Publications

Abstract

In this paper I take up the idea that human thinking is systematically biased in the direction of interactive thinking (E. Goody's anticipatory interactive planning), that is, that humans are peculiarly good at, and inordinately prone to, attributing intentions and goals to one other (as well as to non-humans), and that they routinely orient to presumptions about each other's intentions in what they say and do. I explore the implications of that idea for an understanding of politeness in interaction, taking as a starting point the Brown and Levinson (1987) model of politeness, which assumes interactive thinking, a notion implicit in the formulation of politeness as strategic orientation to face. Drawing on an analysis of the phenomenon of conventionalized ‘irony’ in Tzeltal, I emphasize that politeness does not inhere in linguistic form per se but is a matter of conveying a polite intention, and argue that Tzeltal irony provides a prime example of one way in which humans' highly-developed intellectual machinery for inferring alter's intentions is put to the service of social relationships.

Abstract

This article is a reprint of chapter 1, the introduction to Brown and Levinson, 1987, Politeness: Some universals in language usage (Cambridge University Press).

Abstract

This study is about the principles for constructing polite speech. The core of it was published as Brown and Levinson (1978); here it is reissued with a new introduction which surveys the now considerable literature in linguistics, psychology and the social sciences that the original extended essay stimulated, and suggests new directions for research. We describe and account for some remarkable parallelisms in the linguistic construction of utterances with which people express themselves in different languges and cultures. A motive for these parallels is isolated - politeness, broadly defined to include both polite friendliness and polite formality - and a universal model is constructed outlining the abstract principles underlying polite usages. This is based on the detailed study of three unrelated languages and cultures: the Tamil of south India, the Tzeltal spoken by Mayan Indians in Chiapas, Mexico, and the English of the USA and England, supplemented by examples from other cultures. Of general interest is the point that underneath the apparent diversity of polite behaviour in different societies lie some general pan-human principles of social interaction, and the model of politeness provides a tool for analysing the quality of social relations in any society.

Abstract

For multimodal annotations an exhaustive encoding system for gestures was developed to facilitate research. The structural requirements of multimodal annotations were analyzed to develop an Abstract Corpus Model which is the basis for a powerful annotation and exploitation tool for multimedia recordings and the definition of the XML-based EUDICO Annotation Format. Finally, a metadata-based data management environment has been setup to facilitate resource discovery and especially corpus management. Bt means of an appropriate digitization policy and their online availability researchers have been able to build up a large corpus covering gesture and sign language data.

Abstract

A consistent finding across head-initial languages, such as English, is that subject relative clauses (SRCs) are easier to comprehend than object relative clauses (ORCs). However, several studies in Mandarin Chinese, a head-final language, revealed the opposite pattern, which might be modulated by working memory (WM) as suggested by recent results from self-paced reading performance. In the present study, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded when participants with high and low WM spans (measured by forward digit span and operation span tests) read Chinese ORCs and SRCs. The results revealed an N400-P600 complex elicited by ORCs on the relativizer, whose magnitude was modulated by the WM span. On the other hand, a P600 effect was elicited by SRCs on the head noun, whose magnitude was not affected by the WM span. These findings paint a complex picture of relative clause processing in Chinese such that opposing factors involving structural ambiguities and integration of filler-gap dependencies influence processing dynamics in Chinese relative clauses.

Abstract

Most human communication is between people who speak or sign the same languages. Nevertheless, communication is to some extent possible where there is no language in common, as every tourist knows. How this works is of some theoretical interest (Levinson 2006). A nice arena to explore this capacity is when deaf signers of different languages meet for the first time, and are able to use the iconic affordances of sign to begin communication. Here we focus on Other-Initiated Repair (OIR), that is, where one signer makes clear he or she does not understand, thus initiating repair of the prior conversational turn. OIR sequences are typically of a three-turn structure (Schegloff 2007) including the problem source turn (T-1), the initiation of repair (T0), and the turn offering a problem solution (T+1). These sequences seem to have a universal structure (Dingemanse et al. 2013). We find that in most cases where such OIR occur, the signer of the troublesome turn (T-1) foresees potential difficulty, and marks the utterance with 'try markers' (Sacks & Schegloff 1979, Moerman 1988) which pause to invite recognition. The signers use repetition, gestural holds, prosodic lengthening and eyegaze at the addressee as such try-markers. Moreover, when T-1 is try-marked this allows for faster response times of T+1 with respect to T0. This finding suggests that signers in these 'first encounter' situations actively anticipate potential trouble and, through try-marking, mobilize and facilitate OIRs. The suggestion is that heightened meta-linguistic awareness can be utilized to deal with these problems at the limits of our communicational ability.

Abstract

Until recently, corpus studies of natural bilingual speech and, more specifically, codeswitching in bilingual speech have used a manual method of glossing, partof- speech tagging, and clause-splitting to prepare the data for analysis. In our article, we present innovative tools developed for the first large-scale corpus study of codeswitching triggered by cognates. A study of this size was only possible due to the automation of several steps, such as morpheme-by-morpheme glossing, splitting complex clauses into simple clauses, and the analysis of internal and external codeswitching through the use of database tables, algorithms, and a scripting language.

