Publications

Abstract

Studies exploring the role of neural oscillations in cognition have revealed sustained increases in alpha-band (∼8–14 Hz) power during the delay period of delayed-recognition short-term memory tasks. These increases have been proposed to reflect the inhibition, for example, of cortical areas representing task-irrelevant information, or of potentially interfering representations from previous trials. Another possibility, however, is that elevated delay-period alpha-band power (DPABP) reflects the selection and maintenance of information, rather than, or in addition to, the inhibition of task-irrelevant information. In the present study, we explored these possibilities using a delayed-recognition paradigm in which the presence and task relevance of shape information was systematically manipulated across trial blocks and electroencephalographic was used to measure alpha-band power. In the first trial block, participants remembered locations marked by identical black circles. The second block featured the same instructions, but locations were marked by unique shapes. The third block featured the same stimulus presentation as the second, but with pretrial instructions indicating, on a trial-by-trial basis, whether memory for shape or location was required, the other dimension being irrelevant. In the final block, participants remembered the unique pairing of shape and location for each stimulus. Results revealed minimal DPABP in each of the location-memory conditions, whether locations were marked with identical circles or with unique task-irrelevant shapes. In contrast, alpha-band power increases were observed in both the shape-memory condition, in which location was task irrelevant, and in the critical final condition, in which both shape and location were task relevant. These results provide support for the proposal that alpha-band oscillations reflect the retention of shape information and/or shape–location associations in short-term memory.

Abstract

A visual fixation study tested whether seven-month-olds can discriminate between different talkers. The infants were first habituated to talkers producing sentences in either a familiar or unfamiliar language, then heard test sentences from previously unheard speakers, either in the language used for habituation, or in another language. When the language at test mismatched that in habituation, infants always noticed the change. When language remained constant and only talker altered, however, infants detected the change only if the language was the native tongue. Adult listeners with a different native tongue than the infants did not reproduce the discriminability patterns shown by the infants, and infants detected neither voice nor language changes in reversed speech; both these results argue against explanation of the native-language voice discrimination in terms of acoustic properties of the stimuli. The ability to identify talkers is, like many other perceptual abilities, strongly influenced by early life experience.

Abstract

Background: Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterised by social and communication difficulties in day-to-day life, including problems in recognising emotions. However, experimental investigations of emotion recognition ability in ASD have been equivocal; hampered by small sample sizes, narrow IQ range and over-focus on the visual modality. Methods: We tested 99 adolescents (mean age 15;6 years, mean IQ 85) with an ASD and 57 adolescents without an ASD (mean age 15;6 years, mean IQ 88) on a facial emotion recognition task and two vocal emotion recognition tasks (one verbal; one non-verbal). Recognition of happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise and disgust were tested. Using structural equation modelling, we conceptualised emotion recognition ability as a multimodal construct, measured by the three tasks. We examined how the mean levels of recognition of the six emotions differed by group (ASD vs. non-ASD) and IQ (>= 80 vs. < 80). Results: There was no significant difference between groups for the majority of emotions and analysis of error patterns suggested that the ASD group were vulnerable to the same pattern of confusions between emotions as the non-ASD group. However, recognition ability was significantly impaired in the ASD group for surprise. IQ had a strong and significant effect on performance for the recognition of all six emotions, with higher IQ adolescents outperforming lower IQ adolescents. Conclusions: The findings do not suggest a fundamental difficulty with the recognition of basic emotions in adolescents with ASD.

