Publications

Displaying 1 - 100 of 689
  • Aarts, E. (2009). Resisting temptation: The role of the anterior cingulate cortex in adjusting cognitive control. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Acheson, D. J., & MacDonald, M. C. (2009). Twisting tongues and memories: Explorations of the relationship between language production and verbal working memory. Journal of Memory and Language, 60(3), 329-350. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2008.12.002.

    Abstract

    Many accounts of working memory posit specialized storage mechanisms for the maintenance of serial order. We explore an alternative, that maintenance is achieved through temporary activation in the language production architecture. Four experiments examined the extent to which the phonological similarity effect can be explained as a sublexical speech error. Phonologically similar nonword stimuli were ordered to create tongue twister or control materials used in four tasks: reading aloud, immediate spoken recall, immediate typed recall, and serial recognition. Dependent measures from working memory (recall accuracy) and language production (speech errors) fields were used. Even though lists were identical except for item order, robust effects of tongue twisters were observed. Speech error analyses showed that errors were better described as phoneme rather than item ordering errors. The distribution of speech errors was comparable across all experiments and exhibited syllable-position effects, suggesting an important role for production processes. Implications for working memory and language production are discussed.
  • Acheson, D. J., & MacDonald, M. C. (2009). Verbal working memory and language production: Common approaches to the serial ordering of verbal information. Psychological Bulletin, 135(1), 50-68. doi:10.1037/a0014411.

    Abstract

    Verbal working memory (WM) tasks typically involve the language production architecture for recall; however, language production processes have had a minimal role in theorizing about WM. A framework for understanding verbal WM results is presented here. In this framework, domain-specific mechanisms for serial ordering in verbal WM are provided by the language production architecture, in which positional, lexical, and phonological similarity constraints are highly similar to those identified in the WM literature. These behavioral similarities are paralleled in computational modeling of serial ordering in both fields. The role of long-term learning in serial ordering performance is emphasized, in contrast to some models of verbal WM. Classic WM findings are discussed in terms of the language production architecture. The integration of principles from both fields illuminates the maintenance and ordering mechanisms for verbal information.
  • Adank, P., & Janse, E. (2009). Perceptual learning of time-compressed and natural fast speech. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 126(5), 2649-2659. doi:10.1121/1.3216914.

    Abstract

    Speakers vary their speech rate considerably during a conversation, and listeners are able to quickly adapt to these variations in speech rate. Adaptation to fast speech rates is usually measured using artificially time-compressed speech. This study examined adaptation to two types of fast speech: artificially time-compressed speech and natural fast speech. Listeners performed a speeded sentence verification task on three series of sentences: normal-speed sentences, time-compressed sentences, and natural fast sentences. Listeners were divided into two groups to evaluate the possibility of transfer of learning between the time-compressed and natural fast conditions. The first group verified the natural fast before the time-compressed sentences, while the second verified the time-compressed before the natural fast sentences. The results showed transfer of learning when the time-compressed sentences preceded the natural fast sentences, but not when natural fast sentences preceded the time-compressed sentences. The results are discussed in the framework of theories on perceptual learning. Second, listeners show adaptation to the natural fast sentences, but performance for this type of fast speech does not improve to the level of time-compressed sentences.
  • Aleman, A., Formisano, E., Koppenhagen, H., Hagoort, P., De Haan, E. H. F., & Kahn, R. S. (2005). The functional neuroanatomy of metrical stress evaluation of perceived and imagined spoken words. Cerebral Cortex, 15(2), 221-228. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhh124.

