Publications

Abstract

We present a computational model that provides a unified account of inference, coherence, and disambiguation. It simulates how the build-up of coherence in text leads to the knowledge-based resolution of referential ambiguity. Possible interpretations of an ambiguity are represented by centers of gravity in a high-dimensional space. The unresolved ambiguity forms a vector in the same space. This vector is attracted by the centers of gravity, while also being affected by context information and world knowledge. When the vector reaches one of the centers of gravity, the ambiguity is resolved to the corresponding interpretation. The model accounts for reading time and error rate data from experiments on ambiguous pronoun resolution and explains the effects of context informativeness, anaphor type, and processing depth. It shows how implicit causality can have an early effect during reading. A novel prediction is that ambiguities can remain unresolved if there is insufficient disambiguating information.

Abstract

What drives humans around the world to converge in certain ways in their naming while diverging dramatically in others? We studied how naming patterns are constrained by investigating whether labeling of human locomotion reflects the biomechanical discontinuity between walking and running gaits. Similarity judgments of a student locomoting on a treadmill at different slopes and speeds revealed perception of this discontinuity. Naming judgments of the same clips by speakers of English, Japanese, Spanish, and Dutch showed lexical distinctions between walking and running consistent with the perceived discontinuity. Typicality judgments showed that major gait terms of the four languages share goodness-of-example gradients. These data demonstrate that naming reflects the biomechanical discontinuity between walking and running and that shared elements of naming can arise from correlations among stimulus properties that are dynamic and fleeting. The results support the proposal that converging naming patterns reflect structure in the world, not only acts of construction by observers.

Abstract

Interpreting a verb-phrase ellipsis (VP ellipsis) requires accessing an antecedent in memory, and then integrating a representation of this antecedent into the local context. We investigated the online interpretation of VP ellipsis in an eye-tracking experiment and four speed–accuracy tradeoff experiments. To investigate whether the antecedent for a VP ellipsis is accessed with a search or direct-access retrieval process, Experiments 1 and 2 measured the effect of the distance between an ellipsis and its antecedent on the speed and accuracy of comprehension. Accuracy was lower with longer distances, indicating that interpolated material reduced the quality of retrieved information about the antecedent. However, contra a search process, distance did not affect the speed of interpreting ellipsis. This pattern suggests that antecedent representations are content-addressable and retrieved with a direct-access process. To determine whether interpreting ellipsis involves copying antecedent information into the ellipsis site, Experiments 3–5 manipulated the length and complexity of the antecedent. Some types of antecedent complexity lowered accuracy, notably, the number of discourse entities in the antecedent. However, neither antecedent length nor complexity affected the speed of interpreting the ellipsis. This pattern is inconsistent with a copy operation, and it suggests that ellipsis interpretation may involve a pointer to extant structures in memory.

Abstract

Several models of spoken word recognition postulate that recognition is achieved via a process of competition between lexical hypotheses. Competition not only provides a mechanism for isolated word recognition, it also assists in continuous speech recognition, since it offers a means of segmenting continuous input into individual words. We present statistics on the pattern of occurrence of words embedded in the polysyllabic words of the English vocabulary, showing that an overwhelming majority (84%) of polysyllables have shorter words embedded within them. Positional analyses show that these embeddings are most common at the onsets of the longer word. Although both phonological and syntactic constraints could rule out some embedded words, they do not remove the problem. Lexical competition provides a means of dealing with lexical embedding. It is also supported by a growing body of experimental evidence. We present results which indicate that competition operates both between word candidates that begin at the same point in the input and candidates that begin at different points (McQueen, Norris, & Cutler, 1994, Noms, McQueen, & Cutler, in press). We conclude that lexical competition is an essential component in models of continuous speech recognition.

Abstract

Although spontaneous speech occurs more frequently in most listeners’ experience than read speech, laboratory studies of human speech recognition typically use carefully controlled materials read from a script. The phonological and prosodic characteristics of spontaneous and read speech differ considerably, however, which suggests that laboratory results may not generalize to the recognition of spontaneous and read speech materials, and their response time to detect word-initial target phonemes was measured. Response were, overall, equally fast in each speech mode. However analysis of effects previously reported in phoneme detection studies revealed significant differences between speech modes. In read speech but not in spontaneous speech, later targets were detected more rapidly than earlier targets, and targets preceded by long words were detected more rapidly than targets preceded by short words. In contrast, in spontaneous speech but not in read speech, targets were detected more rapidly in accented than unaccented words and in strong than in weak syllables. An explanation for this pattern is offered in terms of characteristic prosodic differences between spontaneous and read speech. The results support claim from previous work that listeners pay great attention to prosodic information in the process of recognizing speech.

Abstract

The authors investigated whether speakers who named several objects processed them sequentially or in parallel. Speakers named object triplets, arranged in a triangle, in the order left, right, and bottom object. The left object was easy or difficult to identify and name. During the saccade from the left to the right object, the right object shown at trial onset (the interloper) was replaced by a new object (the target), which the speakers named. Interloper and target were identical or unrelated objects, or they were conceptually unrelated objects with the same name (e.g., bat [animal] and [baseball] bat). The mean duration of the gazes to the target was shorter when interloper and target were identical or had the same name than when they were unrelated. The facilitatory effects of identical and homophonous interlopers were significantly larger when the left object was easy to process than when it was difficult to process. This interaction demonstrates that the speakers processed the left and right objects in parallel.

Abstract

When the perceptual system uses color to facilitate object recognition, it must solve the color-constancy problem: The light an object reflects to an observer's eyes confounds properties of the source of the illumination with the surface reflectance of the object. Information from the visual scene (bottom-up information) is insufficient to solve this problem. We show that observers use world knowledge about objects and their prototypical colors as a source of top-down information to improve color constancy. Specifically, observers use world knowledge to recalibrate their color categories. Our results also suggest that similar effects previously observed in language perception are the consequence of a general perceptual process.

Abstract

This study reports a shadowing experiment, in which one has to repeat a speech stimulus as fast as possible. We tested claims about a direct link between perception and production based on speech gestures, and obtained two types of counterevidence. First, shadowing is not slowed down by a gestural mismatch between stimulus and response. Second, phonetic detail is more likely to be imitated in a shadowing task if it is phonologically relevant. This is consistent with the idea that speech perception and speech production are only loosely coupled, on an abstract phonological level.

Abstract

In four experiments, we investigated how listeners compensate for reduced /t/ in Dutch. Mitterer and Ernestus [Mitterer,H., & Ernestus, M. (2006). Listeners recover /t/s that speakers lenite: evidence from /t/-lenition in Dutch. Journal of Phonetics, 34, 73–103] showed that listeners are biased to perceive a /t/ more easily after /s/ than after /n/, compensating for the tendency of speakers to reduce word-final /t/ after /s/ in spontaneous conversations. We tested the robustness of this phonological context effect in perception with three very different experimental tasks: an identification task, a discrimination task with native listeners and with non-native listeners who do not have any experience with /t/-reduction,and a passive listening task (using electrophysiological dependent measures). The context effect was generally robust against these experimental manipulations, although we also observed some deviations from the overall pattern. Our combined results show that the context effect in compensation for reduced /t/ results from a complex process involving auditory constraints, phonological learning, and lexical constraints.

