Publications

Abstract

A discourse domain D is a form of middle-term memory for the storage of the information embodied in the discourse at hand. The information carried by a new utterance u is added to D (u is incremented to D). The processes involved and the specific structure of D are a matter of ongoing research.

Abstract

Discourse semantics (DSx) is based on the fact that the interpretation of uttered sentences is dependent on and co-determined by the information stored in a specialized middle-term cognitive memory called discourse domain (D). DSx studies the structure and dynamics of Ds and the conditions to be fulfilled by D for proper interpretation. It does so in the light of the truth-conditional criteria for semantics, with an emphasis on intensionality phenomena. It requires the assumption of virtual entities and virtual facts. Any model-theoretic interpretation holds between discourse structures and pre-established verification domains.

Abstract

Aristotle's importance in the professional study of language consists first of all in the fact that he demythologized language and made it an object of rational investigation. In the context of his theory of truth as correspondence, he also provided the first semantic analysis of propositions in that he distinguished two main constituents, the predicate, which expresses a property, and the remainder of the proposition, referring to a substance to which the property is assigned. That assignment is either true or false. Later, the ‘remainder’ was called subject term, and the Aristotelian predicate was identified with the verb in the sentence. The Aristotelian predicate, however, is more like what is now called the ‘comment,’ whereas his remainder corresponds to the topic. Aristotle, furthermore, defined nouns and verbs as word classes. In addition, he introduced the term ‘case’ for paradigmatic morphological variation.

Abstract

There is a growing awareness among theoretical linguists and philosophers of language that the linguistic definition of lexical meanings, which must be learned when one learns a language, underdetermines not only full utterance interpretation but also sentence meaning. The missing information must be provided by cognition – that is, either general encyclopedic or specific situational knowledge. This fact crucially shows the basic insufficiency of current standard model-theoretic semantics as a paradigm for the analysis and description of linguistic meaning.

Abstract

The lexical conditions, also known as satisfaction conditions, of a predicate P are the conditions that must be satisfied by the term referents of P for P applied to these term referents to yield a true sentence. In view of presupposition theory it makes sense to distinguish two categories of lexical conditions, the preconditions that must be satisfied for the sentence to be usable in any given discourse, and the update conditions which must be satisfied for the sentence to yield truth.

Abstract

The widely prevailing view that standard bivalent logic is the only possible sound logical system, imposed by metaphysical necessity, has been shattered by the development of multivalent logics during the 20th century. It is now clear that standard bivalent logic is merely the minimal representative of a wide variety of viable logics with any number of truth values. These viable logics can be subdivided into families. In this article, the Kleene family and the PPCn family are subjected to special examination, as they appear to be most relevant for the study of the logical properties of human language.

Abstract

Speech is perceived relative to the speech rate in the context. It is unclear, however, what information listeners use to compute speech rate. The present study examines whether listeners use the number of
syllables per unit time (i.e., syllable rate) as a measure of speech rate, as indexed by subsequent vowel perception. We ran two rate-normalization experiments in which participants heard duration-matched word lists that contained either monosyllabic
vs. bisyllabic words (Experiment 1), or monosyllabic vs. trisyllabic pseudowords (Experiment 2). The participants’ task was to categorize an /ɑ-aː/ continuum that followed the word lists. The monosyllabic condition was perceived as slower (i.e., fewer /aː/ responses) than the bisyllabic and
trisyllabic condition. However, no difference was observed between bisyllabic and trisyllabic contexts. Therefore, while syllable rate is used in perceiving speech rate, other factors, such as fast speech processes, mean F0, and intensity, must also influence rate normalization.

Abstract

This paper presents research findings on manual gestures
associated with negation in Indonesian, utilizing data sourced
from talk shows available on YouTube. The study reveals that
Indonesian speakers employ six recurrent negation gestures,
which have been observed in various languages worldwide.
This suggests that gestures exhibiting a stable form-meaning
relationship and recurring frequently in relation to negation are
prevalent around the globe, although their distribution may
differ across cultures and languages. Furthermore, the paper
demonstrates that negation gestures are not strictly tied to
verbal negation. Overall, the aim of this paper is to contribute
to a deeper understanding of the conventional usage and cross-
linguistic distribution of recurrent gestures.

