Displaying 201 - 300 of 362
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Levinson, S. C. (2006). Introduction: The evolution of culture in a microcosm. In S. C. Levinson, & P. Jaisson (
Eds. ), Evolution and culture: A Fyssen Foundation Symposium (pp. 1-41). Cambridge: MIT Press. -
Levinson, S. C. (2009). Foreword. In J. Liep (
Ed. ), A Papuan plutocracy: Ranked exchange on Rossel Island (pp. ix-xxiii). Copenhagen: Aarhus University Press. -
Levinson, S. C. (2009). Language and mind: Let's get the issues straight! In S. D. Blum (
Ed. ), Making sense of language: Readings in culture and communication (pp. 95-104). Oxford: Oxford University Press. -
Levinson, S. C. (2014). Language evolution. In N. J. Enfield, P. Kockelman, & J. Sidnell (
Eds. ), The Cambridge handbook of linguistic anthropology (pp. 309-324). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. -
Levinson, S. C., Majid, A., & Enfield, N. J. (2007). Language of perception: The view from language and culture. In A. Majid (
Ed. ), Field Manual Volume 10 (pp. 10-21). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.468738. -
Levinson, S. C. (1988). Putting linguistics on a proper footing: Explorations in Goffman's participation framework. In P. Drew, & A. Wootton (
Eds. ), Goffman: Exploring the interaction order (pp. 161-227). Oxford: Polity Press. -
Levinson, S. C. (1982). Speech act theory: The state of the art. In V. Kinsella (
Ed. ), Surveys 2. Eight state-of-the-art articles on key areas in language teaching. Cambridge University Press. -
Levinson, S. C. (2014). Pragmatics as the origin of recursion. In F. Lowenthal, & L. Lefebvre (
Eds. ), Language and recursion (pp. 3-13). Berlin: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-1-4614-9414-0_1.Abstract
There has been a recent spate of work on recursion as a central design feature of language and specifically of syntax. This short report points out that there is little evidence that unlimited recursion, understood as centre embedding, is typical of natural language syntax. Nevertheless, embedded pragmatic construals seem available in every language. Further, much deeper centre embedding can be found in dialogue or conversation structure than can be found in syntax. Existing accounts for the ‘performance’ limitations on centre embedding are thus thrown in doubt. Dialogue materials suggest that centre embedding is perhaps a core part of the human interaction system and is for some reason much more highly restricted in syntax than in other aspects of cognition -
Levinson, S. C., & Majid, A. (2009). Preface and priorities. In A. Majid (
Ed. ), Field manual volume 12 (pp. III). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. -
Levinson, S. C., & Majid, A. (2009). The role of language in mind. In S. Nolen-Hoeksema, B. Fredrickson, G. Loftus, & W. Wagenaar (
Eds. ), Atkinson and Hilgard's introduction to psychology (15th ed., pp. 352). London: Cengage learning. -
Levinson, S. C., & Majid, A. (2007). The language of sound. In A. Majid (
Ed. ), Field Manual Volume 10 (pp. 29-31). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.468735. -
Levinson, S. C., & Majid, A. (2007). The language of vision II: Shape. In A. Majid (
Ed. ), Field Manual Volume 10 (pp. 26-28). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.468732. -
Lindström, E., Terrill, A., Reesink, G., & Dunn, M. (2007). The languages of Island Melanesia. In J. S. Friedlaender (
Ed. ), Genes, language, and culture history in the Southwest Pacific (pp. 118-140). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Abstract
This chapter provides an overview of the Papuan and the Oceanic languages (a branch of Austronesian) in Northern Island Melanesia, as well as phenomena arising through contact between these groups. It shows how linguistics can contribute to the understanding of the history of languages and speakers, and what the findings of those methods have been. The location of the homeland of speakers of Proto-Oceanic is indicated (in northeast New Britain); many facets of the lives of those speakers are shown; and the patterns of their subsequent spread across Island Melanesia and beyond into Remote Oceania are indicated, followed by a second wave overlaying the first into New Guinea and as far as halfway through the Solomon Islands. Regarding the Papuan languages of this region, at least some are older than the 6,000-10,000 ceiling of the Comparative Method, and their relations are explored with the aid of a database of 125 non-lexical structural features. The results reflect archipelago-based clustering with the Central Solomons Papuan languages forming a clade either with the Bismarcks or with Bougainville languages. Papuan languages in Bougainville are less influenced by Oceanic languages than those in the Bismarcks and the Solomons. The chapter considers a variety of scenarios to account for their findings, concluding that the results are compatible with multiple pre-Oceanic waves of arrivals into the area after initial settlement. -
Liszkowski, U. (2007). Human twelve-month-olds point cooperatively to share interest with and helpfully provide information for a communicative partner. In K. Liebal, C. Müller, & S. Pika (
Eds. ), Gestural communication in nonhuman and human primates (pp. 124-140). Amsterdam: Benjamins.Abstract
This paper investigates infant pointing at 12 months. Three recent experimental studies from our lab are reported and contrasted with existing accounts on infant communicative and social-cognitive abilities. The new results show that infant pointing at 12 months already is a communicative act which involves the intentional transmission of information to share interest with, or provide information for other persons. It is argued that infant pointing is an inherently social and cooperative act which is used to share psychological relations between interlocutors and environment, repairs misunderstandings in proto-conversational turn-taking, and helps others by providing information. Infant pointing builds on an understanding of others as persons with attentional states and attitudes. Findings do not support lean accounts on early infant pointing which posit that it is initially non-communicative, does not serve the function of indicating, or is purely self-centered. It is suggested to investigate the emergence of reference and the motivation to jointly engage with others also before pointing has emerged. -
Liszkowski, U., & Brown, P. (2007). Infant pointing (9-15 months) in different cultures. In A. Majid (
Ed. ), Field Manual Volume 10 (pp. 82-88). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.492895.Abstract
There are two tasks for conducting systematic observation of child-caregiver joint attention interactions. Task 1 – a “decorated room” designed to elicit infant and caregiver pointing. Task 2 – videotaped interviews about infant pointing behaviour. The goal of this task is to document the ontogenetic emergence of referential communication in caregiver infant interaction in different cultures, during the critical age of 8-15 months when children come to understand and share others’ intentions. This is of interest to all students of interaction and human communication; it does not require specialist knowledge of children. -
Liszkowski, U. (2006). Infant pointing at twelve months: Communicative goals, motives, and social-cognitive abilities. In N. J. Enfield, & S. C. Levinson (
Eds. ), Roots of human sociality: culture, cognition and interaction (pp. 153-178). New York: Berg. -
Liszkowski, U. (2014). Pointing. In P. Brooks, & V. Kempe (
Eds. ), Encyclopedia of language development (Vol. 15) (pp. 471-473). London: Sage. -
Majid, A., van Leeuwen, T., & Dingemanse, M. (2009). Synaesthesia: A cross-cultural pilot. In A. Majid (
Ed. ), Field manual volume 12 (pp. 8-13). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.883570.Abstract
Synaesthesia is a condition in which stimulation of one sensory modality (e.g. hearing) causes additional experiences in a second, unstimulated modality (e.g. seeing colours). The goal of this task is to explore the types (and incidence) of synaesthesia in different cultures. Two simple tests can ascertain the existence of synaesthesia in your community.Additional information
2009_Synaesthesia_audio_files.zip -
Majid, A. (2015). Comparing lexicons cross-linguistically. In J. R. Taylor (
