Publications

Abstract

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

Abstract

Odor naming is difficult for people, but recent cross-cultural research suggests this difficulty is culture-specific. Jahai speakers (hunter-gatherers from the Malay Peninsula) name odors as consistently as colors, and much better than English speakers (Majid & Burenhult, 2014). In Jahai the linguistic advantage for smells correlates with a cultural interest in odors. Here we ask whether sub-cultures in the West with odor expertise also show superior odor naming. We tested wine and coffee experts (who have specialized odor training) in an odor naming task. Both wine and coffee experts were no more accurate or consistent than novices when naming odors. Although there were small differences in naming strategies, experts and non-experts alike relied overwhelmingly on source-based descriptions. So the specific language experts speak continues to constrain their ability to express odors. This suggests expertise alone is not sufficient to overcome the limits of language in the domain of smell.

Abstract

Social tolerance is a core aspect of primate social relationships with implications for the evolution of cooperation, prosociality and social learning. We measured the social tolerance of bonobos in an experiment recently validated with chimpanzees to allow for a comparative assessment of group-level tolerance, and found that the bonobo group studied here exhibited lower social tolerance on average than chimpanzees. Furthermore, following the Relational Model [de Waal, 1996], we investigated whether bonobos responded to an increased potential for social conflict with tolerance, conflict avoidance or conflict escalation, and found that only behaviours indicative of conflict escalation differed across conditions. Taken together, these findings contribute to the current debate over the level of social tolerance of bonobos and lend support to the position that the social tolerance of bonobos may not be notably high compared with other primates.

Abstract

Studies of animal behavior consistently demonstrate that the social environment impacts cooperation, yet the effect of social dynamics has been largely excluded from studies of human cooperation. Here, we introduce a novel approach inspired by nonhuman primate research to address how social hierarchies impact human cooperation. Participants competed to earn hierarchy positions and then could cooperate with another individual in the hierarchy by investing in a common effort. Cooperation was achieved if the combined investments exceeded a threshold, and the higher ranked individual distributed the spoils unless control was contested by the partner. Compared to a condition lacking hierarchy, cooperation declined in the presence of a hierarchy due to a decrease in investment by lower ranked individuals. Furthermore, hierarchy was detrimental to cooperation regardless of whether it was earned or arbitrary. These findings mirror results from nonhuman primates and demonstrate that hierarchies are detrimental to cooperation. However, these results deviate from nonhuman primate findings by demonstrating that human behavior is responsive to changing hierarchical structures and suggests partnership dynamics that may improve cooperation. This work introduces a controlled way to investigate the social influences on human behavior, and demonstrates the evolutionary continuity of human behavior with other primate species.

Abstract

Language-specific differences in the size and distribution of the phonemic repertoire can have implications for the task facing listeners in recognising spoken words. A language with more phonemes will allow shorter words and reduced embedding of short words within longer ones, decreasing the potential for spurious lexical competitors to be activated by speech signals. We demonstrate that this is the case via comparative analyses of the vocabularies of English and Spanish. A language which uses suprasegmental as well as segmental contrasts, however, can substantially reduce the extent of spurious embedding.

Abstract

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

Abstract

Native American English and non-native(Dutch)listeners identified either the consonant or the vowel in all possible American English CV and VC syllables. The syllables were embedded in multispeaker babble at three signal-to-noise ratios(0, 8, and 16 dB). The phoneme identification
performance of the non-native listeners was less accurate than that of the native listeners. All listeners were adversely affected by noise. With these isolated syllables, initial segments were harder to identify than final segments. Crucially, the effects of language background and noise did not interact; the performance asymmetry between the native and non-native groups was not significantly different across signal-to-noise ratios. It is concluded that the frequently reported disproportionate difficulty of non-native listening under disadvantageous conditions is not due to a disproportionate increase in phoneme misidentifications.

