Publications

Abstract

Nannten die Erwachsenen irgend einen Gegenstand und wandten sie sich dabei ihm zu, so nahm ich das wahr und ich begriff, daß der Gegenstand durch die Laute, die sie aussprachen, bezeichnet wurde, da sie auf ihn hinweisen wollten. Dies aber entnahm ich aus ihren Gebärden, der natürlichen Sprache aller Völker, der Sprache, die durch Mienen- und Augenspiel, durch die Bewegungen der Glieder und den Klang der Stimme die Empfindungen der Seele anzeigt, wenn diese irgend etwas begehrt, oder festhält, oder zurückweist, oder flieht. So lernte ich nach und nach verstehen, welche Dinge die Wörter bezeichneten, die ich wieder und wieder, an ihren bestimmten Stellen in verschiedenen Sätzen, aussprechen hörte. Und ich brachte, als nun mein Mund sich an diese Zeichen gewöhnt hatte, durch sie meine Wünsche zum Ausdruck. (Augustinus, Confessiones I, 8) Dies ist das Zitat eines Zitats: Zu Beginn der Philosophischen Untersuchungen führt Ludwig Wittgenstein diese Stelle aus Augustinus’ Bekenntnissen an, in denen dieser beschreibt, wie er seiner Erinnerung nach seine Muttersprache gelernt hat (Wittgenstein führt den lateinischen Text an und gibt dann seine Übersetzung, hier ist nur letztere zitiert). Sie bilden den Ausgangspunkt für Wittgensteins berühmte Überlegungen über die Funktionsweise der menschlichen Sprache und für seine Idee des Sprachspiels. Nun weiß man nicht, wie genau sich Augustinus wirklich erinnert und ob er sich all dies, wie so viel, was seither über den Spracherwerb gesagt und geschrieben wurde, bloß zurechtgelegt hat, in der Meinung, so müsse es sein. Aber anders als so vieles, was seither über den Spracherwerb gesagt und geschrieben wurde, ist es wunderbar formuliert und enthält zwei Momente, die in der wissenschaftlichen Forschung bis heute, wenn denn nicht bestritten, so doch oft nicht gesehen und dort, wo sie denn gesehen, nicht wirklich ernstgenommen wurden: A. Wir lernen die Sprache in der alltäglichen Kommunikation mit der sozialen Umgebung. B. Um eine Sprache zu lernen, genügt es nicht, diese Sprache zu hören; vielmehr benötigen wir eine Fülle an begleitender Information, wie hier Gestik und Mimik der Erwachsenen. Beides möchte man eigentlich für selbstverständlich halten. Herodot erzählt die berühmte Geschichte des Pharaos Psammetich, der wissen wollte, was die erste und eigentliche Sprache der Menschen sei, und befahl, zwei Neugeborene aufwachsen zu lassen, ohne dass jemand zu ihnen spricht; das erste Wort, das sie äußern, klang, so erzählt Herodot, wie das phrygische Wort für Brot, und so nahm man denn an, die Ursprache des Menschen sei das Phrygische. In dieser Vorstellung vom Spracherwerb spielt der Input aus der sozialen Umgebung nur insofern eine Rolle, als die eigentliche, von Geburt an vorhandene Sprache durch eine andere verdrängt werden kann: Kinder, die in einer englischsprachigen Umgebung aufwachsen, sprechen nicht die Ursprache. Diese Theorie gilt heute als obsolet. Sie ist aber in ihrer Einschätzung vom relativen Gewicht dessen, was an sprachlichem Wissen von Anfang an vorhanden ist, und dem, was der sozialen Umgebung entnommen werden muss, manchen neueren Theorien des Spracherwerbs nicht ganz fern: In der Chomsky’schen Idee der Universalgrammatik, theoretische Grundlage eines wesentlichen Teils der modernen Spracherwerbsforschung, ist „die Sprache” hauptsächlich etwas Angeborenes, insoweit gleich für alle Menschen und vom jeweiligen Input unabhängig. Das, was das Kind oder, beim Zweitspracherwerb, der erwachsene Lerner an Sprachlichem aus seiner Umgebung erfährt, wird nicht genutzt, um daraus bestimmte Regelhaftigkeiten abzuleiten und sich diese anzueignen; der Input fungiert eher als eine Art externer Auslöser für latent bereits vorhandenes Wissen. Für das Erlernen des Wortschatzes gilt dies sicher nicht. Es kann nicht angeboren sein, dass der Mond luna heißt. Für andere Bereiche der Sprache ist das Ausmaß des Angeborenen aber durchaus umstritten. Bei dieser Denkweise gilt das unter A Gesagte nicht. Die meisten modernen Spracherwerbsforscher schreiben dem Input ein wesentlich höheres Gewicht zu: Wir kopieren die charakteristischen Eigenschaften eines bestimmten sprachlichen Systems, indem wir den Input analysieren, um so die ihm zugrundeliegenden Regularitäten abzuleiten. Der Input tritt uns in Form von Schallfolgen (oder Gesten und später geschriebenen Zeichen) entgegen, die von anderen, die das System beherrschen, zu kommunikativen Zwecken verwendet werden. Diese Schallfolgen müssen die Lernenden in kleinere Einheiten zerlegen, diese mit Bedeutungen versehen und nach den Regularitäten abklopfen, denen gemäß sie sich zu komplexeren Ausdrücken verbinden lassen. Dies – und vieles andere – ist es, was das dem Menschen angeborene Sprachvermögen leistet, keine andere Spezies kann es (einem Pferd kann man so viel Chinesisch vorspielen, wie man will, es wird es nicht lernen). Aber auch wir könnten es nicht, wenn wir nur den Schall hätten. Wenn man, in einer Abwandlung des Psammetich’schen Versuchs, jemanden in ein Zimmer einsperren und tagaus tagein mit Chinesisch beschallen und im Übrigen gut versorgen würde, so würde er es, gleich ob als Kind oder als Erwachsener, nicht lernen. Vielleicht würde er einige strukturelle Eigenschaften des Schallstroms ausfindig machen; aber er würde auch nach Jahren kein Chinesisch können. Man benötigt den Schallstrom als sinnlich fassbaren Ausdruck der zugrundeliegenden Sprache, und man benötigt all die Informationen, die man der jeweiligen Redesituation oder aber seinem bereits vorhandenen anderweitigen Wissen entnehmen kann. Augustinus hat beides radikal vereinfacht; aber im Prinzip hat er Recht, und man sollte daher von der Spracherwerbsforschung erwarten, dass sie dies in Rechnung stellt. Das tut sie aber selten. Soweit sie überhaupt aus dem Gehäuse der Theorie tritt und sich den tatsächlichen Verlauf des Spracherwerbs anschaut, konzentriert sie sich weithin auf das, was die Kinder selbst sagen – dazu dienen ausgedehnte Corpora –, oder aber sie untersucht in experimentellen Settings, wie Kinder bestimmte Wörter oder Strukturen verstehen oder auch nicht verstehen. Das hat auch, wenn denn gut gemacht, einen hohen Aufschlusswert. Aber die eigentliche Verarbeitung des Inputs im doppelten Sinne – Schallwellen und Parallelinformation – wird selten in den Mittelpunkt des Interesses gerückt. Dies führt zu eigentümlichen Verzerrungen. So betrachtet man in der Spracherwerbsforschung vor allem deklarative Hauptsätze. Ein nicht unwesentlicher Teil dessen, was Kinder hören, besteht aber aus Imperativen („Tu das!“, „Tu das nicht!“). In solchen Imperativen gibt es normalerweise kein Subjekt. Ein intelligentes Kind muss daher zu dem Schluss kommen, dass das Deutsche in einem nicht unwesentlichen Teil seiner grammatischen Strukturen eine „pro drop-Sprache” ist, d.h. eine Sprache, in dem man das Subjekt weglassen kann. Kein Linguist käme auf diese Idee; sie entspricht aber den tatsächlichen Verhältnissen, und dies schlägt sich in dem Input, den das Kind verarbeiten muss, nieder. Dieses Heft befasst sich mit einer Spracherwerbssituation, in der – anders als beispielsweise bei einem Gespräch am Frühstückstisch – der Input in seiner doppelten Form gut zu überschauen ist, ohne dass die Situation, wie etwa bei einem kontrollierten Experiment, unnatürlich und der normalen Lernumgebung ferne wäre: mit dem Anschauen, Vorlesen und Lesen von Kinderbüchern. Man kann sich eine solche Situation als eine natürliche Ausweitung dessen vorstellen, was Augustinus beschreibt: Die Kinder hören, was die Erwachsenen sagen, und ihre Aufmerksamkeit wird auf bestimmte Dinge gerichtet, während sie hören und schauen – nur geht es hier nicht um einzelne Wörter, sondern um komplexe Ausdrücke und um komplexe, aber dennoch überschaubare begleitende Informationen. Nun haben Kinderbücher in der Spracherwerbsforschung durchaus eine Rolle gespielt. Dabei dienen sie – sei es als reine Folge von Bildern, sei es mit Text oder gar nur als Text – aber meistens nur als eine Art Vorlage für die Sprachproduktion der Kinder: Sie sollen aus der Vorlage eine Geschichte ableiten und in ihren eigenen Worten erzählen. Das bekannteste, aber keineswegs das einzige Beispiel sind die von Michael Bamberg, Ruth Berman und Dan Slobin in den 1980er Jahren initiierten „frog stories” – Nacherzählungen einer einfachen Bildgeschichte, die inzwischen in zahlreichen Sprachen vorliegen und viele Aufschlüsse über die unterschiedlichsten Aspekte der sich entwickelnden Sprachbeherrschung, von der Flexionsmorphologie bis zur Textstruktur, gebracht haben. Das ist gut und sinnvoll; aber im Grunde müsste man einen Schritt weiter gehen, nämlich gleichsam wir durch ein Mikroskop zu schauen, wie sich die Kinder ihre Regularitäten aus der Interaktion ableiten. Dies würde unsere Vorstellungen über den Verlauf des Spracherwerbs und die Gesetzlichkeiten, nach denen er erfolgt, wesentlich bereichern, vielleicht auf eine ganz neue Basis stellen. Die Beiträge dieses Heftes geben dafür eine Reihe von Beispielen, von denen nur ein kleines, aber besonders schlagendes erwähnt werden soll. Es gibt zahlreiche, auf Bildgeschichten beruhende Analysen, in denen untersucht wird, wie Kinder eine bestimmte Person oder eine Sache im fortlaufenden Diskurs benennen – ob sie etwa definite und indefinite Nominalausdrücke (ein Junge – der Junge), lexikalische oder pronominale Nominalphrasen (der Junge – er) oder gar leere Elemente (der Junge wacht auf und 0 schaut nach seinem Hund) richtig verwenden können. Das Bild, das die Forschung in diesem wesentlichen Teil der Sprachbeherrschung heute bietet, ist alles andere als einheitlich. So umfassen die Ansichten darüber, wann die Definit-Indefinit-Unterscheidung gemeistert wird, den größten Teil der Kindheit, je nachdem, welche Untersuchungen man zu Rate zieht. In dem Aufsatz von Katrin Dammann-Thedens wird deutlich, dass Kindern in einem bestimmen Alter oft überhaupt nicht klar ist, dass eine bestimmte Person, eine bestimmte Sache auf fortlaufenden Bildern dieselbe ist – auch wenn sie ähnlich aussieht –, und das ist bei Licht besehen ja auch keine triviale Frage. Diese Beobachtungen werfen ein ganz neues Licht auf die Idee der referentiellen Kontinuität im Diskurs und ihren Ausdruck durch nominale Ausdrücke wie die eben genannten. Vielleicht haben wir ganz falsche Vorstellungen darüber, wie Kinder die begleitende Information – hier durch die Bilder einer Geschichte geliefert – verstehen und damit für den Spracherwerb verarbeiten. Derlei Beobachtungen sind zunächst einmal etwas Punktuelles, keine Antworten, sondern Hinweise auf Dinge, die man bedenken muss. Aber ihre Analyse, und allgemeiner, ein genauerer Blick auf das, was sich tatsächlich abspielt, wenn Kinder sich Kinderbücher anschauen, mag uns vielleicht zu einem wesentlich tieferen Verständnis dessen führen, was beim Erwerb einer Sprache tatsächlich geschieht.