Ed. ), The Oxford Handbook of the Word (pp. 364-379). Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199641604.013.020.Abstract
The lexicon is central to the concerns of disparate disciplines and has correspondingly elicited conflicting proposals about some of its foundational properties. Some suppose that word meanings and their associated concepts are largely universal, while others note that local cultural interests infiltrate every category in the lexicon. This chapter reviews research in two semantic domains—perception and the body—in order to illustrate crosslinguistic similarities and differences in semantic fields. Data is considered from a wide array of languages, especially those from small-scale indigenous communities which are often overlooked. In every lexical field we find considerable variation across cultures, raising the question of where this variation comes from. Is it the result of different ecological or environmental niches, cultural practices, or accidents of historical pasts? Current evidence suggests that diverse pressures differentially shape lexical fields. -
Majid, A., & Levinson, S. C. (2007). Language of perception: Overview of field tasks. In A. Majid (
Ed. ), Field Manual Volume 10 (pp. 8-9). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.492898. -
Majid, A. (2007). Preface and priorities. In A. Majid (
Ed. ), Field manual volume 10 (pp. 3). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. -
Majid, A., Senft, G., & Levinson, S. C. (2007). The language of olfaction. In A. Majid (
Ed. ), Field Manual Volume 10 (pp. 36-41). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.492910. -
Majid, A., Senft, G., & Levinson, S. C. (2007). The language of touch. In A. Majid (
Ed. ), Field Manual Volume 10 (pp. 32-35). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.492907. -
Majid, A., & Levinson, S. C. (2007). The language of vision I: colour. In A. Majid (
Ed. ), Field Manual Volume 10 (pp. 22-25). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.492901. -
Malt, B. C., Gennari, S., Imai, M., Ameel, E., Saji, N., & Majid, A. (2015). Where are the concepts? What words can and can’t reveal. In E. Margolis, & S. Laurence (
Eds. ), The conceptual Mind: New directions in the study of concepts (pp. 291-326). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Abstract
Concepts are so fundamental to human cognition that Fodor declared the heart of a cognitive science to be its theory of concepts. To study concepts, though, cognitive scientists need to be able to identify some. The prevailing assumption has been that they are revealed by words such as triangle, table, and robin. But languages vary dramatically in how they carve up the world with names. Either ordinary concepts must be heavily language dependent, or names cannot be a direct route to concepts. We asked speakers of English, Dutch, Spanish, and Japanese to name a set of 36 video clips of human locomotion and to judge the similarities among them. We investigated what name inventories, name extensions, scaling solutions on name similarity, and scaling solutions on nonlinguistic similarity from the groups, individually and together, suggest about the underlying concepts. Aggregated naming data and similarity solutions converged on results distinct from individual languages. -
Martin, R. C., & Tan, Y. (2015). Sentence comprehension deficits: Independence and interaction of syntax, semantics, and working memory. In A. E. Hillis (
Ed. ), Handbook of adult language disorders (2nd ed., pp. 303-327). Boca Raton: CRC Press. -
Martins, M., Raju, A., & Ravignani, A. (2014). Evaluating the role of quantitative modeling in language evolution. In L. McCrohon, B. Thompson, T. Verhoef, & H. Yamauchi (
Eds. ), The Past, Present and Future of Language Evolution Research: Student volume of the 9th International Conference on the Evolution of Language (pp. 84-93). Tokyo: EvoLang9 Organising Committee.Abstract
Models are a flourishing and indispensable area of research in language evolution. Here we
highlight critical issues in using and interpreting models, and suggest viable approaches. First,
contrasting models can explain the same data and similar modelling techniques can lead to
diverging conclusions. This should act as a reminder to use the extreme malleability of
modelling parsimoniously when interpreting results. Second, quantitative techniques similar to
those used in modelling language evolution have proven themselves inadequate in other
disciplines. Cross-disciplinary fertilization is crucial to avoid mistakes which have previously
occurred in other areas. Finally, experimental validation is necessary both to sharpen models'
hypotheses, and to support their conclusions. Our belief is that models should be interpreted as
quantitative demonstrations of logical possibilities, rather than as direct sources of evidence.
Only an integration of theoretical principles, quantitative proofs and empirical validation can
allow research in the evolution of language to progress. -
Massaro, D. W., & Jesse, A. (2007). Audiovisual speech perception and word recognition. In M. G. Gaskell (
Ed. ), The Oxford handbook of psycholinguistics (pp. 19-35). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Abstract
In most of our everyday conversations, we not only hear but also see each other talk. Our understanding of speech benefits from having the speaker's face present. This finding immediately necessitates the question of how the information from the different perceptual sources is used to reach the best overall decision. This need for processing of multiple sources of information also exists in auditory speech perception, however. Audiovisual speech simply shifts the focus from intramodal to intermodal sources but does not necessitate a qualitatively different form of processing. It is essential that a model of speech perception operationalizes the concept of processing multiple sources of information so that quantitative predictions can be made. This chapter gives an overview of the main research questions and findings unique to audiovisual speech perception and word recognition research as well as what general questions about speech perception and cognition the research in this field can answer. The main theoretical approaches to explain integration and audiovisual speech perception are introduced and critically discussed. The chapter also provides an overview of the role of visual speech as a language learning tool in multimodal training. -
Matic, D. (2014). Clues to information structure in field data. In D. El Zarka, & S. Heidinger (
Eds. ), Methodological Issues in the Study of Information Structure (pp. 25-42). Graz: Graz University Press. -
Matić, D., Van Gijn, R., & Van Valin Jr., R. D. (2014). Information structure and reference tracking in complex sentences: An overview. In R. van Gijn, J. Hammond, D. Matić, S. van Putten, & A. Galucio (
Eds. ), Information structure and reference tracking in complex sentences. (pp. 1-42). Amsterdam: Benjamins.Abstract
This volume is dedicated to exploring the crossroads where complex sentences and information management – more specifically information structure (IS) and reference tracking (RT) – come together. Complex sentences are a highly relevant but understudied domain for studying notions of IS and RT. On the one hand, a complex sentence can be studied as a mini-unit of discourse consisting of two or more elements describing events, situations, or processes, with its own internal information-structural and referential organisation. On the other hand, complex sentences can be studied as parts of larger discourse structures, such as narratives or conversations, in terms of how their information-structural characteristics relate to this wider context.We first focus on the interrelatedness of IS and RT (Section 1) and then define and discuss the notion of complex sentences and their subtypes in Section 2. Section 3 surveys issues of IS in complex sentences, while Section 4 focuses on RT in complex sentences. Sections 5 and 6 briefly consider IS and RT in a wider discourse context. Section 5 discusses the interaction between IS, RT, and other discourse factors, and Section 6 focuses on ways in which a specific RT system, switch reference, can function as an RT device beyond the sentence. -