    Abstract

    We hypothesized that areas in the temporal lobe that have been implicated in the phonological processing of spoken words would also be activated during the generation and phonological processing of imagined speech. We tested this hypothesis using functional magnetic resonance imaging during a behaviorally controlled task of metrical stress evaluation. Subjects were presented with bisyllabic words and had to determine the alternation of strong and weak syllables. Thus, they were required to discriminate between weak-initial words and strong-initial words. In one condition, the stimuli were presented auditorily to the subjects (by headphones). In the other condition the stimuli were presented visually on a screen and subjects were asked to imagine hearing the word. Results showed activation of the supplementary motor area, inferior frontal gyrus (Broca's area) and insula in both conditions. In the superior temporal gyrus (STG) and in the superior temporal sulcus (STS) strong activation was observed during the auditory (perceptual) condition. However, a region located in the posterior part of the STS/STG also responded during the imagery condition. No activation of this same region of the STS was observed during a control condition which also involved processing of visually presented words, but which required a semantic decision from the subject. We suggest that processing of metrical stress, with or without auditory input, relies in part on cortical interface systems located in the posterior part of STS/STG. These results corroborate behavioral evidence regarding phonological loop involvement in auditory–verbal imagery.
  • Ambridge, B., Pine, J. M., Rowland, C. F., Jones, R. L., & Clark, V. (2009). A Semantics-Based Approach to the “no negative evidence” problem. Cognitive Science, 33(7), 1301-1316. doi:10.1111/j.1551-6709.2009.01055.x.

    Abstract

    Previous studies have shown that children retreat from argument-structure overgeneralization errors (e.g., *Don’t giggle me) by inferring that frequently encountered verbs are unlikely to be grammatical in unattested constructions, and by making use of syntax-semantics correspondences (e.g., verbs denoting internally caused actions such as giggling cannot normally be used causatively). The present study tested a new account based on a unitary learning mechanism that combines both of these processes. Seventy-two participants (ages 5–6, 9–10, and adults) rated overgeneralization errors with higher (*The funny man’s joke giggled Bart) and lower (*The funny man giggled Bart) degrees of direct external causation. The errors with more-direct causation were rated as less unacceptable than those with less-direct causation. This finding is consistent with the new account, under which children acquire—in an incremental and probabilistic fashion—the meaning of particular constructions (e.g., transitive causative = direct external causation) and particular verbs, rejecting generalizations where the incompatibility between the two is too great.
  • Ambridge, B., & Rowland, C. F. (2009). Predicting children's errors with negative questions: Testing a schema-combination account. Cognitive Linguistics, 20(2), 225-266. doi:10.1515/COGL.2009.014.

