Publications

Abstract

During conversation, people integrate information from co-speech hand gestures with information in spoken language. For example, after hearing the sentence, "A piece of the log flew up and hit Carl in the face" while viewing a gesture directed at the nose, people tend to later report that the log hit Carl in the nose (information only in gesture) rather than in the face (information in speech). The cognitive and neural mechanisms that support the integration of gesture with speech are unclear. One possibility is that the hippocampus known for its role in relational memory and information integration is necessary for integrating gesture and speech. To test this possibility, we examined how patients with hippocampal amnesia and healthy and brain-damaged comparison participants express information from gesture in a narrative retelling task. Participants watched videos of an experimenter telling narratives that included hand gestures that contained supplementary information. Participants were asked to retell the narratives and their spoken retellings were assessed for the presence of information from gesture. For features that had been accompanied by supplementary gesture, patients with amnesia retold fewer of these features overall and fewer retellings that matched the speech from the narrative. Yet their retellings included features that contained information that had been present uniquely in. gesture in amounts that were not reliably different from comparison groups. Thus, a functioning hippocampus is not necessary for gesture-speech integration over short timescales. Providing unique information in gesture may enhance communication for individuals with declarative memory impairment, possibly via non-declarative memory mechanisms.

Abstract

How do conversational participants continue with turn-by-turn talk after a momentary lapse? If all participants forgo the option to speak at possible sequence completion, an extended silence may emerge that can indicate a lack of anything to talk about next. For the interaction to proceed recognizably as a conversation, the postlapse turn needs to implicate more talk. Using conversation analysis, I examine three practical alternatives regarding sequentially implicative postlapse turns: Participants may move to end the interaction, continue with some prior matter, or start something new. Participants are shown using resources grounded in the interaction’s overall structural organization, the materials from the interaction-so-far, the mentionables they bring to interaction, and the situated environment itself. Comparing these alternatives, there’s suggestive quantitative evidence for a preference for continuation. The analysis of lapse resolution shows lapses as places for the management of multiple possible courses of action. Data are in U.S. and UK English.

Abstract

The home of human language use is face-to-face interaction, a context in which communicative exchanges are characterised not only by bodily signals accompanying what is being said but also by a pattern of alternating turns at talk. This transition between turns is astonishingly fast—typically a mere 200-ms elapse between a current and a next speaker’s contribution—meaning that comprehending, producing, and coordinating conversational contributions in time is a significant challenge. This begs the question of whether the additional information carried by bodily signals facilitates or hinders language processing in this time-pressured environment. We present analyses of multimodal conversations revealing that bodily signals appear to profoundly influence language processing in interaction: Questions accompanied by gestures lead to shorter turn transition times—that is, to faster responses—than questions without gestures, and responses come earlier when gestures end before compared to after the question turn has ended. These findings hold even after taking into account prosodic patterns and other visual signals, such as gaze. The empirical findings presented here provide a first glimpse of the role of the body in the psycholinguistic processes underpinning human communication

Abstract

In face-to-face communication, recurring intervals of mutual gaze allow listeners to provide speakers with visual feedback (e.g. nodding). Here, we investigate the potential feedback function of one of the subtlest of human movements—eye blinking. While blinking tends to be subliminal, the significance of mutual gaze in human interaction raises the question whether the interruption of mutual gaze through blinking may also be communicative. To answer this question, we developed a novel, virtual reality-based experimental paradigm, which enabled us to selectively manipulate blinking in a virtual listener, creating small differences in blink duration resulting in ‘short’ (208 ms) and ‘long’ (607 ms) blinks. We found that speakers unconsciously took into account the subtle differences in listeners’ blink duration, producing substantially shorter answers in response to long listener blinks. Our findings suggest that, in addition to physiological, perceptual and cognitive functions, listener blinks are also perceived as communicative signals, directly influencing speakers’ communicative behavior in face-to-face communication. More generally, these findings may be interpreted as shedding new light on the evolutionary origins of mental-state signaling, which is a crucial ingredient for achieving mutual understanding in everyday social interaction.

Abstract

Very little research has attempted to describe normal human variation in female genitalia, and no studies have compared the visual images that women might use in constructing their ideas of average and acceptable genital morphology to see if there are any systematic differences. Our objective was to determine if visual depictions of the vulva differed according to their source so as to alert medical professionals and their patients to how these depictions might capture variation and thus influence perceptions of "normality". We conducted a comparative analysis by measuring (a) published visual materials from human anatomy textbooks in a university library, (b) feminist publications (both print and online) depicting vulval morphology, and (c) online pornography, focusing on the most visited and freely accessible sites in the UK. Post-hoc tests showed that labial protuberance was significantly less (p < .001, equivalent to approximately 7 mm) in images from online pornography compared to feminist publications. All five measures taken of vulval features were significantly correlated (p < .001) in the online pornography sample, indicating a less varied range of differences in organ proportions than the other sources where not all measures were correlated. Women and health professionals should be aware that specific sources of imagery may depict different types of genital morphology and may not accurately reflect true variation in the population, and consultations for genital surgeries should include discussion about the actual and perceived range of variation in female genital morphology.

Abstract

There is increasing evidence that genetic risk variants for non-syndromic cleft lip/palate (nsCL/P) are also associated with normal-range variation in facial morphology. However, previous analyses are mostly limited to candidate SNPs and findings have not been consistently replicated. Here, we used polygenic risk scores (PRS) to test for genetic overlap between nsCL/P and seven biologically relevant facial phenotypes. Where evidence was found of genetic overlap, we used bidirectional Mendelian randomization (MR) to test the hypothesis that genetic liability to nsCL/P is causally related to implicated facial phenotypes. Across 5,804 individuals of European ancestry from two studies, we found strong evidence, using PRS, of genetic overlap between nsCL/P and philtrum width; a 1 S.D. increase in nsCL/P PRS was associated with a 0.10 mm decrease in philtrum width (95% C.I. 0.054, 0.146; P = 2x10-5). Follow-up MR analyses supported a causal relationship; genetic variants for nsCL/P homogeneously cause decreased philtrum width. In addition to the primary analysis, we also identified two novel risk loci for philtrum width at 5q22.2 and 7p15.2 in our Genome-wide Association Study (GWAS) of 6,136 individuals. Our results support a liability threshold model of inheritance for nsCL/P, related to abnormalities in development of the philtrum.

Abstract

This paper examines ╪Ākhoe Hai||om, a Khoe language of the Khoisan family spoken in Northern Namibia. I document the way questions are posed in natural conversation, the actions the questions are used for and the manner in which they are responded to. I show that in this language speakers rely most heavily on content questions. I also find that speakers of ╪Ākhoe Hai||om address fewer questions to a specific individual than would be expected from prior research on Indo European languages. Finally, I discuss some possible explanations for these findings.