Abstract

Language acquisition is the transition between the language faculty, with which we are born as a part of our genetic endowment, to the mastery of one or more linguistic systems. There is a plethora of findings about this process; but these findings still do not form a coherent picture of the principles which underlie this process. There are at least six reasons for this situation. First, there is an enormous variability in the conditions under which this process occurs. Second, the learning capacity does not remain constant over time. Third, the process extends over many years and is therefore hard to study. Fourth, especially the investigation of the meaning side is problem-loaded. Fifth, many skills and types of knowledge must be learned in a more or less synchronised way. And sixth, our understanding of the functioning of linguistic systems is still very limited. Nevertheless, there are a few overarching results, three of which are discussed here: (1) There are salient differences between child and adult learners: While children normally end up with perfect mastery of the language to be learned, this is hardly ever the case for adults. On the hand, it could be shown for each linguistic property examined so far, that adults are in principle able to learn it up to perfection. So, adults can learn everything perfectly well, they just don’t. (2) Within childhood, age of onset plays no essential role for ultimate attainment. (3) Children care much more for formal correctness than adults - they are just better in mimicking existing systems. It is argued that age does not affect the „construction capacity”- the capacity to build up linguistic systems - but the „copying faculty”, i.e., the faculty to imitate an existing system.

Abstract

A contentious issue in memory research is whether verbal short-term memory (STM) depends on a neural system specifically dedicated to the temporary maintenance of information, or instead relies on the same brain areas subserving the comprehension and production of language. In this study, we examined a large sample of adults with acquired brain lesions to identify the critical neural substrates underlying verbal STM and the relationship between verbal STM and language processing abilities. We found that patients with damage to selective regions of left perisylvian cortex – specifically the inferior frontal and posterior temporal sectors – were impaired on auditory–verbal STM performance (digit span), as well as on tests requiring the production and/or comprehension of language. These results support the conclusion that verbal STM and language processing are mediated by the same areas of left perisylvian cortex.

Abstract

Why does chanting, drumming or dancing together make people feel united? Here we investigate the neural mechanisms underlying interpersonal synchrony and its subsequent effects on prosocial behavior among synchronized individuals. We hypothesized that areas of the brain associated with the processing of reward would be active when individuals experience synchrony during drumming, and that these reward signals would increase prosocial behavior toward this synchronous drum partner. 18 female non-musicians were scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging while they drummed a rhythm, in alternating blocks, with two different experimenters: one drumming in-synchrony and the other out-of-synchrony relative to the participant. In the last scanning part, which served as the experimental manipulation for the following prosocial behavioral test, one of the experimenters drummed with one half of the participants in-synchrony and with the other out-of-synchrony. After scanning, this experimenter "accidentally" dropped eight pencils, and the number of pencils collected by the participants was used as a measure of prosocial commitment. Results revealed that participants who mastered the novel rhythm easily before scanning showed increased activity in the caudate during synchronous drumming. The same area also responded to monetary reward in a localizer task with the same participants. The activity in the caudate during experiencing synchronous drumming also predicted the number of pencils the participants later collected to help the synchronous experimenter of the manipulation run. In addition, participants collected more pencils to help the experimenter when she had drummed in-synchrony than out-of-synchrony during the manipulation run. By showing an overlap in activated areas during synchronized drumming and monetary reward, our findings suggest that interpersonal synchrony is related to the brain's reward system.

Abstract

Does the naming of clocks always require conceptual preparation? To examine this question, speakers were presented with analog and digital clocks that had to be named in Dutch using either a relative (e.g., “quarter to four”) or an absolute (e.g., “three forty-five”) clock time expression format. Naming latencies showed evidence of conceptual preparation when speakers produced relative time expressions to analog and digital clocks, but not when they used absolute time expressions. These findings indicate that conceptual mediation is not always mandatory for telling time, but instead depends on clock time expression format, supporting a multiple-route account of Dutch clock time naming.

Abstract

* Kristiansen, M., Deriziotis, P. These authors contributed equally to this work.* - The mechanism of cell death in prion disease is unknown but is associated with the production of a misfolded conformer of the prion protein. We report that disease-associated prion protein specifically inhibits the proteolytic β subunits of the 26S proteasome. Using reporter substrates, fluorogenic peptides, and an activity probe for the β subunits, this inhibitory effect was demonstrated in pure 26S proteasome and three different cell lines. By challenge with recombinant prion and other amyloidogenic proteins, we demonstrate that only the prion protein in a nonnative β sheet conformation inhibits the 26S proteasome at stoichiometric concentrations. Preincubation with an antibody specific for aggregation intermediates abrogates this inhibition, consistent with an oligomeric species mediating this effect. We also present evidence for a direct relationship between prion neuropathology and impairment of the ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS) in prion-infected UPS-reporter mice. Together, these data suggest a mechanism for intracellular neurotoxicity mediated by oligomers of misfolded prion protein.