Abstract

Learning a specific skill during childhood may partly determine the functional organization of the adult brain. This hypothesis led us to study oral language processing in illiterate subjects who, for social reasons, had never entered school and had no knowledge of reading or writing. In a brain activation study using PET and statistical parametric mapping, we compared word and pseudoword repetition in literate and illiterate subjects. Our study confirms behavioural evidence of different phonological processing in illiterate subjects. During repetition of real words, the two groups performed similarly and activated similar areas of the brain. In contrast, illiterate subjects had more difficulty repeating pseudowords correctly and did not activate the same neural structures as literates. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that learning the written form of language (orthography) interacts with the function of oral language. Our results indicate that learning to read and write during childhood influences the functional organization of the adult human brain.

Abstract

We report on an eye-tracking study that investigated four-year-old Cantonese-speaking children's online processing of subject and object relative clauses (RCs). Children's eye-movements were recorded as they listened to RC structures identifying a unique referent (e.g. “Can you pick up the horse that pushed the pig?”). Two RC types, classifier (CL) and ge3 RCs, were tested in a between-participants design. The two RC types differ in their syntactic analyses and frequency of occurrence, providing an important point of comparison for theories of RC acquisition and processing. A permutation analysis showed that the two structures were processed differently: CL RCs showed a significant object-over-subject advantage, whereas ge3 RCs showed the opposite effect. This study shows that children can have different preferences even for two very similar RC structures within the same language, suggesting that syntactic processing preferences are shaped by the unique features of particular constructions both within and across different linguistic typologies.

Abstract

Objects in the world usually have names at different hierarchical levels (e.g., beagle, dog, animal). This research investigates adults' ability to use cross-situational statistics to simultaneously learn object labels at individual and category levels. The results revealed that adults were able to use co-occurrence information to learn hierarchical labels in contexts where the labels for individual objects and labels for categories were presented in completely separated blocks, in interleaved blocks, or mixed in the same trial. Temporal presentation schedules significantly affected the learning of individual object labels, but not the learning of category labels. Learners' subsequent generalization of category labels indicated sensitivity to the structure of statistical input.

Abstract

Two groups of listeners with Dutch and British English language backgrounds judged Dutch and British English utterances, respectively, which varied in the intonation contour on the scales EMPHATIC vs. NOT EMPHATIC and SURPRISED vs. NOT SURPRISED, two meanings derived from the Effort Code. The stimuli, which differed in sentence mode but were otherwise lexically equivalent, were varied in peak height, peak alignment, end pitch, and overall register. In both languages, there are positive correlations between peak height and degree of emphasis, between peak height and degree of surprise, between peak alignment and degree of surprise, and between pitch register and degree of surprise. However, in all these cases, Dutch stimuli lead to larger perceived meaning differences than the British English stimuli. This difference in the extent to which increased pitch height triggers increases in perceived emphasis and surprise is argued to be due to the difference in the standard pitch ranges between Dutch and British English. In addition, we found a positive correlation between pitch register and the degree of emphasis in Dutch, but a negative correlation in British English. This is an unexpected difference, which illustrates a case of ambiguity in the meaning of pitch.

Abstract

This study examines acoustic and aerodynamic characteristics of consonants in standard Korean and in Cheju, an endangered Korean language. The focus is on the well-known three-way distinction among voiceless stops (i.e., lenis, fortis, aspirated) and the two-way distinction between the voiceless fricatives /s/ and /s*/. While such a typologically unusual contrast among voiceless stops has long drawn the attention of phoneticians and phonologists, there is no single work in the literature that discusses a body of data representing a relatively large number of speakers. This study reports a variety of acoustic and aerodynamic measures obtained from 12 Korean speakers (four speakers of Seoul Korean and eight speakers of Cheju). Results show that, in addition to findings similar to those reported by others, there are three crucial points worth noting. Firstly, lenis, fortis, and aspirated stops are systematically differentiated from each other by the voice quality of the following vowel. Secondly, these stops are also differentiated by aerodynamic mechanisms. The aspirated and fortis stops are similar in supralaryngeal articulation, but employ a different relation between intraoral pressure and flow. Thirdly, our study suggests that the fricative /s/ is better categorized as “lenis” rather than “aspirated”. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of Korean data for theories of the voicing contrast and their phonological representations.

Abstract

Several studies have documented that international adoptees, who in early years have
experienced a change from a language used in their birth country to a new language
in an adoptive country, benefit from the limited early exposure to the birth language
when relearning that language’s sounds later in life. The adoptees’ relearning advantages
have been argued to be conferred by lasting birth-language knowledge obtained from
the early exposure. However, it is also plausible to assume that the advantages may
arise from adoptees’ superior ability to learn language sounds in general, as a result
of their unusual linguistic experience, i.e., exposure to multiple languages in sequence
early in life. If this is the case, then the adoptees’ relearning benefits should generalize
to previously unheard language sounds, rather than be limited to their birth-language
sounds. In the present study, adult Korean adoptees in the Netherlands and matched
Dutch-native controls were trained on identifying a Japanese length distinction to which
they had never been exposed before. The adoptees and Dutch controls did not differ
on any test carried out before, during, or after the training, indicating that observed
adoptee advantages for birth-language relearning do not generalize to novel, previously
unheard language sounds. The finding thus fails to support the suggestion that
birth-language relearning advantages may arise from enhanced ability to learn language
sounds in general conferred by early experience in multiple languages. Rather, our
finding supports the original contention that such advantages involve memory traces
obtained before adoption

