long vowels, and schwa in Dutch. Special interest was paid to words such as letter ['leter] ''id.,'' where a short vowel is followed by a single consonant. On phonological grounds one may predict that the first syllable should always be closed, but earlier psycholinguistic research had shown that speakers tend to leave these syllables open. In our experiments, bisyllabic word forms were presented aurally, and participants produced their syllables in reversed order (Experiments 1 through 5), or repeated the words inserting a pause between the syllables (Experiment 6). The results showed that participants generally closed syllables with a short vowel. However, in a significant number of the cases they produced open short vowel syllables. Syllables containing schwa, like syllables with a long vowel, were hardly ever closed. Word stress, the phonetic quality of the vowel in the first syllable, and the experimental context influenced syllabification. Taken together, the experiments show that native speakers syllabify bisyllabic Dutch nouns in accordance with a small set of prosodic output constraints. To account for the variability of the results, we propose that these constraints differ in their probabilities of being applied.

Abstract

Speakers can use pronouns when their conceptual referents are accessible from the preceding discourse, as in 'The flower is red. It turns blue'. Theories of language production agree that in order to produce a noun semantic, syntactic, and phonological information must be accessed. However, little is known about lexical access to pronouns. In this paper, we propose a model of pronoun access in German. Since the forms of German pronouns depend on the grammatical gender of the nouns they replace, the model claims that speakers must access the syntactic representation of the replaced noun (its lemma) to select a pronoun. In two experiments using the lexical decision during naming paradigm [Levelt, W.J.M., Schriefers, H., Vorberg, D., Meyer, A.S., Pechmann, T., Havinga, J., 1991a. The time course of lexical access in speech production: a study of picture naming. Psychological Review 98, 122-142], we investigated whether lemma access automatically entails the activation of the corresponding word form or whether a word form is only activated when the noun itself is produced, but not when it is replaced by a pronoun. Experiment 1 showed that during pronoun production the phonological form of the replaced noun is activated. Experiment 2 demonstrated that this phonological activation was not a residual of the use of the noun in the preceding sentence. Thus, when a pronoun is produced, the lemma and the phonological form of the replaced noun become reactivated.

Abstract

This presentation will address aspects of the expression of emotion in non-verbal vocal behaviour, specifically attempting to determine the roles of both positive and negative emotions, their acoustic bases, and the extent to which these are recognized in non-Western cultures.

Abstract

In a landmark study, Jusczyk and Aslin (1995) demonstrated that English-learning infants are able to segment words from continuous speech at 7.5 months of age. In the current study, we explored the possibility that infants segment words from the edges of utterances more readily than the middle of utterances. The same procedure was used as in Jusczyk and Aslin (1995); however, our stimuli were controlled for target word location and infants were given a shorter familiarization time to avoid ceiling effects. Infants were familiarized to one word that always occurred at the edge of an utterance (sentence-initial position for half of the infants and sentence-final position for the other half) and one word that always occurred in sentence-medial position. Our results demonstrate that infants segment words from the edges of an utterance more readily than from the middle of an utterance. In addition, infants segment words from utterance-final position just as readily as they segment words from utterance-initial position. Possible explanations for these results, as well as their implications for current models of the development of word segmentation, are discussed.

Abstract

This research investigated how spontaneous gestures during speech represent “Frames of Reference” (FoR) among preschool children, and how their FoRs change with age. Four-, five-, and six-year-olds (N＝55) described the route from the nursery school to their own homes. Analysis of children’s utterances and gestures showed that mean length of utterance, speech time, and use of landmarks or right/left terms to describe a route, all increased with age. Most of 4-year-olds made gestures in the direction of the actual route to their homes, and their hands tend to be raised above the shoulder. In contrast, 6-year-olds used gestures to give directions that did not match the actual route, as if they were creating a virtual space in front of the speaker. Some 5- and 6-year-olds produced gestures that represented survey mapping. These results indicated that development of FoR in childhood may change from an egocentric FoR to a fixed FoR. As factors underlying development of FoR, verbal encoding skills and the commuting experience were also discussed.

Abstract

This paper presents preliminary remarks on some of the central linguistic means speakers of Kilivila use in expressing their conceptions of space and for referring to objects, persons, and events in space . After a brief characterisation of the language and its speakers, I sketch how specific topological relations are encoded, how motion events are described, and what frames of spatial reference are preferred in what contexts for what means and ends.

Abstract

Starting with Hockett’s famous statement on the relationship between linguistics and anthropology - "Linguistics without anthropology is sterile; anthropology without linguistics is blind” - this paper first discusses the historic perspective of the topic. This discussion starts with Herder, Humboldt and Schleiermacher and ends with the present debate on the interrelationship of anthropology and linguistics. Then some excellent examples of interdisciplinary projects within anthropological linguistics (or linguistic anthropology) are presented. And finally it is illustrated why Hockett is still right.

