Publications

Abstract

Research on the exploitation of prosodic information in the recognition of spoken language is reviewed. The research falls into three main areas: the use of prosody in the recognition of spoken words, in which most attention has been paid to the question of whether the prosodic structure of a word plays a role in initial contact with stored lexical representations; the use of prosody in the computation of syntactic structure, in which the resolution of global and local ambiguities has formed the central focus; and the role of prosody in the processing of discourse structure, in which there has been a preponderance of work on the contribution of accentuation and deaccentuation to integration of concepts with an existing discourse model. The review reveals that in each area progress has been made towards new conceptions of prosody's role in processing, and in particular this has involved abandonment of previously held deterministic views of the relationship between prosodic structure and other aspects of linguistic structure

Abstract

Psycholinguists strive to construct a model of human language processing in general. But this does not imply that they should confine their research to universal aspects of linguistic structure, and avoid research on language-specific phenomena. First, even universal characteristics of language structure can only be accurately observed cross-linguistically. This point is illustrated here by research on the role of the syllable in spoken-word recognition, on the perceptual processing of vowels versus consonants, and on the contribution of phonetic assimilation phonemena to phoneme identification. In each case, it is only by looking at the pattern of effects across languages that it is possible to understand the general principle. Second, language-specific processing can certainly shed light on the universal model of language comprehension. This second point is illustrated by studies of the exploitation of vowel harmony in the lexical segmentation of Finnish, of the recognition of Dutch words with and without vowel epenthesis, and of the contribution of different kinds of lexical prosodic structure (tone, pitch accent, stress) to the initial activation of candidate words in lexical access. In each case, aspects of the universal processing model are revealed by analysis of these language-specific effects. In short, the study of spoken-language processing by human listeners requires cross-linguistic comparison.

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 realized. 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 spelling was rendered salient by the presence in the experiment of many irregularly spelled filler words. Within the inconsistent targets [f, s, k], there was no significant difference between responses to targets in words with more usual (foam, seed, cattle) versus less usual (phone, cede, kettle) spellings. Phoneme detection is thus not necessarily sensitive to orthographic effects; knowledge of spelling stored in the lexical representations of words does not automatically become available as word candidates are activated. However, salient orthographic manipulations in experimental input can induce such sensitivity. We attribute this to listeners' experience of the value of spelling in everyday situations that encourage phonemic decisions (such as learning new names)

Abstract

Adverse listening conditions always make the perception of speech harder, but their deleterious effect is far greater if the speech we are trying to understand is in a non-native language. An imperfect signal can be coped with by recourse to the extensive knowledge one has of a native language, and imperfect knowledge of a non-native language can still support useful communication when speech signals are high-quality. But the combination of imperfect signal and imperfect knowledge leads rapidly to communication breakdown. This phenomenon is undoubtedly well known to every reader of Speech Communication from personal experience. Many readers will also have a professional interest in explaining, or remedying, the problems it produces. The journal’s readership being a decidedly interdisciplinary one, this interest will involve quite varied scientific approaches, including (but not limited to) modelling the interaction of first and second language vocabularies and phonemic repertoires, developing targeted listening training for language learners, and redesigning the acoustics of classrooms and conference halls. In other words, the phenomenon that this special issue deals with is a well-known one, that raises important scientific and practical questions across a range of speech communication disciplines, and Speech Communication is arguably the ideal vehicle for presentation of such a breadth of approaches in a single volume. The call for papers for this issue elicited a large number of submissions from across the full range of the journal’s interdisciplinary scope, requiring the guest editors to apply very strict criteria to the final selection. Perhaps unique in the history of treatments of this topic is the combination represented by the guest editors for this issue: a phonetician whose primary research interest is in second-language speech (MLGL), an engineer whose primary research field is the acoustics of masking in speech processing (MC), and a psychologist whose primary research topic is the recognition of spoken words (AC). In the opening article of the issue, these three authors together review the existing literature on listening to second-language speech under adverse conditions, bringing together these differing perspectives for the first time in a single contribution. The introductory review is followed by 13 new experimental reports of phonetic, acoustic and psychological studies of the topic. The guest editors thank Speech Communication editor Marc Swerts and the journal’s team at Elsevier, as well as all the reviewers who devoted time and expert efforts to perfecting the contributions to this issue.

Abstract

Two experiments examined the dynamics of lexical activation in spoken-word recognition. In both, the key materials were pairs of onset-matched picturable nouns varying in frequency. Pictures associated with these words, plus two distractor pictures were displayed. A gating task, in which participants identified the picture associated with gradually lengthening fragments of spoken words, examined the availability of discriminating cues in the speech waveforms for these pairs. There was a clear frequency bias in participants’ responses to short, ambiguous fragments, followed by a temporal window in which discriminating information gradually became available. A visual-world experiment examined speech contingent eye movements. Fixation analyses suggested that frequency influences lexical competition well beyond the point in the speech signal at which the spoken word has been fully discriminated from its competitor (as identified using gating). Taken together, these data support models in which the processing dynamics of lexical activation are a limiting factor on recognition speed, over and above the temporal unfolding of the speech signal.

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

Aims Circulating microRNAs (miRNAs) may represent a novel class of biomarkers; therefore, we examined whether acute myocardial infarction (MI) modulates miRNAs plasma levels in humans and mice. Methods and results Healthy donors (n = 17) and patients (n = 33) with acute ST-segment elevation MI (STEMI) were evaluated. In one cohort (n = 25), the first plasma sample was obtained 517 ± 309 min after the onset of MI symptoms and after coronary reperfusion with percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI); miR-1, -133a, -133b, and -499-5p were ∼15- to 140-fold control, whereas miR-122 and -375 were ∼87–90% lower than control; 5 days later, miR-1, -133a, -133b, -499-5p, and -375 were back to baseline, whereas miR-122 remained lower than control through Day 30. In additional patients (n = 8; four treated with thrombolysis and four with PCI), miRNAs and troponin I (TnI) were quantified simultaneously starting 156 ± 72 min after the onset of symptoms and at different times thereafter. Peak miR-1, -133a, and -133b expression and TnI level occurred at a similar time, whereas miR-499-5p exhibited a slower time course. In mice, miRNAs plasma levels and TnI were measured 15 min after coronary ligation and at different times thereafter. The behaviour of miR-1, -133a, -133b, and -499-5p was similar to STEMI patients; further, reciprocal changes in the expression levels of these miRNAs were found in cardiac tissue 3–6 h after coronary ligation. In contrast, miR-122 and -375 exhibited minor changes and no significant modulation. In mice with acute hind-limb ischaemia, there was no increase in the plasma level of the above miRNAs. Conclusion Acute MI up-regulated miR-1, -133a, -133b, and -499-5p plasma levels, both in humans and mice, whereas miR-122 and -375 were lower than control only in STEMI patients. These miRNAs represent novel biomarkers of cardiac damage.

