Publications

Abstract

Both emotional words and words focused by information structure can capture attention. This study examined the interplay between emotional salience and information structure in modulating attentional resources in the service of integrating emotional words into sentence context. Event-related potentials (ERPs) to affectively negative, neutral, and positive words, which were either focused or nonfocused in question–answer pairs, were evaluated during sentence comprehension. The results revealed an early negative effect (90–200 ms), a P2 effect, as well as an effect in the N400 time window, for both emotional salience and information structure. Moreover, an interaction between emotional salience and information structure occurred within the N400 time window over right posterior electrodes, showing that information structure influences the semantic integration only for neutral words, but not for emotional words. This might reflect the fact that the linguistic salience of emotional words can override the effect of information structure on the integration of words into context. The interaction provides evidence for attention–emotion interactions at a later stage of processing. In addition, the absence of interaction in the early time window suggests that the processing of emotional information is highly automatic and independent of context. The results suggest independent attention capture systems of emotional salience and information structure at the early stage but an interaction between them at a later stage, during the semantic integration of words.

Abstract

Unlike common nouns, person names refer to unique entities and generally have a referring function. We used event-related potentials to investigate the time course of identifying the emotional meaning of nouns and names. The emotional valence of names and nouns were manipulated separately. The results show early N1 effects in response to emotional valence only for nouns. This might reflect automatic attention directed towards emotional stimuli. The absence of such an effect for names supports the notion that the emotional meaning carried by names is accessed after word recognition and person identification. In addition, both names with negative valence and emotional nouns elicited late positive effects, which have been associated with evaluation of emotional significance. This positive effect started earlier for nouns than for names, but with similar durations. Our results suggest that distinct neural systems are involved in the retrieval of names’ and nouns’ emotional meaning.

Abstract

Next to propositional content, speakers distribute information in their utterances in such a way that listeners can make a distinction between new (focused) and given (non-focused) information. This is referred to as information structure. We measured event-related potentials (ERPs) to explore the role of information structure in semantic processing. Following different questions in wh-question-answer pairs (e.g. What kind of vegetable did Ming buy for cooking today? /Who bought the vegetables for cooking today?), the answer sentences (e.g., Ming bought eggplant/beef to cook today.) contained a critical word, which was either semantically appropriate (eggplant) or inappropriate (beef), and either focus or non-focus. The results showed a full N400 effect only when the critical words were in focus position. In non-focus position a strongly reduced N400 effect was observed, in line with the well-known semantic illusion effect. The results suggest that information structure facilitates semantic processing by devoting more resources to focused information.

Abstract

The present study investigated whether and how beat gesture (small baton-like hand movements used to emphasize information in speech) influences semantic processing as well as its interaction with pitch accent during speech comprehension. Event-related potentials were recorded as participants watched videos of a person gesturing and speaking simultaneously. The critical words in the spoken sentences were accompanied by a beat gesture, a control hand movement, or no hand movement, and were expressed either with or without pitch accent. We found that both beat gesture and control hand movement induced smaller negativities in the N400 time window than when no hand movement was presented. The reduced N400s indicate that both beat gesture and control movement facilitated the semantic integration of the critical word into the sentence context. In addition, the words accompanied by beat gesture elicited smaller negativities in the N400 time window than those accompanied by control hand movement over right posterior electrodes, suggesting that beat gesture has a unique role for enhancing semantic processing during speech comprehension. Finally, no interaction was observed between beat gesture and pitch accent, indicating that they affect semantic processing independently.

Abstract

Previous research suggests that lie detection can be improved by asking the interviewee unexpected questions. The present experiment investigates the effect of two types of unexpected questions: background questions and detail questions, on detecting lies about topics with which the interviewee is (a) familiar or (b) unfamiliar. In this experiment, 66 participants read interviews in which interviewees answered background or detail questions, either truthfully or deceptively. Those who answered deceptively could be lying about a topic they were familiar with or about a topic they were unfamiliar with. The participants were asked to judge whether the interviewees were lying. The results revealed that background questions distinguished truths from both types of lies, while the detail questions distinguished truths from unfamiliar lies, but not from familiar lies. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Abstract

Natural, spontaneous speech (and even quite careful speech) often shows extreme reduction in many speech segments, even resulting in apparent deletion of consonants. Where the flap ([(sic)]) allophone of /t/ and /d/ is expected in American English, one frequently sees an approximant-like or even vocalic pattern, rather than a clear flap. Still, the /t/ or /d/ is usually perceived, suggesting the acoustic characteristics of a reduced flap are sufficient for perception of a consonant. This paper identifies several acoustic characteristics of reduced flaps based on previous acoustic research (size of intensity dip, consonant duration, and F4 valley) and presents phonetic identification data for continua that manipulate these acoustic characteristics of reduction. The results indicate that the most obvious types of acoustic variability seen in natural flaps do affect listeners' percept of a consonant, but not sufficiently to completely account for the percept. Listeners are affected by the acoustic characteristics of consonant reduction, but they are also very skilled at evaluating variability along the acoustic dimensions that realize reduction.