    Abstract

    Positive and negative what, why and yes/no questions with the 3sg auxiliaries can and does were elicited from 50 children aged 3;3–4;3. In support of the constructivist “schema-combination” account, only children who produced a particular positive question type correctly (e.g., What does she want?) produced a characteristic “auxiliary-doubling” error (e.g., *What does she doesn't want?) for the corresponding negative question type. This suggests that these errors are formed by superimposing a positive question frame (e.g., What does THING PROCESS?) and an inappropriate negative frame (e.g., She doesn't PROCESS) learned from declarative utterances. In addition, a significant correlation between input frequency and correct production was observed for 11 of the 12 lexical frames (e.g., What does THING PROCESS?), although some negative question types showed higher rates of error than one might expect based on input frequency alone. Implications for constructivist and generativist theories of question-acquisition are discussed.
  • Ameka, F. K. (2009). Access rituals in West Africa: An ethnopragmatic perspective. In G. Senft, & E. B. Basso (Eds.), Ritual communication (pp. 127-151). Oxford: Berg.
  • Ameka, F. K. (2005). "The woman is seeable" and "The woman perceives seeing": Undergoer voice constructions in Ewe and Likpe. In M. Dakubu, & E. Osam (Eds.), Studies in languages of the Volta Basin (pp. 43-62). Legon: University of Ghana. Department of Linguistics.
  • Ameka, F. K. (2005). Forms of secondary predication in serializing languages: On depictives in Ewe. In N. P. Himmelmann, & E. Schultze-Berndt (Eds.), Secondary predication and adverbial modification: The typology of depictives (pp. 335-378). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Ameka, F. K. (2005). Multiverb constructions on the West African littoral: Microvariation and areal typology. In M. Vulchanova, & T. A. Afarli (Eds.), Grammar and beyond: Essays in honour of Lars Hellan (pp. 15-42). Oslo: Novus.
  • Ameka, F. K. (2009). Likpe. In G. J. Dimmendaal (Ed.), Coding participant marking: Construction types in twelve African languages (pp. 239-280). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Ameka, F. K. (1991). Ewe: Its grammatical constructions and illocutionary devices. PhD Thesis, Australian National University, Canberra.
  • Ameka, F. K. (2009). Verb extensions in Likpe (Sɛkpɛlé). Journal of West African Languages, 36(1/2), 139-157.
  • Andrieu, C., Figuerola, H., Jacquemot, E., Le Guen, O., Roullet, J., & Salès, C. (2005). Parfum de rose, odeur de sainteté: Un sermon Tzeltal sur la première sainte des Amériques. Ateliers du LESC, 29, 11-67. Retrieved from http://ateliers.revues.org/document174.html.
  • Araújo, S., Faísca, L., Petersson, K. M., & Reis, A. (2009). Cognitive profiles in Portuguese children with dyslexia. In Abstracts presented at the International Neuropsychological Society, Finnish Neuropsychological Society, Joint Mid-Year Meeting July 29-August 1, 2009. Helsinki, Finland & Tallinn, Estonia (pp. 23). Retrieved from http://www.neuropsykologia.fi/ins2009/INS_MY09_Abstract.pdf.
  • Araújo, S., Faísca, L., Petersson, K. M., & Reis, A. (2009). Visual processing factors contribute to object naming difficulties in dyslexic readers. In Abstracts presented at the International Neuropsychological Society, Finnish Neuropsychological Society, Joint Mid-Year Meeting July 29-August 1, 2009. Helsinki, Finland & Tallinn, Estonia (pp. 39). Retrieved from http://www.neuropsykologia.fi/ins2009/INS_MY09_Abstract.pdf.
  • Avelino, H., Coon, J., & Norcliffe, E. (Eds.). (2009). New perspectives in Mayan linguistics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Working Papers in Linguistics.
  • Baayen, R. H., & Moscoso del Prado Martín, F. (2005). Semantic density and past-tense formation in three Germanic languages. Language, 81(3), 666-698. doi:10.1353/lan.2005.0112.

    Abstract

    it is widely believed that the difference between regular and irregular verbs is restricted to form. This study questions that belief. We report a series of lexical statistics showing that irregular verbs cluster in denser regions in semantic space. Compared to regular verbs, irregular verbs tend to have more semantic neighbors that in turn have relatively many other semantic neighbors that are morphologically irregular. We show that this greater semantic density for irregulars is reflected in association norms, familiarity ratings, visual lexical-decision latencies, and word-naming latencies. Meta-analyses of the materials of two neuroimaging studies show that in these studies, regularity is confounded with differences in semantic density. Our results challenge the hypothesis of the supposed formal encapsulation of rules of inflection and support lines of research in which sensitivity to probability is recognized as intrinsic to human language.
  • Baayen, R. H. (2005). Data mining at the intersection of psychology and linguistics. In A. Cutler (Ed.), Twenty-first century psycholinguistics: Four cornerstones (pp. 69-83). Mahwah: Erlbaum.
  • Baayen, H., & Lieber, R. (1991). Productivity and English derivation: A corpus-based study. Linguistics, 29(5), 801-843. doi:10.1515/ling.1991.29.5.801.

    Abstract

    The notion of productivity is one which is central to the study of morphology.
    It is a notion about which linguists frequently have intuitions. But it is a notion which still
    remains somewhat problematic in the
    literature on generative morphology some
    15 years after Aronoff raised the issue in his (1976) monograph. In this paper we will review some of the definitions and measures of productivity discussed in the generative and pregenerative literature.
    We will adopt the definition of productivity suggested by Schultink (1961) and propose
    a number of statistical measures of productivity whose results, when
    applied to a fixed corpus, accord nicely with our intuitive estimates of productivity, and which shed light on the quantitative weight of linguistic restrictions on word formation rules. Part of our
    purpose here is also a very
    simple one: to make
    available a substantial
    set of empirical data concerning
    the productivity of
    some of the major derivational
    affixes of English.

