Publications

Abstract

Researchers have struggled to obtain a clear account of the evolution of prosocial behaviour despite a great deal of recent effort. The aim of this review is to take a brief step back from addressing the question of evolutionary origins of prosocial behaviour in order to identify contextual factors that are contributing to variation in the expression of prosocial behaviour and hindering progress towards identifying phylogenetic patterns. Most available data come from the Primate Order, and the choice of contextual factors to consider was informed by theory and practice, including the nature of the relationship between the potential donor and recipient, the communicative behaviour of the recipients, and features of the prosocial task including whether rewards are visible and whether the prosocial choice creates an inequity between actors. Conclusions are drawn about the facilitating or inhibiting impact of each of these factors on the expression of prosocial behaviour, and areas for future research are highlighted. Acknowledging the impact of these contextual features on the expression of prosocial behaviours should stimulate new research into the proximate mechanisms that drive these effects, yield experimental designs that better control for potential influences on prosocial expression, and ultimately allow progress towards reconstructing the evolutionary origins of prosocial behaviour.

Abstract

The social factors that influence cooperation have remained largely uninvestigated but have the potential to explain much of the variation in cooperative behavior observed in the natural world. We show here that certain dimensions of the social environment, namely the size of the social group, the degree of social tolerance expressed, the structure of the dominance hierarchy, and the patterns of dispersal, may influence the emergence and stability of cooperation in predictable ways. Furthermore, the social environment experienced by a species over evolutionary time will have shaped their cognition to provide certain strengths and strategies that are beneficial in their species‟ social world. These cognitive adaptations will in turn impact the likelihood of cooperating in a given social environment. Experiments with one primate species, the cottontop tamarin, illustrate how social dynamics may influence emergence and stability of cooperative behavior in this species. We then take a more general viewpoint and argue that the hypotheses presented here require further experimental work and the addition of quantitative modeling to obtain a better understanding of how social dynamics influence the emergence and stability of cooperative behavior in complex systems. We conclude by pointing out subsequent specific directions for models and experiments that will allow relevant advances in the understanding of the emergence of cooperation.

Abstract

This study is a comprehensive description of the nominal demonstratives in Dalabon, a severely endangered Gunwinyguan non-Pama-Nyungan language of southwestern Arnhem Land, northern Australia. Demonstratives are attested in the basic vocabulary of every language, yet remain heretofore underdescribed in Australian languages. Traditional definitions of demonstratives as primarily making spatial reference have recently evolved at a great pace, with close analyses of demonstratives-in-use revealing that their use in spatial reference, in narrative discourse, and in interaction is significantly more complex than previously assumed, and that definitions of demonstrative forms are best developed after consideration of their use across these contexts. The present study reinforces findings of complexity in demonstrative use, and the significance of a multidimensional characterization of demonstrative forms. This study is therefore a contribution to the description of Dalabon, to the analysis of demonstratives in Australian languages, and to the theory and typology of demonstratives cross-linguistically. In this study, I present a multi-dimensional analysis of Dalabon demonstratives, using a variety of theoretical frameworks and research tools including descriptive linguistics, lexical-functional grammar, discourse analysis, gesture studies and pragmatics. Using data from personal narratives, improvised interactions and elicitation sessions to investigate the demonstratives, this study takes into account their morphosyntactic distribution, uses in the speech situation, interactional factors, discourse phenomena, concurrent gesture, and uses in personal narratives. I conclude with a unified account of the intenstional and extensional semantics of each form surveyed. The Dalabon demonstrative paradigm divides into two types, those which are spatially-specific and those which are non-spatial. The spatially-specific demonstratives nunda ‘this (in the here-space)’ and djakih ‘that (in the there-space)’ are shown not to encode the location of the referent per se, rather its relative position to dynamic physical and social elements of the speech situation such as the speaker’s engagement area and here-space. Both forms are also used as spatial adverbs to mean ‘here’ and ‘there’ respectively, while only nunda is also used as a temporal adverb ‘now, today’. The spatially-specific demonstratives are limited to situational use in narratives. The non-spatial demonstratives kanh/kanunh ‘that (identifiable)’ and nunh ‘that (unfamiliar, contrastive)’ are used in both the speech situation and personal narratives to index referents as ‘identifiable’ or ‘unfamiliar’ respectively. Their use in the speech situation can conversationally implicate that the referent is distal. The non-spatial demonstratives display the greatest diversity of use in narratives, each specializing for certain uses, yet their wide distribution across discourse usage types can be described on account of their intensional semantics. The findings of greatest typological interest in this study are that speakers’ choice of demonstrative in the speech situation is influenced by multiple simultaneous deictic parameters (including gesture); that oppositions in the Dalabon demonstrative paradigm are not equal, nor exclusively semantic; that the form nunh ‘that (unfamiliar, contrastive)’ is used to index a referent as somewhat inaccessible or unexpected; that the ‘recognitional’ form kanh/kanunh is instead described as ‘identifiable’; and that speakers use demonstratives to index emotional deixis to a referent, or to their addressee.