Abstract

Introduction to the special issue 'The Effects of Literacy on Cognition and Brain Functioning'

Abstract

In two eye-tracking studies we investigated the influence of Mandarin numeral classifiers - a grammatical category in the language - on online overt attention. Mandarin speakers were presented with simple sentences through headphones while their eye-movements to objects presented on a computer screen were monitored. The crucial question is what participants look at while listening to a pre-specified target noun. If classifier categories influence Mandarin speakers' general conceptual processing, then on hearing the target noun they should look at objects that are members of the same classifier category - even when the classifier is not explicitly present (cf. Huettig & Altmann, 2005). The data show that when participants heard a classifier (e.g., ba3, Experiment 1) they shifted overt attention significantly more to classifier-match objects (e.g., chair) than to distractor objects. But when the classifier was not explicitly presented in speech, overt attention to classifier-match objects and distractor objects did not differ (Experiment 2). This suggests that although classifier distinctions do influence eye-gaze behavior, they do so only during linguistic processing of that distinction and not in moment-to-moment general conceptual processing.

Abstract

The cause of developmental dyslexia is still unknown despite decades of intense research. Many causal explanations have been proposed, based on the range of impairments displayed by affected individuals. Here we draw attention to the fact that many of these impairments are also shown by illiterate individuals who have not received any or very little reading instruction. We suggest that this fact may not be coincidental and that the performance differences of both illiterates and individuals with dyslexia compared to literate controls are, to a substantial extent, secondary consequences of either reduced or suboptimal reading experience or a combination of both. The search for the primary causes of reading impairments will make progress if the consequences of quantitative and qualitative differences in reading experience are better taken into account and not mistaken for the causes of reading disorders. We close by providing four recommendations for future research.

Abstract

Theories of verbal self-monitoring generally assume an internal (pre-articulatory) monitoring channel, but there is debate about whether this channel relies on speech perception or on production-internal mechanisms. Perception-based theories predict that listening to one's own inner speech has similar behavioral consequences as listening to someone else's speech. Our experiment therefore registered eye-movements while speakers named objects accompanied by phonologically related or unrelated written words. The data showed that listening to one's own speech drives eye-movements to phonologically related words, just as listening to someone else's speech does in perception experiments. The time-course of these eye-movements was very similar to that in other-perception (starting 300 ms post-articulation), which demonstrates that these eye-movements were driven by the perception of overt speech, not inner speech. We conclude that external, but not internal monitoring, is based on speech perception.

Abstract

People from Western societies generally find it difficult to name odors. In trying to explain this, the olfactory literature has proposed several theories that focus heavily on properties of the odor itself but rarely discuss properties of the label used to describe it. However, recent studies show speakers of languages with dedicated smell lexicons can name odors with relative ease. Has the role of the lexicon been overlooked in the olfactory literature? Word production studies show properties of the label, such as word frequency and semantic context, influence naming; but this field of research focuses heavily on the visual domain. The current study combines methods from both fields to investigate word production for olfaction in two experiments. In the first experiment, participants named odors whose veridical labels were either high-frequency or low-frequency words in Dutch, and we found that odors with high-frequency labels were named correctly more often. In the second experiment, edibility was used for manipulating semantic context in search of a semantic interference effect, presenting the odors in blocks of edible and inedible odor source objects to half of the participants. While no evidence was found for a semantic interference effect, an effect of word frequency was again present. Our results demonstrate psycholinguistic variables—such as word frequency—are relevant for olfactory naming, and may, in part, explain why it is difficult to name odors in certain languages. Olfactory researchers cannot afford to ignore properties of an odor’s label.

Abstract

Ten healthy adults encountered pictures of unfamiliar archaic tools and successfully learned either their name, verbal definition of their usage, or both. Neural representation of the newly acquired information was probed with magnetoencephalography in an overt picture-naming task before and after learning, and in two categorization tasks after learning. Within 400 ms, activation proceeded from occipital through parietal to left temporal cortex, inferior frontal cortex (naming) and right temporal cortex (categorization). Comparison of naming of newly learned versus familiar pictures indicated that acquisition and maintenance of word forms are supported by the same neural network. Explicit access to newly learned phonology when such information was known strongly enhanced left temporal activation. By contrast, access to newly learned semantics had no comparable, direct neural effects. Both the behavioral learning pattern and neurophysiological results point to fundamentally different implementation of and access to phonological versus semantic features in processing pictured objects.

Abstract

The acquisition and maintenance of new language information, such as picking up new words, is a critical human ability that is needed throughout the life span. Most likely you learned the word “blog” quite recently as an adult, whereas the word “kipe,” which in the 1970s denoted stealing, now seems unfamiliar. Brain mechanisms underlying the long-term maintenance of new words have remained unknown, albeit they could provide important clues to the considerable individual differences in the ability to remember words. After successful training of a set of novel object names we tracked, over a period of 10 months, the maintenance of this new vocabulary in 10 human participants by repeated behavioral tests and magnetoencephalography measurements of overt picture naming. When namingrelated activation in the left frontal and temporal cortex was enhanced 1 week after training, compared with the level at the end of training, the individual retained a good command of the new vocabulary at 10 months; vice versa, individuals with reduced activation at 1 week posttraining were less successful in recalling the names at 10 months. This finding suggests an individual neural marker for memory, in the context of language. Learning is not over when the acquisition phase has been successfully completed: neural events during the access to recently established word representations appear to be important for the long-term outcome of learning.

Abstract

This study investigates the implicit sequence learning abilities of dyslexic children using an artificial grammar learning task with an extended exposure period. Twenty children with developmental dyslexia participated in the study and were matched with two control groups—one matched for age and other for reading skills. During 3 days, all participants performed an acquisition task, where they were exposed to colored geometrical forms sequences with an underlying grammatical structure. On the last day, after the acquisition task, participants were tested in a grammaticality classification task. Implicit sequence learning was present in dyslexic children, as well as in both control groups, and no differences between groups were observed. These results suggest that implicit learning deficits per se cannot explain the characteristic reading difficulties of the dyslexics.

Abstract

The articles in this volume are the result of an invited conference entitled "The Earliest Stages of Language Learning" held at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, in October 2009.

