Publications

Displaying 1 - 100 of 118
  • Ambridge, B., Rowland, C. F., Theakston, A. L., & Twomey, K. E. (2020). Introduction. In C. F. Rowland, A. L. Theakston, B. Ambridge, & K. E. Twomey (Eds.), Current Perspectives on Child Language Acquisition: How children use their environment to learn (pp. 1-7). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi:10.1075/tilar.27.int.
  • Amora, K. K., Garcia, R., & Gagarina, N. (2020). Tagalog adaptation of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives: History, process and preliminary results. In N. Gagarina, & J. Lindgren (Eds.), New language versions of MAIN: Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives – Revised (pp. 221-233).

    Abstract

    This paper briefly presents the current situation of bilingualism in the Philippines,
    specifically that of Tagalog-English bilingualism. More importantly, it describes the process of adapting the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN) to Tagalog, the basis of Filipino, which is the country’s national language.
    Finally, the results of a pilot study conducted on Tagalog-English bilingual children and
    adults (N=27) are presented. The results showed that Story Structure is similar across the
    two languages and that it develops significantly with age.
  • Bauer, B. L. M. (2020). Appositive compounds in dialectal and sociolinguistic varieties of French. In M. Maiden, & S. Wolfe (Eds.), Variation and change in Gallo-Romance (pp. 326-346). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Becker, A., Dittmar, N., & Klein, W. (1978). Sprachliche und soziale Determinanten im kommunikativen Verhalten ausländischer Arbeiter. In V. Quasthoff (Ed.), Sprachstruktur - Sozialstruktur: Zur linguistischen Theorienbildung (pp. 158-192). Kronberg/Ts.: Scriptor.
  • Blythe, J. (2018). Genesis of the trinity: The convergent evolution of trirelational kinterms. In P. McConvell, & P. Kelly (Eds.), Skin, kin and clan: The dynamics of social categories in Indigenous Australia (pp. 431-471). Canberra: ANU EPress.
  • Bohnemeyer, J. (1998). Temporale Relatoren im Hispano-Yukatekischen Sprachkontakt. In A. Koechert, & T. Stolz (Eds.), Convergencia e Individualidad - Las lenguas Mayas entre hispanización e indigenismo (pp. 195-241). Hannover, Germany: Verlag für Ethnologie.
  • Bohnemeyer, J. (1998). Sententiale Topics im Yukatekischen. In Z. Dietmar (Ed.), Deskriptive Grammatik und allgemeiner Sprachvergleich (pp. 55-85). Tübingen, Germany: Max-Niemeyer-Verlag.
  • Bowerman, M. (1978). The acquisition of word meaning: An investigation into some current conflicts. In N. Waterson, & C. Snow (Eds.), The development of communication (pp. 263-287). New York: Wiley.
  • Bowerman, M. (1973). Structural relationships in children's utterances: Semantic or syntactic? In T. Moore (Ed.), Cognitive development and the acquisition of language (pp. 197-213). New York: Academic Press.
  • Bowerman, M. (1978). Structural relationships in children's utterances: Semantic or syntactic? [Reprint]. In L. Bloom (Ed.), Readings in language development (pp. 217-230). New York: Wiley.

    Abstract

    Reprinted from Bowerman, M. (1973). Structural relationships in children's utterances: Semantic or syntactic? In T. Moore (Ed.), Cognitive development and the acquisition of language (pp. 197 213). New York: Academic Press
  • Bowerman, M. (1978). Semantic and syntactic development: A review of what, when, and how in language acquisition. In R. L. Schiefelbusch (Ed.), Bases of language intervention (pp. 97-189). Baltimore: University Park Press.
  • Bowerman, M. (1978). Words and sentences: Uniformity, variation, and shifts over time in patterns of acquisition. In F. D. Minifie, & L. L. Lloyd (Eds.), Communicative and cognitive abilities: Early behavioral assessment (pp. 349-396). Baltimore: University Park Press.
  • Brehm, L., & Goldrick, M. (2018). Connectionist principles in theories of speech production. In S.-A. Rueschemeyer, & M. G. Gaskell (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics (2nd ed., pp. 372-397). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Abstract

    This chapter focuses on connectionist modeling in language production, highlighting how
    core principles of connectionism provide coverage for empirical observations about
    representation and selection at the phonological, lexical, and sentence levels. The first
    section focuses on the connectionist principles of localist representations and spreading
    activation. It discusses how these two principles have motivated classic models of speech
    production and shows how they cover results of the picture-word interference paradigm,
    the mixed error effect, and aphasic naming errors. The second section focuses on how
    newer connectionist models incorporate the principles of learning and distributed
    representations through discussion of syntactic priming, cumulative semantic
    interference, sequencing errors, phonological blends, and code-switching
  • Brown, P. (1998). Early Tzeltal verbs: Argument structure and argument representation. In E. Clark (Ed.), Proceedings of the 29th Annual Stanford Child Language Research Forum (pp. 129-140). Stanford: CSLI Publications.

