Publications

Abstract

This questionnaire is designed to explore how spatial relations are encoded in Australian language, but may be of interest to researchers further afield.

Abstract

This questionnaire is designed to explore how spatial relations are encoded in Australian language, but may be of interest to researchers further afield.

Abstract

Demonstratives are key items in understanding how a language constructs and interprets spatial relationships. They are also multi-functional, with applications to non-spatial deictic fields such as time, perception, person and discourse, and uses in anaphora and affect marking. This item consists of an overview of theoretical distinctions in demonstrative systems, followed by a set of practical queries and elicitation suggestions for demonstratives in “table top” space, wider spatial fields, and naturalistic data.

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

The world’s languages encode a diverse range of topological relations. However, cross-linguistic investigation suggests that the relations IN, AT and ON are especially fundamental to the grammaticised expression of space. The purpose of this questionnaire is to collect information about adpositions, case markers, and spatial nominals that are involved in the expression of core IN/AT/ON meanings. The task explores the more general parts of a language’s topological system, with a view to testing certain hypotheses about the packaging of spatial concepts. The questionnaire consists of target translation sentences that focus on a number of dimensions including animacy, caused location and motion.

Abstract

Languages differ widely in terms of how they encode the fundamental concepts of location and position. For some languages, verbs have an important role to play in describing situations (e.g., whether a bottle is standing or lying on the table); for others, verbs are not used in describing location at all. This item outlines certain hypotheses concerning four “types” of languages: those that have verbless basic locatives; those that use a single verb; those that have several verbs available to express location; and those that use positional verbs. The document was originally published as an appendix to the 'Picture series for positional verbs' (https://doi.org/10.17617/2.2573831).

Abstract

These classic tasks can be used to explore spatial reference in field settings. They provide a language-independent metric for eliciting spatial language, using a “director-matcher” paradigm. The Man and Tree task deals with location on the horizontal plane with both featured (man) and non-featured (e.g., tree) objects. The Space Games depict various objects (e.g. bananas, lemons) and elicit spatial contrasts not obviously lexicalisable in English.

Abstract

Focuses on the pre-observations on the modeling of dialogue. Assumptions that underlie speech act models of dialogue; Identifiability of utterance units corresponding to unit acts; Capacity of the models to model the actual properties of natural dialogue.

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

This paper investigates infant pointing at 12 months. Three recent experimental studies from our lab are reported and contrasted with existing accounts on infant communicative and social-cognitive abilities. The new results show that infant pointing at 12 months already is a communicative act which involves the intentional transmission of information to share interest with, or provide information for other persons. It is argued that infant pointing is an inherently social and cooperative act which is used to share psychological relations between interlocutors and environment, repairs misunderstandings in proto-conversational turn-taking, and helps others by providing information. Infant pointing builds on an understanding of others as persons with attentional states and attitudes. Findings do not support lean accounts on early infant pointing which posit that it is initially non-communicative, does not serve the function of indicating, or is purely self-centered. It is suggested to investigate the emergence of reference and the motivation to jointly engage with others also before pointing has emerged.

Abstract

Infants point for various motives. Classically, one such motive is declarative, to share attention and interest with adults to events. Recently, some researchers have questioned whether infants have this motivation. In the current study, an adult reacted to 12-month-olds' pointing in different ways, and infants' responses were observed. Results showed that when the adult shared attention and interest (i.e. alternated gaze and emoted), infants pointed more frequently across trials and tended to prolong each point – presumably to prolong the satisfying interaction. However, when the adult emoted to the infant alone or looked only to the event, infants pointed less across trials and repeated points more within trials – presumably in an attempt to establish joint attention. Results suggest that 12-month-olds point declaratively and understand that others have psychological states that can be directed and shared.

Abstract

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and reading disability (RD) are common highly heritable disorders of childhood, which frequently co-occur. Data from twin and family studies suggest that this overlap is, in part, due to shared genetic underpinnings. Here, we report the first genome-wide linkage analysis of measures of reading ability in children with ADHD, using a sample of 233 affected sibling pairs who previously participated in a genome-wide scan for susceptibility loci in ADHD. Quantitative trait locus (QTL) analysis of a composite reading factor defined from three highly correlated reading measures identified suggestive linkage (multipoint maximum lod score, MLS>2.2) in four chromosomal regions. Two regions (16p, 17q) overlap those implicated by our previous genome-wide scan for ADHD in the same sample: one region (2p) provides replication for an RD susceptibility locus, and one region (10q) falls approximately 35 cM from a modestly highlighted region in an independent genome-wide scan of siblings with ADHD. Investigation of an individual reading measure of Reading Recognition supported linkage to putative RD susceptibility regions on chromosome 8p (MLS=2.4) and 15q (MLS=1.38). Thus, the data support the existence of genetic factors that have pleiotropic effects on ADHD and reading ability--as suggested by shared linkages on 16p, 17q and possibly 10q--but also those that appear to be unique to reading--as indicated by linkages on 2p, 8p and 15q that coincide with those previously found in studies of RD. Our study also suggests that reading measures may represent useful phenotypes in ADHD research. The eventual identification of genes underlying these unique and shared linkages may increase our understanding of ADHD, RD and the relationship between the two.

