Publications

Abstract

On the basis of two-speaker spontaneous conversations, it is shown that the distributions of both pauses and speech-overlaps of telephone and faceto-face dialogues have different statistical properties. Pauses in a face-to-face
dialogue last up to 4 times longer than pauses in telephone conversations in functionally comparable conditions. There is a high correlation (0.88 or larger) between the average pause duration for the two speakers across face-to-face
dialogues and telephone dialogues. The data provided form a first quantitative analysis of the complex turn-taking mechanism evidenced in the dialogues available in the 9-million-word Spoken Dutch Corpus.

Abstract

In spontaneous conversations, words are often produced in reduced form compared to formal careful speech. In English, for instance, ’probably’ may be pronounced as ’poly’ and ’police’ as ’plice’. Reduced forms are very common, and native listeners usually do not have any problems with interpreting these reduced forms in context. Non-native listeners, however, have great difficulties in comprehending reduced forms. In order to investigate the problems in comprehension that non-native listeners experience, a dictation experiment was conducted in which sentences were presented auditorily to non-natives either in full (unreduced) or reduced form. The types of errors made by the L2 listeners reveal aspects of the cognitive processes underlying this dictation task. In addition, we compare the errors made by these human participants with the type of word errors made by DIANA, a recently developed computational model of word comprehension.

Abstract

The present study shows that [t] consonants are affected by probabilistic factors in a syllable-timed language as French, and in spontaneous as well as in journalistic speech. Study 1 showed a word bigram frequency effect in spontaneous French, but its exact nature depended on the corpus on which the probabilistic measures were based. Study 2 investigated journalistic speech and showed an effect of the joint frequency of the test word and its following word. We discuss the possibility that these probabilistic effects are due to the speaker’s planning of upcoming words, and to the speaker’s adaptation to the listener’s needs.

Abstract

This paper describes the development of a CLARIN-compatible repository solution that fulfils
both the long-term preservation requirements as well as the current day discoverability and usability
needs of an online data repository of language resources. The widely used Fedora Commons
open source repository framework, combined with the Islandora discovery layer, forms
the basis of the solution. On top of this existing solution, additional modules and tools are developed
to make it suitable for the types of data and metadata that are used by the participating
partners.

Abstract

A dominant hypothesis in empirical research on the evolution of language is the following: the fundamental difference between animal and human communication systems is captured by the distinction between regular and more complex non-regular grammars. Studies reporting successful artificial grammar learning of nested recursive structures and imaging studies of the same have methodological shortcomings since they typically allow explicit problem solving strategies and this has been shown to account for the learning effect in subsequent behavioral studies. The present study overcomes these shortcomings by using subtle violations of agreement structure in a preference classification task. In contrast to the studies conducted so far, we use an implicit learning paradigm, allowing the time needed for both abstraction processes and consolidation to take place. Our results demonstrate robust implicit learning of recursively embedded structures (context-free grammar) and recursive structures with cross-dependencies (context-sensitive grammar) in an artificial grammar learning task spanning 9 days. Keywords: Implicit artificial grammar learning; centre embedded; cross-dependency; implicit learning; context-sensitive grammar; context-free grammar; regular grammar; non-regular grammar

Abstract

This paper describes a new flexible delexicalization method based on glottal excited parametric speech synthesis scheme. The system utilizes inverse filtered glottal flow and all-pole modelling of the vocal tract. The method provides a possibility to retain and manipulate all relevant prosodic features of any kind of speech. Most importantly, the features include voice quality, which has not been properly modeled in earlier delexicalization methods. The functionality of the new method was tested in a prosodic tagging experiment aimed at providing word prominence data for a text-to-speech synthesis system. The experiment confirmed the usefulness of the method and further corroborated earlier evidence that linguistic factors influence the perception of prosodic prominence.

Abstract

A not uncommon assumption in psycholinguistics is that the N400 directly indexes high-level semantic integration, the compositional, word-driven construction of sentence- and discourse-level meaning in some language-relevant unification space. The various discourse- and speaker-dependent modulations of the N400 uncovered by us and others are often taken to support this 'compositional integration' position. In my talk, I will argue that these N400 modulations are probably better interpreted as only indirectly reflecting compositional sense-making. The account that I will advance for these N400 effects is a variant of the classic Kutas and Federmeier (2002, TICS) memory retrieval account in which context effects on the word-elicited N400 are taken to reflect contextual priming of LTM access. It differs from the latter in making more explicit that the contextual cues that prime access to a word's meaning in LTM can range from very simple (e.g., a single concept) to very complex ones (e.g., a structured representation of the current discourse). Furthermore, it incorporates the possibility, suggested by recent N400 findings, that semantic retrieval can also be intensified in response to certain ‘relevance signals’, such as strong value-relevance, or a marked delivery (linguistic focus, uncommon choice of words, etc). In all, the perspective I'll draw is that in the context of discourse-level language processing, N400 effects reflect an 'overlay of technologies', with the construction of discourse-level representations riding on top of more ancient sense-making technology.