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  • Baggio, G. (2009). Semantics and the electrophysiology of meaning: Tense, aspect, event structure. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Basso, E. B., & Senft, G. (2009). Introduction. In G. Senft, & E. B. Basso (Eds.), Ritual communication (pp. 1-19). Oxford: Berg.
  • Bastiaanse, R., De Goede, D., & Love, T. (2009). Auditory sentence processing: An introduction. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 38(3), 177-179. doi:10.1007/s10936-009-9109-3.
  • Bastiaansen, M. C. M., Van der Linden, M., Ter Keurs, M., Dijkstra, T., & Hagoort, P. (2005). Theta responses are involved in lexico-semantic retrieval during language processing. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17, 530-541. doi:10.1162/0898929053279469.

    Abstract

    Oscillatory neuronal dynamics, observed in the human electroencephalogram (EEG) during language processing, have been related to the dynamic formation of functionally coherent networks that serve the role of integrating the different sources of information needed for understanding the linguistic input. To further explore the functional role of oscillatory synchrony during language processing, we quantified event-related EEG power changes induced by the presentation of open-class (OC) words and closed-class (CC) words in a wide range of frequencies (from 1 to 30 Hz), while subjects read a short story. Word presentation induced three oscillatory components: a theta power increase (4–7 Hz), an alpha power decrease (10–12 Hz), and a beta power decrease (16–21 Hz). Whereas the alpha and beta responses showed mainly quantitative differences between the two word classes, the theta responses showed qualitative differences between OC words and CC words: A theta power increase was found over left temporal areas for OC words, but not for CC words. The left temporal theta increase may index the activation of a network involved in retrieving the lexical–semantic properties of the OC items.
  • Bauer, B. L. M. (2005). Innovation in Old French syntax and its Latin origins. In S. Kiss, L. Mondin, & G. Salvi (Eds.), Latin et langues romanes: Etudes de linguistique offertes à Jozsef Herman à l’occasion de son 80ème anniversaire (pp. 507-521). Tübingen: Niemeyer.
  • Bauer, B. L. M. (2005). Living in two worlds. In W. R. Louis (Ed.), Burnt orange Britannia (pp. 732-744). Austin: Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center.
  • Bauer, B. L. M. (2009). Residues as an aid in internal reconstruction. In J. E. Rasmussen, & T. Olander (Eds.), Internal reconstruction in Indo-European: Methods, results, and problems (pp. 17-31). Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press.
  • Bauer, B. L. M. (2009). Strategies of definiteness in Latin: Implications for early Indo-European. In V. Bubenik, J. Hewson, & S. Rose (Eds.), Grammatical change in Indo-European languages: Papers presented at the workshop on Indo-European Linguistics at the XVIIIth International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Montreal, 2007 (pp. 71-87). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Bauer, B. L. M. (2009). Word order. In P. Baldi, & P. Cuzzolin (Eds.), New Perspectives on Historical Latin Syntax: Vol 1: Syntax of the Sentence (pp. 241-316). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Belke, E., Brysbaert, M., Meyer, A. S., & Ghyselinck, M. (2005). Age of acquisition effects in picture naming: Evidence for a lexical-semantic competition hypothesis. Cognition, 96, B45-B54. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2004.11.006.

    Abstract

    In many tasks the effects of frequency and age of acquisition (AoA) on reaction latencies are similar in size. However, in picture naming the AoA-effect is often significantly larger than expected on the basis of the frequency-effect. Previous explanations of this frequency-independent AoA-effect have attributed it to the organisation of the semantic system or to the way phonological word forms are stored in the mental lexicon. Using a semantic blocking paradigm, we show that semantic context effects on naming latencies are more pronounced for late-acquired than for early-acquired words. This interaction between AoA and naming context is likely to arise during lexical-semantic encoding, which we put forward as the locus for the frequency-independent AoA-effect.
  • Belke, E., Meyer, A. S., & Damian, M. F. (2005). Refractory effects in picture naming as assessed in a semantic blocking paradigm. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A, 58, 667-692. doi:10.1080/02724980443000142.