Matić, D. (2015). Information structure in linguistics. In J. D. Wright (
Ed. ), The International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences (2nd ed.) Vol. 12 (pp. 95-99). Amsterdam: Elsevier. doi:10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.53013-X.Abstract
Information structure is a subfield of linguistic research dealing with the ways speakers encode instructions to the hearer on how to process the message relative to their temporary mental states. To this end, sentences are segmented into parts conveying known and yet-unknown information, usually labeled ‘topic’ and ‘focus.’ Many languages have developed specialized grammatical and lexical means of indicating this segmentation. -
Matić, D. (2014). Questions and syntactic islands in Tundra Yukaghir. In R. van Gijn, J. Hammond, D. Matić, S. van Putten, & A. Galucio (
Eds. ), Information structure and reference tracking in complex sentences (pp. 127-162). Amsterdam: Benjamins.Abstract
No island effects are observable in Tundra Yukaghir questions, which are possible in virtually all syntactic environments. It is argued that this feature of Tundra Yukaghir relates to its capability of explicitly marking focus domains. If a question word occurs in a syntactic island, the whole island is morphologically treated as a focus domain. In order to take scope and function as question markers, question words must remain within the focus domain, i.e. in the island clause. This syntactic configuration is reflected in the semantics of question islands, which are used to inquire about the identity of the whole island, not merely the denotation of the question word. -
McQueen, J. M. (2007). Eight questions about spoken-word recognition. In M. G. Gaskell (
Ed. ), The Oxford handbook of psycholinguistics (pp. 37-53). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Abstract
This chapter is a review of the literature in experimental psycholinguistics on spoken word recognition. It is organized around eight questions. 1. Why are psycholinguists interested in spoken word recognition? 2. What information in the speech signal is used in word recognition? 3. Where are the words in the continuous speech stream? 4. Which words did the speaker intend? 5. When, as the speech signal unfolds over time, are the phonological forms of words recognized? 6. How are words recognized? 7. Whither spoken word recognition? 8. Who are the researchers in the field? -
Mickan, A., Schiefke, M., & Anatol, S. (2014). Key is a llave is a Schlüssel: A failure to replicate an experiment from Boroditsky et al. 2003. In M. Hilpert, & S. Flach (
Eds. ), Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association (pp. 39-50). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. doi:doi.org/10.1515/gcla-2014-0004.Abstract
In this paper, we present two attempts to replicate a widely-cited but never fully published experiment in which German and Spanish speakers were asked to associate adjectives with nouns of masculine and feminine grammati-cal gender (Boroditsky et al. 2003). The researchers claim that speakers associ-ated more stereotypically female adjectives with grammatically feminine nouns and more stereotypically male adjectives with grammatically masculine nouns. We were not able to replicate the results either in a word association task or in an analogous primed lexical decision task. This suggests that the results of the original experiment were either an artifact of some non-documented aspect of the experimental procedure or a statistical fluke. The question whether speakers assign sex-based interpretations to grammatical gender categories at all cannot be answered definitively, as the results in the published literature vary consider-ably. However, our experiments show that if such an effect exists, it is not strong enough to be measured indirectly via the priming of adjectives by nouns. -
Mitterer, H., & Cutler, A. (2006). Speech perception. In K. Brown (
Ed. ), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (vol. 11) (pp. 770-782). Amsterdam: Elsevier.Abstract
The goal of speech perception is understanding a speaker's message. To achieve this, listeners must recognize the words that comprise a spoken utterance. This in turn implies distinguishing these words from other minimally different words (e.g., word from bird, etc.), and this involves making phonemic distinctions. The article summarizes research on the perception of phonemic distinctions, on how listeners cope with the continuity and variability of speech signals, and on how phonemic information is mapped onto the representations of words. Particular attention is paid to theories of speech perception and word recognition. -
Moulin, C. A., Souchay, C., Bradley, R., Buchanan, S., Karadöller, D. Z., & Akan, M. (2014). Déjà vu in older adults. In B. L. Schwartz, & A. S. Brown (
Eds. ), Tip-of-the-tongue states and related phenomena (pp. 281-304). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. -
Muysken, P., Hammarström, H., Birchall, J., van Gijn, R., Krasnoukhova, O., & Müller, N. (2015). Linguistic Areas, bottom up or top down? The case of the Guaporé-Mamoré region. In B. Comrie, & L. Golluscio (
Eds. ), Language Contact and Documentation / Contacto lingüístico y documentación (pp. 205-238). Berlin: De Gruyter. -
Muysken, P., Hammarström, H., Birchall, J., Danielsen, S., Eriksen, L., Galucio, A. V., Van Gijn, R., Van de Kerke, S., Kolipakam, V., Krasnoukhova, O., Müller, N., & O'Connor, L. (2014). The languages of South America: Deep families, areal relationships, and language contact. In P. Muysken, & L. O'Connor (
Eds. ), Language contact in South America (pp. 299-323). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. -
Narasimhan, B., & Brown, P. (2009). Getting the inside story: Learning to talk about containment in Tzeltal and Hindi. In V. C. Mueller-Gathercole (
Ed. ), Routes to language: Studies in honor of Melissa Bowerman (pp. 97-132). New York: Psychology Press.Abstract
The present study examines young children's uses of semantically specific and general relational containment terms (e.g. in, enter) in Hindi and Tzeltal, and the extent to which their usage patterns are influenced by input frequency. We hypothesize that if children have a preference for relational terms that are semantically specific, this will be reflected in early acquisition of more semantically specific expressions and underextension of semantically general ones, regardless of the distributional patterns of use of these terms in the input. Our findings however show a strong role for input frequency in guiding children's patterns of use of containment terms in the two languages. Yet language-specific lexicalization patterns play a role as well, since object-specific containment verbs are used as early as the semantically general 'enter' verb by children acquiring Tzeltal. -
Noordman, L. G. M., Vonk, W., Cozijn, R., & Frank, S. (2015). Causal inferences and world knowledge. In E. J. O'Brien, A. E. Cook, & R. F. Lorch (
Eds. ), Inferences during reading (pp. 260-289). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. -
Noordman, L. G. M., & Vonk, W. (2015). Inferences in Discourse, Psychology of. In J. D. Wright (
Ed. ), International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (2nd ed.) Vol. 12 (pp. 37-44). Amsterdam: Elsevier. doi:10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.57012-3.Abstract
An inference is defined as the information that is not expressed explicitly by the text but is derived on the basis of the understander's knowledge and is encoded in the mental representation of the text. Inferencing is considered as a central component in discourse understanding. Experimental methods to detect inferences, established findings, and some developments are reviewed. Attention is paid to the relation between inference processes and the brain. -
Norcliffe, E., & Konopka, A. E. (2015). Vision and language in cross-linguistic research on sentence production. In R. K. Mishra, N. Srinivasan, & F. Huettig (
Eds. ), Attention and vision in language processing (pp. 77-96). New York: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-81-322-2443-3_5.Abstract