Abstract

The classification of texts and pieces of texts uses the occurrence of, combinations of, words as an important indicator. Not every word or each combination of words gives a clear indication of the classification of a piece of text. Research has been done on methods that select some words or combinations of words that are more indicative of the type of a piece of text. These words or combinations of words are selected from the words and word-groups as they occur in the texts. These more indicative words or combinations of words we call ¿cue-phrases¿. The goal of these methods is to select the most indicative cue-phrases first. The collection of selected words and/or combinations thereof can then be used for training the classification system. To test these selection methods, a number of experiments has been done on a corpus containing cookbook recipes and on a corpus of four-participant meetings. To perform these experiments, a computer program was written. On the recipe corpus we looked at classifying the sentences into different types. Some examples of these types include ¿requirement¿ and ¿instruction¿. On the four-person meeting corpus we tried to learn, using only lexical features, whether a sentence is addressed to an individual or a group. The experiments on the recipe corpus produced good results that showed that, a number of, the used cue-phrase selection methods are suitable for feature selection. The experiments on the four-person meeting corpus where less successful in terms of performance off the classification task. We did see comparable patterns in selection methods, and considering the results of Jovanovic we can conclude that different features are needed for this particular classification task. One of the original goals was to look at ¿addressee¿ in discussions. Are sentences more often addressed to individuals inside discussions compared to outside discussions? However, in order to be able to accomplish this, we must first identify the segments of the text that are discussions. It proved hard to come to a reliable specification of discussions, and our initial definition wasn¿t sufficient.

Abstract

This study focuses on embodied uses of recognitional
demonstratives. While multimodal conversation analytic
studies have shown how gesture and speech interact in the
elaboration of exophoric references, little attention has been
given to the multimodal configuration of other types of
referential actions. Based on a video-recorded corpus of
professional meetings held in French, this qualitative study
shows that a subtype of deictic references, namely recognitional
references, are frequently associated with iconic gestures, thus
challenging the traditional distinction between exophoric and
endophoric uses of deixis.

Abstract

This paper describes ongoing research aiming at the description of variation in speech as represented by asynchronous articulatory features. We will first illustrate how distances in the articulatory feature space can be used for event detection along speech trajectories in this space. The temporal structure imposed by the cosine distance in articulatory feature space coincides to a large extent with the manual segmentation on phone level. The analysis also indicates that the articulatory feature representation provides better such alignments than the MFCC representation does. Secondly, we will present first results that indicate that articulatory features can be used to probe for acoustic differences in the onsets of Dutch singulars and plurals.

Abstract

This paper builds on previous work that aims at unraveling the structure of the speech signal by means of using probabilistic representations. The context of this work is a multi-pass speech recognition system in which a phone lattice is created and used as a basis for a lexical search in which symbolic mismatches are allowed at certain costs. The focus is on the optimization of the costs of phone insertions, deletions and substitutions that are used in the lexical decoding pass. Two optimization approaches are presented, one related to a multi-pass computational model for human speech recognition, the other based on a decoding in which Bayes’ risks are minimized. In the final section, the advantages of these optimization methods are discussed and compared.

Abstract

The Papuan languages of the central Solomon Islands are a negatively defined areal grouping: They are those four or possibly five languages in the central Solomon Islands that do not belong to the Austronesian family. Bilua (Vella Lavella), Touo (Rendova), Lavukaleve (Russell Islands), Savosavo (Savo Island) and possibly Kazukuru (New Georgia) have been identified as non-Austronesian since the early 20th century. However, their affiliations both to each other and to other languages still remain a mystery. Heterogeneous and until recently largely undescribed, they present an interesting departure from what is known both of Austronesian languages in the region and of the Papuan languages of the mainland of New Guinea.