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 relationship between semantic and grammatical processing in sentence comprehension was investigated by examining event-related potential (ERP) and event-related power changes in response to semantic and grammatical violations. Sentences with semantic, phrase structure, or number violations and matched controls were presented serially (1.25 words/s) to 20 participants while EEG was recorded. Semantic violations were associated with an N400 effect and a theta band increase in power, while grammatical violations were associated with a P600 effect and an alpha/beta band decrease in power. A quartile analysis showed that for both types of violations, larger average violation effects were associated with lower relative amplitudes of oscillatory activity, implying an inverse relation between ERP amplitude and event-related power magnitude change in sentence processing.

Abstract

There are some 6000 languages spoken today, classfied in approximately 90 linguistic families and many isolates, and also differing across structural, typological, dimensions. Genetically, the human species is remarkably homogeneous, with the existant genetic diversity mostly explain by intra-population differences between individuals, but the remaining inter-population differences have a non-trivial structure. Populations splits and contacts influence both languages and genes, in principle allowing them to evolve in parallel ways. The farming/language co-dispersal hypothesis is a well-known such theory, whereby farmers spreading agriculture from its places of origin also spread their genes and languages. A different type of relationship was recently proposed, involving a genetic bias which influences the structural properties of language as it is transmitted across generations. Such a bias was proposed to explain the correlations between the distribution of tone languages and two brain development-related human genes and, if confirmed by experimental studies, it could represent a new factor explaining the distrbution of diversity. The present chapter overviews these related topics in the hope that a truly interdisciplinary approach could allow a better understanding of our complex (recent as well as evolutionary) history.

Abstract

The correlations between interpopulation genetic and linguistic diversities are mostly noncausal (spurious), being due to historical processes and geographical factors that shape them in similar ways. Studies of such correlations usually consider allele frequencies and linguistic groupings (dialects, languages, linguistic families or phyla), sometimes controlling for geographic, topographic, or ecological factors. Here, we consider the relation between allele frequencies and linguistic typological features. Specifically, we focus on the derived haplogroups of the brain growth and development-related genes ASPM and Microcephalin, which show signs of natural selection and a marked geographic structure, and on linguistic tone, the use of voice pitch to convey lexical or grammatical distinctions. We hypothesize that there is a relationship between the population frequency of these two alleles and the presence of linguistic tone and test this hypothesis relative to a large database (983 alleles and 26 linguistic features in 49 populations), showing that it is not due to the usual explanatory factors represented by geography and history. The relationship between genetic and linguistic diversity in this case may be causal:
certain alleles can bias language acquisition or processing and thereby influence the trajectory of language change through iterated cultural transmission.

Abstract

One of the first steps infants take in learning their native language is to discover its set of speech-sound categories. This early development is shown when infants begin to lose the ability to differentiate some of the speech sounds their language does not use, while retaining or improving discrimination of language-relevant sounds. However, this aspect of early phonological tuning is not sufficient for language learning. Children must also discover which of the phonetic cues that are used in their language serve to signal lexical distinctions. Phonetic variation that is readily discriminable to all children may indicate two different words in one language but only one word in another. Here, we provide evidence that the language background of 1.5-year-olds affects their interpretation of phonetic variation in word learning, and we show that young children interpret salient phonetic variation in language-specific ways. Three experiments with a total of 104 children compared Dutch- and English-learning 18-month-olds' responses to novel words varying in vowel duration or vowel quality. Dutch learners interpreted vowel duration as lexically contrastive, but English learners did not, in keeping with properties of Dutch and English. Both groups performed equivalently when differentiating words varying in vowel quality. Thus, at one and a half years, children's phonological knowledge already guides their interpretation of salient phonetic variation. We argue that early phonological learning is not just a matter of maintaining the ability to distinguish language-relevant phonetic cues. Learning also requires phonological interpretation at appropriate levels of linguistic analysis.

Abstract

This paper discusses the influence of age-related factors like stage of cognitive development, prior linguistic knowledge, and motivation and addresses the specific effects of these ‘age factors’ on second language acquisition as opposed to other learning tasks. Based on longitudinal corpus data from child and adolescent learners of L2 German (L1 = Russian), the paper studies the acquisition of word order (verb raising over negation, verb second) and inflectional morphology (subject-verb-agreement, tense, noun plural, and adjective-noun agreement). Whereas the child learner shows target-like production in all of these areas within the observation period (1½ years), the adolescent learner masters only some of them. The discussion addresses the question of what it is about clusters of grammatical features that make them particularly affected by age.

Abstract

The younger - the better? This paper discusses second language learning at different ages and takes a critical look at generalizations of the kind ‘The younger – the better’. It is argued that these generalizations do not apply across the board. Age related differences like the amount of linguistic knowledge, prior experience as a language user, or more or less advanced communicative needs affect different components of the language system to different degrees, and can even be an advantage for the early development of simple communicative systems.

Abstract

This paper deals with the anaphoric linking of information units in spoken discourse in French, Italian, Dutch and German. We distinguish the information units ‘time’, ‘entity’, and ‘predicate’ and specifically investigate how speakers mark the information structure of their utterances and enhance discourse cohesion in contexts where the predicate contains given information but there is a change in one or more of the other information units. Germanic languages differ from Romance languages in the availability of a set of assertion-related particles (e.g. doch/toch, wel; roughly meaning ‘indeed’) and the option of highlighting the assertion component of a finite verb independently of its lexical content (verum focus). Based on elicited production data from 20 native speakers per language, we show that speakers of Dutch and German relate utterances to one another by focussing on this assertion component, and propose an analysis of the additive scope particles ook/auch (also) along similar lines. Speakers of Romance languages tend to highlight change or maintenance in the other information units. Such differences in the repertoire have consequences for the selection of units that are used for anaphoric linking. We conclude that there is a Germanic and a Romance way of signalling the information flow and enhancing discourse cohesion.