Abstract

The posterior medial parietal cortex and left prefrontal cortex (PFC) have both been implicated in the recollection of past episodes. In a previous study, we found the posterior precuneus and left lateral inferior frontal cortex to be activated during episodic source memory retrieval. This study further examines the role of posterior precuneal and left prefrontal activation during episodic source memory retrieval using a similar source memory paradigm but with longer latency between encoding and retrieval. Our results suggest that both the precuneus and the left inferior PFC are important for regeneration of rich episodic contextual associations and that the precuneus activates in tandem with the left inferior PFC during correct source retrieval. Further, results suggest that the left ventro-lateral frontal region/ frontal operculum is involved in searching for task-relevant information (BA 47) and subsequent monitoring or scrutiny (BA 44/45) while regions in the dorsal inferior frontal cortex are important for information selection (BA 45/46).

Abstract

FOXP2, the first gene to have been implicated in a developmental communication disorder, offers a unique entry point into neuromolecular mechanisms influencing human speech and language acquisition. In multiple members of the well-studied KE family, a heterozygous missense mutation in FOXP2 causes problems in sequencing muscle movements required for articulating speech (developmental verbal dyspraxia), accompanied by wider deficits in linguistic and grammatical processing. Chromosomal rearrangements involving this locus have also been identified. Analyses of FOXP2 coding sequence in typical forms of specific language impairment (SLI), autism, and dyslexia have not uncovered any etiological variants. However, no previous study has performed mutation screening of children with a primary diagnosis of verbal dyspraxia, the most overt feature of the disorder in affected members of the KE family. Here, we report investigations of the entire coding region of FOXP2, including alternatively spliced exons, in 49 probands affected with verbal dyspraxia. We detected variants that alter FOXP2 protein sequence in three probands. One such variant is a heterozygous nonsense mutation that yields a dramatically truncated protein product and cosegregates with speech and language difficulties in the proband, his affected sibling, and their mother. Our discovery of the first nonsense mutation in FOXP2 now opens the door for detailed investigations of neurodevelopment in people carrying different etiological variants of the gene. This endeavor will be crucial for gaining insight into the role of FOXP2 in human cognition.

Abstract

Nyelv és/vagy evolúció: Lehetséges-e a nyelv evolúciós magyarázata? [Derek Bickerton: Nyelv és evolúció] (Magyari Lilla); Történelmi olvasókönyv az agyról [Charles G. Gross: Agy, látás, emlékezet. Mesék az idegtudomány történetéből] (Garab Edit Anna); Művészet vagy tudomány [Margitay Tihamér: Az érvelés mestersége. Érvelések elemzése, értékelése és kritikája] (Zemplén Gábor); Tényleg ésszerűek vagyunk? [Herbert Simon: Az ésszerűség szerepe az emberi életben] (Kardos Péter); Nemi különbségek a megismerésben [Doreen Kimura: Női agy, férfi agy]. (Hahn Noémi);

Abstract

The human body is unique: it is both an object of perception and the source of human experience. Its universality makes it a perfect resource for asking questions about how cognition, brain and typology relate to one another. For example, we can ask how speakers of different languages segment and categorize the human body. A dominant view is that body parts are “given” by visual perceptual discontinuities, and that words are merely labels for these visually determined parts (e.g., Andersen, 1978; Brown, 1976; Lakoff, 1987). However, there are problems with this view. First it ignores other perceptual information, such as somatosensory and motoric representations. By looking at the neural representations of sesnsory representations, we can test how much of the categorization of the human body can be done through perception alone. Second, we can look at language typology to see how much universality and variation there is in body-part categories. A comparison of a range of typologically, genetically and areally diverse languages shows that the perceptual view has only limited applicability (Majid, Enfield & van Staden, in press). For example, using a “coloring-in” task, where speakers of seven different languages were given a line drawing of a human body and asked to color in various body parts, Majid & van Staden (in prep) show that languages vary substantially in body part segmentation. For example, Jahai (Mon-Khmer) makes a lexical distinction between upper arm, lower arm, and hand, but Lavukaleve (Papuan Isolate) has just one word to refer to arm, hand, and leg. This shows that body part categorization is not a straightforward mapping of words to visually determined perceptual parts.

Abstract

Many studies in cognitive science address how people categorize objects, but there has been comparatively little research on event categorization. This study investigated the categorization of events involving material destruction, such as “cutting” and “breaking”. Speakers of 28 typologically, genetically, and areally diverse languages described events shown in a set of video-clips. There was considerable cross-linguistic agreement in the dimensions along which the events were distinguished, but there was variation in the number of categories and the placement of their boundaries.