    Abstract

    The surge of research activity focussing on children's acquisition of verbs (e.g., Tomasello and Merriman 1996) addresses some fundamental questions: Just how variable across languages, and across individual children, is the process of verb learning? How specific are arguments to particular verbs in early child language? How does the grammatical category 'Verb' develop? The position of Universal Grammar, that a verb category is early, contrasts with that of Tomasello (1992), Pine and Lieven and their colleagues (1996, in press), and many others, that children develop a verb category slowly, gradually building up subcategorizations of verbs around pragmatic, syntactic, and semantic properties of the language they are exposed to. On this latter view, one would expect the language which the child is learning, the cultural milieu and the nature of the interactions in which the child is engaged, to influence the process of acquiring verb argument structures. This paper explores these issues by examining the development of argument representation in the Mayan language Tzeltal, in both its lexical and verbal cross-referencing forms, and analyzing the semantic and pragmatic factors influencing the form argument representation takes. Certain facts about Tzeltal (the ergative/ absolutive marking, the semantic specificity of transitive and positional verbs) are proposed to affect the representation of arguments. The first 500 multimorpheme combinations of 3 children (aged between 1;8 and 2;4) are examined. It is argued that there is no evidence of semantically light 'pathbreaking' verbs (Ninio 1996) leading the way into word combinations. There is early productivity of cross-referencing affixes marking A, S, and O arguments (although there are systematic omissions). The paper assesses the respective contributions of three kinds of factors to these results - structural (regular morphology), semantic (verb specificity) and pragmatic (the nature of Tzeltal conversational interaction).
  • Brown, P. (1998). How and why are women more polite: Some evidence from a Mayan community. In J. Coates (Ed.), Language and gender (pp. 81-99). Oxford: Blackwell.
  • Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1998). Politeness, introduction to the reissue: A review of recent work. In A. Kasher (Ed.), Pragmatics: Vol. 6 Grammar, psychology and sociology (pp. 488-554). London: Routledge.

    Abstract

    This article is a reprint of chapter 1, the introduction to Brown and Levinson, 1987, Politeness: Some universals in language usage (Cambridge University Press).
  • Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (2018). Tzeltal: The demonstrative system. In S. C. Levinson, S. Cutfield, M. Dunn, N. J. Enfield, & S. Meira (Eds.), Demonstratives in cross-linguistic perspective (pp. 150-177). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1978). Universals in language usage: Politeness phenomena. In E. N. Goody (Ed.), Questions and politeness: strategies in social interaction (pp. 56-311). Cambridge University Press.

    Abstract

    This study is about the principles for constructing polite speech. We describe and account for some remarkable parallelisms in the linguistic construction of utterances with which people express themselves in different languges and cultures. A motive for these parallels is isolated - politeness, broadly defined to include both polite friendliness and polite formality - and a universal model is constructed outlining the abstract principles underlying polite usages. This is based on the detailed study of three unrelated languages and cultures: the Tamil of south India, the Tzeltal spoken by Mayan Indians in Chiapas, Mexico, and the English of the USA and England, supplemented by examples from other cultures. Of general interest is the point that underneaath the apparent diversity of polite behaviour in different societies lie some general pan-human principles of social interaction, and the model of politenss provides a tool for analysing the quality of social relations in any society.
  • Wu, D. H., & Bulut, T. (2020). The contribution of statistical learning to language and literacy acquisition. In K. D. Federmeier, & H. W. Huang (Eds.), Psychology of Learning and Motivation (pp. 283-318). doi:10.1016/bs.plm.2020.02.001.

    Abstract

    Acquisition and processing of written and spoken language is an impressive cognitive accomplishment considering the complexity of the tasks. While only humans seem to have evolved to the fullest extent the capacity that underpins these remarkable feats of development and civilization, the exact nature of such capacity has been subject to ongoing research. In this chapter, we focus on language competence and what makes it unique among the communication systems of different species. We then elaborate on the classical debate between nativist and environmentalist accounts of language acquisition, with reference to evidence for and against the critical period hypothesis. After introducing the regularity embedded in different languages and particularly in drastically different orthographies, we present behavioral and neurophysiological evidence for the sensitivity to systematic mapping between orthography and phonology. Because learning to read is to master such mapping, we assume that the ability to use statistical learning to appreciate the dependency among items would contribute to literacy acquisition. Empirical results from behavioral and neuroimaging experiments conducted in our and other laboratories provide support for the close link between statistical learning and literacy acquisition in native and foreign language. Such findings highlight the significance of domain-general statistical learning to domain-specific language acquisition, and point to an important direction for theories and practices of language education.

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  • Burenhult, N. (2020). Foraging and the history of languages in the Malay Peninsula. In T. Güldemann, P. McConvell, & R. Rhodes (Eds.), The language of Hunter-Gatherers (pp. 164-197). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Casillas, M., & Hilbrink, E. (2020). Communicative act development. In K. P. Schneider, & E. Ifantidou (Eds.), Developmental and Clinical Pragmatics (pp. 61-88). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

    Abstract

    How do children learn to map linguistic forms onto their intended meanings? This chapter begins with an introduction to some theoretical and analytical tools used to study communicative acts. It then turns to communicative act development in spoken and signed language acquisition, including both the early scaffolding and production of communicative acts (both non-verbal and verbal) as well as their later links to linguistic development and Theory of Mind. The chapter wraps up by linking research on communicative act development to the acquisition of conversational skills, cross-linguistic and individual differences in communicative experience during development, and human evolution. Along the way, it also poses a few open questions for future research in this domain.
  • Crago, M. B., & Allen, S. E. M. (1998). Acquiring Inuktitut. In O. L. Taylor, & L. Leonard (Eds.), Language Acquisition Across North America: Cross-Cultural And Cross-Linguistic Perspectives (pp. 245-279). San Diego, CA, USA: Singular Publishing Group, Inc.
  • Cutler, A., & Farrell, J. (2018). Listening in first and second language. In J. I. Liontas (Ed.), The TESOL encyclopedia of language teaching. New York: Wiley. doi:10.1002/9781118784235.eelt0583.