Abstract

Reviews the book, Talking voices: Repetition, dialogue, and imagery in conversational discourse. 2nd edition by Deborah Tannen. This book is the same as the 1989 original except for an added introduction. This introduction situates TV in the context of intertextuality and gives a survey of relevant research since the book first appeared. The strength of the book lies in its insightful analysis of the auditory side of conversation. Yet talking voices have always been embedded in richly contextualized multimodal speech events. As spontaneous and pervasive involvement strategies, both iconic gestures and ideophones should be of central importance to the analysis of conversational discourse. Unfortunately, someone who picks up this book is pretty much left in the dark about the prevalence of these phenomena in everyday face-to-face interaction all over the world.

Abstract

Ideophones are marked words that depict sensory events, for example English hippety-hoppety ‘in a limping and hobbling manner’ or Siwu mukumuku ‘mouth movements of a toothless person eating’. They typically have special sound patterns and distinct grammatical properties. Ideophones are found in many languages of the world, suggesting a common fascination with detailed sensory depiction, but reliable data on their meaning and use is still very scarce. This task involves video-recording spontaneous, informal explanations (“folk definitions”) of individual ideophones by native speakers, in their own language. The approach facilitates collection of rich primary data in a planned context while ensuring a large amount of spontaneity and freedom.

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 results from a new set of experiments using the sentence matching paradigm (Forster, Kenneth (1979), Freedman & Forster (1985), also Bley-Vroman & Masterson (1989), investigating native-speakers’ and L2 learners’ knowledge of constraints on clitic placement in French.1 Our purpose is three-fold: (i) to shed more light on the contrasts between native-speakers and L2 learners observed in previous experiments, especially Duffield & White (1999), and Duffield, White, Bruhn de Garavito, Montrul & Prévost (2002); (ii), to address specific criticisms of the sentence-matching paradigm leveled by Gass (2001); (iii), to provide a firm empirical basis for follow-up experiments with L2 learners

Abstract

This paper builds on a previous work in which we attempted to retrieve a phylogenetic signal using abstract structural features alone, as opposed to cognate sets, drawn from a sample of Island Melanesian languages, both Oceanic (Austronesian) and (non-Austronesian) Papuan (Science 2005[309]: 2072-75 ). Here we clarify a number of misunderstandings of this approach, referring particularly to the critique by Mark Donohue and Simon Musgrave (in this same issue of Oceanic Linguistics), in which they fail to appreciate the statistical principles underlying computational phylogenetic methods. We also present new analyses that provide stronger evidence supporting the hypotheses put forward in our original paper: a reanalysis using Bayesian phylogenetic inference demonstrates the robustness of the data and methods, and provides a substantial improvement over the parsimony method used in our earlier paper. We further demonstrate, using the technique of spatial autocorrelation, that neither proximity nor Oceanic contact can be a major determinant of the pattern of structural variation of the Papuan languages, and thus that the phylogenetic relatedness of the Papuan languages remains a serious hypothesis.

Abstract

The Touo language is a non-Austronesian language spoken on Rendova Island (Western Province, Solomon Islands). First language speakers of Touo are typically multilingual, and are likely to speak other (Austronesian) vernaculars, as well as Solomon Island Pijin and English. There is no institutional support of literacy in Touo: schools function in English, and church-based support for vernacular literacy focuses on the major Austronesian languages of the local area. Touo vernacular literacy exists in a restricted niche of the linguistic ecology, where it is utilised for symbolic rather than communicative goals. Competing vernacular orthographic traditions complicate the situation further.

Abstract

As proposed by Ameka and Levinson (this issue) locative verb systems can be classified into four types according to the number of verbs distinguished. This article addresses the lower extreme of this typology: languages which offer no choice of verb in the basic locative function (BLF). These languages have either a single locative verb, or do not use verbs at all in the basic locative construction (BLC, the construction used to encode the BLF). A close analysis is presented of the behavior of BLF predicate types in four genetically diverse languages: Chukchi (Chukotko-Kamchatkan, Russian Arctic), and Lavukaleve (Papuan isolate, Solomon Islands), which have BLC with the normal copula/existential verb for the language; Tiriyó (Cariban/Taranoan, Brazil), which has an optional copula in the BLC; and Saliba (Austronesian/Western Oceanic, Papua New Guinea), a language with a verbless clause as the BLC. The status of these languages in the typology of positional verb systems is reviewed, and other relevant typological generalizations are discussed

Abstract

Kazukuru is an extinct language, originally spoken in the inland of the western part of the island of New Georgia, Solomon Islands, and attested by very limited historical sources. Kazukuru has generally been considered to be a Papuan, that is, non-Austronesian, language, mostly on the basis of its lexicon. Reevaluation of the available data suggests a high likelihood that Kazukuru was in fact an Oceanic Austronesian language. Pronominal paradigms are clearly of Austronesian origin, and many other aspects of language structured retrievable from the limited data are also congruent with regional Oceanic Austronesian typology. The extent and possible causes of Kazukuru lexical deviations from the Austronesian norm are evaluated and discussed.

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

This article presents a study of a set of pointing gestures produced together with speech in a corpus of video-recorded “locality description” interviews in rural Laos. In a restricted set of the observed gestures (we did not consider gestures with special hand shapes, gestures with arc/tracing motion, or gestures directed at referents within physical reach), two basic formal types of pointing gesture are observed: B-points (large movement, full arm, eye gaze often aligned) and S-points (small movement, hand only, casual articulation). Taking the approach that speech and gesture are structurally integrated in composite utterances, we observe that these types of pointing gesture have distinct pragmatic functions at the utterance level. One type of gesture (usually “big” in form) carries primary, informationally foregrounded information (for saying “where” or “which one”). Infants perform this type of gesture long before they can talk. The second type of gesture (usually “small” in form) carries secondary, informationally backgrounded information which responds to a possible but uncertain lack of referential common ground. We propose that the packaging of the extra locational information into a casual gesture is a way of adding extra information to an utterance without it being on-record that the added information was necessary. This is motivated by the conflict between two general imperatives of communication in social interaction: a social-affiliational imperative not to provide more information than necessary (“Don’t over-tell”), and an informational imperative not to provide less information than necessary (“Don’t under-tell”).

Abstract

This article presents a description of two sequences of talk by urban speakers of Lao (a southwestern Tai language spoken in Laos) in which co-speech gesture plays a central role in explanations of kinship relations and terminology. The speakers spontaneously use hand gestures and gaze to spatially diagram relationships that have no inherent spatial structure. The descriptive sections of the article are prefaced by a discussion of the semiotic complexity of illustrative gestures and gesture diagrams. Gestured signals feature iconic, indexical, and symbolic components, usually in combination, as well as using motion and three-dimensional space to convey meaning. Such diagrams show temporal persistence and structural integrity despite having been projected in midair by evanescent signals (i.e., handmovements anddirected gaze). Speakers sometimes need or want to revise these spatial representations without destroying their structural integrity. The need to "edit" gesture diagrams involves such techniques as hold-and-drag, hold-and-work-with-free-hand, reassignment-of-old-chunk-tonew-chunk, and move-body-into-new-space.