To what extent are the planning processes involved in producing sentences fine-tuned to grammatical properties of specific languages? In this chapter we survey the small body of cross-linguistic research that bears on this question, focusing in particular on recent evidence from eye-tracking studies. Because eye-tracking methods provide a very fine-grained temporal measure of how conceptual and linguistic planning unfold in real time, they serve as an important complement to standard psycholinguistic methods. Moreover, the advent of portable eye-trackers in recent years has, for the first time, allowed eye-tracking techniques to be used with language populations that are located far away from university laboratories. This has created the exciting opportunity to extend the typological base of vision-based psycholinguistic research and address key questions in language production with new language comparisons. -
Nordhoff, S., & Hammarström, H. (2014). Archiving grammatical descriptions. In P. K. Austin (
Ed. ), Language Documentation and Description. Vol. 12 (pp. 164-186). London: SOAS.Additional information
link to website -
Norman, D. A., & Levelt, W. J. M. (1988). Life at the center. In W. Hirst (
Ed. ), The making of cognitive science: essays in honor of George A. Miller (pp. 100-109). Cambridge University Press. -
O'Connor, L. (2006). Sobre los predicados complejos en el Chontal de la baja. In A. Oseguera (
Ed. ), Historia y etnografía entre los Chontales de Oaxaca (pp. 119-161). Oaxaca: Instituto Nacional de Antroplogía e Historia. -
O'Connor, L., & Kolipakam, V. (2014). Human migrations, dispersals, and contacts in South America. In L. O'Connor, & P. Muysken (
Eds. ), The native languages of South America: Origins, development, typology (pp. 29-55). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. -
Ozyurek, A. (2007). Processing of multi-modal semantic information: Insights from cross-linguistic comparisons and neurophysiological recordings. In T. Sakamoto (
Ed. ), Communicating skills of intention (pp. 131-142). Tokyo: Hituzi Syobo Publishing. -
Ozyurek, A., Kita, S., Allen, S., Furman, R., & Brown, A. (2007). How does linguistic framing of events influence co-speech gestures? Insights from crosslinguistic variations and similarities. In K. Liebal, C. Müller, & S. Pika (
Eds. ), Gestural communication in nonhuman and human primates (pp. 199-218). Amsterdam: Benjamins.Abstract
What are the relations between linguistic encoding and gestural representations of events during online speaking? The few studies that have been conducted on this topic have yielded somewhat incompatible results with regard to whether and how gestural representations of events change with differences in the preferred semantic and syntactic encoding possibilities of languages. Here we provide large scale semantic, syntactic and temporal analyses of speech- gesture pairs that depict 10 different motion events from 20 Turkish and 20 English speakers. We find that the gestural representations of the same events differ across languages when they are encoded by different syntactic frames (i.e., verb-framed or satellite-framed). However, where there are similarities across languages, such as omission of a certain element of the event in the linguistic encoding, gestural representations also look similar and omit the same content. The results are discussed in terms of what gestures reveal about the influence of language specific encoding on on-line thinking patterns and the underlying interactions between speech and gesture during the speaking process. -
Perniss, P. M., Pfau, R., & Steinbach, M. (2007). Can't you see the difference? Sources of variation in sign language structure. In P. M. Perniss, R. Pfau, & M. Steinbach (
Eds. ), Visible variation: Cross-linguistic studies in sign language narratives (pp. 1-34). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. -
Perniss, P. M. (2007). Locative functions of simultaneous perspective constructions in German sign language narrative. In M. Vermeerbergen, L. Leeson, & O. Crasborn (
Eds. ), Simultaneity in signed language: Form and function (pp. 27-54). Amsterdam: Benjamins. -
Petersson, K. M., & Reis, A. (2006). Characteristics of illiterate and literate cognitive processing: Implications of brain- behavior co-constructivism. In P. B. Baltes, P. Reuter-Lorenz, & F. Rösler (
Eds. ), Lifespan development and the brain: The perspective of biocultural co-constructivism (pp. 279-305). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Abstract
Literacy and education represent essential aspects of contemporary society and subserve important aspects of socialization and cultural transmission. The study of illiterate subjects represents one approach to investigate the interactions between neurobiological and cultural factors in cognitive development, individual learning, and their influence on the functional organization of the brain. In this chapter we review some recent cognitive, neuroanatomic, and functional neuroimaging results indicating that formal education influences important aspects of the human brain. Taken together this provides strong support for the idea that the brain is modulated by literacy and formal education, which in turn change the brains capacity to interact with its environment, including the individual's contemporary culture. In other words, the individual is able to participate in, interact with, and actively contribute to the process of cultural transmission in new ways through acquired cognitive skills. -
Petersson, K. M., Ingvar, M., & Reis, A. (2009). Language and literacy from a cognitive neuroscience perspective. In D. Olsen, & N. Torrance (
Eds. ), Cambridge handbook of literacy (pp. 152-181). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. -
Poletiek, F. H. (2006). Natural sampling of stimuli in (artificial) grammar learning. In K. Fiedler, & P. Juslin (
Eds. ), Information sampling and adaptive cognition (pp. 440-455). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. -
Pye, C., Pfeiler, B., De León, L., Brown, P., & Mateo, P. (2007). Roots or edges? Explaining variation in children's early verb forms across five Mayan languages. In B. Pfeiler (
Ed. ), Learning indigenous languages: Child language acquisition in Mesoamerica (pp. 15-46). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Abstract
This paper compares the acquisition of verb morphology in five Mayan languages, using a comparative method based on historical linguistics to establish precise equivalences between linguistic categories in the five languages. Earlier work on the acquisition of these languages, based on examination of longitudinal samples of naturally-occuring child language, established that in some of the languages (Tzeltal, Tzotzil) bare roots were the predominant forms for children’s early verbs, but in three other languages (Yukatek, K’iche’, Q’anjobal) unanalyzed portions of the final part of the verb were more likely. That is, children acquiring different Mayan languages initially produce different parts of the adult verb forms. In this paper we analyse the structures of verbs in caregiver speech to these same children, using samples from two-year-old children and their caregivers, and assess the degree to which features of the input might account for the children’s early verb forms in these five Mayan languages. We found that the frequency with which adults produce verbal roots at the extreme right of words and sentences influences the frequency with which children produce bare verb roots in their early verb expressions, while production of verb roots at the extreme left does not, suggesting that the children ignore the extreme left of verbs and sentences when extracting verb roots. -
Ramus, F., & Fisher, S. E. (2009). Genetics of language. In M. S. Gazzaniga (
Ed. ), The cognitive neurosciences, 4th ed. (pp. 855-871). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Abstract
It has long been hypothesised that the human faculty to acquire a language is in some way encoded in our genetic program. However, only recently has genetic evidence been available to begin to substantiate the presumed genetic basis of language. Here we review the first data from molecular genetic studies showing association between gene variants and language disorders (specific language impairment, speech sound disorder, developmental dyslexia), we discuss the biological function of these genes, and we further speculate on the more general question of how the human genome builds a brain that can learn a language. -
