Publications

Displaying 101 - 190 of 190
  • Kita, S. (1995). Recommendations for data collection for gesture studies. In D. Wilkins (Ed.), Extensions of space and beyond: manual for field elicitation for the 1995 field season (pp. 35-45). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.3004287.

    Abstract

    Do our hands 'speak the same language' across cultures? Gesture is the silent partner of spoken languages in face-to-face interaction, but we still have a lot to learn about gesture practices in different speech communities. The primary purpose of this task is to collect data in naturalistic settings that can be used to investigate the linguistic and cultural relativity of gesture performance, especially spatially indicative gestures. It involves video-recording pairs of speakers in both free conversation and more structured communication tasks (e.g., describing film plots).

    Please note: the stimuli mentioned in this entry are available elsewhere: 'The Pear Story', a short film made at the University of California at Berkeley; "Frog, where are you?" from the original Mayer (1969) book, as published in the Appendix of Berman & Slobin (1994).
  • Klein, W., Dietrich, R., & Noyau, C. (1995). Conclusions. In R. Dietrich, W. Klein, & C. Noyau (Eds.), The acquisition of temporality in a second language (pp. 261-280). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Klein, W. (1998). Ein Blick zurück auf die Varietätengrammatik. In U. Ammon, K. Mattheier, & P. Nelde (Eds.), Sociolinguistica: Internationales Jahrbuch für europäische Soziolinguistik (pp. 22-38). Tübingen: Niemeyer.
  • Klein, W. (1998). Assertion and finiteness. In N. Dittmar, & Z. Penner (Eds.), Issues in the theory of language acquisition: Essays in honor of Jürgen Weissenborn (pp. 225-245). Bern: Peter Lang.
  • Klein, W. (1967). Einführende Bibliographie zu "Mathematik und Dichtung". In H. Kreuzer, & R. Gunzenhäuser (Eds.), Mathematik und Dichtung (pp. 347-359). München: Nymphenburger.
  • Klein, W. (1995). Frame of analysis. In R. Dietrich, W. Klein, & C. Noyau (Eds.), The acquisition of temporality in a second language (pp. 17-29). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Klein, W., Coenen, J., Van Helvert, K., & Hendriks, H. (1995). The acquisition of Dutch. In R. Dietrich, W. Klein, & C. Noyau (Eds.), The acquisition of temporality in a second language (pp. 117-143). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Klein, W. (1995). The acquisition of English. In R. Dietrich, W. Klein, & C. Noyau (Eds.), The acquisition of temporality in a second language (pp. 31-70). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Klein, W. (1995). Sprachverhalten. In M. Amelang, & Pawlik (Eds.), Enzyklopädie der Psychologie (pp. 469-505). Göttingen: Hogrefe.
  • Klein, W., & Vater, H. (1998). The perfect in English and German. In L. Kulikov, & H. Vater (Eds.), Typology of verbal categories: Papers presented to Vladimir Nedjalkov on the occasion of his 70th birthday (pp. 215-235). Tübingen: Niemeyer.
  • Klein, W. (1980). Verbal planning in route directions. In H. Dechert, & M. Raupach (Eds.), Temporal variables in speech (pp. 159-168). Den Haag: Mouton.
  • Kuijpers, C. T., Coolen, R., Houston, D., & Cutler, A. (1998). Using the head-turning technique to explore cross-linguistic performance differences. In C. Rovee-Collier, L. Lipsitt, & H. Hayne (Eds.), Advances in infancy research: Vol. 12 (pp. 205-220). Stamford: Ablex.
  • Levelt, W. J. M., & Ruijssenaars, A. (1995). Levensbericht Johan Joseph Dumont. In Jaarboek Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen (pp. 31-36).
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1995). Chapters of psychology: An interview with Wilhelm Wundt. In R. L. Solso, & D. W. Massaro (Eds.), The science of mind: 2001 and beyond (pp. 184-202). Oxford University Press.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1962). Motion breaking and the perception of causality. In A. Michotte (Ed.), Causalité, permanence et réalité phénoménales: Etudes de psychologie expérimentale (pp. 244-258). Louvain: Publications Universitaires.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1980). On-line processing constraints on the properties of signed and spoken language. In U. Bellugi, & M. Studdert-Kennedy (Eds.), Signed and spoken language: Biological constraints on linguistic form (pp. 141-160). Weinheim: Verlag Chemie.

    Abstract

    It is argued that the dominantly successive nature of language is largely mode-independent and holds equally for sign and for spoken language. A preliminary distinction is made between what is simultaneous or successive in the signal, and what is in the process; these need not coincide, and it is the successiveness of the process that is at stake. It is then discussed extensively for the word/sign level, and in a more preliminary fashion for the clause and discourse level that online processes are parallel in that they can simultaneously draw on various sources of knowledge (syntactic, semantic, pragmatic), but successive in that they can work at the interpretation of only one unit at a time. This seems to hold for both sign and spoken language. In the final section, conjectures are made about possible evolutionary explanations for these properties of language processing.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1995). Psycholinguistics. In C. C. French, & A. M. Colman (Eds.), Cognitive psychology (reprint, pp. 39- 57). London: Longman.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (2020). The alpha and omega of Jerome Bruner's contributions to the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. In M. E. Poulsen (Ed.), The Jerome Bruner Library: From New York to Nijmegen (pp. 11-18). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.