Abstract

While the distribution of RNA polymerase II (PolII) in a variety of complex genomes is correlated with gene expression, the presence of PolII at a gene does not necessarily indicate active expression. Various patterns of PolII binding have been described genome wide; however, whether or not PolII binds at transcriptionally inactive sites remains uncertain. The two X chromosomes in female cells in mammals present an opportunity to examine each of the two alleles of a given locus in both active and inactive states, depending on which X chromosome is silenced by X chromosome inactivation. Here, we investigated PolII occupancy and expression of the associated genes across the active (Xa) and inactive (Xi) X chromosomes in human female cells to elucidate the relationship of gene expression and PolII binding. We find that, while PolII in the pseudoautosomal region occupies both chromosomes at similar levels, it is significantly biased toward the Xa throughout the rest of the chromosome. The general paucity of PolII on the Xi notwithstanding, detectable (albeit significantly reduced) binding can be observed, especially on the evolutionarily younger short arm of the X. PolII levels at genes that escape inactivation correlate with the levels of their expression; however, additional PolII sites can be found at apparently silenced regions, suggesting the possibility of a subset of genes on the Xi that are poised for expression. Consistent with this hypothesis, we show that a high proportion of genes associated with PolII-accessible sites, while silenced in GM12878, are expressed in other female cell lines.

Abstract

Only relatively recently have theories of speech production concerned themselves with the part idioms and other multi-word lexical items (MLIs) play in the processes of speech production. Two theories of speech production which attempt to account for the accessing of idioms in speech production are those of Cutting and Bock (1997) and superlemma theory (Sprenger, 2003; Sprenger, Levelt, & Kempen, 2006). Much of the data supporting theories of speech production comes either from time course experiments or from slips of the tongue (Bock & Levelt, 1994). The latter are of two kinds: experimentally induced (Baars, 1992) or naturally observed (Fromkin, 1980). Cutting and Bock use experimentally induced speech errors while Sprenger et al. use time course experiments. The missing data type that has a bearing on speech production involving MLIs is that of naturally occurring slips. In this study the impact of data taken from naturally observed slips involving English and Dutch MLIs are brought to bear on these theories. The data are taken initially from a corpus of just over 1000 naturally observed English slips involving MLIs (the Tuggy corpus). Our argument proceeds as follows. First we show that slips occur independent of whether or not there are MLIs involved. In other words, speech production proceeds in certain of its aspects as though there were no MLI present. We illustrate these slips from the Tuggy data. Second we investigate the predictions of superlemma theory. Superlemma theory (Sprenger et al., 2006) accounts for the selection of MLIs and how their properties enter processes of speech production. It predicts certain activation patterns dependent on a MLI being selected. Each such pattern might give rise to slips of the tongue. This set of predictions is tested against the Tuggy data. Each of the predicted activation patterns yields a significant number of slips. These findings are therefore compatible with a view of MLIs as single units in so far as their activation by lexical concepts goes. However, the theory also predicts that some slips are likely not to occur. We confirm that such slips are not present in the data. These findings are further corroborated by reference a second smaller dataset of slips involving Dutch MLIs (the Kempen corpus). We then use slips involving irreversible binomials to distinguish between the predictions of superlemma theory which are supported by slips involving irreversible binomials and the Cutting and Bock model's predictions for slips involving these MLIs which are not

Abstract

This study explores the effects of informational redundancy, as carried by a word's morphological paradigmatic structure, on acoustic duration in read aloud speech. The hypothesis that the more predictable a linguistic unit is, the less salient its realization, was tested on the basis of the acoustic duration of interfixes in Dutch compounds in two datasets: One for the interfix -s- (1155 tokens) and one for the interfix -e(n)- (742 tokens). Both datasets show that the more probable the interfix is, given the compound and its constituents, the longer it is realized. These findings run counter to the predictions of information-theoretical approaches and can be resolved by the Paradigmatic Signal Enhancement Hypothesis. This hypothesis argues that whenever selection of an element from alternatives is probabilistic, the element's duration is predicted by the amount of paradigmatic support for the element: The most likely alternative in the paradigm of selection is realized longer.

Abstract

The present study investigates the influence of prosodic structure on the fine-grained phonetic details of German plosives which also cue the phonological fortis-lenis contrast. Closure durations were found to be longer at higher prosodic boundaries. There was also less glottal vibration in lenis plosives at higher prosodic boundaries. Voice onset time in lenis plosives was not affected by prosody. In contrast, for the fortis plosives VOT decreased at higher boundaries, as did the maximal intensity of the release. These results demonstrate that the effects of prosody on different phonetic cues can go into opposite directions, but are overall constrained by the need to maintain phonological contrasts. While prosodic effects on some cues are compatible with a ‘fortition’ account of prosodic strengthening or with a general feature enhancement explanation, the effects on others enhance paradigmatic contrasts only within a given prosodic position.

Abstract

This study addressed prosodic effects on the duration of and amount of glottal vibration in German word-initial fricatives /f, v, z/ in assimilatory and non-assimilatory devoicing contexts. Fricatives following /small schwa/ (non-assimilation context) were longer and were produced with less glottal vibration after higher prosodic boundaries, reflecting domain-initial prosodic strengthening. After /t/ (assimilation context), lenis fricatives (/v, z/) were produced with less glottal vibration than after /small schwa/, due to assimilatory devoicing. This devoicing was especially strong across lower prosodic boundaries, showing the influence of prosodic structure on sandhi processes. Reduction in glottal vibration made lenis fricatives more fortis-like (/f, s/). Importantly, fricative duration, another major cue to the fortis-lenis distinction, was affected by initial lengthening, but not by assimilation. Hence, at smaller boundaries, fricatives were more devoiced (more fortis-like), but also shorter (more lenis-like). As a consequence, the fortis and lenis fricatives remained acoustically distinct in all prosodic and segmental contexts. Overall, /z/ was devoiced to a greater extent than /v/. Since /z/ does not have a fortis counterpart in word-initial position, these findings suggest that phonotactic restrictions constrain phonetic processes. The present study illuminates a complex interaction of prosody, sandhi processes, and phonotactics, yielding systematic phonetic cues to prosodic structure and phonological distinctions.

Abstract

This study investigates the prosodic conditioning of phonetic details which are candidate cues to phonological contrasts. German /b, d, g, p, t, k/ were examined in three prosodic positions. Lenis plosives /b, d, g/ were produced with less glottal vibration at larger prosodic boundaries, whereas their VOT showed no effect of prosody. VOT of fortis plosives /p, t, k/ decreased at larger boundaries, as did their burst intensity maximum. Vowels (when measured from consonantal release) following fortis plosives and lenis velars were shorter after larger boundaries. Closure duration, which did not contribute to the fortis/lenis contrast, was heavily affected by prosody. These results support neither of the hitherto proposed accounts of prosodic strengthening (Uniform Strengthening and Feature Enhancement). We propose a different account, stating that the phonological identity of speech sounds remains stable not only within, but also across prosodic positions (contrast-over-prosody hypothesis). Domain-initial strengthening hardly diminishes the contrast between prosodically weak fortis and strong lenis plosives.

Abstract

Phase-locked evoked responses and event-related modulations of spontaneous rhythmic activity are the two main approaches used to quantify stimulus- or task-related changes in electrophysiological measures. The relationship between the two has beenwidely theorized upon but empirical research has been limited to the primary visual and sensorimotor cortex. However, both evoked responses and rhythms have been used as markers of neural activity in paradigms ranging from simple sensory to complex cognitive tasks.While some spatial agreement between the two phenomena has been observed, typically only one of the measures has been used in any given study, thus disallowing a direct evaluation of their exact spatiotemporal relationship. In this study, we sought to systematically clarify the connection between evoked responses and rhythmic activity. Using both measures, we identified the spatiotemporal patterns of task effects in three magnetoencephalography (MEG) data sets, all variants of a picture naming task. Evoked responses and rhythmic modulation yielded largely separate networks, with spatial overlap mainly in the sensorimotor and primary visual areas.Moreover, in the cortical regions thatwere identified with both measures the experimental effects they conveyed differed in terms of timing and function. Our results suggest that the two phenomena are largely detached and that both measures are needed for an accurate portrayal of brain activity.