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

Listeners rely on native-language rhythm in segmenting speech; in different languages, stress-, syllable- or mora-based rhythm is exploited. This language-specificity affects listening to non- native speech, if native procedures are applied even though inefficient for the non-native language. However, speakers of two languages with similar rhythmic interpretation should segment their own and the other language similarly. This was observed to date only for related languages (English-Dutch; French-Spanish). We now report experiments in which Japanese listeners heard Telugu, a Dravidian language unrelated to Japanese, and Telugu listeners heard Japanese. In both cases detection of target sequences in speech was harder when target boundaries mismatched mora boundaries, exactly the pattern that Japanese listeners earlier exhibited with Japanese and other languages. These results suggest that Telugu and Japanese listeners use similar procedures in segmenting speech, and support the idea that languages fall into rhythmic classes, with aspects of phonological structure affecting listeners' speech segmentation.

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

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

A distinction between strong and weak vowels can be drawn on the basis of vowel quality, of stress, or of both factors. An experiment was conducted in which sets of contextually matched word-intial vowels ranging from clearly strong to clearly weak were cross-spliced, and the naturalness of the resulting words was rated by listeners. The ratings showed that in general cross-spliced words were only significantly less acceptable than unspliced words when schwa was not involved; this supports a categorical distinction based on vowel quality.

Abstract

Infants acquire whatever language is spoken in the environment into which they are born. The mental capability of the newborn child is not biased in any way towards the acquisition of one human language rather than another. Because psychologists who attempt to model the process of language comprehension are interested in the structure of the human mind, rather than in the properties of individual languages, strategies which they incorporate in their models are presumed to be universal, not language-specific. In other words, strategies of comprehension are presumed to be characteristic of the human language processing system, rather than, say, the French, English, or Igbo language processing systems. We report here, however, on a comprehension strategy which appears to be used by native speakers of French but not by native speakers of English.

Abstract

Word-initial CVC syllables are detected faster in words beginning consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel (CVCV-) than in words beginning consonant-vowel-consonant-consonant (CVCC-). This effect was reported independently by M. Taft and G. Hambly (1985, Journal of Memory and Language, 24, 320–335) and by A. Cutler, J. Mehler, D. Norris, and J. Segui (1986, Journal of Memory and Language, 25, 385–400). Taft and Hambly explained the effect in terms of lexical factors. This explanation cannot account for Cutler et al.'s results, in which the effect also appeared with nonwords and foreign words. Cutler et al. suggested that CVCV-sequences might simply be easier to perceive than CVCC-sequences. The present study confirms this suggestion, and explains it as a reflection of listener expectations constructed on the basis of distributional characteristics of the language.

Abstract

Previous research has shown that listeners use the prosodic structure of utterances in a predictive fashion in sentence comprehension, to direct attention to accented words. Acoustically identical words spliced into sentence contexts arc responded to differently if the prosodic structure of the context is \ aricd: when the preceding prosody indicates that the word will he accented, responses are faster than when the preceding prosodv is inconsistent with accent occurring on that word. In the present series of experiments speech hybridisation techniques were first used to interchange the timing patterns within pairs of prosodic variants of utterances, independently of the pitch and intensity contours. The time-adjusted utterances could then serve as a basis lor the orthogonal manipulation of the three prosodic dimensions of pilch, intensity and rhythm. The overall pattern of results showed that when listeners use prosody to predict accent location, they do not simply rely on a single prosodic dimension, hut exploit the interaction between pitch, intensity and rhythm.

Abstract

Rede uitgesproken bij het afscheid als hoogleraar Vergelijkende taalpsychologie aan de Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen van de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen op donderdag 20 september 2012

Abstract

To examine whether lexically stored knowledge about spelling influences phoneme evaluation, we conducted three experiments with a low-level phonetic judgement task: phoneme goodness rating. In each experiment, listeners heard phonetic tokens varying along a continuum centred on /s/, occurring finally in isolated word or nonword tokens. An effect of spelling appeared in Experiment 1: Native English speakers’ goodness ratings for the best /s/ tokens were significantly higher in words spelled with S (e.g., bless) than in words spelled with C (e.g., voice). No such difference appeared when nonnative speakers rated the same materials in Experiment 2, indicating that the difference could not be due to acoustic characteristics of the S- versus C-words. In Experiment 3, nonwords with lexical neighbours consistently spelled with S (e.g., pless) versus with C (e.g., floice) failed to elicit orthographic neighbourhood effects; no significant difference appeared in native English speakers’ ratings for the S-consistent versus the C-consistent sets. Obligatory influence of lexical knowledge on phonemic processing would have predicted such neighbourhood effects; the findings are thus better accommodated by models in which phonemic decisions draw strategically upon lexical information.