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

The retiring academic may look back upon, inter alia, years of conference attendance. Speech error researchers are uniquely fortunate because they can collect data in any situation involving communication; accordingly, the retiring speech error researcher will have collected data at those conferences. We here address the issue of whether error data collected in situations involving conviviality (such as at conferences) is representative of error data in general. Our approach involved a comparison, across three levels of linguistic processing, between a specially constructed Conviviality Sample and the largest existing source of speech error data, the newly available Fromkin Speech Error Database. The results indicate that there are grounds for regarding the data in the Conviviality Sample as a better than average reflection of the true population of all errors committed. These findings encourage us to recommend further data collection in collaboration with like-minded colleagues.

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

One of a listener’s major tasks in understanding continuous speech in segmenting the speech signal into separate words. When listening conditions are difficult, speakers can help listeners by deliberately clear speech. We found that speakers do indeed attempt to makr word boundaries; moreover, they differentiate between word boundaries in a way which suggest they are sensitive to listener needs. Application of heuristic segmentation strategies makes word boundaries before strong syllables easiest for listeners to perceive; but under difficult listening conditions speakers pay more attention to marking word boundaries before weak syllables, i.e. they mark those boundaries which are otherwise particularly hard to perceive.

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

Orthographies encode phonological information only at the level of words (chiefly, the information encoded concerns phonetic segments; in some cases, tonal information or default stress may be encoded). Of primary interest to second language (L2) learners is whether orthography can assist in clarifying L2 phonological distinctions that are particularly difficult to perceive (e.g., where one native-language phonemic category captures two L2 categories). A review of spoken-word recognition evidence suggests that orthographic information can install knowledge of such a distinction in lexical representations but that this does not affect learners’ ability to perceive the phonemic distinction in speech. Words containing the difficult phonemes become even harder for L2 listeners to recognize, because perception maps less accurately to lexical content.

Abstract

It is a widely held belief that women talk more than men; but experimental evidence has suggested that this belief is mistaken. The present study investigated whether listener bias contributes to this mistake. Dialogues were recorded in mixed-sex and single-sex versions, and male and female listeners judged the proportions of talk contributed to the dialogues by each participant. Female contributions to mixed-sex dialogues were rated as greater than male contributions by both male and female listeners. Female contributions were more likely to be overestimated when they were speaking a dialogue part perceived as probably female than when they were speaking a dialogue part perceived as probably male. It is suggested that the misestimates are due to a complex of factors that may involve both perceptual effects such as misjudgment of rates of speech and sociological effects such as attitudes to social roles and perception of power relations.

Abstract

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

Abstract

Bisyllabic sequences which could be interpreted as one word or two were produced in sentence contexts by a trained speaker, and syllabic durations measured. Listeners judged whether the bisyllables, excised from context, were one word or two. The proportion of two-word choices correlated positively with measured duration, but only for bisyllables stressed on the second syllable. The results may suggest a limit for listener sensitivity to syllabic lengthening as a word boundary cue.

Abstract

Four experiments examined Dutch listeners’ use of suprasegmental information in spoken-word recognition. Isolated syllables excised from minimal stress pairs such as VOORnaam/voorNAAM could be reliably assigned to their source words. In lexical decision, no priming was observed from one member of minimal stress pairs to the other, suggesting that the pairs’ segmental ambiguity was removed by suprasegmental information.Words embedded in nonsense strings were harder to detect if the nonsense string itself formed the beginning of a competing word, but a suprasegmental mismatch to the competing word significantly reduced this inhibition. The same nonsense strings facilitated recognition of the longer words of which they constituted the beginning, butagain the facilitation was significantly reduced by suprasegmental mismatch. Together these results indicate that Dutch listeners effectively exploit suprasegmental cues in recognizing spoken words. Nonetheless, suprasegmental mismatch appears to be somewhat less effective in constraining activation than segmental mismatch.