Abstract

This article addresses revitalization of a dormant language whose prospective speakers live in scattered geographical areas. In comparison to increasing the usage of an endangered language, revitalizing a dormant language (one with no living speakers) requires different methods to gain knowledge of the language. Language teaching for a dormant language with a scattered community presents different problems from other teaching situations. In this article, we discuss the types of tasks that must be accomplished for dormant-language revitalization, with particular focus on development of teaching materials. We also address the role of computer technologies, arguing that each use of technology should be evaluated for how effectively it increases fluency. We discuss methods for achieving semi-fluency for the first new speakers of a dormant language, and for spreading the language through the community.

Abstract

Recent brain potential research into first versus second language (L1 vs. L2) processing revealed striking responses to morphosyntactic features absent in the mother tongue. The aim of the present study was to establish whether the presence of comparable morphosyntactic features in L1 leads to more similar electrophysiological L1 and L2 profiles. ERPs were acquired while German-English bilinguals and native speakers of English read sentences. Some sentences were meaningful and well formed, whereas others contained morphosyntactic or semantic violations in the final word. In addition to the expected P600 component, morphosyntactic violations in L2 but not L1 led to an enhanced N400. This effect may suggest either that resolution of morphosyntactic anomalies in L2 relies on the lexico-semantic system or that the weaker/slower morphological mechanisms in L2 lead to greater sentence wrap-up difficulties known to result in N400 enhancement.

Abstract

A longstanding question in bilingualism is whether syntactic information is shared between the two language processing systems. We used an fMRI repetition suppression paradigm to investigate syntactic priming in reading comprehension in German–English late-acquisition bilinguals. In comparison to conventional subtraction analyses in bilingual experiments, repetition suppression has the advantage of being able to detect neuronal populations that are sensitive to properties that are shared by consecutive stimuli. In this study, we manipulated the syntactic structure between prime and target sentences. A sentence with a passive sentence structure in English was preceded either by a passive or by an active sentence in English or German. We looked for repetition suppression effects in left inferior frontal, left precentral and left middle temporal regions of interest. These regions were defined by a contrast of all non-target sentences in German and English versus the baseline of sentence-format consonant strings. We found decreases in activity (repetition suppression effects) in these regions of interest following the repetition of syntactic structure from the first to the second language and within the second language.
Moreover, a separate behavioural experiment using a word-by-word reading paradigm similar to the fMRI experiment showed faster reading times for primed compared to unprimed English target sentences regardless of whether they were preceded by an English or a German sentence of the same structure.
We conclude that there is interaction between the language processing systems and that at least some syntactic information is shared between a bilingual's languages with similar syntactic structures.

Abstract

Many explanations of the difficulties associated with interpreting object relative clauses appeal to the demands that object relatives make on working memory. MacDonald and Christiansen [MacDonald, M. C., & Christiansen, M. H. (2002). Reassessing working memory: Comment on Just and Carpenter (1992) and Waters and Caplan (1996). Psychological Review, 109, 35-54] pointed to variations in reading experience as a source of differences, arguing that the unique word order of object relatives makes their processing more difficult and more sensitive to the effects of previous experience than the processing of subject relatives. This hypothesis was tested in a large-scale study manipulating reading experiences of adults over several weeks. The group receiving relative clause experience increased reading speeds for object relatives more than for subject relatives, whereas a control experience group did not. The reading time data were compared to performance of a computational model given different amounts of experience. The results support claims for experience-based individual differences and an important role for statistical learning in sentence comprehension processes.