Abstract

The Abelson helper integration site 1 (AHI1) gene locus on chromosome 6q23 is among a group of candidate loci for schizophrenia susceptibility that were initially identified by linkage followed by linkage disequilibrium mapping, and subsequent replication of the association in an independent sample. Here, we present results of a replication study of AHI1 locus markers, previously implicated in schizophrenia, in a large European sample (in total 3907 affected and 7429 controls). Furthermore, we perform a meta-analysis of the implicated markers in 4496 affected and 18,920 controls. Both the replication study of new samples and the meta-analysis show evidence for significant overrepresentation of all tested alleles in patients compared with controls (meta-analysis; P = 8.2 x 10(-5)-1.7 x 10(-3), common OR = 1.09-1.11). The region contains two genes, AHI1 and C6orf217, and both genes-as well as the neighbouring phosphodiesterase 7B (PDE7B)-may be considered candidates for involvement in the genetic aetiology of schizophrenia.

Abstract

Thesaurus alignments play an important role in realising efficient access to heterogeneous Cultural Heritage data. Current technology, however, provides only limited value for such access as it fails to bridge the gap between theoretical study and user needs that stem from practical application requirements. In this paper, we explore common real-world problems of a library, and identify solutions that would greatly benefit from a more application embedded study, development, and evaluation of matching technology.

Abstract

The results of a self-paced reading study with German second language (L2) learners of Dutch showed that noun animacy affected the learners' on-line commitments when comprehending relative clauses in their L2. Earlier research has found that German L2 learners of Dutch do not show an on-line preference for subject–object word order in temporarily ambiguous relative clauses when no disambiguating material is available prior to the auxiliary verb. We investigated whether manipulating the animacy of the ambiguous noun phrases would push the learners to make an on-line commitment to either a subject- or object-first analysis. Results showed they performed like Dutch native speakers in that their reading times reflected an interaction between topichood and animacy in the on-line assignment of grammatical roles

Abstract

This study uses a sentence completion task with Swedish and Chinese L2 English speakers to investigate how L1 morphosyntax and L2 proficiency influence L2 English subject-verb agreement production. Chinese has limited nominal and verbal number morphology, while Swedish has robust noun phrase (NP) morphology but does not number-mark verbs. Results showed that like L1 English speakers, both L2 groups used grammatical and conceptual number to produce subject-verb agreement. However, only L1 Chinese speakers—and less-proficient speakers in both L2 groups—were similarly influenced by grammatical and conceptual number when producing the subject NP. These findings demonstrate how L2 proficiency, perhaps combined with cross-linguistic differences, influence L2 production and underscore that encoding of noun and verb number are not independent.

Abstract

Fiction is vital to our being. Many people enjoy engaging with fiction every day. Here we focus on literary reading as 1 instance of fiction consumption from a cognitive neuroscience perspective. The brain processes which play a role in the mental construction of fiction worlds and the related engagement with fictional characters, remain largely unknown. The authors discuss the neurocognitive poetics model (Jacobs, 2015a) of literary reading specifying the likely neuronal correlates of several key processes in literary reading, namely inference and situation model building, immersion, mental simulation and imagery, figurative language and style, and the issue of distinguishing fact from fiction. An overview of recent work on these key processes is followed by a discussion of methodological challenges in studying the brain bases of fiction processing

Abstract

This paper introduces Parselmouth, an open-source Python library that facilitates access to core functionality of Praat in Python, in an efficient and programmer-friendly way. We introduce and motivate the package, and present simple usage examples. Specifically, we focus on applications in data visualisation, file manipulation, audio manipulation, statistical analysis, and integration of Parselmouth into a Python-based experimental design for automated, in-the-loop manipulation of acoustic data. Parselmouth is available at https://github.com/YannickJadoul/Parselmouth.

Abstract

The mechanisms underlying language production are often assumed to be universal, and hence not contingent on a speaker’s language. This assumption is problematic for at least two reasons. Given the typological diversity of the world’s languages, only a small subset of languages has actually been studied psycholinguistically. And, in some cases, these investigations have returned results that at least superficially raise doubt about the assumption of universal production mechanisms. The goal of this paper is to illustrate the need for more psycholinguistic work on a typologically more diverse set of languages. We summarize cross-linguistic work on sentence production (specifically: grammatical encoding), focusing on examples where such work has improved our theoretical understanding beyond what studies on English alone could have achieved. But cross-linguistic research has much to offer beyond the testing of existing hypotheses: it can guide the development of theories by revealing the full extent of the human ability to produce language structures. We discuss the potential for interdisciplinary collaborations, and close with a remark on the impact of language endangerment on psycholinguistic research on understudied languages.

Abstract

Initial lexical activation in typical populations is a direct reflection of the goodness of fit between the presented stimulus and the intended target. In this study, lexical activation was investigated upon presentation of polysyllabic pseudowords (such as procodile for crocodile) for the atypical population of dyslexic adults to see to what extent mismatching phonemic information affects lexical activation in the face of overwhelming support for one specific lexical candidate. Results of an auditory lexical decision task showed that sensitivity to phonemic mismatch was less in the dyslexic population, compared to the respective control group. However, the dyslexic participants were outperformed by their controls only for word-initial mismatches. It is argued that a subtle speech decoding deficit affects lexical activation levels and makes spoken word processing less robust against distortion.

Abstract

This study investigates neighbourhood density effects on lexical decision performance (both accuracy and response times) of aphasic patients. Given earlier results on lexical activation and deactivation in Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia, the prediction was that smaller neighbourhood density effects would be found for Broca's aphasic patients, compared to age-matched non-brain-damaged control participants, whereas enlarged density effects were expected for Wernicke's aphasic patients. The results showed density effects for all three groups of listeners, and overall differences in performance between groups, but no significant interaction between neighbourhood density and listener group. Several factors are discussed to account for the present results.

Abstract

This study investigates the relative contributions of auditory and cognitive factors to the common finding that an increase in speech rate affects elderly listeners more than young listeners. Since a direct relation between non-auditory factors, such as age-related cognitive slowing, and fast speech performance has been difficult to demonstrate, the present study took an on-line, rather than off-line, approach and focused on processing time. Elderly and young listeners were presented with speech at two rates of time compression and were asked to detect pre-assigned target words as quickly as possible. A number of auditory and cognitive measures were entered in a statistical model as predictors of elderly participants’ fast speech performance: hearing acuity, an information processing rate measure, and two measures of reading speed. The results showed that hearing loss played a primary role in explaining elderly listeners’ increased difficulty with fast speech. However, non-auditory factors such as reading speed and the extent to which participants were affected by
increased rate of presentation in a visual analog of the listening experiment also predicted fast
speech performance differences among the elderly participants. These on-line results confirm that slowed information processing is indeed part of elderly listeners’ problem keeping up with fast language