Abstract

Phoneme detection is a psycholinguistic task in which listeners' response time to detect the presence of a pre-specified phoneme target is measured. Typically, detection tasks have used consonant targets. This paper reports two experiments in which subjects responded to vowels as phoneme detection targets. In the first experiment, targets occurred in real words, in the second in nonsense words. Response times were long by comparison with consonantal targets. Targets in initial syllables were responded to much more slowly than targets in second syllables. Strong vowels were responded to faster than reduced vowels in real words but not in nonwords. These results suggest that the process of phoneme detection produces different results for vowels and for consonants. We discuss possible explanations for this difference, in particular the possibility of language-specificity.

Abstract

The authors used 2 “visual-world” eye-tracking experiments to examine lexical access using Dutch constructions in which the verb did or did not place semantic constraints on its subsequent subject noun phrase. In Experiment 1, fixations to the picture of a cohort competitor (overlapping with the onset of the referent’s name, the subject) did not differ from fixations to a distractor in the constraining-verb condition. In Experiment 2, cross-splicing introduced phonetic information that temporarily biased the input toward the cohort competitor. Fixations to the cohort competitor temporarily increased in both the neutral and constraining conditions. These results favor models in which mapping from the input onto meaning is continuous over models in which contextual effects follow access of an initial form-based competitor set.

Abstract

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

Abstract

Two experiments investigated whether lexical retrieval for speaking can be characterized as a competitive process by assessing the effects of semantic context on picture and word naming in German. In Experiment 1 we demonstrated that pictures are named slower in the context of same-category items than in the context of items from various semantic categories, replicating findings by Kroll and Stewart (Journal of Memory and Language, 33 (1994) 149). In Experiment 2 we used words instead of pictures. Participants either named the words in the context of same- or different-category items, or produced the words together with their corresponding determiner. While in the former condition words were named faster in the context of samecategory items than of different-category items, the opposite pattern was obtained for the latter condition. These findings confirm the claim that the interfering effect of semantic context reflects competition in the retrieval of lexical entries in speaking.

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

European cooperative effort seeks best practices architecture and procedures for international sites

Abstract

Current research on spoken language does not provide a consistent picture as to whether prosody, the melody and rhythm of speech, conveys a specific meaning. Perception studies show that English listeners assign meaning to prosodic patterns, and, for instance, associate some accents with contrast, whereas Dutch listeners behave more controversially. In two ERP studies we tested how Dutch listeners process words carrying two types of accents, which either provided new information (new information accents) or corrected information (corrective accents), both in single sentences (experiment 1) and after corrective and new information questions (experiment 2). In both experiments corrective accents elicited a sustained positivity as compared to new information accents, which started earlier in context than in single sentences. The positivity was not modulated by the nature of the preceding question, suggesting that the underlying neural mechanism likely reflects the construction of an interpretation to the accented word, either by identifying an alternative in context or by inferring it when no context is present. Our experimental results provide strong evidence for inferential processes related to prosodic contours in Dutch

Abstract

The article compares the integration of topic-related additive words at different stages of untutored L2 acquisition. Data stem from an ‘‘additive-elicitation task’’ that was designed in order to capture topic-related additive words in a context that is at the same time controlled for the underlying information structure and nondeviant from other kinds of narrative discourse. We relate the distinction between stressed and nonstressed forms of the German scope particles and adverbials auch ‘also’, noch ‘another’, wieder ‘again’, and immer noch ‘still’ to a uniform, information-structure-based principle: the stressed variants have scope over the topic information of the relevant utterances. It is then the common function of these additive words to express the additive link between the topic of the present utterance and some previous topic for which the same state of affairs is claimed to hold. This phenomenon has often been referred to as ‘‘contrastive topic,’’ but contrary to what this term suggests, these topic elements are by no means deviant from the default in coherent discourse. In the underlying information structure, the validity of some given state of affairs for the present topic must be under discussion. Topic-related additive words then express that the state of affairs indeed applies to this topic, their function therefore coming close to the function of assertion marking. While this functional correspondence goes along with the formal organization of the basic stages of untutored second-language acquisition, its expression brings linguistic constraints into conflict when the acquisition of finiteness pushes learners to reorganize their utterances according to target-language syntax.