    Abstract

    In the cyclic semantic blocking paradigm participants repeatedly name sets of objects with semantically related names (homogeneous sets) or unrelated names (heterogeneous sets). The naming latencies are typically longer in related than in unrelated sets. In we replicated this semantic blocking effect and demonstrated that the effect only arose after all objects of a set had been shown and named once. In , the objects of a set were presented simultaneously (instead of on successive trials). Evidence for semantic blocking was found in the naming latencies and in the gaze durations for the objects, which were longer in homogeneous than in heterogeneous sets. For the gaze-to-speech lag between the offset of gaze on an object and the onset of the articulation of its name, a repetition priming effect was obtained but no blocking effect. showed that the blocking effect for speech onset latencies generalized to new, previously unnamed lexical items. We propose that the blocking effect is due to refractory behaviour in the semantic system.
  • Bethard, S., Lai, V. T., & Martin, J. (2009). Topic model analysis of metaphor frequency for psycholinguistic stimuli. In Proceedings of the NAACL HLT Workshop on Computational Approaches to Linguistic Creativity, Boulder, Colorado, June 4, 2009 (pp. 9-16). Stroudsburg, PA: Association for Computational Linguistics.

    Abstract

    Psycholinguistic studies of metaphor processing must control their stimuli not just for word frequency but also for the frequency with which a term is used metaphorically. Thus, we consider the task of metaphor frequency estimation, which predicts how often target words will be used metaphorically. We develop metaphor classifiers which represent metaphorical domains through Latent Dirichlet Allocation, and apply these classifiers to the target words, aggregating their decisions to estimate the metaphorical frequencies. Training on only 400 sentences, our models are able to achieve 61.3 % accuracy on metaphor classification and 77.8 % accuracy on HIGH vs. LOW metaphorical frequency estimation.
  • Bickel, B. (1991). Der Hang zur Exzentrik - Annäherungen an das kognitive Modell der Relativkonstruktion. In W. Bisang, & P. Rinderknecht (Eds.), Von Europa bis Ozeanien - von der Antinomie zum Relativsatz (pp. 15-37). Zurich, Switzerland: Seminar für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft der Universität.
  • Bien, H., Levelt, W. J. M., & Baayen, R. H. (2005). Frequency effects in compound production. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 102(49), 17876-17881.

    Abstract

    Four experiments investigated the role of frequency information in compound production by independently varying the frequencies of the first and second constituent as well as the frequency of the compound itself. Pairs of Dutch noun-noun compounds were selected such that there was a maximal contrast for one frequency while matching the other two frequencies. In a position-response association task, participants first learned to associate a compound with a visually marked position on a computer screen. In the test phase, participants had to produce the associated compound in response to the appearance of the position mark, and we measured speech onset latencies. The compound production latencies varied significantly according to factorial contrasts in the frequencies of both constituting morphemes but not according to a factorial contrast in compound frequency, providing further evidence for decompositional models of speech production. In a stepwise regression analysis of the joint data of Experiments 1-4, however, compound frequency was a significant nonlinear predictor, with facilitation in the low-frequency range and a trend toward inhibition in the high-frequency range. Furthermore, a combination of structural measures of constituent frequencies and entropies explained significantly more variance than a strict decompositional model, including cumulative root frequency as the only measure of constituent frequency, suggesting a role for paradigmatic relations in the mental lexicon.
  • De Bleser, R., Willmes, K., Graetz, P., & Hagoort, P. (1991). De Akense Afasie Test. Logopedie en Foniatrie, 63, 207-217.
  • Bonte, M. L., Mitterer, H., Zellagui, N., Poelmans, H., & Blomert, L. (2005). Auditory cortical tuning to statistical regularities in phonology. Clinical Neurophysiology, 16(12), 2765-2774. doi:10.1016/j.clinph.2005.08.012.