    Abstract

    Presentation of the official opening of the Jerome Bruner Library, January 8th, 2020
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1980). Toegepaste aspecten van het taal-psychologisch onderzoek: Enkele inleidende overwegingen. In J. Matter (Ed.), Toegepaste aspekten van de taalpsychologie (pp. 3-11). Amsterdam: VU Boekhandel.
  • Levinson, S. C. (1995). 'Logical' Connectives in Natural Language: A First Questionnaire. In D. Wilkins (Ed.), Extensions of space and beyond: manual for field elicitation for the 1995 field season (pp. 61-69). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.3513476.

    Abstract

    It has been hypothesised that human reasoning has a non-linguistic foundation, but is nevertheless influenced by the formal means available in a language. For example, Western logic is transparently related to European sentential connectives (e.g., and, if … then, or, not), some of which cannot be unambiguously expressed in other languages. The questionnaire explores reasoning tools and practices through investigating translation equivalents of English sentential connectives and collecting examples of “reasoned arguments”.
  • Levinson, S. C. (1998). Deixis. In J. L. Mey (Ed.), Concise encyclopedia of pragmatics (pp. 200-204). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
  • Levinson, S. C. (2011). Deixis [Reprint]. In D. Archer, & P. Grundy (Eds.), The pragmatics reader (pp. 163-185). London: Routledge.

    Abstract

    Reproduced with permission of Blackwell Publishing from: Levinson, S. C. (2004) 'Deixis'. In: Horn, L.R. and Ward, G. (Eds.) The Handbook of Pragmatics. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 100-121
  • Levinson, S. C. (2011). Foreword. In D. M. Mark, A. G. Turk, N. Burenhult, & D. Stea (Eds.), Landscape in language: Transdisciplinary perspectives (pp. ix-x). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • Levinson, S. C. (1998). Minimization and conversational inference. In A. Kasher (Ed.), Pragmatics: Vol. 4 Presupposition, implicature and indirect speech acts (pp. 545-612). London: Routledge.
  • Levinson, S. C. (1995). Interactional biases in human thinking. In E. N. Goody (Ed.), Social intelligence and interaction (pp. 221-260). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Levinson, S. C. (2011). Presumptive meanings [Reprint]. In D. Archer, & P. Grundy (Eds.), The pragmatics reader (pp. 86-98). London: Routledge.

    Abstract

    Reprinted with permission of The MIT Press from Levinson (2000) Presumptive meanings: The theory of generalized conversational implicature, pp. 112-118, 116-167, 170-173, 177-180. MIT Press
  • Levinson, S. C. (2011). Reciprocals in Yélî Dnye, the Papuan language of Rossel Island. In N. Evans, A. Gaby, S. C. Levinson, & A. Majid (Eds.), Reciprocals and semantic typology (pp. 177-194). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    Yélî Dnye has two discernable dedicated constructions for reciprocal marking. The first and main construction uses a dedicated reciprocal pronoun numo, somewhat like English each other. We can recognise two subconstructions. First, the ‘numo-construction’, where the reciprocal pronoun is a patient of the verb, and where the invariant pronoun numo is obligatorily incorporated, triggering intransitivisation (e.g. A-NPs become absolutive). This subconstruction has complexities, for example in the punctual aspect only, the verb is inflected like a transitive, but with enclitics mismatching actual person/number. In the second variant or subconstruction, the ‘noko-construction’, the same reciprocal pronoun (sometimes case-marked as noko) occurs but now in oblique positions with either transitive or intransitive verbs. The reciprocal element here has some peculiar binding properties. Finally, the second independent construction is a dedicated periphrastic (or woni…woni) construction, glossing ‘the one did X to the other, and the other did X to the one’. It is one of the rare cross-serial dependencies that show that natural languages cannot be modelled by context-free phrase-structure grammars. Finally, the usage of these two distinct constructions is discussed.
  • Levinson, S. C. (1995). Three levels of meaning. In F. Palmer (Ed.), Grammar and meaning: Essays in honour of Sir John Lyons (pp. 90-115). Cambridge University Press.
  • Levinson, S. C. (2011). Three levels of meaning: Essays in honor of Sir John Lyons [Reprint]. In A. Kasher (Ed.), Pragmatics II. London: Routledge.