Abstract

The notion that the form of a word bears an arbitrary relation to its meaning accounts only partly for the attested form to meaning correspondences in the world’s languages. Recent research suggests a more textured view of vocabulary structure, in which arbitrariness is complemented by iconicity (aspects of form resemble aspects of meaning) and systematicity (statistical regularities in forms predict function). Experimental evidence suggests these form to meaning correspondences serve different functions in language processing, development and communication: systematicity facilities category learning by means of phonological cues, iconicity facilitates word learning and communication by means of perceptuomotor analogies, and arbitrariness facilitates meaning individuation through distinctive forms. Processes of cultural evolution help explain how these competing motivations shape vocabulary structure.

Abstract

Informal paraphrases by native speaker consultants are crucial tools in linguistic fieldwork. When recorded, archived, and analysed, they offer rich data that can be mined for many purposes, from lexicography to semantic typology and from ethnography to the investigation of gesture and speech. This paper describes a procedure for the collection and analysis of folk definitions that are native (in the language under study rather than the language of analysis), informal (spoken rather than written), and multi-modal (preserving the integrity of gesture-speech composite utterances). The value of folk definitions is demonstrated using the case of ideophones, words that are notoriously hard to study using traditional elicitation methods. Three explanatory strategies used in a set of folk definitions of ideophones are examined: the offering of everyday contexts of use, the use of depictive gestures, and the use of sense relations as semantic anchoring points. Folk definitions help elucidate word meanings that are hard to capture, bring to light cultural background knowledge that often remains implicit, and take seriously the crucial involvement of native speaker consultants in linguistic fieldwork. They provide useful data for language documentation and are an essential element of any toolkit for linguistic and ethnographic field research.

Abstract

Repetition is one of the most basic operations on talk, often discussed for its iconic meanings. Ideophones are marked words that depict sensory imagery, often identified by their reduplicated forms. Yet not all reduplication is iconic, and not all ideophones are reduplicated. This paper discusses the semantics and pragmatics of repeated talk (repetition as well as reduplication), with special focus on the intersection of reduplicative processes and ideophonic words. Various formal features of ideophones suggest that it is fruitful to distinguish two modes of representation in language —description and depiction— along with cues like prosodic foregrounding that can steer listeners’ interpretation from one to the other. What is special about reduplication is that it can naturally partake in both of these modes of representation, which is why it is so common in ideophones as well as in other areas of grammar. Using evidence from Siwu, Korean, Semai and a range of other languages, this paper shows how the study of ideophones sheds light on the interpretation of repeated talk and can lead to a more holistic understanding of reduplicative phenomena in language.

Abstract

This special issue reports on a cross-linguistic study of other-initiated repair, a domain at the crossroads of language, mind, and social life. Other-initiated repair is part of a system of practices that people use to deal with problems of speaking, hearing and understanding. The contributions in this special issue describe the linguistic resources and interactional practices associated with other-initiated repair in ten different languages. Here we provide an overview of the research methods and the conceptual framework. The empirical base for the project consists of corpora of naturally occurring conversations, collected in fieldsites around the world. Methodologically, we combine qualitative analysis with a comparative-typological perspective, and we formulate principles for the cross-linguistic comparison of conversational structures. A key move, of broad relevance to pragmatic typology, is the recognition that formats for repair initiation form paradigm-like systems that are ultimately language-specific, and that comparison is best done at the level of the constitutive properties of these formats. These properties can be functional (concerning aspects of linguistic formatting) as well as sequential (concerning aspects of the interactional environment). We show how functional and sequential aspects of conversational structure can capture patterns of commonality and diversity in conversational structures within and across languages