Abstract

Koriat (1981) demonstrated that an association from the target to a preceding prime, in the absence of an association from the prime to the target, facilitates lexical decision and referred to this effect as "backward priming". Backward priming is of relevance, because it can provide information about the mechanism underlying semantic priming effects. Following Neely (1991), we distinguish three mechanisms of priming: spreading activation, expectancy, and semantic matching/integration. The goal was to determine which of these mechanisms causes backward priming, by assessing effects of backward priming on a language-relevant ERP component, the N400, and reaction time (RT). Based on previous work, we propose that the N400 priming effect reflects expectancy and semantic matching/integration, but in contrast with RT does not reflect spreading activation. Experiment 1 shows a backward priming effect that is qualitatively similar for the N400 and RT in a lexical decision task. This effect was not modulated by an ISI manipulation. Experiment 2 clarifies that the N400 backward priming effect reflects genuine changes in N400 amplitude and cannot be ascribed to other factors. We will argue that these backward priming effects cannot be due to expectancy but are best accounted for in terms of semantic matching/integration.

Abstract

In a semantic priming paradigm, the effects of different levels of processing on the N400 were assessed by changing the task demands. In the lexical decision task, subjects had to discriminate between words and nonwords and in the physical task, subjects had to discriminate between uppercase and lowercase letters. The proportion of related versus unrelated word pairs differed between conditions. A lexicality test on reaction times demonstrated that the physical task was performed nonlexically. Moreover, a semantic priming reaction time effect was obtained only in the lexical decision task. The level of processing clearly affected the event-related potentials. An N400 priming effect was only observed in the lexical decision task. In contrast, in the physical task a P300 effect was observed for either related or unrelated targets, depending on their frequency of occurrence. Taken together, the results indicate that an N400 priming effect is only evoked when the task performance induces the semantic aspects of words to become part of an episodic trace of the stimulus event.

Abstract

When we talk, we often make hand movements called gestures at the same time. Although just about everyone gestures when they talk, we usually do not even notice the gestures. Our hand gestures play an important role in helping us learn and remember! When we see other people gesturing when they talk—or when we gesture when we talk ourselves—we are more likely to remember the information being talked about than if gestures were not involved. Our hand gestures can even indicate when we are ready to learn new things! In this article, we explain how gestures can help learning. To investigate this, we studied children learning a new mathematical concept called equivalence. We hope that this article will help you notice when you, your friends and family, and your teachers are gesturing, and that it will help you understand how those gestures can help people learn.

Abstract

Four cross-modal priming experiments and two forced-choice identification experiments investigated the use of suprasegmental cues to stress in the recognition of spoken English words, by native (English-speaking) and non- native (Dutch) listeners. Previous results had indicated that suprasegmental information was exploited in lexical access by Dutch but not by English listeners. For both listener groups, recognition of visually presented target words was faster, in comparison to a control condition, after stress-matching spoken primes, either monosyllabic (mus- from MUsic /muSEum) or bisyl labic (admi- from ADmiral/admiRAtion). For native listeners, the effect of stress-mismatching bisyllabic primes was not different from that of control primes, but mismatching monosyllabic primes produced partial facilitation. For non-native listeners, both bisyllabic and monosyllabic stress-mismatching primes produced partial facilitation. Native English listeners thus can exploit suprasegmental information in spoken-word recognition, but information from two syllables is used more effectively than information from one syllable. Dutch listeners are less proficient at using suprasegmental information in English than in their native language, but, as in their native language, use mono- and bisyllabic information to an equal extent. In forced-choice identification, Dutch listeners outperformed native listeners at correctly assigning a monosyllabic fragment (e.g., mus-) to one of two words differing in stress.

Abstract

Individual alpha frequency (IAF) is a promising electrophysiological marker of interindividual differences in cognitive function. IAF has been linked with trait-like differences in information processing and general intelligence, and provides an empirical basis for the definition of individualized frequency bands. Despite its widespread application, however, there is little consensus on the optimal method for estimating IAF, and many common approaches are prone to bias and inconsistency. Here, we describe an automated strategy for deriving two of the most prevalent IAF estimators in the literature: peak alpha frequency (PAF) and center of gravity (CoG). These indices are calculated from resting-state power spectra that have been smoothed using a Savitzky-Golay filter (SGF). We evaluate the performance characteristics of this analysis procedure in both empirical and simulated EEG data sets. Applying the SGF technique to resting-state data from n = 63 healthy adults furnished 61 PAF and 62 CoG estimates. The statistical properties of these estimates were consistent with previous reports. Simulation analyses revealed that the SGF routine was able to reliably extract target alpha components, even under relatively noisy spectral conditions. The routine consistently outperformed a simpler method of automated peak detection that did not involve spectral smoothing. The SGF technique is fast, open source, and available in two popular programming languages (MATLAB, Python), and thus can easily be integrated within the most popular M/EEG toolsets (EEGLAB, FieldTrip, MNE-Python). As such, it affords a convenient tool for improving the reliability and replicability of future IAF-related research.

