Publications

Abstract

This paper examines code and style shifting during sales transactions based on two market case studies from highland Ecuador. Bringing together ideas of linguistic economy with work on stylistic variation and ethnohistorical research on Andean markets, I study bartering, market calls and sales pitches to show how sellers create stylistic performances distinguished by contrasts of code, register and poetic features. The interaction of the symbolic value of language with the economic values of the market presents a place to examine the relationship between discourse and the material world.

Abstract

The human brain supports acquisition mechanisms that extract structural regularities implicitly from experience without the induction of an explicit model. It has been argued that the capacity to generalize to new input is based on the acquisition of abstract representations, which reflect underlying structural regularities in the input ensemble. In this study, we explored the outcome of this acquisition mechanism, and to this end, we investigated the neural correlates of artificial syntactic classification using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging. The participants engaged once a day during an 8-day period in a short-term memory acquisition task in which consonant-strings generated from an artificial grammar were presented in a sequential fashion without performance feedback. They performed reliably above chance on the grammaticality classification tasks on days 1 and 8 which correlated with a corticostriatal processing network, including frontal, cingulate, inferior parietal, and middle occipital/occipitotemporal regions as well as the caudate nucleus. Part of the left inferior frontal region (BA 45) was specifically related to syntactic violations and showed no sensitivity to local substring familiarity. In addition, the head of the caudate nucleus correlated positively with syntactic correctness on day 8 but not day 1, suggesting that this region contributes to an increase in cognitive processing fluency.

Abstract

The role of gravity in spatial coordinate assignment and the mental representation of space were studiedin three experiments, varying different perceptual cues systematically: the retinal, the visual background, the vestibular, and proprioceptive information. Verbal descriptions of visually presented arrays were required under different head positions (straight/tilt) and under different gravitational conditions (gravity present/gravity absent). The results of two experiments conducted with 2 subjects who participated in a space flight revealed that subjects are able to adequately assign positions in space in the absence of gravitational information, and that they do this by using their head—retinal coordinates as primary references. This indicates that they cognitively adapted to the perceptually new situation.The findings from a third experiment conducted with a larger group of subjects under a condition in which the gravitational information was present but irrelevant to the task being solved (subjects were in a-horizontal 8upine-position) show that subjects, in general, are flexible in using cues other than gravitational ones as references when the latter cannot serve as a referential system. These findings, together with the observation that consistent spatial assignment is possible evenimmediately after first exposure to the perceptually totally novel situation of weightlessness, seem to suggest that the mental representation of space, onto which given perceptual information is mapped, is independent of a particular percept.

Abstract

Segmentation (and, indeed, definition) of the human body in Kuuk Thaayorre (a Paman language of Cape York Peninsula, Australia) is in some respects typologically unusual, while at other times it conforms to cross-linguistic patterns. The process of deriving complex body part terms from monolexemic items is revealing of metaphorical associations between parts of the body. Associations between parts of the body and entities and phenomena in the broader environment are evidenced by the ubiquity of body part terms (in their extended uses) throughout Thaayorre speech. Understanding the categorisation of the body is therefore prerequisite to understanding the Thaayorre language and worldview.

Abstract

The Error-Related Negativity (ERN) is a component of the event-related brain potential (ERP) that is associated with action monitoring and error detection. The present study addressed the question whether or not an ERN occurs after verbal error detection, e.g., during phoneme monitoring.We obtained an ERN following verbal errors which showed a typical decrease in amplitude under severe time pressure. This result demonstrates that the functioning of the verbal self-monitoring system is comparable to other performance monitoring, such as action monitoring. Furthermore, we found that participants made more errors in phoneme monitoring under time pressure than in a control condition. This may suggest that time pressure decreases the amount of resources available to a capacity-limited self-monitor thereby leading to more errors.