Abstract

This article describes the interactional patterns and linguistic structures associated with other-initiated repair in Siwu, a Kwa language spoken in eastern Ghana. Other-initiated repair is the set of techniques used by people to deal with problems in speaking, hearing and understanding. Formats for repair initiation in Siwu exploit language-specific resources like question words and noun class morphology. At the same time, the basic structure of the system bears a strong similarity other-initiated repair in other languages. Practices described for Siwu thus are potentially of broader relevance to the study of other-initiated repair. This article documents how different prosodic realisations of repair initiators may index social actions and features of the speech event; how two distinct roles of repetition in repair initiators are kept apart by features of turn design; and what kinds of items can be treated as ‘dispensable’ in resayings. By charting how other-initiated repair uses local linguistic resources and yet is shaped by interactional needs that transcend particular languages, this study contributes to the growing field of pragmatic typology: the study of systems of language use and the principles that shape them

Abstract

There would be little adaptive value in a complex communication system like human language if there were no ways to detect and correct problems. A systematic comparison of conversation in a broad sample of the world’s languages reveals a universal system for the real-time resolution of frequent breakdowns in communication. In a sample of 12 languages of 8 language families of varied typological profiles we find a system of ‘other-initiated repair’, where the recipient of an unclear message can signal trouble and the sender can repair the original message. We find that this system is frequently used (on average about once per 1.4 minutes in any language), and that it has detailed common properties, contrary to assumptions of radical cultural variation. Unrelated languages share the same three functionally distinct types of repair initiator for signalling problems and use them in the same kinds of contexts. People prefer to choose the type that is the most specific possible, a principle that minimizes cost both for the sender being asked to fix the problem and for the dyad as a social unit. Disruption to the conversation is kept to a minimum, with the two-utterance repair sequence being on average no longer that the single utterance which is being fixed. The findings, controlled for historical relationships, situation types and other dependencies, reveal the fundamentally cooperative nature of human communication and offer support for the pragmatic universals hypothesis: while languages may vary in the organization of grammar and meaning, key systems of language use may be largely similar across cultural groups. They also provide a fresh perspective on controversies about the core properties of language, by revealing a common infrastructure for social interaction which may be the universal bedrock upon which linguistic diversity rests.

Abstract

A syntactic and a semantic task were per-formed by German-speaking healthy subjects and apha-sics with lesions in the dominant left hemisphere. In both
tasks, pictures of objects were presented that had to be classified by pressing buttons. The classification was into grammatical gender in the syntactic task (masculine or feminine gender?) and into semantic category in the se-
mantic task (man- or nature made?). Behavioral data revealed a significant Group by Task interaction, with
aphasics showing most pronounced problems with syn-
tax. Brain event-related potentials 300–600 ms following picture onset showed different task-dependent laterality
patterns in the two groups. In controls, the syntax task
induced a left-lateralized negative ERP, whereas the semantic task produced more symmetric responses over the hemispheres. The opposite was the case in the patients, where, paradoxically, stronger laterality of physio-logical brain responses emerged in the semantic task than in the syntactic task. We interpret these data based on neuro-psycholinguistic models of word processing and current theories about the roles of the hemispheres in language recovery.

Abstract

Some languages describe musical pitch in terms of spatial height; others in terms of thickness. Differences in pitch metaphors also shape adults’ nonlinguistic space-pitch representations. At the same time, 4-month-old infants have both types of space-pitch mappings available. This tension between prelinguistic space-pitch associations and their subsequent linguistic mediation raises questions about the acquisition of space-pitch metaphors. To address this issue, 5-year-old Dutch children were tested on their linguistic knowledge of pitch metaphors, and nonlinguistic space-pitch associations. Our results suggest 5-year-olds understand height-pitch metaphors in a reversed fashion (high pitch = low). Children displayed good comprehension of a thickness-pitch metaphor, despite its absence in Dutch. In nonlinguistic tasks, however, children did not show consistent space-pitch associations. Overall, pitch representations do not seem to be influenced by linguistic metaphors in 5-year-olds, suggesting that effects of language on musical pitch arise rather late during development.