Abstract

During conversation, interlocutors rapidly switch between speaker and listener
roles and take turns at talk. How do they achieve such fine coordination?
Most research has concentrated on the role of prediction, but listeners
must also prepare a response in advance (assuming they wish to respond)
and articulate this response at the appropriate moment. Such mechanisms
may overlap with the processes of comprehending the speaker’s incoming
turn and predicting its end. However, little is known about the stages of
response preparation and production. We discuss three questions pertaining
to such stages: (1) Do listeners prepare their own response in advance?,
(2) Can listeners buffer their prepared response?, and (3) Does buffering
lead to interference with concurrent comprehension? We argue that fine
coordination requires more than just an accurate prediction of the interlocutor’s
incoming turn: Listeners must also simultaneously prepare their own
response.

Abstract

During conversation, there is often little gap between interlocutors’ utterances. In two pairs of experiments, we manipulated the content predictability of yes/no questions to investigate whether listeners achieve such coordination by (i) preparing a response as early as possible or (ii) predicting the end of the speaker’s turn. To assess these two mechanisms, we varied the participants’ task: They either pressed a button when they thought the question was about to end (Experiments 1a and 2a), or verbally answered the questions with either yes or no (Experiments 1b and 2b). Predictability effects were present when participants had to prepare a verbal response, but not when they had to predict the turn-end. These findings suggest content prediction facilitates turn-taking because it allows listeners to prepare their own response early, rather than because it helps them predict when the speaker will reach the end of their turn.

Abstract

In three experiments, listeners detected vowel or consonant targets in lists of CV syllables constructed from five vowels and five consonants. Responses were faster in a predictable context (e.g., listening for a vowel target in a list of syllables all beginning with the same consonant) than in an unpredictable context (e.g., listening for a vowel target in a list of syllables beginning with different consonants). In Experiment 1, the listeners’ native language was Dutch, in which vowel and consonant repertoires are similar in size. The difference between predictable and unpredictable contexts was comparable for vowel and consonant targets. In Experiments 2 and 3, the listeners’ native language was Spanish, which has four times as many consonants as vowels; here effects of an unpredictable consonant context on vowel detection were significantly greater than effects of an unpredictable vowel context on consonant detection. This finding suggests that listeners’ processing of phonemes takes into account the constitution of their language’s phonemic repertoire and the implications that this has for contextual variability.

Abstract

A recent debate in the morphological literature concerns the status of derivational affixes. While some linguists (Marantz 1997, 2001; Marvin 2003) consider derivational affixes a type of functional morpheme that realizes a categorial head, others (Lowenstamm 2015; De Belder 2011) argue that derivational affixes are roots. Our proposal, which finds its empirical basis in a study of Dutch derivational affixes, takes a middle position. We argue that there are two types of derivational affixes: some that are roots (i.e. lexical morphemes) and others that are categorial heads (i.e. functional morphemes). Affixes that are roots show ‘flexible’ categorial behavior, are subject to ‘lexical’ phonological rules, and may trigger idiosyncratic meanings. Affixes that realize categorial heads, on the other hand, are categorially rigid, do not trigger ‘lexical’ phonological rules nor allow for idiosyncrasies in their interpretation.

Abstract

Speaker diarization (answering 'who spoke when') is a widely researched subject within speech technology. Numerous experiments have been run on datasets built from broadcast news, meeting data, and call centers—the task sometimes appears close to being solved. Much less work has begun to tackle the hardest diarization task of all: spontaneous conversations in real-world settings. Such diarization would be particularly useful for studies of language acquisition, where researchers investigate the speech children produce and hear in their daily lives. In this paper, we study audio gathered with a recorder worn by small children as they went about their normal days. As a result, each child was exposed to different acoustic environments with a multitude of background noises and a varying number of adults and peers. The inconsistency of speech and noise within and across samples poses a challenging task for speaker diarization systems, which we tackled via retraining and data augmentation techniques. We further studied sources of structured variation across raw audio files, including the impact of speaker type distribution, proportion of speech from children, and child age on diarization performance. We discuss the extent to which these findings might generalize to other samples of speech in the wild.

Abstract

A large amount of variability exists across human brains; revealed initially on a small scale by postmortem studies and,
more recently, on a larger scale with the advent of neuroimaging. Here we compared structural variability between human
and macaque monkey brains using grey and white matter magnetic resonance imaging measures. The monkey brain was
overall structurally as variable as the human brain, but variability had a distinct distribution pattern, with some key areas
showing high variability. We also report the first evidence of a relationship between anatomical variability and evolutionary
expansion in the primate brain. This suggests a relationship between variability and stability, where areas of low variability
may have evolved less recently and have more stability, while areas of high variability may have evolved more recently and
be less similar across individuals. We showed specific differences between the species in key areas, including the amount of
hemispheric asymmetry in variability, which was left-lateralized in the human brain across several phylogenetically recent
regions. This suggests that cerebral variability may be another useful measure for comparison between species and may add
another dimension to our understanding of evolutionary mechanisms.