Abstract

Words such as what -d'you-call-it raise issues at the heart of the semantics/pragmatics interface. Expressions of this kind are conventionalised and have meanings which, while very general, are explicitly oriented to the interactional nature of the speech context, drawing attention to a speaker's assumption that the listener can figure out what the speaker is referring to. The details of such meanings can account for functional contrast among similar expressions, in a single language as well as cross-linguistically. The English expressions what -d'you-call-it and you-know-what are compared, along with a comparable Lao expression meaning, roughly, ‘that thing’. Proposed definitions of the meanings of these expressions account for their different patterns of use. These definitions include reference to the speech act participants, a point which supports the view that what -d'you-call-it words can be considered deictic. Issues arising from the descriptive section of this paper include the question of how such terms are derived, as well as their degree of conventionality.

Abstract

Research on video- and audio-recordings of spontaneous naturally-occurring conversation in English has shown that conversation is a rule-guided, practice-oriented domain that can be investigated for its underlying mechanics or structure. Systematic study could yield something like a grammar for conversation. The goal of this task is to acquire a corpus of video-data, for investigating the underlying structure(s) of interaction cross-linguistically and cross-culturally.

Abstract

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

Abstract

This task is designed to elicit virtual 3D ‘models’ created in gesture space using iconic and other representational gestures. This task has been piloted with Lao speakers, where two speakers were asked to explain the meaning of terms referring to different kinds of fish trap mechanisms. The task elicited complex performances involving a range of iconic gestures, and with especially interesting use of (a) the ‘model/diagram’ in gesture space as a virtual object, (b) the non-dominant hand as a prosodic/semiotic anchor, (c) a range of different techniques (indexical and iconic) for evoking meaning with the hand, and (d) the use of nearby objects and parts of the body as semiotic ‘props’.

Abstract

Reviews the book, Gesturecraft: The Manu-Facture of Meaning by Jurgen Streeck (see record 2009-03892-000). This book on gesture goes back to well before the recent emergence of a mainstream of interest in the topic. The author of this book presents his vision of the hands' involvement in the making of meaning. The author's stance falls within a second broad category of work, a much more interdisciplinary approach, which focuses on context more richly construed. The approach not only addresses socially and otherwise distributed cognition, but also tackles the less psychologically framed concerns of meaning as a collaborative achievement and its role in the practicalities of human social life. The author's insistence that the right point of departure for gesture work is "human beings in their daily activities" leads to a view of gesture that begins not with language, and not with mind, but with types of social and contextual settings that constitute ecologies for the deployment of the hands in making meaning. The author's categories go beyond a reliance on semiotic properties of hand movements or their relation to accompanying speech, being grounded also in contextual aspects of the local setting, social activity type and communicative goals. Thus, this book is a unique contribution to gesture research.

Abstract

Any language will have a range of predicates that specify three core participants (e.g. 'put', 'show', 'give'), and will conventionally provide a range of constructional types for the expression of these three participants in a structured single-clause or single-sentence event description. This article examines the clausal encoding of three-participant events in Lao, a Tai language of Southeast Asia. There is no possibility in Lao for expression of three full arguments in the core of a single-verb clause (although it is possible to have a third argument in a noncore slot, marked as oblique with a prepositionlike element). Available alternatives include extraposing an argument using a topic-comment construction, incorporating an argument into the verb phrase, and ellipsing one or more contextually retrievable arguments. A more common strategy is verb serialization, for example, where a threeplace verb (e.g. 'put') is assisted by an additional verb (typically a verb of handling such as 'carry') that provides a slot for the theme argument (e.g. the transferred object in a putting scene). The event construal encoded by this type of structure decomposes the event into a first stage in which the agent comes into control over a theme, and a second in which the agent performs a controlled action (e.g. of transfer) with respect to that theme and a goal (and/or source). The particular set of strategies that Lao offers for encoding three-participant events — notably, topic-comment strategy, ellipsis strategy, serial verb strategy — conform with (and are presumably motivated by) the general typological profile of the language. The typological features of Lao are typical for the mainland Southeast Asia area (isolating, topic-prominent, verb-serializing, widespread nominal ellipsis).

Abstract

The semantics of simple (i.e. two-term) systems of demonstratives have in general hitherto been treated as inherently spatial and as marking a symmetrical opposition of distance (‘proximal’ versus ‘distal’), assuming the speaker as a point of origin. More complex systems are known to add further distinctions, such as visibility or elevation, but are assumed to build on basic distinctions of distance. Despite their inherently context-dependent nature, little previous work has based the analysis of demonstratives on evidence of their use in real interactional situations. In this article, video recordings of spontaneous interaction among speakers of Lao (Southwestern Tai, Laos) are examined in an analysis of the two Lao demonstrative determiners nii4 and nan4. A hypothesis of minimal encoded semantics is tested against rich contextual information, and the hypothesis is shown to be consistent with the data. Encoded conventional meanings must be kept distinct from contingent contextual information and context-dependent pragmatic implicatures. Based on examples of the two Lao demonstrative determiners in exophoric uses, the following claims are made. The term nii4 is a semantically general demonstrative, lacking specification of ANY spatial property (such as location or distance). The term nan4 specifies that the referent is ‘not here’ (encoding ‘location’ but NOT ‘distance’). Anchoring the semantic specification in a deictic primitive ‘here’ allows a strictly discrete intensional distinction to be mapped onto an extensional range of endless elasticity. A common ‘proximal’ spatial interpretation for the semantically more general term nii4 arises from the paradigmatic opposition of the two demonstrative determiners. This kind of analysis suggests a reappraisal of our general understanding of the semantics of demonstrative systems universally. To investigate the question in sufficient detail, however, rich contextual data (preferably collected on video) is necessary

Abstract

While there are infinite conceivable events of material separation, those actually encoded in the conventions of a given language's verb semantics number only a few. Furthermore, there appear to be crosslinguistic parallels in the native verbal analysis of this conceptual domain. What are the operative distinctions, and why these? This article analyses a key subset of the bivalent (transitive) verbs of cutting and breaking in Lao. I present a decompositional analysis of the verbs glossed 'cut (off)', 'cut.into.with.placed.blade', 'cut.into.with.moving.blade', and 'snap', pursuing the idea that the attested combinations of sub-events have a natural logic to them. Consideration of the nature of linguistic categories, as distinct from categories in general, suggests that the attested distinctions must have ethnographic and social interactional significance, raising new lines of research for cognitive semantics.