Abstract

Research into sound-symbolism has shown that people can
consistently associate certain pseudo-words with certain referents;
for instance, pseudo-words with rounded vowels and
sonorant consonants are linked to round shapes, while pseudowords
with unrounded vowels and obstruents (with a noncontinuous
airflow), are associated with sharp shapes. Such
sound-symbolic associations have been proposed to arise from
cross-modal abstraction processes. Here we assess the link between
sound-symbolism and cross-modal abstraction by testing
dyslexic individuals’ ability to make sound-symbolic associations.
Dyslexic individuals are known to have deficiencies
in cross-modal processing. We find that dyslexic individuals
are impaired in their ability to make sound-symbolic associations
relative to the controls. Our results shed light on the cognitive
underpinnings of sound-symbolism by providing novel
evidence for the role —and disruptability— of cross-modal abstraction
processes in sound-symbolic eects.

Abstract

The cortical regions of the brain traditionally associated with the comprehension of language are Wernicke's area and Broca's area. However, recent evidence suggests that other brain regions might also be involved in this complex process. This paper describes the opportunity to evaluate a large number of brain-injured patients to determine which lesioned brain areas might affect language comprehension. Sixty-four chronic left hemisphere stroke patients were evaluated on 11 subtests of the Curtiss–Yamada Comprehensive Language Evaluation – Receptive (CYCLE-R; Curtiss, S., & Yamada, J. (1988). Curtiss–Yamada Comprehensive Language Evaluation. Unpublished test, UCLA). Eight right hemisphere stroke patients and 15 neurologically normal older controls also participated. Patients were required to select a single line drawing from an array of three or four choices that best depicted the content of an auditorily-presented sentence. Patients' lesions obtained from structural neuroimaging were reconstructed onto templates and entered into a voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM; Bates, E., Wilson, S., Saygin, A. P., Dick, F., Sereno, M., Knight, R. T., & Dronkers, N. F. (2003). Voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping. Nature Neuroscience, 6(5), 448–450.) analysis along with the behavioral data. VLSM is a brain–behavior mapping technique that evaluates the relationships between areas of injury and behavioral performance in all patients on a voxel-by-voxel basis, similar to the analysis of functional neuroimaging data. Results indicated that lesions to five left hemisphere brain regions affected performance on the CYCLE-R, including the posterior middle temporal gyrus and underlying white matter, the anterior superior temporal gyrus, the superior temporal sulcus and angular gyrus, mid-frontal cortex in Brodmann's area 46, and Brodmann's area 47 of the inferior frontal gyrus. Lesions to Broca's and Wernicke's areas were not found to significantly alter language comprehension on this particular measure. Further analysis suggested that the middle temporal gyrus may be more important for comprehension at the word level, while the other regions may play a greater role at the level of the sentence. These results are consistent with those seen in recent functional neuroimaging studies and offer complementary data in the effort to understand the brain areas underlying language comprehension.

Abstract

This paper presents a study of the spontaneous pre-sentential negations
of ten English-speaking children between the ages of 1; 6 and 3; 4 which
supports the hypothesis that child English nonanaphoric pre-sentential
negation is a form of metalinguistic exclamatory sentence negation. A
detailed discourse analysis reveals that children's pre-sentential negatives
like No Nathaniel a king (i) are characteristically echoic, and (it)
typically express objection and rectification, two characteristic functions
of exclamatory negation in adult discourse, e.g. Don't say 'Nathaniel's a
king'! A comparison of children's pre-sentential negations with their
internal predicate negations using not and don't reveals that the two
negative constructions are formally and functionally distinct. I argue
that children's nonanaphoric pre-sentential negatives constitute an
independent, well-formed class of discourse negation. They are not
'primitive' constructions derived from the miscategorization of emphatic
no in adult speech or children's 'inventions'. Nor are they an
early derivational variant of internal sentence negation. Rather, these
negatives reflect young children's competence in using grammatical
negative constructions appropriately in discourse.