Abstract

In two experiments, we investigated the processing of extrafoveal objects in a double-object naming task. On most trials, participants named two objects; but on some trials, the objects were replaced shortly after trial onset by a written word probe, which participants had to name instead of the objects. In Experiment 1, the word was presented in the same location as the left object either 150 or 350 msec after trial onset and was either phonologically related or unrelated to that object name. Phonological facilitation was observed at the later but not at the earlier SOA. In Experiment 2, the word was either phonologically related or unrelated to the right object and was presented 150 msec after the speaker had begun to inspect that object. In contrast with Experiment 1, phonological facilitation was found at this early SOA, demonstrating that the speakers had begun to process the right object prior to fixation.

Abstract

Two experiments were conducted with younger and older speakers. In Experiment 1, participants named single objects that were intact or visually degraded, while hearing distractor words that were phonologically related or unrelated to the object name. In both younger and older participants naming latencies were shorter for intact than for degraded objects and shorter when related than when unrelated distractors were presented. In Experiment 2, the single objects were replaced by object triplets, with the distractors being phonologically related to the first object's name. Naming latencies and gaze durations for the first object showed degradation and relatedness effects that were similar to those in single-object naming. Older participants were slower than younger participants when naming single objects and slower and less fluent on the second but not the first object when naming object triplets. The results of these experiments indicate that both younger and older speakers plan object names sequentially, but that older speakers use this planning strategy less efficiently.

Abstract

In expressing rich, multi-dimensional thought in language, speakers are influenced by a range of factors that influence the ordering of utterance constituents. A fundamental principle that guides constituent ordering in adults has to do with information status, the accessibility of referents in discourse. Typically, adults order previously mentioned referents (“old” or accessible information) first, before they introduce referents that have not yet been mentioned in the discourse (“new” or inaccessible information) at both sentential and phrasal levels. Here we ask whether a similar principle influences ordering patterns at the phrasal level in children who are in the early stages of combining words productively. Prior research shows that when conveying semantic relations, children reproduce language-specific ordering patterns in the input, suggesting that they do not have a bias for any particular order to describe “who did what to whom”. But our findings show that when they label “old” versus “new” referents, 3- to 5-year-old children prefer an ordering pattern opposite to that of adults (Study 1). Children’s ordering preference is not derived from input patterns, as “old-before-new” is also the preferred order in caregivers’ speech directed to young children (Study 2). Our findings demonstrate that a key principle governing ordering preferences in adults does not originate in early childhood, but develops: from new-to-old to old-to-new.

Abstract

It was recently suggested that the Kibra polymorphism rs17070145 has a strong effect on multiple episodic memory tasks in humans. We attempted to replicate this using two cohorts of European genetic origin (n = 319 and n = 365). We found no association with either the original SNP or a set of tagging SNPs in the Kibra gene with multiple verbal memory tasks, including one that was an exact replication (Auditory Verbal Learning Task, AVLT). These results suggest that Kibra does not have a strong and general effect on human memory.

Abstract

Referential ambiguity arises whenever readers or listeners are unable to select a unique referent for a linguistic expression out of multiple candidates. In the current article, we review a series of neurocognitive experiments from our laboratory that examine the neural correlates of referential ambiguity, and that employ the brain signature of referential ambiguity to derive functional properties of the language comprehension system. The results of our experiments converge to show that referential ambiguity resolution involves making an inference to evaluate the referential candidates. These inferences only take place when both referential candidates are, at least initially, equally plausible antecedents. Whether comprehenders make these anaphoric inferences is strongly context dependent and co-determined by characteristics of the reader. In addition, readers appear to disregard referential ambiguity when the competing candidates are each semantically incoherent, suggesting that, under certain circumstances, semantic analysis can proceed even when referential analysis has not yielded a unique antecedent. Finally, results from a functional neuroimaging study suggest that whereas the neural systems that deal with referential ambiguity partially overlap with those that deal with referential failure, they show an inverse coupling with the neural systems associated with semantic processing, possibly reflecting the relative contributions of semantic and episodic processing to re-establish semantic and referential coherence, respectively.

Abstract

In this event-related brain potential (ERP) study, we examined how semantic and referential aspects of anaphoric noun phrase resolution interact during discourse comprehension. We used a full factorial design that crossed referential ambiguity with semantic incoherence. Ambiguous anaphors elicited a sustained negative shift (Nref effect), and incoherent anaphors elicited an N400 effect. Simultaneously ambiguous and incoherent anaphors elicited an ERP pattern resembling that of the incoherent anaphors. These results suggest that semantic incoherence can preclude readers from engaging in anaphoric inferencing. Furthermore, approximately half of our participants unexpectedly showed common late positive effects to the three types of problematic anaphors. We relate the latter finding to recent accounts of what the P600 might reflect, and to the role of individual differences therein.

Abstract

Our brains rapidly map incoming language onto what we hold to be true. Yet there are claims that such integration and verification processes are delayed in sentences containing negation words like not. However, studies have often confounded whether a statement is true and whether it is a natural thing to say during normal communication. In an event-related potential (ERP) experiment, we aimed to disentangle effects of truth value and pragmatic licensing on the comprehension of affirmative and negated real-world statements. As in affirmative sentences, false words elicited a larger N400 ERP than did true words in pragmatically licensed negated sentences (e.g., “In moderation, drinking red wine isn't bad/good…”), whereas true and false words elicited similar responses in unlicensed negated sentences (e.g., “A baby bunny's fur isn't very hard/soft…”). These results suggest that negation poses no principled obstacle for readers to immediately relate incoming words to what they hold to be true.

Abstract

A Bayesian model of continuous speech recognition is presented. It is based on Shortlist ( D. Norris, 1994; D. Norris, J. M. McQueen, A. Cutler, & S. Butterfield, 1997) and shares many of its key assumptions: parallel competitive evaluation of multiple lexical hypotheses, phonologically abstract prelexical and lexical representations, a feedforward architecture with no online feedback, and a lexical segmentation algorithm based on the viability of chunks of the input as possible words. Shortlist B is radically different from its predecessor in two respects. First, whereas Shortlist was a connectionist model based on interactive-activation principles, Shortlist B is based on Bayesian principles. Second, the input to Shortlist B is no longer a sequence of discrete phonemes; it is a sequence of multiple phoneme probabilities over 3 time slices per segment, derived from the performance of listeners in a large-scale gating study. Simulations are presented showing that the model can account for key findings: data on the segmentation of continuous speech, word frequency effects, the effects of mispronunciations on word recognition, and evidence on lexical involvement in phonemic decision making. The success of Shortlist B suggests that listeners make optimal Bayesian decisions during spoken-word recognition.

Abstract

Spoken utterances contain few reliable cues to word boundaries, but listeners nonetheless experience little difficulty identifying words in continuous speech. The authors present data and simulations that suggest that this ability is best accounted for by a model of spoken-word recognition combining competition between alternative lexical candidates and sensitivity to prosodic structure. In a word-spotting experiment, stress pattern effects emerged most clearly when there were many competing lexical candidates for part of the input. Thus, competition between simultaneously active word candidates can modulate the size of prosodic effects, which suggests that spoken-word recognition must be sensitive both to prosodic structure and to the effects of competition. A version of the Shortlist model ( D. G. Norris, 1994b) incorporating the Metrical Segmentation Strategy ( A. Cutler & D. Norris, 1988) accurately simulates the results using a lexicon of more than 25,000 words.

Abstract

We propose that word recognition in continuous speech is subject to constraints on what may constitute a viable word of the language. This Possible-Word Constraint (PWC) reduces activation of candidate words if their recognition would imply word status for adjacent input which could not be a word - for instance, a single consonant. In two word-spotting experiments, listeners found it much harder to detectapple,for example, infapple(where [f] alone would be an impossible word), than invuffapple(wherevuffcould be a word of English). We demonstrate that the PWC can readily be implemented in a competition-based model of continuous speech recognition, as a constraint on the process of competition between candidate words; where a stretch of speech between a candidate word and a (known or likely) word boundary is not a possible word, activation of the candidate word is reduced. This implementation accurately simulates both the present results and data from a range of earlier studies of speech segmentation.

