Publications

Abstract

Readers experience a number of sensations during reading. They do
not – or do not only – process words and sentences in a detached, abstract
manner. Instead they “perceive” what they read about. They see descriptions of
scenery, feel what characters feel, and hear the sounds in a story. These sensa-
tions tend to be grouped under the umbrella terms “mental simulation” and
“mental imagery.” This chapter provides an overview of empirical research on
the role of mental simulation during literary reading. Our chapter also discusses
what mental simulation is and how it relates to mental imagery. Moreover, it
explores how mental simulation plays a role in leading models of literary read-
ing and investigates under what circumstances mental simulation occurs dur-
ing literature reading. Finally, the effect of mental simulation on the literary
reader’s experience is discussed, and suggestions and unresolved issues in this
field are formulated.

Abstract

Visual and auditory channels have different affordances and
this is mirrored in what information is available for linguistic
encoding. The visual channel has high spatial acuity, whereas
the auditory channel has better temporal acuity. These
differences may lead to different conceptualizations of events
and affect multimodal language production. Previous studies of
motion events typically present visual input to elicit speech and
gesture. The present study compared events presented as audio-
only, visual-only, or multimodal (visual+audio) input and
assessed speech and co-speech gesture for path and manner of
motion in Turkish. Speakers with audio-only input mentioned
path more and manner less in verbal descriptions, compared to
speakers who had visual input. There was no difference in the
type or frequency of gestures across conditions, and gestures
were dominated by path-only gestures. This suggests that input
modality influences speakers’ encoding of path and manner of
motion events in speech, but not in co-speech gestures.

Abstract

Recurrent neural networks (RNNs) have long been an architecture of interest for computational models of human sentence processing. The recently introduced Transformer architecture outperforms RNNs on many natural language processing tasks but little is known about its ability to model human language processing. We compare Transformer- and RNN-based language models’ ability to account for measures of human reading effort. Our analysis shows Transformers to outperform RNNs in explaining self-paced reading times and neural activity during reading English sentences, challenging the widely held idea that human sentence processing involves recurrent and immediate processing and provides evidence for cue-based retrieval.

Abstract

This study addresses the question whether visually grounded speech recognition (VGS) models learn to capture sentence semantics without access to any prior linguistic knowledge. We produce synthetic and natural spoken versions of a well known semantic textual similarity database and show that our VGS model produces embeddings that correlate well with human semantic similarity judgements. Our results show that a model trained on a small image-caption database outperforms two models trained on much larger databases, indicating that database size is not all that matters. We also investigate the importance of having multiple captions per image and find that this is indeed helpful even if the total number of images is lower, suggesting that paraphrasing is a valuable learning signal. While the general trend in the field is to create ever larger datasets to train models on, our findings indicate other characteristics of the database can just as important.

Abstract

Language emergence is characterized by a high degree of lex-
ical variation. It has been suggested that the speed at which
lexical conventionalization occurs depends partially on social
structure. In large communities, individuals receive input from
many sources, creating a pressure for lexical convergence.
In small, insular communities, individuals can remember id-
iolects and share common ground with interlocuters, allow-
ing these communities to retain a high degree of lexical vari-
ation. We look at lexical variation in Kata Kolok, a sign lan-
guage which emerged six generations ago in a Balinese vil-
lage, where women tend to have more tightly-knit social net-
works than men. We test if there are differing degrees of lexical
uniformity between women and men by reanalyzing a picture
description task in Kata Kolok. We find that women’s produc-
tions exhibit less lexical uniformity than men’s. One possible
explanation of this finding is that women’s more tightly-knit
social networks allow for remembering idiolects, alleviating
the pressure for lexical convergence, but social network data
from the Kata Kolok community is needed to support this ex-
planation.

Abstract

Dutch and Spanish differ in how predictable the stress pattern is as a function of the segmental content: it is correlated with syllable weight in Dutch but not in Spanish. In the present study, two experiments were run to compare the abilities of Dutch and Spanish speakers to separately process segmental and stress information. It was predicted that the Spanish speakers would have more difficulty focusing on the segments and ignoring the stress pattern than the Dutch speakers. The task was a speeded classification task on CVCV syllables, with blocks of trials in which the stress pattern could vary versus blocks in which it was fixed. First, we found interference due to stress variability in both languages, suggesting that the processing of segmental information cannot be performed independently of stress. Second, the effect was larger for Spanish than for Dutch, suggesting that that the degree of interference from stress variation may be partially mitigated by the predictability of stress placement in the language.

Abstract

Demonstrative terms (e.g., this and that) are key items in understanding how a language constructs and interprets spatial relationships. This in-depth questionnaire explores how demonstratives (and similar spatial deixis forms) function in the research language, covering such topics as their morphology and syntax, semantic dimensions, and co-occurring gesture practices. Questionnaire responses should ideally be based on natural, situated discourse as well as elicitation with consultants.