Abstract

Social structure in human societies is underpinned by the variable expression of ideas about relatedness between different types of kin. We express these ideas through language in our kin terminology: to delineate who is kin and who is not, and to attach meanings to the types of kin labels associated with different individuals. Cross-culturally, there is a regular and restricted range of patterned variation in kin terminologies, and to date, our understanding of this diversity has been hampered by inadequate techniques for dealing with the hierarchical relatedness of languages (Galton’s Problem). Here I use maximum-likelihood and Bayesian phylogenetic comparative methods to begin to tease apart the processes underlying the evolution of kin terminologies in the Austronesian language family, focusing on terms for siblings. I infer (1) the probable ancestral states and (2) evolutionary models of change for the semantic distinctions of relative age (older/younger sibling) and relative sex (same sex/opposite-sex). Analyses show that early Austronesian languages contained the relative-age, but not the relative-sex distinction; the latter was reconstructed firmly only for the ancestor of Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages. Both distinctions were best characterized by evolutionary models where the gains and losses of the semantic distinctions were equally likely. A multi-state model of change examined how the relative-sex distinction could be elaborated and found that some transitions in kin terms were not possible: jumps from absence to heavily elaborated were very unlikely, as was piece-wise dismantling of elaborate distinctions. Cultural ideas about what types of kin distinctions are important can be embedded in the semantics of language; using a phylogenetic evolutionary framework we can understand how those distinctions in meaning change through time.

Abstract

Theorists of language have argued that co-­speech hand gestures are an
intentional part of social communication. The present study provides evidence for these
claims by showing that speakers adjust their gesture use according to their perceived relevance to the audience. Participants were asked to read about items that were and were not useful in a wilderness survival scenario, under the pretense that they would then
explain (on camera) what they learned to one of two different audiences. For one audience (a group of college students in a dormitory orientation activity), the stakes of successful
communication were low;; for the other audience (a group of students preparing for a
rugged camping trip in the mountains), the stakes were high. In their explanations to the camera, participants in the high stakes condition produced three times as many
representational gestures, and spent three times as much time gesturing, than participants in the low stakes condition. This study extends previous research by showing that the anticipated consequences of one’s communication—namely, the degree to which information may be useful to an intended recipient—influences speakers’ use of gesture.

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

A series of experiments is reported in which subjects describe simple visual scenes by means of both sentential and non-sentential responses. The data support the following statements about the lexicalization (word finding) process. (1) Words used by speakers in overt naming or sentence production responses are selected by a sequence of two lexical retrieval processes, the first yielding abstract pre-phonological items (Ll -items), the second one adding their phonological shapes (L2-items). (2) The selection of several Ll-items for a multi-word utterance can take place simultaneously. (3) A monitoring process is watching the output of Ll-lexicalization to check if it is in keeping with prevailing constraints upon utterance format. (4) Retrieval of the L2-item which corresponds with a given LI-item waits until the Ld-item has been checked by the monitor, and all other Ll-items needed for the utterance under construction have become available. A coherent picture of the lexicalization process begins to emerge when these characteristics are brought together with other empirical results in the area of naming and sentence production, e.g., picture naming reaction times (Seymour, 1979), speech errors (Garrett, 1980), and word order preferences (Bock, 1982).

Abstract

Previous work has shown that Dutch listeners use prosodic information in the speech signal to optimise morphological processing: Listeners are sensitive to prosodic differences between a noun stem realised in isolation and a noun stem realised as part of a plural form (in which the stem is followed by an unstressed syllable). The present study, employing a lexical decision task, provides an additional demonstration of listeners' sensitivity to prosodic cues in the stem. This sensitivity is shown for two languages that differ in morphological productivity: Dutch and English. The degree of morphological productivity does not correlate with listeners' sensitivity to prosodic cues in the stem, but it is reflected in differential sensitivities to the word-specific log odds ratio of encountering an unshortened stem (i.e., a stem in isolation) versus encountering a shortened stem (i.e., a stem followed by a suffix consisting of one or more unstressed syllables). In addition to being sensitive to the prosodic cues themselves, listeners are also sensitive to the probabilities of occurrence of these prosodic cues.