Abstract

This paper summarizes the results of a descriptive syntactic category analysis of child English no which reveals that young children use and represent no as a determiner and negatives like no pen as NPs, contra standard analyses.

Abstract

Previous research revealed remarkable flexibility of native and non-native listeners’ perceptual system, i.e., native and non-native phonetic category boundaries can be quickly recalibrated in the face of ambiguous input.
The present study investigates the limitations of the flexibility of the non-native perceptual system. In two lexically-guided perceptual learning experiments, Dutch listeners were exposed to a short story in English, where either all /l/ or all /ɹ/ sounds were replaced by an ambiguous [l/ɹ] sound. In the first experiment, the story was presented in clean, while in the second experiment, intermittent noise was added to the story, although never on the critical words. Lexically-guided perceptual learning was only observed in the clean condition. It is argued that the introduction of intermittent noise reduced the reliability of the evidence of hearing a particular word, which in turn blocked retuning of the phonetic categories.

Abstract

Die Awetí sind ein kleiner Indianerstamm in Zentralbrasilien, der bislang nur wenig Kontakt mit Weißen hatte. Im Zuge eines Programms der Volkswagenstiftung zur Dokumentation bedrohter Sprachen wird unser Autor die Awetí erneut besuchen und berichtet als „jüngerer Bruder des Häuptlings“ über seine Bemühungen, die Sprache der Awetí für künftige Generationen festzuhalten.

Abstract

This study provides an answer to the question of how dictionaries should be read. For this purpose, articles taken from an outline for a Guaraní-German dictionary geared to established lexicographic practice are provided with standardized interpretations. Each article is systematically assigned a formal sentence making its meaning explicit both for content words (including polysemes) and functional words or affixes. Integrative Linguistics proves its theoretical and practical value both for the description of Guaraní (indigenous Indian language spoken in Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil) and in metalexicographic terms.

Abstract

The dominantly inherited cerebellar ataxias are a heterogeneous group of neurodegenerative disorders caused by Purkinje cell loss in the cerebellum. Recently, we identified loss-of-function mutations in the KCND3 gene as the cause of spinocerebellar ataxia type 19/22 (SCA19/22), revealing a previously unknown role for the voltage-gated potassium channel, Kv4.3, in Purkinje cell survival. However, how mutant Kv4.3 affects wild-type Kv4.3 channel functioning remains unknown. We provide evidence that SCA19/22-mutant Kv4.3 exerts a dominant negative effect on the trafficking and surface expression of wild-type Kv4.3 in the absence of its regulatory subunit, KChIP2. Notably, this dominant negative effect can be rescued by the presence of KChIP2. We also found that all SCA19/22-mutant subunits either suppress wild-type Kv4.3 current amplitude or alter channel gating in a dominant manner. Our findings suggest that altered Kv4.3 channel localization and/or functioning resulting from SCA19/22 mutations may lead to Purkinje cell loss, neurodegeneration and ataxia.

Abstract

This paper examines the Papuan languages of Island Melanesia, with a view to considering their typological similarities and differences. The East Papuan languages are thought to be the descendants of the languages spoken by the original inhabitants of Island Melanesia, who arrived in the area up to 50,000 years ago. The Oceanic Austronesian languages are thought to have come into the area with the Lapita peoples 3,500 years ago. With this historical backdrop in view, our paper seeks to investigate the linguistic relationships between the scattered Papuan languages of Island Melanesia. To do this, we survey various structural features, including syntactic patterns such as constituent order in clauses and noun phrases and other features of clause structure, paradigmatic structures of pronouns, and the structure of verbal morphology. In particular, we seek to discern similarities between the languages that might call for closer investigation, with a view to establishing genetic relatedness between some or all of the languages. In addition, in examining structural relationships between languages, we aim to discover whether it is possible to distinguish between original Papuan elements and diffused Austronesian elements of these languages. As this is a vast task, our paper aims merely to lay the groundwork for investigation into these and related questions.