Abstract

The Neolithic is a key period in the history of the European settlement. Although archaeological and present-day genetic data suggest several hypotheses regarding the human migration patterns at this period, validation of these hypotheses with the use of ancient genetic data has been limited. In this context, we studied DNA extracted from 53 individuals buried in a necropolis used by a French local community 5,000 y ago. The relatively good DNA preservation of the samples allowed us to obtain autosomal, Y-chromosomal, and/or mtDNA data for 29 of the 53 samples studied. From these datasets, we established close parental relationships within the necropolis and determined maternal and paternal lineages as well as the absence of an allele associated with lactase persistence, probably carried by Neolithic cultures of central Europe. Our study provides an integrative view of the genetic past in southern France at the end of the Neolithic period. Furthermore, the Y-haplotype lineages characterized and the study of their current repartition in European populations confirm a greater influence of the Mediterranean than the Central European route in the peopling of southern Europe during the Neolithic transition.

Abstract

The impact of the Neolithic dispersal on the western European populations is subject to continuing debate. To trace and date genetic lineages potentially brought during this transition and so understand the origin of the gene pool of current populations, we studied DNA extracted from human remains excavated in a Spanish funeral cave dating from the beginning of the fifth millennium B.C. Thanks to a “multimarkers” approach based on the analysis of mitochondrial and nuclear DNA (autosomes and Y-chromosome), we obtained information on the early Neolithic funeral practices and on the biogeographical origin of the inhumed individuals. No close kinship was detected. Maternal haplogroups found are consistent with pre-Neolithic settlement, whereas the Y-chromosomal analyses permitted confirmation of the existence in Spain approximately 7,000 y ago of two haplogroups previously associated with the Neolithic transition: G2a and E1b1b1a1b. These results are highly consistent with those previously found in Neolithic individuals from French Late Neolithic individuals, indicating a surprising temporal genetic homogeneity in these groups. The high frequency of G2a in Neolithic samples in western Europe could suggest, furthermore, that the role of men during Neolithic dispersal could be greater than currently estimated.

Abstract

In this study, we explored methods for linking Chinese and English sense inventories using two opposing approaches: creating links (1) bottom-up: by starting at the finer-grained sense level then proceeding to the verb subcategorization frames and (2) top-down: by starting directly with the more coarse-grained frame levels. The sense inventories for linking include pre-existing corpora, such as English Propbank (Palmer, Gildea, and Kingsbury, 2005), Chinese Propbank (Xue and Palmer, 2004) and English WordNet (Fellbaum, 1998) and newly created corpora, the English and Chinese Sense Inventories from DARPA-GALE OntoNotes. In the linking task, we selected a group of highly frequent and polysemous communication verbs, including say, ask, talk, and speak in English, and shuo, biao-shi, jiang, and wen in Chinese. We found that with the bottom-up method, although speakers of both languages agreed on the links between senses, the subcategorization frames of the corresponding senses did not match consistently. With the top-down method, if the verb frames match in both languages, their senses line up more quickly to each other. The results indicate that the top-down method is more promising in linking English and Chinese sense inventories.

Abstract

A theoretical debate in artificial grammar learning (AGL) regards the learnability of hierarchical structures. Recent studies using an AnBn grammar draw conflicting conclusions (Bahlmann and Friederici, 2006, De Vries et al., 2008). We argue that 2 conditions crucially affect learning AnBn structures: sufficient exposure to zero-level-of-embedding (0-LoE) exemplars and a staged-input. In 2 AGL experiments, learning was observed only when the training set was staged and contained 0-LoE exemplars. Our results might help understanding how natural complex structures are learned from exemplars.

Abstract

Force-distance measurements have been used to examine differences in the interaction of the dendritic cell glycan-binding receptor DC-SIGN and the closely related endothelial cell receptor DC-SIGNR (L-SIGN) with membranes bearing glycan ligands. The results demonstrate that upon binding to membrane-anchored ligand, DC-SIGNR undergoes a conformational change similar to that previously observed for DC-SIGN. The results also validate a model for the extracellular domain of DC-SIGNR derived from crystallographic studies. Force measurements were performed with DC-SIGNR variants that differ in the length of the neck that result from genetic polymorphisms, which encode different numbers of the 23-amino acid repeat sequences that constitute the neck. The findings are consistent with an elongated, relatively rigid structure of the neck repeat observed in crystals. In addition, differences in the lengths of DC-SIGN and DC-SIGNR extracellular domains with equivalent numbers of neck repeats support a model in which the different dispositions of the carbohydrate-recognition domains in DC-SIGN and DC-SIGNR result from variations in the sequences of the necks.

Abstract

The temporal dynamics of processing morphologically complex words was investigated by recording event-related brain potentials (ERPs) when native Finnish-speakers performed a visual lexical decision task. Behaviorally, there is evidence that recognition of inflected nouns elicits a processing cost (i.e., longer reaction times and higher error rates) in comparison to matched monomorphemic words. We aimed to reveal whether the processing cost stems from decomposition at the early visual word form level or from recomposition at the later semantic–syntactic level. The ERPs showed no early effects for morphology, but revealed an interaction with word frequency at a late N400-type component, as well as a late positive component that was larger for inflected words. These results suggest that the processing cost stems mainly from the semantic–syntactic level. We also studied the features of the morphological decomposition route by investigating the recognition of pseudowords carrying real morphemes. The results showed no differences between inflected vs. uninflected pseudowords with a false stem, but differences in relation to those with a real stem, suggesting that a recognizable stem is needed to initiate the decomposition route.

Abstract

Annotations of media recordings are the grounds for linguistic research. Since creating those annotations is a very laborious task, reaching 100 times longer than the length of the annotated media, innovative audio and video processing algorithms are needed, in order to improve the efficiency and quality of annotation process. The AVATecH project, started by the Max-Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (MPI) and the Fraunhofer institutes HHI and IAIS, aims at significantly speeding up the process of creating annotations of audio-visual data for humanities research. In order for this to be achieved a range of state-of-the-art audio and video pattern recognition algorithms have been developed and integrated into widely used ELAN annotation tool. To address the problem of heterogeneous annotation tasks and recordings we provide modular components extended by adaptation and feedback mechanisms to achieve competitive annotation quality within significantly less annotation time.

Abstract

Evolution and changes of all modern languages is a well-known fact. However, recently it is reaching dynamics never seen before, which results in loss of the vast amount of information encoded in every language. In order to preserve such heritage, properly annotated recordings of world languages are necessary. Since creating those annotations is a very laborious task, reaching times 100 longer than the length of the annotated media, innovative video processing algorithms are needed, in order to improve the efficiency and quality of annotation process.

Abstract

Processing medical data has always been an interesting field that has shown the need for effective image segmentation methods. Modern medical image segmentation solutions are focused on 3D image volumes, which originate at advanced acquisition devices. Operating on such data in a 3D envi- ronment is essential in order to take the full advantage of the available information. In this paper we present an extended version of our 3D image segmentation and reconstruction model that belongs to the family of Deformable Models and is capable of processing large image volumes in competitive times and in fully 3D environment, offering a big level of automation of the process and a high precision of results. It is also capable of handling topology changes and offers a very good scalability on multi-processing unit architectures. We present a description of the model and show its capabilities in the field of medical image processing.

Abstract

In their comment, Dell and O'Seaghdha (1991) adduced any effect on phonological probes for semantic alternatives to the activation of these probes in the lexical network. We argue that that interpretation is false and, in addition, that the model still cannot account for our data. Furthermore, and different from Dell and O'seaghda, we adduce semantic rebound to the lemma level, where it is so substantial that it should have shown up in our data. Finally, we question the function of feedback in a lexical network (other than eliciting speech errors) and discuss Dell's (1988) notion of a unified production-comprehension system.

Abstract

Recent work on sentence recognition suggests that listeners use their knowledge of the language to directly infer deep structure syntactic relations from surface structure markers. Suffixes may be such clues, especially in agglutinative languages. A cross-language (Dutch-Finnish) experiment is reported, designed to investigate whether the suffix structure of Finnish words (as opposed to suffixless Dutch words) can facilitate prompted recall of sentences in case these suffixes differentiate between possible deep structures. The experiment, in which 80 subjects recall sentences at the occasion of prompt words, gives only slight confirmatory evidence. Meanwhile, another prompted recall effect (Blumenthal's) could not be replicated.