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

Understanding speech in our native tongue seems natural and effortless; listening to speech in a nonnative language is a different experience. In this book, Anne Cutler argues that listening to speech is a process of native listening because so much of it is exquisitely tailored to the requirements of the native language. Her cross-linguistic study (drawing on experimental work in languages that range from English and Dutch to Chinese and Japanese) documents what is universal and what is language specific in the way we listen to spoken language. Cutler describes the formidable range of mental tasks we carry out, all at once, with astonishing speed and accuracy, when we listen. These include evaluating probabilities arising from the structure of the native vocabulary, tracking information to locate the boundaries between words, paying attention to the way the words are pronounced, and assessing not only the sounds of speech but prosodic information that spans sequences of sounds. She describes infant speech perception, the consequences of language-specific specialization for listening to other languages, the flexibility and adaptability of listening (to our native languages), and how language-specificity and universality fit together in our language processing system. Drawing on her four decades of work as a psycholinguist, Cutler documents the recent growth in our knowledge about how spoken-word recognition works and the role of language structure in this process. Her book is a significant contribution to a vibrant and rapidly developing field.

Abstract

The way we listen to spoken language is tailored to the specific benefit of native-language speech input. Listening to speech in non-native languages can be significantly hindered by this native bias. Is it possible to determine the degree to which a listener is listening in a native-like manner? Promising indications of how this question may be tackled are provided by new research findings concerning the great flexibility that characterises listening to the L1, in online adjustment of phonetic category boundaries for adaptation across talkers, and in modulation of lexical dynamics for adjustment across listening conditions. This flexibility pays off in many dimensions, including listening in noise, adaptation across dialects, and identification of voices. These findings further illuminate the robustness and flexibility of native listening, and potentially point to ways in which we might begin to assess degrees of ‘native-likeness’ in this skill.

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

Studies of spoken-word recognition have revealed that competition from embedded words differs in strength as a function of where in the carrier word the embedded word is found and have further shown embedding patterns to be skewed such that embeddings in initial position in carriers outnumber embeddings in final position. Lexico-statistical analyses show that this skew is highly attenuated in Japanese, a noninflectional language. Comparison of the extent of the asymmetry in the three Germanic languages English, Dutch, and German allows the source to be traced to a combination of suffixal morphology and vowel reduction in unstressed syllables.

Abstract

Speakers and listeners have a shared goal: to communicate. The processes of speech perception and of speech production interact in many ways under the constraints of this communicative goal; such interaction is as characteristic of prosodic processing as of the processing of other aspects of linguistic structure. Two of the major uses of prosodic information in situations of communication are to encode salience and segmentation, and these themes unite the contributions to the symposium introduced by the present review.

Abstract

Psycholinguists are saddled with a paradox. Their aim is to construct a model of human language processing, which will hold equally well for the processing of any language, but this aim cannot be achieved just by doing experiments in any language. They have to compare processing of many languages, and actively search for effects which are specific to a single language, even though a model which is itself specific to a single language is really the last thing they want.

Abstract

Speech production is constrained at all levels by the demands of speech perception. The speaker's primary aim is successful communication, and to this end semantic, syntactic and lexical choices are directed by the needs of the listener. Even at the articulatory level, some aspects of production appear to be perceptually constrained, for example the blocking of phonological distortions under certain conditions. An apparent exception to this pattern is word boundary information, which ought to be extremely useful to listeners, but which is not reliably coded in speech. It is argued that the solution to this apparent problem lies in rethinking the concept of the boundary of the lexical access unit. Speech rhythm provides clear information about the location of stressed syllables, and listeners do make use of this information. If stressed syllables can serve as the determinants of word lexical access codes, then once again speakers are providing precisely the necessary form of speech information to facilitate perception.

Abstract

In four experiments, listeners’ response times to detect vowel targets in spoken input were measured. The first three experiments were conducted in English. In two, one using real words and the other, nonwords, detection accuracy was low, targets in initial syllables were detected more slowly than targets in final syllables, and both response time and missed-response rate were inversely correlated with vowel duration. In a third experiment, the speech context for some subjects included all English vowels, while for others, only five relatively distinct vowels occurred. This manipulation had essentially no effect, and the same response pattern was again observed. A fourth experiment, conducted in Spanish, replicated the results in the first three experiments, except that miss rate was here unrelated to vowel duration. We propose that listeners’ responses to vowel targets in naturally spoken input are effectively cautious, reflecting realistic appreciation of vowel variability in natural context.