    Abstract

    Reprint from Stephen C. Levinson, ‘Three Levels of Meaning’, in Frank Palmer (ed.), Grammar and Meaning: Essays in Honor of Sir John Lyons (Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 90–115
  • Levinson, S. C. (2011). Universals in pragmatics. In P. C. Hogan (Ed.), The Cambridge encyclopedia of the language sciences (pp. 654-657). New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Abstract

    Changing Prospects for Universals in Pragmatics
    The term PRAGMATICS has come to denote the study of general principles of language use. It is usually understood to contrast with SEMANTICS, the study of encoded meaning, and also, by some authors, to contrast with SOCIOLINGUISTICS
    and the ethnography of speaking, which are more concerned with local sociocultural practices. Given that pragmaticists come from disciplines as varied as philosophy, sociology,
    linguistics, communication studies, psychology, and anthropology, it is not surprising that definitions of pragmatics vary. Nevertheless, most authors agree on a list of topics
    that come under the rubric, including DEIXIS, PRESUPPOSITION,
    implicature (see CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURE), SPEECH-ACTS, and conversational organization (see CONVERSATIONAL ANALYSIS). Here, we can use this extensional definition as a starting point (Levinson 1988; Huang 2007).
  • Majid, A., Evans, N., Gaby, A., & Levinson, S. C. (2011). The semantics of reciprocal constructions across languages: An extensional approach. In N. Evans, A. Gaby, S. C. Levinson, & A. Majid (Eds.), Reciprocals and semantic typology (pp. 29-60). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    How similar are reciprocal constructions in the semantic parameters they encode? We investigate this question by using an extensional approach, which examines similarity of meaning by examining how constructions are applied over a set of 64 videoclips depicting reciprocal events (Evans et al. 2004). We apply statistical modelling to descriptions from speakers of 20 languages elicited using the videoclips. We show that there are substantial differences in meaning between constructions of different languages.

    Files private

    Request files
  • Marcus, G., & Fisher, S. E. (2011). Genes and language. In P. Hogan (Ed.), The Cambridge encyclopedia of the language sciences (pp. 341-344). New York: Cambridge University Press.
  • Mark, D. M., Turk, A., Burenhult, N., & Stea, D. (2011). Landscape in language: An introduction. In D. M. Mark, A. G. Turk, N. Burenhult, & D. Stea (Eds.), Landscape in language: Transdisciplinary perspectives (pp. 1-24). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • 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.
  • McQueen, J. M., & Dilley, L. C. (2020). Prosody and spoken-word recognition. In C. Gussenhoven, & A. Chen (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of language prosody (pp. 509-521). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Abstract

    This chapter outlines a Bayesian model of spoken-word recognition and reviews how
    prosody is part of that model. The review focuses on the information that assists the lis­
    tener in recognizing the prosodic structure of an utterance and on how spoken-word
    recognition is also constrained by prior knowledge about prosodic structure. Recognition
    is argued to be a process of perceptual inference that ensures that listening is robust to
    variability in the speech signal. In essence, the listener makes inferences about the seg­
    mental content of each utterance, about its prosodic structure (simultaneously at differ­
    ent levels in the prosodic hierarchy), and about the words it contains, and uses these in­
    ferences to form an utterance interpretation. Four characteristics of the proposed
    prosody-enriched recognition model are discussed: parallel uptake of different informa­
    tion types, high contextual dependency, adaptive processing, and phonological abstrac­
    tion. The next steps that should be taken to develop the model are also discussed.
  • Misersky, J., & Redl, T. (2020). A psycholinguistic view on stereotypical and grammatical gender: The effects and remedies. In C. D. J. Bulten, C. F. Perquin-Deelen, M. H. Sinninghe Damsté, & K. J. Bakker (Eds.), Diversiteit. Een multidisciplinaire terreinverkenning (pp. 237-255). Deventer: Wolters Kluwer.
  • 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.
  • Norcliffe, E., Enfield, N. J., Majid, A., & Levinson, S. C. (2011). The grammar of perception. In K. Kendrick, & A. Majid (Eds.), Field manual volume 14 (pp. 1-10). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
  • Ozyurek, A., & Perniss, P. M. (2011). Event representations in signed languages. In J. Bohnemeyer, & E. Pederson (Eds.), Event representations in language and cognition (pp. 84-107). New York: Cambridge University Press.
  • Pederson, E. (1995). Questionnaire on event realization. In D. Wilkins (Ed.), Extensions of space and beyond: manual for field elicitation for the 1995 field season (pp. 54-60). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.3004359.

    Abstract

    "Event realisation" refers to the normal final state of the affected entity of an activity described by a verb. For example, the sentence John killed the mosquito entails that the mosquito is afterwards dead – this is the full realisation of a killing event. By contrast, a sentence such as John hit the mosquito does not entail the mosquito’s death (even though we might assume this to be a likely result). In using a certain verb, which features of event realisation are entailed and which are just likely? This questionnaire supports cross-linguistic exploration of event realisation for a range of event types.
  • Petersson, K. M., Forkstam, C., Inácio, F., Bramão, I., Araújo, S., Souza, A. C., Silva, S., & Castro, S. L. (2011). Artificial language learning. In A. Trevisan, & V. Wannmacher Pereira (Eds.), Alfabeltização e cognição (pp. 71-90). Porto Alegre, Brasil: Edipucrs.