    Abstract

    Listeners' recognition of spoken language involves complex decoding processes: The continuous speech stream must be segmented into its component words, and words must be recognized despite great variability in their pronunciation (due to talker differences, or to influence of phonetic context, or to speech register) and despite competition from many spuriously present forms supported by the speech signal. L1 listeners deal more readily with all levels of this complexity than L2 listeners. Fortunately, the decoding processes necessary for competent L2 listening can be taught in the classroom. Evidence-based methodologies targeted at the development of efficient speech decoding include teaching of minimal pairs, of phonotactic constraints, and of reduction processes, as well as the use of dictation and L2 video captions.
  • Cutler, A., & Fay, D. (1978). Introduction. In A. Cutler, & D. Fay (Eds.), [Annotated re-issue of R. Meringer and C. Mayer: Versprechen und Verlesen, 1895] (pp. ix-xl). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • Cutler, A. (1998). Prosodic structure and word recognition. In A. D. Friederici (Ed.), Language comprehension: A biological perspective (pp. 41-70). Heidelberg: Springer.
  • Dingemanse, M., Blythe, J., & Dirksmeyer, T. (2018). Formats for other-initiation of repair across languages: An exercise in pragmatic typology. In I. Nikolaeva (Ed.), Linguistic Typology: Critical Concepts in Linguistics. Vol. 4 (pp. 322-357). London: Routledge.

    Abstract

    In conversation, people regularly deal with problems of speaking, hearing, and understanding. We report on a cross-linguistic investigation of the conversational structure of other-initiated repair (also known as collaborative repair, feedback, requests for clarification, or grounding sequences). We take stock of formats for initiating repair across languages (comparable to English huh?, who?, y’mean X?, etc.) and find that different languages make available a wide but remarkably similar range of linguistic resources for this function. We exploit the patterned variation as evidence for several underlying concerns addressed by repair initiation: characterising trouble, managing responsibility, and handling knowledge. The concerns do not always point in the same direction and thus provide participants in interaction with alternative principles for selecting one format over possible others. By comparing conversational structures across languages, this paper contributes to pragmatic typology: the typology of systems of language use and the principles that shape them.
  • Dingemanse, M. (2020). Recruiting assistance and collaboration: A West-African corpus study. In S. Floyd, G. Rossi, & N. J. Enfield (Eds.), Getting others to do things: A pragmatic typology of recruitments (pp. 369-241). Berlin: Language Science Press. doi:10.5281/zenodo.4018388.

    Abstract

    Doing things for and with others is one of the foundations of human social life. This chapter studies a systematic collection of 207 requests for assistance and collaboration from a video corpus of everyday conversations in Siwu, a Kwa language of Ghana. A range of social action formats and semiotic resources reveals how language is adapted to the interactional challenges posed by recruiting assistance. While many of the formats bear a language-specific signature, their sequential and interactional properties show important commonalities across languages. Two tentative findings are put forward for further cross-linguistic examination: a “rule of three” that may play a role in the organisation of successive response pursuits, and a striking commonality in animal-oriented recruitments across languages that may be explained by convergent cultural evolution. The Siwu recruitment system emerges as one instance of a sophisticated machinery for organising collaborative action that transcends language and culture.
  • Eibl-Eibesfeldt, I., Senft, B., & Senft, G. (1998). Trobriander (Ost-Neuguinea, Trobriand Inseln, Kaile'una) Fadenspiele 'ninikula'. In Ethnologie - Humanethologische Begleitpublikationen von I. Eibl-Eibesfeldt und Mitarbeitern. Sammelband I, 1985-1987. Göttingen: Institut für den Wissenschaftlichen Film.
  • Eisner, F., & McQueen, J. M. (2018). Speech perception. In S. Thompson-Schill (Ed.), Stevens’ handbook of experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience (4th ed.). Volume 3: Language & thought (pp. 1-46). Hoboken: Wiley. doi:10.1002/9781119170174.epcn301.

    Abstract

    This chapter reviews the computational processes that are responsible for recognizing word forms in the speech stream. We outline the different stages in a processing hierarchy from the extraction of general acoustic features, through speech‐specific prelexical processes, to the retrieval and selection of lexical representations. We argue that two recurring properties of the system as a whole are abstraction and adaptability. We also present evidence for parallel processing of information on different timescales, more specifically that segmental material in the speech stream (its consonants and vowels) is processed in parallel with suprasegmental material (the prosodic structures of spoken words). We consider evidence from both psycholinguistics and neurobiology wherever possible, and discuss how the two fields are beginning to address common computational problems. The challenge for future research in speech perception will be to build an account that links these computational problems, through functional mechanisms that address them, to neurobiological implementation.
  • Ernestus, M., & Smith, R. (2018). Qualitative and quantitative aspects of phonetic variation in Dutch eigenlijk. In F. Cangemi, M. Clayards, O. Niebuhr, B. Schuppler, & M. Zellers (Eds.), Rethinking reduction: Interdisciplinary perspectives on conditions, mechanisms, and domains for phonetic variation (pp. 129-163). Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.
  • Flecken, M., & Von Stutterheim, C. (2018). Sprache und Kognition: Sprachvergleichende und lernersprachliche Untersuchungen zur Ereigniskonzeptualisierung. In S. Schimke, & H. Hopp (Eds.), Sprachverarbeitung im Zweitspracherwerb (pp. 325-356). Berlin: De Gruyter. doi:10.1515/9783110456356-014.
  • Floyd, S. (2018). Egophoricity and argument structure in Cha'palaa. In S. Floyd, E. Norcliffe, & L. San Roque (Eds.), Egophoricity (pp. 269-304). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    The Cha’palaa language of Ecuador (Barbacoan) features verbal morphology for marking knowledge-based categories that, in usage, show a variant of the cross-linguistically recurrent pattern of ‘egophoric distribution': specific forms associate with speakers in contrast to others in statements and with addressees in contrast to others in questions. These are not person markers, but rather are used by speakers to portray their involvement in states of affairs as active, agentive participants (ego) versus other types of involvement (non-ego). They interact with person and argument structure, but through pragmatic ‘person sensitivities’ rather than through grammatical agreement. Not only does this pattern appear in verbal morphology, it also can be observed in alternations of predicate construction types and case alignment, helping to show how egophoric marking is a pervasive element of Cha'palaa's linguistic system. This chapter gives a first account of egophoricity in Cha’palaa, beginning with a discussion of person sensitivity, egophoric distribution, and issues of flexibility of marking with respect to degree of volition or control. It then focuses on a set of intransitive experiencer (or ‘endopathic') predicates that refer to internal states which mark egophoric values for the undergoer role, not the actor role, showing ‘quirky’ accusative marking instead of nominative case. It concludes with a summary of how egophoricity in Cha'palaa interacts with issues of argument structure in comparison to a language with person agreement, here represented by examples from Cha’palaa’s neighbor Ecuadorian Highland Quechua.
  • Forkel, S. J., & Catani, M. (2018). Structural Neuroimaging. In A. De Groot, & P. Hagoort (Eds.), Research Methods in Psycholinguistics and the Neurobiology of Language: A Practical Guide (pp. 288-308). Hoboken: Wiley. doi:10.1002/9781394259762.ch15.