Abstract

The present paper studies how, in deictic expressions, the temporal interdependency of speech and gesture is realized in the course of motor planning and execution. Two theoretical positions were compared. On the “interactive” view the temporal parameters of speech and gesture are claimed to be the result of feedback between the two systems throughout the phases of motor planning and execution. The alternative “ballistic” view, however, predicts that the two systems are independent during the phase of motor execution, the temporal parameters having been preestablished in the planning phase. In four experiments subjects were requested to indicate which of an array of referent lights was momentarily illuminated. This was done by pointing to the light and/or by using a deictic expression (this/that light). The temporal and spatial course of the pointing movement was automatically registered by means of a Selspot opto-electronic system. By analyzing the moments of gesture initiation and apex, and relating them to the moments of speech onset, it was possible to show that, for deictic expressions, the ballistic view is very nearly correct.

Abstract

The paper explores verbs of cutting and breaking (C&B, hereafter) in Yeli Dnye, the Papuan language of Rossel Island. The Yeli Dnye verbs covering the C&B domain do not divide it in the expected way, with verbs focusing on special instruments and manners of action on the one hand, and verbs focusing on the resultant state on the other. Instead, just three transitive verbs and their intransitive counterparts cover most of the domain, and they are all based on 'exotic' distinctions in mode of severance[--]coherent severance with the grain vs. against the grain, and incoherent severance (regardless of grain).

Abstract

Comment on Sperber and Wilson

Abstract

Polish translation of Levinson, S. C. (1998). Studying spatial conceptualization across cultures: Anthropology and cognitive science. Ethos, 26(1), 7-24. doi:10.1525/eth.1998.26.1.7

Abstract

In an earlier article (Levinson, 1987b), I raised the possibility that a Gricean theory of implicature might provide a systematic partial reduction of the Binding Conditions; the briefest of outlines is given in Section 2.1 below but the argumentation will be found in the earlier article. In this article I want, first, to show how that account might be further justified and extended, but then to introduce a radical alternative. This alternative uses the same pragmatic framework, but gives an account better adjusted to some languages. Finally, I shall attempt to show that both accounts can be combined by taking a diachronic perspective. The attraction of the combined account is that, suddenly, many facts about long-range reflexives and their associated logophoricity fall into place.

Abstract

This paper is one in a series that develops a pragmatic framework in loose confederation with Jay Atlas and Larry Horn: thus they may or may not be responsible for the ideas contained herein. Jay Atlas provided many comments which I have utilized or perverted as the case may be. The Australian data to which this framework is applied was collected with the financial and personal assistance of many people and agencies acknowledged separately below; but I must single out for special thanks John Haviland, who recommended the study of Guugu Yimidhirr anaphora to me and upon whose grammatical work on Guugu Yimidhirr this paper is but a minor (and perhaps flawed) elaboration. A grant from the British Academy allowed me to visit Haviland in September 1986 to discuss many aspects of Guugu Yimidhirr with him, and I am most grateful to the Academy for funding this trip and to Haviland for generously making available his time, his texts (from which I have drawn many examples, not always with specific acknowledgement) and most especially his expertise. Where I have diverged from his opinion I may well learn to regret it. I must also thank Nigel Vincent for putting me in touch with a number of recent relevant developments in syntax (only some of which I have been able to address) and for suggestions for numerous improvements. In addition, I have benefited immensely for comments on a distinct but related paper (Levinson, 1987) kindly provided by Jay Atlas, John Haviland, John Heritage, Phil Johnson-Laird, John Lyons, Tanya Reinhart, Emanuel Schegloff and an anonymous referee; and from comments on this paper by participants in the Cambridge Linguistics Department seminar where it was first presented (especial thanks to John Lyons and Huang Yan for further comments, and Mary Smith for a counter-example). Despite all this help, there are sure to be errors of data and analysis that I have persisted in. Aid in gathering the Australian data is acknowledged separately below.

Abstract

1. Introduction We claim that making sense of the typological diversity of languages demands a historical/evolutionary approach.We are pleased that the target paper (Dunn et al. 2011a) has served to bring discussion of this claim into prominence, and are grateful that leading typologists have taken the time to respond (commentaries denoted by boldface). It is unfortunate though that a number of the commentaries in this issue of LT show significant misunderstandings of our paper. Donohue thinks we were out to show the stability of typological features, but that was not our target at all (although related methods can be used to do that: see, e.g., Greenhill et al. 2010a, Dediu 2011a). Plank seems to think we were arguing against universals of any type, but our target was in fact just the implicational universals of word order that have been the bread and butter of typology. He also seems to think we ignore diachrony, whereas in fact the method introduces diachrony centrally into typological reasoning, thereby potentially revolutionising typology (see Cysouw’s commentary). Levy & Daumé think we were testing for lineage-specificity, whereas that was in fact an outcome (the main finding) of our testing for correlated evolution. Dryer thinks we must account for the distribution of language types around the world, but that was not our aim: our aim was to test the causal connection between linguistic variables by taking the perspective of language evolution (diversification and change). Longobardi & Roberts seem to think we set out to extract family trees from syntactic features, but our goal was in fact to use trees based on lexical cognates and hang reconstructed syntactic states on each node of these trees, thereby reconstructing the processes of language change.

Abstract

Educational tools claiming to use “right-brain techniques” are increasingly shaping school curricula. By implying a strong scientific basis, such approaches appeal to educators who rightly believe that knowledge of the brain should guide curriculum development. However, the notion of hemisphericity (idea that people are “left-brained” or “right-brained”) is a neuromyth that was debunked in the scientific literature 25 years ago. This article challenges the validity of “right-brain” teaching, highlighting the fact that neuroscientific research does not support its claims. Providing teachers with a basic understanding of neuroscience research as part of teacher training would enable more effective evaluation of brain-based claims and facilitate the adoption of tools validated by rigorous independent research rather than programs based on pseudoscience.

Abstract

Little is known about the origins of the pointing gesture. We sought to gain insight into its emergence by investigating individual differences in the pointing of 12-month-old infants in two ways. First, we looked at differences in the communicative and interactional uses of pointing and asked how different hand shapes relate to point frequency, accompanying vocalizations, and mothers’ pointing. Second, we looked at differences in social-cognitive skills of point comprehension and imitation and tested whether these were related to infants’ own pointing. Infants’ and mothers’ spontaneous pointing correlated with one another, as did infants’ point production and comprehension. In particular, infants’ index-finger pointing had a profile different from simple whole-hand pointing. It was more frequent, it was more often accompanied by vocalizations, and it correlated more strongly with comprehension of pointing (especially to occluded referents). We conclude that whole-hand and index-finger pointing differ qualitatively and suggest that it is index-finger pointing that first embodies infants’ understanding of communicative intentions.

Abstract

We investigated two main components of infant declarative pointing, reference and attitude, in two experiments with a total of 106 preverbal infants at 1;0. When an experimenter (E) responded to the declarative pointing of these infants by attending to an incorrect referent (with positive attitude), infants repeated pointing within trials to redirect E’s attention, showing an understanding of E’s reference and active message repair. In contrast, when E identified infants’ referent correctly but displayed a disinterested attitude, infants did not repeat pointing within trials and pointed overall in fewer trials, showing an understanding of E’s unenthusiastic attitude about the referent. When E attended to infants’ intended referent AND shared interest in it, infants were most satisfied, showing no message repair within trials and pointing overall in more trials. These results suggest that by twelve months of age infant declarative pointing is a full communicative act aimed at sharing with others both attention to a referent and a specific attitude about that referent.