    Abstract

    Neste artigo fazemos uma revisão breve de investigações actuais com técnicas comportamentais e de neuroimagem funcional sobre a aprendizagem de uma linguagem artificial em crianças e adultos. Na secção final, discutimos uma possível associação entre dislexia e aprendizagem implícita. Resultados recentes sugerem que a presença de um défice ao nível da aprendizagem implícita pode contribuir para as dificuldades de leitura e escrita observadas em indivíduos disléxicos.
  • Phillips, W., & Majid, A. (2011). Emotional sound symbolism. In K. Kendrick, & A. Majid (Eds.), Field manual volume 14 (pp. 16-18). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.1005615.
  • Rapold, C. J. (2011). Semantics of Khoekhoe reciprocal constructions. In N. Evans, A. Gaby, S. C. Levinson, & A. Majid (Eds.), Reciprocals and semantic typology (pp. 61-74). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    This paper identifies four reciprocal construction types in Khoekhoe (Central Khoisan). After a brief description of the morphosyntax of each construction, semantic factors governing their choice are explored. Besides lexical semantics, the number of participants, timing of symmetric subevents, and symmetric conceptualisation are shown to account for the distribution of the four partially competing reciprocal constructions.
  • Reis, A., Faísca, L., & Petersson, K. M. (2011). Literacia: Modelo para o estudo dos efeitos de uma aprendizagem específica na cognição e nas suas bases cerebrais. In A. Trevisan, J. J. Mouriño Mosquera, & V. Wannmacher Pereira (Eds.), Alfabeltização e cognição (pp. 23-36). Porto Alegro, Brasil: Edipucrs.

    Abstract

    A aquisição de competências de leitura e de escrita pode ser vista como um processo formal de transmissão cultural, onde interagem factores neurobiológicos e culturais. O treino sistemático exigido pela aprendizagem da leitura e da escrita poderá produzir mudanças quantitativas e qualitativas tanto a nível cognitivo como ao nível da organização do cérebro. Estudar sujeitos iletrados e letrados representa, assim, uma oportunidade para investigar efeitos de uma aprendizagem específica no desenvolvimento cognitivo e suas bases cerebrais. Neste trabalho, revemos um conjunto de investigações comportamentais e com métodos de imagem cerebral que indicam que a literacia tem um impacto nas nossas funções cognitivas e na organização cerebral. Mais especificamente, discutiremos diferenças entre letrados e iletrados para domínios cognitivos verbais e não-verbais, sugestivas de que a arquitectura cognitiva é formatada, em parte, pela aprendizagem da leitura e da escrita. Os dados de neuroimagem funcionais e estruturais são também indicadores que a aquisição de uma ortografia alfabética interfere nos processos de organização e lateralização das funções cognitivas.
  • Robinson, S. (2011). Reciprocals in Rotokas. In N. Evans, A. Gaby, S. C. Levinson, & A. Majid (Eds.), Reciprocals and semantic typology (pp. 195-211). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    This paper describes the syntax and semantics of reciprocity in the Central dialect of Rotokas, a non-Austronesian (Papuan) language spoken in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea. In Central Rotokas, there are three main reciprocal construction types, which differ formally according to where the reflexive/reciprocal marker (ora-) occurs in the clause: on the verb, on a pronominal argument or adjunct, or on a body part noun. The choice of construction type is determined by two considerations: the valency of the verb (i.e., whether it has one or two core arguments) and whether the reciprocal action is performed on a body part. The construction types are compatible with a wide range of the logical subtypes of reciprocity (strong, melee, chaining, etc.).
  • Rowland, C. F. (2020). Introduction. In M. E. Poulsen (Ed.), The Jerome Bruner Library: From New York to Nijmegen. Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
  • Sekine, K. (2011). The development of spatial perspective in the description of large-scale environments. In G. Stam, & M. Ishino (Eds.), Integrating Gestures: The interdisciplinary nature of gesture (pp. 175-186). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