Abstract

Frames of reference are coordinate systems used to compute and specify the location of objects with respect to other objects. These have long been thought of as innate concepts, built into our neurocognition. However, recent work shows that the use of such frames in language, cognition and gesture varies crossculturally, and that children can acquire different systems with comparable ease. We argue that language can play a significant role in structuring, or restructuring, a domain as fundamental as spatial cognition. This suggests we need to rethink the relation between the neurocognitive underpinnings of spatial cognition and the concepts we use in everyday thinking, and, more generally, to work out how to account for cross-cultural cognitive diversity in core cognitive domains.

Abstract

Four groups of second language (L2) learners of English from different language backgrounds (Chinese, Japanese, German, and Greek) and a group of native speaker controls participated in an online reading time experiment with sentences involving long-distance wh-dependencies. Although the native speakers showed evidence of making use of intermediate syntactic gaps during processing, the L2 learners appeared to associate the fronted wh-phrase directly with its lexical subcategorizer, regardless of whether the subjacency constraint was operative in their native language. This finding is argued to support the hypothesis that nonnative comprehenders underuse syntactic information in L2 processing.

Abstract

Words are fundamental to reading and yet over a century of research has not masked the controversies around how words are recognized. We review some old and new research that disproves simple ideas such as words are read as wholes or are simply mapped directly to spoken language. We also review theory and research relevant to the question of sublexical influences in word recognition. We describe orthography and phonology, how they are related to each other and describe a series of new experiments on how these sources of information are processed. Tasks include lexical decision, perceptual identification, and naming. Dependent measures are reaction time, accuracy of performance, and a new measure, initial phoneme duration, that refers to the duration of the first phoneme when the target word is pronounced. Important factors in resolving the controversies include the realization that reading has multiple determinants, as well as evaluating the type of task, proper controls such as familiarity of the test items and accuracy of measurement of the response. We also address potential limitations with measures related to the mapping between orthography and phonology, and show that the existence of a sound-to-spelling consistency effect does not require interactive activation, but can be explained and predicted by a feedforward model, the Fuzzy logical model of perception.

Abstract

In a phonological priming experiment using spoken Dutch words, Dutch listeners were taught varying expectancies and relatedness relations about the phonological form of target words, given particular primes. They learned to expect that, after a particular prime, if the target was a word, it would be from a specific phonological category. The expectancy either involved phonological overlap (e.g., honk-vonk, “base-spark”; expected related) or did not (e.g., nest-galm, “nest-boom”; expected unrelated, where the learned expectation after hearing nest was a word rhyming in -alm). Targets were occasionally inconsistent with expectations. In these inconsistent expectancy trials, targets were either unrelated (e.g., honk-mest, “base-manure”; unexpected unrelated), where the listener was expecting a related target, or related (e.g., nest-pest, “nest-plague”; unexpected related), where the listener was expecting an unrelated target. Participant expectations and phonological relatedness were thus manipulated factorially for three types of phonological overlap (rhyme, one onset phoneme, and three onset phonemes) at three interstimulus intervals (ISIs; 50, 500, and 2,000 msec). Lexical decisions to targets revealed evidence of expectancy-based strategies for all three types of overlap (e.g., faster responses to expected than to unexpected targets, irrespective of phonological relatedness) and evidence of automatic phonological processes, but only for the rhyme and three-phoneme onset overlap conditions and, most strongly, at the shortest ISI (e.g., faster responses to related than to unrelated targets, irrespective of expectations). Although phonological priming thus has both automatic and strategic components, it is possible to cleave them apart.

Abstract

In 5 experiments, listeners heard words and nonwords, some cross-spliced so that they contained acoustic-phonetic mismatches. Performance was worse on mismatching than on matching items. Words cross-spliced with words and words cross-spliced with nonwords produced parallel results. However, in lexical decision and 1 of 3 phonetic decision experiments, performance on nonwords cross-spliced with words was poorer than on nonwords cross-spliced with nonwords. A gating study confirmed that there were misleading coarticulatory cues in the cross-spliced items; a sixth experiment showed that the earlier results were not due to interitem differences in the strength of these cues. Three models of phonetic decision making (the Race model, the TRACE model, and a postlexical model) did not explain the data. A new bottom-up model is outlined that accounts for the findings in terms of lexical involvement at a dedicated decision-making stage.

Abstract

The results of a word-spotting experiment are presented in which Dutch listeners tried to spot different types of bisyllabic Dutch words embedded in different types of nonsense contexts. Embedded verbs were not reliably harder to spot than embedded nouns; this suggests that nouns and verbs are recognised via the same basic processes. Iambic words were no harder to spot than trochaic words, suggesting that trochaic words are not in principle easier to recognise than iambic words. Words were harder to spot in consonantal contexts (i.e., contexts which themselves could not be words) than in longer contexts which contained at least one vowel (i.e., contexts which, though not words, were possible words of Dutch). A control experiment showed that this difference was not due to acoustic differences between the words in each context. The results support the claim that spoken-word recognition is sensitive to the viability of sound sequences as possible words.