    Abstract

    Structural imaging based on computerized tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has progressively replaced traditional post‐mortem studies in the process of identifying the neuroanatomical basis of language. In the clinical setting, the information provided by structural imaging has been used to confirm the exact diagnosis and formulate an individualized treatment plan. In the research arena, neuroimaging has permitted to understand neuroanatomy at the individual and group level. The possibility to obtain quantitative measures of lesions has improved correlation analyses between severity of symptoms, lesion load, and lesion location. More recently, the development of structural imaging based on diffusion MRI has provided valid solutions to two major limitations of more conventional imaging. In stroke patients, diffusion can visualize early changes due to a stroke that are otherwise not detectable with more conventional structural imaging, with important implications for the clinical management of acute stroke patients. Beyond the sensitivity to early changes, diffusion imaging tractography presents the possibility of visualizing the trajectories of individual white matter pathways connecting distant regions. A pathway analysis based on tractography is offering a new perspective in neurolinguistics. First, it permits to formulate new anatomical models of language function in the healthy brain and allows to directly test these models in the human population without any reliance on animal models. Second, by defining the exact location of the damage to specific white matter connections we can understand the contribution of different mechanisms to the emergence of language deficits (e.g., cortical versus disconnection mechanisms). Finally, a better understanding of the anatomical variability of different language networks is helping to identify new anatomical predictors of language recovery. In this chapter we will focus on the principles of structural MRI and, in particular, diffusion imaging and tractography and present examples of how these methods have informed our understanding of variance in language performances in the healthy brain and language deficits in patient populations.
  • Fox, E. (2020). Literary Jerry and justice. In M. E. Poulsen (Ed.), The Jerome Bruner Library: From New York to Nijmegen. Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
  • Frost, R. L. A., & Monaghan, P. (2020). Insights from studying statistical learning. In C. F. Rowland, A. L. Theakston, B. Ambridge, & K. E. Twomey (Eds.), Current Perspectives on Child Language Acquisition: How children use their environment to learn (pp. 65-89). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi:10.1075/tilar.27.03fro.

    Abstract

    Acquiring language is notoriously complex, yet for the majority of children this feat is accomplished with remarkable ease. Usage-based accounts of language acquisition suggest that this success can be largely attributed to the wealth of experience with language that children accumulate over the course of language acquisition. One field of research that is heavily underpinned by this principle of experience is statistical learning, which posits that learners can perform powerful computations over the distribution of information in a given input, which can help them to discern precisely how that input is structured, and how it operates. A growing body of work brings this notion to bear in the field of language acquisition, due to a developing understanding of the richness of the statistical information contained in speech. In this chapter we discuss the role that statistical learning plays in language acquisition, emphasising the importance of both the distribution of information within language, and the situation in which language is being learnt. First, we address the types of statistical learning that apply to a range of language learning tasks, asking whether the statistical processes purported to support language learning are the same or distinct across different tasks in language acquisition. Second, we expand the perspective on what counts as environmental input, by determining how statistical learning operates over the situated learning environment, and not just sequences of sounds in utterances. Finally, we address the role of variability in children’s input, and examine how statistical learning can accommodate (and perhaps even exploit) this during language acquisition.
  • Gingras, B., Honing, H., Peretz, I., Trainor, L. J., & Fisher, S. E. (2018). Defining the biological bases of individual differences in musicality. In H. Honing (Ed.), The origins of musicality (pp. 221-250). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  • Güldemann, T., & Hammarström, H. (2020). Geographical axis effects in large-scale linguistic distributions. In M. Crevels, & P. Muysken (Eds.), Language Dispersal, Diversification, and Contact. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Hagoort, P. (2020). Taal. In O. Van den Heuvel, Y. Van der Werf, B. Schmand, & B. Sabbe (Eds.), Leerboek neurowetenschappen voor de klinische psychiatrie (pp. 234-239). Amsterdam: Boom Uitgevers.
  • Hagoort, P. (1998). The shadows of lexical meaning in patients with semantic impairments. In B. Stemmer, & H. Whitaker (Eds.), Handbook of neurolinguistics (pp. 235-248). New York: Academic Press.
  • Hammarström, H. (2018). Language isolates in the New Guinea region. In L. Campbell (Ed.), Language Isolates (pp. 287-322). London: Routledge.
  • Hoey, E., & Kendrick, K. H. (2018). Conversation analysis. In A. M. B. De Groot, & P. Hagoort (Eds.), Research methods in psycholinguistics and the neurobiology of language: A practical guide (pp. 151-173). Hoboken: Wiley.

