Publications

Abstract

In many languages the future is in front and the past behind, but in some cultures (like Aymara) the past is in front. Is it possible to find this mapping as an alternative conceptualization of time in other cultures? If so, what are the factors that affect its choice out of the set of available alternatives? In a paper and pencil task, participants placed future or past events either in front or behind a character (a schematic head viewed from above). A sample of 24 Islamic participants (whose language also places the future in front and the past behind) tended to locate the past event in the front box more often than Spanish participants. This result might be due to the greater cultural value assigned to tradition in Islamic culture. The same pattern was found in a sample of Spanish elders (N = 58), what may support that conclusion. Alternatively, the crucial factor may be the amount of attention paid to the past. In a final study, young Spanish adults (N = 200) who had just answered a set of questions about their past showed the past-in-front pattern, whereas questions about their future exacerbated the future-in-front pattern. Thus, the attentional explanation was supported: attended events are mapped to front space in agreement with the experiential connection between attending and seeing. When attention is paid to the past, it tends to occupy the front location in spite of available alternative mappings in the language-culture.

Abstract

This project is part of a collaborative project with the research group “Reciprocals across languages” led by Nick Evans. One goal of this project is to develop a typology of reciprocals. This questionnaire is designed to help field workers get an overview over the type of markers used in the expression of reciprocity in the language studied.

Abstract

This paper investigates the lexical semantics and relative distributions of verbs describing putting and taking events in Kuuk Thaayorre, a Pama-Nyungan language of Cape York (Australia). Thaayorre put/take verbs can be subcategorised according to whether they may combine with an NP encoding a goal, an NP encoding a source, or both. Goal NPs are far more frequent in natural discourse: initial analysis shows 85% of goal-oriented verb tokens to be accompanied by a goal NP, while only 31% of source-oriented verb tokens were accompanied by a source. This finding adds weight to Ikegami’s (1987) assertion of the conceptual primacy of goals over sources, reflected in a cross-linguistic dissymmetry whereby goal-marking is less marked and more widely used than source-marking.

Abstract

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

Abstract

Print Friendly XML Gebre, Binyam Gebrekidan, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Netherlands, binyamgebrekidan.gebre [at] mpi.nl Wittenburg, Peter, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Netherlands, peter.wittenburg [at] mpi.nl Introduction Many gesture and sign language researchers manually annotate video recordings to systematically categorize, analyze and explain their observations. The number and kinds of annotations are so diverse and unpredictable that any attempt at developing non-adaptive automatic annotation systems is usually less effective. The trend in the literature has been to develop models that work for average users and for average scenarios. This approach has three main disadvantages. First, it is impossible to know beforehand all the patterns that could be of interest to all researchers. Second, it is practically impossible to find enough training examples for all patterns. Third, it is currently impossible to learn a model that is robustly applicable across all video quality-recording variations.

Abstract

Automatic annotation of gesture strokes is important for many gesture and sign language researchers. The unpredictable diversity of human gestures and video recording conditions require that we adopt a more adaptive case-by-case annotation model. In this paper, we present a work-in progress annotation model that allows a user to a) track hands/face b) extract features c) distinguish strokes from non-strokes. The hands/face tracking is done with color matching algorithms and is initialized by the user. The initialization process is supported with immediate visual feedback. Sliders are also provided to support a user-friendly adjustment of skin color ranges. After successful initialization, features related to positions, orientations and speeds of tracked hands/face are extracted using unique identifiable features (corners) from a window of frames and are used for training a learning algorithm. Our preliminary results for stroke detection under non-ideal video conditions are promising and show the potential applicability of our methodology.

Abstract

Recognizing the speech acts in our interlocutors’ utterances is a crucial prerequisite for conversation. However, it is not a trivial task given that the form and content of utterances is frequently underspecified for this level of meaning. In the present study we investigate participants’ competence in categorizing speech acts in such action-underspecific sentences and explore the time-course of speech act inferencing using a self-paced reading paradigm. The results demonstrate that participants are able to categorize the speech acts with very high accuracy, based on limited context and without any prosodic information. Furthermore, the results show that the exact same sentence is processed differently depending on the speech act it performs, with reading times starting to differ already at the first word. These results indicate that participants are very good at “getting” the speech acts, opening up a new arena for experimental research on action recognition in conversation.