Abstract

What are the preferred ways to describe spatial relationships in different linguistic and cultural groups, and how does this interact with non-linguistic spatial awareness? This game was devised as an interactive supplement to several items that collect information on the encoding and understanding of spatial relationships, especially as relevant to “route descriptions”. This is a director-matcher task, where one consultant has access to stimulus materials that shows a “target” situation, and directs another consultant (who cannot see the target) to recreate this arrangement.

Abstract

Conversation analysis (CA) is an approach to the study of language and social interaction that puts at center stage its sequential development. The chain of initiating and responding actions that characterizes any interaction is a source of internal evidence for the meaning of social behavior as it exposes the understandings that participants themselves give of what one another is doing. Such an analysis requires the close and repeated inspection of audio and video recordings of naturally occurring interaction, supported by transcripts and other forms of annotation. Distributional regularities are complemented by a demonstration of participants' orientation to deviant behavior. CA has long maintained a constructive dialogue and reciprocal influence with linguistic anthropology. This includes a recent convergence on the cross-linguistic and cross-cultural study of social interaction.

Abstract

No idea is older in the history of linguistics than the thought that there is, somehow hidden underneath the surface of sentences, a form or a structure which provides a semantic analysis and lays bare their logical structure. In Plato’s Cratylus the theory was proposed, deriving from Heraclitus’ theory of explanatory underlying structure in physical nature, that words contain within themselves bits of syntactic structure giving their meanings. The Stoics held the same view and maintained moreover that every sentence has an underlying logical structure, which for them was the Aristotelian subject- predicate form. They even proposed transformational processes to derive the surface from the deep structure. The idea of a semantically analytic logical form underlying the sentences of every language kept reappearing in various guises at various times. Quite recently it re-emerged under the name of generative semantics.

Abstract

Previous fNIRS studies have suggested that adult-child cooperation is accompanied by increased inter-brain synchrony. However, its reflection in the electrophysiological synchrony remains unclear. In this study, we designed a naturalistic and well-controlled adult-child interaction paradigm using a tangram solving video game, and recorded dual-EEG from child and adult dyads during cooperative and individual conditions. By calculating the directed inter-brain connectivity in the theta and alpha bands, we found that the inter-brain frontal network was more densely connected and stronger in strength during the cooperative than the individual condition when the adult was watching the child playing. Moreover, the inter-brain network across different dyads shared more common information flows from the player to the observer during cooperation, but was more individually different in solo play. The results suggest an enhancement in inter-brain EEG interactions during adult-child cooperation. However, the enhancement was evident in all cooperative cases but partly depended on the role of participants.

Abstract

“Dimensional expressions” single out and describe one symmetric axis of a 1D, 2D, or 3D object (e.g., The road is long). “Bloxes” is an interactive, object-matching task that elicits descriptions of dimensional contrasts between simple geometrical objects (rectangular blocks, rectangular boxes, and cylinders). The aim is to explore the linguistic encoding of dimensions, focusing on features of axis, orientation, flatness/solidity, size and shape. See also 'Suggestions for field research on dimensional expressions' (https://doi.org/10.17617/2.3003382).

Abstract

The aim of this task is to explore the linguistic expression of “dimensions” — e.g., the height, width or depth — of objects in the world around us. In a dimensional expression, one symmetric axis of a 1D, 2D, or 3D object is singled out and described (e.g., That man is tall). Dimensional expressions in different languages show a range of different combinatorial and extensional uses. This document guides the researcher through some spatial situations where contrastive features of dimensional expressions are likely to be observable.

Abstract

Natural human interaction involves the fast-paced exchange of speaker turns. Crucially, if a next speaker waited with planning their turn until the current speaker was finished, language production models would predict much longer turn transition times than what we observe. Next speakers must therefore prepare their turn in parallel to listening. Visual signals likely play a role in this process, for example by helping the next speaker to process the ongoing utterance and thus prepare an appropriately-timed response.

To understand how visual signals contribute to the timing of turn-taking, and to move beyond the mostly qualitative studies of gesture in conversation, we examined unconstrained, computer-mediated conversations between 20 pairs of participants while systematically manipulating speaker visibility. Using motion tracking and manual gesture annotation, we assessed 1) how visibility affected the timing of turn transitions, and 2) whether use of co-speech gestures and 3) the communicative kinematic features of these gestures were associated with changes in turn transition timing.

We found that 1) decreased visibility was associated with less tightly timed turn transitions, and 2) the presence of gestures was associated with more tightly timed turn transitions across visibility conditions. Finally, 3) structural and salient kinematics contributed to gesture’s facilitatory effect on turn transition times.

Our findings suggest that speaker visibility--and especially the presence and kinematic form of gestures--during conversation contributes to the temporal coordination of conversational turns in computer-mediated settings. Furthermore, our study demonstrates that it is possible to use naturalistic conversation and still obtain controlled results.

Abstract

Pitch, intonation, and speech rate were analyzed in a collection of everyday speech heard by one Dutch infant between the ages of six and nine months. Components of each of these variables were measured in the speech of three adult speakers (mother, father, baby-sitter) when they addressed the infant, and when they addressed another adult. The results are in line with previously reported findings which are usually based on laboratory or prearranged settings: infant-directed speech in a natural setting exhibits more pitch variation, a larger number of simple intonation contours, and slower speech rate than does adult-directed speech.

