Publications

Abstract

Neurocognitive studies of language production have provided sufficient evidence on both the spatial and the temporal patterns of brain activation to allow tentative and in some cases not so tentative conclusions about function-structure relationships. This chapter reports meta-analysis results that identify reliable activation areas for a range of word, sentence, and narrative production tasks both in the native language and a second language. Based on a theoretically motivated analysis of language production tasks it is possible to specify relationships between brain areas and functional processing components of language production that could not have been derived from the data provided by any single task.

Abstract

In this paper we present a definition of Performance Grammar (PG), a psycholinguistically motivated syntax formalism, in declarative terms. PG aims not only at describing and explaining intuitive judgments and other data concerning the well–formedness of sentences of a language, but also at contributing to accounts of syntactic processing phenomena observable in language comprehension and language production. We highlight two general properties of human sentence generation, incrementality and late linearization,which make special demands on the design of grammar formalisms claiming psychological plausibility. In order to meet these demands, PG generates syntactic structures in a two-stage process. In the first and most important ‘hierarchical’ stage, unordered hierarchical structures (‘mobiles’) are assembled out of lexical building blocks. The key operation at work here is typed feature unification, which also delimits the positional options of the syntactic constituents in terms of so-called topological features. The second, much simpler stage takes care of arranging the branches of the mobile from left to right by ‘reading–out’ one positional option of every constituent. In this paper we concentrate on the structure assembly formalism in PG’s hierarchical component. We provide a declarative definition couched in an HPSG–style notation based on typed feature unification. Our emphasis throughout is on linear order constraints.

Abstract

This paper is an abridged version (in Dutch) of an in-press article by the same author (Kempen, G. (2008/9). Clausal coordination and coordinate ellipsis in a model of the speaker. To be published in: Linguistics). The two papers present a psycholinguistically inspired approach to the syntax of clause-level coordination and coordinate ellipsis. It departs from the assumption that coordinations are structurally similar to so-called appropriateness repairs Ñ an important type of self-repairs in spontaneous speech. Coordinate structures and appropriateness repairs can both be viewed as ÒupdateÓ con-structions. Updating is defined as a special sentence production mode that efficiently revises or augments existing sentential structure in response to modifications in the speakerÕs communicative intention. This perspective is shown to offer an empirically satisfactory and theoretically parsimonious account of two prominent types of coordinate ellipsis, in particular Forward Conjunction Reduction (FCR) and Gapping (including Long-Distance Gapping and Subgapping). They are analyzed as different manifestations of Òincremental updatingÓ Ñ efficient updating of only part of the existing sentential structure. Based on empirical data from Dutch and German, novel treatments are proposed for both types of clausal coordinate ellipsis. Two other forms of coordinate ellipsis Ñ SGF (ÒSubject Gap in Finite clauses with fronted verbÓ), and Backward Conjunction Reduction (BCR; also known as Right Node Raising or RNR) Ñ are shown to be incompatible with the notion of incremental updating. Alternative theoretical interpretations of these phenomena are proposed. The four types of clausal coordinate ellipsis Ñ SGF, Gapping, FCR and BCR Ñ are argued to originate in four different stages of sentence production: Intending (i.e. preparing the communicative intention), Conceptualization, Grammatical Encoding, and Phonological Encoding, respectively.

Abstract

We outline an algorithm capable of generating varied but natural sounding sequences of argument NPs in subordinate clauses of German, a semi-free word order language. In order to attain the right level of output flexibility, the algorithm considers (1) the relevant lexical properties of the head verb (not only transitivity type but also reflexivity, thematic relations expressed by the NPs, etc.), and (2) the animacy and definiteness values of the arguments, and their length. The relevant statistical data were extracted from the NEGRA–II treebank and from hand-coded features for animacy and definiteness. The algorithm maps the relevant properties onto “primary” versus “secondary” placement options in the generator. The algorithm is restricted in that it does not take into account linear order determinants related to the sentence’s information structure and its discourse context (e.g. contrastiveness). These factors may modulate the above preferences or license “tertiary” linear orders beyond the primary and secondary options considered here.