Abstract

Studies of human speech processing have provided evidence for a segmentation strategy in the perception of continuous speech, whereby a word boundary is postulated, and a lexical access procedure initiated, at each metrically strong syllable. The likely success of this strategy was here estimated against the characteristics of the English vocabulary. Two computerized dictionaries were found to list approximately three times as many words beginning with strong syllables (i.e. syllables containing a full vowel) as beginning with weak syllables (i.e. syllables containing a reduced vowel). Consideration of frequency of lexical word occurrence reveals that words beginning with strong syllables occur on average more often than words beginning with weak syllables. Together, these findings motivate an estimate for everyday speech recognition that approximately 85% of lexical words (i.e. excluding function words) will begin with strong syllables. This estimate was tested against a corpus of 190 000 words of spontaneous British English conversion. In this corpus, 90% of lexical words were found to begin with strong syllables. This suggests that a strategy of postulating word boundaries at the onset of strong syllables would have a high success rate in that few actual lexical word onsets would be missed.

Abstract

One of a listener's major tasks in understanding continuous speech is segmenting the speech signal into separate words. When listening conditions are difficult, speakers can help listeners by deliberately speaking more clearly. In four experiments, we examined how word boundaries are produced in deliberately clear speech. In an earlier report we showed that speakers do indeed mark word boundaries in clear speech, by pausing at the boundary and lengthening pre-boundary syllables; moreover, these effects are applied particularly to boundaries preceding weak syllables. In English, listeners use segmentation procedures which make word boundaries before strong syllables easier to perceive; thus marking word boundaries before weak syllables in clear speech will make clear precisely those boundaries which are otherwise hard to perceive. The present report presents supplementary data, namely prosodic analyses of the syllable following a critical word boundary. More lengthening and greater increases in intensity were applied in clear speech to weak syllables than to strong. Mean F0 was also increased to a greater extent on weak syllables than on strong. Pitch movement, however, increased to a greater extent on strong syllables than on weak. The effects were, however, very small in comparison to the durational effects we observed earlier for syllables preceding the boundary and for pauses at the boundary.

Abstract

We show that Atkinson’s (Reports, 15 April 2011, p. 346) intriguing proposal—that global
linguistic diversity supports a single language origin in Africa—is an artifact of using suboptimal
data, biased methodology, and unjustified assumptions. We criticize his approach using more
suitable data, and we additionally provide new results suggesting a more complex scenario for the
emergence of global linguistic diversity.

Abstract

Evidence from certain geographical areas links lymphomas of the ocular adnexa marginal zone B-cell lymphomas (OAMZL) with Chlamydophila psittaci (Cp) infection, suggesting that lymphoma development is dependent upon chronic stimulation by persistent infections. Notwithstanding that, the actual immunopathogenetical mechanisms have not yet been elucidated. As in other B-cell lymphomas, insight into this issue, especially with regard to potential selecting ligands, could be provided by analysis of the immunoglobulin (IG) receptors of the malignant clones. To this end, we studied the molecular features of IGs in 44 patients with OAMZL (40% Cp-positive), identifying features suggestive of a pathogenic mechanism of autoreactivity. Herein, we show that lymphoma cells express a distinctive IG repertoire, with electropositive antigen (Ag)-binding sites, reminiscent of autoantibodies (auto-Abs) recognizing DNA. Additionally, five (11%) cases of OAMZL expressed IGs homologous with autoreactive Abs or IGs of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, a disease known for the expression of autoreactive IGs by neoplastic cells. In contrast, no similarity with known anti-Chlamydophila Abs was found. Taken together, these results strongly indicate that OAMZL may originate from B cells selected for their capability to bind Ags and, in particular, auto-Ags. In OAMZL associated with Cp infection, the pathogen likely acts indirectly on the malignant B cells, promoting the development of an inflammatory milieu, where auto-Ags could be exposed and presented, driving proliferation and expansion of self-reactive B cells.