Abstract

It has recently been shown that listeners use systematic differences in vowel length and intonation to resolve ambiguities between onset-matched simple words (Davis, Marslen-Wilson, & Gaskell, 2002; Salverda, Dahan, & McQueen, 2003). The present study shows that listeners also use prosodic information in the speech signal to optimize morphological processing. The precise acoustic realization of the stem provides crucial information to the listener about the morphological context in which the stem appears and attenuates the competition between stored inflectional variants. We argue that listeners are able to make use of prosodic information, even though the speech signal is highly variable within and between speakers, by virtue of the relative invariance of the duration of the onset. This provides listeners with a baseline against which the durational cues in a vowel and a coda can be evaluated. Furthermore, our experiments provide evidence for item-specific prosodic effects.

Abstract

In Dutch, high-frequency words with the suffix -lijk are often highly reduced in spontaneous unscripted speech. This study addressed socio-geographic variation in the reduction of such words against the backdrop of the variation in their use in written and spoken Dutch. Multivariate analyses of the frequencies with which the words were used in a factorially contrasted set of subcorpora revealed signi ficant variation involving the speaker's country, sex, and education level for spoken Dutch, and involving country and register for written Dutch. Acoustic analyses revealed that Dutch men reduced most often, while Flemish highly educated women reduced least. Two linguistic context effects emerged, one prosodic, and the other pertaining to the flow of information. Words in sentence final position showed less reduction, while words that were better predictable from the preceding word in the sentence(based on mutual information) tended to be reduced more often. The increased probability of reduction for forms that are more predictable in context, combined with the loss of the suffix in the more extremely reduced forms, suggests that highfrequency words in -lijk are undergoing a process of erosion that causes them to gravitate towards monomorphemic function words.

Abstract

In this paper we report on a visual world eye-tracking experiment that investigated the differing abilities of adults and children to use referential scene information during reanalysis to overcome lexical biases during sentence processing. The results showed that adults incorporated aspects of the referential scene into their parse as soon as it became apparent that a test sentence was syntactically ambiguous, suggesting they considered the two alternative analyses in parallel. In contrast, the children appeared not to reanalyze their initial analysis, even over shorter distances than have been investigated in prior research. We argue that this reflects the children's over-reliance on bottom-up, lexical cues to interpretation. The implications for the development of parsing routines are discussed

Abstract

This paper considers the use and representation of Australian hypocoristics (e.g., choccie → chocolate, arvo → afternoon). One-hundred-and-fifteen adult speakers of Australian English aged 17–84 years generated as many tokens of hypocoristics as they could in 10 min. The resulting corpus was analysed along a number of dimensions in an attempt to identify (i) general age- and gender-related trends in hypocoristic knowledge and use, and (ii) linguistic properties of each hypocoristic class. Following Bybee’s (1985, 1995) lexical network approach, we conclude that Australian hypocoristics are the product of the same linguistic processes that capture other inflectional morphological processes.

Abstract

This paper reports on an investigation of children's (aged 3;5–9;8) comprehension of sentences containing ambiguity of prepositional phrase (PP) attachment. Results from a picture selection study (N=90) showed that children use verb semantics and preposition type to resolve the ambiguity, with older children also showing sensitivity to the definiteness of the object NP as a cue to interpretation. Study 2 investigated three- and five-year-old children's (N=47) ability to override an instrumental interpretation of ambiguous PPs in order to process attributes of the referential scene. The results showed that while five-year-olds are capable of incorporating aspects of the referential scene into their interpretations, three-year-olds are not as successful. Overall, the results suggest that children are attuned very early to the lexico-semantic co-occurrences that have been shown to aid ambiguity resolution in adults, but that more diffuse cues to interpretation are used only later in development

Abstract

The present paper reports on a study that investigated the role of procedural and declarative memory in the acquisition of Finnish past tense morphology. Two competing models were tested. Ullman's (2004) declarative/procedural model predicts that procedural memory supports the acquisition of regular morphology, whereas declarative memory supports the acquisition of irregular morphology. In contrast, single-route approaches predict that declarative memory should support lexical learning, which in turn should predict morphological acquisition. One-hundred and twenty-four (N=124) monolingual Finnish-speaking children aged 4;0–6;7 completed tests of procedural and declarative memory, tests of vocabulary knowledge and nonverbal ability, and a test of past test knowledge. The results best supported the single-route approach, suggesting that this account best extends to languages that possess greater morphological complexity than English.