Abstract

There is currently controversy over the nature of 1-year-olds' social-cognitive understanding and motives. In this study we investigated whether 12-month-old infants point for others with an understanding of their knowledge states and with a prosocial motive for sharing experiences with them. Declarative pointing was elicited in four conditions created by crossing two factors: an adult partner (1) was already attending to the target event or not, and (2) emoted positively or neutrally. Pointing was also coded after the event had ceased. The findings suggest that 12-month-olds point to inform others of events they do not know about, that they point to share an attitude about mutually attended events others already know about, and that they can point (already prelinguistically) to absent referents. These findings provide strong support for a mentalistic and prosocial interpretation of infants' prelinguistic communication

Abstract

Sociocultural theories of development posit that higher cognitive functions emerge through socially mediated processes, in particular through language. However, theories of human communication posit that language itself is based on higher social cognitive skills and cooperative motivations. Prelinguistic communication is a test case to this puzzle. In the current review, I first present recent and new findings of a research program on prelinguistic infants’ ommunication skills. This research provides empirical evidence for a rich social cognitive and motivational basis of human communication before language. Next, I discuss the emergence of these foundational skills. By considering all three lines of development, and by drawing on new findings from phylogenetic and cross-cultural comparisons, this article discusses the possibility that the cognitive foundations of prelinguistic communication are, in turn, mediated by social interactional input and shared experiences.

Abstract

A growing body of theoretical and empirical research has examined cultural transmission and adaptive cultural behaviour at the individual, within-group level. However, relatively few studies have tried to examine proximate transmission or test ultimate adaptive hypotheses about behavioural or cultural diversity at a between-societies macro-level. In both the history of anthropology and in present-day work, a common approach to examining adaptive behaviour at the macro-level has been through correlating various cultural traits with features of ecology. We discuss some difficulties with simple ecological associations, and then review cultural phylogenetic studies that have attempted to go beyond correlations to understand the underlying cultural evolutionary processes. We conclude with an example of a phylogenetically controlled approach to understanding proximate transmission pathways in Austronesian cultural diversity.

Abstract

This special issue of Cognitive Linguistics explores the linguistic encoding of events of cutting and breaking. In this article we first introduce the project on which it is based by motivating the selection of this conceptual domain, presenting the methods of data collection used by all the investigators, and characterizing the language sample. We then present a new approach to examining crosslinguistic similarities and differences in semantic categorization. Applying statistical modeling to the descriptions of cutting and breaking events elicited from speakers of all the languages, we show that although there is crosslinguistic variation in the number of distinctions made and in the placement of category boundaries, these differences take place within a strongly constrained semantic space: across languages, there is a surprising degree of consensus on the partitioning of events in this domain. In closing, we compare our statistical approach with more conventional semantic analyses, and show how...

Abstract

There is little consensus regarding the circumstances in which people spontaneously generate causal inferences, and in particular whether they generate inferences about the causal antecedents or the causal consequences of events. We tested whether people systematically infer causal antecedents or causal consequences to minimal social scenarios by using a continuation methodology. People overwhelmingly produced causal antecedent continuations for descriptions of interpersonal events (John hugged Mary), but causal consequence continuations to descriptions of transfer events (John gave a book to Mary). This demonstrates that there is no global cognitive style, but rather inference generation is crucially tied to the input. Further studies examined the role of event unusualness, number of participators, and verb-type on the likelihood of producing a causal antecedent or causal consequence inference. We conclude that inferences are critically guided by the specific verb used.

Abstract

This special issue of Cognitive Linguistics explores the linguistic encoding of events of cutting and breaking. In this article we first introduce the project on which it is based by motivating the selection of this conceptual domain, presenting the methods of data collection used by all the investigators, and characterizing the language sample. We then present a new approach to examining crosslinguistic similarities and differences in semantic categorization. Applying statistical modeling to the descriptions of cutting and breaking events elicited from speakers of all the languages, we show that although there is crosslinguistic variation in the number of distinctions made and in the placement of category boundaries, these differences take place within a strongly constrained semantic space: across languages, there is a surprising degree of consensus on the partitioning of events in this domain. In closing, we compare our statistical approach with more conventional semantic analyses, and show how an extensional semantic typological approach like the one illustrated here can help illuminate the intensional distinctions made by languages.

Abstract

Are the semantic categories of very closely related languages the same? We present a new methodology for addressing this question. Speakers of English, German, Dutch and Swedish described a set of video clips depicting cutting and breaking events. The verbs elicited were then subjected to cluster analysis, which groups scenes together based on similarity (determined by shared verbs). Using this technique, we find that there are surprising differences among the languages in the number of categories, their exact boundaries, and the relationship of the terms to one another[--]all of which is circumscribed by a common semantic space.

Abstract

Multiple social science disciplines have converged on the senses in recent years, where formerly the domain of perception was the preserve of psychology. Linguistics, or Language, however, seems to have an ambivalent role in this undertaking. On the one hand, Language with a capital L (language as a general human capacity) is part of the problem. It was the prior focus on language (text) that led to the disregard of the senses. On the other hand, it is language (with a small "l", a particular tongue) that offers key insights into how other peoples onceptualize the senses. In this article, we argue that a systematic cross-cultural approach can reveal fundamental truths about the precise connections between language and the senses. Recurring failures to adequately describe the sensorium across specific languages reveal the intrinsic limits of Language. But the converse does not hold. Failures of expressibility in one language need not hold any implications for the Language faculty per se, and indeed can enlighten us about the possible experiential worlds available to human experience.

Abstract

Cultures are built on social exchange. Most languages have dedicated grammatical machinery for expressing this. To demonstrate that statistical methods can also be applied to grammatical meaning, we here ask whether the underlying meanings of these grammatical constructions are based on shared common concepts. To explore this, we designed video stimuli of reciprocated actions (e.g. ‘giving to each other’) and symmetrical states (e.g. ‘sitting next to each other’), and with the help of a team of linguists collected responses from 20 languages around the world. Statistical analyses revealed that many languages do, in fact, share a common conceptual core for reciprocal meanings but that this is not a universally expressed concept. The recurrent pattern of conceptual packaging found across languages is compatible with the view that there is a shared non-linguistic understanding of reciprocation. But, nevertheless, there are considerable differences between languages in the exact extensional patterns, highlighting that even in the domain of grammar semantics is highly language-specific.

Abstract

How are the senses structured by the languages we speak, the cultures we inhabit? To what extent is the encoding of perceptual experiences in languages a matter of how the mind/brain is ―wired-up‖ and to what extent is it a question of local cultural preoccupation? The ―Language of Perception‖ project tests the hypothesis that some perceptual domains may be more ―ineffable‖ – i.e. difficult or impossible to put into words – than others. While cognitive scientists have assumed that proximate senses (olfaction, taste, touch) are more ineffable than distal senses (vision, hearing), anthropologists have illustrated the exquisite variation and elaboration the senses achieve in different cultural milieus. The project is designed to test whether the proximate senses are universally ineffable – suggesting an architectural constraint on cognition – or whether they are just accidentally so in Indo-European languages, so expanding the role of cultural interests and preoccupations. To address this question, a standardized set of stimuli of color patches, geometric shapes, simple sounds, tactile textures, smells and tastes have been used to elicit descriptions from speakers of more than twenty languages—including three sign languages. The languages are typologically, genetically and geographically diverse, representing a wide-range of cultures. The communities sampled vary in subsistence modes (hunter-gatherer to industrial), ecological zones (rainforest jungle to desert), dwelling types (rural and urban), and various other parameters. We examine how codable the different sensory modalities are by comparing how consistent speakers are in how they describe the materials in each modality. Our current analyses suggest that taste may, in fact, be the most codable sensorial domain across languages. Moreover, we have identified exquisite elaboration in the olfactory domains in some cultural settings, contrary to some contemporary predictions within the cognitive sciences. These results suggest that differential codability may be at least partly the result of cultural preoccupation. This shows that the senses are not just physiological phenomena but are constructed through linguistic, cultural and social practices.

Abstract

To study concepts, cognitive scientists must first identify some. The prevailing assumption is that they are revealed by words such as triangle, table, and robin. But languages vary dramatically in how they carve up the world by name. Either ordinary concepts must be heavily language-dependent or names cannot be a direct route to concepts. We asked English, Dutch, Spanish, and Japanese speakers to name videos of human locomotion and judge their similarities. We investigated what name inventories and scaling solutions on name similarity and on physical similarity for the groups individually and together suggest about the underlying concepts. Aggregated naming and similarity solutions converged on results distinct from the answers suggested by the word inventories and scaling solutions of any single language. Words such as triangle, table, and robin can help identify the conceptual space of a domain, but they do not directly reveal units of knowledge usefully considered 'concepts'.