Abstract

This paper presents lexical statistics on the pattern of occurrence of words embedded in other words. We report the results of an analysis of 25000 words, varying in length from two to six syllables, extracted from a phonetically-coded English dictionary (The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English). Each syllable, and each string of syllables within each word was checked against the dictionary. Two analyses are presented: the first used a complete list of polysyllables, with look-up on the entire dictionary; the second used a sublist of content words, counting only embedded words which were themselves content words. The results have important implications for models of human speech recognition. The efficiency of these models depends, in different ways, on the number and location of words within words.

Abstract

This thesis addressed the spoken production of complex numerals for time and space. The production of complex numerical expressions like those involved in telling time (e.g., 'quarter to four') or producing house numbers (e.g., 'two hundred forty-five') has been almost completely ignored. Yet, adult speakers produce such expressions on a regular basis in everyday communication. Thus, no theory on numerical cognition or speech production is complete without an account of the production of multi-morphemic utterances such as complex numeral expressions. The main question of this thesis is which particular speech planning levels are involved in the naming and reading of complex numerals for time and space. More specifically, this issue was investigated by examining different modes of response (clock times versus house numbers), alternative input formats (Arabic digit versus alphabetic format; analog versus digital clock displays), and different expression types (relative 'quarter to four' versus absolute 'three forty-five' time expressions).

Abstract

This study investigates how speakers of Dutch compute and produce relative time expressions. Naming digital clocks (e.g., 2:45, say ‘‘quarter to three’’) requires conceptual operations on the minute and hour information for the correct relative time expression. The interplay of these conceptual operations was investigated using a repetition priming paradigm. Participants named analog clocks (the primes) directly before naming digital clocks (the targets). The targets referred to the hour (e.g., 2:00), half past the hour (e.g., 2:30), or the coming hour (e.g., 2:45). The primes differed from the target in one or two hour and in five or ten minutes. Digital clock naming latencies were shorter with a five- than with a ten-min difference between prime and target, but the difference in hour had no effect. Moreover, the distance in minutes had only an effect for half past the hour and the coming hour, but not for the hour. These findings suggest that conceptual facilitation occurs when conceptual transformations are shared between prime and target in telling time.

Abstract

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

Abstract

This article explores the contrastive function of demonstratives in two languages, Tiriyó (Cariban, northern Brazil) and Lavukaleve (Papuan isolate, Solomon Islands). The contrastive function has to a large extent been neglected in the theoretical literature on demonstrative functions, although preliminary investigations suggest that there are significant differences in demonstrative use in contrastive versus noncontrastive contexts. Tiriyó and Lavukaleve have what seem at first glance to be rather similar three-term demonstrative systems for exophoric deixis, with a proximal term, a distal term, and a middle term. However, under contrastive usage, significant differences between the two systems become apparent. In presenting an analysis of the contrastive use of demonstratives in these two languages, this article aims to show that the contrastive function is an important parameter of variation in demonstrative systems.

Abstract

This paper aims to determine whether iconic tracing gestures produced while speaking constitute part of the speaker’s communicative intention. We used a picture description task in which speakers must communicate the spatial and color information of each picture to an interlocutor. By establishing the necessary minimal content of an intended message, we determined whether speech produced with concurrent gestures is less explicit than speech without gestures. We argue that a gesture must be communicatively intended if it expresses necessary information that was nevertheless omitted from speech. We found that speakers who produced iconic gestures representing spatial relations omitted more required spatial information from their descriptions than speakers who did not gesture. These results provide evidence that speakers intend these gestures to communicate. The results have implications for the cognitive architectures that underlie the production of gesture and speech.

Abstract

Spatial memory deficits are core features of aging-related changes in cognitive abilities. The neural correlates of these deficits are largely unknown. In the present study, we investigated the neural underpinnings of age-related differences in spatial memory by functional MRI using a navigational memory task with route encoding and route recognition conditions. We investigated 20 healthy young (18 - 29 years old) and 20 healthy old adults (53 - 78 years old) in a random effects analysis. Old subjects showed slightly poorer performance than young subjects. Compared to the control condition, route encoding and route recognition showed activation of the dorsal and ventral visual processing streams and the frontal eye fields in both groups of subjects. Compared to old adults, young subjects showed during route encoding stronger activations in the dorsal and the ventral visual processing stream (supramarginal gyrus and posterior fusiform/parahippocampal areas). In addition, young subjects showed weaker anterior parahippocampal activity during route recognition compared to the old group. In contrast, old compared to young subjects showed less suppressed activity in the left perisylvian region and the anterior cingulate cortex during route encoding. Our findings suggest that agerelated navigational memory deficits might be caused by less effective route encoding based on reduced posterior fusiform/parahippocampal and parietal functionality combined with diminished inhibition of perisylvian and anterior cingulate cortices correlated with less effective suppression of task-irrelevant information. In contrast, age differences in neural correlates of route recognition seem to be rather subtle. Old subjects might show a diminished familiarity signal during route recognition in the anterior parahippocampal region.