Abstract

Background: There is evidence that, unlike in typical populations, initial lexical activation upon hearing spoken words in aphasic patients is not a direct reflection of the goodness of fit between the presented stimulus and the intended target. Earlier studies have mainly used short monosyllabic target words. Short words are relatively difficult to recognise because they are not highly redundant: changing one phoneme will often result in a (similar-sounding) different word. Aims: The present study aimed to investigate sensitivity of the lexical recognition system in aphasia. The focus was on longer words that contain more redundancy, to investigate whether aphasic adults might be impaired in deactivation of strongly activated lexical candidates. This was done by studying lexical activation upon presentation of spoken polysyllabic pseudowords (such as procodile) to see to what extent mismatching phonemic information leads to deactivation in the face of overwhelming support for one specific lexical candidate. Methods & Procedures: Speeded auditory lexical decision was used to investigate response time and accuracy to pseudowords with a word-initial or word-final phonemic mismatch in 21 aphasic patients and in an age-matched control group. Outcomes & Results: Results of an auditory lexical decision task showed that aphasic participants were less sensitive to phonemic mismatch if there was strong evidence for one particular lexical candidate, compared to the control group. Classifications of patients as Broca's vs Wernicke's or as fluent vs non-fluent did not reveal differences in sensitivity to mismatch between aphasia types. There was no reliable relationship between measures of auditory verbal short-term memory and lexical decision performance. Conclusions: It is argued that the aphasic results can best be viewed as lexical “overactivation” and that a verbal short-term memory account is less appropriate.

Abstract

People vary at most levels, from the molecular to the cognitive, and the shape of the hard palate (the bony roof of the mouth) is no exception. The patterns of variation in the hard palate are important for the forensic sciences and (palaeo)anthropology, and might also play a role in speech production, both in pathological cases and normal variation. Here we describe a method based on Bézier curves, whose main aim is to generate possible shapes of the hard palate in humans for use in computer simulations of speech production and language evolution. Moreover, our method can also capture existing patterns of variation using few and easy-to-interpret parameters, and fits actual data obtained from MRI traces very well with as little as two or three free parameters. When compared to the widely-used Principal Component Analysis (PCA), our method fits actual data slightly worse for the same number of degrees of freedom. However, it is much better at generating new shapes without requiring a calibration sample, its parameters have clearer interpretations, and their ranges are grounded in geometrical considerations. © 2018 Janssen et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

The authors compared sublexical and supralexical approaches to morphological processing with unambiguous and ambiguous inflected words and words with ambiguous stems in 3 masked and unmasked priming experiments in Finnish. Experiment 1 showed equal facilitation for all prime types with a short 60-ms stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) but significant facilitation for unambiguous words only with a long 300-ms SOA. Experiment 2 showed that all potential readings of ambiguous inflections were activated under a short SOA. Whereas the prime-target form overlap did not affect the results under a short SOA, it significantly modulated the results with a long SOA. Experiment 3 confirmed that the results from masked priming were modulated by the morphological structure of the words but not by the prime-target form overlap alone. The results support approaches in which early prelexical morphological processing is driven by morph-based segmentation and form is used to cue selection between 2 candidates only during later processing.

Abstract

Discrete phonological phenomena form our conscious experience of language: continuous changes in pitch appear as distinct tones to the speakers of tone languages, whereas the speakers of quantity languages experience duration categorically. The categorical nature of our linguistic experience is directly reflected in the traditionally clear-cut linguistic classification of languages into tonal or non-tonal. However, some evidence suggests that duration and pitch are fundamentally interconnected and co-vary in signaling word meaning in non-tonal languages as well. We show that pitch information affects real-time language processing in a (non-tonal) quantity language. The results suggest that there is no unidirectional causal link from a genetically-based perceptual sensitivity towards pitch information to the appearance of a tone language. They further suggest that the contrastive categories tone and quantity may be based on simultaneously co-varying properties of the speech signal and the processing system, even though the conscious experience of the speakers may highlight only one discrete variable at a time.

Abstract

When listening to speech, we often benefit when also seeing the speaker talk. If this benefit is not domain-specific for speech, then the recognition of sung lyrics should likewise benefit from seeing the singer. Nevertheless, previous research failed to obtain a substantial improvement in that domain. Our study shows that this failure was not due to inherent differences between singing and speaking but rather to less informative visual presentations. By presenting a professional singer, we found a substantial audiovisual benefit of about 35% improvement for lyrics recognition. This benefit was further robust across participants, phrases, and repetition of the test materials. Our results provide the first evidence that lyrics recognition just like speech and music perception is a multimodal process.

Abstract

In the present study, we examined the distribution and processing of information over time in auditory and visual speech as it is used in unimodal and bimodal word recognition. English consonant—vowel—consonant words representing all possible initial consonants were presented as auditory, visual, or audiovisual speech in a gating task. The distribution of information over time varied across and within features. Visual speech information was generally fully available early during the phoneme, whereas auditory information was still accumulated. An audiovisual benefit was therefore already found early during the phoneme. The nature of the audiovisual recognition benefit changed, however, as more of the phoneme was presented. More features benefited at short gates rather than at longer ones. Visual speech information plays, therefore, a more important role early during the phoneme rather than later. The results of the study showed the complex interplay of information across modalities and time, since this is essential in determining the time course of audiovisual spoken-word recognition.

Abstract

English-learning 7.5-month-olds are heavily biased to perceive stressed syllables as word onsets. By 11 months, however, infants begin segmenting non-initially stressed words from speech.Using the same artificial language methodology as Johnson and Jusczyk (2001), we explored the possibility that the emergence of this ability is linked to a decreased reliance on prosodic cues to word boundaries accompanied by an increased reliance on syllable distribution cues. In a baseline study, where only statistical cues to word boundaries were present, infants exhibited a familiarity preference for statistical words. When conflicting stress cues were added to the speech stream, infants exhibited a familiarity preference for stress as opposed to statistical words. This was interpreted as evidence that 11-month-olds weight stress cues to word boundaries more heavily than statistical cues. Experiment 2 further investigated these results with a language containing convergent cues to word boundaries. The results of Experiment 2 were not conclusive. A third experiment using new stimuli and a different experimental design supported the conclusion that 11-month-olds rely more heavily on prosodic than statistical cues to word boundaries. We conclude that the emergence of the ability to segment non-initially stressed words from speech is not likely to be tied to an increased reliance on syllable distribution cues relative to stress cues, but instead may emerge due to an increased reliance on and integration of a broad array of segmentation cues.