Abstract

Common activations in prefrontal cortex (PFC) during episodic and semantic long-term memory (LTM) tasks have been hypothesized to reflect functional overlap in terms of working memory (WM) and cognitive control. To evaluate a WM account of LTM-general activations, the present study took into consideration that cognitive task performance depends on the dynamic operation of multiple component processes, some of which are stimulus-synchronous and transient in nature; and some that are engaged throughout a task in a sustained fashion. PFC and WM may be implicated in both of these temporally independent components. To elucidate these possibilities we employed mixed blocked/event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) procedures to assess the extent to which sustained or transient activation patterns overlapped across tasks indexing episodic and semantic LTM, attention (ATT), and WM. Within PFC, ventrolateral and medial areas exhibited sustained activity across all tasks, whereas more anterior regions including right frontopolar cortex were commonly engaged in sustained processing during the three memory tasks. These findings do not support a WM account of sustained frontal responses during LTM tasks, but instead suggest that the pattern that was common to all tasks reflects general attentional set/vigilance, and that the shared WM-LTM pattern mediates control processes related to upholding task set. Transient responses during the three memory tasks were assessed relative to ATT to isolate item-specific mnemonic processes and were found to be largely distinct from sustained effects. Task-specific effects were observed for each memory task. In addition, a common item response for all memory tasks involved left dorsolateral PFC (DLPFC). The latter response might be seen as reflecting WM processes during LTM retrieval. Thus, our findings suggest that a WM account of shared PFC recruitment in LTM tasks holds for common transient item-related responses rather than sustained state-related responses that are better seen as reflecting more general attentional/control processes.

Abstract

How listeners understand spoken words despite massive variation in the speech signal is a central issue for linguistic theory. A recent focus on lexical frequency and specificity has proved fruitful in accounting for this phenomenon. Speech perception, though, is a multi-faceted process and likely incorporates a number of mechanisms to map a variable signal to meaning. We examine a well-established language use factor — lexical frequency — and how this factor is integrated with phonetic variability during the perception of accented speech. We show that an integrated perspective highlights a low-level perceptual mechanism that accounts for the perception of accented speech absent native contrasts, while shedding light on the use of interactive language factors in the perception of spoken words.

Abstract

Language comprehension requires recovering meaning from linguistic form, even when the mapping between the two is indirect. A canonical example is ellipsis, the omission of information that is subsequently understood without being overtly pronounced. Comprehension of ellipsis requires retrieval of an antecedent from memory, without prior prediction, a property which enables the study of retrieval in situ ( Martin and McElree, 2008 and Martin and McElree, 2009). Sluicing, or inflectional-phrase ellipsis, in the presence of a conjunction, presents a test case where a competing antecedent position is syntactically licensed, in contrast with most cases of nonadjacent dependency, including verb–phrase ellipsis. We present speed–accuracy tradeoff and eye-movement data inconsistent with the hypothesis that retrieval is accomplished via a syntactically guided search, a particular variant of search not examined in past research. The observed timecourse profiles are consistent with the hypothesis that antecedents are retrieved via a cue-dependent direct-access mechanism susceptible to general memory variables.

Abstract

Abstract Background: Archaeologists and anthropologists have long recognized that different cultural complexes may have distinct descent histories, but they have lacked analytical techniques capable of easily identifying such incongruence. Here, we show how Bayesian phylogenetic analysis can be used to identify incongruent cultural histories. We employ the approach to investigate Iranian tribal textile traditions. Methods: We used Bayes factor comparisons in a phylogenetic framework to test two models of cultural evolution: the hierarchically integrated system hypothesis and the multiple coherent units hypothesis. In the hierarchically integrated system hypothesis, a core tradition of characters evolves through descent with modification and characters peripheral to the core are exchanged among contemporaneous populations. In the multiple coherent units hypothesis, a core tradition does not exist. Rather, there are several cultural units consisting of sets of characters that have different histories of descent. Results: For the Iranian textiles, the Bayesian phylogenetic analyses supported the multiple coherent units hypothesis over the hierarchically integrated system hypothesis. Our analyses suggest that pile-weave designs represent a distinct cultural unit that has a different phylogenetic history compared to other textile characters. Conclusions: The results from the Iranian textiles are consistent with the available ethnographic evidence, which suggests that the commercial rug market has influenced pile-rug designs but not the techniques or designs incorporated in the other textiles produced by the tribes. We anticipate that Bayesian phylogenetic tests for inferring cultural units will be of great value for researchers interested in studying the evolution of cultural traits including language, behavior, and material culture.

Abstract

This study investigated links between working memory and speech processing systems. We used delayed pseudoword repetition in fMRI to investigate the neural correlates of sublexical structure in phonological working memory (pWM). We orthogonally varied the number of syllables and consonant clusters in auditory pseudowords and measured the neural responses to these manipulations under conditions of covert rehearsal (Experiment 1). A left-dominant network of temporal and motor cortex showed increased activity for longer items, with motor cortex only showing greater activity concomitant with adding consonant clusters. An individual-differences analysis revealed a significant positive relationship between activity in the angular gyrus and the hippocampus, and accuracy on pseudoword repetition. As models of pWM stipulate that its neural correlates should be activated during both perception and production/rehearsal [Buchsbaum, B. R., & D'Esposito, M. The search for the phonological store: From loop to convolution. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20, 762-778, 2008; Jacquemot, C., & Scott, S. K. What is the relationship between phonological short-term memory and speech processing? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10, 480-486, 2006; Baddeley, A. D., & Hitch, G. Working memory. In G. H. Bower (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation: Advances in research and theory (Vol. 8, pp. 47-89). New York: Academic Press, 1974], we further assessed the effects of the two factors in a separate passive listening experiment (Experiment 2). In this experiment, the effect of the number of syllables was concentrated in posterior-medial regions of the supratemporal plane bilaterally, although there was no evidence of a significant response to added clusters. Taken together, the results identify the planum temporale as a key region in pWM; within this region, representations are likely to take the form of auditory or audiomotor -templates- or -chunks- at the level of the syllable [Papoutsi, M., de Zwart, J. A., Jansma, J. M., Pickering, M. J., Bednar, J. A., & Horwitz, B. From phonemes to articulatory codes: an fMRI study of the role of Broca's area in speech production. Cerebral Cortex, 19, 2156-2165, 2009; Warren, J. E., Wise, R. J. S., & Warren, J. D. Sounds do-able: auditory-motor transformations and the posterior temporal plane. Trends in Neurosciences, 28, 636-643, 2005; Griffiths, T. D., & Warren, J. D. The planum temporale as a computational hub. Trends in Neurosciences, 25, 348-353, 2002], whereas more lateral structures on the STG may deal with phonetic analysis of the auditory input [Hickok, G. The functional neuroanatomy of language. Physics of Life Reviews, 6, 121-143, 2009].

Abstract

Eye movements of Dutch participants were tracked as they looked at arrays of four words on a computer screen and followed spoken instructions (e.g., "Klik op het woord buffel": Click on the word buffalo). The arrays included the target (e.g., buffel), a phonological competitor (e.g., buffer, buffer), and two unrelated distractors. Targets were monosyllabic or bisyllabic, and competitors mismatched targets only on either their onset or offset phoneme and only by one distinctive feature. Participants looked at competitors more than at distractors, but this effect was much stronger for offset-mismatch than onset-mismatch competitors. Fixations to competitors started to decrease as soon as phonetic evidence disfavouring those competitors could influence behaviour. These results confirm that listeners continuously update their interpretation of words as the evidence in the speech signal unfolds and hence establish the viability of the methodology of using eye movements to arrays of printed words to track spoken-word recognition.

Abstract

Whether the brain’s speech-production system is also involved in speech comprehension is a topic of much debate. Research has focused on whether motor areas are involved in listening, but overlap between speaking and listening might occur not only at primary sensory and motor levels, but also at linguistic levels (where semantic, lexical, and syntactic processes occur). Using functional MRI adaptation during speech comprehension and production, we found that the brain areas involved in semantic, lexical, and syntactic processing are mostly the same for speaking and for listening. Effects of primary processing load (indicative of sensory and motor processes) overlapped in auditory cortex and left inferior frontal cortex, but not in motor cortex, where processing load affected activity only in speaking. These results indicate that the linguistic parts of the language system are used for both speaking and listening, but that the motor system does not seem to provide a crucial contribution to listening.

Abstract

Three hypotheses for effects of age of acquisition (AoA) in lexical processing are compared: the cumulative frequency hypothesis (frequency and AoA both influence the number of encounters with a word, which influences processing speed), the semantic hypothesis (early-acquired words are processed faster because they are more central in the semantic network), and the neural network model (early-acquired words are faster because they are acquired when a network has maximum plasticity). In a regression study of lexical decision (LD) and semantic categorization (SC) in Italian and Dutch, contrary to the cumulative frequency hypothesis, AoA coefficients were larger than frequency coefficients, and, contrary to the semantic hypothesis, the effect of AoA was not larger in SC than in LD. The neural network model was supported.