Abstract

Participants were unknowingly exposed to complex regularities in a working memory task. The existence of implicit knowledge was subsequently inferred from a preference for stimuli with similar grammatical regularities. Several affective traits have been shown to influence
AGL performance positively, many of which are related to a tendency for automatic responding. We therefore tested whether the mindfulness trait predicted a reduction of grammatically congruent preferences, and used emotional primes to explore the influence of affect. Mindfulness was shown to correlate negatively with grammatically congruent responses. Negative primes were shown to result in faster and more negative evaluations.
We conclude that grammatically congruent preference ratings rely on habitual responses, and that our findings provide empirical evidence for the non-reactive disposition of the mindfulness trait.

Abstract

This contribution emphasizes the role of multimedia data not only for archiving languages but also for creating opportunities for innovative analyses. In the case at hand, video material was collected as part of the documentation of Akhoe Haiom, a Khoisan language spoken in northern Namibia. The multimedia documentation project brought together linguistic and anthropological work to highlight connections between specialized domains, namely kinship terminology, interrogatives and reciprocals. These connections would have gone unnoticed or undocumented in more conventional modes of language description. It is suggested that such an approach may be particularly appropriate for the documentation of endangered languages since it directs the focus of attention away from isolated traits of languages towards more complex practices of communication that are also frequently threatened with extinction.

Abstract

Even before it became a common place to assume that “the Eskimo have a hundred words for snow” the languages of hunting and gathering people have played an important role in debates about linguistic relativity concerning geographical ontologies. Evidence from languages of hunter-gatherers has been used in radical relativist challenges to the overall notion of a comparative typology of generic natural forms and landscapes as terms of reference. It has been invoked to emphasize a personalized relationship between humans and the non-human world. It is against this background that this contribution discusses the landscape terminology of ≠Akhoe Hai//om, a Khoisan language spoken by “Bushmen” in Namibia. Landscape vocabulary is ubiquitous in ≠Akhoe Hai//om due to the fact that the landscape plays a critical role in directionals and other forms of “topographical gossip” and due to merges between landscape and group terminology. This system of landscape-cum-group terminology is outlined and related to the use of place names in the area.

Abstract

Understanding language always occurs within a situational context and, therefore, often implies combining streams of information from different domains and modalities. One such combination is that of spoken language and visual information, which are perceived together in a variety of ways during everyday communication. Here we investigate whether and how words and pictures differ in terms of their neural correlates when they are integrated into a previously built-up sentence context. This is assessed in two experiments looking at the time course (measuring event-related potentials, ERPs) and the locus (using functional magnetic resonance imaging, fMRI) of this integration process. We manipulated the ease of semantic integration of word and/or picture to a previous sentence context to increase the semantic load of processing. In the ERP study, an increased semantic load led to an N400 effect which was similar for pictures and words in terms of latency and amplitude. In the fMRI study, we found overlapping activations to both picture and word integration in the left inferior frontal cortex. Specific activations for the integration of a word were observed in the left superior temporal cortex. We conclude that despite obvious differences in representational format, semantic information coming from pictures and words is integrated into a sentence context in similar ways in the brain. This study adds to the growing insight that the language system incorporates (semantic) information coming from linguistic and extralinguistic domains with the same neural time course and by recruitment of overlapping brain areas.

Abstract

If motor imagery uses neural structures involved in action execution, then the neural correlates of imagining an action should differ between individuals who tend to execute the action differently. Here we report fMRI data showing that motor imagery is influenced by the way people habitually perform motor actions with their particular bodies; that is, motor imagery is ‘body-specific’ (Casasanto, 2009). During mental imagery for complex hand actions, activation of cortical areas involved in motor planning and execution was left-lateralized in right-handers but right-lateralized in left-handers. We conclude that motor imagery involves the generation of an action plan that is grounded in the participant’s motor habits, not just an abstract representation at the level of the action’s goal. People with different patterns of motor experience form correspondingly different neurocognitive representations of imagined actions.

Abstract

Several studies indicate that both posterior superior temporal sulcus/middle temporal gyrus (pSTS/MTG) and left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) are involved in integrating information from different modalities. Here we investigated the respective roles of these two areas in integration of action and language information. We exploited the fact that the semantic relationship between language and different forms of action (i.e. co-speech gestures and pantomimes) is radically different. Speech and co-speech gestures are always produced together, and gestures are not unambiguously understood without speech. On the contrary, pantomimes are not necessarily produced together with speech and can be easily understood without speech. We presented speech together with these two types of communicative hand actions in matching or mismatching combinations to manipulate semantic integration load. Left and right pSTS/MTG were only involved in semantic integration of speech and pantomimes. Left IFG on the other hand was involved in integration of speech and co-speech gestures as well as of speech and pantomimes. Effective connectivity analyses showed that depending upon the semantic relationship between language and action, LIFG modulates activation levels in left pSTS.