Abstract

It is generally assumed that verbs have an ‘argument structure’, which imposes various constraints on the noun phrases that can or must go with the verb, and an ‘event structure’, which characterises the particular temporal characteristics of the ‘event’ which the verb relates to: this event may be a state, a process, an activity, an ‘event in the narrow sense’, and others. In this paper, it is argued that that argument structure and event structure should be brought together. The lexical content of a verb assigns descriptive properties to one or more arguments at one or more times, hence verbs have an ‘argument time-structure’ (AT-structure). Numerous morphological and syntactical operations, such as participle formation or complex verb constructions, modify this AT-structure. This is illustrated with German recipient constructions such as ein Buch geschenkt bekommen or das Fenster geöffnet kriegen.

Abstract

This chapter explicates the requirement in person–reference for balancing demands for recognition, minimalization, explicitness and indirection. This is illustrated with reference to data from repair of failures of person–reference within a particular linguistic/cultural context, namely casual interaction among Rossel Islanders. Rossel Island (PNG) offers a ‘natural experiment’ for studying aspects of person reference, because of a number of special properties: 1. It is a closed universe of 4000 souls, sharing one kinship network, so in principle anyone could be recognizable from a reference. As a result no (complex) descriptions (cf. ‘ the author of Waverly’) are employed. 2. Names, however, are never uniquely referring, since they are drawn from a fixed pool. They are only used for about 25% of initial references, another 25% of initial references being done by kinship triangulation (‘that man’s father–in–law’). Nearly 50% of initial references are semantically underspecified or vague (e.g. ‘that girl’). 3. There are systematic motivations for oblique reference, e.g. kinship–based taboos and other constraints, which partly account for the underspecified references. The ‘natural experiment’ thus reveals some gneral lessons about how person–reference requires optimizing multiple conflicting constraints. Comparison with Sacks and Schegloff’s (1979) treatment of English person reference suggests a way to tease apart the universal and the culturally–particular.

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of the Papuan and the Oceanic languages (a branch of Austronesian) in Northern Island Melanesia, as well as phenomena arising through contact between these groups. It shows how linguistics can contribute to the understanding of the history of languages and speakers, and what the findings of those methods have been. The location of the homeland of speakers of Proto-Oceanic is indicated (in northeast New Britain); many facets of the lives of those speakers are shown; and the patterns of their subsequent spread across Island Melanesia and beyond into Remote Oceania are indicated, followed by a second wave overlaying the first into New Guinea and as far as halfway through the Solomon Islands. Regarding the Papuan languages of this region, at least some are older than the 6,000-10,000 ceiling of the Comparative Method, and their relations are explored with the aid of a database of 125 non-lexical structural features. The results reflect archipelago-based clustering with the Central Solomons Papuan languages forming a clade either with the Bismarcks or with Bougainville languages. Papuan languages in Bougainville are less influenced by Oceanic languages than those in the Bismarcks and the Solomons. The chapter considers a variety of scenarios to account for their findings, concluding that the results are compatible with multiple pre-Oceanic waves of arrivals into the area after initial settlement.

Abstract

This paper investigates infant pointing at 12 months. Three recent experimental studies from our lab are reported and contrasted with existing accounts on infant communicative and social-cognitive abilities. The new results show that infant pointing at 12 months already is a communicative act which involves the intentional transmission of information to share interest with, or provide information for other persons. It is argued that infant pointing is an inherently social and cooperative act which is used to share psychological relations between interlocutors and environment, repairs misunderstandings in proto-conversational turn-taking, and helps others by providing information. Infant pointing builds on an understanding of others as persons with attentional states and attitudes. Findings do not support lean accounts on early infant pointing which posit that it is initially non-communicative, does not serve the function of indicating, or is purely self-centered. It is suggested to investigate the emergence of reference and the motivation to jointly engage with others also before pointing has emerged.