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

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

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

Children begin to talk at about age one. The vocabulary they need to do so must be built on perceptual evidence and, indeed, infants begin to recognize spoken words long before they talk. Most of the utterances infants hear, however, are continuous, without pauses between words, so constructing a vocabulary requires them to decompose continuous speech in order to extract the individual words. Here, we present electrophysiological evidence that 10-month-old infants recognize two-syllable words they have previously heard only in isolation when these words are presented anew in continuous speech. Moreover, they only need roughly the first syllable of the word to begin doing this. Thus, prelinguistic infants command a highly efficient procedure for segmentation and recognition of spoken words in the absence of an existing vocabulary, allowing them to tackle effectively the problem of bootstrapping a lexicon out of the highly variable, continuous speech signals in their environment.

Abstract

In various applications of forensic phonetics the question arises as to how far aural-perceptual speaker recognition performance is reliable. Therefore, it is necessary to examine the relationship between speaker recognition results and human perception/production abilities like musicality or speech sensitivity. In this study, performance in a speaker recognition experiment and a speech sensitivity test are correlated. The results show a moderately significant positive correlation between the two tasks. Generally, performance in the speaker recognition task was better than in the speech sensitivity test. Professionals in speech and singing yielded a more homogeneous correlation than non-experts. Training in speech as well as choir-singing seems to have a positive effect on performance in speaker recognition. It may be concluded, firstly, that in cases where the reliability of voice line-up results or the credibility of a testimony have to be considered, the speech sensitivity test could be a useful indicator. Secondly, the speech sensitivity test might be integrated into the canon of possible procedures for the accreditation of forensic phoneticians. Both tests may also be used in combination.

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

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

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

The chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a disabling disorder of unknown etiology. The symptomatology of CFS (central fatigue, impaired concentration, attention and memory) suggests that this disorder could be related to alterations at the level of the central nervous system. In this study, we have used an automated and unbiased morphometric technique to test whether CFS patients display structural cerebral abnormalities. We mapped structural cerebral morphology and volume in two cohorts of CFS patients (in total 28 patients) and healthy controls (in total 28 controls) from high-resolution structural magnetic resonance images, using voxel-based morphometry. Additionally, we recorded physical activity levels to explore the relation between severity of CFS symptoms and cerebral abnormalities. We observed significant reductions in global gray matter volume in both cohorts of CFS patients, as compared to matched control participants. Moreover, the decline in gray matter volume was linked to the reduction in physical activity, a core aspect of CFS. These findings suggest that the central nervous system plays a key role in the pathophysiology of CFS and point to a new objective and quantitative tool for clinical diagnosis of this disabling disorder.

Abstract

We have used implicit motor imagery to investigate the neural correlates of motor planning independently from actual movements. Subjects were presented with drawings of left or right hands and asked to judge the hand laterality, regardless of the stimulus rotation from its upright orientation. We paired this task with a visual imagery control task, in which subjects were presented with typographical characters and asked to report whether they saw a canonical letter or its mirror image, regardless of its rotation. We measured neurovascular activity with fast event-related fMRI, distinguishing responses parametrically related to motor imagery from responses evoked by visual imagery and other task-related phenomena. By quantifying behavioral and neurovascular correlates of imagery on a trial-by-trial basis, we could discriminate between stimulusrelated, mental rotation-related, and response-related neural activity. We found that specific portions of the posterior parietal and precentral cortex increased their activity as a function of mental rotation only during the motor imagery task. Within these regions, the parietal cortex was visually responsive, whereas the dorsal precentral cortex was not. Response- but not rotation-related activity was found around the left central sulcus (putative primary motor cortex) during both imagery tasks. Our study provides novel evidence on the topography and content of movement representations in the human brain. During intended action, the posterior parietal cortex combines somatosensory and visuomotor information, whereas the dorsal premotor cortex generates the actual motor plan, and the primary motor cortex deals with movement execution. We discuss the relevance of these results in the context of current models of action planning.