    Abstract

    This research investigated developmental changes in children’s representations of large-scale environments as reflected in spontaneous gestures and speech produced during route descriptions Four-, five-, and six-year-olds (N = 122) described the route from their nursery school to their own homes. Analysis of the children’s gestures showed that some 5- and 6-year-olds produced gestures that represented survey mapping, and they were categorized as a survey group. Children who did not produce such gestures were categorized as a route group. A comparison of the two groups revealed no significant differences in speech indices, with the exception that the survey group showed significantly fewer right/left terms. As for gesture, the survey group produced more gestures than the route group. These results imply that an initial form of survey-map representation is acquired beginning at late preschool age.
  • Senft, G. (2020). Kampfschild - vayola. In T. Brüderlin, S. Schien, & S. Stoll (Eds.), Ausgepackt! 125Jahre Geschichte[n] im Museum Natur und Mensch (pp. 58-59). Freiburg: Michael Imhof Verlag.
  • Senft, G. (2020). 32 Kampfschild - dance or war shield - vayola. In T. Brüderlin, & S. Stoll (Eds.), Ausgepackt! 125Jahre Geschichte[n] im Museum Natur und Mensch. Texte zur Ausstellung, Städtische Museen Freiburg, vom 20. Juni 2020 bis 10. Januar 2021 (pp. 76-77). Freiburg: Städtische Museen.
  • Senft, G., & Labov, W. (1980). Einige Prinzipien linguistischer Methodologie [transl. from English by Gunter Senft]. In N. Dittmar, & B. O. Rieck (Eds.), William Labov: Sprache im sozialen Kontext (pp. 1-24). Königstein: Athenäum FAT.
  • Senft, G. (1995). Elicitation. In J. Blommaert, J.-O. Östman, & J. Verschueren (Eds.), Handbook of Pragmatics: Manual (pp. 577-581). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • Senft, G. (1995). 'Noble savages' and 'the islands of love': Trobriand Islanders in 'popular publications'. In C. Baak, M. Bakker, & D. Van der Meij (Eds.), Tales from a concave world: Liber amicorum Bert Voorhoeve (pp. 480-510). Leiden: Projects division, department of languages and cultures of South East Asia and Oceania, Leiden University.
  • 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. (1995). Fieldwork. In J. Blommaert, J.-O. Östman, & J. Verschueren (Eds.), Handbook of Pragmatics: Manual (pp. 595-601). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • Senft, G., & Labov, W. (1980). Hyperkorrektheit der unteren Mittelschicht als Faktor im Sprachwandel; [transl. from English by Gunter Senft]. In N. Dittmar, & B. O. Rieck (Eds.), William Labov: Sprache im sozialen Kontext (pp. 77-94). Königstein: Athneäum FAT.
  • Senft, G. (2011). Machst Du jetzt Witze oder was? - Die Sprechweisen der Trobriand-Insulaner. In Max-Planck-Gesellschaft Jahrbuch 2011/11 Tätigkeitsberichte und Publikationen (DVD) (pp. 1-8). München: Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science. Retrieved from http://www.mpg.de/1077403/Sprache_Trobriand-Insulaner.

    Abstract

    The Trobriand Islanders of Papua New Guinea differentiate and label in their language Kilivila genres and varieties or registers which are constituted by these genres. The documentation and analysis of these varieties and genres reveals how important it is to understand these metalinguistic differentiations. The cultural and verbal competence which is necessary to adequately interact with the Trobriander Islanders is based on the understanding of the indigenous text typology and the Trobriand Islanders' culture specific ways of speaking.
  • Senft, G. (1995). Mit Tinkertoy in die Tiefe(n) des Raumes: Zum räumlichen Verweisen im Kilivila - Eine Fallstudie. In R. Fiehler, & D. Metzing (Eds.), Untersuchungen zur Kommunikationstruktur (Bielefelder Schriften zu Linguistik und Literaturwissenschaft, pp. 139-162). Bielefeld: Aisthesis Verlag.
  • Senft, G. (2011). Linearisation in narratives. In K. Kendrick, & A. Majid (Eds.), Field manual volume 14 (pp. 24-28). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.1005607.
  • Senft, G. (2011). To have and have not: Kilivila reciprocals. In N. Evans, A. Gaby, S. C. Levinson, & A. Majid (Eds.), Reciprocals and semantic typology (pp. 225-232). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    Kilivila is one of the languages of the world that lacks dedicated reciprocal forms. After a short introduction the paper briefly shows how reciprocity is either not expressed at all, is only implicated in an utterance, or expressed periphrastically.
  • 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.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1980). Dreiwertige Logik und die Semantik natürlicher Sprache. In J. Ballweg, & H. Glinz (Eds.), Grammatik und Logik: Jahrbuch 1979 des Instituts für deutsche Sprache (pp. 72-103). Düsseldorf: Pädagogischer Verlag Schwann.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1995). Reflections on negation. In H. C. M. De Swart, & L. J. M. Bergmans (Eds.), Perspectives on Negation. Essays in honour of Johan J. de Iongh on his 80th birthday (pp. 153-176). Tilburg: Tilburg University Press.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (2011). Western linguistics: An historical introduction [Reprint]. In D. Archer, & P. Grundy (Eds.), The pragmatics reader (pp. 55-67). London: Routledge.