Abstract

Talkers are recognized more accurately if they are speaking the listeners’ native language rather than an unfamiliar language. This “language familiarity effect” has been shown not to depend upon comprehension and must instead involve language sound patterns. We further examine the level of sound-pattern processing involved, by comparing talker recognition in foreign languages versus two varieties of English, by (a) English speakers of one variety, (b) English speakers of the other variety, and (c) non-native listeners (more familiar with one of the varieties). All listener groups performed better with native than foreign speech, but no effect of language variety appeared: Native listeners discriminated talkers equally well in each, with the native variety never outdoing the other variety, and non-native listeners discriminated talkers equally poorly in each, irrespective of the variety's familiarity. The results suggest that this talker recognition effect rests not on simple familiarity, but on an abstract level of phonological processing

Abstract

Past research has demonstrated that infants can rapidly extract syllable distribution information from an artificial language and use this knowledge to infer likely word boundaries in speech. However, artificial languages are extremely simplified with respect to natural language. In this study, we ask whether infants’ ability to track transitional probabilities between syllables in an artificial language can scale up to the challenge of natural language. We do so by testing both 5.5- and 8-month-olds’ ability to segment an artificial language containing four words of uniform length (all CVCV) or four words of varying length (two CVCV, two CVCVCV). The transitional probability cues to word boundaries were held equal across the two languages. Both age groups segmented the language containing words of uniform length, demonstrating that even 5.5-month-olds are extremely sensitive to the conditional probabilities in their environment. However, either age group succeeded in segmenting the language containing words of varying length, despite the fact that the transitional probability cues defining word boundaries were equally strong in the two languages. We conclude that infants’ statistical learning abilities may not be as robust as earlier studies have suggested.

Abstract

The nature of social life in human prehistory is elusive, yet knowing how kinship systems evolve is critical for understanding population history and cultural diversity. Post-marital residence rules specify sex-specific dispersal and kin association, influencing the pattern of genetic markers across populations. Cultural phylogenetics allows us to practise 'virtual archaeology' on these aspects of social life that leave no trace in the archaeological record. Here we show that early Austronesian societies practised matrilocal post-marital residence. Using a Markov-chain Monte Carlo comparative method implemented in a Bayesian phylogenetic framework, we estimated the type of residence at each ancestral node in a sample of Austronesian language trees spanning 135 Pacific societies. Matrilocal residence has been hypothesized for proto-Oceanic society (ca 3500 BP), but we find strong evidence that matrilocality was predominant in earlier Austronesian societies ca 5000-4500 BP, at the root of the language family and its early branches. Our results illuminate the divergent patterns of mtDNA and Y-chromosome markers seen in the Pacific. The analysis of present-day cross-cultural data in this way allows us to directly address cultural evolutionary and life-history processes in prehistory.

Abstract

Explanations in the domain of kinship can be sought on several different levels: Jones addresses online processing, as well as issues of origins and innateness. We argue that his framework can more usefully be applied at the levels of developmental and historical change, the latter especially. A phylogenetic approach to the diversity of kinship terminologies is most urgently required.

Abstract

The mutual exclusivity (ME) assumption is proposed to facilitate early word learning by guiding infants to map novel words to novel referents. This study assessed the emergence and use of ME to both disambiguate and retain the meanings of novel words across development in 18‐month‐old monolingual and bilingual children (Experiment 1; N = 58), and in a sub‐group of these children again at 24 months of age (Experiment 2: N = 32). Both monolinguals and bilinguals employed ME to select the referent of a novel label to a similar extent at 18 and 24 months. At 18 months, there were also no differences in novel word retention between the two language‐background groups. However, at 24 months, only monolinguals showed the ability to retain these label–object mappings. These findings indicate that the development of the ME assumption as a reliable word‐learning strategy is shaped by children's individual language exposure and experience with language use.

Abstract

In this article, we review research on child–robot interaction (CRI) to discuss how social robots can be used to scaffold language learning in young children. First we provide reasons why robots can be useful for teaching first and second languages to children. Then we review studies on CRI that used robots to help children learn vocabulary and produce language. The studies vary in first and second languages and demographics of the learners (typically developing children and children with hearing and communication impairments). We conclude that, although social robots are useful for teaching language to children, evidence suggests that robots are not as effective as human teachers. However, this conclusion is not definitive because robots that tutor students in language have not been evaluated rigorously and technology is advancing rapidly. We suggest that CRI offers an opportunity for research and list possible directions for that work.

Abstract

Gesture and speech are assumed to form an integrated system during language production. Based on this view, we propose the integrated‐systems hypothesis, which explains two ways in which gesture and speech are integrated—through mutual and obligatory interactions—in language comprehension. Experiment 1 presented participants with action primes (e.g., someone chopping vegetables) and bimodal speech and gesture targets. Participants related primes to targets more quickly and accurately when they contained congruent information (speech: “chop”; gesture: chop) than when they contained incongruent information (speech: “chop”; gesture: twist). Moreover, the strength of the incongruence affected processing, with fewer errors for weak incongruities (speech: “chop”; gesture: cut) than for strong incongruities (speech: “chop”; gesture: twist). Crucial for the integrated‐systems hypothesis, this influence was bidirectional. Experiment 2 demonstrated that gesture’s influence on speech was obligatory. The results confirm the integrated‐systems hypothesis and demonstrate that gesture and speech form an integrated system in language comprehension.

Abstract

In Dutch and German, the canonical order of subject, object(s) and finite verb is ‘verb-second’ (V2) in main but ‘verb-final’ (VF) in subordinate clauses. This occasionally leads to the production of noncanonical word orders. Familiar examples are causative and argumentative clauses introduced by a subordinating conjunction (Du. omdat, Ger. weil ‘because’): the omdat/weil-V2 phenomenon. Such clauses may also be introduced by coordinating conjunctions (Du. want, Ger. denn), which license V2 exclusively. However, want/denn-VF structures are unknown. We present the results of a corpus study on the incidence of omdat-V2 in spoken Dutch, and compare them to published data on weil-V2 in spoken German. Basic findings: omdat-V2 is much less frequent than weil-V2 (ratio almost 1:8); and the frequency relations between coordinating and subordinating conjunctions are opposite (want >> omdat; denn << weil). We propose that conjunction selection and V2/VF selection proceed partly independently, and sometimes miscommunicate—e.g. yielding omdat/weil paired with V2. Want/denn-VF pairs do not occur because want/denn clauses are planned as autonomous sentences, which take V2 by default. We sketch a simple feedforward neural network with two layers of nodes (representing conjunctions and word orders, respectively) that can simulate the observed data pattern through inhibition-based competition of the alternative choices within the node layers.