Abstract

Earlier work has shown that speakers naming several objects usually look at each of them before naming them (e.g., Meyer, Sleiderink, & Levelt, 1998). In the present study, participants saw pictures and described them in utterances such as "The chair next to the cross is brown", where the colour of the first object was mentioned after another object had been mentioned. In Experiment 1, we examined whether the speakers would look at the first object (the chair) only once, before naming the object, or twice (before naming the object and before naming its colour). In Experiment 2, we examined whether speakers about to name the colour of the object would look at the object region again when the colour or the entire object had been removed while they were looking elsewhere. We found that speakers usually looked at the target object again before naming its colour, even when the colour was not displayed any more. Speakers were much less likely to fixate upon the target region when the object had been removed from view. We propose that the object contours may serve as a memory cue supporting the retrieval of the associated colour information. The results show that a speaker's eye movements in a picture description task, far from being random, depend on the available visual information and the content and structure of the planned utterance.

Abstract

Most current theories of lexical access in speech production are designed to capture the behaviour of young adults - typically college students. However, young adults represent a minority of the world's speakers. For theories of speech production, the question arises of how the young adults' speech develops out of the quite different speech observed in children and adolescents and how the speech of young adults evolves into the speech observed in older persons. Though a model of adult speech production need not include a detailed account language development, it should be compatible with current knowledge about the development of language across the lifespan. In this sense, theories of young adults' speech production may be constrained by theories and findings concerning the development of language with age. Conversely, any model of language acquisition or language change in older adults should, of course, be compatible with existing theories of the "ideal" speech found in young speakers. For this SpecialIssue we elicited papers on the development of speech production in childhood, adult speech production, and changes in speech production in older adults. The structure of the Special Issue is roughly chronological, focusing in turn on the language production of children (papers by Behrens; Goffman, Heisler & Chakraborty; Vousden & Maylor), young adults (papers by Roelofs; Schiller, Jansma, Peters & Levelt; Finocchiaro & Caramazza; Hartsuiker & Barkhuysen; Bonin, Malardier, Meot & Fayol) and older adults (papers by Mortensen, Meyer & Humphreys; Spieler & Griffin; Altmann & Kemper). We hope that the work compiled here will encourage researchers in any of these areas to consider the theories and findings in the neighbouring fields.

Abstract

Phonological encoding in language production can be defined as a set of processes generating utterance forms on the basis of semantic and syntactic information. Most evidence about these processes stems from analyses of sound errors. In section 1 of this paper, certain important results of these analyses are reviewed. Two prominent models of phonological encoding, which are mainly based on speech error evidence, are discussed in section 2. In section 3, limitations of speech error analyses are discussed, and it is argued that detailed and comprehensive models of phonological encoding cannot be derived solely on the basis of error analyses. As is argued in section 4, a new research strategy is required. Instead of using the properties of errors to draw inferences about the generation of correct word forms, future research should directly investigate the normal process of phonological encoding.

Abstract

The production and interpretation of pronouns involves the identification of a mental referent and, in connected speech or text, a discourse antecedent. One of the few overt signals of the relationship between a pronoun and its antecedent is agreement in features such as number and grammatical gender. To examine how speakers create these signals, two experiments tested conceptual, lexical. and morphophonological accounts of pronoun production in Dutch. The experiments employed sentence completion and continuation tasks with materials containing noun phrases that conflicted or agreed in grammatical gender. The noun phrases served as the antecedents for demonstrative pronouns tin Experiment 1) and relative pronouns tin Experiment 2) that required gender marking. Gender errors were used to assess the nature of the processes that established the link between pronouns and antecedents. There were more gender errors when candidate antecedents conflicted in grammatical gender, counter to the predictions of a pure conceptual hypothesis. Gender marking on candidate antecedents did not change the magnitude of this interference effect, counter to the predictions of an overt-morphology hypothesis. Mirroring previous findings about pronoun comprehension, the results suggest that speakers of gender-marking languages call on specific linguistic information about antecedents in order to select pronouns and that the information consists of specifications of grammatical gender associated with the lemmas of words.

Abstract

Tip-of-the-tongue states may represent the momentary unavailability of an otherwise accessible word or the weak activation of an otherwise inaccessible word. In three experiments designed to address these alternative views, subjects attempted to retrieve rare target words from their definitions. The definitions were followed by cues that were related to the targets in sound, by cues that were related in meaning, and by cues that were not related to the targets. Experiment 1 found that compared with unrelated cues, related cue words that were presented immediately after target definitions helped rather than hindered lexical retrieval, and that sound cues were more effective retrieval aids than meaning cues. Experiment 2 replicated these results when cues were presented after an initial target-retrieval attempt. These findings reverse a previous one (Jones, 1989) that was reproduced in Experiment 3 and shown to stem from a small group of unusually difficult target definitions.