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

Researchers interested in face processing have recently debated whether access to the name of a known person occurs in parallel with retrieval of semantic-biographical codes, rather than in a sequential fashion. Recently, Schweinberger, Burton, and Kelly (2001) took a failure to obtain a semantic context effect in a manual syllable judgment task on names of famous faces as support for this position. In two experiments, we compared the effects of visually presented categorically related prime words with either objects (e.g. prime: animal; target: dog) or faces of celebrities (e.g. prime: actor; target: Bruce Willis) as targets. Targets were either manually categorized with regard to the number of syllables (as in Schweinberger et al.), or they were overtly named. For neither objects nor faces was semantic priming obtained in syllable decisions; crucially, however, priming was obtained when objects and faces were overtly named. These results suggest that both face and object naming are susceptible to semantic context effects

Abstract

The morphosyntactic paradigm of an inflected word can influence isolated word recognition, but its role in multiple-word phrasal integration is less clear. We examined the electrophysiological response to adjectives in short German prepositional phrases to evaluate whether strong and weak forms of the adjective show a differential response, and whether paradigm variables are related to this response. Twenty native German speakers classified serially presented phrases as grammatically correct or not while the electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded. A functional mixed effects model of the response to grammatically correct trials revealed a differential response to strong and weak forms of the adjectives. This response difference depended on whether the preceding preposition imposed accusative or dative case. The lexically conditioned information content of the adjectives modulated a later interval of the response. The results indicate that grammatical context modulates the response to morphosyntactic information content, and lends support to the role of paradigm structure in integrative phrasal processing.

Abstract

Language is the best example of a cultural evolutionary system, able to retain a phylogenetic signal over many thousands of years. The temporal stability (conservatism) of basic vocabulary is relatively well understood, but the stability of the structural properties of language (phonology, morphology, syntax) is still unclear. Here we report an extensive Bayesian phylogenetic investigation of the structural stability of numerous features across many language families and we introduce a novel method for analyzing the relationships between the “stability profiles” of language families. We found that there is a strong universal component across language families, suggesting the existence of universal linguistic, cognitive and genetic constraints. Against this background, however, each language family has a distinct stability profile, and these profiles cluster by geographic area and likely deep genealogical relationships. These stability profiles reveal, for example, the ancient historical relationships between the Siberian and American language families, presumed to be separated by at least 12,000 years. Thus, such higher-level properties of language seen as an evolutionary system might allow the investigation of ancient connections between languages and shed light on the peopling of the world.

Abstract

Commentary on Cohen, E. (2012). The evolution of tag-based cooperation in humans: The case for accent. Current Anthropology, 53, 588-616. doi:10.1086/667654.

Abstract

People automatically chunk ongoing dynamic events into discrete units. This paper investigates whether linguistic structure is a factor in this process. We test the claim that describing an event with a serial verb construction will influence a speaker’s conceptual event structure. The grammar of Avatime (a Kwa language spoken in Ghana)requires its speakers to describe some, but not all, placement events using a serial verb construction which also encodes the preceding taking event. We tested Avatime and English speakers’ recognition memory for putting and taking events. Avatime speakers were more likely to falsely recognize putting and taking events from episodes associated with takeput serial verb constructions than from episodes associated with other constructions. English speakers showed no difference in false recognitions between episode types. This demonstrates that memory for episodes is related to the type of language used; and, moreover, across languages different conceptual representations are formed for the same physical episode, paralleling habitual linguistic practices

Abstract

Speakers choose a particular expression based on many factors, including availability of the referent in the perceptual context. We examined whether, when expressing referents, monolingual English- and Turkish-speaking children: (1) are sensitive to perceptual context, (2) express this sensitivity in language-specific ways, and (3) use co-speech gestures to specify referents that are underspecified. We also explored the mechanisms underlying children's sensitivity to perceptual context. Children described short vignettes to an experimenter under two conditions: The characters in the vignettes were present in the perceptual context (perceptual context); the characters were absent (no perceptual context). Children routinely used nouns in the no perceptual context condition, but shifted to pronouns (English-speaking children) or omitted arguments (Turkish-speaking children) in the perceptual context condition. Turkish-speaking children used underspecified referents more frequently than English-speaking children in the perceptual context condition; however, they compensated for the difference by using gesture to specify the forms. Gesture thus gives children learning structurally different languages a way to achieve comparable levels of specification while at the same time adhering to the referential expressions dictated by their language.

Abstract

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

Abstract

Abnormal prosody is a striking feature of the speech of those with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), but previous reports suggest large variability among those with ASD. Here we show that part of this heterogeneity can be explained by level of language functioning. We recorded semi-spontaneous but controlled conversations in adults with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder and measured features related to pitch and duration to determine (1) general use of prosodic features, (2) prosodic use in relation to marking information structure, specifically, the emphasis of new information in a sentence (focus) as opposed to information already given in the conversational context (topic), and (3) the relation between prosodic use and level of language function. We found that, compared to typical adults, those with ASD with high language functioning generally used a larger pitch range than controls but did not mark information structure, whereas those with moderate language functioning generally used a smaller pitch range than controls but marked information structure appropriately to a large extent. Both impaired general prosodic use and impaired marking of information structure would be expected to seriously impact social communication and thereby lead to increased difficulty in personal domains, such as making and keeping friendships, and in professional domains, such as competing for employment opportunities.