Abstract

This article presents a psycholinguistically inspired approach to the syntax of clause-level coordination and coordinate ellipsis. It departs from the assumption that coordinations are structurally similar to so-called appropriateness repairs — an important type of self-repairs in spontaneous speech. Coordinate structures and appropriateness repairs can both be viewed as “update” constructions. Updating is defined as a special sentence production mode that efficiently revises or augments existing sentential structure in response to modifications in the speaker's communicative intention. This perspective is shown to offer an empirically satisfactory and theoretically parsimonious account of two prominent types of coordinate ellipsis, in particular “forward conjunction reduction” (FCR) and “gapping” (including “long-distance gapping” and “subgapping”). They are analyzed as different manifestations of “incremental updating” — efficient updating of only part of the existing sentential structure. Based on empirical data from Dutch and German, novel treatments are proposed for both types of clausal coordinate ellipsis. The coordination-as-updating perspective appears to explain some general properties of coordinate structure: the existence of the well-known “coordinate structure constraint”, and the attractiveness of three-dimensional representations of coordination. Moreover, two other forms of coordinate ellipsis — SGF (“subject gap in finite clauses with fronted verb”), and “backward conjunction reduction” (BCR) (also known as “right node raising” or RNR) — are shown to be incompatible with the notion of incremental updating. Alternative theoretical interpretations of these phenomena are proposed. The four types of clausal coordinate ellipsis — SGF, gapping, FCR and BCR — are argued to originate in four different stages of sentence production: Intending (i.e., preparing the communicative intention), conceptualization, grammatical encoding, and phonological encoding, respectively.

Abstract

When you compare the behavior of two different age groups which are trying to master the same sensori-motor or cognitive skill, you are likely to discover varying learning routes: different stages, different intervals between stages, or even different orderings of stages. Such heterogeneous learning trajectories may be caused by at least six different types of factors: (1) Initial state: the kinds and levels of skills the learners have available at the onset of the learning episode. (2) Learning mechanisms: rule-based, inductive, connectionist, parameter setting, and so on. (3) Input and feedback characteristics: learning stimuli, information about success and failure. (4) Information processing mechanisms: capacity limitations, attentional biases, response preferences. (5) Energetic variables: motivation, emotional reactions. (6) Final state: the fine-structure of kinds and levels of subskills at the end of the learning episode. This applies to language acquisition as well. First and second language learners probably differ on all six factors. Nevertheless, the debate between advocates and opponents of the Fundamental Difference Hypothesis concerning L1 and L2 acquisition have looked almost exclusively at the first two factors. Those who believe that L1 learners have access to Universal Grammar whereas L2 learners rely on language processing strategies, postulate different learning mechanisms (UG parameter setting in L1, more general inductive strategies in L2 learning). Pienemann opposes this view and, based on his Processability Theory, argues that L1 and L2 learners start out from different initial states: they come to the grammar learning task with different structural hypotheses (SOV versus SVO as basic word order of German).

Abstract

This paper presents a theory of the syntactic aspects of human sentence production. An important characteristic of unprepared speech is that overt pronunciation of a sentence can be initiated before the speaker has completely worked out the meaning content he or she is going to express in that sentence. Apparently, the speaker is able to build up a syntactically coherent utterance out of a series of syntactic fragments each rendering a new part of the meaning content. This incremental, left-to-right mode of sentence production is the central capability of the proposed Incremental Procedural Grammar (IPG). Certain other properties of spontaneous speech, as derivable from speech errors, hesitations, self-repairs, and language pathology, are accounted for as well. The psychological plausibility thus gained by the grammar appears compatible with a satisfactory level of linguistic plausibility in that sentences receive structural descriptions which are in line with current theories of grammar. More importantly, an explanation for the existence of configurational conditions on transformations and other linguistics rules is proposed. The basic design feature of IPG which gives rise to these psychologically and linguistically desirable properties, is the “Procedures + Stack” concept. Sentences are built not by a central constructing agency which overlooks the whole process but by a team of syntactic procedures (modules) which work-in parallel-on small parts of the sentence, have only a limited overview, and whose sole communication channel is a stock. IPG covers object complement constructions, interrogatives, and word order in main and subordinate clauses. It handles unbounded dependencies, cross-serial dependencies and coordination phenomena such as gapping and conjunction reduction. It is also capable of generating self-repairs and elliptical answers to questions. IPG has been implemented as an incremental Dutch sentence generator written in LISP.

Abstract

The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, is creating a state-of-the-art web environment for the ISO TC 37 (terminology and other language and content resources) metadata registry. This Data Category Registry (DCR) is called ISOcat and encompasses data categories for a broad range of language resources. Under the governance of the DCR Board, ISOcat provides an open work space for creating data category specifications, defining Data Category Selections (DCSs) (domain-specific groups of data categories), and standardising selected data categories and DCSs. Designers visualise future interactivity among the DCR, reference registries and ontological knowledge spaces

Abstract

We report a large‐scale electrophysiological study of infant speech segmentation, in which over 100 English‐acquiring 9‐month‐olds were exposed to unfamiliar bisyllabic words embedded in sentences (e.g., He saw a wild eagle up there), after which their brain responses to either the just‐familiarized word (eagle) or a control word (coral) were recorded. When initial exposure occurs in continuous speech, as here, past studies have reported that even somewhat older infants do not reliably recognize target words, but that successful segmentation varies across children. Here, we both confirm and further uncover the nature of this variation. The segmentation response systematically varied across individuals and was related to their vocabulary development. About one‐third of the group showed a left‐frontally located relative negativity in response to familiar versus control targets, which has previously been described as a mature response. Another third showed a similarly located positive‐going reaction (a previously described immature response), and the remaining third formed an intermediate grouping that was primarily characterized by an initial response delay. A fine‐grained group‐level analysis suggested that a developmental shift to a lexical mode of processing occurs toward the end of the first year, with variation across individual infants in the exact timing of this shift.

Abstract

Humans differ in innumerable ways, with considerable variation observable at every level of description, from the molecular to the social. Traditionally, linguistic and psycholinguistic theory has downplayed the possibility of meaningful differences in language across individuals. However, it is becoming increasingly evident that there is
significant variation among speakers at any age as well as across the lifespan. In this paper, we review recent research in psycholinguistics, and argue that a focus on individual differences provides a crucial source of evidence that bears strongly upon core issues in theories of the acquisition and processing of language; specifically, the role of experience in language acquisition, processing, and attainment, and the architecture of the language faculty.

Abstract

Usage-based approaches to language acquisition argue that children acquire the grammar of their target language using general-cognitive learning principles. The current paper reports on an experiment that tested a central assumption of the usage-based approach: argument structure patterns are connected to high frequency verbs that facilitate acquisition. Sixty children (N = 60) aged 4- and 6-years participated in a sentence recall/lexical priming experiment that manipulated the frequency with which the target verbs occurred in the finite sentential complement construction in English. The results showed that the children performed better on sentences that contained high frequency verbs. Furthermore, the children’s performance suggested that their knowledge of finite sentential complements relies most heavily on one particular verb – think, supporting arguments made by Goldberg [Goldberg, A.E., 2006. Constructions at Work: The Nature of Generalization in Language. Oxford University Press, Oxford], who argued that skewed input facilitates language learning.