Rapold, C. J., & Zaugg-Coretti, S. (2009). Exploring the periphery of the central Ethiopian Linguistic area: Data from Yemsa and Benchnon. In J. Crass, & R. Meyer (
Eds. ), Language contact and language change in Ethiopia (pp. 59-81). Köln: Köppe. -
Reesink, G. (2009). A connection between Bird's Head and (Proto) Oceanic. In B. Evans (
Ed. ), Discovering history through language, papers in honor of Malcolm Ross (pp. 181-192). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. -
Reesink, G. (2014). Topic management and clause combination in the Papuan language Usan. In R. Van Gijn, J. Hammond, D. Matic, S. van Putten, & A.-V. Galucio (
Eds. ), Information Structure and Reference Tracking in Complex Sentences. (pp. 231-262). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Abstract
This chapter describes topic management in the Papuan language Usan. The notion of ‘topic’ is defined by its pre-theoretical meaning ‘what someone’s speech is about’. This notion cannot be restricted to simple clausal or sentential constructions, but requires the wider context of long stretches of natural text. The tracking of a topic is examined in its relationship to clause combining mechanisms. Coordinating clause chaining with its switch reference mechanism is contrasted with subordinating strategies called ‘domain-creating’ constructions. These different strategies are identified by language-specific signals, such as intonation and morphosyntactic cues like nominalizations and scope of negation and other modalities. -
Rietveld, T., & Chen, A. (2006). How to obtain and process perceptual judgements of intonational meaning. In S. Sudhoff, D. Lenertová, R. Meyer, S. Pappert, P. Augurzky, I. Mleinek, N. Richter, & J. Schliesser (
Eds. ), Methods in empirical prosody research (pp. 283-319). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. -
Roberts, S. G. (2014). Monolingual Biases in Simulations of Cultural Transmission. In V. Dignum, & F. Dignum (
Eds. ), Perspectives on Culture and Agent-based Simulations (pp. 111-125). Cham: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-01952-9_7.Abstract
Recent research suggests that the evolution of language is affected by the inductive biases of its learners. I suggest that there is an implicit assumption that one of these biases is to expect a single linguistic system in the input. Given the prevalence of bilingual cultures, this may not be a valid abstraction. This is illustrated by demonstrating that the ‘minimal naming game’ model, in which a shared lexicon evolves in a population of agents, includes an implicit mutual exclusivity bias. Since recent research suggests that children raised in bilingual cultures do not exhibit mutual exclusivity, the individual learning algorithm of the agents is not as abstract as it appears to be. A modification of this model demonstrates that communicative success can be achieved without mutual exclusivity. It is concluded that complex cultural phenomena, such as bilingualism, do not necessarily result from complex individual learning mechanisms. Rather, the cultural process itself can bring about this complexity. -
Roberts, S. G., & Quillinan, J. (2014). The Chimp Challenge: Working memory in chimps and humans. In L. McCrohon, B. Thompson, T. Verhoef, & H. Yamauchi (
Eds. ), The Past, Present and Future of Language Evolution Research: Student volume of the 9th International Conference on the Evolution of Language (pp. 31-39). Tokyo: EvoLang9 Organising Committee.Abstract
Matsuzawa (2012) presented work at Evolang demonstrating the working memory abilities of chimpanzees. (Inoue & Matsuzawa, 2007) found that chimpanzees can correctly remember the location of 9 randomly arranged numerals displayed for 210ms - shorter than an average human eye saccade. Humans, however, perform poorly at this task. Matsuzawa suggests a semantic link hypothesis: while chimps have good visual, eidetic memory, humans are good at symbolic associations. The extra information in the semantic, linguistic links that humans possess increase the load on working memory and make this task difficult for them. We were interested to see if a wider search could find humans that matched the performance of the chimpanzees. We created an online version of the experiment and challenged people to play. We also attempted to run a non-semantic version of the task to see if this made the task easier. We found that, while humans can perform better than Inoue and Matsuzawa (2007) suggest, chimpanzees can perform better still. We also found no evidence to support the semantic link hypothesis. -
Roelofs, A., & Lamers, M. (2007). Modelling the control of visual attention in Stroop-like tasks. In A. S. Meyer, L. R. Wheeldon, & A. Krott (
Eds. ), Automaticity and control in language processing (pp. 123-142). Hove: Psychology Press.Abstract
The authors discuss the issue of how visual orienting, selective stimulus processing, and vocal response planning are related in Stroop-like tasks. The evidence suggests that visual orienting is dependent on both visual processing and verbal response planning. They also discuss the issue of selective perceptual processing in Stroop-like tasks. The evidence suggests that space-based and object-based attention lead to a Trojan horse effect in the classic Stroop task, which can be moderated by increasing the spatial distance between colour and word and by making colour and word part of different objects. Reducing the presentation duration of the colour-word stimulus or the duration of either the colour or word dimension reduces Stroop interference. This paradoxical finding was correctly simulated by the WEAVER++ model. Finally, the authors discuss evidence on the neural correlates of executive attention, in particular, the ACC. The evidence suggests that the ACC plays a role in regulation itself rather than only signalling the need for regulation. -
Rossano, F., Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (2009). Gaze, questioning and culture. In J. Sidnell (
Ed. ), Conversation analysis: Comparative perspectives (pp. 187-249). Cambridge University Press.Abstract
Relatively little work has examined the function of gaze in interaction. Previous research has mainly addressed issues such as next speaker selection (e.g. Lerner 2003) or engagement and disengagement in the conversation (Goodwin 1981). It has looked for gaze behavior in relation to the roles participants are enacting locally, (e.g., speaker or hearer) and in relation to the unit “turn” in the turn taking system (Goodwin 1980, 1981; Kendon 1967). In his seminal work Kendon (1967) claimed that “there is a very clear and quite consistent pattern, namely, that [the speaker] tends to look away as he begins a long utterance, and in many cases somewhat in advance of it; and that he looks up at his interlocutor as the end of the long utterance approaches, usually during the last phase, and he continues to look thereafter.” Goodwin (Goodwin 1980) introducing the listener into the picture proposed the following two rules: Rule1: A speaker should obtain the gaze of his recipient during the course of a turn of talk. Rule2: a recipient should be gazing at the speaker when the speaker is gazing at the hearer. Rossano’s work (2005) has suggested the possibility of a different level of order for gaze in interaction: the sequential level. In particular he found that gaze withdrawal after sustained mutual gaze tends to occur at sequence possible completion and if both participants withdraw the sequence is complete. By sequence here we refer to a unit that is structured around the notion of adjacency pair. The latter refers to two turns uttered by different speakers orderly organized (first part and second part) and pair type related (greeting-greeting, question-answer). These two turns are related by conditional relevance (Schegloff 1968) that is to say that the first part requires the production of the second and the absence of the latter is noticeable and accountable. Question-anwers are very typical examples of adjacency pairs. In this paper we compare the use of gaze in question-answer sequences in three different populations: Italians, speakers of Mayan Tzeltal (Mexico) and speakers of Yeli Ndye (Russel Island, Papua New Guinea). Relying mainly on dyadic interactions and ordinary conversation we will provide a comparison of the occurrence of gaze in each turn (to compare with the claims of Goodwin and Kendon) and we will describe whether gaze has any effect on the other participant response and whether it persists also during the answer. The three languages and cultures that will be compared here belong to three different continents and have been previously described as potentially following opposite rules: for speakers of Italian and Yeli Ndye unproblematic and preferred engagement of mutual gaze while for speakers of Tzeltal strong mutual gaze avoidance. This paper tries to provide an accurate description of their gaze behavior in this specific type of sequential conversation. -