Abstract

People of all cultures have some degree of concern with categorizing types of communicative social action. All languages have words with meanings like speak, say, talk, complain, curse, promise, accuse, nod, wink, point and chant. But the exact distinctions they make will differ in both quantity and quality. How is communicative social action categorised across languages and cultures? The goal of this task is to establish a basis for cross-linguistic comparison of native metalanguages for social action.

Abstract

Research on video- and audio-recordings of spontaneous naturally-occurring conversation in English has shown that conversation is a rule-guided, practice-oriented domain that can be investigated for its underlying mechanics or structure. Systematic study could yield something like a grammar for conversation. The goal of this task is to acquire a corpus of video-data, for investigating the underlying structure(s) of interaction cross-linguistically and cross-culturally

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no abstract available

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We want to know how people think about their field of kin, on the supposition that it is quasi-spatial. To get some insights here, we need to video a discussion about kinship reckoning, the kinship system, marriage rules and so on, with a view to looking at both the linguistic expressions involved, and the gestures people use to indicate kinship groups and relations. Unlike the task in the 2001 manual, this task is a direct interview method.

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This paper surveys the structure of questions and their responses in Lao, a Southwestern Tai language spoken in Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia. Data are from video-recordings of naturally occurring conversation in Vientiane, Laos. An outline of the lexico-grammatical options for formulating questions describes content (‘WH’) questions and polar (‘yes/no’) questions. The content question forms are from a set of indefinite pronouns. The WHAT, WHERE, and WHO categories have higher token frequency than the other categories. Polar questions are mostly formed by the addition of different turn-final markers, with different meanings. ‘Declarative questions’ (i.e., polar questions which are formally identical to statements) are common. An examination of the interactional functions of questions in the data show asymmetries between polar and content questions, with content questions used mostly for requesting information, while polar questions are also widely used for requesting confirmation, among other things. There is discussion of the kinds of responses that are appropriate or preferred given certain types of question. Alongside discussion of numerous examples, the paper provides quantitative data on the frequencies of various patterns in questions and responses. These data form part of a large-scale, ten-language coding study.

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This sub-project is concerned with analysis and cross-linguistic comparison of the mechanisms of signaling and redressing ‘trouble’ during conversation. Speakers and listeners constantly face difficulties with many different aspects of speech production and comprehension during conversation. A speaker may mispronounce a word, or may be unable to find a word, or be unable to formulate in words an idea he or she has in mind. A listener may have troubling hearing (part of) what was said, may not know who a speaker is referring to, may not be sure of the current relevance of what is being said. There may be problems in the organisation of turns at talk, for instance, two speakers’ speech may be in overlap. The goal of this task is to investigate the range of practices that a language uses to address problems of speaking, hearing and understanding in conversation.

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This Field Manual entry has been superceded by the 2007 version: https://doi.org/10.17617/2.468724

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This task is a complement to the questionnaire ‘Multimodal interaction in your field site: a preliminary investigation’. The objective of the task is to obtain high quality video data on structured and symmetrical dyadic multimodal interaction. The features of interaction we are interested in include turn organization in speech and nonverbal behavior, eye-gaze behavior, use of composite signals (i.e. communicative units of speech-combined-with-gesture), and linguistic and other resources for ‘navigating’ interaction (e.g. words like okay, now, well, and um).

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Both of these considerations of the evolution of language draw on research from a wide range of fields, although Enfield believes they do not pay sufficient attention to the dynamic context of human social behavior.

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Based on an analysis of 350 questions and their responses in a corpus of ordinary interactions, this paper gives a descriptive overview of the ways Dutch interactants formulate their utterances to make them recognizable as doing questioning and the options they rely on to respond to these questions. I describe the formal options for formulating questions and responses in Dutch and the range of social actions (e.g. requests for information, requests for confirmation) that are implemented through questions in the corpus. Finally, I focus on answer design and discuss some of the coherence relations between questions, answers, and social actions. Questions that are asked to elicit information are associated with the more prototypical, lexico-morpho-syntactically defined question type such as polar interrogatives and, mainly, content questions. Most polar questions with declarative syntax are not primarily concerned with obtaining information but with doing other kinds of social actions

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Among the most fascinating data for phonology are those showing how speakers incorporate new words and foreign words into their language system, since these data provide cues to the actual principles underlying language. In this article, we address how speakers deal with neutralized obstruents in new words. We formulate four hypotheses and test them on the basis of Dutch word-final obstruents, which are neutral for [voice]. Our experiments show that speakers predict the characteristics ofneutralized segments on the basis ofphonologically similar morphemes stored in the mental lexicon. This effect of the similar morphemes can be modeled in several ways. We compare five models, among them STOCHASTIC OPTIMALITY THEORY and ANALOGICAL MODELING OF LANGUAGE; all perform approximately equally well, but they differ in their complexity, with analogical modeling oflanguage providing the most economical explanation.

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This article shows that Old-French literary texts differ systematically in their relative frequencies of syntactic constructions. These frequencies reflect differences in register (poetry versus prose), region (Picardy, Champagne, and Esatern France), time period (until 1250, 1251 – 1300, 1301 – 1350), and genre (hagiography, romance of chivalry, or other).

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Two lexical decision experiments addressed the role of paradigmatic effects in auditory word recognition. Experiment 1 showed that listeners classified a form with an incorrectly voiced final obstruent more readily as a word if the obstruent is realised as voiced in other forms of that word's morphological paradigm. Moreover, if such was the case, the exact probability of paradigmatic voicing emerged as a significant predictor of the response latencies. A greater probability of voicing correlated with longer response latencies for words correctly realised with voiceless final obstruents. A similar effect of this probability was observed in Experiment 2 for words with completely voiceless or weakly voiced (incompletely neutralised) final obstruents. These data demonstrate the relevance of paradigmatically related complex words for the processing of morphologically simple words in auditory word recognition.

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This paper discusses four experiments on Dutch which show that distinctive phonological features differ in their relevance for word recognition. The relevance of a feature for word recognition depends on its phonological stability, that is, the extent to which that feature is generally realized in accordance with its lexical specification in the relevant word position. If one feature value is uninformative, all values of that feature are less relevant for word recognition, with the least informative feature being the least relevant. Features differ in their relevance both in spoken and written word recognition, though the differences are more pronounced in auditory lexical decision than in self-paced reading.