Abstract

Previous research comparing detection times for syllables and for phonemes has consistently found that syllables are responded to faster than phonemes. This finding poses theoretical problems for strictly hierarchical models of speech recognition, in which smaller units should be able to be identified faster than larger units. However, inspection of the characteristics of previous experiments’stimuli reveals that subjects have been able to respond to syllables on the basis of only a partial analysis of the stimulus. In the present experiment, five groups of subjects listened to identical stimulus material. Phoneme and syllable monitoring under standard conditions was compared with monitoring under conditions in which near matches of target and stimulus occurred on no-response trials. In the latter case, when subjects were forced to analyze each stimulus fully, phonemes were detected faster than syllables.

Abstract

Speech comprehension has been shown to be a strikingly bilateral process, but the differential contributions of the subfields of left and right auditory cortices have remained elusive. The hypothesis that left auditory areas engage predominantly in decoding fast temporal perturbations of a signal whereas the right areas are relatively more driven by changes of the frequency spectrum has not been directly tested in speech or music. This brain-imaging study independently manipulated the speech signal itself along the spectral and the temporal domain using noise-band vocoding. In a parametric design with five temporal and five spectral degradation levels in word comprehension, a functional distinction of the left and right auditory association cortices emerged: increases in the temporal detail of the signal were most effective in driving brain activation of the left anterolateral superior temporal sulcus (STS), whereas the right homolog areas exhibited stronger sensitivity to the variations in spectral detail. In accordance with behavioral measures of speech comprehension acquired in parallel, change of spectral detail exhibited a stronger coupling with the STS BOLD signal. The relative pattern of lateralization (quantified using lateralization quotients) proved reliable in a jack-knifed iterative reanalysis of the group functional magnetic resonance imaging model. This study supplies direct evidence to the often implied functional distinction of the two cerebral hemispheres in speech processing. Applying direct manipulations to the speech signal rather than to low-level surrogates, the results lend plausibility to the notion of complementary roles for the left and right superior temporal sulci in comprehending the speech signal.

Abstract

Language is an intrinsically open-ended system. This fact has led to the widely shared assumption that readers and listeners do not predict upcoming words, at least not in a way that goes beyond simple priming between words. Recent evidence, however, suggests that readers and listeners do anticipate upcoming words “on the fly” as a text unfolds. In 2 event-related potentials experiments, this study examined whether these predictions are based on the exact message conveyed by the prior discourse or on simpler word-based priming mechanisms. Participants read texts that strongly supported the prediction of a specific word, mixed with non-predictive control texts that contained the same prime words. In Experiment 1A, anomalous words that replaced a highly predictable (as opposed to a non-predictable but coherent) word elicited a long-lasting positive shift, suggesting that the prior discourse had indeed led people to predict specific words. In Experiment 1B, adjectives whose suffix mismatched the predictable noun's syntactic gender elicited a short-lived late negativity in predictive stories but not in prime control stories. Taken together, these findings reveal that the conceptual basis for predicting specific upcoming words during reading is the exact message conveyed by the discourse and not the mere presence of prime words.

Abstract

The way adults express manner and path components of a motion event varies across typologically different languages both in speech and cospeech gestures, showing that language specificity in event encoding influences gesture. The authors tracked when and how this multimodal cross-linguistic variation develops in children learning Turkish and English, 2 typologically distinct languages. They found that children learn to speak in language-specific ways from age 3 onward (i.e., English speakers used 1 clause and Turkish speakers used 2 clauses to express manner and path). In contrast, English- and Turkish-speaking children’s gestures looked similar at ages 3 and 5 (i.e., separate gestures for manner and path), differing from each other only at age 9 and in adulthood (i.e., English speakers used 1 gesture, but Turkish speakers used separate gestures for manner and path). The authors argue that this pattern of the development of cospeech gestures reflects a gradual shift to language-specific representations during speaking and shows that looking at speech alone may not be sufficient to understand the full process of language acquisition.

Abstract

Evaluation plays a role in the telling and understanding of narratives, in communicative interaction, emotional understanding, and in psychological well-being. This article reports a study of evaluation by describing how readers monitor the concerns of characters over the course of a narrative. The main hypothesis is that readers tract the well-being via the expression of a character's internal states. Reader evaluations were revealed in think aloud protocols obtained during reading of narrative texts, one sentence at a time. Five kinds of evaluative inferences were found: appraisals (good versus bad), preferences (like versus don't like), emotions (happy versus frustrated), goals (want versus don't want), or purposes (to attain or maintain X versus to prevent or avoid X). Readers evaluated all sentences. The mean rate of evaluation per sentence was 0.55. Positive and negative evaluations over the course of the story indicated that things initially went badly for characters, improved with the formulation and execution of goal plans, declined with goal failure, and improved as characters formulated new goals and succeeded. The kind of evaluation made depended upon the episodic category of the event and the event's temporal location in the story. Evaluations also served to explain or predict events. In making evaluations, readers stayed within the frame of the story and perspectives of the character or narrator. They also moved out of the narrative frame and addressed evaluations towards the experimenter in a communicative context.

Abstract

Background: Growing evidence for overlap in the syntactic processing of language and music in non-brain-damaged individuals leads to the question of whether aphasic individuals with grammatical comprehension problems in language also have problems processing structural relations in music.

Aims: The current study sought to test musical syntactic processing in individuals with Broca's aphasia and grammatical comprehension deficits, using both explicit and implicit tasks.

Methods & Procedures: Two experiments were conducted. In the first experiment 12 individuals with Broca's aphasia (and 14 matched controls) were tested for their sensitivity to grammatical and semantic relations in sentences, and for their sensitivity to musical syntactic (harmonic) relations in chord sequences. An explicit task (acceptability judgement of novel sequences) was used. The second experiment, with 9 individuals with Broca's aphasia (and 12 matched controls), probed musical syntactic processing using an implicit task (harmonic priming).

Outcomes & Results: In both experiments the aphasic group showed impaired processing of musical syntactic relations. Control experiments indicated that this could not be attributed to low-level problems with the perception of pitch patterns or with auditory short-term memory for tones.

Conclusions: The results suggest that musical syntactic processing in agrammatic aphasia deserves systematic investigation, and that such studies could help probe the nature of the processing deficits underlying linguistic agrammatism. Methodological suggestions are offered for future work in this little-explored area.

Abstract

Understanding the role of the medial temporal lobe (MTL) in learning and memory is an important problem in cognitive neuroscience. Memory and learning processes that depend on the function of the MTL and related diencephalic structures (e.g., the anterior and mediodorsal thalamic nuclei) are defined as declarative. We have studied the MTL activity as indicated by regional cerebral blood flow with positron emission tomography and statistical parametric mapping during recall of abstract designs in a less practiced memory state as well as in a well-practiced (well-encoded) memory state. The results showed an increased activity of the MTL bilaterally (including parahippocampal gyrus extending into hippocampus proper, as well as anterior lingual and anterior fusiform gyri) during retrieval in the less practiced memory state compared to the well-practiced memory state, indicating a dynamic role of the MTL in retrieval during the learning processes. The results also showed that the activation of the MTL decreases as the subjects learn to draw abstract designs from memory, indicating a changing role of the MTL during recall in the earlier stages of acquisition compared to the well-encoded declarative memory state.

