Publications

Displaying 101 - 171 of 171
  • Levinson, S. C. (2014). Language evolution. In N. J. Enfield, P. Kockelman, & J. Sidnell (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of linguistic anthropology (pp. 309-324). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Levinson, S. C. (2014). Pragmatics as the origin of recursion. In F. Lowenthal, & L. Lefebvre (Eds.), Language and recursion (pp. 3-13). Berlin: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-1-4614-9414-0_1.

    Abstract

    There has been a recent spate of work on recursion as a central design feature of language and specifically of syntax. This short report points out that there is little evidence that unlimited recursion, understood as centre embedding, is typical of natural language syntax. Nevertheless, embedded pragmatic construals seem available in every language. Further, much deeper centre embedding can be found in dialogue or conversation structure than can be found in syntax. Existing accounts for the ‘performance’ limitations on centre embedding are thus thrown in doubt. Dialogue materials suggest that centre embedding is perhaps a core part of the human interaction system and is for some reason much more highly restricted in syntax than in other aspects of cognition
  • Levinson, S. C., & Dediu, D. (2013). The interplay of genetic and cultural factors in ongoing language evolution. In P. J. Richerson, & M. H. Christiansen (Eds.), Cultural evolution: Society, technology, language, and religion. Strüngmann Forum Reports, vol. 12 (pp. 219-232). Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
  • Liszkowski, U. (2014). Pointing. In P. Brooks, & V. Kempe (Eds.), Encyclopedia of language development (Vol. 15) (pp. 471-473). London: Sage.
  • Majid, A. (2013). Psycholinguistics. In J. L. Jackson (Ed.), Oxford Bibliographies Online: Anthropology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Martins, M., Raju, A., & Ravignani, A. (2014). Evaluating the role of quantitative modeling in language evolution. In L. McCrohon, B. Thompson, T. Verhoef, & H. Yamauchi (Eds.), The Past, Present and Future of Language Evolution Research: Student volume of the 9th International Conference on the Evolution of Language (pp. 84-93). Tokyo: EvoLang9 Organising Committee.

    Abstract

    Models are a flourishing and indispensable area of research in language evolution. Here we
    highlight critical issues in using and interpreting models, and suggest viable approaches. First,
    contrasting models can explain the same data and similar modelling techniques can lead to
    diverging conclusions. This should act as a reminder to use the extreme malleability of
    modelling parsimoniously when interpreting results. Second, quantitative techniques similar to
    those used in modelling language evolution have proven themselves inadequate in other
    disciplines. Cross-disciplinary fertilization is crucial to avoid mistakes which have previously
    occurred in other areas. Finally, experimental validation is necessary both to sharpen models'
    hypotheses, and to support their conclusions. Our belief is that models should be interpreted as
    quantitative demonstrations of logical possibilities, rather than as direct sources of evidence.
    Only an integration of theoretical principles, quantitative proofs and empirical validation can
    allow research in the evolution of language to progress.
  • Matic, D. (2014). Clues to information structure in field data. In D. El Zarka, & S. Heidinger (Eds.), Methodological Issues in the Study of Information Structure (pp. 25-42). Graz: Graz University Press.
  • Matić, D., Van Gijn, R., & Van Valin Jr., R. D. (2014). Information structure and reference tracking in complex sentences: An overview. In R. van Gijn, J. Hammond, D. Matić, S. van Putten, & A. Galucio (Eds.), Information structure and reference tracking in complex sentences. (pp. 1-42). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    This volume is dedicated to exploring the crossroads where complex sentences and information management – more specifically information structure (IS) and reference tracking (RT) – come together. Complex sentences are a highly relevant but understudied domain for studying notions of IS and RT. On the one hand, a complex sentence can be studied as a mini-unit of discourse consisting of two or more elements describing events, situations, or processes, with its own internal information-structural and referential organisation. On the other hand, complex sentences can be studied as parts of larger discourse structures, such as narratives or conversations, in terms of how their information-structural characteristics relate to this wider context.We first focus on the interrelatedness of IS and RT (Section 1) and then define and discuss the notion of complex sentences and their subtypes in Section 2. Section 3 surveys issues of IS in complex sentences, while Section 4 focuses on RT in complex sentences. Sections 5 and 6 briefly consider IS and RT in a wider discourse context. Section 5 discusses the interaction between IS, RT, and other discourse factors, and Section 6 focuses on ways in which a specific RT system, switch reference, can function as an RT device beyond the sentence.
  • Matić, D. (2014). Questions and syntactic islands in Tundra Yukaghir. In R. van Gijn, J. Hammond, D. Matić, S. van Putten, & A. Galucio (Eds.), Information structure and reference tracking in complex sentences (pp. 127-162). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    No island effects are observable in Tundra Yukaghir questions, which are possible in virtually all syntactic environments. It is argued that this feature of Tundra Yukaghir relates to its capability of explicitly marking focus domains. If a question word occurs in a syntactic island, the whole island is morphologically treated as a focus domain. In order to take scope and function as question markers, question words must remain within the focus domain, i.e. in the island clause. This syntactic configuration is reflected in the semantics of question islands, which are used to inquire about the identity of the whole island, not merely the denotation of the question word.
  • McDonough, L., Choi, S., Bowerman, M., & Mandler, J. M. (1998). The use of preferential looking as a measure of semantic development. In C. Rovee-Collier, L. P. Lipsitt, & H. Hayne (Eds.), Advances in Infancy Research. Volume 12. (pp. 336-354). Stamford, CT: Ablex Publishing.
  • McQueen, J. M., & Cutler, A. (1998). Morphology in word recognition. In A. M. Zwicky, & A. Spencer (Eds.), The handbook of morphology (pp. 406-427). Oxford: Blackwell.
  • Mickan, A., Schiefke, M., & Anatol, S. (2014). Key is a llave is a Schlüssel: A failure to replicate an experiment from Boroditsky et al. 2003. In M. Hilpert, & S. Flach (Eds.), Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association (pp. 39-50). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. doi:doi.org/10.1515/gcla-2014-0004.