    Abstract

    Objective: Ample behavioral evidence suggests that distributional properties of the language environment influence the processing of speech. Yet, how these characteristics are reflected in neural processes remains largely unknown. The present ERP study investigates neurophysiological correlates of phonotactic probability: the distributional frequency of phoneme combinations. Methods: We employed an ERP measure indicative of experience-dependent auditory memory traces, the mismatch negativity (MMN). We presented pairs of non-words that differed by the degree of phonotactic probability in a codified passive oddball design that minimizes the contribution of acoustic processes. Results: In Experiment 1 the non-word with high phonotactic probability (notsel) elicited a significantly enhanced MMN as compared to the non-word with low phonotactic probability (notkel). In Experiment 2 this finding was replicated with a non-word pair with a smaller acoustic difference (notsel–notfel). An MMN enhancement was not observed in a third acoustic control experiment with stimuli having comparable phonotactic probability (so–fo). Conclusions: Our data suggest that auditory cortical responses to phoneme clusters are modulated by statistical regularities of phoneme combinations. Significance: This study indicates that the language environment is relevant in shaping the neural processing of speech. Furthermore, it provides a potentially useful design for investigating implicit phonological processing in children with anomalous language functions like dyslexia.
  • Borgwaldt, S. R., Hellwig, F. M., & De Groot, A. M. B. (2005). Onset entropy matters: Letter-to-phoneme mappings in seven languages. Reading and Writing, 18, 211-229. doi:10.1007/s11145-005-3001-9.
  • De Bot, K., Broersma, M., & Isurin, L. (2009). Sources of triggering in code-switching. In L. Isurin, D. Winford, & K. De Bot (Eds.), Multidisciplinary approaches to code switching (pp. 103-128). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Boves, L., Carlson, R., Hinrichs, E., House, D., Krauwer, S., Lemnitzer, L., Vainio, M., & Wittenburg, P. (2009). Resources for speech research: Present and future infrastructure needs. In Proceedings of the 10th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2009) (pp. 1803-1806).

    Abstract

    This paper introduces the EU-FP7 project CLARIN, a joint effort of over 150 institutions in Europe, aimed at the creation of a sustainable language resources and technology infrastructure for the humanities and social sciences research community. The paper briefly introduces the vision behind the project and how it relates to speech research with a focus on the contributions that CLARIN can and will make to research in spoken language processing.
  • Bowerman, M. (2005). Why can't you "open" a nut or "break" a cooked noodle? Learning covert object categories in action word meanings. In L. Gershkoff-Stowe, & D. H. Rakison (Eds.), Building object categories in developmental time (pp. 209-243). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
  • Bowerman, M. (1971). [Review of A. Bar Adon & W.F. Leopold (Eds.), Child language: A book of readings (Prentice Hall, 1971)]. Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 16, 808-809.
  • Bowerman, M. (2005). Linguistics. In B. Hopkins (Ed.), The Cambridge encyclopedia of child development (pp. 497-501). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Bowerman, M., & Eling, P. (1983). Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics: Annual Report nr. 4 1983. Nijmegen: MPI for Psycholinguistics.
  • Bowerman, M., & Meyer, A. (1991). Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics: Annual Report Nr.12 1991. Nijmegen: MPI for Psycholinguistics.
  • Bowerman, M. (1983). Hidden meanings: The role of covert conceptual structures in children's development of language. In D. Rogers, & J. A. Sloboda (Eds.), The acquisition of symbolic skills (pp. 445-470). New York: Plenum Press.
  • Bowerman, M. (1983). How do children avoid constructing an overly general grammar in the absence of feedback about what is not a sentence? Papers and Reports on Child Language Development, 22, 23-35.