Abstract

PTEN Hamartoma Tumour Syndrome (PHTS) includes Cowden syndrome (CS), Bannayan-Riley-Ruvalcaba syndrome (BRRS), and other conditions resulting from germline mutation of the PTEN tumour suppressor gene. Although macrocephaly, presumably due to megencephaly, is found in both CS and BRRS, the prevalence and degree have not been formally assessed in PHTS. We evaluated head size in a prospective nested series of 181 patients found to have pathogenic germline PTEN mutations. Clinical data including occipital-frontal circumference (OFC) measurement were requested for all participants. Macrocephaly was present in 94% of 161 evaluable PHTS individuals. In patients ≤18 years, mean OFC was +4.89 standard deviations (SD) above the population mean with no difference between genders (P=0.7). Among patients >18 years, average OFC was 60.0 cm in females and 62.8 cm in males (P<0.0001). To systematically determine whether macrocephaly was due to megencephaly, we examined PtenM3M4 missense mutant mice generated and maintained on mixed backgrounds. Mice were killed at various ages, brains were dissected out and weighed. Average brain weight for PtenM3M4 homozygous mice (N=15) was 1.02 g compared with 0.57 g for heterozygous mice (N=29) and 0.49 g for wild-type littermates (N=24) (P<0.0001). Macrocephaly, secondary to megencephaly, is an important component of PHTS and more prevalent than previously appreciated. Patients with PHTS have increased risks for breast and thyroid cancers, and early diagnosis is key to initiating timely screening to reduce patient morbidity and mortality. Clinicians should consider germline PTEN testing at an early point in the diagnostic work-up for patients with extreme macrocephaly.

Abstract

In four experiments, participants named target pictures that were accompanied by distractor pictures with phonologically related or unrelated names. Across experiments, the type of phonological relationship between the targets and the related distractors was varied: They were homophones (e.g., bat [animal/baseball]), or they shared word-initial segments (e.g., dog-doll) or word-final segments (e.g., ball-wall). The participants either named the objects after an extensive familiarization and practice phase or without any familiarization or practice. In all of the experiments, the mean target-naming latency was shorter in the related than in the unrelated condition, demonstrating that the phonological form of the name of the distractor picture became activated. These results are best explained within a cascaded model of lexical access—that is, under the assumption that the recognition of an object leads to the activation of its name.

Abstract

In a visual search experiment, participants had to decide whether or not a target object was present in a four-object search array. One of these objects could be a semantically related competitor (e.g., shirt for the target trousers) or a conceptually unrelated object with the same name as the target-for example, bat (baseball) for the target bat (animal). In the control condition, the related competitor was replaced by an unrelated object. The participants' response latencies and eye movements demonstrated that the two types of related competitors had similar effects: Competitors attracted the participants' visual attention and thereby delayed positive and negative decisions. The results imply that semantic and name information associated with the objects becomes rapidly available and affects the allocation of visual attention.

Abstract

Subjects named pictures while hearing distractor words that shared word-initial or word-final segments with the picture names or were unrelated to the picture names. The relative timing of distractor and picture presentation was varied. Compared with unrelated distractors, both types of related distractors facilitated picture naming under certain timing conditions. Begin-related distractors facilitated the naming responses if the shared segments began 150 ms before, at, or 150 ms after picture onset. By contrast, end-related distractors only facilitated the responses if the shared segments began at or 150 ms after picture onset. The results suggest that the phonological encoding of the beginning of a word is initiated before the encoding of its end.

Abstract

Eight experiments were carried out investigating whether different parts of a syllable must be phonologically encoded in a specific order or whether they can be encoded in any order. A speech production task was used in which the subjects in each test trial had to utter one out of three or five response words as quickly as possible. In the so-called homogeneous condition these words were related in form, while in the heterogeneous condition they were unrelated in form. For monosyllabic response words shorter reaction times were obtained in the homogeneous than in the heterogeneous condition when the words had the same onset, but not when they had the same rhyme. Similarly, for disyllabic response words, the reaction times were shorter in the homogeneous than in the heterogeneous condition when the words shared only the onset of the first syllable, but not when they shared only its rhyme. Furthermore, a stronger facilitatory effect was observed when the words had the entire first syllable in common than when they only shared the onset, or the onset and the nucleus, but not the coda of the first syllable. These results suggest that syllables are phonologically encoded in two ordered steps, the first of which is dedicated to the onset and the second to the rhyme.

Abstract

Griffin [Griffin, Z. M. (2003). A reversed length effect in coordinating the preparation and articulation of words in speaking. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 10, 603-609.] found that speakers naming object pairs spent more time before utterance onset looking at the second object when the first object name was short than when it was long. She proposed that this reversed length effect arose because the speakers' decision when to initiate an utterance was based, in part, on their estimate of the spoken duration of the first object name and the time available during its articulation to plan the second object name. In Experiment I of the present study, participants named object pairs. They spent more time looking at the first object when its name was monosyllabic than when it was trisyllabic, and, as in Griffin's study, the average gaze-speech lag (the time between the end of the gaze to the first object and onset of its name, which corresponds closely to the pre-speech inspection time for the second object) showed a reversed length effect. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that this effect was not due to a trade-off between the time speakers spent looking at the first and second object before speech onset. Experiment 4 yielded a reversed length effect when the second object was replaced by a symbol (x or +), which the participants had to categorise. We propose a novel account of the reversed length effect, which links it to the incremental nature of phonological encoding and articulatory planning rather than the speaker's estimate of the length of the first object name.

Abstract

Past studies have found that, in adults, the acoustic properties of sound signals (such as fast versus slow temporal features) differentially activate the left and right hemispheres, and some have hypothesized that left-lateralization for speech processing may follow from left-lateralization to rapidly changing signals. Here, we tested whether newborns’ brains show some evidence of signal-specific lateralization responses using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and auditory stimuli that elicits lateralized responses in adults, composed of segments that vary in duration and spectral diversity. We found significantly greater bilateral responses of oxygenated hemoglobin (oxy-Hb) in the temporal areas for stimuli with a minimum segment duration of 21 ms, than stimuli with a minimum segment duration of 667 ms. However, we found no evidence for hemispheric asymmetries dependent on the stimulus characteristics. We hypothesize that acoustic-based functional brain asymmetries may develop throughout early infancy, and discuss their possible relationship with brain asymmetries for language.

Abstract

During the past ten years, research using Near-infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) to study the developing brain has provided groundbreaking evidence of brain functions in infants. This paper presents a theoretically oriented review of this wealth of evidence, summarizing recent NIRS data on language processing, without neglecting other neuroimaging or behavioral studies in infancy and adulthood. We review three competing classes of hypotheses (i.e. signal-driven, domain-driven, and learning biases hypotheses) regarding the causes of hemispheric specialization for speech processing. We assess the fit between each of these hypotheses and neuroimaging evidence in speech perception and show that none of the three hypotheses can account for the entire set of observations on its own. However, we argue that they provide a good fit when combined within a developmental perspective. According to our proposed scenario, lateralization for language emerges out of the interaction between pre-existing left–right biases in generic auditory processing (signal-driven hypothesis), and a left-hemisphere predominance of particular learning mechanisms (learning-biases hypothesis). As a result of this completed developmental process, the native language is represented in the left hemisphere predominantly. The integrated scenario enables to link infant and adult data, and points to many empirical avenues that need to be explored more systematically.

Abstract

Listeners use lexical knowledge to judge what speech sounds they heard. I investigated whether such lexical influences are truly top-down or just reflect a merging of perceptual and lexical constraints. This is achieved by testing whether the lexically determined identity of a phone exerts the appropriate context effects on surrounding phones. The current investigations focuses on compensation for coarticulation in vowel-fricative sequences, where the presence of a rounded vowel (/y/ rather than /i/) leads fricatives to be perceived as /s/ rather than //. This results was consistently found in all three experiments. A vowel was also more likely to be perceived as rounded /y/ if that lead listeners to be perceive words rather than nonwords (Dutch: meny, English id. vs. meni nonword). This lexical influence on the perception of the vowel had, however, no consistent influence on the perception of following fricative.