Abstract

This paper presents a new interdisciplinary methodology for the
analysis of future conceptualisations in big messy media data.
More specifically, it focuses on the depictions of post-Covid
futures by RT during the pandemic, i.e. on data which are of
interest not just from the perspective of academic research but
also of policy engagement. The methodology has been
developed to support the scaling up of fine-grained data-driven
analysis of discourse utterances larger than individual lexical
units which are centred around ‘will’ + the infinitive. It relies
on the true integration of manual analytical and computational
methods and tools in researching three modalities – textual,
prosodic1, and gestural. The paper describes the process of
building a computational infrastructure for the collection and
processing of video data, which aims to empower the manual
analysis. It also shows how manual analysis can motivate the
development of computational tools. The paper presents
individual computational tools to demonstrate how the
combination of human and machine approaches to analysis can
reveal new manifestations of cohesion between gesture and
prosody. To illustrate the latter, the paper shows how the
boundaries of prosodic units can work to help determine the
boundaries of gestural units for future conceptualisations.

Abstract

Over the course of a conversation, interlocutors sound more and more like each other in a process called convergence. However, the automaticity and grain size of convergence are not well established. This study therefore examined whether female native Dutch speakers converge to large yet sub-phonemic shifts in the F2 of the vowel /e/. Participants first performed a short reading task to establish baseline F2s for the vowel /e/, then shadowed 120 target words (alongside 360 fillers) which contained one instance of a manipulated vowel /e/ where the F2 had been shifted down to that of the vowel /ø/. Consistent exposure to large (sub-phonemic) downward shifts in F2 did not result in convergence. The results raise issues for theories which view convergence as a product of automatic integration between perception and production.

Abstract

We report four experiments in which English and Italian monolinguals detected clicks in continous speech in their native language. Two of the experiments used an off-line location task, and two used an on-line reaction time task. Despite there being large differences between English and Italian with respect to rhythmic characteristics, very similar response patterns were found for the two language groups. It is concluded that the process of click detection operates independently from language-specific differences in perceptual processing at the sublexical level.

Abstract

This book provides an overview of the grammatical structure of the language Yurakaré, an unclassified and previously undescribed language of central Bolivia. It consists of 8 chapters, each describing different aspects of the language. Chapter 1 is an introduction to the Yurakaré people and their language. Chapter 2 describes the phonology of the language, from the individual sounds to the stress system. In chapter 3 the morphology of Yurakaré is introduced, i.e. the parts of speech, and the different morphological processes. Chapter 4 is a description of the noun phrase and contains information about nouns, adjectives, postpositions and quantifiers. It also discusses the categories associated with the noun phrase in Yurakaré, such as number, possession, collectivity/distributivity, diminutive. In chapter 5, called 'Verbal agreement, voice and valency' there is a description of the argument structure of predicates, how arguments are expressed and how argument structure can be altered by means of voice and valency-changing operations such as applicatives, causative and middle voice. In chapter 6 there is an overview of verbal morphology, apart from the morphology associated with voice, valency and cross-reference discussed in chapter 5. There is also a description of adverbs in the language in this chapter. Chapter 7 discusses formal and functional properties of modal and aspectual enclitics. In chapter 8, finally, the structure of the clause (both simplex and complex) is discussed, including the switch-reference system and word order. The book ends with two text samples.

Abstract

Language- and speech-related disorders are among the most frequent consequences of developmental and acquired pathologies. While classical approaches to the study of these disorders typically employed the lesion method to unveil one-to-one correspondence between locations, the extent of the brain damage, and corresponding symptoms, recent advances advocate the use of online methods of investigation. For example, the use of electrophysiology or magnetoencephalography—especially when combined with anatomical measures—allows for in vivo tracking of real-time language and speech events, and thus represents a particularly promising venue for future research targeting rehabilitative interventions. In this chapter, we provide a comprehensive overview of language and speech pathologies arising from cortical and/or subcortical damage, and their corresponding neurophysiological and pathological symptoms. Building upon the reviewed evidence and literature, we aim at providing a description of how the neurophysiology of the language network changes as a result of brain damage. We will conclude by summarizing the evidence presented in this chapter, while suggesting directions for future research.