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This study addresses the question to what extent the production of regular past tense forms in Dutch is a¤ected by analogical processes. We report an experiment in which native speakers of Dutch listened to existing regular verbs over headphones, and had to indicate which of the past tense allomorphs, te or de, was appropriate for these verbs. According to generative analyses, the choice between the two su‰xes is completely regular and governed by the underlying [voice]-specification of the stem-final segment. In this approach, no analogical e¤ects are expected. In connectionist and analogical approaches, by contrast, the phonological similarity structure in the lexicon is expected to a¤ect lexical processing. Our experimental results support the latter approach: all participants created more nonstandard past tense forms, produced more inconsistency errors, and responded more slowly for verbs with stronger analogical support for the nonstandard form.

Abstract

In Dutch, all morpheme-final obstruents are voiceless in word-final position. As a consequence, the distinction between obstruents that are voiced before vowel-initial suffixes and those that are always voiceless is neutralized. This study adds to the existing evidence that the neutralization is incomplete: neutralized, alternating plosives tend to have shorter bursts than non-alternating plosives. Furthermore, in a rating study, listeners scored the alternating plosives as more voiced than the nonalternating plosives, showing sensitivity to the subtle subphonemic cues in the acoustic signal. Importantly, the participants who were presented with the complete words, instead of just the final rhymes, scored the alternating plosives as even more voiced. This shows that listeners’ perception of voice is affected by their knowledge of the obstruent’s realization in the word’s morphological paradigm. Apparently, subphonemic paradigmatic levelling is a characteristic of both production and perception. We explain the effects within an analogy-based approach.

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Manganese (Mn2+)-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MEMRI) offers the possibility to generate longitudinal maps of brain activity in unrestrained and behaving animals. However, Mn2+ is a metabolic toxin and a competitive inhibitor for Ca2+, and therefore, a yet unsolved question in MEMRI studies is whether the concentrations of metal ion used may alter brain physiology. In the present work we have investigated the behavioral, electrophysiological and histopathological consequences of MnCl2 administration at concentrations and dosage protocols regularly used in MEMRI. Three groups of animals were sc injected with saline, 0.1 and 0.5 mmol/kg MnCl2, respectively. In vivo electrophysiological recordings in the hippocampal formation revealed a mild but detectable decrease in both excitatory postsynaptic potentials (EPSP) and population spike (PS) amplitude under the highest MnCl2 dose. The EPSP to PS ratio was preserved at control levels, indicating that neuronal excitability was not affected. Experiments of pair pulse facilitation demonstrated a dose dependent increase in the potentiation of the second pulse, suggesting presynaptic Ca2+ competition as the mechanism for the decreased neuronal response. Tetanization of the perforant path induced a long-term potentiation of synaptic transmission that was comparable in all groups, regardless of treatment. Accordingly, the choice accuracy tested on a hippocampal-dependent learning task was not affected. However, the response latency in the same task was largely increased in the group receiving 0.5 mmol/kg of MnCl2. Immunohistological examination of the hippocampus at the end of the experiments revealed no sign of neuronal toxicity or glial reaction. Although we show that MEMRI at 0.1 mmol/Kg MnCl2 may be safely applied to the study of cognitive networks, a detailed assessment of toxicity is strongly recommended for each particular study and Mn2+ administration protocol.

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Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is widely used in basic and clinical research to map the structural and functional organization of the brain. An important need of MR research is for contrast agents that improve soft-tissue contrast, enable visualization of neuronal tracks, and enhance the capacity of MRI to provide functional information at different temporal scales. Unchelated manganese can be such an agent, and manganese-enhanced MRI (MEMRI) can potentially be an excellent technique for localization of brain activity (for review see Silva et al., 2004). Yet, the toxicity of manganese presents a major limitation for employing MEMRI in behavioral paradigms. We have tested systematically the voluntary wheel running behavior of rats after systemic application of MnCl2 in a dose range of 16–80 mg/kg, which is commonly used in MEMRI studies. The results show a robust dose-dependent decrease in motor performance, which was accompanied by weight loss and decrease in food intake. The adverse effects lasted for up to 7 post-injection days. The lowest dose of MnCl2 (16 mg/kg) produced minimal adverse effects, but was not sufficient for functional mapping. We have therefore evaluated an alternative method of manganese delivery via osmotic pumps, which provide a continuous and slow release of manganese. In contrast to a single systemic injection, the pump method did not produce any adverse locomotor effects, while achieving a cumulative concentration of manganese (80 mg/kg) sufficient for functional mapping. Thus, MEMRI with such an optimized manganese delivery that avoids toxic effects can be safely applied for longitudinal studies in behaving animals.

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This paper compares “cut” and “break” verbs in four variants of Gbe, namely Anfoe, Anlo, Fon and Ayizo, with those of Sranan. “Cut” verbs are change-of-state verbs that co-lexicalize the type of action that brings about a change, the type of instrument or instrument part, and the manner in which a change occurs. By contrast, break verbs co-lexicalize either the type of object or the type of change. It has been hypothesized that “cut”-verbs are unergative while breaks verbs are unaccusatives. For example “break” verbs participate in the causative alternation constructions but “cut” verbs don’t. We show that although there are some differences in the meanings of “cut” and break verbs across the Gbe languages, significant generalizations can be made with regard to their lexicalization patterns. By contrast, the meanings of “cut” and break verbs in Sranan are closer to those of their etymons in English and Dutch. However, despite the differences in the meanings of “cut” and “break” verbs between the Gbe languages and Sranan, the syntax of the verbs in Sranan is similar to that of the Eastern Gbe variants, namely Fon and Ayizo. We look at the implications of our findings for the relexification hypothesis. (copyright Benjamins)

Abstract

Two-year-old children’s reasoning about the relation between their own and others’ preferences was investigated across two studies. In Experiment 1, children first observed 2 actors display their individual preferences for various toys. Children were then asked to make inferences about new, visually inaccessible toys and books that were described as being the favorite of each actor, unfamiliar to each actor, or disliked by each actor. Children tended to select the favorite toys and books from the actor who shared their own preference but chose randomly when the new items were unfamiliar to or disliked by the two actors. Experiment 2 extended these findings, showing that children do not generalize a shared preference across unrelated categories of items. Taken together, the results suggest that young children readily recognize when another person holds a preference similar to their own and use that knowledge appropriately to achieve desired outcomes.