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explore whether indexing terms for an audiovisual program can be derived from contextual texts automatically. For this we apply natural-language processing techniques to contextual texts of two Dutch TV-programs. We use a Dutch domain thesaurus to derive possible metadata. This possible metadata is ranked by an algorithm which uses the relations of the thesaurus. We evaluate the results by comparing them to human made descriptions.

Abstract

A key function of attention is to select an appropriate subset of available information by facilitation of attended processes and/or inhibition of irrelevant processing. Functional imaging studies, using positron emission tomography, have during different experimental tasks revealed decreased neuronal activity in areas that process input from unattended sensory modalities. It has been hypothesized that these decreases reflect a selective inhibitory modulation of nonrelevant cortical processing. In this study we addressed this question using a continuous arithmetical task with and without concomitant disturbing auditory input (task-irrelevant speech). During the arithmetical task, irrelevant speech did not affect task-performance but yielded decreased activity in the auditory and midcingulate cortices and increased activity in the left posterior parietal cortex. This pattern of modulation is consistent with a top down inhibitory modulation of a nonattended input to the auditory cortex and a coexisting, attention-based facilitation of taskrelevant processing in higher order cortices. These findings suggest that task-related decreases in cortical activity may be of functional importance in the understanding of both attentional mechanisms and taskrelated information processing.

Abstract

Acquiring the sounds of a language involves learning to recognize distributional patterns present in the input. We show that among adult learners, this distributional learning of auditory categories (which are conceived of here as probability density functions in a multidimensional space) is constrained by the salience of the dimensions that form the axes of this perceptual space. Only with a particular ratio of variation in the perceptual dimensions was category learning driven by the distributional properties of the input.

Abstract

This paper outlines some reasons for why gestures are relevant to the study of SLA. First, given cross-cultural and cross-linguistic gestural repertoires, gestures can be treated as part of what learners can acquire in a target language. Gestures can therefore be studied as a developing system in their own right both in L2 production and comprehension. Second, because of the close link between gestures, language, and speech, learners' gestures as deployed in L2 usage and interaction can offer valuable insights into the processes of acquisition, such as the handling of expressive difficulties, the influence of the first language, interlanguage phenomena, and possibly even into planning and processing difficulties. As a form of input to learners and to their interlocutors alike, finally, gestures also play a potential role for comprehension and learning.

Abstract

The papers in this volume explore the cognitive neuroscience of second language acquisition from the perspectives of critical/sensitive periods, maturational effects, individual differences, neural regions involved, and processing characteristics. The research methodologies used include functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), positron emission tomography (PET), and event related potentials (ERP). Questions addressed include: Which brain areas are reliably activated in second language processing? Are they the same or different from those activated in first language acquisition and use? What are the behavioral consequences of individual differences among brains? What are the consequences of anatomical and physiological differences, learner proficiency effects, critical/sensitive periods? What role does degeneracy, in which two different neural systems can produce the same behavioral output, play? What does it mean that learners' brains respond to linguistic distinctions that cannot be recognized or produced yet? The studies in this volume provide initial answers to all of these questions.

Abstract

This study investigates whether addressees visually attend to speakers’ gestures in interaction and whether attention is modulated by changes in social setting and display size. We compare a live face-to-face setting to two video conditions. In all conditions, the face dominates as a fixation target and only a minority of gestures draw fixations. The social and size parameters affect gaze mainly when combined and in the opposite direction from the predicted with fewer gestures fixated on video than live. Gestural holds and speakers’ gaze at their own gestures reliably attract addressees’ fixations in all conditions. The attraction force of holds is unaffected by changes in social and size parameters, suggesting a bottom-up response, whereas speaker-fixated gestures draw significantly less attention in both video conditions, suggesting a social effect for overt gaze-following and visual joint attention. The study provides and validates a video-based paradigm enabling further experimental but ecologically valid explorations of cross-modal information processing.