    Abstract

    Conversation Analysis (CA) is an inductive, micro-analytic, and predominantly qualitative
    method for studying human social interactions. This chapter describes and illustrates the basic
    methods of CA. We first situate the method by describing its sociological foundations, key areas
    of analysis, and particular approach in using naturally occurring data. The bulk of the chapter is
    devoted to practical explanations of the typical conversation analytic process for collecting data
    and producing an analysis. We analyze a candidate interactional practice – the assessmentimplicative
    interrogative – using real data extracts as a demonstration of the method, explicitly
    laying out the relevant questions and considerations for every stage of an analysis. The chapter
    concludes with some discussion of quantitative approaches to conversational interaction, and
    links between CA and psycholinguistic concerns
  • Indefrey, P. (2018). The relationship between syntactic production and comprehension. In S.-A. Rueschemeyer, & M. G. Gaskell (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics (2nd ed., pp. 486-505). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Abstract

    This chapter deals with the question of whether there is one syntactic system that is shared by language production and comprehension or whether there are two separate systems. It first discusses arguments in favor of one or the other option and then presents the current evidence on the brain structures involved in sentence processing. The results of meta-analyses of numerous neuroimaging studies suggest that there is one system consisting of functionally distinct cortical regions: the dorsal part of Broca’s area subserving compositional syntactic processing; the ventral part of Broca’s area subserving compositional semantic processing; and the left posterior temporal cortex (Wernicke’s area) subserving the retrieval of lexical syntactic and semantic information. Sentence production, the comprehension of simple and complex sentences, and the parsing of sentences containing grammatical violations differ with respect to the recruitment of these functional components.
  • Janssen, R., & Dediu, D. (2018). Genetic biases affecting language: What do computer models and experimental approaches suggest? In T. Poibeau, & A. Villavicencio (Eds.), Language, Cognition and Computational Models (pp. 256-288). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Abstract

    Computer models of cultural evolution have shown language properties emerging on interacting agents with a brain that lacks dedicated, nativist language modules. Notably, models using Bayesian agents provide a precise specification of (extra-)liguististic factors (e.g., genetic) that shape language through iterated learning (biases on language), and demonstrate that weak biases get expressed more strongly over time (bias amplification). Other models attempt to lessen assumption on agents’ innate predispositions even more, and emphasize self-organization within agents, highlighting glossogenesis (the development of language from a nonlinguistic state). Ultimately however, one also has to recognize that biology and culture are strongly interacting, forming a coevolving system. As such, computer models show that agents might (biologically) evolve to a state predisposed to language adaptability, where (culturally) stable language features might get assimilated into the genome via Baldwinian niche construction. In summary, while many questions about language evolution remain unanswered, it is clear that it is not to be completely understood from a purely biological, cognitivist perspective. Language should be regarded as (partially) emerging on the social interactions between large populations of speakers. In this context, agent models provide a sound approach to investigate the complex dynamics of genetic biasing on language and speech
  • Jordens, P. (1998). Defaultformen des Präteritums. Zum Erwerb der Vergangenheitsmorphologie im Niederlänidischen. In H. Wegener (Ed.), Eine zweite Sprache lernen (pp. 61-88). Tübingen, Germany: Verlag Gunter Narr.
  • Kastens, K. (2020). The Jerome Bruner Library treasure. In M. E. Poulsen (Ed.), The Jerome Bruner Library: From New York to Nijmegen (pp. 29-34). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
  • Kempen, G. (1978). Sentence construction by a psychologically plausible formulator. In R. N. Campbell, & P. T. Smith (Eds.), Recent advances in the psychology of language: Formal and experimental approaches. Volume 2 (pp. 103-124). New York: Plenum Press.
  • Kempen, G. (1998). Sentence parsing. In A. D. Friederici (Ed.), Language comprehension: A biological perspective (pp. 213-228). Berlin: Springer.
  • Kidd, E., Bigood, A., Donnelly, S., Durrant, S., Peter, M. S., & Rowland, C. F. (2020). Individual differences in first language acquisition and their theoretical implications. In C. F. Rowland, A. L. Theakston, B. Ambridge, & K. E. Twomey (Eds.), Current Perspectives on Child Language Acquisition: How children use their environment to learn (pp. 189-219). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi:10.1075/tilar.27.09kid.