Abstract

The Pioneers project seeks to uncover relationships between the Papuan languages of Island Melanesia. One basic way to uncover linguistic relationships, either contact or genetic, is through lexical comparison. We have seen very few shared words between our Papuan languages and any other languages, either Oceanic or Papuan, but most of the words which are shared are shared because they are commonly borrowed from Oceanic languages. This task is aimed at enabling fieldworkers to collect terms for inland bird and tree species. In the past it is has proved very difficult for non-experts to identify plant and bird species, so the task consists of a booklet of colour pictures of some of the more common species, with information on the range and habits of each species, as well as some information on their cultural uses, which should enable better identification. It is intended that fieldworkers will show this book to consultants and use it as an elicitation aid.

Abstract

Language is a uniquely human trait likely to have been a prerequisite for the development of human culture. The ability to develop articulate speech relies on capabilities, such as fine control of the larynx and mouth, that are absent in chimpanzees and other great apes. FOXP2 is the first gene relevant to the human ability to develop language. A point mutation in FOXP2 co-segregates with a disorder in a family in which half of the members have severe articulation difficulties accompanied by linguistic and grammatical impairment. This gene is disrupted by translocation in an unrelated individual who has a similar disorder. Thus, two functional copies of FOXP2 seem to be required for acquisition of normal spoken language. We sequenced the complementary DNAs that encode the FOXP2 protein in the chimpanzee, gorilla, orang-utan, rhesus macaque and mouse, and compared them with the human cDNA. We also investigated intraspecific variation of the human FOXP2 gene. Here we show that human FOXP2 contains changes in amino-acid coding and a pattern of nucleotide polymorphism, which strongly suggest that this gene has been the target of selection during recent human evolution.

Abstract

Investigation of the emotions entails reference to words and expressions conventionally used for the description of emotion experience. Important methodological issues arise for emotion researchers, and the issues are of similarly central concern in linguistic semantics more generally. I argue that superficial and/or inconsistent description of linguistic meaning can have seriously misleading results. This paper is firstly a critique of standards in emotion research for its tendency to underrate and ill-understand linguistic semantics. It is secondly a critique of standards in some approaches to linguistic semantics itself. Two major problems occur. The first is failure to distinguish between conceptually distinct meanings of single words, neglecting the well-established fact that a single phonological string can signify more than one conceptual category (i.e., that words can be polysemous). The second error involves failure to distinguish between two kinds of secondary uses of words: (1) those which are truly active “online” extensions, and (2) those which are conventionalised secondary meanings and not active (qua “extensions”) at all. These semantic considerations are crucial to conclusions one may draw about cognition and conceptualisation based on linguistic evidence.

Abstract

“Recognitional” words and constructions enshrine our systematic reliance on shared knowledge in dedicated morphological forms and usage patterns. For example, English has a large range of terms for use when a speaker cannot locate the word or name for something or someone (e.g., whatsit, what’s-his-name), but thinks that the interlocutor knows, or can easily work out, what the speaker is talking about. This task aims to identify and investigate these kinds of expressions in the research language, including their grammaticalised status, meaning, distribution, and productivity. The task consists of a questionnaire with examples of relevant hypothetical scenarios that can be used in eliciting the relevant terms. The researcher is then encouraged to pursue further questions in regard to these items.

Abstract

This task investigates the extensional meaning of body part terms, in particular the terms for the upper and lower limbs. Two questions are addressed, namely (i) are the boundaries of these body parts universal, guided by proposed universals of object recognition? (ii) How can we compare the extensional meanings of body part terms within and across different systems of nomenclature? Consultants receive booklets with line drawings of a body and are asked to colour in specific parts of the body.

Abstract

This Field Manual entry has been superceded by the 2007 version:
https://doi.org/10.17617/2.468728