    Abstract

    In this paper, we present two attempts to replicate a widely-cited but never fully published experiment in which German and Spanish speakers were asked to associate adjectives with nouns of masculine and feminine grammati-cal gender (Boroditsky et al. 2003). The researchers claim that speakers associ-ated more stereotypically female adjectives with grammatically feminine nouns and more stereotypically male adjectives with grammatically masculine nouns. We were not able to replicate the results either in a word association task or in an analogous primed lexical decision task. This suggests that the results of the original experiment were either an artifact of some non-documented aspect of the experimental procedure or a statistical fluke. The question whether speakers assign sex-based interpretations to grammatical gender categories at all cannot be answered definitively, as the results in the published literature vary consider-ably. However, our experiments show that if such an effect exists, it is not strong enough to be measured indirectly via the priming of adjectives by nouns.
  • Mishra, R. K., Olivers, C. N. L., & Huettig, F. (2013). Spoken language and the decision to move the eyes: To what extent are language-mediated eye movements automatic? In V. S. C. Pammi, & N. Srinivasan (Eds.), Progress in Brain Research: Decision making: Neural and behavioural approaches (pp. 135-149). New York: Elsevier.

    Abstract

    Recent eye-tracking research has revealed that spoken language can guide eye gaze very rapidly (and closely time-locked to the unfolding speech) toward referents in the visual world. We discuss whether, and to what extent, such language-mediated eye movements are automatic rather than subject to conscious and controlled decision-making. We consider whether language-mediated eye movements adhere to four main criteria of automatic behavior, namely, whether they are fast and efficient, unintentional, unconscious, and overlearned (i.e., arrived at through extensive practice). Current evidence indicates that language-driven oculomotor behavior is fast but not necessarily always efficient. It seems largely unintentional though there is also some evidence that participants can actively use the information in working memory to avoid distraction in search. Language-mediated eye movements appear to be for the most part unconscious and have all the hallmarks of an overlearned behavior. These data are suggestive of automatic mechanisms linking language to potentially referred-to visual objects, but more comprehensive and rigorous testing of this hypothesis is needed.
  • Moulin, C. A., Souchay, C., Bradley, R., Buchanan, S., Karadöller, D. Z., & Akan, M. (2014). Déjà vu in older adults. In B. L. Schwartz, & A. S. Brown (Eds.), Tip-of-the-tongue states and related phenomena (pp. 281-304). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Muysken, P., Hammarström, H., Birchall, J., Danielsen, S., Eriksen, L., Galucio, A. V., Van Gijn, R., Van de Kerke, S., Kolipakam, V., Krasnoukhova, O., Müller, N., & O'Connor, L. (2014). The languages of South America: Deep families, areal relationships, and language contact. In P. Muysken, & L. O'Connor (Eds.), Language contact in South America (pp. 299-323). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Noordman, L. G., & Vonk, W. (1998). Discourse comprehension. In A. D. Friederici (Ed.), Language comprehension: a biological perspective (pp. 229-262). Berlin: Springer.

