Publications

Abstract

Participants were unknowingly exposed to complex regularities in a working memory task. The existence of implicit knowledge was subsequently inferred from a preference for stimuli with similar grammatical regularities. Several affective traits have been shown to influence
AGL performance positively, many of which are related to a tendency for automatic responding. We therefore tested whether the mindfulness trait predicted a reduction of grammatically congruent preferences, and used emotional primes to explore the influence of affect. Mindfulness was shown to correlate negatively with grammatically congruent responses. Negative primes were shown to result in faster and more negative evaluations.
We conclude that grammatically congruent preference ratings rely on habitual responses, and that our findings provide empirical evidence for the non-reactive disposition of the mindfulness trait.

Abstract

When we want to describe a path through space, but do not share a common perceptual field with a conversation partner, language has to work doubly hard. This task investigates how people communicate the navigation of space in the absence of shared visual cues, as well as collecting data on motion verbs and the roles of symmetry and landmarks in route description. Two speakers (separated by a curtain or other barrier) are each given a model of a landscape, and one participant describes standard routes through this landscape for the other to match.

Abstract

The encoding of apparently ‘simple’ movement concepts such as ‘COME’ and ‘GO’ can differ widely across languages (e.g., in regard to specifying direction of motion relative to the speaker). This questionnaire is used to identify the range of use of basic motion verbs in a language, and investigate semantic parameters that are involved in high frequency ‘COME’ and ‘GO’-like terms.

Abstract

Field data are drawn from a particular speech community at a certain place and time. The intent of this survey is to enrich understanding of the various socio-cultural contexts in which linguistic and “cognitive” data may have been collected, so that we can explore the role which societal, cultural and contextual factors may play in this material. The questionnaire gives guidelines concerning types of ethnographic information that are important to cross-cultural and cross-linguistic enquiry, and will be especially useful to researchers who do not have specialised training in anthropology.

Abstract

How do languages encode different kinds of movement, and what features do people pay attention to when describing motion events? This document outlines topics concerning the investigation of “enter” and “exit” events. It helps contextualise research tasks that examine this domain (see 'Motion Elicitation' and 'Enter/Exit animation') and gives some pointers about what other questions can be explored.

Abstract

How do languages encode different kinds of movement, and what features do people pay attention to when describing motion events? This task investigates the expression of “enter” and “exit” activities, that is, events involving motion in(to) and motion out (of) container-like items. The researcher first uses particular stimuli (a ball, a cup, rice, etc.) to elicit descriptions of enter/exit events from one consultant, and then asks another consultant to demonstrate the event based on these descriptions. See also the related entries Enter/Exit Animation and Background Questions for Enter/Exit Research.

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to question some of the basic assumpiions concerning motion verbs. In particular, it examines the assumption that "come" and "go" are lexical universals which manifest a universal deictic Opposition. Against the background offive working hypotheses about the nature of'come" and ''go", this study presents a comparative investigation of t wo unrelated languages—Mparntwe Arrernte (Pama-Nyungan, Australian) and Longgu (Oceanic, Austronesian). Although the pragmatic and deictic "suppositional" complexity of"come" and "go" expressions has long been recognized, we argue that in any given language the analysis of these expressions is much more semantically and systemically complex than has been assumed in the literature. Languages vary at the lexical semantic level äs t o what is entailed by these expressions, äs well äs differing äs t o what constitutes the prototype and categorial structure for such expressions. The data also strongly suggest that, ifthere is a lexical universal "go", then this cannof be an inherently deictic expression. However, due to systemic Opposition with "come", non-deictic "go" expressions often take on a deictic Interpretation through pragmatic attribution. Thus, this crosslinguistic investigation of "come" and "go" highlights the need to consider semantics and pragmatics äs modularly separate.

Abstract

We investigated how the strength of a foreign accent and varying types of experience with foreign-accented speech influence the recognition of accented words. In Experiment 1, native Dutch listeners with limited or extensive prior experience with German-accented Dutch completed a cross-modal priming experiment with strongly, medium, and weakly accented words. Participants with limited experience were primed by the medium and weakly accented words, but not by the strongly accented words. Participants with extensive experience were primed by all accent types. In Experiments 2 and 3, Dutch listeners with limited experience listened to a short story before doing the cross-modal priming task. In Experiment 2, the story was spoken by the priming task speaker and either contained strongly accented words or did not. Strongly accented exposure led to immediate priming by novel strongly accented words, while exposure to the speaker without strongly accented tokens led to priming only in the experiment’s second half. In Experiment 3, listeners listened to the story with strongly accented words spoken by a different German-accented speaker. Listeners were primed by the strongly accented words, but again only in the experiment’s second half. Together, these results show that adaptation to foreign-accented speech is rapid but depends on accent strength and on listener familiarity with those strongly accented words.

