Publications

Abstract

All humans are equipped with perceptual and articulatory mechanisms which (in healthy humans) allow them to learn to perceive and produce speech. One basic question in psycholinguistics is whether humans share similar underlying processing mechanisms for all languages, or whether these are fundamentally different due to the diversity of languages and speakers. This book provides a cross-linguistic examination of speech comprehension by investigating word recognition in users of different languages. The focus is on how listeners segment the quasi-continuous stream of sounds that they hear into a sequence of discrete words, and how a universal segmentation principle, the Possible Word Constraint, applies in the recognition of Slovak and German.

Abstract

Two experiments were carried out to examine the syllable affiliation of intervocalic consonant clusters and their effects on speech segmentation in two different languages. In a syllable reversal task, Slovak and German speakers divided bisyllabic non-words that were presented aurally into two parts, starting with the second syllable. Following the maximal onset principle, intervocalic consonants should be maximally assigned to the onset of the following syllable in conformity with language-specific restrictions, e.g., /du.gru/, /zu.kro:/ (dot indicates a syllable boundary). According to German phonology, syllables require branching rhymes (hence, /zuk.ro:/). In Slovak, both /du.gru/ and /dug.ru/ are possible syllabifications. Experiment 1 showed that German speakers more often closed the first syllable (/zuk.ro:/), following the requirement for a branching rhyme. In Experiment 2, Slovak speakers showed no clear preference; the first syllable was either closed (/dug.ru/) or open (/du.gru/). Correlation analyses on previously conducted word-spotting studies (Hanulíková, in press, 2008) suggest that speech segmentation is unaffected by these syllabification preferences.

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to discuss an inherent difficulty of PET (and fMRI) research in language production. On the one hand, language production presupposes some degree of freedom for the subject, on the other hand, interpretability of results presupposes restrictions of this freedom. This difficulty is reflected in the existing PET literature in some neglect of the general principle to design experiments in such a way that the results do not allow for alternative interpretations. It is argued that by narrowing down the scope of experiments a gain in interpretability can be achieved.

Abstract

This article reviews neurocognitive evidence on second language (L2) processing at speech sound, word, and sentence levels. Hemodynamic (functional magnetic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography) data suggest that L2s are implemented in the same brain structures as the native language but with quantitative differences in the strength of activation that are modulated by age of L2 acquisition and L2 proficiency. Electrophysiological data show a more complex pattern of first and L2 similarities and differences, providing some, although not conclusive, evidence for qualitative differences between L1 and L2 syntactic processing.

Abstract

Day-to-day interpretations of “space” are enmeshed in specific cultural and linguistic practices. For example, many cultures have an association between vertical height and social standing; more powerful people may be placed literally higher than others at social gatherings, and be spoken of as having higher status. This questionnaire is a guide for exploring relationships between space, language, and social structure. The goal is to better understand how space is organised in the focus community, and to investigate the extent to which space is used as a model for reproducing social forms.

Abstract

The psychological process of translating semantic into syntactic structures has dynamic properties such as the following. (1) The speaker is able to start pronouncing an utterance before having worked out the semantic content he wishes to express. Selection of semantic content and construction of syntactic form proceed partially in parallel. (2) The human sentence generator takes as input not only a specification of semantic content but also some indication of desired syntactic shape. Such indications, if present, do not complicate the generation process but make it easier. (3) Certain regularities of speech errors suggest a two-stage generation process. Stage I constructs the “syntactic skeleton” of an utterance; stage II provides the skeleton with morpho- honological information. An outline is given of the type of grammar which is used by a sentence generation system embodying these characteristics. The system is being implemented on a computer.

Abstract

Rede, uitgesproken bij de aanvaarding van het ambt van lector in de taalpsychologie aan de Katholieke Universiteit te Nijmegen op Vrijdag 10 juni 1977

Abstract

[Seven one-page psycholinguistic sketches]

Abstract

This task investigates the expression of “enter” and “exit” events, and is a supplement to the Motion Elicitation task (https://doi.org/10.17617/2.3003391). Consultants are asked to describe a series of animated clips where a man moves into or out of a house. The clips focus on contrasts to do with perspective (e.g., whether the man appears to move away or towards the viewer) and transitional movement (e.g., whether the man walks or “teleports” into his new location).