    Abstract

    Much of Lieven’s pioneering work has helped move the study of individual differences to the centre of child language research. The goal of the present chapter is to illustrate how the study of individual differences provides crucial insights into the language acquisition process. In part one, we summarise some of the evidence showing how pervasive individual differences are across the whole of the language system; from gestures to morphosyntax. In part two, we describe three causal factors implicated in explaining individual differences, which, we argue, must be built into any theory of language acquisition (intrinsic differences in the neurocognitive learning mechanisms, the child’s communicative environment, and developmental cascades in which each new linguistic skill that the child has to acquire depends critically on the prior acquisition of foundational abilities). In part three, we present an example study on the role of the speed of linguistic processing on vocabulary development, which illustrates our approach to individual differences. The results show evidence of a changing relationship between lexical processing speed and vocabulary over developmental time, perhaps as a result of the changing nature of the structure of the lexicon. The study thus highlights the benefits of an individual differences approach in building, testing, and constraining theories of language acquisition.
  • Klein, W. (1969). Bibliographie zur maschinellen syntaktischen Analyse. In H. Eggers, & R. Dietrich (Eds.), Elektronische Syntaxanalyse der deutschen Gegenwartssprache (pp. 165-177). Tübingen: Niemeyer.
  • 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. (1973). Eine Analyse der Kerne in Schillers "Räuber". In S. Marcus (Ed.), Mathematische Poetik (pp. 326-333). Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum.
  • Klein, W., & Heidelberger Forschungsprojekt "Pidgin - Deutsch" (1978). Aspekte der ungesteuerten Erlernung des Deutschen durch ausländische Arbeiter. In C. Molony, H. Zobl, & W. Stölting (Eds.), German in contact with other languages / Deutsch im Kontakt mit anderen Sprachen (pp. 147-183). Wiesbaden: Scriptor.
  • 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. (1973). Dialekt und Einheitssprache im Fremdsprachenunterricht. In Beiträge zu den Sommerkursen des Goethe-Instituts München (pp. 53-60).
  • Klein, W. (1978). The aquisition of German syntax by foreign migrant workers. In D. Sankoff (Ed.), Linguistic variation: models and methods (pp. 1-22). New York: Academic Press.
  • Klein, W. (1978). Soziolinguistik. In H. Balmer (Ed.), Die Psychologie des 20. Jahrhunderts: Vol. 7. Piaget und die Folgen (pp. 1130-1147). Zürich: Kindler.
  • 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. (1969). Zum Begriff der syntaktischen Analyse. In H. Eggers, & R. Dietrich (Eds.), Elektronische Syntaxanalyse der deutschen Gegenwartssprache (pp. 20-37). Tübingen: Niemeyer.
  • De Kovel, C. G. F., & Fisher, S. E. (2018). Molecular genetic methods. In A. M. B. De Groot, & P. Hagoort (Eds.), Research methods in psycholinguistics and the neurobiology of language: A practical guide (pp. 330-353). Hoboken: Wiley.
  • 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. (1969). Semantic features: A psychological model and its mathematical analysis. In Heymans Bulletins Psychologische instituten R.U. Groningen, HB-69-45.
  • Levelt, W. J. M., Sinclair, A., & Jarvella, R. J. (1978). Causes and functions of linguistic awareness in language acquisition: Some introductory remarks. In A. Sinclair, R. Jarvella, & W. J. M. Levelt (Eds.), The child's conception of language (pp. 1-14). Heidelberg: Springer.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1978). A survey of studies in sentence perception: 1970-1976. In W. J. M. Levelt, & G. Flores d'Arcais (Eds.), Studies in the perception of language (pp. 1-74). New York: Wiley.
  • 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. (1969). Psycholinguistiek. In Winkler-Prins [Suppl.] (pp. A756-A757).
  • 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., Schreuder, R., & Hoenkamp, E. (1978). Structure and use of verbs of motion. In R. N. Campbell, & P. T. Smith (Eds.), Recent advances in the psychology of language: Vol 2. Formal and experimental approaches (pp. 137-162). New York: Plenum Press.
  • Levinson, S. C. (1998). Deixis. In J. L. Mey (Ed.), Concise encyclopedia of pragmatics (pp. 200-204). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
  • 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. (2018). Introduction: Demonstratives: Patterns in diversity. In S. C. Levinson, S. Cutfield, M. Dunn, N. J. Enfield, & S. Meira (Eds.), Demonstratives in cross-linguistic perspective (pp. 1-42). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Levinson, S. C. (2018). Yélî Dnye: Demonstratives in the language of Rossel Island, Papua New Guinea. In S. C. Levinson, S. Cutfield, M. Dunn, N. J. Enfield, & S. Meira (Eds.), Demonstratives in cross-linguistic perspective (pp. 318-342). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Majid, A. (2018). Cultural factors shape olfactory language [Reprint]. In D. Howes (Ed.), Senses and Sensation: Critical and Primary Sources. Volume 3 (pp. 307-310). London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
  • Majid, A. (2018). Language and cognition. In H. Callan (Ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

    Abstract

    What is the relationship between the language we speak and the way we think? Researchers working at the interface of language and cognition hope to understand the complex interplay between linguistic structures and the way the mind works. This is thorny territory in anthropology and its closely allied disciplines, such as linguistics and psychology.

