Publications

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

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Questions Questioning and the Epistemic Gradient Presuppositions, Agenda Setting and Preferences Social Actions Implemented by Questions Questions as Building Blocks of Institutional Activities Future Directions

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

Anthropology began by comparing aspects of kinship across cultures, while linguists interested in semantic domains such as kinship necessarily compare across languages. In this chapter I show how phylogenetic comparative methods from evolutionary biology can be used to study evolutionary processes relating to kinship and kinship terminologies across language and culture.

Abstract

It is an important feature of the human sentence production system that semantic and syntactic processes may overlap in time and do not proceed strictly serially. That is, the process of building the syntactic form of an utterance does not always wait until the complete semantic content for that utterance has been decided upon. On the contrary, speakers will often start pronouncing the first words of a sentence while still working on further details of its semantic content. An important advantage is memory economy. Semantic and syntactic fragments do not have to occupy working memory until complete semantic and syntactic structures for an utterance have been computed. Instead, each semantic and syntactic fragment is processed as soon as possible and is kept in working memory for a minimum period of time. This raises the question of how the sentence production system can maintain syntactic coherence across syntactic fragments. Presumably there are processes of "syntactic bookkeeping" which (1) store in working memory those syntactic properties of a fragmentary sentence which are needed to eliminate ungrammatical continuations, and (2) check whether a prospective continuation is indeed compatible with the sentence constructed so far. In reaction time experiments where subjects described, under time pressure, simple static pictures of an action performed by an actor, the second aspect of syntactic bookkeeping could be demonstrated. This evidence is used for modelling bookkeeping processes as part of a computational sentence generator which aims at simulating the syntactic operations people carry out during spontaneous speech.

Abstract

It is usually assumed that the language spoken by a human community is independent of the community's genetic makeup, an assumption supported by an overwhelming amount of evidence. However, the possibility that language is influenced by its speakers' genes cannot be ruled out a priori, and a recently discovered correlation between the geographic distribution of tone languages and two human genes seems to point to a genetically influenced bias affecting language. This entry describes this specific correlation and highlights its major implications. Voice pitch has a variety of communicative functions. Some of these are probably universal, such as conveying information about the speaker's sex, age, and emotional state. In many languages, including the European languages, voice pitch also conveys certain sentence-level meanings such as signaling that an utterance is a question or an exclamation; these uses of pitch are known as intonation. Some languages, however, known as tone languages, nian ...

Abstract

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

Abstract

Originally published in Cognition International Journal of Cognitive Science, Volume 42, Numbers 1-3, 1992 This paper introduces a special issue of Cognition 011 lexical access in speech production. Over the last quarter century, the psycholinguistic study of speaking, and in particular of accessing words in speech, received a major new impetus from the analysis of speech errors, dysfluencies and hesMions, from aphasiology, and from new paradigms in reaction time research. The emerging theoretical picture partitions the accessing process into two subprocesses, the selection of an appropriate lexical item (and "lemma") from the mental lexicon, and the phonological encoding of that item, that is, the computation of a phonetic program for the item in the context of utterance These two theoretical domains are successively introduced by outlining some core issues that have been or still have to be addressed. The final section discusses the controversial question whether phonological encoding can affect lexical selection. This partitioning is also followed in this special issue as a whole. There are, first, four papers on lexical selection, then three papers on phonological encoding, and finally one on the interaction between selection and phonological encoding.

Abstract

Since the core matrix for language use is interaction, the main job of language
is not to express propositions or abstract meanings, but to deliver actions.
For in order to respond in interaction we have to ascribe to the prior turn
a primary ‘action’ – variously thought of as an ‘illocution’, ‘speech act’, ‘move’,
etc. – to which we then respond. The analysis of interaction also relies heavily
on attributing actions to turns, so that, e.g., sequences can be characterized in
terms of actions and responses. Yet the process of action ascription remains way
understudied. We don’t know much about how it is done, when it is done, nor even
what kind of inventory of possible actions might exist, or the degree to which they
are culturally variable.
The study of action ascription remains perhaps the primary unfulfilled task in
the study of language use, and it needs to be tackled from conversationanalytic,
psycholinguistic, cross-linguistic and anthropological perspectives.
In this talk I try to take stock of what we know, and derive a set of goals for and
constraints on an adequate theory. Such a theory is likely to employ, I will suggest,
a top-down plus bottom-up account of action perception, and a multi-level notion
of action which may resolve some of the puzzles that have repeatedly arisen.