    Abstract

    Reproduced with permission of Blackwell Publishing from: Seuren, P. A. M. (1998) Western linguistics, 25: pp. 426-428, 430-441. Oxford Blackwell Publishers
  • 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.
  • Sicoli, M. A. (2011). Agency and ideology in language shift and language maintenance. In T. Granadillo, & H. A. Orcutt-Gachiri (Eds.), Ethnographic contributions to the study of endangered languages (pp. 161-176). Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.
  • Skiba, R., & Steinmüller, U. (1995). Pragmatics of compositional word formation in technical languages. In H. Pishwa, & K. Maroldt (Eds.), The development of morphological systematicity: A cross-linguistic perspective (pp. 305-321). Tübingen: Narr.
  • Slobin, D. I., Bowerman, M., Brown, P., Eisenbeiss, S., & Narasimhan, B. (2011). Putting things in places: Developmental consequences of linguistic typology. In J. Bohnemeyer, & E. Pederson (Eds.), Event representation in language and cognition (pp. 134-165). New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Abstract

    The concept of 'event' has been posited as an ontological primitive in natural language semantics, yet relatively little research has explored patterns of event encoding. Our study explored how adults and children describe placement events (e.g., putting a book on a table) in a range of different languages (Finnish, English, German, Russian, Hindi, Tzeltal Maya, Spanish, and Turkish). Results show that the eight languages grammatically encode placement events in two main ways (Talmy, 1985, 1991), but further investigation reveals fine-grained crosslinguistic variation within each of the two groups. Children are sensitive to these finer-grained characteristics of the input language at an early age, but only when such features are perceptually salient. Our study demonstrates that a unitary notion of 'event' does not suffice to characterize complex but systematic patterns of event encoding crosslinguistically, and that children are sensitive to multiple influences, including the distributional properties of the target language in constructing these patterns in their own speech.
  • Stivers, T. (2011). Morality and question design: 'Of course' as contesting a presupposition of askability. In T. Stivers, L. Mondada, & J. Steensig (Eds.), The morality of knowledge in conversation (pp. 82-106). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Stivers, T., Mondada, L., & Steensig, J. (2011). Knowledge, morality and affiliation in social interaction. In T. Stivers, L. Mondada, & J. Steensig (Eds.), The morality of knowledge in conversation (pp. 3-26). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Terrill, A. (2011). Limits of the substrate: Substrate grammatical influence in Solomon Islands Pijin. In C. Lefebvre (Ed.), Creoles, their substrates, and language typology (pp. 513-529). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Abstract

    What grammatical elements of a substrate language find their way into a creole? Grammatical features of the Oceanic substrate languages have been shown to be crucial in the development of Solomon Islands Pijin and of Melanesian Pidgin as a whole (Keesing 1988), so one might expect constructions which are very stable in the Oceanic family of languages to show up as substrate influence in the creole. This paper investigates three constructions in Oceanic languages which have been stable over thousands of years and persist throughout a majority of the Oceanic languages spoken in the Solomon Islands. The paper asks whether these are the sorts of constructions which could be expected to be reflected in Solomon Islands Pijin and shows that none of these persistent constructions appears in Solomon Islands Pijin at all. The absence of these constructions in Solomon Islands Pijin could be due to simplification: Creole genesis involves simplification of the substrate grammars. However, while simplification could be the explanation, it is not necessarily the case that all complex structures become simplified. For instance Solomon Islands Pijin pronoun paradigms are more complex than those in English, but the complexity is similar to that of the substrate languages. Thus it is not the case that all areas of a creole language are necessarily simplified. One must therefore look further than just simplification for an explanation of the presence or absence of stable grammatical features deriving from the substrate in creole languages. An account based on constraints in specific domains (Siegel 1999) is a better predictor of the behaviour of substrate constructions in Solomon Islands Pijin.
  • Tuinman, A., & Cutler, A. (2011). L1 knowledge and the perception of casual speech processes in L2. In M. Wrembel, M. Kul, & K. Dziubalska-Kolaczyk (Eds.), Achievements and perspectives in SLA of speech: New Sounds 2010. Volume I (pp. 289-301). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