Abstract

Two studies showed that adults who reported having an imaginary companion as a child differed from adults who did not on certain personality dimensions. The first yielded a higher mean on the Gough Creative Personality Scale for the group who had imaginary companions. Study 2 showed that such adults scored higher on the Achievement and Absorption subscales of Tellegen's Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire. The results suggest that some differences reported in the developmental literature may be observed in adults

Abstract

Sentence-final particles (SFPs) as bound morphemes in Japanese have no obvious effect on the truth conditions of a sentence. However, they encompass a diverse range of usages, from typical to atypical, according to the context and the interpersonal relationships in the specific situation. The most frequent particle,-ne, is typically used after addressee-oriented propositions for information sharing, while another frequent particle,-yo, is typically used after addresser-oriented propositions to elicit a sense of strength. This study sheds light on individual differences among native speakers in flexibly understanding such linguistic markers based on their mentalizing ability (i.e., the ability to infer the mental states of others). Two experiments employing electroencephalography (EEG) consistently showed enhanced early posterior negativities (EPN) for atypical SFP usage compared to typical usage, especially when understanding-ne compared to -yo, in both an SFP appropriateness judgment task and a content comprehension task. Importantly, the amplitude of the EPN for atypical usages of-ne was significantly higher in participants with lower mentalizing ability than in those with a higher mentalizing ability. This effect plausibly reflects low-ability mentalizers' stronger sense of strangeness toward atypical-ne usage. While high-ability mentalizers may aptly perceive others' attitudes via their various usages of-ne, low-ability mentalizers seem to adopt a more stereotypical understanding. These results attest to the greater degree of difficulty low-ability mentalizers have in establishing a smooth regulation of interpersonal distance during social encounters.

Abstract

Verbs are traditionally assumed to have an “argument structure”, which imposes various constraints on form and meaning of the noun phrases that go with the verb, and an “event structure”, which defines certain temporal characteristics of the “event” to which the verb relates. In this paper, I argue that these two structures should be brought together. The verb assigns descriptive properties to one or more arguments at one or more temporal intervals, hence verbs have an “argument-time structure”. This argument-time structure as well as the descriptive properties connected to it can be modified by various morphological and syntactic operations. This approach allows a relatively simple analysis of familiar but not well-defined temporal notions such as tense, aspect and Aktionsart. This will be illustrated for English. It will be shown that a few simple morphosyntactic operations on the argument-time structure might account for form and meaning of the perfect, the progressive, the passive and related constructions.

Abstract

During the last 25 years, second language acquisition (SLA) research hasmade considerable progress, but is still far from proving a solid basis for foreign language teaching, or from a general theory of SLA. In addition, its status within the linguistic disciplines is still very low. I argue this has not much to do with low empirical or theoretical standards in the field—in this regard, SLA research is fully competitive—but with a particular perspective on the acquisition process: SLA researches learners' utterances as deviations from a certain target, instead of genuine manifestations of underlying language capacity; it analyses them in terms of what they are not rather than what they are. For some purposes such a "target deviation perspective" makes sense, but it will not help SLA researchers to substantially and independently contribute to a deeper understanding of the structure and function of the human language faculty. Therefore, these findings will remain of limited interest to other scientists until SLA researchers consider learner varieties a normal, in fact typical, manifestation of this unique human capacity.

Abstract

Zwaan et al. mention that young researchers should conduct replications as a
small part of their portfolio. We extend this proposal and suggest that conducting and
reporting replications should become an integral part of PhD projects and be taken into
account in their assessment. We discuss how this would help not only scientific
advancement, but also PhD candidates’ careers.

Abstract

The Dravidian language family consists of about 80 varieties (Hammarström H. 2016 Glottolog 2.7) spoken by 220 million people across southern and central India and surrounding countries (Steever SB. 1998 In The Dravidian languages (ed. SB Steever), pp. 1–39: 1). Neither the geographical origin of the Dravidian language homeland nor its exact dispersal through time are known. The history of these languages is crucial for understanding prehistory in Eurasia, because despite their current restricted range, these languages played a significant role in influencing other language groups including Indo-Aryan (Indo-European) and Munda (Austroasiatic) speakers. Here, we report the results of a Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of cognate-coded lexical data, elicited first hand from native speakers, to investigate the subgrouping of the Dravidian language family, and provide dates for the major points of diversification. Our results indicate that the Dravidian language family is approximately 4500 years old, a finding that corresponds well with earlier linguistic and archaeological studies. The main branches of the Dravidian language family (North, Central, South I, South II) are recovered, although the placement of languages within these main branches diverges from previous classifications. We find considerable uncertainty with regard to the relationships between the main branches.

Abstract

Hemispheric asymmetry is a cardinal feature of human brain organization. Altered brain asymmetry has also been linked to some cognitive and neuropsychiatric disorders. Here the ENIGMA consortium presents the largest ever analysis of cerebral cortical asymmetry and its variability across individuals. Cortical thickness and surface area were assessed in MRI scans of 17,141 healthy individuals from 99 datasets worldwide. Results revealed widespread asymmetries at both hemispheric and regional levels, with a generally thicker cortex but smaller surface area in the left hemisphere relative to the right. Regionally, asymmetries of cortical thickness and/or surface area were found in the inferior frontal gyrus, transverse temporal gyrus, parahippocampal gyrus, and entorhinal cortex. These regions are involved in lateralized functions, including language and visuospatial processing. In addition to population-level asymmetries, variability in brain asymmetry was related to sex, age, and intracranial volume. Interestingly, we did not find significant associations between asymmetries and handedness. Finally, with two independent pedigree datasets (N = 1,443 and 1,113, respectively), we found several asymmetries showing significant, replicable heritability. The structural asymmetries identified, and their variabilities and heritability provide a reference resource for future studies on the genetic basis of brain asymmetry and altered laterality in cognitive, neurological, and psychiatric disorders.

Abstract

Statistical inference plays a critical role in modern scientific research, however, the dominant method for statistical inference in science, null hypothesis significance testing (NHST), is often misunderstood and misused, which leads to unreproducible findings. To address this issue, researchers propose to adopt the Bayes factor as an alternative to NHST. The Bayes factor is a principled Bayesian tool for model selection and hypothesis testing, and can be interpreted as the strength for both the null hypothesis H0 and the alternative hypothesis H1 based on the current data. Compared to NHST, the Bayes factor has the following advantages: it quantifies the evidence that the data provide for both the H0 and the H1, it is not “violently biased” against H0, it allows one to monitor the evidence as the data accumulate, and it does not depend on sampling plans. Importantly, the recently developed open software JASP makes the calculation of Bayes factor accessible for most researchers in psychology, as we demonstrated for the t-test. Given these advantages, adopting the Bayes factor will improve psychological researchers’ statistical inferences. Nevertheless, to make the analysis more reproducible, researchers should keep their data analysis transparent and open.