Abstract

There are two tasks for conducting systematic observation of child-caregiver joint attention interactions. Task 1 – a “decorated room” designed to elicit infant and caregiver pointing. Task 2 – videotaped interviews about infant pointing behaviour. The goal of this task is to document the ontogenetic emergence of referential communication in caregiver infant interaction in different cultures, during the critical age of 8-15 months when children come to understand and share others’ intentions. This is of interest to all students of interaction and human communication; it does not require specialist knowledge of children.

Abstract

This special issue of Cognitive Linguistics explores the linguistic encoding of events of cutting and breaking. In this article we first introduce the project on which it is based by motivating the selection of this conceptual domain, presenting the methods of data collection used by all the investigators, and characterizing the language sample. We then present a new approach to examining crosslinguistic similarities and differences in semantic categorization. Applying statistical modeling to the descriptions of cutting and breaking events elicited from speakers of all the languages, we show that although there is crosslinguistic variation in the number of distinctions made and in the placement of category boundaries, these differences take place within a strongly constrained semantic space: across languages, there is a surprising degree of consensus on the partitioning of events in this domain. In closing, we compare our statistical approach with more conventional semantic analyses, and show how an extensional semantic typological approach like the one illustrated here can help illuminate the intensional distinctions made by languages.

Abstract

In most of our everyday conversations, we not only hear but also see each other talk. Our understanding of speech benefits from having the speaker's face present. This finding immediately necessitates the question of how the information from the different perceptual sources is used to reach the best overall decision. This need for processing of multiple sources of information also exists in auditory speech perception, however. Audiovisual speech simply shifts the focus from intramodal to intermodal sources but does not necessitate a qualitatively different form of processing. It is essential that a model of speech perception operationalizes the concept of processing multiple sources of information so that quantitative predictions can be made. This chapter gives an overview of the main research questions and findings unique to audiovisual speech perception and word recognition research as well as what general questions about speech perception and cognition the research in this field can answer. The main theoretical approaches to explain integration and audiovisual speech perception are introduced and critically discussed. The chapter also provides an overview of the role of visual speech as a language learning tool in multimodal training.

Abstract

This chapter is a review of the literature in experimental psycholinguistics on spoken word recognition. It is organized around eight questions. 1. Why are psycholinguists interested in spoken word recognition? 2. What information in the speech signal is used in word recognition? 3. Where are the words in the continuous speech stream? 4. Which words did the speaker intend? 5. When, as the speech signal unfolds over time, are the phonological forms of words recognized? 6. How are words recognized? 7. Whither spoken word recognition? 8. Who are the researchers in the field?

Abstract

This issue investigates the linguistic encoding of events with three or more participants from the perspectives of language typology and acquisition. Such “multiple-participant events” include (but are not limited to) any scenario involving at least three participants, typically encoded using transactional verbs like 'give' and 'show', placement verbs like 'put', and benefactive and applicative constructions like 'do (something for someone)', among others. There is considerable crosslinguistic and withinlanguage variation in how the participants (the Agent, Causer, Theme, Goal, Recipient, or Experiencer) and the subevents involved in multipleparticipant situations are encoded, both at the lexical and the constructional levels

Abstract

Effekte linguisticher Typologie auf die Sprach-entwicklung. In G. Plehn (Ed.), Jahrbuch der Max-Planck Gesellsch

Abstract

The human language processor is conceived as a system that consists of several interrelated subsystems. Each subsystem performs a specific task in the complex process of language comprehension and production. A subsystem receives a particular input, performs certain specific operations on this input and yields a particular output. The subsystems can be characterized in terms of the transformations that relate the input representations to the output representations. An important issue in describing the language processing system is to identify the subsystems and to specify the relations between the subsystems. These relations can be conceived in two different ways. In one conception the subsystems are autonomous. They are related to each other only by the input-output channels. The operations in one subsystem are not affected by another system. The subsystems are modular, that is they are independent. In the other conception, the different subsystems influence each other. A subsystem affects the processes in another subsystem. In this conception there is an interaction between the subsystems.