Abstract

The production of cohesive discourse, especially maintained reference, poses problems for early second language (L2) speakers. This paper considers a communicative account of overexplicit L2 discourse by focusing on the interdependence between spoken and gestural cohesion, the latter being expressed by anchoring of referents in gesture space. Specifically, this study investigates whether overexplicit maintained reference in speech (lexical noun phrases [NPs]) and gesture (anaphoric gestures) constitutes an interactional communication strategy. We examine L2 speech and gestures of 16 Dutch learners of French retelling stories to addressees under two visibility conditions. The results indicate that the overexplicit properties of L2 speech are not motivated by interactional strategic concerns. The results for anaphoric gestures are more complex. Although their presence is not interactionally

Abstract

Gestures are often regarded as the most typical compensatory device used by language learners in communicative trouble. Yet gestural solutions to communicative problems have rarely been studied within any theory of second language use. The work pre­sented in this volume aims to account for second language learners’ strategic use of speech-associated gestures by combining a process-oriented framework for communi­cation strategies with a cognitive theory of gesture. Two empirical studies are presented. The production study investigates Swedish lear­ners of French and French learners of Swedish and their use of strategic gestures. The results, which are based on analyses of both individual and group behaviour, contradict popular opinion as well as theoretical assumptions from both fields. Gestures are not primarily used to replace speech, nor are they chiefly mimetic. Instead, learners use gestures with speech, and although they do exploit mimetic gestures to solve lexical problems, they also use more abstract gestures to handle discourse-related difficulties and metalinguistic commentary. The influence of factors such as proficiency, task, culture, and strategic competence on gesture use is discussed, and the oral and gestural strategic modes are compared. In the evaluation study, native speakers’ assessments of learners’ gestures, and the potential effect of gestures on evaluations of proficiency are analysed and discussed in terms of individual communicative style. Compensatory gestures function at multiple communicative levels. This has implica­tions for theories of communication strategies, and an expansion of the existing frameworks is discussed taking both cognitive and interactive aspects into account.

Abstract

We explore the nature of the oscillatory dynamics in the EEG of subjects reading sentences that contain a semantic violation. More specifically, we examine whether increases in theta (≈3–7 Hz) and gamma (around 40 Hz) band power occur in response to sentences that were either semantically correct or contained a semantically incongruent word (semantic violation). ERP results indicated a classical N400 effect. A wavelet-based time-frequency analysis revealed a theta band power increase during an interval of 300–800 ms after critical word onset, at temporal electrodes bilaterally for both sentence conditions, and over midfrontal areas for the semantic violations only. In the gamma frequency band, a predominantly frontal power increase was observed during the processing of correct sentences. This effect was absent following semantic violations. These results provide a characterization of the oscillatory brain dynamics, and notably of both theta and gamma oscillations, that occur during language comprehension.

Abstract

Many current sentence generators lack the ability to compute elliptical versions of coordinated clauses in accordance with the rules for Gapping, Forward and Backward Conjunction Reduction, and SGF (Subject Gap in clauses with Finite/ Fronted verb). We describe a module (implemented in JAVA, with German and Dutch as target languages) that takes non-elliptical coordinated clauses as input and returns all reduced versions licensed by coordinative ellipsis. It is loosely based on a new psycholinguistic theory of coordinative ellipsis proposed by Kempen. In this theory, coordinative ellipsis is not supposed to result from the application of declarative grammar rules for clause formation but from a procedural component that interacts with the sentence generator and may block the overt expression of certain constituents.

Abstract

We describe a generation-oriented workbench for the Performance Grammar (PG) formalism, highlighting the treatment of certain word order and movement constraints in Dutch and German. PG enables a simple and uniform treatment of a heterogeneous collection of linear order phenomena in the domain of verb constructions (variably known as Cross-serial Dependencies, Verb Raising, Clause Union, Extraposition, Third Construction, Particle Hopping, etc.). The central data structures enabling this feature are clausal “topologies”: one-dimensional arrays associated with clauses, whose cells (“slots”) provide landing sites for the constituents of the clause. Movement operations are enabled by unification of lateral slots of topologies at adjacent levels of the clause hierarchy. The PGW generator assists the grammar developer in testing whether the implemented syntactic knowledge allows all and only the well-formed permutations of constituents.