    Abstract

    Every language manifests casual speech processes, and hence every second language too. This study examined how listeners deal with second-language casual speech processes, as a function of the processes in their native language. We compared a match case, where a second-language process t/-reduction) is also operative in native speech, with a mismatch case, where a second-language process (/r/-insertion) is absent from native speech. In each case native and non-native listeners judged stimuli in which a given phoneme (in sentence context) varied along a continuum from absent to present. Second-language listeners in general mimicked native performance in the match case, but deviated significantly from native performance in the mismatch case. Together these results make it clear that the mapping from first to second language is as important in the interpretation of casual speech processes as in other dimensions of speech perception. Unfamiliar casual speech processes are difficult to adapt to in a second language. Casual speech processes that are already familiar from native speech, however, are easy to adapt to; indeed, our results even suggest that it is possible for subtle difference in their occurrence patterns across the two languages to be detected,and to be accommodated to in second-language listening
  • Van Berkum, J. J. A., Hijne, H., De Jong, T., Van Joolingen, W. R., & Njoo, M. (1995). Characterizing the application of computer simulations in education: Instructional criteria. In A. Ram, & D. B. Leake (Eds.), Goal-driven learning (pp. 381-392). Cambridge, M: MIT Press.
  • Van Gijn, R. (2011). Multi-verb constructions in Yurakaré. In A. Y. Aikhenvald, & P. C. Muysken (Eds.), Multi-verb constructions: A view from the Americas (pp. 255-282). Leiden: Brill.
  • 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 Gijn, R., Haude, K., & Muysken, P. (2011). Subordination in South America: An overview. In R. Van Gijn, K. Haude, & P. Muysken (Eds.), Subordination in native South-American languages (pp. 1-24). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Van Gijn, R. (2011). Semantic and grammatical integration in Yurakaré subordination. In R. Van Gijn, K. Haude, & P. Muysken (Eds.), Subordination in native South-American languages (pp. 169-192). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    Yurakaré (unclassified, central Bolivia) has five subordination strategies (on the basis of a morphosyntactic definition). In this paper I argue that the use of these different strategies is conditioned by the degree of conceptual synthesis of the two events, relating to temporal integration and participant integration. The most integrated events are characterized by shared time reference; morphosyntactically they are serial verb constructions, with syntactically fused predicates. The other constructions are characterized by less grammatical integration, which correlates either with a low degree of temporal integration of the dependent predicate and the main predicate, or with participant discontinuity.
  • Van Valin Jr., R. D. (1995). Toward a functionalist account of so-called ‘extraction constraints’. In B. Devriendt (Ed.), Complex structures: A functionalist perspective (pp. 29-60). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Vernes, S. C., & Fisher, S. E. (2011). Functional genomic dissection of speech and language disorders. In J. D. Clelland (Ed.), Genomics, proteomics, and the nervous system (pp. 253-278). New York: Springer.

    Abstract

    Mutations of the human FOXP2 gene have been shown to cause severe difficulties in learning to make coordinated sequences of articulatory gestures that underlie speech (developmental verbal dyspraxia or DVD). Affected individuals are impaired in multiple aspects of expressive and receptive linguistic processing and ­display abnormal grey matter volume and functional activation patterns in cortical and subcortical brain regions. The protein encoded by FOXP2 belongs to a divergent subgroup of forkhead-box transcription factors, with a distinctive DNA-binding domain and motifs that mediate hetero- and homodimerization. This chapter describes the successful use of FOXP2 as a unique molecular window into neurogenetic pathways that are important for speech and language development, adopting several complementary strategies. These include direct functional investigations of FOXP2 splice variants and the effects of etiological mutations. FOXP2’s role as a transcription factor also enabled the development of functional genomic routes for dissecting neurogenetic mechanisms that may be relevant for speech and language. By identifying downstream target genes regulated by FOXP2, it was possible to identify common regulatory themes in modulating synaptic plasticity, neurodevelopment, and axon guidance. These targets represent novel entrypoints into in vivo pathways that may be disturbed in speech and language disorders. The identification of FOXP2 target genes has also led to the discovery of a shared neurogenetic pathway between clinically distinct language disorders; the rare Mendelian form of DVD and a complex and more common form of language ­disorder known as Specific Language Impairment.

    Files private

    Request files
  • Virpioja, S., Lehtonen, M., Hulten, A., Salmelin, R., & Lagus, K. (2011). Predicting reaction times in word recognition by unsupervised learning of morphology. In W. Honkela, W. Dutch, M. Girolami, & S. Kaski (Eds.), Artificial Neural Networks and Machine Learning – ICANN 2011 (pp. 275-282). Berlin: Springer.

    Abstract

    A central question in the study of the mental lexicon is how morphologically complex words are processed. We consider this question from the viewpoint of statistical models of morphology. As an indicator of the mental processing cost in the brain, we use reaction times to words in a visual lexical decision task on Finnish nouns. Statistical correlation between a model and reaction times is employed as a goodness measure of the model. In particular, we study Morfessor, an unsupervised method for learning concatenative morphology. The results for a set of inflected and monomorphemic Finnish nouns reveal that the probabilities given by Morfessor, especially the Categories-MAP version, show considerably higher correlations to the reaction times than simple word statistics such as frequency, morphological family size, or length. These correlations are also higher than when any individual test subject is viewed as a model.
  • Wegener, C. (2011). Expression of reciprocity in Savosavo. In N. Evans, A. Gaby, S. C. Levinson, & A. Majid (Eds.), Reciprocals and semantic typology (pp. 213-224). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    This paper describes how reciprocity is expressed in the Papuan (i.e. non-Austronesian­) language Savosavo, spoken in the Solomon Islands. The main strategy is to use the reciprocal nominal mapamapa, which can occur in different NP positions and always triggers default third person singular masculine agreement, regardless of the number and gender of the referents. After a description of this as well as another strategy that is occasionally used (the ‘joint activity construction’), the paper will provide a detailed analysis of data elicited with set of video stimuli and show that the main strategy is used to describe even clearly asymmetric situations, as long as more than one person acts on more than one person in a joint activity.
  • Wilkin, K., & Holler, J. (2011). Speakers’ use of ‘action’ and ‘entity’ gestures with definite and indefinite references. In G. Stam, & M. Ishino (Eds.), Integrating gestures: The interdisciplinary nature of gesture (pp. 293-308). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Abstract