Abstract

What are the relations between linguistic encoding and gestural representations of events during online speaking? The few studies that have been conducted on this topic have yielded somewhat incompatible results with regard to whether and how gestural representations of events change with differences in the preferred semantic and syntactic encoding possibilities of languages. Here we provide large scale semantic, syntactic and temporal analyses of speech- gesture pairs that depict 10 different motion events from 20 Turkish and 20 English speakers. We find that the gestural representations of the same events differ across languages when they are encoded by different syntactic frames (i.e., verb-framed or satellite-framed). However, where there are similarities across languages, such as omission of a certain element of the event in the linguistic encoding, gestural representations also look similar and omit the same content. The results are discussed in terms of what gestures reveal about the influence of language specific encoding on on-line thinking patterns and the underlying interactions between speech and gesture during the speaking process.

Abstract

This paper compares the acquisition of verb morphology in five Mayan languages, using a comparative method based on historical linguistics to establish precise equivalences between linguistic categories in the five languages. Earlier work on the acquisition of these languages, based on examination of longitudinal samples of naturally-occuring child language, established that in some of the languages (Tzeltal, Tzotzil) bare roots were the predominant forms for children’s early verbs, but in three other languages (Yukatek, K’iche’, Q’anjobal) unanalyzed portions of the final part of the verb were more likely. That is, children acquiring different Mayan languages initially produce different parts of the adult verb forms. In this paper we analyse the structures of verbs in caregiver speech to these same children, using samples from two-year-old children and their caregivers, and assess the degree to which features of the input might account for the children’s early verb forms in these five Mayan languages. We found that the frequency with which adults produce verbal roots at the extreme right of words and sentences influences the frequency with which children produce bare verb roots in their early verb expressions, while production of verb roots at the extreme left does not, suggesting that the children ignore the extreme left of verbs and sentences when extracting verb roots.

Abstract

Although humans are the ultimate “natural language generators”, the area of psycholinguistic modeling has been somewhat underrepresented in recent approaches to Natural Language Generation in computer science. To draw attention to the area and illustrate its potential relevance to Natural Language Generation, I provide an overview of recent work on psycholinguistic modeling of language production together with some key empirical findings, state-of-the-art experimental techniques, and their historical roots. The techniques include analyses of speech-error corpora, chronometric analyses, eyetracking, and neuroimaging.
The overview is built around the issue of cognitive control in natural language generation, concentrating on the production of single words, which is an essential ingredient of the generation of larger utterances. Most of the work exploited the fact that human speakers are good but not perfect at resisting temptation, which has provided some critical clues about the nature of the underlying system.

Abstract

The authors discuss the issue of how visual orienting, selective stimulus processing, and vocal response planning are related in Stroop-like tasks. The evidence suggests that visual orienting is dependent on both visual processing and verbal response planning. They also discuss the issue of selective perceptual processing in Stroop-like tasks. The evidence suggests that space-based and object-based attention lead to a Trojan horse effect in the classic Stroop task, which can be moderated by increasing the spatial distance between colour and word and by making colour and word part of different objects. Reducing the presentation duration of the colour-word stimulus or the duration of either the colour or word dimension reduces Stroop interference. This paradoxical finding was correctly simulated by the WEAVER++ model. Finally, the authors discuss evidence on the neural correlates of executive attention, in particular, the ACC. The evidence suggests that the ACC plays a role in regulation itself rather than only signalling the need for regulation.

Abstract

Listeners’ signals of recipiency, such as “Mm-hm” or “uh-huh” in English, are the most elementary or minimal “conversational turns” possible. Minimal, because apart from acknowledging recipiency and inviting the speaker to continue with his/her next turn, they do not add any new information to the discourse of the conversation. The goal of this project is to gather cross cultural information on listeners’ feedback behaviour during conversation. Listeners in a conversation usually provide short signals that indicate to the speaker that they are still “with the speaker”. These signals could be verbal (like for instance “mm hm” in English or “hm hm” in Dutch) or nonverbal (visual), like nodding. Often, these signals are produced in overlap with the speaker’s vocalisation. If listeners do not produce these signals, speakers often invite them explicitly (e.g. “are you still there?” in a telephone conversation). Our goal is to investigate what kind of signals are used by listeners of different languages to signal “recipiency” to the speaker.