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 purpose of this study was to relate a psycholinguistic processing model of picture naming to the dynamics of cortical activation during picture naming. The activation was recorded from eight Dutch subjects with a whole-head neuromagnetometer. The processing model, based on extensive naming latency studies, is a stage model. In preparing a picture's name, the speaker performs a chain of specific operations. They are, in this order, computing the visual percept, activating an appropriate lexical concept, selecting the target word from the mental lexicon, phonological encoding, phonetic encoding, and initiation of articulation. The time windows for each of these operations are reasonably well known and could be related to the peak activity of dipole sources in the individual magnetic response patterns. The analyses showed a clear progression over these time windows from early occipital activation, via parietal and temporal to frontal activation. The major specific findings were that (1) a region in the left posterior temporal lobe, agreeing with the location of Wernicke's area, showed prominent activation starting about 200 msec after picture onset and peaking at about 350 msec, (i.e., within the stage of phonological encoding), and (2) a consistent activation was found in the right parietal cortex, peaking at about 230 msec after picture onset, thus preceding and partly overlapping with the left temporal response. An interpretation in terms of the management of visual attention is proposed.

Abstract

Making a self-repair in speech typically proceeds in three phases. The first phase involves the monitoring of one’s own speech and the interruption of the flow of speech when trouble is detected. From an analysis of 959 spontaneous self-repairs it appears that interrupting follows detection promptly, with the exception that correct words tend to be completed. Another finding is that detection of trouble improves towards the end of constituents. The second phase is characterized by hesitation, pausing, but especially the use of so-called editing terms. Which editing term is used depends on the nature of the speech trouble in a rather regular fashion: Speech errors induce other editing terms than words that are merely inappropriate, and trouble which is detected quickly by the speaker is preferably signalled by the use of ‘uh’. The third phase consists of making the repair proper The linguistic well-formedness of a repair is not dependent on the speaker’s respecting the integriv of constituents, but on the structural relation between original utterance and repair. A bi-conditional well-formedness rule links this relation to a corresponding relation between the conjuncts of a coordination. It is suggested that a similar relation holds also between question and answer. In all three cases the speaker respects certain Istructural commitments derived from an original utterance. It was finally shown that the editing term plus the first word of the repair proper almost always contain sufficient information for the listener to decide how the repair should be related to the original utterance. Speakers almost never produce misleading information in this respect. It is argued that speakers have little or no access to their speech production process; self-monitoring is probably based on parsing one’s own inner or overt speech.

Abstract

This commentary discusses whether abstract metrical frames are stored. For stress-assigning languages (e.g., Dutch and English), which have a dominant stress pattern, metrical frames are stored only for words that deviate from the default stress pattern. The majority of the words in these languages are produced without retrieving any independent syllabic or metrical frame.

Abstract

Spontaneous self-corrections in speech pose a communication problem; the speaker must make clear to the listener not only that the original Utterance was faulty, but where it was faulty and how the fault is to be corrected. Prosodic marking of corrections - making the prosody of the repair noticeably different from that of the original utterance - offers a resource which the speaker can exploit to provide the listener with such information. A corpus of more than 400 spontaneous speech repairs was analysed, and the prosodic characteristics compared with the syntactic and semantic characteristics of each repair. Prosodic marking showed no relationship at all with the syntactic characteristics of repairs. Instead, marking was associated with certain semantic factors: repairs were marked when the original utterance had been actually erroneous, rather than simply less appropriate than the repair; and repairs tended to be marked more often when the set of items encompassing the error and the repair was small rather than when it was large. These findings lend further weight to the characterization of accent as essentially semantic in function.

Abstract

The core issue in the 19-century sources of psycholinguistics was the question, "Where does language come from?'' This genetic perspective unified the study of the ontogenesis, the phylogenesis, the microgenesis, and to some extent the neurogenesis of language. This paper makes the point that this original perspective is still a valid and attractive one. It is exemplified by a discussion of the genesis of spoken words.