    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.
  • Nordhoff, S., & Hammarström, H. (2014). Archiving grammatical descriptions. In P. K. Austin (Ed.), Language Documentation and Description. Vol. 12 (pp. 164-186). London: SOAS.
  • O'Connor, L., & Kolipakam, V. (2014). Human migrations, dispersals, and contacts in South America. In L. O'Connor, & P. Muysken (Eds.), The native languages of South America: Origins, development, typology (pp. 29-55). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Osswald, R., & Van Valin Jr., R. D. (2013). FrameNet, frame structure and the syntax-semantics interface. In T. Gamerschlag, D. Gerland, R. Osswald, & W. Petersen (Eds.), Frames and concept types: Applications in language and philosophy. Heidelberg: Springer.
  • Plomp, R., & Levelt, W. J. M. (1966). Perception of tonal consonance. In M. A. Bouman (Ed.), Studies in Perception - dedicated to M.A. Bouman (pp. 105-118). Soesterberg: Institute for Perception RVO-TNO.
  • Reesink, G. (2014). Topic management and clause combination in the Papuan language Usan. In R. Van Gijn, J. Hammond, D. Matic, S. van Putten, & A.-V. Galucio (Eds.), Information Structure and Reference Tracking in Complex Sentences. (pp. 231-262). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Abstract

    This chapter describes topic management in the Papuan language Usan. The notion of ‘topic’ is defined by its pre-theoretical meaning ‘what someone’s speech is about’. This notion cannot be restricted to simple clausal or sentential constructions, but requires the wider context of long stretches of natural text. The tracking of a topic is examined in its relationship to clause combining mechanisms. Coordinating clause chaining with its switch reference mechanism is contrasted with subordinating strategies called ‘domain-creating’ constructions. These different strategies are identified by language-specific signals, such as intonation and morphosyntactic cues like nominalizations and scope of negation and other modalities.
  • Roberts, L. (2013). Discourse processing. In P. Robinson (Ed.), The Routledge encyclopedia of second language acquisition (pp. 190-194). New York: Routledge.
  • Roberts, S. G. (2014). Monolingual Biases in Simulations of Cultural Transmission. In V. Dignum, & F. Dignum (Eds.), Perspectives on Culture and Agent-based Simulations (pp. 111-125). Cham: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-01952-9_7.

    Abstract

    Recent research suggests that the evolution of language is affected by the inductive biases of its learners. I suggest that there is an implicit assumption that one of these biases is to expect a single linguistic system in the input. Given the prevalence of bilingual cultures, this may not be a valid abstraction. This is illustrated by demonstrating that the ‘minimal naming game’ model, in which a shared lexicon evolves in a population of agents, includes an implicit mutual exclusivity bias. Since recent research suggests that children raised in bilingual cultures do not exhibit mutual exclusivity, the individual learning algorithm of the agents is not as abstract as it appears to be. A modification of this model demonstrates that communicative success can be achieved without mutual exclusivity. It is concluded that complex cultural phenomena, such as bilingualism, do not necessarily result from complex individual learning mechanisms. Rather, the cultural process itself can bring about this complexity.
  • Roberts, S. G., & Quillinan, J. (2014). The Chimp Challenge: Working memory in chimps and humans. In L. McCrohon, B. Thompson, T. Verhoef, & H. Yamauchi (Eds.), The Past, Present and Future of Language Evolution Research: Student volume of the 9th International Conference on the Evolution of Language (pp. 31-39). Tokyo: EvoLang9 Organising Committee.

    Abstract

    Matsuzawa (2012) presented work at Evolang demonstrating the working memory abilities of chimpanzees. (Inoue & Matsuzawa, 2007) found that chimpanzees can correctly remember the location of 9 randomly arranged numerals displayed for 210ms - shorter than an average human eye saccade. Humans, however, perform poorly at this task. Matsuzawa suggests a semantic link hypothesis: while chimps have good visual, eidetic memory, humans are good at symbolic associations. The extra information in the semantic, linguistic links that humans possess increase the load on working memory and make this task difficult for them. We were interested to see if a wider search could find humans that matched the performance of the chimpanzees. We created an online version of the experiment and challenged people to play. We also attempted to run a non-semantic version of the task to see if this made the task easier. We found that, while humans can perform better than Inoue and Matsuzawa (2007) suggest, chimpanzees can perform better still. We also found no evidence to support the semantic link hypothesis.
  • Roberts, L. (2013). Sentence processing in bilinguals. In R. Van Gompel (Ed.), Sentence processing. London: Psychology Press.
  • Rossano, F. (2013). Gaze in conversation. In J. Sidnell, & T. Stivers (Eds.), The handbook of conversation analysis (pp. 308-329). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. doi:10.1002/9781118325001.ch15.