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  • Mamus, E., & Karadöller, D. Z. (2018). Anıları Zihinde Canlandırma [Imagery in autobiographical memories]. In S. Gülgöz, B. Ece, & S. Öner (Eds.), Hayatı Hatırlamak: Otobiyografik Belleğe Bilimsel Yaklaşımlar [Remembering Life: Scientific Approaches to Autobiographical Memory] (pp. 185-200). Istanbul, Turkey: Koç University Press.
  • Mani, N., Mishra, R. K., & Huettig, F. (2018). Introduction to 'The Interactive Mind: Language, Vision and Attention'. In N. Mani, R. K. Mishra, & F. Huettig (Eds.), The Interactive Mind: Language, Vision and Attention (pp. 1-2). Chennai: Macmillan Publishers India.
  • 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.
  • Mitterer, H., Brouwer, S., & Huettig, F. (2018). How important is prediction for understanding spontaneous speech? In N. Mani, R. K. Mishra, & F. Huettig (Eds.), The Interactive Mind: Language, Vision and Attention (pp. 26-40). Chennai: Macmillan Publishers India.
  • 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. (2018). Egophoricity and evidentiality in Guambiano (Nam Trik). In S. Floyd, E. Norcliffe, & L. San Roque (Eds.), Egophoricity (pp. 305-345). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    Egophoric verbal marking is a typological feature common to Barbacoan languages, but otherwise unknown in the Andean sphere. The verbal systems of three out of the four living Barbacoan languages, Cha’palaa, Tsafiki and Awa Pit, have previously been shown to express egophoric contrasts. The status of Guambiano has, however, remained uncertain. In this chapter, I show that there are in fact two layers of egophoric or egophoric-like marking visible in Guambiano’s grammar. Guambiano patterns with certain other (non-Barbacoan) languages in having ego-categories which function within a broader evidential system. It is additionally possible to detect what is possibly a more archaic layer of egophoric marking in Guambiano’s verbal system. This marking may be inherited from a common Barbacoan system, thus pointing to a potential genealogical basis for the egophoric patterning common to these languages. The multiple formal expressions of egophoricity apparent both within and across the four languages reveal how egophoric contrasts are susceptible to structural renewal, suggesting a pan-Barbacoan preoccupation with the linguistic encoding of self-knowledge.
  • Ozyurek, A. (2018). Cross-linguistic variation in children’s multimodal utterances. In M. Hickmann, E. Veneziano, & H. Jisa (Eds.), Sources of variation in first language acquisition: Languages, contexts, and learners (pp. 123-138). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    Our ability to use language is multimodal and requires tight coordination between what is expressed in speech and in gesture, such as pointing or iconic gestures that convey semantic, syntactic and pragmatic information related to speakers’ messages. Interestingly, what is expressed in gesture and how it is coordinated with speech differs in speakers of different languages. This paper discusses recent findings on the development of children’s multimodal expressions taking cross-linguistic variation into account. Although some aspects of speech-gesture development show language-specificity from an early age, it might still take children until nine years of age to exhibit fully adult patterns of cross-linguistic variation. These findings reveal insights about how children coordinate different levels of representations given that their development is constrained by patterns that are specific to their languages.
  • Ozyurek, A. (2018). Role of gesture in language processing: Toward a unified account for production and comprehension. In S.-A. Rueschemeyer, & M. G. Gaskell (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics (2nd ed., pp. 592-607). Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198786825.013.25.

    Abstract

    Use of language in face-to-face context is multimodal. Production and perception of speech take place in the context of visual articulators such as lips, face, or hand gestures which convey relevant information to what is expressed in speech at different levels of language. While lips convey information at the phonological level, gestures contribute to semantic, pragmatic, and syntactic information, as well as to discourse cohesion. This chapter overviews recent findings showing that speech and gesture (e.g. a drinking gesture as someone says, “Would you like a drink?”) interact during production and comprehension of language at the behavioral, cognitive, and neural levels. Implications of these findings for current psycholinguistic theories and how they can be expanded to consider the multimodal context of language processing are discussed.
  • Pawley, A., & Hammarström, H. (2018). The Trans New Guinea family. In B. Palmer (Ed.), Papuan Languages and Linguistics (pp. 21-196). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
  • Piepers, J., & Redl, T. (2018). Gender-mismatching pronouns in context: The interpretation of possessive pronouns in Dutch and Limburgian. In B. Le Bruyn, & J. Berns (Eds.), Linguistics in the Netherlands 2018 (pp. 97-110). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    Gender-(mis)matching pronouns have been studied extensively in experiments. However, a phenomenon common to various languages has thus far been overlooked: the systemic use of non-feminine pronouns when referring to female individuals. The present study is the first to provide experimental insights into the interpretation of such a pronoun: Limburgian zien ‘his/its’ and Dutch zijn ‘his/its’ are grammatically ambiguous between masculine and neuter, but while Limburgian zien can refer to women, the Dutch equivalent zijn cannot. Employing an acceptability judgment task, we presented speakers of Limburgian (N = 51) with recordings of sentences in Limburgian featuring zien, and speakers of Dutch (N = 52) with Dutch translations of these sentences featuring zijn. All sentences featured a potential male or female antecedent embedded in a stereotypically male or female context. We found that ratings were higher for sentences in which the pronoun could refer back to the antecedent. For Limburgians, this extended to sentences mentioning female individuals. Context further modulated sentence appreciation. Possible mechanisms regarding the interpretation of zien as coreferential with a female individual will be discussed.
  • Rommers, J., & Federmeier, K. D. (2018). Electrophysiological methods. In A. M. B. De Groot, & P. Hagoort (Eds.), Research methods in psycholinguistics and the neurobiology of language: A practical guide (pp. 247-265). Hoboken: Wiley.
  • 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.
  • San Roque, L. (2018). Egophoric patterns in Duna verbal morphology. In S. Floyd, E. Norcliffe, & L. San Roque (Eds.), Egophoricity (pp. 405-436). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    In the language Duna (Trans New Guinea), egophoric distributional patterns are a pervasive characteristic of verbal morphology, but do not comprise a single coherent system. Many morphemes, including evidential markers and future time inflections, show strong tendencies to co-occur with ‘informant’ subjects (the speaker in a declarative, the addressee in an interrogative), or alternatively with non-informant subjects. The person sensitivity of the Duna forms is observable in frequency, speaker judgments of sayability, and subject implicatures. Egophoric and non-egophoric distributional patterns are motivated by the individual semantics of the morphemes, their perspective-taking properties, and logical and/or conventionalised expectations of how people experience and talk about events. Distributional tendencies can also be flouted, providing a resource for speakers to convey attitudes towards their own knowledge and experiences, or the knowledge and experiences of others.
  • San Roque, L., Floyd, S., & Norcliffe, E. (2018). Egophoricity: An introduction. In S. Floyd, E. Norcliffe, & L. San Roque (Eds.), Egophoricity (pp. 1-78). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • San Roque, L., & Schieffelin, B. B. (2018). Learning how to know. In S. Floyd, E. Norcliffe, & L. San Roque (Eds.), Egophoricity (pp. 437-471). Amsterdam: Benjamins. doi:10.1075/tsl.118.14san.