    Abstract

    The theory that language acquisition is guided and constrained by inborn linguistic knowledge is assessed. Specifically, the "no negative evidence" view, the belief that linguistic theory should be restricted in such a way that the grammars it allows can be learned by children on the basis of positive evidence only, is explored. Child language data are cited in order to investigate influential innatist approaches to language acquisition. Baker's view that children are innately constrained in significant ways with respect to language acquisition is evaluated. Evidence indicates that children persistently make overgeneralizations of the sort that violate the constrained view of language acquisition. Since children eventually do develop correct adult grammar, they must have other mechanisms for cutting back on these overgeneralizations. Thus, any hypothesized constraints cannot be justified on grounds that without them the child would end up with overly general grammar. It is necessary to explicate the mechanisms by which children eliminate their tendency toward overgeneralization.
  • Bowerman, M. (2009). Introduction (Part IV: Language and cognition: Universals and typological comparisons). In J. Guo, E. Lieven, N. Budwig, S. Ervin-Tripp, K. Nakamura, & S. Ozcaliskan (Eds.), Crosslinguistic approaches to the psychology of language: Research in the tradition of Dan Isaac Slobin (pp. 443-449).
  • Bowerman, M. (1979). The acquisition of complex sentences. In M. Garman, & P. Fletcher (Eds.), Studies in language acquisition (pp. 285-305). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Bramão, I., Faísca, L., Forkstam, C., Inácio, K., Petersson, K. M., & Reis, A. (2009). Interaction between perceptual color and color knowledge information in object recognition: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence. In Abstracts presented at the International Neuropsychological Society, Finnish Neuropsychological Society, Joint Mid-Year Meeting July 29-August 1, 2009. Helsinki, Finland & Tallinn, Estonia (pp. 39). Retrieved from http://www.neuropsykologia.fi/ins2009/INS_MY09_Abstract.pdf.
  • Brandt, S., Kidd, E., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M. (2009). The discourse bases of relativization: An investigation of young German and English-speaking children's comprehension of relative clauses. Cognitive Linguistics, 20(3), 539-570. doi:10.1515/COGL.2009.024.

    Abstract

    In numerous comprehension studies, across different languages, children have performed worse on object relatives (e.g., the dog that the cat chased) than on subject relatives (e.g., the dog that chased the cat). One possible reason for this is that the test sentences did not exactly match the kinds of object relatives that children typically experience. Adults and children usually hear and produce object relatives with inanimate heads and pronominal subjects (e.g., the car that we bought last year) (cf. Kidd et al., Language and Cognitive Processes 22: 860–897, 2007). We tested young 3-year old German- and English-speaking children with a referential selection task. Children from both language groups performed best in the condition where the experimenter described inanimate referents with object relatives that contained pronominal subjects (e.g., Can you give me the sweater that he bought?). Importantly, when the object relatives met the constraints identified in spoken discourse, children understood them as well as subject relatives, or even better. These results speak against a purely structural explanation for children's difficulty with object relatives as observed in previous studies, but rather support the usage-based account, according to which discourse function and experience with language shape the representation of linguistic structures.
  • Braun, B. (2005). Production and perception of thematic contrast in German. Oxford: Lang.
  • Braun, B., Weber, A., & Crocker, M. (2005). Does narrow focus activate alternative referents? In Proceedings of the 9th European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology (pp. 1709-1712).

    Abstract

    Narrow focus refers to accent placement that forces one interpretation of a sentence, which is then often perceived contrastively. Narrow focus is formalised in terms of alternative sets, i.e. contextually or situationally salient alternatives. In this paper, we investigate whether this model is valid also in human utterance processing. We present an eye-tracking experiment to study listeners’ expectations (i.e. eye-movements) with respect to upcoming referents. Some of the objects contrast in colour with objects that were previously referred to, others do not; the objects are referred to with either a narrow focus on the colour adjective or with broad focus on the noun. Results show that narrow focus on the adjective increases early fixations to contrastive referents. Narrow focus hence activates alternative referents in human utterance processing
  • Broeder, D., Brugman, H., & Senft, G. (2005). Documentation of languages and archiving of language data at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen. Linguistische Berichte, no. 201, 89-103.
  • Broersma, M. (2005). Phonetic and lexical processing in a second language. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen. doi:10.17617/2.58294.
  • Broersma, M. (2005). Perception of familiar contrasts in unfamiliar positions. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 117(6), 3890-3901. doi:10.1121/1.1906060.
  • Broersma, M., Isurin, L., Bultena, S., & De Bot, K. (2009). Triggered code-switching: Evidence from Dutch-English and Russian-English bilinguals. In L. Isurin, D. Winford, & K. De Bot (Eds.), Multidisciplinary approaches to code switching (pp. 85-102). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Broersma, M. (2009). Triggered codeswitching between cognate languages. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 12(4), 447-462. doi:10.1017/S1366728909990204.
  • Brouwer, G. J., Tong, F., Hagoort, P., & Van Ee, R. (2009). Perceptual incongruence influences bistability and cortical activation. Plos One, 4(3): e5056. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0005056.