Abstract

Developmental dyslexia, a severe and persistent reading and spelling impairment, is characterized by difficulties in processing speech sounds (i.e., phonemes). Here, we test the hypothesis that these phonological difficulties are associated with a dysfunction of the auditory sensory thalamus, the medial geniculate body (MGB). By using functional MRI, we found that, in dyslexic adults, the MGB responded abnormally when the task required attending to phonemes compared with other speech features. No other structure in the auditory pathway showed distinct functional neural patterns between the two tasks for dyslexic and control participants. Furthermore, MGB activity correlated with dyslexia diagnostic scores, indicating that the task modulation of the MGB is critical for performance in dyslexics. These results suggest that deficits in dyslexia are associated with a failure of the neural mechanism that dynamically tunes MGB according to predictions from cortical areas to optimize speech processing. This view on task-related MGB dysfunction in dyslexics has the potential to reconcile influential theories of dyslexia within a predictive coding framework of brain function.

Abstract

The extent to which the phonetic system of a second language is mastered varies across individuals. The present study evaluates the pattern of individual differences in late bilinguals across different phonological processes. Fifty-five late Dutch-English bilinguals were tested on their ability to perceive a difficult L2 speech contrast (the English /æ/-/ε/ contrast) in three different tasks: A categorization task, a word identification task and a lexical decision task. As a group, L2 listeners were less accurate than native listeners. However, at the individual level, almost half of the L2 listeners scored within the native range in the categorization task whereas a small percentage scored within the native range in the identification and lexical decision tasks. These results show that L2 listeners' performance crucially depends on the nature of the task, with higher L2 listener accuracy on an acoustic-phonetic analysis task than on tasks involving lexical processes. These findings parallel previous results for early bilinguals, where the pattern of performance was consistent with the processing hierarchy proposed by different models of speech perception. The results indicate that the analysis of patterns of non-native performance can provide important insights concerning the architecture of the speech perception system and the issue of language learnability.

Abstract

Prosody, particularly accent, aids comprehension by drawing attention to important elements such as the information that answers a question. A study using ERP registration investigated how the brain deals with the interpretation of prosodic prominence. Sentences were embedded in short dialogues and contained accented elements that were congruous or incongruous with respect to a preceding question. In contrast to previous studies, no explicit prosodic judgment task was added. Robust effects of accentuation were evident in the form of an “accent positivity” (200–500 msec) for accented elements irrespective of their congruity. Our results show that incongruously accented elements, that is, superfluous accents, activate a specific set of neural systems that is inactive in case of incongruously unaccented elements, that is, missing accents. Superfluous accents triggered an early positivity around 100 msec poststimulus, followed by a right-lateralized negative effect (N400). This response suggests that redundant information is identified immediately and leads to the activation of a neural system that is associated with semantic processing (N400). No such effects were found when contextually expected accents were missing. In a later time window, both missing and superfluous accents triggered a late positivity on midline electrodes, presumably related to making sense of both kinds of mismatching stimuli. These results challenge previous findings of greater processing for missing accents and suggest that the natural processing of prosody involves a set of distinct, temporally organized neural systems.

Abstract

The present dissertation investigates what neurocognitive processes are activated in the brain when listeners comprehend spoken language and in particular the melody and rhythm of speech, also referred to as prosody. The findings of several electrophysiological studies show that prosody influences the early and late stages of spoken language processing. When words are accented, listeners consider them important, and the brain responds to accentuation already 200 milliseconds after stimulus onset. The processing of prosodic prominence occurs whether or not a context is present and whether or not accent is congruent with context, although the responses to accentuation may be modified by either of these factors and by the focus particle only. Listeners are sensitive not only to the presence of prosodic prominence but also to the type of accents speakers use: corrective prosody activates additional interpretation mechanisms related to the construction of corrective meaning. The parallel between accents across clauses impacts the disambiguation of sentences with verb ellipsis. By interpreting prosodically parallel elements as syntactically parallel, listeners arrive at less preferred interpretations of conjoined clauses. The research indentifies early correlates of incongruous prosody in strongly predictive contexts as well as late integration processes for prosody comprehension, which are related to the processing of structural complexity in isolated and ambiguous sentences. The dissertation provides evidence that the brain is sensitive to differences in prosody even in the absence of prosodic judgment. However, by changing the task, one modulates the neural mechanisms of prosody processing.