Abstract

Eye movements have been shown to reflect word recognition and language comprehension processes occurring during reading and auditory language comprehension. The present study examines whether the eye movements speakers make during object naming similarly reflect speech planning processes. In Experiment 1, speakers named object pairs saying, for instance, 'scooter and hat'. The objects were presented as ordinary line drawings or with partly dele:ed contours and had high or low frequency names. Contour type and frequency both significantly affected the mean naming latencies and the mean time spent looking at the objects. The frequency effects disappeared in Experiment 2, in which the participants categorized the objects instead of naming them. This suggests that the frequency effects of Experiment 1 arose during lexical retrieval. We conclude that eye movements during object naming indeed reflect linguistic planning processes and that the speakers' decision to move their eyes from one object to the next is contingent upon the retrieval of the phonological form of the object names.

Abstract

Wider knowledge of New Guinea's Bird's Head Peninsula, home to an indigenous population of 114,000 people who share more than twenty languages, was recently gained through an extensive interdisciplinary research project involving anthropologists, archaeologists, botanists, demographers, geologists, linguists, and specialists in public administration. Analyzing the findings of the project, this book provides a systematic comparison with earlier studies, addressing the geological past, the latest archaeological evidence of early human habitation (dating back at least 26,000 years), and the region's diversity of languages and cultures. The peninsula is an important transitional area between Southeast Asia and Oceania, and this book provides valuable new insights for specialists in both the social and natural sciences into processes of state formation and globalization in the Asia-Pacific zone.

Abstract

In 3 experiments, the authors investigated the extent to which objects that are about to be named are processed prior to fixation. Participants named pairs or triplets of objects. One of the objects, initially seen extrafoveally (the interloper), was replaced by a different object (the target) during the saccade toward it. The interloper-target pairs were identical or unrelated objects or visually and conceptually unrelated objects with homophonous names (e.g., animal-baseball bat). The mean latencies and gaze durations for the targets were shorter in the identity and homophone conditions than in the unrelated condition. This was true when participants viewed a fixation mark until the interloper appeared and when they fixated on another object and prepared to name it while viewing the interloper. These results imply that objects that are about to be named may undergo far-reaching processing, including access to their names, prior to fixation.

Abstract

In this study we introduce an information-theoretical formulation of the emergence of type- and token-based effects in morphological processing. We describe a probabilistic measure of the informational complexity of a word, its information residual, which encompasses the combined influences of the amount of information contained by the target word and the amount of information carried by its nested morphological paradigms. By means of re-analyses of previously published data on Dutch words we show that the information residual outperforms the combination of traditional token- and type-based counts in predicting response latencies in visual lexical decision, and at the same time provides a parsimonious account of inflectional, derivational, and compounding processes.

Abstract

In this paper, we show that both token and type-based effects in lexical processing can result from a single, token-based, system, and therefore, do not necessarily reflect different levels of processing. We report three Simple Recurrent Networks modeling Dutch past-tense formation. These networks show token-based frequency effects and type-based analogical effects closely matching the behavior of human participants when producing past-tense forms for both existing verbs and pseudo-verbs. The third network covers the full vocabulary of Dutch, without imposing predefined linguistic structure on the input or output words.

Abstract

This study uses the morphological family size effect as a tool for exploring the degree of isomorphism in the networks of morphologically related words in the Hebrew and Dutch mental lexicon. Hebrew and Dutch are genetically unrelated, and they structure their morphologically complex words in very different ways. Two visual lexical decision experiments document substantial cross-language predictivity for the family size measure after partialing out the effect of word frequency and word length. Our data show that the morphological family size effect is not restricted to Indo-European languages but extends to languages with non-concatenative morphology. In Hebrew, a new inhibitory component of the family size effect emerged that arises when a Hebrew root participates in different semantic fields.

Abstract

Finnish has a very productive morphology in which a stem can give rise to several thousand words. This study presents a visual lexical decision experiment addressing the processing consequences of the huge productivity of Finnish morphology. The authors observed that in Finnish words with larger morphological families elicited shorter response latencies. However, in contrast to Dutch and Hebrew, it is not the complete morphological family of a complex Finnish word that codetermines response latencies but only the subset of words directly derived from the complex word itself. Comparisons with parallel experiments using translation equivalents in Dutch and Hebrew showed substantial cross-language predictivity of family size between Finnish and Dutch but not between Finnish and Hebrew, reflecting the different ways in which the Hebrew and Finnish morphological systems contribute to the semantic organization of concepts in the mental lexicon.

Abstract

We describe the phenomenon of schwa-deletion in Hindi and how it is handled in the pronunciation component of a multilingual concatenative text-to-speech system. Each of the consonants in written Hindi is associated with an “inherent” schwa vowel which is not represented in the orthography. For instance, the Hindi word pronounced as [namak] (’salt’) is represented in the orthography using the consonantal characters for [n], [m], and [k]. Two main factors complicate the issue of schwa pronunciation in Hindi. First, not every schwa following a consonant is pronounced within the word. Second, in multimorphemic words, the presence of a morpheme boundary can block schwa deletion where it might otherwise occur. We propose a model for schwa-deletion which combines a general purpose schwa-deletion rule proposed in the linguistics literature (Ohala, 1983), with additional morphological analysis necessitated by the high frequency of compounds in our database. The system is implemented in the framework of finite-state transducer technology.