Abstract

Given the diversity of languages, it is unlikely that the human capacity for language resides in rich universal syntactic machinery. More likely, it resides centrally in the capacity for vocal learning combined with a distinctive ethology for communicative interaction, which together (no doubt with other capacities) make diverse languages learnable. This chapter focuses on face-to-face communication, which is characterized by the mapping of sounds and multimodal signals onto speech acts and which can be deeply recursively embedded in interaction structure, suggesting an interactive origin for complex syntax. These actions are recognized through Gricean intention recognition, which is a kind of “ mirroring” or simulation distinct from the classic mirror neuron system. The multimodality of conversational interaction makes evident the involvement of body, hand, and mouth, where the burden on these can be shifted, as in the use of speech and gesture, or hands and face in sign languages. Such shifts having taken place during the course of human evolution. All this suggests a slightly different approach to the mystery of music, whose origins should also be sought in joint action, albeit with a shift from turn-taking to simultaneous expression, and with an affective quality that may tap ancient sources residual in primate vocalization. The deep connection of language to music can best be seen in the only universal form of music, namely song.

Abstract

Demonstratives are key items in understanding how a language constructs and interprets spatial relationships. They are also multi-functional, with applications to non-spatial deictic fields such as time, perception, person and discourse, and uses in anaphora and affect marking. This item consists of an overview of theoretical distinctions in demonstrative systems, followed by a set of practical queries and elicitation suggestions for demonstratives in “table top” space, wider spatial fields, and naturalistic data.

Abstract

The world’s languages encode a diverse range of topological relations. However, cross-linguistic investigation suggests that the relations IN, AT and ON are especially fundamental to the grammaticised expression of space. The purpose of this questionnaire is to collect information about adpositions, case markers, and spatial nominals that are involved in the expression of core IN/AT/ON meanings. The task explores the more general parts of a language’s topological system, with a view to testing certain hypotheses about the packaging of spatial concepts. The questionnaire consists of target translation sentences that focus on a number of dimensions including animacy, caused location and motion.

Abstract

Languages differ widely in terms of how they encode the fundamental concepts of location and position. For some languages, verbs have an important role to play in describing situations (e.g., whether a bottle is standing or lying on the table); for others, verbs are not used in describing location at all. This item outlines certain hypotheses concerning four “types” of languages: those that have verbless basic locatives; those that use a single verb; those that have several verbs available to express location; and those that use positional verbs. The document was originally published as an appendix to the 'Picture series for positional verbs' (https://doi.org/10.17617/2.2573831).

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

Recent eye-tracking research has revealed that spoken language can guide eye gaze very rapidly (and closely time-locked to the unfolding speech) toward referents in the visual world. We discuss whether, and to what extent, such language-mediated eye movements are automatic rather than subject to conscious and controlled decision-making. We consider whether language-mediated eye movements adhere to four main criteria of automatic behavior, namely, whether they are fast and efficient, unintentional, unconscious, and overlearned (i.e., arrived at through extensive practice). Current evidence indicates that language-driven oculomotor behavior is fast but not necessarily always efficient. It seems largely unintentional though there is also some evidence that participants can actively use the information in working memory to avoid distraction in search. Language-mediated eye movements appear to be for the most part unconscious and have all the hallmarks of an overlearned behavior. These data are suggestive of automatic mechanisms linking language to potentially referred-to visual objects, but more comprehensive and rigorous testing of this hypothesis is needed.

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.

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

It has long been hypothesised that the human faculty to acquire a language is in some way encoded in our genetic program. However, only recently has genetic evidence been available to begin to substantiate the presumed genetic basis of language. Here we review the first data from molecular genetic studies showing association between gene variants and language disorders (specific language impairment, speech sound disorder, developmental dyslexia), we discuss the biological function of these genes, and we further speculate on the more general question of how the human genome builds a brain that can learn a language.