Abstract

Rhythmic categories such as morae in Japanese or stress units in English play a role in the perception of spoken
language. We examined this role in Japanese, since recent evidence suggests that morae may intervene as
structural units in word recognition. First, we found that traditional puns more often substituted part of a mora
than a whole mora. Second, when listeners reconstructed distorted words, e.g. panorama from panozema, responses
were faster and more accurate when only a phoneme was distorted (panozama, panorema) than when a
whole CV mora was distorted (panozema). Third, lexical decisions on the same nonwords were better predicted
by duration and number of phonemes from nonword uniqueness point to word end than by number of morae. Our
results indicate no role for morae in early spoken-word processing; we propose that rhythmic categories constrain
not initial lexical activation but subsequent processes of speech segmentation and selection among word candidates.

Abstract

Speech segmentation procedures may differ in speakers of different languages. Earlier work based on French speakers listening to French words suggested that the syllable functions as a segmentation unit in speech processing. However, while French has relatively regular and clearly bounded syllables, other languages, such as English, do not. No trace of syllabifying segmentation was found in English listeners listening to English words, French words, or nonsense words. French listeners, however, showed evidence of syllabification even when they were listening to English words. We conclude that alternative segmentation routines are available to the human language processor. In some cases speech segmentation may involve the operation of more than one procedure.

Abstract

The Possible Word Constraint is a proposed mechanism whereby listeners avoid recognising words spuriously embedded in other words. It applies to words leaving a vowelless residue between their edge and the nearest known word or syllable boundary. The present study tests the usefulness of this constraint via lexical statistics of both English and Dutch. The analyses demonstrate that the constraint removes a clear majority of embedded words in speech, and thus can contribute significantly to the efficiency of human speech recognition

Abstract

Recognizing spoken language involves automatic activation of multiple candidate words. The process of selection between candidates is made more efficient by inhibition of embedded words (like egg in beg) that leave a portion of the input stranded (here, b). Results from European languages suggest that this inhibition occurs when consonants are stranded but not when syllables are stranded. The reason why leftover syllables do not lead to inhibition could be that in principle they might themselves be words; in European languages, a syllable can be a word. In Sesotho (a Bantu language), however, a single syllable cannot be a word. We report that in Sesotho, word recognition is inhibited by stranded consonants, but stranded monosyllables produce no more difficulty than stranded bisyllables (which could be Sesotho words). This finding suggests that the viability constraint which inhibits spurious embedded word candidates is not sensitive to language-specific word structure, but is universal.

Abstract

Assimilation of place of articulation across a nasal and a following stop consonant is obligatory in Japanese, but not in Dutch. In four experiments the processing of assimilated forms by speakers of Japanese and Dutch was compared, using a task in which listeners blended pseudo-word pairs such as ranga-serupa. An assimilated blend of this pair would be rampa, an unassimilated blend rangpa. Japanese listeners produced significantly more assimilated than unassimilated forms, both with pseudo-Japanese and pseudo-Dutch materials, while Dutch listeners produced significantly more unassimilated than assimilated forms in each materials set. This suggests that Japanese listeners, whose native-language phonology involves obligatory assimilation constraints, represent the assimilated nasals in nasal-stop sequences as unmarked for place of articulation, while Dutch listeners, who are accustomed to hearing unassimilated forms, represent the same nasal segments as marked for place of articulation.

Abstract

In two experiments, Mandarin listeners resolved potential syntactic ambiguities in spoken utterances in (a) their native language (L1) and (b) English which they had learned as a second language (L2). A new disambiguation task was used, requiring speeded responses to select the correct meaning for structurally ambiguous sentences. Importantly, the ambiguities used in the study are identical in Mandarin and in English, and production data show that prosodic disambiguation of this type of ambiguity is also realised very similarly in the two languages. The perceptual results here showed however that listeners’ response patterns differed for L1 and L2, although there was a significant increase in similarity between the two response patterns with increasing exposure to the L2. Thus identical ambiguity and comparable disambiguation patterns in L1 and L2 do not lead to immediate application of the appropriate L1 listening strategy to L2; instead, it appears that such a strategy may have to be learned anew for the L2.

Abstract

Infants acquire whatever language is spoken in the environment into which they are born. The mental capability of the newborn child is not biased in any way towards the acquisition of one human language rather than another. Because psychologists who attempt to model the process of language comprehension are interested in the structure of the human mind, rather than in the properties of individual languages, strategies which they incorporate in their models are presumed to be universal, not language-specific. In other words, strategies of comprehension are presumed to be characteristic of the human language processing system, rather than, say, the French, English, or Igbo language processing systems. We report here, however, on a comprehension strategy which appears to be used by native speakers of French but not by native speakers of English.

Abstract

Word-initial CVC syllables are detected faster in words beginning consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel (CVCV-) than in words beginning consonant-vowel-consonant-consonant (CVCC-). This effect was reported independently by M. Taft and G. Hambly (1985, Journal of Memory and Language, 24, 320–335) and by A. Cutler, J. Mehler, D. Norris, and J. Segui (1986, Journal of Memory and Language, 25, 385–400). Taft and Hambly explained the effect in terms of lexical factors. This explanation cannot account for Cutler et al.'s results, in which the effect also appeared with nonwords and foreign words. Cutler et al. suggested that CVCV-sequences might simply be easier to perceive than CVCC-sequences. The present study confirms this suggestion, and explains it as a reflection of listener expectations constructed on the basis of distributional characteristics of the language.