Abstract

Two construals of agency are evaluated as possible innate biases guiding case-marking in children. A BROAD construal treats agentive arguments of multi-participant and single-participant events as being similar. A NARROWER construal is restricted to agents of multi-participant events. In Hindi, ergative case-marking is associated with agentive participants of multi-participant, perfective actions. Children relying on a broad or narrow construal of agent are predicted to overextend ergative case-marking to agentive participants of transitive imperfective actions and/or intransitive actions. Longitudinal data from three children acquiring Hindi (1;7 to 3;9) reveal no overextension errors, suggesting early sensitivity to distributional patterns in the input.

Abstract

An influential claim in the child language literature posits that children use structural cues in the input language to acquire verb meaning (Gleitman, 1990). One such cue is the number of arguments co-occurring with the verb, which provides an indication as to the event type associated with the verb (Fisher, 1995). In some languages however (e.g. Hindi), verb arguments are ellipted relatively freely, subject to certain discourse-pragmatic constraints. In this paper, we address three questions: Is the pervasive argument ellipsis characteristic of adult Hindi also found in Hindi-speaking caregivers’ input ? If so, do children consequently make errors in verb transitivity? How early do children learning a split-ergative language, such as Hindi, exhibit sensitivity to discourse-pragmatic influences on argument realization? We show that there is massive argument ellipsis in caregivers’ input to 3–4 year-olds. However, children acquiring Hindi do not make transitivity errors in their own speech. Nor do they elide arguments randomly. Rather, even at this early age, children appear to be sensitive to discourse-pragmatics in their own spontaneous speech production. These findings in a split-ergative language parallel patterns of argument realization found in children acquiring both nominative-accusative languages (e.g. Korean) and ergative-absolutive languages (e.g. Tzeltal, Inuktitut).

Abstract

Effekte linguisticher Typologie auf die Sprach-entwicklung. In G. Plehn (Ed.), Jahrbuch der Max-Planck Gesellsch

Abstract

Specific language impairment (SLI) is defined as an unexplained failure to acquire normal language skills despite adequate intelligence and opportunity. We have reported elsewhere a full-genome scan in 98 nuclear families affected by this disorder, with the use of three quantitative traits of language ability (the expressive and receptive tests of the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals and a test of nonsense word repetition). This screen implicated two quantitative trait loci, one on chromosome 16q (SLI1) and a second on chromosome 19q (SLI2). However, a second independent genome screen performed by another group, with the use of parametric linkage analyses in extended pedigrees, found little evidence for the involvement of either of these regions in SLI. To investigate these loci further, we have collected a second sample, consisting of 86 families (367 individuals, 174 independent sib pairs), all with probands whose language skills are ⩾1.5 SD below the mean for their age. Haseman-Elston linkage analysis resulted in a maximum LOD score (MLS) of 2.84 on chromosome 16 and an MLS of 2.31 on chromosome 19, both of which represent significant linkage at the 2% level. Amalgamation of the wave 2 sample with the cohort used for the genome screen generated a total of 184 families (840 individuals, 393 independent sib pairs). Analysis of linkage within this pooled group strengthened the evidence for linkage at SLI1 and yielded a highly significant LOD score (MLS = 7.46, interval empirical P<.0004). Furthermore, linkage at the same locus was also demonstrated to three reading-related measures (basic reading [MLS = 1.49], spelling [MLS = 2.67], and reading comprehension [MLS = 1.99] subtests of the Wechsler Objectives Reading Dimensions).

Abstract

In general, language comprehension is surprisingly reliable. Listeners very rapidly extract meaning from the unfolding speech signal, on a word-by-word basis, and usually successfully. Research on ‘semantic illusions’ however suggests that under certain conditions, people fail to notice that the linguistic input simply doesn't make sense. In the current event-related brain potentials (ERP) study, we examined whether listeners would, under such conditions, spontaneously detect an anomaly in which a human character central to the story at hand (e.g., “a tourist”) was suddenly replaced by an inanimate object (e.g., “a suitcase”). Because this replacement introduced a very powerful coherence break, we expected listeners to immediately notice the anomaly and generate the standard ERP effect associated with incoherent language, the N400 effect. However, instead of the standard N400 effect, anomalous words elicited a positive ERP effect from about 500–600 ms onwards. The absence of an N400 effect suggests that subjects did not immediately notice the anomaly, and that for a few hundred milliseconds the comprehension system has converged on an apparently coherent but factually incorrect interpretation. The presence of the later ERP effect indicates that subjects were processing for comprehension and did ultimately detect the anomaly. Therefore, we take the absence of a regular N400 effect as the online manifestation of a temporary semantic illusion. Our results also show that even attentive listeners sometimes fail to notice a radical change in the nature of a story character, and therefore suggest a case of short-lived ‘semantic change deafness’ in language comprehension.