Rossi, G. (2014). When do people not use language to make requests? In P. Drew, & E. Couper-Kuhlen (
Eds. ), Requesting in social interaction (pp. 301-332). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Abstract
In everyday joint activities (e.g. playing cards, preparing potatoes, collecting empty plates), participants often request others to pass, move or otherwise deploy objects. In order to get these objects to or from the requestee, requesters need to manipulate them, for example by holding them out, reaching for them, or placing them somewhere. As they perform these manual actions, requesters may or may not accompany them with language (e.g. Take this potato and cut it or Pass me your plate). This study shows that adding or omitting language in the design of a request is influenced in the first place by a criterion of recognition. When the requested action is projectable from the advancement of an activity, presenting a relevant object to the requestee is enough for them to understand what to do; when, on the other hand, the requested action is occasioned by a contingent development of the activity, requesters use language to specify what the requestee should do. This criterion operates alongside a perceptual criterion, to do with the affordances of the visual and auditory modality. When the requested action is projectable but the requestee is not visually attending to the requester’s manual behaviour, the requester can use just enough language to attract the requestee’s attention and secure immediate recipiency. This study contributes to a line of research concerned with the organisation of verbal and nonverbal resources for requesting. Focussing on situations in which language is not – or only minimally – used, it demonstrates the role played by visible bodily behaviour and by the structure of everyday activities in the formation and understanding of requests. -
Rowland, C. F., Noble, C. H., & Chan, A. (2014). Competition all the way down: How children learn word order cues to sentence meaning. In B. MacWhinney, A. Malchukov, & E. Moravcsik (
Eds. ), Competing Motivations in Grammar and Usage (pp. 125-143). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Abstract
Most work on competing cues in language acquisition has focussed on what happens when cues compete within a certain construction. There has been far less work on what happens when constructions themselves compete. The aim of the present chapter was to explore how the acquisition mechanism copes when constructions compete in a language. We present three experimental studies, all of which focus on the acquisition of the syntactic function of word order as a marker of the Theme-Recipient relation in ditransitives (form-meaning mapping). In Study 1 we investigated how quickly English children acquire form-meaning mappings when there are two competing structures in the language. We demonstrated that English speaking 4-year- olds, but not 3-year-olds, correctly interpreted both preposition al and double object datives, assigning Theme and Recipient participant roles on the basis of word order cues. There was no advantage for the double object dative despite its greater frequency in child directed speech. In Study 2 we looked at acquisition in a language which has no dative alternation –Welsh–to investigate how quickly children acquire form-meaning mapping when there is no competing structure. We demonstrated that Welsh children (Study 2) acquired the prepositional dative at age 3 years, which was much earlier than English children. Finally, in Study 3 we examined bei2 (give) ditransitives in Cantonese, to investigate what happens when there is no dative alternation (as in Welsh), but when the child hears alternative, and possibly competing, word orders in the input. Like the English 3-year-olds, the Cantonese 3-year-olds had not yet acquired the word order marking constraints of bei2 ditransitives. We conclude that there is not only competition between cues but competition between constructions in language acquisition. We suggest an extension to the competition model (Bates & MacWhinney, 1982) whereby generalisations take place across constructions as easily as they take place within constructions, whenever there are salient similarities to form the basis of the generalisation. -
De Ruiter, J. P., Noordzij, M. L., Newman-Norlund, S., Hagoort, P., & Toni, I. (2007). On the origins of intentions. In P. Haggard, Y. Rossetti, & M. Kawato (
Eds. ), Sensorimotor foundations of higher cognition (pp. 593-610). Oxford: Oxford University Press. -
Salomo, D., & Liszkowski, U. (2009). Socialisation of prelinguistic communication. In A. Majid (
Ed. ), Field manual volume 12 (pp. 56-57). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.844597.Abstract
Little is known about cultural differences in interactional practices with infants. The goal of this task is to document the nature and emergence of caregiver-infant interaction/ communication in different cultures. There are two tasks: Task 1 – a brief documentation about the culture under investigation with respect to infant-caregiver interaction and parental beliefs. Task 2 – the “decorated room”, a task designed to elicit infant and caregiver. -
Sankoff, G., & Brown, P. (2009). The origins of syntax in discourse: A case study of Tok Pisin relatives [reprint of 1976 article in Language]. In J. Holm, & S. Michaelis (
Eds. ), Contact languages (vol. II) (pp. 433-476). London: Routledge. -
Sauter, D. (2009). Emotion concepts. In A. Majid (
Ed. ), Field manual volume 12 (pp. 20-30). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.883578.Abstract
The goal of this task is to investigate emotional categories across linguistic and cultural boundaries. There are three core tasks. In order to conduct this task you will need emotional vocalisation stimuli on your computer and you must translate the scenarios at the end of this entry into your local language. -
Scharenborg, O., ten Bosch, L., & Boves, L. (2007). Early decision making in continuous speech. In M. Grimm, & K. Kroschel (
Eds. ), Robust speech recognition and understanding (pp. 333-350). I-Tech Education and Publishing. -
Schiller, N. O., & Verdonschot, R. G. (2015). Accessing words from the mental lexicon. In J. Taylor (
Ed. ), The Oxford handbook of the word (pp. 481-492). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Abstract
This chapter describes how speakers access words from the mental lexicon. Lexical access is a crucial
component in the process of transforming thoughts into speech. Some theories consider lexical access to be
strictly serial and discrete, while others view this process as being cascading or even interactive, i.e. the different
sub-levels influence each other. We discuss some of the evidence in favour and against these viewpoints, and
also present arguments regarding the ongoing debate on how words are selected for production. Another important
issue concerns the access to morphologically complex words such as derived and inflected words, as well as
compounds. Are these accessed as whole entities from the mental lexicon or are the parts assembled online? This
chapter tries to provide an answer to that question as well. -
Schimke, S. (2009). Does finiteness mark assertion? A picture selection study with Turkish learners and native speakers of German. In C. Dimroth, & P. Jordens (
Eds. ), Functional categories in learner language (pp. 169-202). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. -
Schoffelen, J.-M., & Gross, J. (2014). Studying dynamic neural interactions with MEG. In S. Supek, & C. J. Aine (