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

Gestures are visuospatial events, meaning carriers, and social interactional phenomena. As such they constitute a particularly favourable area for investigating visual attention in a complex everyday situation under conditions of competitive processing. This chapter discusses visual attention to spontaneous gestures in human face-to-face interaction as explored with eye-tracking. Some basic fixation patterns are described, live and video-based settings are compared, and preliminary results on the relationship between fixations and information processing are outlined.

Abstract

This paper discusses how the gestural modality can contribute to our understanding of anaphoric linkage in learner varieties, focusing on gestural anaphoric linkage marking the introduction, maintenance, and shift of reference in story retellings by learners of French and Swedish. The comparison of gestural anaphoric linkage in native and non-native varieties reveals what appears to be a particular learner variety of gestural cohesion, which closely reflects the characteristics of anaphoric linkage in learners' speech. Specifically, particular forms co-occur with anaphoric gestures depending on the information organisation in discourse. The typical nominal over-marking of maintained referents or topic elements in speech is mirrored by gestural (over-)marking of the same items. The paper discusses two ways in which this finding may further the understanding of anaphoric over-explicitness of learner varieties. An addressee-based communicative perspective on anaphoric linkage highlights how over-marking in gesture and speech may be related to issues of hyper-clarity and ambiguity. An alternative speaker-based perspective is also explored in which anaphoric over-marking is seen as related to L2 speech planning.

Abstract

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

Abstract

This paper explores the linguistic encoding of placement and removal events in Swedish. Drawing on elicited spoken data, it provides a unified approach to caused motion descriptions. The results show uniform syntactic behaviour of placement and removal descriptions and a consistent asymmetry between placement and removal in the semantic specificity of verbs. The results also reveal three further semantic patterns, pertaining to the nature of the relationship between Figure and Ground, that appear to account for how these event types are characterised, viz. whether the Ground is represented by a body part of the Agent; whether the Figure is contained within the Ground; or whether it is supported by the Ground.

Abstract

The standard for the analysis of distorted voices is perceptual rating of read-out texts or spontaneous speech. Automatic voice evaluation, however, is usually done on stable sections of sustained vowels. In this paper, text-based and established vowel-based analysis are compared with respect to their ability to measure hoarseness and its subclasses. 73 hoarse patients (48.3±16.8 years) uttered the vowel /e/ and read the German version of the text “The North Wind and the Sun”. Five speech therapists and physicians rated roughness, breathiness, and hoarseness according to the German RBH evaluation scheme. The best human-machine correlations were obtained for measures based on the Cepstral Peak Prominence (CPP; up to |r | = 0.73). Support Vector Regression (SVR) on CPP-based measures and prosodic features improved the results further to r ≈0.8 and confirmed that automatic voice evaluation should be performed on a text recording.

Abstract

We review data and hypotheses dealing with the mental representations for perceived and produced speech that infants build and use over the course of learning a language. In the early stages of speech perception and vocal production, before the emergence of a receptive or a productive lexicon, the dominant picture emerging from the literature suggests rather non-analytic representations based on units of the size of the syllable: Young children seem to parse speech into syllable-sized units in spite of their ability to detect sound equivalence based on shared phonetic features. Once a productive lexicon has emerged, word form representations are initially rather underspecified phonetically but gradually become more specified with lexical growth, up to the phoneme level. The situation is different for the receptive lexicon, in which phonetic specification for consonants and vowels seem to follow different developmental paths. Consonants in stressed syllables are somewhat well specified already at the first signs of a receptive lexicon, and become even better specified with lexical growth. Vowels seem to follow a different developmental path, with increasing flexibility throughout lexical development. Thus, children come to exhibit a consonant vowel asymmetry in lexical representations, which is clear in adult representations.