    Abstract

    Languages with egophoric systems require their users to pay special attention to who knows what in the speech situation, providing formal marking of whether the speaker or addressee has personal knowledge of the event being discussed. Such systems have only recently come to be studied in cross-linguistic perspective. This chapter has two aims in regard to contributing to our understanding of egophoric marking. Firstly, it presents relevant data from a relatively under-described and endangered language, Kaluli (aka Bosavi), spoken in Papua New Guinea. Unusually, Kaluli tense inflections appear to show a mix of both egophoric and first vs non-first person-marking features, as well as other contrasts that are broadly relevant to a typology of egophoricity, such as special constructions for the expression of involuntary experience. Secondly, the chapter makes a preliminary foray into issues concerning egophoric marking and child language, drawing on a naturalistic corpus of child-caregiver interactions. Questions for future investigation raised by the Kaluli data concern, for example, the potentially challenging nature of mastering inflections that are sensitive to both person and speech act type, the possible role of question-answer pairs in children’s acquisition of egophoric morphology, and whether there are special features of epistemic access and authority that relate particularly to child-adult interactions.
  • Schiller, N. O., & Verdonschot, R. G. (2018). Morphological theory and neurolinguistics. In J. Audring, & F. Masini (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Morphological Theory (pp. 554-572). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Abstract

    This chapter describes neurolinguistic aspects of morphology, morphological theory, and especially morphological processing. It briefly mentions the main processing models in the literature and how they deal with morphological issues, i.e. full-listing models (all morphologically related words are listed separately in the lexicon and are processed individually), full-parsing or decompositional models (morphologically related words are not listed in the lexicon but are decomposed into their constituent morphemes, each of which is listed in the lexicon), and hybrid, so-called dual route, models (regular morphologically related words are decomposed, irregular words are listed). The chapter also summarizes some important findings from the literature that bear on neurolinguistic aspects of morphological processing, from both language comprehension and language production, taking into consideration neuropsychological patient studies as well as studies employing neuroimaging methods.
  • Seifart, F., & Hammarström, H. (2018). Language Isolates in South America. In L. Campbell, A. Smith, & T. Dougherty (Eds.), Language Isolates (pp. 260-286). London: Routledge.
  • 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. (1978). Einige Prinzipien linguistischer Methodologie [transl. from English by Gunter Senft]. In N. Dittmar, & B. O. Rieck (Eds.), William Labov: Sprache im sozialen Kontext, vol. 2 (pp. 187-207). Königstein: Scriptor.
  • 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., & Labov, W. (1978). 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, Vol.2 (pp. 129-146). Königstein: Scriptor.
  • Senft, G. (2018). Pragmatics and anthropology - The Trobriand Islanders' Ways of Speaking. In C. Ilie, & N. Norrick (Eds.), Pragmatics and its Interfaces (pp. 185-211). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Abstract

    Bronislaw Malinowski – based on his experience during his field research on the Trobriand Islands – pointed out that language is first and foremost a tool for creating social bonds. It is a mode of behavior and the meaning of an utterance is constituted by its pragmatic function. Malinowski’s ideas finally led to the formation of the subdiscipline “anthropological linguistics”. This paper presents three observations of the Trobrianders’ attitude to their language Kilivila and their language use in social interactions. They illustrate that whoever wants to successfully research the role of language, culture and cognition in social interaction must be on ‘common ground’ with the researched community.
  • Senft, G. (2018). Theory meets Practice - H. Paul Grice's Maxims of Quality and Manner and the Trobriand Islanders' Language Use. In A. Capone, M. Carapezza, & F. Lo Piparo (Eds.), Further Advances in Pragmatics and Philosophy Part 1: From Theory to Practice (pp. 203-220). Cham: Springer.

    Abstract

    As I have already pointed out elsewhere (Senft 2008; 2010; 2014), the Gricean conversational maxims of Quality – “Try to make your contribution one that is true” – and Manner “Be perspicuous”, specifically “Avoid obscurity of expression” and “Avoid ambiguity” (Grice 1967; 1975; 1978) – are not observed by the Trobriand Islanders of Papua New Guinea, neither in forms of their ritualized communication nor in forms and ways of everyday conversation and other ordinary verbal interactions. The speakers of the Austronesian language Kilivila metalinguistically differentiate eight specific non-diatopical registers which I have called “situational-intentional” varieties. One of these varieties is called “biga sopa”. This label can be glossed as “joking or lying speech, indirect speech, speech which is not vouched for”. The biga sopa constitutes the default register of Trobriand discourse and conversation. This contribution to the workshop on philosophy and pragmatics presents the Trobriand Islanders’ indigenous typology of non-diatopical registers, especially elaborating on the concept of sopa, describing its features, discussing its functions and illustrating its use within Trobriand society. It will be shown that the Gricean maxims of quality and manner are irrelevant for and thus not observed by the speakers of Kilivila. On the basis of the presented findings the Gricean maxims and especially Grice’s claim that his theory of conversational implicature is “universal in application” is critically discussed from a general anthropological-linguistic point of view.

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