    Abstract

    This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Background: The Gaze “Machinery” Gaze “Machinery” in Social Interaction Future Directions
  • Rossi, G. (2014). When do people not use language to make requests? In P. Drew, & E. Couper-Kuhlen (Eds.), Requesting in social interaction (pp. 301-332). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Abstract

    In everyday joint activities (e.g. playing cards, preparing potatoes, collecting empty plates), participants often request others to pass, move or otherwise deploy objects. In order to get these objects to or from the requestee, requesters need to manipulate them, for example by holding them out, reaching for them, or placing them somewhere. As they perform these manual actions, requesters may or may not accompany them with language (e.g. Take this potato and cut it or Pass me your plate). This study shows that adding or omitting language in the design of a request is influenced in the first place by a criterion of recognition. When the requested action is projectable from the advancement of an activity, presenting a relevant object to the requestee is enough for them to understand what to do; when, on the other hand, the requested action is occasioned by a contingent development of the activity, requesters use language to specify what the requestee should do. This criterion operates alongside a perceptual criterion, to do with the affordances of the visual and auditory modality. When the requested action is projectable but the requestee is not visually attending to the requester’s manual behaviour, the requester can use just enough language to attract the requestee’s attention and secure immediate recipiency. This study contributes to a line of research concerned with the organisation of verbal and nonverbal resources for requesting. Focussing on situations in which language is not – or only minimally – used, it demonstrates the role played by visible bodily behaviour and by the structure of everyday activities in the formation and understanding of requests.
  • Rowland, C. F., Noble, C. H., & Chan, A. (2014). Competition all the way down: How children learn word order cues to sentence meaning. In B. MacWhinney, A. Malchukov, & E. Moravcsik (Eds.), Competing Motivations in Grammar and Usage (pp. 125-143). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Abstract