Abstract

In this study we test a number of different claims about the nature of stylistic variation at the “single-word” stage by examining the relation between variation in early vocabulary composition, variation in early language use, and variation in the structural and functional propreties of mothers' child-directed speech. Maternal-report and observational data were collected for 26 children at 10, 50, and 100 words, These were then correlated with a variety of different measures of maternal speech at 10 words, The results show substantial variation in the percentage of common nouns and unanalyzed phrases in children's vocabularies, and singficant relations between this variation and the way in which language is used by the child. They also reveal singficant relations between the way in whch mothers use language at 10 words and the way in chich their children use language at 50 words and between certain formal properties of mothers speech at 10 words and the percentage of common nouns and unanalyzed phrases in children's early vocabularies, However, most of these relations desappear when an attempt is made to control for ossible effects of the child on the mother at Time 1. The exception is a singficant negative correlation between mothers tendency to produce speech that illustrates word boundaries and the percentage of unanalyzed phrases at 50 and 100 words. This suggests that mothers whose sprech provides the child with information about where new words begin and end tend to have children with few unanalyzed. phrases in their early vocabularies.

Abstract

Randomization performance was studied using the "Mental Dice Task" in 20 patients with aphasia (APH) and 101 elderly normal control subjects (NC). The produced sequences were compared to 100 computer-generated pseudorandom sequences with respect to 7 measures of sequential bias. The performance of APH differed significantly from NC participants, according to all but one measure, i.e. Turning Point Index (points of change between ascending and descending sequences). NC participants differed significantly from the computer generated sequences, according to all measures of randomness. Finally, APH differed significantly from the computer simulator, according to all measures but mean Repetition Gap score (gap between a digit and its reoccurrence). Despite the heterogeneity of our APH group, there were no significant differences in randomization performance between patients with different language impairments. All the APH displayed a distinct performance profile, with more response stereotypy, counting tendencies, and inhibition problems, as hypothesised, while at the same time responding more randomly than NC by showing less of a cycling strategy and more number repetitions.

Abstract

This article takes an interdisciplinary route towards explaining the complex history of Hai//om culture and language. We begin this article with a short review of ideas relating to 'origins' and historical reconstructions as they are currently played out among Khoekhoe groups in Namibia, in particular with regard to the Hai//om. We then take a comparative look at parts of the kinship system and the tonology of ≠Âkhoe Hai//om and other variants of Khoekhoe. With regard to the kinship and naming system, we see patterns that show similarities with Nama and Damara on the one hand but also with 'San' groups on the other hand. With regard to tonology, new data from three northern Khoekoe varieties shows similarities as well as differences with Standard Namibian Khoekhoe and Ju and Tuu varieties. The historical scenarios that might explain these facts suggest different centres of innovations and opposite directions of diffusion. The anthropological and linguistic data demonstrates that only a fine-grained and multi-layered approach that goes far beyond any simplistic dichotomies can do justice to the Hai//om riddle.

Abstract

This study investigates whether advanced second language (L2) learners of a nonnull subject language (Dutch) are influenced by their null subject first language (L1) (Turkish) in their offline and online resolution of subject pronouns in L2 discourse. To tease apart potential L1 effects from possible general L2 processing effects, we also tested a group of German L2 learners of Dutch who were predicted to perform like the native Dutch speakers. The two L2 groups differed in their offline interpretations of subject pronouns. The Turkish L2 learners exhibited a L1 influence, because approximately half the time they interpreted Dutch subject pronouns as they would overt pronouns in Turkish, whereas the German L2 learners performed like the Dutch controls, interpreting pronouns as coreferential with the current discourse topic. This L1 effect was not in evidence in eye-tracking data, however. Instead, the L2 learners patterned together, showing an online processing disadvantage when two potential antecedents for the pronoun were grammatically available in the discourse. This processing disadvantage was in evidence irrespective of the properties of the learners' L1 or their final interpretation of the pronoun. Therefore, the results of this study indicate both an effect of the L1 on the L2 in offline resolution and a general L2 processing effect in online subject pronoun resolution.

Abstract

he present study investigated the referential communication skills of children with imaginary companions (ICs). Twenty-two children with ICs aged between 4 and 6 years were compared to 22 children without ICs (NICs). The children were matched for age, gender, birth order, number of siblings, and parental education. All children completed the Test of Referential Commu- nication (Camaioni, Ercolani & Lloyd, 1995). The results showed that the children with ICs performed better than the children without ICs on the speaker component of the task. In particular, the IC children were better able to identify a specific referen t to their interlocutor than were the NIC children. Furthermore, the IC children described less redundant features of the target picture than did the NIC children. The children did not differ in the listening comprehension component of the task. Overall, the results suggest that the IC children had a better understanding of their interlocutor’s information requirements in convers ation. The role of pretend play in the development of communicative competence is discussed in light of these results.

Abstract

Lexical access in speaking consists of two major steps: lemma retrieval and word-form encoding. In Roelofs (Roelofs, A. 1992a. Cognition 42. 107-142; Roelofs. A. 1993. Cognition 47, 59-87.), I described a model of lemma retrieval. The present paper extends this work by presenting a comprehensive model of the second access step, word-form encoding. The model is called WEAVER (Word-form Encoding by Activation and VERification). Unlike other models of word-form generation, WEAVER is able to provide accounts of response time data, particularly from the picture-word interference paradigm and the implicit priming paradigm. Its key features are (1) retrieval by spreading activation, (2) verification of activated information by a production rule, (3) a rightward incremental construction of phonological representations using a principle of active syllabification, syllables are constructed on the fly rather than stored with lexical items, (4) active competitive selection of syllabic motor programs using a mathematical formalism that generates response times and (5) the association of phonological speech errors with the selection of syllabic motor programs due to the failure of verification.

Abstract

Remembering complex, multidimensional information typically requires strategic memory retrieval, during which information is structured, for instance by spatial- or temporal associations. Although brain regions involved in strategic memory retrieval in general have been identified, differences in retrieval operations related to distinct retrieval strategies are not well-understood. Thus, our aim was to identify brain regions whose activity is differentially involved in spatial-associative and temporal-associative retrieval. First, we showed that our behavioral paradigm probing memory for a set of object-location associations promoted the use of a spatial-associative structure following an encoding condition that provided multiple associations to neighboring objects (spatial-associative condition) and the use of a temporal- associative structure following another study condition that provided predominantly temporal associations between sequentially presented items (temporal-associative condition). Next, we used an adapted version of this paradigm for functional MRI, where we contrasted brain activity related to the recall of object-location associations that were either encoded in the spatial- or the temporal-associative condition. In addition to brain regions generally involved in recall, we found that activity in higher-order visual regions, including the fusiform gyrus, the lingual gyrus, and the cuneus, was relatively enhanced when subjects used a spatial-associative structure for retrieval. In contrast, activity in the globus pallidus and the thalamus was relatively enhanced when subjects used a temporal-associative structure for retrieval. In conclusion, we provide evidence for differential involvement of these brain regions related to different types of strategic memory retrieval and the neural structures described play a role in either spatial-associative or temporal-associative memory retrieval.

Abstract

The present study aims to investigate the extent to which the process of lexical interpretation is context dependent. It has been uncontroversially agreed in psycholinguistics that interpretation is always affected by sentential context. The major debate in lexical processing research has revolved around the question of whether initial semantic activation is context sensitive or rather exhaustive, that is, whether the effect of context occurs before or only after the information associated to a concept has been accessed from the mental lexicon. However, within post-lexical access processes, the question of whether the selection of a word's meaning components is guided exclusively by contextual relevance, or whether certain meaning components might be selected context independently, has not been such an important focus of research. I have investigated this question in the two experiments reported in this paper and, moreover, have analysed the role that context-independent information in concepts might play in word interpretation. This analysis differs from previous studies on lexical processing in that it places experimental work in the context of a theoretical model of lexical pragmatics.