Eds. ), Magnetoencephalography: From signals to dynamic cortical networks (pp. 405-427). Berlin: Springer. -
Schriefers, H., & Vigliocco, G. (2015). Speech Production, Psychology of [Repr.]. In J. D. Wright (
Ed. ), International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (2nd ed) Vol. 23 (pp. 255-258). Amsterdam: Elsevier. doi:10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.52022-4.Abstract
This article is reproduced from the previous edition, volume 22, pp. 14879–14882, © 2001, Elsevier Ltd. -
Schubotz, L., Oostdijk, N., & Ernestus, M. (2015). Y’know vs. you know: What phonetic reduction can tell us about pragmatic function. In S. Lestrade, P. De Swart, & L. Hogeweg (
Eds. ), Addenda: Artikelen voor Ad Foolen (pp. 361-380). Njimegen: Radboud University. -
Scott, S. K., Sauter, D., & McGettigan, C. (2009). Brain mechanisms for processing perceived emotional vocalizations in humans. In S. M. Brudzynski (
Ed. ), Handbook of mammalian vocalization: An integrative neuroscience approach (pp. 187-198). London: Academic Press.Abstract
Humans express emotional information in their facial expressions and body movements, as well as in their voice. In this chapter we consider the neural processing of a specific kind of vocal expressions, non-verbal emotional vocalizations e.g. laughs and sobs. We outline evidence, from patient studies and functional imaging studies, for both emotion specific and more general processing of emotional information in the voice. We relate these findings to evidence for both basic and dimensional accounts of the representations of emotion. We describe in detail an fMRI study of positive and negative non-verbal expressions of emotion, which revealed that prefrontal areas involved in the control of oro-facial movements were also sensitive to different kinds of vocal emotional information. -
Senft, G. (2007). Reference and 'référence dangereuse' to persons in Kilivila: An overview and a case study. In N. Enfield, & T. Stivers (
Eds. ), Person reference in interaction: Linguistic, cultural, and social perspectives (pp. 309-337). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Abstract
Based on the conversation analysts’ insights into the various forms of third person reference in English, this paper first presents the inventory of forms Kilivila, the Austronesian language of the Trobriand Islanders of Papua New Guinea, offers its speakers for making such references. To illustrate such references to third persons in talk-in-interaction in Kilivila, a case study on gossiping is presented in the second part of the paper. This case study shows that ambiguous anaphoric references to two first mentioned third persons turn out to not only exceed and even violate the frame of a clearly defined situational-intentional variety of Kilivila that is constituted by the genre “gossip”, but also that these references are extremely dangerous for speakers in the Trobriand Islanders’ society. I illustrate how this culturally dangerous situation escalates and how other participants of the group of gossiping men try to “repair” this violation of the frame of a culturally defined and metalinguistically labelled “way of speaking”. The paper ends with some general remarks on how the understanding of forms of person reference in a language is dependent on the culture specific context in which they are produced. -
Senft, G. (2006). Prolegomena to Kilivila grammar of space. In S. C. Levinson, & D. P. Wilkins (
Eds. ), Grammars of space: Explorations in cognitive diversity (pp. 206-229). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Abstract
This paper presents preliminary remarks on some of the central linguistic means speakers of Kilivila use in expressing their conceptions of space and for referring to objects, persons, and events in space . After a brief characterisation of the language and its speakers, I sketch how specific topological relations are encoded, how motion events are described, and what frames of spatial reference are preferred in what contexts for what means and ends. -
Senft, G. (2007). The Nijmegen space games: Studying the interrelationship between language, culture and cognition. In J. Wassmann, & K. Stockhaus (
Eds. ), Person, space and memory in the contemporary Pacific: Experiencing new worlds (pp. 224-244). New York: Berghahn Books.Abstract
One of the central aims of the "Cognitive Anthropology Research Group" (since 1998 the "Department of Language and Cognition of the MPI for Psycholinguistics") is to research the relationship between language, culture and cognition and the conceptualization of space in various languages and cultures. Ever since its foundation in 1991 the group has been developing methods to elicit cross-culturally and cross-linguistically comparable data for this research project. After a brief summary of the central considerations that served as guidelines for the developing of these elicitation devices, this paper first presents a broad selection of the "space games" developed and used for data elicitation in the groups' various fieldsites so far. The paper then discusses the advantages and shortcomings of these data elicitation devices. Finally, it is argued that methodologists developing such devices find themselves in a position somewhere between Scylla and Charybdis - at least, if they take the requirement seriously that the elicited data should be comparable not only cross-culturally but also cross-linguistically. -
Senft, G. (2009). Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski. In G. Senft, J.-O. Östman, & J. Verschueren (
Eds. ), Culture and language use (pp. 210-225). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. -
Senft, G. (2009). Elicitation. In G. Senft, J.-O. Östman, & J. Verschueren (
Eds. ), Culture and language use (pp. 105-109). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. -
Senft, G. (2007). "Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten.." - Ethnolinguistische Winke zur Rolle von umfassenden Metadaten bei der (und für die) Arbeit mit Corpora. In W. Kallmeyer, & G. Zifonun (
Eds. ), Sprachkorpora - Datenmengen und Erkenntnisfortschritt (pp. 152-168). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.Abstract
Arbeitet man als muttersprachlicher Sprecher des Deutschen mit Corpora gesprochener oder geschriebener deutscher Sprache, dann reflektiert man in aller Regel nur selten über die Vielzahl von kulturspezifischen Informationen, die in solchen Texten kodifiziert sind – vor allem, wenn es sich bei diesen Daten um Texte aus der Gegenwart handelt. In den meisten Fällen hat man nämlich keinerlei Probleme mit dem in den Daten präsupponierten und als allgemein bekannt erachteten Hintergrundswissen. Betrachtet man dagegen Daten in Corpora, die andere – vor allem nicht-indoeuropäische – Sprachen dokumentieren, dann wird einem schnell bewußt, wieviel an kulturspezifischem Wissen nötig ist, um diese Daten adäquat zu verstehen. In meinem Vortrag illustriere ich diese Beobachtung an einem Beispiel aus meinem Corpus des Kilivila, der austronesischen Sprache der Trobriand-Insulaner von Papua-Neuguinea. Anhand eines kurzen Auschnitts einer insgesamt etwa 26 Minuten dauernden Dokumentation, worüber und wie sechs Trobriander miteinander tratschen und klatschen, zeige ich, was ein Hörer oder Leser eines solchen kurzen Daten-Ausschnitts wissen muß, um nicht nur dem Gespräch überhaupt folgen zu können, sondern auch um zu verstehen, was dabei abläuft und wieso ein auf den ersten Blick absolut alltägliches Gespräch plötzlich für einen Trobriander ungeheuer an Brisanz und Bedeutung gewinnt. Vor dem Hintergrund dieses Beispiels weise ich dann zum Schluß meines Beitrags darauf hin, wie unbedingt nötig und erforderlich es ist, in allen Corpora bei der Erschließung und Kommentierung von Datenmaterialien durch sogenannte Metadaten solche kulturspezifischen Informationen explizit zu machen. -
Senft, G. (2007). Nominal classification. In D. Geeraerts, & H. Cuyckens (
Eds. ), The Oxford handbook of cognitive linguistics (pp. 676-696). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Abstract
This handbook chapter summarizes some of the problems of nominal classification in language, presents and illustrates the various systems or techniques of nominal classification, and points out why nominal classification is one of the most interesting topics in Cognitive Linguistics. -