    Most work on competing cues in language acquisition has focussed on what happens when cues compete within a certain construction. There has been far less work on what happens when constructions themselves compete. The aim of the present chapter was to explore how the acquisition mechanism copes when constructions compete in a language. We present three experimental studies, all of which focus on the acquisition of the syntactic function of word order as a marker of the Theme-Recipient relation in ditransitives (form-meaning mapping). In Study 1 we investigated how quickly English children acquire form-meaning mappings when there are two competing structures in the language. We demonstrated that English speaking 4-year- olds, but not 3-year-olds, correctly interpreted both preposition al and double object datives, assigning Theme and Recipient participant roles on the basis of word order cues. There was no advantage for the double object dative despite its greater frequency in child directed speech. In Study 2 we looked at acquisition in a language which has no dative alternation –Welsh–to investigate how quickly children acquire form-meaning mapping when there is no competing structure. We demonstrated that Welsh children (Study 2) acquired the prepositional dative at age 3 years, which was much earlier than English children. Finally, in Study 3 we examined bei2 (give) ditransitives in Cantonese, to investigate what happens when there is no dative alternation (as in Welsh), but when the child hears alternative, and possibly competing, word orders in the input. Like the English 3-year-olds, the Cantonese 3-year-olds had not yet acquired the word order marking constraints of bei2 ditransitives. We conclude that there is not only competition between cues but competition between constructions in language acquisition. We suggest an extension to the competition model (Bates & MacWhinney, 1982) whereby generalisations take place across constructions as easily as they take place within constructions, whenever there are salient similarities to form the basis of the generalisation.
  • Rumsey, A., San Roque, L., & Schieffelin, B. (2013). The acquisition of ergative marking in Kaluli, Ku Waru and Duna (Trans New Guinea). In E. L. Bavin, & S. Stoll (Eds.), The acquisition of ergativity (pp. 133-182). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    In this chapter we present material on the acquisition of ergative marking on noun phrases in three languages of Papua New Guinea: Kaluli, Ku Waru, and Duna. The expression of ergativity in all the languages is broadly similar, but sensitive to language-specific features, and this pattern of similarity and difference is reflected in the available acquisition data. Children acquire adult-like ergative marking at about the same pace, reaching similar levels of mastery by 3;00 despite considerable differences in morphological complexity of ergative marking among the languages. What may be more important – as a factor in accounting for the relative uniformity of acquisition in this respect – are the similarities in patterns of interactional scaffolding that emerge from a comparison of the three cases.
  • Schepens, J., Van der Slik, F., & Van Hout, R. (2013). The effect of linguistic distance across Indo-European mother tongues on learning Dutch as a second language. In L. Borin, & A. Saxena (Eds.), Approaches to measuring linguistic differences (pp. 199-230). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Schoffelen, J.-M., & Gross, J. (2014). Studying dynamic neural interactions with MEG. In S. Supek, & C. J. Aine (Eds.), Magnetoencephalography: From signals to dynamic cortical networks (pp. 405-427). Berlin: Springer.
  • Scott, S. K., McGettigan, C., & Eisner, F. (2013). The neural basis of links and dissociations between speech perception and production. In J. J. Bolhuis, & M. Everaert (Eds.), Birdsong, speech and language: Exploring the evolution of mind and brain (pp. 277-294). Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
  • Senft, G. (1998). 'Noble Savages' and the 'Islands of Love': Trobriand Islanders in 'Popular Publications'. In J. Wassmann (Ed.), Pacific answers to Western hegemony: Cultural practices of identity construction (pp. 119-140). Oxford: Berg Publishers.
  • Senft, G. (2013). Ethnolinguistik. In B. Beer, & H. Fischer (Eds.), Ethnologie - Einführung und Überblick. (8. Auflage, pp. 271-286). Berlin: Reimer.
  • Senft, G. (1998). Zeichenkonzeptionen in Ozeanien. In R. Posner, T. Robering, & T.. Sebeok (Eds.), Semiotics: A handbook on the sign-theoretic foundations of nature and culture (Vol. 2) (pp. 1971-1976). Berlin: de Gruyter.
  • Senghas, A., Ozyurek, A., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2013). Homesign as a way-station between co-speech gesture and sign language: The evolution of segmenting and sequencing. In R. Botha, & M. Everaert (Eds.), The evolutionary emergence of language: Evidence and inference (pp. 62-77). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (2013). The logico-philosophical tradition. In K. Allan (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of the history of linguistics (pp. 537-554). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1998). Towards a discourse-semantic account of donkey anaphora. In S. Botley, & T. McEnery (Eds.), New Approaches to Discourse Anaphora: Proceedings of the Second Colloquium on Discourse Anaphora and Anaphor Resolution (DAARC2) (pp. 212-220). Lancaster: Universiy Centre for Computer Corpus Research on Language, Lancaster University.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (2014). Universe restriction in the logic of language. In J. Hoeksema, & D. Gilbers (Eds.), Black Book: A Festschrift in Honor of Frans Zwarts (pp. 282-300). Groningen: University of Groningen.
  • Sidnell, J., & Enfield, N. J. (2014). Deixis and the interactional foundations of reference. In Y. Huang (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of pragmatics.
  • Sidnell, J., Kockelman, P., & Enfield, N. J. (2014). Community and social life. In N. J. Enfield, P. Kockelman, & J. Sidnell (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of linguistic anthropology (pp. 481-483). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Sidnell, J., Enfield, N. J., & Kockelman, P. (2014). Interaction and intersubjectivity. In N. J. Enfield, P. Kockelman, & J. Sidnell (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of linguistic anthropology (pp. 343-345). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Sidnell, J., & Enfield, N. J. (2014). The ontology of action, in interaction. In N. J. Enfield, P. Kockelman, & J. Sidnell (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of linguistic anthropology (pp. 423-446). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Sloetjes, H. (2014). ELAN: Multimedia annotation application. In J. Durand, U. Gut, & G. Kristoffersen (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Corpus Phonology (pp. 305-320). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Sloetjes, H. (2013). The ELAN annotation tool. In H. Lausberg (Ed.), Understanding body movement: A guide to empirical research on nonverbal behaviour with an introduction to the NEUROGES coding system (pp. 193-198). Frankfurt a/M: Lang.
  • Sloetjes, H. (2013). Step by step introduction in NEUROGES coding with ELAN. In H. Lausberg (Ed.), Understanding body movement: A guide to empirical research on nonverbal behaviour with an introduction to the NEUROGES coding system (pp. 201-212). Frankfurt a/M: Lang.
  • Smith, A. C., Monaghan, P., & Huettig, F. (2014). Modelling language – vision interactions in the hub and spoke framework. In J. Mayor, & P. Gomez (Eds.), Computational Models of Cognitive Processes: Proceedings of the 13th Neural Computation and Psychology Workshop (NCPW13). (pp. 3-16). Singapore: World Scientific Publishing.