Abstract

Universal Grammar (UG) is indeed evolutionarily implausible. But if languages are just “adapted” to a large primate brain, it is hard to see why other primates do not have complex languages. The answer is that humans have evolved a specialized and uniquely human cognitive architecture, whose main function is to compute mappings between arbitrary signals and communicative intentions. This underlies the development of language in the human species.

Abstract

We used simultaneously recorded EEG and fMRI to investigate in which areas the BOLD signal correlates with frontal theta power changes, while subjects were quietly lying resting in the scanner with their eyes open. To obtain a reliable estimate of frontal theta power we applied ICA on band-pass filtered (2–9 Hz) EEG data. For each subject we selected the component that best matched the mid-frontal scalp topography associated with the frontal theta rhythm. We applied a time-frequency analysis on this component and used the time course of the frequency bin with the highest overall power to form a regressor that modeled spontaneous fluctuations in frontal theta power. No significant positive BOLD correlations with this regressor were observed. Extensive negative correlations were observed in the areas that together form the default mode network. We conclude that frontal theta activity can be seen as an EEG index of default mode network activity.

Abstract

A series of experiments was carried out to investigate the syllable affiliation of intervocalic consonants following short vowels, long vowels, and schwa in Dutch. Special interest was paid to words such as letter ['leter] ''id.,'' where a short vowel is followed by a single consonant. On phonological grounds one may predict that the first syllable should always be closed, but earlier psycholinguistic research had shown that speakers tend to leave these syllables open. In our experiments, bisyllabic word forms were presented aurally, and participants produced their syllables in reversed order (Experiments 1 through 5), or repeated the words inserting a pause between the syllables (Experiment 6). The results showed that participants generally closed syllables with a short vowel. However, in a significant number of the cases they produced open short vowel syllables. Syllables containing schwa, like syllables with a long vowel, were hardly ever closed. Word stress, the phonetic quality of the vowel in the first syllable, and the experimental context influenced syllabification. Taken together, the experiments show that native speakers syllabify bisyllabic Dutch nouns in accordance with a small set of prosodic output constraints. To account for the variability of the results, we propose that these constraints differ in their probabilities of being applied.

Abstract

Cette étude traite de la question de savoir s’il y a une relation entre les équivalents des particules additives ‘aussi’ et ‘de nouveau’ portant sur le topique et la finitude dans la variété des apprenants turcophones du néerlandais et de l’allemand. Dans les données obtenues avec une tâche contrôlée, nous observons que la finitude est moins fréquemment marquée dans les énoncés contenant ces particules que les énoncés comparables qui ne contiennent pas ces particules. Ceci est vrai pour le marquage de la finitude sur les verbes lexicaux ainsi que pour la présence de verbes conjugués sans contenu lexical comme la copule. De plus, nous montrons que les particules peuvent précéder le verbe conjugué dans la langue des apprenants. Ces résultats peuvent être expliqués par la similarité fonctionnelle entre la finitude et les particules portant sur le topique.

Abstract

Rhythmic synchronization likely subserves interactions among neuronal groups. One of the best studied rhythmic synchronization phenomena in the human nervous system is the beta-band (15-30 Hz) synchronization in the motor system. In this study, we imaged structures across the human brain that are synchronized to the motor system's beta rhythm. We recorded whole-head magnetoencephalograms (MEG) and electromyograms (EMG) of left/right extensor carpi radialis muscle during left/right wrist extension. We analyzed coherence, on the one hand between the EMG and neuronal sources in the brain, and on the other hand between different brain sources, using a spatial filtering approach. Cortico-muscular coherence analysis revealed a spatial maximum of coherence to the muscle in motor cortex contralateral to the muscle in accordance with earlier findings. Moreover, by applying a two-dipole source model, we unveiled significantly coherent clusters of voxels in the ipsilateral cerebellar hemisphere and ipsilateral cerebral motor regions. The spatial pattern of coherence to the right and left arm EMG was roughly mirror reversed across the midline, in agreement with known physiology. Subsequently, we analyzed the brain-wide pattern of beta-band coherence to the motor cortex contralateral to the contracting muscle. This analysis did not reveal any convincing pattern. Because the prior cortico-muscular analysis had demonstrated the expected pattern in our data, this negative finding demonstrates a current limitation of the applied method for cortico-cortical coherence analysis. We conclude that during an isometric muscle contraction, several distributed brain regions form a brain-wide beta-band network for motor control.

Abstract

This study investigates the roles of phonetic analogy and lexical frequency in an ongoing sound change, the devoicing of fricatives in Dutch, which occurs mainly in the Netherlands and to a lesser degree in Flanders. In the experiment, Dutch and Flemish students read two variants of 98 words: the standard and a nonstandard form with the incorrect voice value of the fricative. Dutch students chose the non-standard forms with devoiced fricatives more often than Flemish students. Moreover, devoicing, though a gradual process, appeared lexically diffused, affecting first the words that are low in frequency and phonetically similar to words with voiceless fricatives.

Abstract

This article presents a study to distinguish and quantify the various types of semantic associations provided by humans, to investigate their properties, and to discuss the impact that our analyses may have on NLP tasks. Specifically, we concentrate on two issues related to word properties and word relations: (1) We address the task of modelling word meaning by empirical features in data-intensive lexical semantics. Relying on large-scale corpus-based resources, we identify the contextual categories and functions that are activated by the associates and therefore contribute to the salient meaning components of individual words and across words. As a result, we discuss conceptual roles and present evidence for the usefulness of co-occurrence information in distributional descriptions. (2) We assume that semantic associates provide a means to investigate the range of semantic relations between words and contexts, and we provide insight into which types of semantic relations are treated as important or salient by the speakers of the language.

Abstract

The topic of word classes remains curiously under-represented in the sign language literature due to many theoretical and methodological problems in sign linguistics. This article focuses on language-specific classifications of signs into word classes in two different sign languages: German Sign Language and Kata Kolok, the sign language of a village community in Bali. The article discusses semantic and structural criteria for identifying word classes in the target sign languages. On the basis of a data set of signs, these criteria are systematically tested out as a first step towards an inductive classification of signs. Approaches and analyses relating to the problem of word classes in linguistic typology are used for shedding new light on the issue of word class distinctions in sign languages

Abstract

Recent research in speech production has shown that syntactic structure is reflected in segmental phonology--the application of certain phonological rules of English (e.g., palatalization and alveolar flapping) is inhibited across phrase boundaries. We examined whether such segmental effects can be used in speech perception as cues to syntactic structure, and the relation between the use of these segmental features as syntactic markers in production and perception. Speakers of American English (a dialect in which the above segmental effects occur) could indeed use the segmental cues in syntax perception; speakers of British English (in which the effects do not occur) were unable to make use of them, while speakers of British English who were long-term residents of the United States showed intermediate performance.