Abstract

The human language processor is conceived as a system that consists of several interrelated subsystems. Each subsystem performs a specific task in the complex process of language comprehension and production. A subsystem receives a particular input, performs certain specific operations on this input and yields a particular output. The subsystems can be characterized in terms of the transformations that relate the input representations to the output representations. An important issue in describing the language processing system is to identify the subsystems and to specify the relations between the subsystems. These relations can be conceived in two different ways. In one conception the subsystems are autonomous. They are related to each other only by the input-output channels. The operations in one subsystem are not affected by another system. The subsystems are modular, that is they are independent. In the other conception, the different subsystems influence each other. A subsystem affects the processes in another subsystem. In this conception there is an interaction between the subsystems.

Abstract

The reading process depends both on the text and on the reader. When we read a text, propositions in the current input are matched to propositions in the memory representation of the previous discourse but also to knowledge structures in long‐term memory. Therefore, memory‐based text processing refers both to the bottom‐up processing of the text and to the top‐down activation of the reader's knowledge. In this article, we focus on the role of cognitive structures in the reader's knowledge. We argue that causality is an important category in structuring human knowledge and that this property has consequences for text processing. Some research is discussed that illustrates that the more the information in the text reflects causal categories, the more easily the information is processed.

Abstract

We report two experiments in which vowels and steady-state consonants served as targets in a speeded detection task. In the first experiment, two vowels were compared with one voiced and once unvoiced fricative. Response times (RTs) to the vowels were longer than to the fricatives. The error rate was higher for the consonants. Consonants in word-final position produced the shortest RTs, For the vowels, RT correlated negatively with target duration. In the second experiment, the same two vowel targets were compared with two nasals. This time there was no significant difference in RTs, but the error rate was still significantly higher for the consonants. Error rate and length correlated negatively for the vowels only. We conclude that RT differences between phonemes are independent of vocalic or consonantal status. Instead, we argue that the process of phoneme detection reflects more finely grained differences in acoustic/articulatory structure within the phonemic repertoire.

Abstract

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

Abstract

Memorializes Martin D. S. Braine, whose research on child language acquisition and on both child and adult thinking and reasoning had a major influence on modern cognitive psychology. Addressing meaning as well as position, Braine argued that children start acquiring language by learning narrow-scope positional formulas that map components of meaning to positions in the utterance. These proposals were critical in starting discussions of the possible universality of the pivot-grammar stage and of the role of syntax, semantics,and pragmatics in children's early grammar and were pivotal to the rise of approaches in which cognitive development in language acquisition is stressed.

Abstract

Typologies are critical tools for linguists, but typologies, like grammars, are known to leak. This book addresses the question of typological overlap from the perspective of a single language. In Lowland Chontal of Oaxaca, a language of southern Mexico, change events are expressed with three types of predicates, and each predicate type corresponds to a different language type in the well-known typology of lexicalization patterns established by Talmy and elaborated by others. O’Connor evaluates the predictive powers of the typology by examining the consequences of each predicate type in a variety of contexts, using data from narrative discourse, stimulus response, and elicitation. This is the first de­tailed look at the lexical and grammatical resources of the verbal system in Chontal and their relation to semantics of change. The analysis of how and why Chontal speakers choose among these verbal resources to achieve particular communicative and social goals serves both as a documentation of an endangered language and a theoretical contribution towards a typology of language use.

Abstract

We completed fine mapping of nine positional candidate regions for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in an extended population sample of 308 affected sibling pairs (ASPs), constituting the largest linkage sample of families with ADHD published to date. The candidate chromosomal regions were selected from all three published genomewide scans for ADHD, and fine mapping was done to comprehensively validate these positional candidate regions in our sample. Multipoint maximum LOD score (MLS) analysis yielded significant evidence of linkage on 6q12 (MLS 3.30; empiric P=.024) and 17p11 (MLS 3.63; empiric P=.015), as well as suggestive evidence on 5p13 (MLS 2.55; empiric P=.091). In conjunction with the previously reported significant linkage on the basis of fine mapping 16p13 in the same sample as this report, the analyses presented here indicate that four chromosomal regions—5p13, 6q12, 16p13, and 17p11—are likely to harbor susceptibility genes for ADHD. The refinement of linkage within each of these regions lays the foundation for subsequent investigations using association methods to detect risk genes of moderate effect size.

Abstract

Two recent studies (Coulson et al., 1998;Osterhout et al., 1996)examined the
relationship between the event-related brain potential (ERP) responses to linguistic syntactic anomalies (P600/SPS) and domain-general unexpected events (P300). Coulson et al. concluded that these responses are highly similar, whereas Osterhout et al. concluded that they are distinct. In this comment, we evaluate the relativemerits of these claims. We conclude that the available evidence indicates that the ERP response to syntactic anomalies is at least partially distinct from the ERP response to unexpected anomalies that do not involve a grammatical violation