    Abstract

    Multimodal integration is a central characteristic of human cognition. However our understanding of the interaction between modalities and its influence on behaviour is still in its infancy. This paper examines the value of the Hub & Spoke framework (Plaut, 2002; Rogers et al., 2004; Dilkina et al., 2008; 2010) as a tool for exploring multimodal interaction in cognition. We present a Hub and Spoke model of language–vision information interaction and report the model’s ability to replicate a range of phonological, visual and semantic similarity word-level effects reported in the Visual World Paradigm (Cooper, 1974; Tanenhaus et al, 1995). The model provides an explicit connection between the percepts of language and the distribution of eye gaze and demonstrates the scope of the Hub-and-Spoke architectural framework by modelling new aspects of multimodal cognition.
  • Stolker, C. J. J. M., & Poletiek, F. H. (1998). Smartengeld - Wat zijn we eigenlijk aan het doen? Naar een juridische en psychologische evaluatie. In F. Stadermann (Ed.), Bewijs en letselschade (pp. 71-86). Lelystad, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Vermande.
  • Sumer, B., Zwitserlood, I., Perniss, P. M., & Ozyurek, A. (2013). Acquisition of locative expressions in children learning Turkish Sign Language (TİD) and Turkish. In E. Arik (Ed.), Current directions in Turkish Sign Language research (pp. 243-272). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

    Abstract

    In sign languages, where space is often used to talk about space, expressions of spatial relations (e.g., ON, IN, UNDER, BEHIND) may rely on analogue mappings of real space onto signing space. In contrast, spoken languages express space in mostly categorical ways (e.g. adpositions). This raises interesting questions about the role of language modality in the acquisition of expressions of spatial relations. However, whether and to what extent modality influences the acquisition of spatial language is controversial – mostly due to the lack of direct comparisons of Deaf children to Deaf adults and to age-matched hearing children in similar tasks. Furthermore, the previous studies have taken English as the only model for spoken language development of spatial relations.
    Therefore, we present a balanced study in which spatial expressions by deaf and hearing children in two different age-matched groups (preschool children and school-age children) are systematically compared, as well as compared to the spatial expressions of adults. All participants performed the same tasks, describing angular (LEFT, RIGHT, FRONT, BEHIND) and non-angular spatial configurations (IN, ON, UNDER) of different objects (e.g. apple in box; car behind box).
    The analysis of the descriptions with non-angular spatial relations does not show an effect of modality on the development of
    locative expressions in TİD and Turkish. However, preliminary results of the analysis of expressions of angular spatial relations suggest that signers provide angular information in their spatial descriptions
    more frequently than Turkish speakers in all three age groups, and thus showing a potentially different developmental pattern in this domain. Implications of the findings with regard to the development of relations in spatial language and cognition will be discussed.
  • Suppes, P., Böttner, M., & Liang, L. (1998). Machine Learning of Physics Word Problems: A Preliminary Report. In A. Aliseda, R. van Glabbeek, & D. Westerståhl (Eds.), Computing Natural Language (pp. 141-154). Stanford, CA, USA: CSLI Publications.
  • De Swart, P., & Van Bergen, G. (2014). Unscrambling the lexical nature of weak definites. In A. Aguilar-Guevara, B. Le Bruyn, & J. Zwarts (Eds.), Weak referentiality (pp. 287-310). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    We investigate how the lexical nature of weak definites influences the phenomenon of direct object scrambling in Dutch. Earlier experiments have indicated that weak definites are more resistant to scrambling than strong definites. We examine how the notion of weak definiteness used in this experimental work can be reduced to lexical connectedness. We explore four different ways of quantifying the relation between a direct object and the verb. Our results show that predictability of a verb given the object (verb cloze probability) provides the best fit to the weak/strong distinction used in the earlier experiments
  • Thompson-Schill, S., Hagoort, P., Dominey, P. F., Honing, H., Koelsch, S., Ladd, D. R., Lerdahl, F., Levinson, S. C., & Steedman, M. (2013). Multiple levels of structure in language and music. In M. A. Arbib (Ed.), Language, music, and the brain: A mysterious relationship (pp. 289-303). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Abstract