Abstract

Originally published in Diachronica 27:2 (2010) One attempt at explaining why some language families are large (while others are small) is the hypothesis that the families that are now large became large because their ancestral speakers had a technological advantage, most often agriculture. Variants of this idea are referred to as the Language Farming Dispersal Hypothesis. Previously, detailed language family studies have uncovered various supporting examples and counterexamples to this idea. In the present paper I weigh the evidence from ALL attested language families. For each family, I use the number of member languages as a measure of cardinal size, member language coordinates to measure geospatial size and ethnographic evidence to assess subsistence status. This data shows that, although agricultural families tend to be larger in cardinal size, their size is hardly due to the simple presence of farming. If farming were responsible for language family expansions, we would expect a greater east-west geospatial spread of large families than is actually observed. The data, however, is compatible with weaker versions of the farming dispersal hypothesis as well with models where large families acquire farming because of their size, rather than the other way around.

Abstract

This study investigated whether a shadowing task can provide insights in the nature of reduction processes that are typical of casual speech. We focused on the shortening and presence versus absence of schwa and /t/ in Dutch past participles. Results showed that the absence of these segments was affected by the same variables as their shortening, suggesting that absence mostly resulted from extreme gradient shortening. This contrasts with results based on recordings of spontaneous conversations. We hypothesize that this difference is due to non-casual fast speech elicited by a shadowing task.

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

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

Abstract

Co-speech gestures are an integral part of human face-to-face communication, but little is known about how pragmatic factors influence our comprehension of those gestures. The present study investigates how different types of recipients process iconic gestures in a triadic communicative situation. Participants (N = 32) took on the role of one of two recipients in a triad and were presented with 160 video clips of an actor speaking, or speaking and gesturing. Crucially, the actor’s eye gaze was manipulated in that she alternated her gaze between the two recipients. Participants thus perceived some messages in the role of addressed recipient and some in the role of unaddressed recipient. In these roles, participants were asked to make judgements concerning the speaker’s messages. Their reaction times showed that unaddressed recipients did comprehend speaker’s gestures differently to addressees. The findings are discussed with respect to automatic and controlled processes involved in gesture comprehension.

Abstract

This paper examines how placement and removal events are lexicalised and conceptualised in Basque and Peninsular Spanish. After a brief description of the main linguistic devices employed for the coding of these types of events, the paper discusses how speakers of the two languages choose to talk about these events. Finally, the paper focuses on two aspects that seem to be crucial in the description of these events (1) the role of force dynamics: both languages distinguish between different degrees of force, causality, and intentionality, and (2) the influence of the verb-framed lexicalisation pattern. Data come from six Basque and ten Peninsular Spanish native speakers.

Abstract

Spanish can use dative as well as non-dative strategies to encode Possessors, Human Sources, Interestees (datives of interest) and Experiencers. In Dutch this optionality is virtually absent, restricting dative encoding mainly to the Recipient of a ditransitive. The present study examines whether this may lead to instability of the non-prototypical dative constructions in the Spanish of Dutch-Spanish bilinguals. Elicited data of 12 Chilean heritage informants from the Netherlands were analyzed. Whereas the evidence on the stability of dative Experiencers was not conclusive, the results indicate that the use of prototypical datives, dative External Possessors, dative Human Sources and datives of interest is fairly stable in bilinguals, except for those with limited childhood exposure to Spanish. It is argued that the consistent preference for non-dative strategies of this group was primarily attributable to instability of the dative clitic, which affected all constructions, even the encoding of prototypical indirect objects

Abstract

This study explores the expression of Source and Goal in describing placement and removal events in adult Japanese. Although placement and removal events a priori represent symmetry regarding the orientation of motion, their (c)overt expressions actually exhibit multiple asymmetries at various structural levels. The results show that the expression of the Source is less frequent than the expression of the Goal, but, if expressed, morphosyntactically more complex, suggesting that ‘taking’ events are more complex than ‘putting’ events in their construal. It is stressed that finer linguistic analysis is necessary before explaining linguistic asymmetries in terms of non-linguistic foundations of spatial language.