Abstract

Two studies examined the influence of similarity on 3-year-old children’s initial liking of their peers. Children were presented with pairs of childlike puppets who were either similar or dissimilar to them on a specified dimension and then were asked to choose one of the puppets to play with as a measure of liking. Children selected the puppet whose food preferences or physical appearance matched their own. Unpacking the physical appearance finding revealed that the stable similarity of hair color may influence liking more strongly than the transient similarity of shirt color. A second study showed that children also prefer to play with a peer who shares their toy preferences, yet importantly, show no bias toward a peer who is similar on an arbitrary dimension. The findings provide insight into the earliest development of peer relations in young children.

Abstract

This study investigates the real-time processing of wh-dependencies by advanced Greek-speaking learners of English using a cross-modal picture priming task. Participants were asked to respond to different types of picture target presented either at structurally defined gap positions, or at pre-gap control positions, while listening to sentences containing indirect-object relative clauses. Our results indicate that the learners processed the experimental sentences differently from both adult native speakers of English and monolingual English-speaking children. Contrary to what has been found for native speakers, the learners' response pattern was not influenced by individual working memory differences. Adult second language learners differed from native speakers with a relatively high reading or listening span in that they did not show any evidence of structurally based antecedent reactivation at the point of the indirect object gap. They also differed from low-span native speakers, however, in that they showed evidence of maintained antecedent activation during the processing of the experimental sentences. Whereas the localized priming effect observed in the high-span controls is indicative of trace-based antecedent reactivation in native sentence processing, the results from the Greek-speaking learners support the hypothesis that the mental representations built during non-native language processing lack abstract linguistic structure such as movement traces.

Abstract

This study investigates the way adult second language (L2) learners of English resolve relative clause attachment ambiguities in sentences such as The dean liked the secretary of the professor who was reading a letter. Two groups of advanced L2 learners of English with Greek or German as their first language participated in a set of off-line and on-line tasks. The results indicate that the L2 learners do not process ambiguous sentences of this type in the same way as adult native speakers of English do. Although the learners’ disambiguation preferences were influenced by lexical–semantic properties of the preposition linking the two potential antecedent noun phrases (of vs. with), there was no evidence that they applied any phrase structure–based ambiguity resolution strategies of the kind that have been claimed to influence sentence processing in monolingual adults. The L2 learners’ performance also differs markedly from the results obtained from 6- to 7-year-old monolingual English children in a parallel auditory study, in that the children’s attachment preferences were not affected by the type of preposition at all. We argue that children, monolingual adults, and adult L2 learners differ in the extent to which they are guided by phrase structure and lexical–semantic information during sentence processing.

Abstract

In this study we describe a distinctive pigment ring that appears in spider eyes after ecdysis and successively decreases in size in the days thereafter. Although pigment stops in spider eyes are well known, size variability is, to our knowledge, reported here for the first time. Representative species from three families (Ctenidae, Sparassidae and Lycosidae) are investigated and, for one of these species (Cupiennius salei, Ctenidae), the progressive increase in pupil diameter is monitored. In this species the pupil occupies only a fourth of the total projected lens surface after ecdysis and reaches its final size after approximately ten days. MicroCT images suggest that the decrease of the pigment ring is linked to the growth of the corneal lens after ecdysis. The pigment rings might improve vision in the immature eye by shielding light rays that would otherwise enter the eye via peripheral regions of the cornea, beside the growing crystalline lens.

Abstract

A significant number of individuals have unexplained difficulties with acquiring normal speech and language, despite adequate intelligence and environmental stimulation. Although developmental disorders of speech and language are heritable, the genetic basis is likely to involve several, possibly many, different risk factors. Investigations of a unique three-generation family showing monogenic inheritance of speech and language deficits led to the isolation of the first such gene on chromosome 7, which encodes a transcription factor known as FOXP2. Disruption of this gene causes a rare severe speech and language disorder but does not appear to be involved in more common forms of language impairment. Recent genome-wide scans have identified at least four chromosomal regions that may harbor genes influencing the latter, on chromosomes 2, 13, 16, and 19. The molecular genetic approach has potential for dissecting neurological pathways underlying speech and language disorders, but such investigations are only just beginning.

Abstract

Why do some children fail to acquire speech and language skills despite adequate environmental input and overtly normal neurological and anatomical development? It has been suspected for several decades, based on indirect evidence, that the human genome might hold some answers to this enigma. These suspicions have recently received dramatic confirmation with the discovery of specific genetic changes which appear sufficient to derail speech and language development. Indeed, researchers are already using information from genetic studies to aid early diagnosis and to shed light on the neural pathways that are perturbed in these inherited forms of speech and language disorder. Thus, we have entered an exciting era for dissecting the neural bases of human communication, one which takes genes and molecules as a starting point. In the current article I explain how this recent paradigm shift has occurred and describe the new vistas that have opened up. I demonstrate ways of bridging the gaps between molecules, neurons and the brain, which will provide a new understanding of the aetiology of speech and language impairments.

Abstract

Between 2 and 5% of children who are otherwise unimpaired have significant difficulties in acquiring expressive and/or receptive language, despite adequate intelligence and opportunity. While twin studies indicate a significant role for genetic factors in developmental disorders of speech and language, the majority of families segregating such disorders show complex patterns of inheritance, and are thus not amenable for conventional linkage analysis. A rare exception is the KE family, a large three-generation pedigree in which approximately half of the members are affected with a severe speech and language disorder which appears to be transmitted as an autosomal dominant monogenic trait. This family has been widely publicised as suffering primarily from a defect in the use of grammatical suffixation rules, thus supposedly supporting the existence of genes specific to grammar. The phenotype, however, is broader in nature, with virtually every aspect of grammar and of language affected. In addition, affected members have a severe orofacial dyspraxia, and their speech is largely incomprehensible to the naive listener. We initiated a genome-wide search for linkage in the KE family and have identified a region on chromosome 7 which co-segregates with the speech and language disorder (maximum lod score = 6.62 at theta = 0.0), confirming autosomal dominant inheritance with full penetrance. Further analysis of microsatellites from within the region enabled us to fine map the locus responsible (designated SPCH1) to a 5.6-cM interval in 7q31, thus providing an important step towards its identification. Isolation of SPCH1 may offer the first insight into the molecular genetics of the developmental process that culminates in speech and language.