Abstract

Linguistic context vectors are adapted for measuring the linguistic contexts that accompany gestures and comparable co-linguistic behaviours. Focusing on gestural semiotic types, it is demonstrated that gestural linguistic context vectors carry information associated with gesture. It is suggested that these may be used to approximate gesture meaning in a similar manner to the approximation of word meaning by context vectors.

Abstract

When we want to describe a path through space, but do not share a common perceptual field with a conversation partner, language has to work doubly hard. This task investigates how people communicate the navigation of space in the absence of shared visual cues, as well as collecting data on motion verbs and the roles of symmetry and landmarks in route description. Two speakers (separated by a curtain or other barrier) are each given a model of a landscape, and one participant describes standard routes through this landscape for the other to match.

Abstract

The encoding of apparently ‘simple’ movement concepts such as ‘COME’ and ‘GO’ can differ widely across languages (e.g., in regard to specifying direction of motion relative to the speaker). This questionnaire is used to identify the range of use of basic motion verbs in a language, and investigate semantic parameters that are involved in high frequency ‘COME’ and ‘GO’-like terms.

Abstract

It has been suggested that individual variation in vowel compactness of the native language (L1) and the distance between L1 vowels and vowels in the second language (L2) predict successful L2 vowel acquisition. Moreover, general articulatory skills have been proposed to account for variation in vowel compactness. In the present work, we conceptually replicate a previous study to test these hypotheses with a large sample size, a new language pair and a
new vowel pair. We find evidence that individual variation in L1 vowel compactness has opposing effects for two different vowels. We do not find evidence that individual variation in L1 compactness
is explained by general articulatory skills. We conclude that the results found previously might be specific to sub-groups of L2 learners and/or specific sub-sets of vowel pairs.

Abstract

Utilization of computer tools in linguistic research has gained importance with the maturation of media frameworks for the handling of digital audio and video. The increased use of these tools in gesture, sign language and multimodal interaction studies has led to stronger requirements on the flexibility, the efficiency and in particular the time accuracy of annotation tools. This paper describes the efforts made to make ELAN a tool that meets these requirements, with special attention to the developments in the area of time accuracy. In subsequent sections an overview will be given of other enhancements in the latest versions of ELAN, that make it a useful tool in multimodality research.

Abstract

A number of serious reasons will convince an increasing amount of researchers to store their relevant material in centers which we will call "language resource archives". They combine the duty of taking care of long-term preservation as well as the task to give access to their material to different user groups. Access here is meant in the sense that an active interaction with the data will be made possible to support the integration of new data, new versions or commentaries of all sort. Modern Language Resource Archives will have to adhere to a number of basic principles to fulfill all requirements and they will have to be involved in federations to create joint language resource domains making it even more simple for the researchers to access the data. This paper makes an attempt to formulate the essential pillars language resource archives have to adhere to.

Abstract

In the absence of explicitly marked cues to word boundaries, listeners tend to segment spoken English at the onset of strong syllables. This may suggest that under difficult listening conditions, speech should be easier to recognize where strong syllables are word-initial. We report two experiments in which listeners were presented with sentences which had been time-compressed to make listening difficult. The first study contrasted sentences in which all content words began with strong syllables with sentences in which all content words began with weak syllables. The intelligibility of the two groups of sentences did not differ significantly. Apparent rhythmic effects in the results prompted a second experiment; however, no significant effects of systematic rhythmic manipulation were observed. In both experiments, the strongest predictor of intelligibility was the rated plausibility of the sentences. We conclude that listeners' recognition responses to time-compressed speech may be strongly subject to experiential bias; effects of rhythmic structure are most likely to show up also as bias effects.

Abstract

Although sign language-using communities exist in all areas of the world, few sign languages have been documented in detail. Sign languages occur in a variety of sociocultural contexts, ranging from sign languages used in closed village communities to officially recognized national sign languages. They may be grouped into language families on historical grounds or may participate in various language contact situations. Systematic cross-linguistic comparison reveals both significant structural similarities and important typological differences between sign languages. Focusing on information from non-Western countries, this article provides an overview of the sign languages of the world.