Abstract

Reproduced with permission of Blackwell Publishing from: Levinson, S. C. (2004) 'Deixis'. In: Horn, L.R. and Ward, G. (Eds.) The Handbook of Pragmatics. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 100-121

Abstract

Daniel Dennett, in Darwin's Dangerous Idea, argues that natural selection is a universal acid that eats through other theories, because it can explain just about everything, even the structure of the mind. Emanuel (Manny) Schegloff (1987) in ‘Between Micro and Macro: Context and Other Connections’ opposes the importation of ‘macro’ (sociological/sociolinguistic) factors into the ‘micro’ (interaction analysis), suggesting that one might reverse the strategy instead. Like Darwin, he is coy about whether he just wants his own turf, but the idea opens up the possibility of interactional reductionism. I will argue against interactional reductionism on methodological grounds: Don't bite off more than you can chew! Instead I'll support the good old Durkheimian strategy of looking for intermediate variables between systems of different orders. I try and make the case with data from Rossel Island, Papua New Guinea.

Abstract

Reprinted with permission of The MIT Press from Levinson (2000) Presumptive meanings: The theory of generalized conversational implicature, pp. 112-118, 116-167, 170-173, 177-180. MIT Press

Abstract

Yélî Dnye has two discernable dedicated constructions for reciprocal marking. The first and main construction uses a dedicated reciprocal pronoun numo, somewhat like English each other. We can recognise two subconstructions. First, the ‘numo-construction’, where the reciprocal pronoun is a patient of the verb, and where the invariant pronoun numo is obligatorily incorporated, triggering intransitivisation (e.g. A-NPs become absolutive). This subconstruction has complexities, for example in the punctual aspect only, the verb is inflected like a transitive, but with enclitics mismatching actual person/number. In the second variant or subconstruction, the ‘noko-construction’, the same reciprocal pronoun (sometimes case-marked as noko) occurs but now in oblique positions with either transitive or intransitive verbs. The reciprocal element here has some peculiar binding properties. Finally, the second independent construction is a dedicated periphrastic (or woni…woni) construction, glossing ‘the one did X to the other, and the other did X to the one’. It is one of the rare cross-serial dependencies that show that natural languages cannot be modelled by context-free phrase-structure grammars. Finally, the usage of these two distinct constructions is discussed.

Abstract

Philosophers, psychologists, and linguists have argued that spatial conception is pivotal to cognition in general, providing a general, egocentric, and universal framework for cognition as well as metaphors for conceptualizing many other domains. But in an aboriginal community in Northern Queensland, a system of cardinal directions informs not only language, but also memory for arbitrary spatial arrays and directions. This work suggests that fundamental cognitive parameters, like the system of coding spatial locations, can vary cross-culturally, in line with the language spoken by a community. This opens up the prospect of a fruitful dialogue between anthropology and the cognitive sciences on the complex interaction between cultural and universal factors in the constitution of mind.

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

Reprint from Stephen C. Levinson, ‘Three Levels of Meaning’, in Frank Palmer (ed.), Grammar and Meaning: Essays in Honor of Sir John Lyons (Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 90–115

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

Changing Prospects for Universals in Pragmatics
The term PRAGMATICS has come to denote the study of general principles of language use. It is usually understood to contrast with SEMANTICS, the study of encoded meaning, and also, by some authors, to contrast with SOCIOLINGUISTICS
and the ethnography of speaking, which are more concerned with local sociocultural practices. Given that pragmaticists come from disciplines as varied as philosophy, sociology,
linguistics, communication studies, psychology, and anthropology, it is not surprising that definitions of pragmatics vary. Nevertheless, most authors agree on a list of topics
that come under the rubric, including DEIXIS, PRESUPPOSITION,
implicature (see CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURE), SPEECH-ACTS, and conversational organization (see CONVERSATIONAL ANALYSIS). Here, we can use this extensional definition as a starting point (Levinson 1988; Huang 2007).