Abstract

The human Xp11.23-p11.22 interval has been implicated in several inherited diseases including Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome; three forms of X-linked hypercalciuric nephrolithiaisis; and the eye disorders retinitis pigmentosa 2, congenital stationary night blindness, and Aland Island eye disease. In constructing YAC contigs spanning Xp11. 23-p11.22, we have previously shown that the region around the synaptophysin (SYP) gene is refractory to cloning in YACs, but highly stable in cosmids. Preliminary analysis of the latter suggested that this might reflect a high density of coding sequences and we therefore undertook the complete sequencing of a SYP-containing cosmid. Sequence data were extensively analyzed using computer programs such as CENSOR (to mask repeats), BLAST (for homology searches), and GRAIL and GENE-ID (to predict exons). This revealed the presence of 29 putative exons, organized into three genes, in addition to the 7 exons of the complete SYP coding region, all mapping within a 44-kb interval. Two genes are novel, one (CACNA1F) showing high homology to alpha1 subunits of calcium channels, the other (LMO6) encoding a product with significant similarity to LIM-domain proteins. RT-PCR and Northern blot studies confirmed that these loci are indeed transcribed. The third locus is the previously described, but not previously localized, A4 differentiation-dependent gene. Given that the intron-exon boundaries predicted by the analysis are consistent with previous information where available, we have been able to suggest the genomic organization of the novel genes with some confidence. The region has an elevated GC content (>53%), and we identified CpG islands associated with the 5' ends of SYP, A4, and LMO6. The order of loci was Xpter-A4-LMO6-SYP-CACNA1F-Xcen, with intergenic distances ranging from approximately 300 bp to approximately 5 kb. The density of transcribed sequences in this area (>80%) is comparable to that found in the highly gene-rich chromosomal band Xq28. Further studies may aid our understanding of the long-range organization surrounding such gene-enriched regions.

Abstract

Electrophysiological studies consistently find N400 effects of semantic incongruity in non-native written language comprehension. Typically these N400 effects are later than N400 effects in native comprehension, suggesting that semantic processing in one’s second language (L2) may be delayed compared to one’s first language (L1). In this study we were firstly interested in replicating the semantic incongruity effect using natural auditory speech, which poses strong demands on the speed of processing. Secondly, we wished to investigate whether a possible delay in semantic processing might be due to bilinguals accessing lexical items from both their L1 and L2 (a more extensive lexical search). We recorded EEG from 30 Dutch-English bilinguals who listened to English sentences � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � ��� � � in which the sentence-final word was: (1) semantically fitting, (2) semantically incongruent, (3) initially congruent: semantically incongruent, but sharing initial phonemes with the most probable sentence completion within the L2, (4) semantically incongruent, but sharing initial phonemes with the L1 translation equivalent of the most probable sentence completion. We found an N400 effect in each of the semantically incongruent conditions. This N400 effect was significantly delayed to L2 words that were initially congruent with the sentence context. We found no effect of initial overlap with L1 translation equivalents. Taken together these findings firstly demonstrate that non-native listeners are sensitive to semantic incongruity in natural speech, secondly indicate that semantic integration in non-native listening can start on the basis of word initial phonemes, and finally suggest that during L2 sentence processing listeners do not access the L1 lexicon.

Abstract

Electrophysiological studies consistently find N400 effects of semantic incongruity in nonnative (L2) language comprehension. These N400 effects are often delayed compared with native (L1) comprehension, suggesting that semantic integration in one's second language occurs later than in one's first language. In this study, we investigated whether such a delay could be attributed to (1) intralingual lexical competition and/or (2) interlingual lexical competition. We recorded EEG from Dutch–English bilinguals who listened to English (L2) sentences in which the sentence-final word was (a) semantically fitting and (b) semantically incongruent or semantically incongruent but initially congruent due to sharing initial phonemes with (c) the most probable sentence completion within the L2 or (d) the L1 translation equivalent of the most probable sentence completion. We found an N400 effect in each of the semantically incongruent conditions. This N400 effect was significantly delayed to L2 words but not to L1 translation equivalents that were initially congruent with the sentence context. Taken together, these findings firstly demonstrate that semantic integration in nonnative listening can start based on word initial phonemes (i.e., before a single lexical candidate could have been selected based on the input) and secondly suggest that spuriously elicited L1 lexical candidates are not available for semantic integration in L2 speech comprehension.

Abstract

Partway along the vast waterways of Brazil's middle Rio Negro, upstream from urban Manaus and downstream from the ethnographically famous Northwest Amazon region, is the town of Castanheiro, whose inhabitants skillfully negotiate a space between the polar extremes of 'traditional' and 'acculturated.' This paper takes an ethnographic look at the non-polarizing terms that these rural Amazonian people use for talking about cultural change. While popular and academic discourses alike have often framed cultural change in the Amazon as a linear process, Amazonian discourse provides resources for describing change as situated in shifting fields of knowledge of the social and physical environments, better capturing its non-linear complexity and ambiguity.

Abstract

This article briefly reviews some recent work on artificial language learning in children and adults. The final part of the article is devoted to a theoretical formulation of the language learning problem from a mechanistic neurobiological viewpoint and we show that it is logically possible to combine the notion of innate language constraints with, for example, the notion of domain general learning mechanisms. A growing body of empirical evidence suggests that the mechanisms involved in artificial language learning and in structured sequence processing are shared with those of natural language acquisition and natural language processing. Finally, by theoretically analyzing a formal learning model, we highlight Fodor’s insight that it is logically possible to combine innate, domain-specific constraints with domain-general learning mechanisms.

Abstract

Accurate reconstruction of prehistoric social organization is important if we are to put together satisfactory multidisciplinary scenarios about, for example, the dispersal of human groups. Such considerations apply in the case of Indo-European and Austronesian, two large-scale language families that are thought to represent Neolithic expansions. Ancestral kinship patterns have mostly been inferred through reconstruction of kin terminologies in ancestral proto-languages using the linguistic comparative method, and through geographical or distributional arguments based on the comparative patterns of kin terms and ethnographic kinship ‘facts’. While these approaches are detailed and valuable, the processes through which conclusions have been drawn from the data fail to provide explicit criteria for systematic testing of alternative hypotheses. Here, we use language trees derived using phylogenetic tree-building techniques on Indo-European and Austronesian vocabulary data. With these trees, ethnographic data and Bayesian phylogenetic comparative methods, we statistically reconstruct past marital residence and infer rates of cultural change between different residence forms, showing Proto-Indo-European to be virilocal and Proto-Malayo-Polynesian uxorilocal. The instability of uxorilocality and the rare loss of virilocality once gained emerge as common features of both families