Abstract

Pitch, intonation, and speech rate were analyzed in a collection of everyday speech heard by one Dutch infant between the ages of six and nine months. Components of each of these variables were measured in the speech of three adult speakers (mother, father, baby-sitter) when they addressed the infant, and when they addressed another adult. The results are in line with previously reported findings which are usually based on laboratory or prearranged settings: infant-directed speech in a natural setting exhibits more pitch variation, a larger number of simple intonation contours, and slower speech rate than does adult-directed speech.

Abstract

Dutch distinguishes at least four sentence types: statements and questions, the latter type being subdivided into wh-questions (beginning with a question word), yes/no-questions (with inversion of subject and finite), and declarative questions (lexico-syntactically identical to statement). Acoustically, each of these (sub)types was found to have clearly distinct global F0-patterns, as well as a characteristic distribution of final rises [1,2]. The present paper explores the separate contribution of parameters of global downtrend and size of accent-lending pitch movements versus aspects of the terminal rise to the human identification of the four sentence (sub)types, at various positions in the time-course of the utterance. The results show that interrogativity in Dutch can be identified at an early point in the utterance. However, wh-questions are not distinct from statements.

Abstract

Listeners require context to understand the casual pronunciation variants of words that are typical of spontaneous speech (Ernestus et al., 2002). The present study reports two auditory lexical decision experiments, investigating listeners' use of semantic contextual information in the comprehension of unreduced and reduced words. We found a strong semantic priming effect for low frequency unreduced words, whereas there was no such effect for reduced words. Word frequency was facilitatory for all words. These results show that semantic context is relevant especially for the comprehension of unreduced words, which is unexpected given the listener driven explanation of reduction in spontaneous speech.

Abstract

This paper investigates the production and perception of epenthetic stops at syllable boundaries in Dutch and compares the experimental data with lexical statistics for Dutch and English. This extends past work on epenthesis in coda position [1]. The current work is particularly informative regarding the question of phonotactic constraints’ influence on parsing of speech variability.

Abstract

This paper presents articulatory data on the production of /l/ in various environments in Dutch, and shows that the direction of movement of the tongue dorsum varies across environments. This makes it impossible to measure tongue position at the peak of the dorsal gesture. We argue for an alternative method in such cases: measurement of position of one articulator at a time point defined by the gesture of another. We present new data measured this way which confirms a previous finding on the articulation of Dutch /l/.

Abstract

Recent studies using phoneme detection tasks have shown that spoken-language processing is neither facilitated nor interfered with by optional assimilation, but is inhibited by violation of obligatory assimilation. Interpretation of these results depends on an assessment of their generality, specifically, whether they also obtain when listeners are processing nonnative language. Two separate experiments are presented in which native listeners of German and native listeners of Dutch had to detect a target fricative in legal monosyllabic Dutch nonwords. All of the nonwords were correct realisations in standard Dutch. For German listeners, however, half of the nonwords contained phoneme strings which violate the German fricative assimilation rule. Whereas the Dutch listeners showed no significant effects, German listeners detected the target fricative faster when the German fricative assimilation was violated than when no violation occurred. The results might suggest that violation of assimilation rules does not have to make processing more difficult per se.

Abstract

Two eye-tracking experiments examined linguistic gender effects in non-native spoken-word recognition. French participants, who knew German well, followed spoken instructions in German to click on pictures on a computer screen (e.g., Wo befindet sich die Perle, “where is the pearl”) while their eye movements were monitored. The name of the target picture was preceded by a gender-marked article in the instructions. When a target and a competitor picture (with phonologically similar names) were of the same gender in both German and French, French participants fixated competitor pictures more than unrelated pictures. However, when target and competitor were of the same gender in German but of different gender in French, early fixations to the competitor picture were reduced. Competitor activation in the non-native language was seemingly constrained by native gender information. German listeners showed no such viewing time difference. The results speak against a form-based account of the linguistic gender effect. They rather support the notion that the effect originates from the grammatical level of language processing.

Abstract

Lexical recognition is typically slower in L2 than in L1. Part of the difficulty comes from a not precise enough processing of L2 phonemes. Consequently, L2 listeners fail to eliminate candidate words that L1 listeners can exclude from competing for recognition. For instance, the inability to distinguish /r/ from /l/ in rocket and locker makes for Japanese listeners both words possible candidates when hearing their onset (e.g., Cutler, Weber, and Otake, 2006). The L2 disadvantage can, however, be dispelled: For L2 listeners, but not L1 listeners, L2 speech from a non-native talker with the same language background is known to be as intelligible as L2 speech from a native talker (e.g., Bent and Bradlow, 2003). A reason for this may be that L2 listeners have ample experience with segmental deviations that are characteristic for their own accent. On this account, only phonemic deviations that are typical for the listeners’ own accent will cause spurious lexical activation in L2 listening (e.g., English magic pronounced as megic for Dutch listeners). In this talk, I will present evidence from cross-modal priming studies with a variety of L2 listener groups, showing how the processing of phonemic deviations is accent-specific but withstands fine phonetic differences.