Abstract

Previous research has shown that listeners use the prosodic structure of utterances in a predictive fashion in sentence comprehension, to direct attention to accented words. Acoustically identical words spliced into sentence contexts arc responded to differently if the prosodic structure of the context is \ aricd: when the preceding prosody indicates that the word will he accented, responses are faster than when the preceding prosodv is inconsistent with accent occurring on that word. In the present series of experiments speech hybridisation techniques were first used to interchange the timing patterns within pairs of prosodic variants of utterances, independently of the pitch and intensity contours. The time-adjusted utterances could then serve as a basis lor the orthogonal manipulation of the three prosodic dimensions of pilch, intensity and rhythm. The overall pattern of results showed that when listeners use prosody to predict accent location, they do not simply rely on a single prosodic dimension, hut exploit the interaction between pitch, intensity and rhythm.

Abstract

Languages differ in the constitution of their phonemic repertoire and in the relative distinctiveness of phonemes within the repertoire. In the present study, we asked whether such differences constrain spoken-word recognition, via two word reconstruction experiments, in which listeners turned non-words into real words by changing single sounds. The experiments were carried out in Dutch (which has a relatively balanced vowel-consonant ratio and many similar vowels) and in Spanish (which has many more consonants than vowels and high distinctiveness among the vowels). Both Dutch and Spanish listeners responded significantly faster and more accurately when required to change vowels as opposed to consonants; when allowed to change any phoneme, they more often altered vowels than consonants. Vowel information thus appears to constrain lexical selection less tightly (allow more potential candidates) than does consonant information, independent of language-specific phoneme repertoire and of relative distinctiveness of vowels.

Abstract

Using a phoneme detection task, the present series of
experiments examines whether listeners can entrain to
different combinations of prosodic cues to predict where focus
will fall in an utterance. The stimuli were recorded by four
female native speakers of Australian English who happened to
have used different prosodic cues to produce sentences with
prosodic focus: a combination of duration cues, mean and
maximum F0, F0 range, and longer pre-target interval before
the focused word onset, only mean F0 cues, only pre-target
interval, and only duration cues. Results revealed that listeners
can entrain in almost every condition except for where
duration was the only reliable cue. Our findings suggest that
listeners are flexible in the cues they use for focus processing.

Abstract

Spraak is continu, er zijn geen betrouwbare signalen waardoor de luisteraar weet waar het ene woord eindigt en het volgende begint. Voor volwassen luisteraars is het segmenteren van gesproken taal in afzonderlijke woorden dus niet onproblematisch, maar voor een kind dat nog geen woordenschat bezit, vormt de continuïteit van spraak een nog grotere uitdaging. Desalniettemin produceren de meeste kinderen hun eerste herkenbare woorden rond het begin van het tweede levensjaar. Aan deze vroege spraakproducties gaat een formidabele perceptuele prestatie vooraf. Tijdens het eerste levensjaar - met name gedurende de tweede helft - ontwikkelt de spraakperceptie zich van een algemeen fonetisch discriminatievermogen tot een selectieve gevoeligheid voor de fonologische contrasten die in de moedertaal voorkomen. Recent onderzoek heeft verder aangetoond dat kinderen, lang voordat ze ook maar een enkel woord kunnen zeggen, in staat zijn woorden die kenmerkend zijn voor hun moedertaal te onderscheiden van woorden die dat niet zijn. Bovendien kunnen ze woorden die eerst in isolatie werden aangeboden herkennen in een continue spraakcontext. Het dagelijkse taalaanbod aan een kind van deze leeftijd maakt het in zekere zin niet gemakkelijk, bijvoorbeeld doordat de meeste woorden niet in isolatie voorkomen. Toch wordt het kind ook wel houvast geboden, onder andere doordat het woordgebruik beperkt is.

Abstract

Becoming a native listener is the necessary precursor to becoming a native speaker. Babies in the first year of life undertake a remarkable amount of work; by the time they begin to speak, they have perceptually mastered the phonological repertoire and phoneme co-occurrence probabilities of the native language, and they can locate familiar word-forms in novel continuous-speech contexts. The skills acquired at this early stage form a necessary part of adult listening. However, the same native listening skills also underlie problems in listening to a late-acquired non-native language, accounting for why in such a case listening (an innate ability) is sometimes paradoxically more difficult than, for instance, reading (a learned ability).

Abstract

Listeners adapt rapidly to previously unheard talkers by
adjusting phoneme categories using lexical knowledge, in a
process termed lexically-guided perceptual learning. Although
this is firmly established for listening in the native language
(L1), perceptual flexibility in second languages (L2) is as yet
less well understood. We report two experiments examining L1
and L2 perceptual learning, the first in Mandarin-English late
bilinguals, the second in Australian learners of Mandarin. Both
studies showed stronger learning in L1; in L2, however,
learning appeared for the English-L1 group but not for the
Mandarin-L1 group. Phonological mapping differences from
the L1 to the L2 are suggested as the reason for this result.