    A forum devoted to the relationship between music and language begins with an implicit assumption: There is at least one common principle that is central to all human musical systems and all languages, but that is not characteristic of (most) other domains. Why else should these two categories be paired together for analysis? We propose that one candidate for a common principle is their structure. In this chapter, we explore the nature of that structure—and its consequences for psychological and neurological processing mechanisms—within and across these two domains.
  • Trilsbeek, P., & Koenig, A. (2014). Increasing the future usage of endangered language archives. In D. Nathan, & P. Austin (Eds.), Language Documentation and Description vol 12 (pp. 151-163). London: SOAS. Retrieved from http://www.elpublishing.org/PID/142.
  • Van Leeuwen, T. M., Petersson, K. M., Langner, O., Rijpkema, M., & Hagoort, P. (2014). Color specificity in the human V4 complex: An fMRI repetition suppression study. In T. D. Papageorgiou, G. I. Cristopoulous, & S. M. Smirnakis (Eds.), Advanced Brain Neuroimaging Topics in Health and Disease - Methods and Applications (pp. 275-295). Rijeka, Croatia: Intech. doi:10.5772/58278.
  • Van Putten, S. (2014). Left-dislocation and subordination in Avatime (Kwa). In R. Van Gijn, J. Hammond, D. Matic, S. van Putten, & A.-V. Galucio (Eds.), Information Structure and Reference Tracking in Complex Sentences. (pp. 71-98). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Abstract

    Left dislocation is characterized by a sentence-initial element which is crossreferenced in the remainder of the sentence, and often set off by an intonation break. Because of these properties, left dislocation has been analyzed as an extraclausal phenomenon. Whether or not left dislocation can occur within subordinate clauses has been a matter of debate in the literature, but has never been checked against corpus data. This paper presents data from Avatime, a Kwa (Niger-Congo) language spoken in Ghana, showing that left dislocation occurs within subordinate clauses in spontaneous discourse. This poses a problem for the extraclausal analysis of left dislocation. I show that this problem can best be solved by assuming that Avatime allows the embedding of units larger than a clause
  • Van Valin Jr., R. D. (2013). Head-marking languages and linguistic theory. In B. Bickel, L. A. Grenoble, D. A. Peterson, & A. Timberlake (Eds.), Language typology and historical contingency: In honor of Johanna Nichols (pp. 91-124). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    In her path-breaking 1986 paper, Johanna Nichols proposed a typological contrast between head-marking and dependent-marking languages. Nichols argues that even though the syntactic relations between the head and its dependents are the same in both types of language, the syntactic “bond” between them is not the same; in dependent-marking languages it is one of government, whereas in head-marking languages it is one of apposition. This distinction raises an important question for linguistic theory: How can this contrast – government versus apposition – which can show up in all of the major phrasal types in a language, be captured? The purpose of this paper is to explore the various approaches that have been taken in an attempt to capture the difference between head-marked and dependent-marked syntax in different linguistic theories. The basic problem that head-marking languages pose for syntactic theory will be presented, and then generative approaches will be discussed. The analysis of head-marked structure in Role and Reference Grammar will be presented
  • Van Valin Jr., R. D. (2013). Lexical representation, co-composition, and linking syntax and semantics. In J. Pustejovsky, P. Bouillon, H. Isahara, K. Kanzaki, & C. Lee (Eds.), Advances in generative lexicon theory (pp. 67-107). Dordrecht: Springer.
  • Van Valin Jr., R. D., & Mairal Usón, R. (2014). Interfacing the lexicon and an ontology in a linking system. In M. d. l. Á. Gómez González, F. J. Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, & F. Gonzálvez-García (Eds.), Theory and practice in functional-cognitive space (pp. 205-228). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    The aim of this paper is to discuss the repercussions of a conceptual orientation on two crucial parts of the Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) linking algorithm, that is, semantic representation and constructional schemas. Firstly, it is argued that adopting FunGramKB’s notion of conceptual logical structure (CLS) over standard RRG logical structures (LSs) has numerous advantages since meaning has now access to conceptual knowledge and therefore a CLS provides a format that goes beyond those aspects that are syntactically visible. The second part introduces the notion of the grammaticon, the component where constructional schemas actually reside. RRG constructional schemas are analyzed within a conceptual framework like that provided in FunGramKB. In essence, it is shown that a conceptual orientation to the RRG linking system by the addition of CLSs enriches the semantic representations in it substantially
  • Van Geenhoven, V. (1998). On the Argument Structure of some Noun Incorporating Verbs in West Greenlandic. In M. Butt, & W. Geuder (Eds.), The Projection of Arguments - Lexical and Compositional Factors (pp. 225-263). Stanford, CA, USA: CSLI Publications.
  • Van Valin Jr., R. D. (1998). The acquisition of WH-questions and the mechanisms of language acquisition. In M. Tomasello (Ed.), The new psychology of language: Cognitive and functional approaches to language structure (pp. 221-249). Mahwah, New Jersey: Erlbaum.
  • Van Valin Jr., R. D. (2014). Role and Reference Grammar. In A. Carnie, Y. Sato, & D. Siddiqi (Eds.), Routledge handbook of syntax (pp. 579-603). London: Routledge.
  • Van Gijn, R. (2014). Yurakaré. In M. Crevels, & P. C. Muysken (Eds.), Las lenguas de Bolivia. Vol. 3: Oriente (pp. 135-174). La Paz: Plural Editores.
  • Verkerk, A. (2014). Where Alice fell into: Motion events from a parallel corpus. In B. Szmrecsanyi, & B. Wälchli (Eds.), Aggregating dialectology, typology, and register analysis: Linguistic variation in text and speech (pp. 324-354). Berlin: De Gruyter.
  • Vernes, S. C., & Fisher, S. E. (2013). Genetic pathways implicated in speech and language. In S. Helekar (Ed.), Animal models of speech and language disorders (pp. 13-40). New York: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-1-4614-8400-4_2.