    Common ground is an essential prerequisite for coordination in social interaction, including language use. When referring back to a referent in discourse, this referent is ‘given information’ and therefore in the interactants’ common ground. When a referent is being referred to for the first time, a speaker introduces ‘new information’. The analyses reported here are on gestures that accompany such references when they include definite and indefinite grammatical determiners. The main finding from these analyses is that referents referred to by definite and indefinite articles were equally often accompanied by gesture, but speakers tended to accompany definite references with gestures focusing on action information and indefinite references with gestures focusing on entity information. The findings suggest that speakers use speech and gesture together to design utterances appropriate for speakers with whom they share common ground.

    Files private

    Request files
  • Wilkins, D. (1995). Towards a Socio-Cultural Profile of the Communities We Work With. In D. Wilkins (Ed.), Extensions of space and beyond: manual for field elicitation for the 1995 field season (pp. 70-79). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.3513481.

    Abstract

    Field data are drawn from a particular speech community at a certain place and time. The intent of this survey is to enrich understanding of the various socio-cultural contexts in which linguistic and “cognitive” data may have been collected, so that we can explore the role which societal, cultural and contextual factors may play in this material. The questionnaire gives guidelines concerning types of ethnographic information that are important to cross-cultural and cross-linguistic enquiry, and will be especially useful to researchers who do not have specialised training in anthropology.
  • Wilkins, D., Pederson, E., & Levinson, S. C. (1995). Background questions for the "enter"/"exit" research. In D. Wilkins (Ed.), Extensions of space and beyond: manual for field elicitation for the 1995 field season (pp. 14-16). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.3003935.

    Abstract

    How do languages encode different kinds of movement, and what features do people pay attention to when describing motion events? This document outlines topics concerning the investigation of “enter” and “exit” events. It helps contextualise research tasks that examine this domain (see 'Motion Elicitation' and 'Enter/Exit animation') and gives some pointers about what other questions can be explored.
  • Wilkins, D. (1995). Motion elicitation: "moving 'in(to)'" and "moving 'out (of)'". In D. Wilkins (Ed.), Extensions of space and beyond: manual for field elicitation for the 1995 field season (pp. 4-12). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.3003391.

    Abstract

    How do languages encode different kinds of movement, and what features do people pay attention to when describing motion events? This task investigates the expression of “enter” and “exit” activities, that is, events involving motion in(to) and motion out (of) container-like items. The researcher first uses particular stimuli (a ball, a cup, rice, etc.) to elicit descriptions of enter/exit events from one consultant, and then asks another consultant to demonstrate the event based on these descriptions. See also the related entries Enter/Exit Animation and Background Questions for Enter/Exit Research.
  • Zeshan, U., & Panda, S. (2011). Reciprocals constructions in Indo-Pakistani sign language. In N. Evans, & A. Gaby (Eds.), Reciprocals and semantic typology (pp. 91-113). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    Indo-Pakistani Sign Language (IPSL) is the sign language used by deaf communities in a large region across India and Pakistan. This visual-gestural language has a dedicated construction for specifically expressing reciprocal relationships, which can be applied to agreement verbs and to auxiliaries. The reciprocal construction relies on a change in the movement pattern of the signs it applies to. In addition, IPSL has a number of other strategies which can have a reciprocal interpretation, and the IPSL lexicon includes a good number of inherently reciprocal signs. All reciprocal expressions can be modified in complex ways that rely on the grammatical use of the sign space. Considering grammaticalisation and lexicalisation processes linking some of these constructions is also important for a better understanding of reciprocity in IPSL.
  • Zinken, J., Rossi, G., & Reddy, V. (2020). Doing more than expected: Thanking recognizes another's agency in providing assistance. In C. Taleghani-Nikazm, E. Betz, & P. Golato (Eds.), Mobilizing others: Grammar and lexis within larger activities (pp. 253-278). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Abstract

    In informal interaction, speakers rarely thank a person who has complied with a request. Examining data from British English, German, Italian, Polish, and Telugu, we ask when speakers do thank after compliance. The results show that thanking treats the other’s assistance as going beyond what could be taken for granted in the circumstances. Coupled with the rareness of thanking after requests, this suggests that cooperation is to a great extent governed by expectations of helpfulness, which can be long-standing, or built over the course of a particular interaction. The higher frequency of thanking in some languages (such as English or Italian) suggests that cultures differ in the importance they place on recognizing the other’s agency in doing as requested.

Share this page