Abstract

In this paper, we present empirical data from a corpus study on the linear order of subjects and objects in German main clauses. The aim was to establish the validity of three well-known ordering constraints: given complements tend to occur before new complements, definite before indefinite, and pronoun before full noun phrase complements. Frequencies of occurrences were derived for subject-first and object-first sentences from the German Negra corpus. While all three constraints held on subject-first sentences, results for object-first sentences varied. Our findings suggest an influence of grammatical functions on the ordering of verb complements.

Abstract

Language resources are valuable assets, both for institutions and researchers. To safeguard these resources requirements for repository systems and data management have been specified by various branch organizations, e.g., CLARIN and the Data Seal of Approval. This paper describes these and some additional ones posed by the authors’ home institutions. And it shows how they are met by FLAT, to provide a new home for language resources. The basis of FLAT is formed by the Fedora Commons repository system. This repository system can meet many of the requirements out-of-the box, but still additional configuration and some development work is needed to meet the remaining ones, e.g., to add support for Handles and Component Metadata. This paper describes design decisions taken in the construction of FLAT’s system architecture via a mix-and-match strategy, with a preference for the reuse of existing solutions. FLAT is developed and used by the a Institute and The Language Archive, but is also freely available for anyone in need of a CLARIN-compliant repository for their language resources.

Abstract

Lexica play an important role in every linguistic discipline. We are confronted with many types of lexica. Depending on the type of lexicon and the language we are currently faced with a large variety of structures from very simple tables to complex graphs, as was indicated by a recent overview of structures found in dictionaries from field linguistics and language engineering. It is important to assess these differences and aim at the integration of lexical resources in order to improve lexicon creation, exchange and reuse. This paper describes the first step towards the integration of existing structures and standards into a flexible abstract model.

Abstract

The increasing quantity and complexity of language resources leads to new management problems for those that collect and those that need to preserve them. At the same time the desire to make these resources available on the Internet demands an efficient way characterizing their properties to allow discovery and re-use. The use of metadata is seen as a solution for both these problems. However, the question is what specific requirements there are for the specific domain and if these are met by existing frameworks. Any possible solution should be evaluated with respect to its merit for solving the domain specific problems but also with respect to its future embedding in “global” metadata frameworks as part of the Semantic Web activities.

Abstract

Previous research on basic-level object categories shows there is cross-cultural variation in basic-level concepts, arguing against the idea that the basic level reflects an objective reality. In this paper, I extend the investigation to the domain of events. More specifically, I present a case study of verbs of ingestion in Maniq illustrating a highly specific categorization of ingestion events at the basic level. A detailed analysis of these verbs reveals they tap into culturally salient notions. Yet, cultural salience alone cannot explain specificity of basic-level verbs, since ingestion is a domain of universal human experience. Further analysis reveals, however, that another key factor is the language itself. Maniq’s preference for encoding specific meaning in basic-level verbs is not a peculiarity of one domain, but a recurrent characteristic of its verb lexicon, pointing to the significant role of the language system in the structure of event concepts

Abstract

Set is widely used as a kind of basic data structure. However, when it is used for large scale data set the cost of storage, search and transport is overhead. The bloom filter uses a fixed size bit string to represent elements in a static set, which can reduce storage space and search cost that is a fixed constant. The time-space efficiency is achieved at the cost of a small probability of false positive in membership query. However, for many applications the space savings and locating time constantly outweigh this drawback. Dynamic bloom filter (DBF) can support concisely representation and approximate membership queries of dynamic set instead of static set. It has been proved that DBF not only possess the advantage of standard bloom filter, but also has better features when dealing with dynamic set. This paper proposes a time-dependent multiple bit-strings bloom filter (TMBF) which roots in the DBF and targets on dynamic incremental set. TMBF uses multiple bit-strings in time order to present a dynamic increasing set and uses backward searching to test whether an element is in a set. Based on the system logs from a real P2P file sharing system, the evaluation shows a 20% reduction in searching cost compared to DBF.

Abstract

Young Infants are prolific word learners even though they are facing the challenge of referential uncertainty (Quine, 1960). Many laboratory studies have shown that infants are skilled at inferring correct referents of words from ambiguous contexts (Swingley, 2009). However, little is known regarding how they visually attend to and select the target object among many other objects in view when parents name it during everyday interactions. By investigating the looking pattern of 12-month-old infants using naturalistic first-person images with varying degrees of referential ambiguity, we found that infants’ attention is selective and they only select a small subset of objects to attend to at each learning instance despite the complexity of the data in the real world. This work allows us to better understand how perceptual properties of objects in infants’ view influence their visual attention, which is also related to how they select candidate objects to build word-object mappings.

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that components in a set of simple signs in Nederlandse Gebarentaal (also called Sign Language of the Netherlands; henceforth: NGT), i.e. hand configuration (including orientation), movement and place of articulation, can also have morphological status. Evidence for this is provided by: firstly, the fact that handshape, orientation, movement and place of articulation show regular meaningful patterns in signs, which patterns also occur in newly formed signs, and secondly, the gradual change of formerly noninflecting predicates into inflectional predicates. The morphological complexity of signs can best be accounted for in autosegmental morphological templates.