Abstract

Languages contain tens of thousands of words, but these are constructed from a tiny handful of phonetic elements. Consequently, words resemble one another, or can be embedded within one another, a coup stick snot with standing. me process of spoken-word recognition by human listeners involves activation of multiple word candidates consistent with the input, and direct competition between activated candidate words. Further, human listeners are sensitive, at an early, prelexical, stage of speeeh processing, to constraints on what could potentially be a word of the language.

Abstract

Listeners' recognition of spoken language involves complex decoding processes: The continuous speech stream must be segmented into its component words, and words must be recognized despite great variability in their pronunciation (due to talker differences, or to influence of phonetic context, or to speech register) and despite competition from many spuriously present forms supported by the speech signal. L1 listeners deal more readily with all levels of this complexity than L2 listeners. Fortunately, the decoding processes necessary for competent L2 listening can be taught in the classroom. Evidence-based methodologies targeted at the development of efficient speech decoding include teaching of minimal pairs, of phonotactic constraints, and of reduction processes, as well as the use of dictation and L2 video captions.

Abstract

The phoneme detection task is widely used in spoken word recognition research. Alphabetically literate participants, however, are more used to explicit representations of letters than of phonemes. The present study explored whether phoneme detection is sensitive to how target phonemes are, or may be, orthographically realised. Listeners detected the target sounds [b,m,t,f,s,k] in word-initial position in sequences of isolated English words. Response times were faster to the targets [b,m,t], which have consistent word-initial spelling, than to the targets [f,s,k], which are inconsistently spelled, but only when listeners’ attention was drawn to spelling by the presence in the experiment of many irregularly spelled fillers. Within the inconsistent targets [f,s,k], there was no significant difference between responses to targets in words with majority and minority spellings. We conclude that performance in the phoneme detection task is not necessarily sensitive to orthographic effects, but that salient orthographic manipulation can induce such sensitivity.

Abstract

Two lexical decision experiments in Cantonese are described in which the recognition of spoken target words as a function of phonological similarity to a preceding prime is investigated. Phonological similaritv in first syllables produced inhibition, while similarity in second syllables led to facilitation. Differences between syllables in tonal and segmental structure had generally similar effects.

Abstract

Speech production is constrained at all levels by the demands of speech perception. The speaker's primary aim is successful communication, and to this end semantic, syntactic and lexical choices are directed by the needs of the listener. Even at the articulatory level, some aspects of production appear to be perceptually constrained, for example the blocking of phonological distortions under certain conditions. An apparent exception to this pattern is word boundary information, which ought to be extremely useful to listeners, but which is not reliably coded in speech. It is argued that the solution to this apparent problem lies in rethinking the concept of the boundary of the lexical access unit. Speech rhythm provides clear information about the location of stressed syllables, and listeners do make use of this information. If stressed syllables can serve as the determinants of word lexical access codes, then once again speakers are providing precisely the necessary form of speech information to facilitate perception.

Abstract

This chapter highlights that most language behavior consists of speaking and listening. The chapter also reveals differences and similarities between speaking and listening. The laboratory study of word production raises formidable problems; ensuring that a particular word is produced may subvert the spontaneous production process. Word production is investigated via slips and tip-of-the-tongue (TOT), primarily via instances of processing failure and via the technique of via the picture-naming task. The methodology of word production is explained in the chapter. The chapter also explains the phenomenon of interaction between various stages of word production and the process of speech recognition. In this context, it explores the difference between sound and meaning and examines whether or not the comparisons are appropriate between the processes of recognition and production of spoken words. It also describes the similarities and differences in the structure of the recognition and production systems. Finally, the chapter highlights the common issues in recognition and production research, which include the nuances of frequency of occurrence, morphological structure, and phonological structure.

Abstract

Dutch listeners were slower to make judgements about the semantic relatedness between a spoken target word (e.g. atLEET, 'athlete') and a previously presented visual prime word (e.g. SPORT 'sport') when the spoken word was mis-stressed. The adverse effect of mis-stressing confirms the role of stress information in lexical recognition in Dutch. However, although the erroneous stress pattern was always initially compatible with a competing word (e.g. ATlas, 'atlas'), mis-stressed words did not produced high false alarm rates in unrelated pairs (e.g. SPORT - atLAS). This suggests that stress information did not completely rule out segmentally matching but suprasegmentally mismatching words, a finding consistent with spoken-word recognition models involving multiple activation and inter-word competition.

Abstract

Studies of human speech processing have provided evidence for a segmentation strategy in the perception of continuous speech, whereby a word boundary is postulated, and a lexical access procedure initiated, at each metrically strong syllable. The likely success of this strategy was here estimated against the characteristics of the English vocabulary. Two computerized dictionaries were found to list approximately three times as many words beginning with strong syllables (i.e. syllables containing a full vowel) as beginning with weak syllables (i.e. syllables containing a reduced vowel). Consideration of frequency of lexical word occurrence reveals that words beginning with strong syllables occur on average more often than words beginning with weak syllables. Together, these findings motivate an estimate for everyday speech recognition that approximately 85% of lexical words (i.e. excluding function words) will begin with strong syllables. This estimate was tested against a corpus of 190 000 words of spontaneous British English conversion. In this corpus, 90% of lexical words were found to begin with strong syllables. This suggests that a strategy of postulating word boundaries at the onset of strong syllables would have a high success rate in that few actual lexical word onsets would be missed.