Abstract

To compare abstract structural and lexicalist accounts of syntactic processes in sentence formulation, we examined the effectiveness of nonidiomatic and idiomatic phrasal verbs in inducing structural generalizations. Three experiments made use of a syntactic priming paradigm in which participants recalled sentences they had read in rapid serial visual presentation. Prime and target sentences contained phrasal verbs with particles directly following the verb (pull off a sweatshirt) or following the direct object (pull a sweatshirt off). Idiomatic primes used verbs whose figurative meaning cannot be straightforwardly derived from the literal meaning of the main verb (e.g., pull off a robbery) and are commonly treated as stored lexical units. Particle placement in sentences was primed by both nonidiomatic and idiomatic verbs. Experiment 1 showed that the syntax of idiomatic and nonidiomatic phrasal verbs is amenable to priming, and Experiments 2 and 3 compared the priming patterns created by idiomatic and nonidiomatic primes. Despite differences in idiomaticity and structural flexibility, both types of phrasal verbs induced structural generalizations and differed little in their ability to do so. The findings are interpreted in terms of the role of abstract structural processes in language production.

Abstract

Source monitoring can be influenced by information that is external to the study context, such as beliefs and general knowledge (Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993). We investigated the extent to which metamnemonic judgments predict memory for items and sources when schematic information about the sources is or is not provided at encoding. Participants made judgments of learning (JOLs) to statements presented by two speakers and were informed of the occupation of each speaker either before or after the encoding session. Replicating earlier work, prior knowledge decreased participants' tendency to erroneously attribute statements to schematically consistent but episodically incorrect speakers. The origin of this effect can be understood by examining the relationship between JOLs and performance: JOLs were equally predictive of item and source memory in the absence of prior knowledge, but were exclusively predictive of source memory when participants knew of the relationship between speakers and statements during study. Background knowledge determines the information that people solicit in service of metamnemonic judgments, suggesting that these judgments reflect control processes during encoding that reduce schematic errors.

Abstract

The leading theories of sentence planning – Hierarchical Incrementality and Linear Incrementality – differ in their assumptions about the coordination of processes that map preverbal information onto language. Previous studies showed that, in native (L1) speakers, this coordination can vary with the ease of executing the message-level and sentence-level processes necessary to plan and produce an utterance. We report the first series of experiments to systematically examine how linguistic experience influences sentence planning in native (L1) speakers (i.e., speakers with life-long experience using the target language) and non-native (L2) speakers (i.e., speakers with less experience using the target language). In all experiments, speakers spontaneously generated one-sentence descriptions of simple events in Dutch (L1) and English (L2). Analyses of eye-movements across early and late time windows (pre- and post-400 ms) compared the extent of early message-level encoding and the onset of linguistic encoding. In Experiment 1, speakers were more likely to engage in extensive message-level encoding and to delay sentence-level encoding when using their L2. Experiments 2–4 selectively facilitated encoding of the preverbal message, encoding of the agent character (i.e., the first content word in active sentences), and encoding of the sentence verb (i.e., the second content word in active sentences) respectively. Experiment 2 showed that there is no delay in the onset of L2 linguistic encoding when speakers are familiar with the events. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that the delay in the onset of L2 linguistic encoding is not due to speakers delaying encoding of the agent, but due to a preference to encode information needed to select a suitable verb early in the formulation process. Overall, speakers prefer to temporally separate message-level from sentence-level encoding and to prioritize encoding of relational information when planning L2 sentences, consistent with Hierarchical Incrementality

Abstract

Recognizing word boundaries in continuous speech requires detailed knowledge of the native language. In the first year of life, infants acquire considerable word segmentation abilities. Infants at this early stage in word segmentation rely to a large extent on the metrical pattern of their native language, at least in stress-based languages. In Dutch and English (both languages with a preferred trochaic stress pattern), segmentation of strong-weak words develops rapidly between 7 and 10 months of age. Nevertheless, trochaic languages contain not only strong-weak words but also words with a weak-strong stress pattern. In this article, we present electrophysiological evidence of the beginnings of weak-strong word segmentation in Dutch 10-month-olds. At this age, the ability to combine different cues for efficient word segmentation does not yet seem to be completely developed. We provide evidence that Dutch infants still largely rely on strong syllables, even for the segmentation of weak-strong words.

Abstract

The paper investigates the use of manner verbs (e.g. marcher 'to walk', courir 'to run') with so-called locative prepositions (e.g. dans 'in', sous 'under') in the descriptions of motion in French, as in Il a couru dans le bureau 'He ran in (to) the office', to explore the type of events such constructions express and the factors that influence their interpretation. Based on an extensive corpus survey, the study shows that, contrary to the general claim according to which such constructions express typically motion in some location, they are also frequently used to express change of location. The study discusses the interplay of various factors that contribute to the interpretation of these constructions, including semantic, aspectual and pragmatic factors.

Abstract

In order to investigate conflicts between semantics and syntax, we recorded ERPs, while participants read Dutch sentences. Sentences containing conflicts between syntax and semantics (Fred eats in a sandwich…/ Fred eats a restaurant…) elicited an N400. These results show that conflicts between syntax and semantics not necessarily lead to P600 effects and are in line with the processing competition account. According to this parallel account the syntactic and semantic processing streams are fully interactive and information from one level can influence the processing at another level. The relative strength of the cues of the processing streams determines which level is affected most strongly by the conflict. The processing competition account maintains the distinction between the N400 as index for semantic processing and the P600 as index for structural processing.

Abstract

Low-frequency neural entrainment to rhythmic input
has been hypothesized as a canonical mechanism
that shapes sensory perception in time. Neural
entrainment is deemed particularly relevant for
speech analysis, as it would contribute to the extraction
of discrete linguistic elements from continuous
acoustic signals. However, its causal influence in
speech perception has been difficult to establish.
Here, we provide evidence that oscillations build temporal
predictions about the duration of speech tokens
that affect perception. Using magnetoencephalography
(MEG), we studied neural dynamics during
listening to sentences that changed in speech rate.
Weobserved neural entrainment to preceding speech
rhythms persisting for several cycles after the change
in rate. The sustained entrainment was associated
with changes in the perceived duration of the last
word’s vowel, resulting in the perception of words
with different meanings. These findings support oscillatory
models of speech processing, suggesting that
neural oscillations actively shape speech perception.