    Abstract

    Disorders of speech and language are highly heritable, providing strong
    support for a genetic basis. However, the underlying genetic architecture is complex,
    involving multiple risk factors. This chapter begins by discussing genetic loci associated
    with common multifactorial language-related impairments and goes on to
    detail the only gene (known as FOXP2) to be directly implicated in a rare monogenic
    speech and language disorder. Although FOXP2 was initially uncovered in
    humans, model systems have been invaluable in progressing our understanding of
    the function of this gene and its associated pathways in language-related areas of the
    brain. Research in species from mouse to songbird has revealed effects of this gene
    on relevant behaviours including acquisition of motor skills and learned vocalisations
    and demonstrated a role for Foxp2 in neuronal connectivity and signalling,
    particularly in the striatum. Animal models have also facilitated the identification of
    wider neurogenetic networks thought to be involved in language development and
    disorder and allowed the investigation of new candidate genes for disorders involving
    language, such as CNTNAP2 and FOXP1. Ongoing work in animal models promises
    to yield new insights into the genetic and neural mechanisms underlying human
    speech and language
  • Windhouwer, M., Petro, J., Newskaya, I., Drude, S., Aristar-Dry, H., & Gippert, J. (2013). Creating a serialization of LMF: The experience of the RELISH project. In G. Francopoulo (Ed.), LMF - Lexical Markup Framework (pp. 215-226). London: Wiley.
  • Windhouwer, M., & Wright, S. E. (2013). LMF and the Data Category Registry: Principles and application. In G. Francopoulo (Ed.), LMF: Lexical Markup Framework (pp. 41-50). London: Wiley.
  • Wittenburg, P., Trilsbeek, P., & Wittenburg, F. (2014). Corpus archiving and dissemination. In J. Durand, U. Gut, & G. Kristoffersen (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Corpus Phonology (pp. 133-149). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Wittenburg, P., & Ringersma, J. (2013). Metadata description for lexicons. In R. H. Gouws, U. Heid, W. Schweickard, & H. E. Wiegand (Eds.), Dictionaries: An international encyclopedia of lexicography: Supplementary volume: Recent developments with focus on electronic and computational lexicography (pp. 1329-1335). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Wright, S. E., Windhouwer, M., Schuurman, I., & Kemps-Snijders, M. (2013). Community efforts around the ISOcat Data Category Registry. In I. Gurevych, & J. Kim (Eds.), The People's Web meets NLP: Collaboratively constructed language resources (pp. 349-374). New York: Springer.

    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.
  • Zwitserlood, I. (2014). Meaning at the feature level in sign languages. The case of name signs in Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT). In R. Kager (Ed.), Where the Principles Fail. A Festschrift for Wim Zonneveld on the occasion of his 64th birthday (pp. 241-251). Utrecht: Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS.
  • Zwitserlood, I., Perniss, P. M., & Ozyurek, A. (2013). Expression of multiple entities in Turkish Sign Language (TİD). In E. Arik (Ed.), Current Directions in Turkish Sign Language Research (pp. 272-302). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

    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.

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