Abstract

The ISOcat Data Category Registry provides a community computing environment for creating, storing, retrieving, harmonizing and standardizing data category specifications (DCs), used to register linguistic terms used in various fields. This chapter recounts the history of DC documentation in TC 37, beginning from paper-based lists created for lexicographers and terminologists and progressing to the development of a web-based resource for a much broader range of users. While describing the considerable strides that have been made to collect a very large comprehensive collection of DCs, it also outlines difficulties that have arisen in developing a fully operative web-based computing environment for achieving consensus on data category names, definitions, and selections and describes efforts to overcome some of the present shortcomings and to establish positive working procedures designed to engage a wide range of people involved in the creation of language resources.

Abstract

Im ISOcat-Datenkategorie-Register (Data Category Registry, www.isocat.org) des Technischen Komitees ISO/TC 37 (Terminology and other language and content resources) werden Feldnamen und Werte für Sprachressourcen beschrieben. Empfohlene Feldnamen und zuverlässige Definitionen sollen dazu beitragen, dass Sprachdaten unabhängig von Anwendungen, Plattformen und Communities of Practice (CoP) wiederverwendet werden können. Datenkategorie-Gruppen (Data Category Selections) können eingesehen, ausgedruckt, exportiert und nach kostenloser Registrierung auch neu erstellt werden.

Abstract

In the absence of explicitly marked cues to word boundaries, listeners tend to segment spoken English at the onset of strong syllables. This may suggest that under difficult listening conditions, speech should be easier to recognize where strong syllables are word-initial. We report two experiments in which listeners were presented with sentences which had been time-compressed to make listening difficult. The first study contrasted sentences in which all content words began with strong syllables with sentences in which all content words began with weak syllables. The intelligibility of the two groups of sentences did not differ significantly. Apparent rhythmic effects in the results prompted a second experiment; however, no significant effects of systematic rhythmic manipulation were observed. In both experiments, the strongest predictor of intelligibility was the rated plausibility of the sentences. We conclude that listeners' recognition responses to time-compressed speech may be strongly subject to experiential bias; effects of rhythmic structure are most likely to show up also as bias effects.

Abstract

This article presents data on cardinal numerals in three sign languages from small-scale communities with hereditary deafness. The unusual features found in these data considerably extend the known range of typological variety across sign languages. Some features, such as non-decimal numeral bases, are unattested in sign languages, but familiar from spoken languages, while others, such as subtractive sub-systems, are rare in sign and speech. We conclude that for a complete typological appraisal of a domain, an approach to cross-modal typology, which includes a typologically diverse range of sign languages in addition to spoken languages, is both instructive and feasible.

Abstract

Psycholinguistic research has typically portrayed speech production as a relatively automatic process. This is because when errors are made, they occur as seldom as one in every thousand words we utter. However, it has long been recognised that we need some form of control over what we are currently saying and what we plan to say. This capacity to both monitor our inner speech and self-correct our speech output has often been assumed to be a property of the language comprehension system. More recently, it has been demonstrated that speech production benefits from interfacing with more general cognitive processes such as selective attention, short-term memory (STM) and online response monitoring to resolve potential conflict and successfully produce the output of a verbal plan. The conditions and levels of representation according to which these more general planning, monitoring and control processes are engaged during speech production remain poorly understood. Moreover, there remains a paucity of information about their neural substrates, despite some of the first evidence of more general monitoring having come from electrophysiological studies of error related negativities (ERNs). While aphasic speech errors continue to be a rich source of information, there has been comparatively little research focus on instances of speech repair. The purpose of this Frontiers Research Topic is to provide a forum for researchers to contribute investigations employing behavioural, neuropsychological, electrophysiological, neuroimaging and virtual lesioning techniques. In addition, while the focus of the research topic is on novel findings, we welcome submission of computational simulations, review articles and methods papers.

Abstract

This paper reports on an exploration of the ways in which multiple entities are expressed in Turkish Sign Language (TİD). The (descriptive and quantitative) analyses provided are based on a corpus of both spontaneous data and specifically elicited data, in order to provide as comprehensive an account as possible. We have found several devices in TİD for expression of multiple entities, in particular localization, spatial plural predicate inflection, and a specific form used to express multiple entities that are side by side in the same configuration (not reported for any other sign language to date), as well as numerals and quantifiers. In contrast to some other signed languages, TİD does not appear to have a productive system of plural reduplication. We argue that none of the devices encountered in the TİD data is a genuine plural marking device and that the plural interpretation of multiple entity localizations and plural predicate inflections is a by-product of the use of space to indicate the existence or the involvement in an event of multiple entities.