Abstract

Previous research has shown that the weighting of, or attention to, acoustic cues at the level of the segment changes over the course of development (Nittrouer & Miller, 1997; Nittrouer, Manning & Meyer, 1993). In this paper we examined changes over the course of development in weighting of acoustic cues at the suprasegmental level. Specifically, we tested English-learning 4-month-olds’ performance on a clause segmentation task when each of three acoustic cues to clausal units was neutralized and contrasted it with performance on a Baseline condition where no cues were manipulated. Comparison with the reported performance of 6-month-olds on the same task (Seidl, 2007) reveals that 4-month-olds weight prosodic cues to clausal boundaries differently than 6-month-olds, relying more heavily on all three correlates of clausal boundaries (pause, pitch and vowel duration) than 6-month-olds do, who rely primarily on pitch. We interpret this as evidence that 4-month-olds use a holistic processing strategy, while 6-month-olds may already be able to attend separately to isolated cues in the input stream and may, furthermore, be able to exploit a language-specific cue weighting. Thus, in a way similar to that in other cognitive domains, infants begin as holistic auditory scene processors and are only later able to process individual auditory cues.

Abstract

This paper addresses a set of issues related to language documentation that are not often explicitly dealt with in academic publications, yet are highly important for the development and success of this new discipline. These issues include embedding language documentation in the socio-political context not only at the community level but also at the national level, the ethical and technical challenges of digital language archives, and the importance of regional and international cooperation among documentation activities. These issues play a major role in the initiative to set up a network of regional language archives in three South American countries, which this paper reports on. Local archives for data on endangered languages have recently been set up in Iquitos (Peru), Buenos Aires (Argentina), and in various locations in Brazil. An important feature of these is that they provide fast and secure access to linguistic and cultural data for local researchers and the language communities. They also make data safer by allowing for regular update procedures within the network.

Abstract

Previous studies of the development of gestures have examined gestures in infants. In recent years, together with the rise of interest in spontaneous gestures accompanied by speech, research on spontaneous gestures in preschool-age children has increased. But little has been reported in terms of systematic developmental changes in children's spontaneous gestures, especially with respect to preschool-age children. The present paper surveys domestic and international research on the development of spontaneous gestures in preschoolers. When gestures seen in infants and preschool-age and older children were categorized, it was found that spontaneous gestures begin to appear together with speech semantically and temporarily by the end of the one-word period; during this same period, gestures that were seen earlier gradually decrease. It is suggested that the development of spontaneous gestures relates to a sentence level, not to a vocabulary level. Based on growth point theory (McNeill, 1992), it is also argued that spontaneous gestures develop with “thinking for speaking” and symbol ability.

Abstract

The Gricean maxim of Quality “Try to make your contribution one that is true” and his maxim of Manner “Be perspicuous” are not observed in Kilivila, the Austronesian language of the Trobriand Islanders of Papua New Guinea. Speakers of Kilivila metalinguistically differentiate registers of their language. 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. This article describes the concept of sopa, presents its features, and discusses and illustrates its functions and use within Trobriand society. The article ends with a discussion of the relevance of Gricean maxims for the research of everyday verbal interaction in Kilivila and a general criticism of these maxims, especially from an anthropological linguistic perspective. [Trobriand Islanders, Gricean maxims, varieties of Kilivila, Kilivila sopa, un-plain speaking]

Abstract

After a brief introduction to the topic the paper first gives an overview of Kilivila landscape terms and then presents the inventory of names for villages, wells, island points, reef-channels and gardens on Kaile’una Island, one of the Trobriand Islands in the Milne Bay Province of Papua New Guinea. The data on the meaning of the place names presented were gathered in 2004 with six male consultants (between the age of 36 and 64 years) living in the village Tauwema on Kaile’una Island. Thus, the list of place names is quite possibly not the complete sample, but it is reasonably representative of the types of Kilivila place names. After discussing the meaning of these terms the paper presents a first attempt to typologically classify and categorize the place names. The paper ends with a critical discussion of the landscape terms and the proposed typology for place names.

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to show that given the available observations on the behaviour of negation and presuppositions there is no simpler explanation than to assume that natural language has two distinct negation operators, the minimal negation which preserves presuppositions and the radical negation which does not. The three-valued logic emerging from this distinction, and especially its model-theory, are discussed in detail. It is, however, stressed that the logic itself is only epiphenomenal on the structures and processes involved in the interpretation of sentences. Horn (1985) brings new observations to bear, related with metalinguistic uses of negation, and proposes a “pragmatic” ambiguity in negation to the effect that in descriptive (or “straight”) use negation is the classical bivalent operator, whereas in metalinguistic use it is non-truthfunctional but only pragmatic. Van der Sandt (to appear) accepts Horn's observations but proposes a different solution: he proposes an ambiguity in the argument clause of the negation operator (which, for him, too, is classical and bivalent), according to whether the negation takes only the strictly asserted proposition or covers also the presuppositions, the (scalar) implicatures and other implications (in particular of style and register) of the sentence expressing that proposition. These theories are discussed at some length. The three-valued analysis is defended on the basis of partly new observations, which do not seem to fit either Horn's or Van der Sandt's solution. It is then placed in the context of incremental discourse semantics, where both negations are seen to do the job of keeping increments out of the discourse domain, though each does so in its own specific way. The metalinguistic character of the radical negation is accounted for in terms of the incremental apparatus. The metalinguistic use of negation in denials of implicatures or implications of style and register is regarded as a particular form of minimal negation, where the negation denies not the proposition itself but the appropriateness of the use of an expression in it. This appropriateness negation is truth-functional and not pragmatic, but it applies to a particular, independently motivated, analysis of the argument clause. The ambiguity of negation in natural language is different from the ordinary type of ambiguity found in the lexicon. Normally, lexical ambiguities are idiosyncratic, highly contingent, and unpredictable from language to language. In the case of negation, however, the two meanings are closely related, both truth-conditionally and incrementally. Moreover, the mechanism of discourse incrementation automatically selects the right meaning. These properties are taken to provide a sufficient basis for discarding the, otherwise valid, objection that negation is unlikely to be ambiguous because no known language makes a lexical distinction between the two readings.

Abstract

When speakers detect a problem in what they are saying, they must decide whether or not to interrupt themselves and repair the problem, and if so, when. Speakers will maximize accuracy if they interrupt themselves as soon as they detect a problem, but they will maximize fluency if they go on speaking until they are ready to produce the repair. Speakers must choose between these options. In a corpus analysis, we identified 448 speech repairs, classified them as major (as in a fresh start) or minor (as in a phoneme correction), and measured the interval between suspension and repair. The results showed that speakers interrupted themselves not at the moment they detected the problem but at the moment they were ready to produce the repair. Speakers preferred fluency over accuracy.

Abstract

A t(X;1)(p11.2;q21.2) has been reported in cases of papillary renal cell tumors arising in males. In this study two cell lines derived from this tumor type have been used to indicate the breakpoint region on the X chromosome. Both cell lines have the translocation in addition to other rearrangements and one is derived from the first female case to be reported with the t(X;1)(p11.2;q21.2). Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) has been used to position YACs belonging to contigs in the Xp11.2 region relative to the breakpoint. When considered together with detailed mapping information from the Xp11.2 region the position of the breakpoint in both cell lines was suggested as follows: Xpter-->Xp11.23-OATL1-GATA1-WAS-TFE3-SY P-t(X;1)-DXS255-CLCN5-DXS146-OATL2- Xp11.22-->Xcen. The breakpoint was determined to lie in an uncloned region between SYP and a YAC called FTDM/1 which extends 1 Mb distal to DXS255. These results are contrary to the conclusion from previous FISH studies that the breakpoint was near the OATL2 locus, but are consistent with, and considerably refine, the position that had been established by molecular analysis.

Abstract

Aboriginal languages threatened by speakers poor economic and social conditions; some may survive through support for community development, language maintenance, bilingual education and training of Aboriginal teachers and linguists, and nonAboriginal teachers of Aboriginal and Islander students.