Abstract

German Version of (1996) Classificatory particles in Kilivila. New York: Oxford University Press

Abstract

Visiting the Trobriand Islands is advertised as being the highlight of a trip for tourists to Papua New Guinea who want, and can afford, to experience this 'ultimate adventure' with 'expeditionary cruises aboard the luxurious Melanesian Discoverer. The advertisements also promise that the tourists can 'meet the friendly people' and 'observe their unique culture, dances, and art'. During my research in Kaibola and Nuwebila, two neighbouring villages on the northern tip of Kiriwina Island, I studied and analysed the encounters of tourists with Trobriand Islanders, who sing and dance for the Europeans. The analyses of the islanders' tourist performances are based on Erving Goffman's now classic study The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, which was first published in 1959. In this study Goffmann analyses the structures of social encounters from the perspective of the dramatic performance. The situational context within which the encounter between tourists and Trobriand Islanders takes place frames the tourists as the audience and the Trobriand Islanders as a team of performers. The inherent structure of the parts of the overall performance presented in the two villages can be summarized - within the framework of Goffman's approach - in analogy with the structure of drama. We find parts that constitute the 'exposition', the 'complication', and the 'resolution' of a drama; we even observe an equivalent to the importance of the 'Second Act Curtain' in modern drama theory. Deeper analyses of this encounter show that the motives of the performers and their 'art of impression management' are to control the impression their audience receives in this encounter situation. This analysis reveals that the Trobriand Islanders sell their customers the expected images of what Malinowski (1929) once termed the '...Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia' in a staged 'illusion'. With the conscious realization of the part they as performers play in this encounter, the Trobriand Islanders are in a position that is superior to that of their audience. Their merchandise or commodity is 'not real', as it is sold 'out of its true cultural context'. It is staged - and thus cannot be taken by any customer whatsoever because it (re)presents just an 'illusion'. The Trobriand Islanders know that neither they nor the core aspects of their culture will suffer any damage within a tourist encounter that is defined by the structure and the kind of their performance. Their pride and self-confidence enable them to bring their superior position into play in their dealings with tourists. With their indigenous humour, they even use this encounter for ridiculing their visitors. It turns out that the encounter is another manifestation of the Trobriand Islanders' self-consciousness, self-confidence, and pride with which they manage to protect core aspects of their cultural identity, while at the same time using and 'selling' parts of their culture as a kind of commodity to tourists.

Abstract

1. Introduction 2. A generative grammar as an algorithm 3. The semantic component 4. Bibliography 1. Introduction Throughout the 20th century up to the present day grammar and semantics have been uneasy bedfellows. A look at the historical background will make it clear how this curious situation came about. 20th-century linguistics has been characterized by an almost exclusive concern with the structure of words, word groups and sentences. This concern was reinforced, especially on the American side of the Atlantic, by the sudden rise and subsequent dominance of behaviorism during the 1920s. It started in psychology but quickly permeated all the human sciences, including linguistics, until the early 1960s, when it collapsed as suddenly as it had arisen.

Abstract

Presupposition is a semantic device built into natural language to make sentences fit for use in certain contexts but not in others. A sentence carrying a presupposition thus evokes a context in which that presupposition is fulfilled. The study of presupposition was triggered by the behavior of natural language negation, which tends to preserve presuppositions either as invited inferences or as entailments. As the role of discourse became more apparent in semantics, presupposition began to be seen increasingly as a discourse-semantic phenomenon with consequences for the logic of language.

Abstract

The property of presuppositions to be sometimes preserved through embeddings, albeit often in a weakened form, is called projection. The projection problem consists in formulating the conditions under which the presuppositions of an embedded clause (a) are kept as presuppositions of the superordinate structure, or (b) remain as an invited inference that can be overruled by context, or (c) are canceled. Over the past 25 years it has been recognized that the projection problem is to be solved in the context of a wider theory of presupposition and discourse incrementation.

Abstract

Logic was discovered by Aristotle when he saw that the semantic behavior of the negation word not is different in sentences with a definite and in those with a quantified subject term. Until the early 20th century, logic remained firmly language-based, but for the past century it has been mainly a tool in the hands of mathematicians, which has meant an alienation from linguistic reality. With the help of new techniques, it is now possible to revert to the logic of language, which is seen as based on a semantic analysis of the logical words (constants) involved. This new perspective, combined with much improved insights into the semantically defined discourse dependency of natural language sentences, leads to a novel and more functionally oriented approach to logic and to a reappraisal of traditional predicate calculus, whose main fault, undue existential import, evaporates when discourse dependency, in particular the presuppositional aspect, is brought into play. Traditional predicate calculus is seen to have a much greater logical power and a much greater functionality than modern predicate calculus. There is also full isomorphism, neglected in modern logic, between traditional predicate calculus and propositional calculus, which raises the question of any possible deeper causes.

Abstract

Virtual objects are objects thought up by a thinking individual. Although 20th-century philosophy has tried to ban them from ontology, they make it impossible to account for the truth of sentences such as Apollo was worshipped in the island of Delos, in which a property is assigned to the nonexisting, virtual entity Apollo. Such facts are the reason why virtual objects are slowly being recognized again.

Abstract

Some predicates are ‘factive’ in that they induce the presupposition that what is said in their subordinate that clause is true.

Abstract

The term ‘donkey sentences’ derives from the medieval philosopher Walter Burleigh, whose example sentences contain mention of donkeys. The modern philosopher Peter Geach rediscovered Burleigh's sentences and the associated problem. The problem is that natural language anaphoric pronouns are sometimes used in a way that cannot be accounted for in terms of modern predicate calculus. The solution lies in establishing a separate category of anaphoric pronouns that refer via the intermediary of a contextually given antecedent, possibly an existentially quantified expression.