Senft, G. (2009). Fieldwork. In G. Senft, J.-O. Östman, & J. Verschueren (
Eds. ), Culture and language use (pp. 131-139). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. -
Senft, G. (2009). Linguistische Feldforschung. In H. M. Müller (
Ed. ), Arbeitsbuch Linguistik (2nd rev. ed., pp. 353-363). Paderborn: Schöningh UTB.Abstract
This article provides a brief introduction into field research, its aims, its methods and the various phases of fieldwork. -
Senft, G. (2009). Introduction. In G. Senft, J.-O. Östman, & J. Verschueren (
Eds. ), Culture and language use (pp. 1-17). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. -
Senft, G. (2009). Phatic communion. In G. Senft, J.-O. Östman, & J. Verschueren (
Eds. ), Culture and language use (pp. 226-233). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. -
Senft, G. (2009). Sind die emotionalen Gesichtsausdrücke des Menschen in allen Kulturen gleich? In Max Planck Society (
Ed. ), Max-Planck-Gesellschaft Jahrbuch 2008/09 Tätigkeitsberichte und Publikationen (DVD) (pp. 1-4). München: Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science.Abstract
This paper presents a project which tests the hypothesis of the universality of facial expressions of emotions crossculturally and crosslinguistically. First results are presented which contradict the hypothesis. -
Senft, G., Majid, A., & Levinson, S. C. (2007). The language of taste. In A. Majid (
Ed. ), Field Manual Volume 10 (pp. 42-45). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.492913. -
Senft, G. (2015). The Trobriand Islanders' concept of karewaga. In S. Lestrade, P. de Swart, & L. Hogeweg (
Eds. ), Addenda. Artikelen voor Ad Foolen (pp. 381-390). Nijmegen: Radboud University. -
Senft, G. (2009). Trobriand Islanders' forms of ritual communication. In G. Senft, & E. B. Basso (
Eds. ), Ritual communication (pp. 81-101). Oxford: Berg. -
Seuren, P. A. M. (2006). Sentence-oriented semantic approaches in generative grammar. In S. Auroux, E. Koerner, H. J. Niederehe, & K. Versteegh (
Eds. ), History of the Language Sciences: An International Handbook on the Evolution of the Study of Language from the Beginnings to the Present (pp. 2201-2213). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.Abstract
1. Introduction 2. A generative grammar as an algorithm 3. The semantic component 4. Bibliography 1. Introduction Throughout the 20th century up to the present day grammar and semantics have been uneasy bedfellows. A look at the historical background will make it clear how this curious situation came about. 20th-century linguistics has been characterized by an almost exclusive concern with the structure of words, word groups and sentences. This concern was reinforced, especially on the American side of the Atlantic, by the sudden rise and subsequent dominance of behaviorism during the 1920s. It started in psychology but quickly permeated all the human sciences, including linguistics, until the early 1960s, when it collapsed as suddenly as it had arisen. -
Seuren, P. A. M. (2006). Presupposition. In K. Brown (
Ed. ), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (vol. 10) (pp. 80-87). Amsterdam: Elsevier.Abstract
Presupposition is a semantic device built into natural language to make sentences fit for use in certain contexts but not in others. A sentence carrying a presupposition thus evokes a context in which that presupposition is fulfilled. The study of presupposition was triggered by the behavior of natural language negation, which tends to preserve presuppositions either as invited inferences or as entailments. As the role of discourse became more apparent in semantics, presupposition began to be seen increasingly as a discourse-semantic phenomenon with consequences for the logic of language. -
Seuren, P. A. M. (2006). Projection problem. In K. Brown (
Ed. ), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (vol. 10) (pp. 128-131). Amsterdam: Elsevier.Abstract
The property of presuppositions to be sometimes preserved through embeddings, albeit often in a weakened form, is called projection. The projection problem consists in formulating the conditions under which the presuppositions of an embedded clause (a) are kept as presuppositions of the superordinate structure, or (b) remain as an invited inference that can be overruled by context, or (c) are canceled. Over the past 25 years it has been recognized that the projection problem is to be solved in the context of a wider theory of presupposition and discourse incrementation. -
Seuren, P. A. M. (2006). Propositional and predicate logic-linguistic aspects. In K. Brown (
Ed. ), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (vol. 10) (pp. 146-153). Amsterdam: Elsevier.Abstract
Logic was discovered by Aristotle when he saw that the semantic behavior of the negation word not is different in sentences with a definite and in those with a quantified subject term. Until the early 20th century, logic remained firmly language-based, but for the past century it has been mainly a tool in the hands of mathematicians, which has meant an alienation from linguistic reality. With the help of new techniques, it is now possible to revert to the logic of language, which is seen as based on a semantic analysis of the logical words (constants) involved. This new perspective, combined with much improved insights into the semantically defined discourse dependency of natural language sentences, leads to a novel and more functionally oriented approach to logic and to a reappraisal of traditional predicate calculus, whose main fault, undue existential import, evaporates when discourse dependency, in particular the presuppositional aspect, is brought into play. Traditional predicate calculus is seen to have a much greater logical power and a much greater functionality than modern predicate calculus. There is also full isomorphism, neglected in modern logic, between traditional predicate calculus and propositional calculus, which raises the question of any possible deeper causes. -
Seuren, P. A. M. (2006). Virtual objects. In K. Brown (
Ed. ), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (vol. 13) (pp. 438-441). Amsterdam: Elsevier.Abstract
Virtual objects are objects thought up by a thinking individual. Although 20th-century philosophy has tried to ban them from ontology, they make it impossible to account for the truth of sentences such as Apollo was worshipped in the island of Delos, in which a property is assigned to the nonexisting, virtual entity Apollo. Such facts are the reason why virtual objects are slowly being recognized again. -
Seuren, P. A. M. (2006). Factivity. In K. Brown (
Ed. ), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (vol. 4) (pp. 423-424). Amsterdam: Elsevier.Abstract
Some predicates are ‘factive’ in that they induce the presupposition that what is said in their subordinate that clause is true. -
Seuren, P. A. M. (2006). Donkey sentences. In K. Brown (
Ed. ), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (vol. 3) (pp. 763-766). Amsterdam: Elsevier.Abstract
The term ‘donkey sentences’ derives from the medieval philosopher Walter Burleigh, whose example sentences contain mention of donkeys. The modern philosopher Peter Geach rediscovered Burleigh's sentences and the associated problem. The problem is that natural language anaphoric pronouns are sometimes used in a way that cannot be accounted for in terms of modern predicate calculus. The solution lies in establishing a separate category of anaphoric pronouns that refer via the intermediary of a contextually given antecedent, possibly an existentially quantified expression. -
Seuren, P. A. M. (2006). Early formalization tendencies in 20th-century American linguistics. In S. Auroux, E. Koerner, H.-J. Niederehe, & K. Versteegh (
Eds. ), History of the Language Sciences: An International Handbook on the Evolution of the Study of Language from the Beginnings to the Present (pp. 2026-2034). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. -
Seuren, P. A. M. (2006). Discourse domain. In K. Brown (
Ed. ), Encyclopedia of language and lingusitics (vol. 1) (pp. 638-639). Amsterdam: Elsevier.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.
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