Abstract

Comparatively little is known about the inherited primate background underlying human cognition, the human cognitive “wild-type.” Yet it is possible to trace the evolution of human cognitive abilities and tendencies by contrasting the skills of our nearest cousins, not just chimpanzees, but all the extant great apes, thus showing what we are likely to have inherited from the common ancestor [1]. By looking at human infants early in cognitive development, we can also obtain insights into native cognitive biases in our species [2]. Here, we focus on spatial memory, a central cognitive domain. We show, first, that all nonhuman great apes and 1-year-old human infants exhibit a preference for place over feature strategies for spatial memory. This suggests the common ancestor of all great apes had the same preference. We then examine 3-year-old human children and find that this preference reverses. Thus, the continuity between our species and the other great apes is masked early in human ontogeny. These findings, based on both phylogenetic and ontogenetic contrasts, open up the prospect of a systematic evolutionary psychology resting upon the cladistics of cognitive preferences.

Abstract

Current approaches to human cognition often take a strong nativist stance based on Western adult performance, backed up where possible by neonate and infant research and almost never by comparative research across the Hominidae. Recent research suggests considerable cross-cultural differences in cognitive strategies, including relational thinking, a domain where infant research is impossible because of lack of cognitive maturation. Here, we apply the same paradigm across children and adults of different cultures and across all nonhuman great ape genera. We find that both child and adult spatial cognition systematically varies with language and culture but that, nevertheless, there is a clear inherited bias for one spatial strategy in the great apes. It is reasonable to conclude, we argue, that language and culture mask the native tendencies in our species. This cladistic approach suggests that the correct perspective on human cognition is neither nativist uniformitarian nor ‘‘blank slate’’ but recognizes the powerful impact that language and culture can have on our shared primate cognitive biases.

Abstract

Interrogative structures such as ‘Could you pass the salt? and ‘Couldn’t you pass the salt?’ can be used for making requests. A study of such pairs within a conversation analytic framework suggests that these are not used interchangeably, and that they have different impacts on the interaction. Focusing on Danish interactions between elderly care recipients and their home help assistants, I demonstrate how the care recipient displays different degrees of stance towards whether she is entitled to make a request or not, depending on whether she formats her request as a positive or a negative interrogative. With a positive interrogative request, the care recipient orients to her request as one she is not entitled to make. This is underscored by other features, such as the use of mitigating devices and the choice of verb. When accounting for this type of request, the care recipient ties the request to the specific situation she is in, at the moment in which the request is produced. In turn, the home help assistant orients to the lack of entitlement by resisting the request. With a negative interrogative request, the care recipient, in contrast, orients to her request as one she is entitled to make. This is strengthened by the choice of verb and the lack of mitigating devices. When such requests are accounted for, the requested task is treated as something that should be routinely performed, and hence as something the home help assistant has neglected to do. In turn, the home help assistant orients to the display of entitlement by treating the request as unproblematic, and by complying with it immediately.

Abstract

Longitudinally collected VOT data from an early English-Italian bilingual who became increasingly English-dominant was analyzed. Stops in English were always produced with significantly longer VOT than in Italian. However, the speaker did not show any significant change in the VOT production in either language over time, despite the clear dominance of English in his every day language use later in his life. The results indicate that – unlike L2 learners – early bilinguals may remain unaffected by language use with respect to phonetic realization.

Abstract

When faced with the noun phrase (NP) versus sentence (S) coordination ambiguity as in, for example, The thief shot the jeweller and the cop hellip, readers prefer the reading with NP-coordination (e.g., "The thief shot the jeweller and the cop yesterday") over one with two conjoined sentences (e.g., "The thief shot the jeweller and the cop panicked"). A corpus study is presented showing that NP-coordinations are produced far more often than S-coordinations, which in frequency-based accounts of parsing might be taken to explain the NP-coordination preference. In addition, we describe an eye-tracking experiment investigating S-coordinated sentences such as Jasper sanded the board and the carpenter laughed, where the poor thematic fit between carpenter and sanded argues against NP-coordination. Our results indicate that information regarding poor thematic fit was used rapidly, but not without leaving some residual processing difficulty. This is compatible with claims that thematic information can reduce but not completely eliminate garden-path effects.