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 papers in this volume focus on the impact of information structure on language acquisition, thereby taking different linguistic approaches into account. They start from an empirical point of view, and examine data from natural first and second language acquisition, which cover a wide range of varieties, from early learner language to native speaker production and from gesture to Creole prototypes. The central theme is the interplay between principles of information structure and linguistic structure and its impact on the functioning and development of the learner's system. The papers examine language-internal explanatory factors and in particular the communicative and structural forces that push and shape the acquisition process, and its outcome. On the theoretical level, the approach adopted appeals both to formal and communicative constraints on a learner’s language in use. Two empirical domains provide a 'testing ground' for the respective weight of grammatical versus functional determinants in the acquisition process: (1) the expression of finiteness and scope relations at the utterance level and (2) the expression of anaphoric relations at the discourse level.

Abstract

We present a new transcription mode for the annotation tool ELAN. This mode is designed to speed up the process of creating transcriptions of primary linguistic data (video and/or audio recordings of linguistic behaviour). We survey the basic transcription workflow of some commonly used tools (Transcriber, BlitzScribe, and ELAN) and describe how the new transcription interface improves on these existing implementations. We describe the design of the transcription interface and explore some further possibilities for improvement in the areas of segmentation and computational enrichment of annotations.

Abstract

Ideophones are marked words that depict sensory imagery found in many of the world’s languages. They are noted for their special forms, distinct grammatical behaviour, rich sensory meanings, and interactional uses related to experience and evidentiality. This review surveys recent developments in ideophone research. Work on the semiotics of ideophones helps explain why they are marked and how they realise the depictive potential of speech. A true semantic typology of ideophone systems is coming within reach through a combination of language-internal analyses and language-independent elicitation tools. Documentation of ideophones in a wide variety of genres as well as sequential analysis of ideophone use in natural discourse leads to new insights about their interactional uses and about their relation to other linguistic devices like reported speech and grammatical evidentials. As the study of ideophones is coming of age, it sheds new light on what is possible and probable in human language.

Abstract

Mensen groeien op in verschillende omgevingen, met verschillende ervaringen en verschillende talen. Betekent dat ook dat ze verschillend denken? En als er invloed is van taal op denken, hoe ver reikt die dan? Wordt ons denken begrensd door woorden, of is de invloed meer gematigd en kunnen we er soms zelfs aan ontkomen?

Abstract

The widespread occurrence of ideophones, large classes of words specialized in evoking sensory imagery, is little known outside linguistics and anthropology. Ideophones are a common feature in many of the world’s languages but are underdeveloped in English and other Indo-European languages. Here we study the meanings of ideophones in Siwu (a Kwa language from Ghana) using a pile-sorting task. The goal was to uncover the underlying structure of the lexical space and to examine the claimed link between ideophones and perception. We found that Siwu ideophones are principally organized around fine-grained aspects of sensory perception, and map onto salient psychophysical dimensions identified in sensory science. The results ratify ideophones as dedicated sensory vocabulary and underline the relevance of ideophones for research on language and perception.

Abstract

People often talk about musical pitch in terms of spatial metaphors. In English, for instance, pitches can be high or low, whereas in other languages pitches are described as thick or thin. According to psychophysical studies, metaphors in language can also shape people’s nonlinguistic space-pitch representations. But does language establish mappings between space and pitch in the first place or does it modify preexisting associations? Here we tested 4-month-old Dutch infants’ sensitivity to height-pitch and thickness-pitch mappings in two preferential looking tasks. Dutch infants looked significantly longer at cross-modally congruent stimuli in both experiments, indicating that infants are sensitive to space-pitch associations prior to language. This early presence of space-pitch mappings suggests that these associations do not originate from language. Rather, language may build upon pre-existing mappings and change them gradually via some form of competitive associative learning.

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

This paper presents Advanced Glossing, a proposal for a general glossing format designed for language documentation, and a specific setup for the Shoebox-program that implements Advanced Glossing to a large extent. Advanced Glossing (AG) goes beyond the traditional Interlinear Morphemic Translation, keeping syntactic and morphological information apart from each other in separate glossing tables. AG provides specific lines for different kinds of annotation – phonetic, phonological, orthographical, prosodic, categorial, structural, relational, and semantic, and it allows for gradual and successive, incomplete, and partial filling in case that some information may be irrelevant, unknown or uncertain. The implementation of AG in Shoebox sets up several databases. Each documented text is represented as a file of syntactic glossings. The morphological glossings are kept in a separate database. As an additional feature interaction with lexical databases is possible. The implementation makes use of the interlinearizing automatism provided by Shoebox, thus obtaining the table format for the alignment of lines in cells, and for semi-automatic filling-in of information in glossing tables which has been extracted from databases