This suggests that integration in pSTS/MTG involves the matching of two input streams for which there is a relatively stable common object representation, whereas integration in LIFG is better characterized as the on-line construction of a new and unified representation of the input streams. In conclusion, pSTS/MTG and LIFG are differentially involved in multimodal integration, crucially depending upon the semantic relationship between the input streams.

Abstract

Language is often perceived together with visual information. This raises the question on how the brain integrates information conveyed in visual and/or linguistic format during spoken language comprehension. In this study we investigated the dynamics of semantic integration of visual and linguistic information by means of time-frequency analysis of the EEG signal. A modified version of the N400 paradigm with either a word or a picture of an object being semantically incongruous with respect to the preceding sentence context was employed. Event-Related Potential (ERP) analysis showed qualitatively similar N400 effects for integration of either word or picture. Time-frequency analysis revealed early specific decreases in alpha and gamma band power for linguistic and visual information respectively. We argue that these reflect a rapid context-based analysis of acoustic (word) or visual (picture) form information. We conclude that although full semantic integration of linguistic and visual information occurs through a common mechanism, early differences in oscillations in specific frequency bands reflect the format of the incoming information and, importantly, an early context-based detection of its congruity with respect to the preceding language context

Abstract

It has been argued that we map observed actions onto our own motor system. Here we added to this issue by investigating whether hand preference influences the neural correlates of action observation of simple, essentially meaningless hand actions. Such an influence would argue for an intricate neural coupling between action production and action observation, which goes beyond effects of motor repertoire or explicit motor training, as has been suggested before. Indeed, parts of the human motor system exhibited a close coupling between action production and action observation. Ventral premotor and inferior and superior parietal cortices showed differential activation for left- and right-handers that was similar during action production as well as during action observation. This suggests that mapping observed actions onto the observer's own motor system is a core feature of action observation - at least for actions that do not have a clear goal or meaning. Basic differences in the way we act upon the world are not only reflected in neural correlates of action production, but can also influence the brain basis of action observation.

Abstract

Over recent years small submicroscopic DNA copy-number variants (CNVs) have been highlighted as an important source of variation in the human genome, human phenotypic diversity and disease susceptibility. Consequently, there is a pressing need for the development of methods that allow the efficient, accurate and cheap measurement of genomic copy number polymorphisms in clinical cohorts. We have developed a simple competitive PCR based method to determine DNA copy number which uses the entire genome of a single chimpanzee as a competitor thus eliminating the requirement for competitive sequences to be synthesized for each assay. This results in the requirement for only a single reference sample for all assays and dramatically increases the potential for large numbers of loci to be analysed in multiplex. In this study we establish proof of concept by accurately detecting previously characterized mutations at the PARK2 locus and then demonstrating the potential of quantitative interspecies competitive PCR (qicPCR) to accurately genotype CNVs in association studies by analysing chromosome 22q11 deletions in a sample of previously characterized patients and normal controls.

Abstract

We investigated how the strength of a foreign accent and varying types of experience with foreign-accented speech influence the recognition of accented words. In Experiment 1, native Dutch listeners with limited or extensive prior experience with German-accented Dutch completed a cross-modal priming experiment with strongly, medium, and weakly accented words. Participants with limited experience were primed by the medium and weakly accented words, but not by the strongly accented words. Participants with extensive experience were primed by all accent types. In Experiments 2 and 3, Dutch listeners with limited experience listened to a short story before doing the cross-modal priming task. In Experiment 2, the story was spoken by the priming task speaker and either contained strongly accented words or did not. Strongly accented exposure led to immediate priming by novel strongly accented words, while exposure to the speaker without strongly accented tokens led to priming only in the experiment’s second half. In Experiment 3, listeners listened to the story with strongly accented words spoken by a different German-accented speaker. Listeners were primed by the strongly accented words, but again only in the experiment’s second half. Together, these results show that adaptation to foreign-accented speech is rapid but depends on accent strength and on listener familiarity with those strongly accented words.