Abstract

Simulations explored the inability of the TRACE model of spoken-word recognition to model the effects on human listening of acoustic-phonetic mismatches in word forms. The source of TRACE's failure lay not in its interactive connectivity, not in the presence of interword competition, and not in the use of phonemic representations, but in the need for continuously optimised interpretation of the input. When an analogue of TRACE was allowed to cycle to asymptote on every slice of input, an acceptable simulation of the subcategorical mismatch data was achieved. Even then, however, the simulation was not as close as that produced by the Merge model.

Abstract

The role of accent in reference resolution was investigated by monitoring eye fixations to lexical competitors (e.g., candy and candle ) as participants followed prerecorded instructions to move objects above or below fixed geometric shapes using a computer mouse. In Experiment 1, the first utterance instructed participants to move one object above or below a shape (e.g., “Put the candle/candy below the triangle”) and the second utterance contained an accented or deaccented definite noun phrase which referred to the same object or introduced a new entity (e.g., “Now put the CANDLE above the square” vs. “Now put the candle ABOVE THE SQUARE”). Fixations to the competitor (e.g., candy ) demonstrated a bias to interpret deaccented nouns as anaphoric and accented nouns as nonanaphoric. Experiment 2 used only accented nouns in the second instruction, varying whether the referent of this second instruction was the Theme of the first instruction (e.g., “Put the candle below the triangle”) or the Goal of the first instruction (e.g., “Put the necklace below the candle”). Participants preferred to interpret accented noun phrases as referring to a previously mentioned nonfocused entity (the Goal) rather than as introducing a new unmentioned entity.

Abstract

The neural mechanism for selectively tuning in to a target speaker while tuning out the others in a multi-speaker situation (i.e., the cocktail-party effect) remains elusive. Here we addressed this issue by measuring brain activity simultaneously from a listener and from multiple speakers while they were involved in naturalistic conversations. Results consistently show selectively enhanced interpersonal neural synchronization (INS) between the listener and the attended speaker at left temporal–parietal junction, compared with that between the listener and the unattended speaker across different multi-speaker situations. Moreover, INS increases significantly prior to the occurrence of verbal responses, and even when the listener’s brain activity precedes that of the speaker. The INS increase is independent of brain-to-speech synchronization in both the anatomical location and frequency range. These findings suggest that INS underlies the selective process in a multi-speaker situation through neural predictions at the content level but not the sensory level of speech.

Abstract

Different linguistic structures allow us to highlight distinct aspects of a situation. The aim of this survey is to investigate similarities and differences in the expression of situations or events as “stative” (maintaining a state), “inchoative” (adopting a state) and “agentive” (causing something to be in a state). The questionnaire focuses on the encoding of stative, inchoative and agentive possibilities for the translation equivalents of a set of English verbs.

Abstract

Expressions of human activities and states are a rich area for cross-linguistic comparison. Some languages of the world treat human posture verbs (e.g., sit, lie, kneel) as a special class of predicates, with distinct formal properties. This survey examines lexical, semantic and grammatical patterns for posture verbs, with special reference to contrasts between “stative” (maintaining a posture), “inchoative” (adopting a posture), and “agentive” (causing something to adopt a posture) constructions. The enquiry is thematically linked to the more general questionnaire 'Intransitive Predicate Form Class Survey'.

Abstract

One of the best-known types of non-independence between languages is caused by genealogical relationships due to descent from a common ancestor. These can be represented by (more or less resolved and controversial) language family trees. In theory, one can argue that language families should be built through the strict application of the comparative method of historical linguistics, but in practice this is not always the case, and there are several proposed classifications of languages into language families, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. A major stumbling block shared by most of them is that they are relatively difficult to use with computational methods, and in particular with phylogenetics. This is due to their lack of standardization, coupled with the general non-availability of branch length information, which encapsulates the amount of evolution taking place on the family tree. In this paper I introduce a method (and its implementation in R) that converts the language classifications provided by four widely-used databases (Ethnologue, WALS, AUTOTYP and Glottolog) intothe de facto Newick standard generally used in phylogenetics, aligns the four most used conventions for unique identifiers of linguistic entities (ISO 639-3, WALS, AUTOTYP and Glottocode), and adds branch length information from a variety of sources (the tree's own topology, an externally given numeric constant, or a distance matrix). The R scripts, input data and resulting Newick trees are available under liberal open-source licenses in a GitHub repository (https://github.com/ddediu/lgfam-newick), to encourage and promote the use of phylogenetic methods to investigate linguistic diversity and its temporal dynamics.

Abstract

Here we re-evaluate our 2013 paper on the antiquity of language (Dediu and Levinson, 2013) in the light of a surge of new information on human evolution in the last half million years. Although new genetic data suggest the existence of some cognitive differences between Neanderthals and modern humans — fully expected after hundreds of thousands of years of partially separate evolution, overall our claims that Neanderthals were fully articulate beings and that language evolution was gradual are further substantiated by the wealth of new genetic, paleontological and archeological evidence briefly reviewed here.