Abstract

This study investigates the time-course of information processing in both visual as well as in the auditory speech as used for word identification in face-to-face communication. It extends the limited previous research on this topic and provides a valuable database for future research in audiovisual speech perception. An evaluation of models of speech perception by ear and eye in their ability to account for the audiovisual gating data shows a superior role of the fuzzy logical model of perception (FLMP) [1] over additive models of perception. A new dynamic version of the FLMP seems to be a promising model to account for the complex interplay of perceptual and cognitive information in audiovisual spoken word recognition.

Abstract

Mutations of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) gene are found at a relatively high frequency in glioma, with the most common being the de2-7 EGFR (or EGFRvIII). This mutation arises from an in-frame deletion of exons 2–7, which removes 267 amino acids from the extracellular domain of the receptor. Despite being unable to bind ligand, the de2-7 EGFR is constitutively active at a low level. Transfection of human glioma cells with the de2-7 EGFR has little effect in vitro, but when grown as tumor xenografts this mutated receptor imparts a dramatic growth advantage. We have now mapped the phosphorylation pattern of de2-7 EGFR, both in vivo and in vitro, using a panel of antibodies unique to the different phosphorylated tyrosine residues. Phosphorylation of de2-7 EGFR was detected constitutively at all tyrosine sites surveyed both in vitro and in vivo, including tyrosine 845, a known target in the wild-type EGFR for src kinase. There was a substantial upregulation of phosphorylation at every tyrosine residue of the de2-7 EGFR when cells were grown in vivo compared to the receptor isolated from cells cultured in vitro. Upregulation of phosphorylation could be mimicked in vitro by the addition of specifi c components of the ECM such as collagen via an integrin-dependent mechanism. Since this increase in in vivo phosphorylation enhances de2-7 EGFR signaling, this observation explains why the growth enhancement mediated by de2-7 EGFR is largely restricted to the in vivo environment. In a second set of experiments we analyzed the interaction between EGFRvIII and ErbB2. Co-expression of these proteins in NR6 cells, a mouse fi broblast line devoid of ErbB family members, dramatically enhanced in vivo tumorigenicity of these cells compared to cells expressing either protein alone. Detailed analysis of these xenografts demonstrated that EGFRvIII could heterodimerize and transphosphorylate the ErbB2. Since both EGFRvIII and ErbB2 are commonly expressed at gliomas, this data suggests that the co-expression of these two proteins may enhance glioma tumorigenicity.

Abstract

Research on spontaneous language acquisition both in children learning their mother tongue and in adults learning a second language has shown that language development proceeds in a stagewise manner. Learner utterances are accounted for in terms of so-called 'learner languages'. Learner languages of both children and adults are language systems that are initially rather simple. The present monograph shows how these learner languages develop both in child L1 and in adult L2 Dutch. At the initial stage of both L1 and L2 Dutch, learner systems are lexical systems. This means that utterance structure is determined by the lexical projection of a predicate-argument structure, while the functional properties of the target language are absent. At some point in acquisition, this lexical-semantic system develops into a target-like system. With this target-like system, learners have reached a stage at which their language system has the morpho-syntactic features to express the functional properties of finiteness and topicality. Evidence of this is word order variation and the use of linguistic elements such as auxiliaries, tense, and agreement markers and determiners. Looking at this process of language acquisition from a functional point of view, the author focuses on questions such as the following. What is the driving force behind the process that causes learners to give up a simple lexical-semantic system in favour of a functional-pragmatic one? What is the added value of linguistic features such as the morpho-syntactic properties of inflection, word order variation, and definiteness?

Abstract

Language documentation involves linguistic analysis of the collected material, which is typically done manually. Automatic methods for language processing usually require large corpora. The method presented in this paper uses techniques from bioinformatics and contextual information to morphologically analyze raw text corpora. This paper presents initial results of the method when applied on a small Kilivila corpus.

Abstract

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

Abstract

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