Abstract

In the visual world paradigm, participants are more likely to fixate a visual referent that has some semantic relationship with a heard word, than they are to fixate an unrelated referent [Cooper, R. M. (1974). The control of eye fixation by the meaning of spoken language. A new methodology for the real-time investigation of speech perception, memory, and language processing. Cognitive Psychology, 6, 813–839]. Here, this method is used to examine the psychological validity of models of high-dimensional semantic space. The data strongly suggest that these corpus-based measures of word semantics predict fixation behavior in the visual world and provide further evidence that language-mediated eye movements to objects in the concurrent visual environment are driven by semantic similarity rather than all-or-none categorical knowledge. The data suggest that the visual world paradigm can, together with other methodologies, converge on the evidence that may help adjudicate between different theoretical accounts of the psychological semantics.

Abstract

This article presents the results of a meta-analysis of 30 hemodynamic experiments comparing first language (L1) and second language (L2) processing in a range of tasks. The results suggest that reliably stronger activation during L2 processing is found (a) only for task-specific subgroups of L2 speakers and (b) within some, but not all regions that are also typically activated in native language processing. A tentative interpretation based on the functional roles of frontal and temporal regions is suggested.

Abstract

This volume is a harvest of articles from the first conference in a series on the cognitive neuroscience of language. The first conference focused on the cognitive neuroscience of second language acquisition (henceforth SLA). It brought together experts from as diverse fields as second language acquisition, bilingualism, cognitive neuroscience, and neuroanatomy. The articles and discussion articles presented here illustrate state-of-the-art findings and represent a wide range of theoretical approaches to classic as well as newer SLA issues. The theoretical themes cover age effects in SLA related to the so-called Critical Period Hypothesis and issues of ultimate attainment and focus both on age effects pertaining to childhood and to aging. Other familiar SLA topics are the effects of proficiency and learning as well as issues concerning the difference between the end product and the process that yields that product, here discussed in terms of convergence and degeneracy. A topic more related to actual usage of a second language once acquired concerns how multilingual speakers control and regulate their two languages.

Abstract

Research has shown that Broca’s and Wernicke’s aphasic patients show different impairments in auditory lexical processing. The results of an experiment with form-overlapping primes showed an inhibitory effect of form-overlap for control adults and a weak inhibition trend for Broca’s aphasic patients, but a facilitatory effect of form-overlap was found for Wernicke’s aphasic participants. This suggests that Wernicke’s aphasic patients are mainly impaired in suppression of once-activated word candidates and selection of one winning candidate, which may be related to their problems in auditory language comprehension.

Abstract

In everyday life people have to deal with tasks such as finding a novel path to a certain goal location, finding one’s way back, finding a short cut, or making a detour. In all of these tasks people acquire route knowledge. For finding the same way back they have to remember locations of objects like buildings and additionally direction changes. In three experiments using recognition tasks as well as conscious and unconscious spatial priming paradigms memory processes underlying wayfinding behaviour were investigated. Participants learned a route through a virtual environment with objects either placed at intersections (i.e., decision points) where another route could be chosen or placed along the route (non-decision points). Analyses indicate first that objects placed at decision points are recognized faster than other objects. Second, they indicate that the direction in which a route is travelled is represented only at locations that are relevant for wayfinding (e.g., decision points). The results point out the efficient way in which memory for object location and memory for route direction interact.