Abstract

The ISOcat Data Category Registry provides a community computing environment for creating, storing, retrieving, harmonizing and standardizing data category specifications (DCs), used to register linguistic terms used in various fields. This chapter recounts the history of DC documentation in TC 37, beginning from paper-based lists created for lexicographers and terminologists and progressing to the development of a web-based resource for a much broader range of users. While describing the considerable strides that have been made to collect a very large comprehensive collection of DCs, it also outlines difficulties that have arisen in developing a fully operative web-based computing environment for achieving consensus on data category names, definitions, and selections and describes efforts to overcome some of the present shortcomings and to establish positive working procedures designed to engage a wide range of people involved in the creation of language resources.

Abstract

Im ISOcat-Datenkategorie-Register (Data Category Registry, www.isocat.org) des Technischen Komitees ISO/TC 37 (Terminology and other language and content resources) werden Feldnamen und Werte für Sprachressourcen beschrieben. Empfohlene Feldnamen und zuverlässige Definitionen sollen dazu beitragen, dass Sprachdaten unabhängig von Anwendungen, Plattformen und Communities of Practice (CoP) wiederverwendet werden können. Datenkategorie-Gruppen (Data Category Selections) können eingesehen, ausgedruckt, exportiert und nach kostenloser Registrierung auch neu erstellt werden.

Abstract

In the present study, event-related brain potentials (ERP) were recorded to investigate the role of pitch accent and lexical tone in spoken discourse comprehension. Chinese was used as material to explore the potential difference in the nature and time course of brain responses to sentence meaning as indicated by pitch accent and to lexical meaning as indicated by tone. In both cases, the pitch contour of critical words was varied. The results showed that both inconsistent pitch accent and inconsistent lexical tone yielded N400 effects, and there was no interaction between them. The negativity evoked by inconsistent pitch accent had the some topography as that evoked by inconsistent lexical tone violation, with a maximum over central–parietal electrodes. Furthermore, the effect for the combined violations was the sum of effects for pure pitch accent and pure lexical tone violation. However, the effect for the lexical tone violation appeared approximately 90 ms earlier than the effect of the pitch accent violation. It is suggested that there might be a correspondence between the neural mechanism underlying pitch accent and lexical meaning processing in context. They both reflect the integration of the current information into a discourse context, independent of whether the current information was sentence meaning indicated by accentuation, or lexical meaning indicated by tone. In addition, lexical meaning was processed earlier than sentence meaning conveyed by pitch accent during spoken language processing.

Abstract

This article presents data on cardinal numerals in three sign languages from small-scale communities with hereditary deafness. The unusual features found in these data considerably extend the known range of typological variety across sign languages. Some features, such as non-decimal numeral bases, are unattested in sign languages, but familiar from spoken languages, while others, such as subtractive sub-systems, are rare in sign and speech. We conclude that for a complete typological appraisal of a domain, an approach to cross-modal typology, which includes a typologically diverse range of sign languages in addition to spoken languages, is both instructive and feasible.

Abstract

The lexicons of many sign languages hold large proportions of “frozen” forms, viz. signs that are generally considered to have been formed productively (as classifier predicates), but that have diachronically undergone processes of lexicalisation. Nederlandse Gebarentaal (Sign Language of the Netherlands; henceforth: NGT) also has many of these signs (Van der Kooij 2002, Zwitserlood 2003). In contrast to the general view on “frozen” forms, a few researchers claim that these signs may be formed according to productive sign formation rules, notably Brennan (1990) for BSL, and Meir (2001, 2002) for ISL. Following these claims, I suggest an analysis of “frozen” NGT signs as morphologically complex, using the framework of Distributed Morphology. The signs in question are derived in a similar way as classifier predicates; hence their similar form (but diverging characteristics). I will indicate how and why the structure and use of classifier predicates and “frozen” forms differ. Although my analysis focuses on NGT, it may also be applicable to other sign languages.

Abstract

The Corpus NGT

Abstract

This paper reports on an exploration of the ways in which multiple entities are expressed in Turkish Sign Language (TİD). The (descriptive and quantitative) analyses provided are based on a corpus of both spontaneous data and specifically elicited data, in order to provide as comprehensive an account as possible. We have found several devices in TİD for expression of multiple entities, in particular localization, spatial plural predicate inflection, and a specific form used to express multiple entities that are side by side in the same configuration (not reported for any other sign language to date), as well as numerals and quantifiers. In contrast to some other signed languages, TİD does not appear to have a productive system of plural reduplication. We argue that none of the devices encountered in the TİD data is a genuine plural marking device and that the plural interpretation of multiple entity localizations and plural predicate inflections is a by-product of the use of space to indicate the existence or the involvement in an event of multiple entities.