Abstract

Reduced fecundity, associated with severe mental disorders, places negative selection pressure on risk alleles and may explain, in part, why common variants have not been found that confer risk of disorders such as autism, schizophrenia and mental retardation. Thus, rare variants may account for a larger fraction of the overall genetic risk than previously assumed. In contrast to rare single nucleotide mutations, rare copy number variations (CNVs) can be detected using genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism arrays. This has led to the identification of CNVs associated with mental retardation and autism. In a genome-wide search for CNVs associating with schizophrenia, we used a population-based sample to identify de novo CNVs by analysing 9,878 transmissions from parents to offspring. The 66 de novo CNVs identified were tested for association in a sample of 1,433 schizophrenia cases and 33,250 controls. Three deletions at 1q21.1, 15q11.2 and 15q13.3 showing nominal association with schizophrenia in the first sample (phase I) were followed up in a second sample of 3,285 cases and 7,951 controls (phase II). All three deletions significantly associate with schizophrenia and related psychoses in the combined sample. The identification of these rare, recurrent risk variants, having occurred independently in multiple founders and being subject to negative selection, is important in itself. CNV analysis may also point the way to the identification of additional and more prevalent risk variants in genes and pathways involved in schizophrenia.

Abstract

Through stories, tellers communicate their stance toward what they are reporting. Story recipients rely on different interactional resources to display alignment with the telling activity and affiliation with the teller's stance. In this article, I examine the communication resources participants to tellings rely on to manage displays of alignment and affiliation during the telling. The primary finding is that whereas vocal continuers simply align with the activity in progress, nods also claim access to the teller's stance toward the events (whether directly or indirectly). In mid-telling, when a recipient nods, she or he claims to have access to the teller's stance toward the event being reported, which in turn conveys preliminary affiliation with the teller's position and that the story is on track toward preferred uptake at story completion. Thus, the concepts of structural alignment and social affiliation are separate interactional issues and are managed by different response tokens in the mid-telling sequential environment.

Abstract

Finnish vowel harmony rules require that if the vowel in the first syllable of a word belongs to one of two vowel sets, then all subsequent vowels in that word must belong either to the same set or to a neutral set. A harmony mismatch between two syllables containing vowels from the opposing sets thus signals a likely word boundary. We report five experiments showing that Finnish listeners can exploit this information in an on-line speech segmentation task. Listeners found it easier to detect words likehymyat the end of the nonsense stringpuhymy(where there is a harmony mismatch between the first two syllables) than in the stringpyhymy(where there is no mismatch). There was no such effect, however, when the target words appeared at the beginning of the nonsense string (e.g.,hymypuvshymypy). Stronger harmony effects were found for targets containing front harmony vowels (e.g.,hymy) than for targets containing back harmony vowels (e.g.,paloinkypaloandkupalo). The same pattern of results appeared whether target position within the string was predictable or unpredictable. Harmony mismatch thus appears to provide a useful segmentation cue for the detection of word onsets in Finnish speech.

Abstract

In this study the N400 component of the event-related potential was used to investigate spoken sentence understanding in Broca's and Wernicke's aphasics. The aim of the study was to determine whether spoken sentence comprehension problems in these patients might result from a deficit in the on-line integration of lexical information. Subjects listened to sentences spoken at a normal rate. In half of these sentences, the meaning of the final word of the sentence matched the semantic specifications of the preceding sentence context. In the other half of the sentences, the sentence-final word was anomalous with respect to the preceding sentence context. The N400 was measured to the sentence-final words in both conditions. The results for the aphasic patients (n = 14) were analyzed according to the severity of their comprehension deficit and compared to a group of 12 neurologically unimpaired age-matched controls, as well as a group of 6 nonaphasic patients with a lesion in the right hemisphere. The nonaphasic brain damaged patients and the aphasic patients with a light comprehension deficit (high comprehenders, n = 7) showed an N400 effect that was comparable to that of the neurologically unimpaired subjects. In the aphasic patients with a moderate to severe comprehension deficit (low comprehenders, n = 7), a reduction and delay of the N400 effect was obtained. In addition, the P300 component was measured in a classical oddball paradigm, in which subjects were asked to count infrequent low tones in a random series of high and low tones. No correlation was found between the occurrence of N400 and P300 effects, indicating that changes in the N400 results were related to the patients' language deficit. Overall, the pattern of results was compatible with the idea that aphasic patients with moderate to severe comprehension problems are impaired in the integration of lexical information into a higher order representation of the preceding sentence context.

Abstract

The roles which word class (open/closed) and sentential stress play in the sentence comprehension processes of both agrammatic (Broca's) aphasics and normal listeners were examined with a word monitoring task. Overall, normal listeners responded more quickly to stressed than to unstressed items, but showed no effect of word class. Aphasics also responded more quickly to stressed than to unstressed materials, but, unlike the normals, responded faster to open than to closed class words regardless of their stress. The results are interpreted as support for the theory that Broca's aphasics lack the functional underlying open/closed class word distinction used in word recognition by normal listeners.

Abstract

Two experiments examined the nature of access, storage, and comprehension of idiomatic phrases. In both studies a Phrase Classification Task was utilized. In this, reaction times to determine whether or not word strings constituted acceptable English phrases were measured. Classification times were significantly faster to idiom than to matched control phrases. This effect held under conditions involving different categories of idioms, different transitional probabilities among words in the phrases, and different levels of awareness of the presence of idioms in the materials. The data support a Lexical Representation Hypothesis for the processing of idioms.

Abstract

Verbal descriptions of actions activate compatible motor responses [Glenberg, A. M., & Kaschak, M. P. (2002). Grounding language in action. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 9, 558–565]. Previous studies have found that the motor processes for manual rotation are engaged in a direction-specific manner when a verb disambiguates the direction of rotation [e.g. “unscrewed;” Zwaan, R. A., & Taylor, L. (2006). Seeing, acting, understanding: Motor resonance in language comprehension. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 135, 1–11]. The present experiment contributes to this body of work by showing that verbs that leave direction ambiguous (e.g. “turned”) do not necessarily yield such effects. Rather, motor resonance is associated with a word that disambiguates some element of an action, as meaning is being integrated across sentences. The findings are discussed within the context of discourse processes, inference generation, motor activation, and mental simulation.

Abstract

We investigated how the hippocampus and its adjacent mediotemporal structures contribute to contextual and noncontextual declarative memory retrieval by manipulating the amount of contextual information across two levels of the same contextual dimension in a source memory task. A first analysis identified medial temporal lobe (MTL) substructures mediating either contextual or noncontextual retrieval. A linearly weighted analysis elucidated which MTL substructures show a gradually increasing neural activity, depending on the amount of contextual information retrieved. A hippocampal engagement was found during both levels of source memory but not during item memory retrieval. The anterior MTL including the perirhinal cortex was only engaged during item memory retrieval by an activity decrease. Only the posterior parahippocampal cortex showed an activation increasing with the amount of contextual information retrieved. If one assumes a roughly linear relationship between the blood-oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) signal and the associated cognitive process, our results suggest that the posterior parahippocampal cortex is involved in contextual retrieval on the basis of memory strength while the hippocampus processes representations of item-context binding. The anterior MTL including perirhinal cortex seems to be particularly engaged in familiarity-based item recognition. If one assumes departure from linearity, however, our results can also be explained by one-dimensional modulation of memory strength.

Abstract

This paper explores a strategy of spatial expression which utilizes orientation, a way of describing the spatial relationship of entities by means of reference to their facets. We present detailed data and analysis from two languages, Jahai (Mon-Khmer, Malay Peninsula) and Lavukaleve (Papuan isolate, Solomon Islands), and supporting data from five more languages, to show that the orientation strategy is a major organizing principle in these languages. This strategy has not previously been recognized in the literature as a unitary phenomenon, and the languages which employ it present particular challenges to existing typologies of spatial frames of reference.