Abstract

There is evidence for cognitive as well as neural plasticity across the adult life span, although aging is associated with certain constraints on plasticity. In the current paper, we argue that the age-related reduction in cognitive plasticity may be due to (a) deficits in general processing resources, and (b) failure to engage in task-relevant cognitive operations. Memory-training research suggests that age-related processing deficits (e.g., executive functions, speed) hinder older adults from utilizing mnemonic techniques as efficiently as the young, and that this age difference is reflected by diminished frontal activity during mnemonic use. Additional constraints on memory plasticity in old age are related to difficulties that are specific to the task, such as creating visual images, as well as in binding together the information to be remembered. These deficiencies are paralleled by reduced activity in occipito-parietal and medial–temporal regions, respectively. Future attempts to optimize intervention-related gains in old age should consider targeting both general processing and task-specific origins of age-associated reductions in cognitive plasticity.

Abstract

Modern word processors begin to offer a range of facilities for spelling, grammar and style checking in English. For the Dutch language hardly anything is available as yet. Many commercial word processing packages do include a hyphenation routine and a lexicon-based spelling checker but the practical usefulness of these tools is limited due to certain properties of Dutch orthography, as we will explain below. In this chapter we describe a text editor which incorporates a great deal of lexical, morphological and syntactic knowledge of Dutch and monitors the orthographical quality of Dutch texts. Section 1 deals with those aspects of Dutch orthography which pose problems to human authors as well as to computational language sensitive text editing tools. In section 2 we describe the design and the implementation of the text editor we have built. Section 3 is mainly devoted to a provisional evaluation of the system.

Abstract

When you compare the behavior of two different age groups which are trying to master the same sensori-motor or cognitive skill, you are likely to discover varying learning routes: different stages, different intervals between stages, or even different orderings of stages. Such heterogeneous learning trajectories may be caused by at least six different types of factors: (1) Initial state: the kinds and levels of skills the learners have available at the onset of the learning episode. (2) Learning mechanisms: rule-based, inductive, connectionist, parameter setting, and so on. (3) Input and feedback characteristics: learning stimuli, information about success and failure. (4) Information processing mechanisms: capacity limitations, attentional biases, response preferences. (5) Energetic variables: motivation, emotional reactions. (6) Final state: the fine-structure of kinds and levels of subskills at the end of the learning episode. This applies to language acquisition as well. First and second language learners probably differ on all six factors. Nevertheless, the debate between advocates and opponents of the Fundamental Difference Hypothesis concerning L1 and L2 acquisition have looked almost exclusively at the first two factors. Those who believe that L1 learners have access to Universal Grammar whereas L2 learners rely on language processing strategies, postulate different learning mechanisms (UG parameter setting in L1, more general inductive strategies in L2 learning). Pienemann opposes this view and, based on his Processability Theory, argues that L1 and L2 learners start out from different initial states: they come to the grammar learning task with different structural hypotheses (SOV versus SVO as basic word order of German).

Abstract

This paper presents a theory of the syntactic aspects of human sentence production. An important characteristic of unprepared speech is that overt pronunciation of a sentence can be initiated before the speaker has completely worked out the meaning content he or she is going to express in that sentence. Apparently, the speaker is able to build up a syntactically coherent utterance out of a series of syntactic fragments each rendering a new part of the meaning content. This incremental, left-to-right mode of sentence production is the central capability of the proposed Incremental Procedural Grammar (IPG). Certain other properties of spontaneous speech, as derivable from speech errors, hesitations, self-repairs, and language pathology, are accounted for as well. The psychological plausibility thus gained by the grammar appears compatible with a satisfactory level of linguistic plausibility in that sentences receive structural descriptions which are in line with current theories of grammar. More importantly, an explanation for the existence of configurational conditions on transformations and other linguistics rules is proposed. The basic design feature of IPG which gives rise to these psychologically and linguistically desirable properties, is the “Procedures + Stack” concept. Sentences are built not by a central constructing agency which overlooks the whole process but by a team of syntactic procedures (modules) which work-in parallel-on small parts of the sentence, have only a limited overview, and whose sole communication channel is a stock. IPG covers object complement constructions, interrogatives, and word order in main and subordinate clauses. It handles unbounded dependencies, cross-serial dependencies and coordination phenomena such as gapping and conjunction reduction. It is also capable of generating self-repairs and elliptical answers to questions. IPG has been implemented as an incremental Dutch sentence generator written in LISP.