Abstract

Dutch words with certain final consonant clusters are subject to optional schwa epenthesis. The present research aimed at investigating how Dutch listeners deal with this type of phonological variation. By means of syllable monitoring experiments, it was investigated whether Dutch listeners process words with epenthetic schwa (e.g., ’balluk’) as bisyllabic words or rather as monosyllabic words. Real words (e.g., ’balk’, ’balluk’) and pseudowords (e.g., ’golk’, ’golluk’) were compared, to examine effects of lexical representation. No difference was found between monitoring times for BAL targets in ’balluk’ carriers as compared to ’balk’ carriers. This suggests that words with epenthetic schwa are not processed as bisyllabic words. The effects for the pseudo-words paralleled those for the real words, which suggests that they are not due to lexical representation but rather to the application of phonological rules.

Abstract

Dutch distinguishes at least four sentence types: statements and questions, the latter type being subdivided into wh-questions (beginning with a question word), yes/no-questions (with inversion of subject and finite), and declarative questions (lexico-syntactically identical to statement). Acoustically, each of these (sub)types was found to have clearly distinct global F0-patterns, as well as a characteristic distribution of final rises [1,2]. The present paper explores the separate contribution of parameters of global downtrend and size of accent-lending pitch movements versus aspects of the terminal rise to the human identification of the four sentence (sub)types, at various positions in the time-course of the utterance. The results show that interrogativity in Dutch can be identified at an early point in the utterance. However, wh-questions are not distinct from statements.

Abstract

This chapter explores grammatical gender as a linguistic phenomenon. First, I define gender in terms of agreement, and look at the parts of speech that can take gender agreement. Because it relates to assumptions underlying much psycholinguistic gender research, I also examine the reasons why gender systems are thought to emerge, change, and disappear. Then, I describe the gender system of Dutch. The frequent confusion about the number of genders in Dutch will be resolved by looking at the history of the system, and the role of pronominal reference therein. In addition, I report on three lexical- statistical analyses of the distribution of genders in the language. After having dealt with Dutch, I look at whether the genders of Dutch and other languages are more or less randomly assigned, or whether there is some system to it. In contrast to what many people think, regularities do indeed exist. Native speakers could in principle exploit such regularities to compute rather than memorize gender, at least in part. Although this should be taken into account as a possibility, I will also argue that it is by no means a necessary implication.

Abstract

A new psycholinguistically motivated and neural network based model of human word recognition is presented. In contrast to earlier models it uses real speech as input. At the word layer acoustical and temporal information is stored by sequences of connected sensory neurons which pass on sensor potentials to a word neuron. In experiments with a small lexicon which includes groups of very similar word forms, the model meets high standards with respect to word recognition and simulates a number of wellknown psycholinguistical effects.

Abstract

Language is multimodal: non-linguistic cues, such as prosody,
gestures and mouth movements, are always present in face-to-
face communication and interact to support processing. In this
paper, we ask whether and how multimodal cues affect L2
processing by recording EEG for highly proficient bilinguals
when watching naturalistic materials. For each word, we
quantified surprisal and the informativeness of prosody,
gestures, and mouth movements. We found that each cue
modulates the N400: prosodic accentuation, meaningful
gestures, and informative mouth movements all reduce N400.
Further, effects of meaningful gestures but not mouth
informativeness are enhanced by prosodic accentuation,
whereas effects of mouth are enhanced by meaningful gestures
but reduced by beat gestures. Compared with L1, L2
participants benefit less from cues and their interactions, except
for meaningful gestures and mouth movements. Thus, in real-
world language comprehension, L2 comprehenders use
multimodal cues just as L1 speakers albeit to a lesser extent.

Abstract

Learning verbs is challenging because it is difficult to infer the precise meaning of a verb when there are a multitude of relations that one can derive from a single event. To study this verb learning challenge, we used children's egocentric view collected from naturalistic toy-play interaction as learning materials and investigated how visual and linguistic information provided in individual naming moments as well as cross-situational information provided from multiple learning moments can help learners resolve this mapping problem using the Human Simulation Paradigm. Our results show that learners benefit from seeing children's egocentric views compared to third-person observations. In addition, linguistic information can help learners identify the correct verb meaning by eliminating possible meanings that do not belong to the linguistic category. Learners are also able to integrate visual and linguistic information both within and across learning situations to reduce the ambiguity in the space of possible verb meanings.

Abstract

This study investigates the difficulty of people with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), mild and moderate Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in the production and comprehension of psychological verbs, as thematic realization may involve both the canonical and non-canonical realization of arguments. More specifically, we aim to examine whether there is a deficit in the mapping of syntactic and semantic representations in psych-predicates regarding Greek-speaking individuals with MCI and AD, and whether the linguistic abilities associated with θ-role assignment decrease as the disease progresses. Moreover, given the decline of cognitive abilities in people with MCI and AD, we explore the effects of components of memory (Semantic, Episodic, and Working Memory) on the assignment of thematic roles in constructions with psychological verbs.