Abstract

The discovery of mirror neurons in macaques and of a similar system in humans has provided a new and fertile neurobiological ground for rooting a variety of cognitive faculties. Automatic sensorimotor resonance has been invoked as the key elementary process accounting for disparate (dys)functions, like imitation, ideomotor apraxia, autism, and schizophrenia. In this paper, we provide a critical appraisal of three of these claims that deal with the relationship between language and the motor system. Does language comprehension require the motor system? Was there an evolutionary switch from manual gestures to speech as the primary mode of language? Is human communication explained by automatic sensorimotor resonances? A positive answer to these questions would open the tantalizing possibility of bringing language and human communication within the fold of the motor system. We argue that the available empirical evidence does not appear to support these claims, and their theoretical scope fails to account for some crucial features of the phenomena they are supposed to explain. Without denying the enormous importance of the discovery of mirror neurons, we highlight the limits of their explanatory power for understanding language and communication.

Abstract

The human capacity to implicitly acquire knowledge of structured sequences has recently been investigated in artificial grammar learning using functional magnetic resonance imaging. It was found that the left inferior frontal cortex (IFC; Brodmann's area (BA) 44/45) was related to classification performance. The objective of this study was to investigate whether the IFC (BA 44/45) is causally related to classification of artificial syntactic structures by means of an off-line repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) paradigm. We manipulated the stimulus material in a 2 × 2 factorial design with grammaticality status and local substring familiarity as factors. The participants showed a reliable effect of grammaticality on classification of novel items after 5days of exposure to grammatical exemplars without performance feedback in an implicit acquisition task. The results show that rTMS of BA 44/45 improves syntactic classification performance by increasing the rejection rate of non-grammatical items and by shortening reaction times of correct rejections specifically after left-sided stimulation. A similar pattern of results is observed in FMRI experiments on artificial syntactic classification. These results suggest that activity in the inferior frontal region is causally related to artificial syntax processing.

Abstract

When do listeners take into account who the speaker is? We asked people to listen to utterances whose content sometimes did not match inferences based on the identity of the speaker (e.g., “If only I looked like Britney Spears” in a male voice, or “I have a large tattoo on my back” spoken with an upper-class accent). Event-related brain responses revealed that the speaker's identity is taken into account as early as 200–300 msec after the beginning of a spoken word, and is processed by the same early interpretation mechanism that constructs sentence meaning based on just the words. This finding is difficult to reconcile with standard “Gricean” models of sentence interpretation in which comprehenders initially compute a local, context-independent meaning for the sentence (“semantics”) before working out what it really means given the wider communicative context and the particular speaker (“pragmatics”). Because the observed brain response hinges on voice-based and usually stereotype-dependent inferences about the speaker, it also shows that listeners rapidly classify speakers on the basis of their voices and bring the associated social stereotypes to bear on what is being said. According to our event-related potential results, language comprehension takes very rapid account of the social context, and the construction of meaning based on language alone cannot be separated from the social aspects of language use. The linguistic brain relates the message to the speaker immediately.

Abstract

Language comprehension looks pretty easy. You pick up a novel and simply enjoy the plot, or ponder the human condition. You strike a conversation and listen to whatever the other person has to say. Although what you're taking in is a bunch of letters and sounds, what you really perceive—if all goes well—is meaning. But how do you get from one to the other so easily? The experiments with brain waves (event-related brain potentials or ERPs) reviewed here show that the linguistic brain rapidly draws upon a wide variety of information sources, including prior text and inferences about the speaker. Furthermore, people anticipate what might be said about whom, they use heuristics to arrive at the earliest possible interpretation, and if it makes sense, they sometimes even ignore the grammar. Language comprehension is opportunistic, proactive, and, above all, immediately context-dependent.

Abstract

The present study identified two aspects of complexity that have been manipulated in the implicit learning literature and investigated how they affect implicit and explicit learning of artificial grammars. Ten finite state grammars were used to vary complexity. The results indicated that dependency length is more relevant to the complexity of a structure than is the number of associations that have to be learned. Although implicit learning led to better performance on a grammaticality judgment test than did explicit learning, it was negatively affected by increasing complexity: Performance decreased as there was an increase in the number of previous letters that had to be taken into account to determine whether or not the next letter was a grammatical continuation. In particular, the results suggested that implicit learning of higher order dependencies is hampered by the presence of longer dependencies. Knowledge of first-order dependencies was acquired regardless of complexity and learning mode.

Abstract

The temporal properties of semantic and phonological processes in speech production were investigated in a new experimental paradigm using movement-related brain potentials. The main experimental task was picture naming. In addition, a 2-choice reaction go/no-go procedure was included, involving a semantic and a phonological categorization of the picture name. Lateralized readiness potentials (LRPs) were derived to test whether semantic and phonological information activated motor processes at separate moments in time. An LRP was only observed on no-go trials when the semantic (not the phonological) decision determined the response hand. Varying the position of the critical phoneme in the picture name did not affect the onset of the LRP but rather influenced when the LRP began to differ on go and no-go trials and allowed the duration of phonological encoding of a word to be estimated. These results provide electrophysiological evidence for early semantic activation and later phonological encoding.

Abstract

The large majority of humankind is more or less fluent in 2 or even more languages. This raises the fundamental question how the language network in the brain is organized such that the correct target language is selected at a particular occasion. Here we present behavioral and functional magnetic resonance imaging data showing that bilingual processing leads to language conflict in the bilingual brain even when the bilinguals’ task only required target language knowledge. This finding demonstrates that the bilingual brain cannot avoid language conflict, because words from the target and nontarget languages become automatically activated during reading. Importantly, stimulus-based language conflict was found in brain regions in the LIPC associated with phonological and semantic processing, whereas response-based language conflict was only found in the pre-supplementary motor area/anterior cingulate cortex when language conflict leads to response conflicts.

Abstract

Actively searching for the rules of an artificial grammar has often been shown to produce no more knowledge than memorising exemplars without knowing that they have been generated by a grammar. The present study investigated whether this ineffectiveness of intentional learning could be overcome by removing dual task demands and providing participants with more specific instructions. The results only showed a positive effect of learning intentionally for participants specifically instructed to find out which letters are allowed to follow each other. These participants were also unaffected by a salient feature. In contrast, for participants who did not know what kind of structure to expect, intentional learning was not more effective than incidental learning and knowledge acquisition was guided by salience.

Abstract

The acute neural effects of progesterone are mediated by its neuroactive metabolites allopregnanolone and pregnanolone. These neurosteroids potentiate the inhibitory actions of c-aminobutyric acid (GABA). Progesterone is known to produce anxiolytic effects in animals, but recent animal studies suggest that pregnanolone increases anxiety after a period of low allopregnanolone concentration. This effect is potentially mediated by the amygdala and related to the negative mood symptoms in humans that are observed during increased allopregnanolone levels. Therefore, we investigated with functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) whether a single progesterone administration to healthy young women in their follicular phase modulates the amygdala response to salient, biologically relevant stimuli. The progesterone administration increased the plasma concentrations of progesterone and allopregnanolone to levels that are reached during the luteal phase and early pregnancy. The imaging results show that progesterone selectively increased amygdala reactivity. Furthermore, functional connectivity analyses indicate that progesterone modulated functional coupling of the amygdala with distant brain regions. These results reveal a neural mechanism by which progesterone may mediate adverse effects on anxiety and mood.