Abstract

Do our hands 'speak the same language' across cultures? Gesture is the silent partner of spoken languages in face-to-face interaction, but we still have a lot to learn about gesture practices in different speech communities. The primary purpose of this task is to collect data in naturalistic settings that can be used to investigate the linguistic and cultural relativity of gesture performance, especially spatially indicative gestures. It involves video-recording pairs of speakers in both free conversation and more structured communication tasks (e.g., describing film plots).

Please note: the stimuli mentioned in this entry are available elsewhere: 'The Pear Story', a short film made at the University of California at Berkeley; "Frog, where are you?" from the original Mayer (1969) book, as published in the Appendix of Berman & Slobin (1994).

Abstract

Selected papers from the 18th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Montreal, 6-11 August 2007

Abstract

It has been hypothesised that human reasoning has a non-linguistic foundation, but is nevertheless influenced by the formal means available in a language. For example, Western logic is transparently related to European sentential connectives (e.g., and, if … then, or, not), some of which cannot be unambiguously expressed in other languages. The questionnaire explores reasoning tools and practices through investigating translation equivalents of English sentential connectives and collecting examples of “reasoned arguments”.

Abstract

Synaesthesia is a condition in which stimulation of one sensory modality (e.g. hearing) causes additional experiences in a second, unstimulated modality (e.g. seeing colours). The goal of this task is to explore the types (and incidence) of synaesthesia in different cultures. Two simple tests can ascertain the existence of synaesthesia in your community.

Abstract

Words are fundamental to reading and yet over a century of research has not masked the controversies around how words are recognized. We review some old and new research that disproves simple ideas such as words are read as wholes or are simply mapped directly to spoken language. We also review theory and research relevant to the question of sublexical influences in word recognition. We describe orthography and phonology, how they are related to each other and describe a series of new experiments on how these sources of information are processed. Tasks include lexical decision, perceptual identification, and naming. Dependent measures are reaction time, accuracy of performance, and a new measure, initial phoneme duration, that refers to the duration of the first phoneme when the target word is pronounced. Important factors in resolving the controversies include the realization that reading has multiple determinants, as well as evaluating the type of task, proper controls such as familiarity of the test items and accuracy of measurement of the response. We also address potential limitations with measures related to the mapping between orthography and phonology, and show that the existence of a sound-to-spelling consistency effect does not require interactive activation, but can be explained and predicted by a feedforward model, the Fuzzy logical model of perception.

Abstract

Rede uitgesproken bij de aanvaarding van het ambt van hoogleraar Leren en plasticiteit aan de Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen van de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen op donderdag 1 oktober 2009

Abstract

Most current theories of lexical access in speech production are designed to capture the behaviour of young adults - typically college students. However, young adults represent a minority of the world's speakers. For theories of speech production, the question arises of how the young adults' speech develops out of the quite different speech observed in children and adolescents and how the speech of young adults evolves into the speech observed in older persons. Though a model of adult speech production need not include a detailed account language development, it should be compatible with current knowledge about the development of language across the lifespan. In this sense, theories of young adults' speech production may be constrained by theories and findings concerning the development of language with age. Conversely, any model of language acquisition or language change in older adults should, of course, be compatible with existing theories of the "ideal" speech found in young speakers. For this SpecialIssue we elicited papers on the development of speech production in childhood, adult speech production, and changes in speech production in older adults. The structure of the Special Issue is roughly chronological, focusing in turn on the language production of children (papers by Behrens; Goffman, Heisler & Chakraborty; Vousden & Maylor), young adults (papers by Roelofs; Schiller, Jansma, Peters & Levelt; Finocchiaro & Caramazza; Hartsuiker & Barkhuysen; Bonin, Malardier, Meot & Fayol) and older adults (papers by Mortensen, Meyer & Humphreys; Spieler & Griffin; Altmann & Kemper). We hope that the work compiled here will encourage researchers in any of these areas to consider the theories and findings in the neighbouring fields.

Abstract

The present study examines young children's uses of semantically specific and general relational containment terms (e.g. in, enter) in Hindi and Tzeltal, and the extent to which their usage patterns are influenced by input frequency. We hypothesize that if children have a preference for relational terms that are semantically specific, this will be reflected in early acquisition of more semantically specific expressions and underextension of semantically general ones, regardless of the distributional patterns of use of these terms in the input. Our findings however show a strong role for input frequency in guiding children's patterns of use of containment terms in the two languages. Yet language-specific lexicalization patterns play a role as well, since object-specific containment verbs are used as early as the semantically general 'enter' verb by children acquiring Tzeltal.