Publications

Abstract

Bronislaw Malinowski – based on his experience during his field research on the Trobriand Islands – pointed out that language is first and foremost a tool for creating social bonds. It is a mode of behavior and the meaning of an utterance is constituted by its pragmatic function. Malinowski’s ideas finally led to the formation of the subdiscipline “anthropological linguistics”. This paper presents three observations of the Trobrianders’ attitude to their language Kilivila and their language use in social interactions. They illustrate that whoever wants to successfully research the role of language, culture and cognition in social interaction must be on ‘common ground’ with the researched community.

Abstract

As I have already pointed out elsewhere (Senft 2008; 2010; 2014), the Gricean conversational maxims of Quality – “Try to make your contribution one that is true” – and Manner “Be perspicuous”, specifically “Avoid obscurity of expression” and “Avoid ambiguity” (Grice 1967; 1975; 1978) – are not observed by the Trobriand Islanders of Papua New Guinea, neither in forms of their ritualized communication nor in forms and ways of everyday conversation and other ordinary verbal interactions. The speakers of the Austronesian language Kilivila metalinguistically differentiate eight specific non-diatopical registers which I have called “situational-intentional” varieties. One of these varieties is called “biga sopa”. This label can be glossed as “joking or lying speech, indirect speech, speech which is not vouched for”. The biga sopa constitutes the default register of Trobriand discourse and conversation. This contribution to the workshop on philosophy and pragmatics presents the Trobriand Islanders’ indigenous typology of non-diatopical registers, especially elaborating on the concept of sopa, describing its features, discussing its functions and illustrating its use within Trobriand society. It will be shown that the Gricean maxims of quality and manner are irrelevant for and thus not observed by the speakers of Kilivila. On the basis of the presented findings the Gricean maxims and especially Grice’s claim that his theory of conversational implicature is “universal in application” is critically discussed from a general anthropological-linguistic point of view.

Abstract

Aristotle's importance in the professional study of language consists first of all in the fact that he demythologized language and made it an object of rational investigation. In the context of his theory of truth as correspondence, he also provided the first semantic analysis of propositions in that he distinguished two main constituents, the predicate, which expresses a property, and the remainder of the proposition, referring to a substance to which the property is assigned. That assignment is either true or false. Later, the ‘remainder’ was called subject term, and the Aristotelian predicate was identified with the verb in the sentence. The Aristotelian predicate, however, is more like what is now called the ‘comment,’ whereas his remainder corresponds to the topic. Aristotle, furthermore, defined nouns and verbs as word classes. In addition, he introduced the term ‘case’ for paradigmatic morphological variation.

Abstract

Traditional psycholinguistic studies take place in controlled experimental labs and typically involve testing undergraduate psychology or linguistics students. Investigating psycholinguistics in this manner calls into question the external validity of findings, that is, the extent to which research findings generalize across languages and cultures, as well as ecologically valid settings. Here we consider three ways in which psycholinguistics can be taken out of the lab. First, researchers can conduct cross-cultural fieldwork in diverse languages and cultures. Second, they can conduct online experiments or experiments in institutionalized public spaces (e.g., museums) to obtain large, diverse participant samples. And, third, researchers can perform studies in more ecologically valid settings, to increase the real-world generalizability of findings. By moving away from the traditional lab setting, psycholinguists can enrich their understanding of language use in all its rich and diverse contexts.

Abstract

The artificial grammar learning (AGL) paradigm enables systematic investigation of the acquisition of linguistically relevant structures. It is a paradigm of interest for language processing research, interfacing with theoretical linguistics, and for comparative research on language acquisition and evolution. This chapter presents a key for understanding major variants of the paradigm. An unbiased summary of neuroimaging findings of AGL is presented, using meta-analytic methods, pointing to the crucial involvement of the bilateral frontal operculum and regions in the right lateral hemisphere. Against a background of robust posterior temporal cortex involvement in processing complex syntax, the evidence for involvement of the posterior temporal cortex in AGL is reviewed. Infant AGL studies testing for neural substrates are reviewed, covering the acquisition of adjacent and non-adjacent dependencies as well as algebraic rules. The language acquisition data suggest that comparisons of learnability of complex grammars performed with adults may now also be possible with children.

Abstract

The primary goal of psycholinguistic research is to understand the architectures and mechanisms that underlie human language comprehension and production. This entails an understanding of how linguistic knowledge is represented and organized in the brain and a theory of how that knowledge is accessed when we use language. Research has traditionally emphasized purely linguistic aspects of on-line comprehension, such as the influence of lexical, syntactic, semantic and discourse constraints, and their tim -course. It has become increasingly clear, however, that nonlinguistic information, such as the visual environment, are also actively exploited by situated language comprehenders.

Abstract

How do languages express ideas of movement, and how do they package features that can be part of motion, such as path and cause? This questionnaire is used to gain a picture of the lexical resources a language draws on for motion expressions. It targets issues of semantic conflation (i.e., what other semantic information besides motion may be encoded in a verb root) and patterns of semantic distribution (i.e., what types of information are encoded in the morphemes that come together to build a description of a motion event). It was originally designed for Australian languages, but has since been used around the world.

Abstract

Contrastive reference, where a speaker presents or identifies one item in explicit contrast to another (I like this book but that one is boring), has special communicative and information structure properties. This can be reflected in rules of demonstrative use. For example, in some languages, terms equivalent to this and that can be used for contrastive reference in almost any spatial context. But other two-term languages stick more closely to “distance rules” for demonstratives, allowing a this-like term in close space only. This task elicits data concerning one context of contrastive reference, focusing on whether (and how) non-proximal demonstratives can be used to distinguish objects within a proximal area. The task runs like a memory game, with the consultant being asked to identify the locations of two or three hidden items arranged within arm’s reach.

Abstract

Demonstrative terms (e.g., this and that) are key to understanding how a language constructs and interprets spatial relationships. They are tricky to pin down, typically having functions that do not match “idealized” uses, and that can become invisible in narrow elicitation settings. This questionnaire is designed to identify the range(s) of use of certain spatial demonstrative terms, and help assess the roles played by gesture, access, attention, and addressee knowledge in demonstrative use. The stimuli consist of 25 diagrammed “elicitation settings” to be created by the researcher.

Abstract

Here we review evidence from cognitive neuroscience for a tight relation between language and action in the brain. We focus on two types of relation between language and action. First, we investigate whether the perception of speech and speech sounds leads to activation of parts of the cortical motor system also involved in speech production. Second, we evaluate whether understanding action-related language involves the activation of parts of the motor system. We conclude that whereas there is considerable evidence that understanding language can involve parts of our motor cortex, this relation is best thought of as inherently flexible. As we explain, the exact nature of the input as well as the intention with which language is perceived influences whether and how motor cortex plays a role in language processing.

Abstract

Angelika Wittek untersuchte Zustandsveränderungsverben bei vier- bis sechsjährigen Kindern. Englischsprechende Kinder verstehen bis zum Alter von 8 Jahren diese Verben als Bewegungsverben und ignorieren, daß sie zusätzlich die Information über einen Endzustand im Sinne der Negation des Ausgangszustands beeinhalten. Wittek zeigte, daß entgegen der Erwartung transparente, morphologisch komplexe Formen (wachmachen), in denen die Partikel den Endzustand explizit macht, nicht besser verstanden werden als Simplizia (wecken). Zudem diskutierte sie, inwieweit die Verwendung des Adverbs wieder in restitutiver Lesart Hinweise auf den Erwerb dieser Verben geben kann.