Abstract

Human speakers often produce sentences incrementally. They can start speaking having in mind only a fragmentary idea of what they want to say, and while saying this they refine the contents underlying subsequent parts of the utterance. This capability imposes a number of constraints on the design of a syntactic processor. This paper explores these constraints and evaluates some recent computational sentence generators from the perspective of incremental production.

Abstract

A series of experiments is reported in which subjects describe simple visual scenes by means of both sentential and non-sentential responses. The data support the following statements about the lexicalization (word finding) process. (1) Words used by speakers in overt naming or sentence production responses are selected by a sequence of two lexical retrieval processes, the first yielding abstract pre-phonological items (Ll -items), the second one adding their phonological shapes (L2-items). (2) The selection of several Ll-items for a multi-word utterance can take place simultaneously. (3) A monitoring process is watching the output of Ll-lexicalization to check if it is in keeping with prevailing constraints upon utterance format. (4) Retrieval of the L2-item which corresponds with a given LI-item waits until the Ld-item has been checked by the monitor, and all other Ll-items needed for the utterance under construction have become available. A coherent picture of the lexicalization process begins to emerge when these characteristics are brought together with other empirical results in the area of naming and sentence production, e.g., picture naming reaction times (Seymour, 1979), speech errors (Garrett, 1980), and word order preferences (Bock, 1982).

Abstract

We present empirical data showing that the relative frequency with which a verb normally appears in a syntactic construction predicts young children's ability to remember and repeat sentences instantiating that construction. Children aged 2;10–5;8 years were asked to repeat grammatical and ungrammatical sentential complement sentences (e.g., ‘I think + S’). The sentences contained complement-taking verbs (CTVs) used with differing frequencies in children's natural speech. All children repeated sentences containing high frequency CTVs (e.g., think) more accurately than those containing low frequency CTVs (e.g., hear), and made more sophisticated corrections to ungrammatical sentences containing high frequency CTVs. The data suggest that, like adults, children are sensitive to lexico-constructional collocations. The implications for language acquisition are discussed.

Abstract

The previous literature has suggested that the hand movement in co-speech gestures and signs consists of a series of phases with qualitatively different dynamic characteristics. In this paper, we propose a syntagmatic rule system for movement phases that applies to both co-speech gestures and signs. Descriptive criteria for the rule system were developed for the analysis video-recorded continuous production of signs and gesture. It involves segmenting a stream of body movement into phases and identifying different phase types. Two human coders used the criteria to analyze signs and cospeech gestures that are produced in natural discourse. It was found that the criteria yielded good inter-coder reliability. These criteria can be used for the technology of automatic recognition of signs and co-speech gestures in order to segment continuous production and identify the potentially meaningbearing phase.

Abstract

The distinction between finite and non-finite verb forms is well-established but not particularly well-defined. It cannot just be a matter of verb morphology, because it is also made when there is hardly any morphological difference: by far most English verb forms can be finite as well as non-finite. More importantly, many structural phenomena are clearly associated with the presence or absence of finiteness, a fact which is clearly reflected in the early stages of first and second language acquisition. In syntax, these include basic word order rules, gapping, the licensing of a grammatical subject and the licensing of expletives. In semantics, the specific interpretation of indefinite noun phrases is crucially linked to the presence of a finite element. These phenomena are surveyed, and it is argued that finiteness (a) links the descriptive content of the sentence (the 'sentence basis') to its topic component (in particular, to its topic time), and (b) it confines the illocutionary force to that topic component. In a declarative main clause, for example, the assertion is confined to a particular time, the topic time. It is shown that most of the syntactic and semantic effects connected to finiteness naturally follow from this assumption.