Abstract

Digitizing and annotating texts and field recordings Given that several initiatives worldwide currently explore the new field of documentation of endangered languages, the E-MELD project proposes to survey and unite procedures, techniques and results in order to achieve its main goal, ''the formulation and promulgation of best practice in linguistic markup of texts and lexicons''. In this context, this year's workshop deals with the processing of recorded texts. I assume the most valuable contribution I could make to the workshop is to show the procedures and methods used in the Awetí Language Documentation Project. The procedures applied in the Awetí Project are not necessarily representative of all the projects in the DOBES program, and they may very well fall short in several respects of being best practice, but I hope they might provide a good and concrete starting point for comparison, criticism and further discussion. The procedures to be exposed include: * taping with digital devices, * digitizing (preliminarily in the field, later definitely by the TIDEL-team at the Max Planck Institute in Nijmegen), * segmenting and transcribing, using the transcriber computer program, * translating (on paper, or while transcribing), * adding more specific annotation, using the Shoebox program, * converting the annotation to the ELAN-format developed by the TIDEL-team, and doing annotation with ELAN. Focus will be on the different types of annotation. Especially, I will present, justify and discuss Advanced Glossing, a text annotation format developed by H.-H. Lieb and myself designed for language documentation. It will be shown how Advanced Glossing can be applied using the Shoebox program. The Shoebox setup used in the Awetí Project will be shown in greater detail, including lexical databases and semi-automatic interaction between different database types (jumping, interlinearization). ( Freie Universität Berlin and Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, with funding from the Volkswagen Foundation.)

Abstract

Overview Since the early nineties, the on-going dramatic loss of the world’s linguistic diversity has gained attention, first by the linguists and increasingly also by the general public. As a response, the new field of language documentation emerged from around 2000 on, starting with the funding initiative ‘Dokumentation Bedrohter Sprachen’ (DoBeS, funded by the Volkswagen foundation, Germany), soon to be followed by others such as the ‘Endangered Languages Documentation Programme’ (ELDP, at SOAS, London), or, in the USA, ‘Electronic Meta-structure for Endangered Languages Documentation’ (EMELD, led by the LinguistList) and ‘Documenting Endangered Languages’ (DEL, by the NSF). From its very beginning, the new field focused on digital technologies not only for recording in audio and video, but also for annotation, lexical databases, corpus building and archiving, among others. This development not just coincides but is intrinsically interconnected with the increasing focus on digital data, technology and methods in all sciences, in particular in the humanities.

Abstract

This contribution explores the potentials of combining corpora of language use data with language description in e-grammars (or digital grammars). We present three directions of ongoing research and discuss the advantages of combining these and similar approaches, arguing that the technological possibilities have barely begun to be explored.

Abstract

This contribution presents “The Language Archive” (TLA), a new unit at the MPI for Psycholinguistics, discussing the current developments in management of scientific data, considering the need for new data research infrastructures. Although several initiatives worldwide in the realm of language resources aim at the integration, preservation and mobilization of research data, the state of such scientific data is still often problematic. Data are often not well organized and archived and not described by metadata ― even unique data such as field-work observational data on endangered languages is still mostly on perishable carriers. New data centres are needed that provide trusted, quality-reviewed, persistent services and suitable tools and that take legal and ethical issues seriously. The CLARIN initiative has established criteria for suitable centres. TLA is in a good position to be one of such centres. It is based on three essential pillars: (1) A data archive; (2) management, access and annotation tools; (3) archiving and software expertise for collaborative projects. The archive hosts mostly observational data on small languages worldwide and language acquisition data, but also data resulting from experiments

Abstract

Traditionally, there have been three standard assumptions made about the Parallelism Effect on VP-ellipsis, namely that the effect is categorical, that it applies asymmetrically and that it is uniquely due to syntactic factors. Based on the results of a series of experiments involving online and offline tasks, it will be argued that the Parallelism Effect is instead noncategorical and interactional. The factors investigated include construction type, conceptual and morpho-syntactic recoverability, finiteness and anaphor type (to test VP-anaphora). The results show that parallelism is gradient rather than categorical, effects both VP-ellipsis and anaphora, and is influenced by both structural and non-structural factors.

Abstract

Although laughter forms an important part of human non-verbal communication, it has received rather less attention than it deserves in both the experimental and the observational literatures. Relaxed social (Duchenne) laughter is associated with feelings of wellbeing and heightened affect, a proximate expla- nation for which might be the release of endorphins. We tested this hypothesis in a series of six experimental studies in both the laboratory (watching videos) and naturalistic contexts (watching stage performances), using change in pain threshold as an assay for endorphin release. The results show that pain thresholds are significantly higher after laughter than in the control condition. This pain-tolerance effect is due to laughter itself and not simply due to a change in positive affect. We suggest that laughter, through an endorphin-mediated opiate effect, may play a crucial role in social bonding.