    Abstract

    We employed a parametric psychophysical design in combination with functional imaging to examine the influence of metric changes in perceptual incongruence on perceptual alternation rates and cortical responses. Subjects viewed a bistable stimulus defined by incongruent depth cues; bistability resulted from incongruence between binocular disparity and monocular perspective cues that specify different slants (slant rivalry). Psychophysical results revealed that perceptual alternation rates were positively correlated with the degree of perceived incongruence. Functional imaging revealed systematic increases in activity that paralleled the psychophysical results within anterior intraparietal sulcus, prior to the onset of perceptual alternations. We suggest that this cortical activity predicts the frequency of subsequent alternations, implying a putative causal role for these areas in initiating bistable perception. In contrast, areas implicated in form and depth processing (LOC and V3A) were sensitive to the degree of slant, but failed to show increases in activity when these cues were in conflict.
  • Brown, P. (2005). What does it mean to learn the meaning of words? [Review of the book How children learn the meanings of words by Paul Bloom]. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 14(2), 293-300. doi:10.1207/s15327809jls1402_6.
  • Brown, P. (1983). [Review of the book Conversational routine: Explorations in standardized communication situations and prepatterned speech ed. by Florian Coulmas]. Language, 59, 215-219.
  • Brown, P. (1983). [Review of the books Mayan Texts I, II, and III ed. by Louanna Furbee-Losee]. International Journal of American Linguistics, 49, 337-341.
  • Brown, A., & Gullberg, M. (2005). Convergence in emerging and established language system: Evidence from speech and gesture in L1 Japanese. In Y. Terao, & k. Sawasaki (Eds.), Handbook of the 7th International Conference of the Japanese Society for Language Sciences (pp. 172-173). Tokyo: JSLS.
  • Brown, A. (2005). [Review of the book The resilience of language: What gesture creation in deaf children can tell us about how all children learn language by Susan Goldin-Meadow]. Linguistics, 43(3), 662-666.
  • Brown, P. (2005). Linguistic politeness. In U. Ammon, N. Dittmar, K. J. Mattheier, & P. Trudgill (Eds.), Sociolinguistics: An international handbook of the science of language and society (pp. 1410-1416). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Abstract

    This is an encyclopedia entry surveying research and theoretical approaches to politeness phenomena in language usage.
  • Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (2009). Language as mind tools: Learning how to think through speaking. In J. Guo, E. V. Lieven, N. Budwig, S. Ervin-Tripp, K. Nakamura, & S. Ozcaliskan (Eds.), Crosslinguistic approaches to the psychology of language: Research in the traditions of Dan Slobin (pp. 451-464). New York: Psychology Press.

    Abstract

    Speakers of the Mayan language Tzeltal use two frames of reference for spatial reckoning: an absolute system (based on the south/north axis abstracted from the overall slope of the land) and an intrinsic system utilizing spatial axes of the reference object to establish body parts. This paper examines the use of absolute, intrinsic, and landmark cues in descriptions of spatial relations by 22 pairs of Tzeltal children aged between 5 and 17. The data are drawn from interactive space games, where a Director describes a spatial layout in a photo and the Matcher reproduces it with toys. The paper distinguishes use of ad hoc landmarks ('Red Cliffs', 'the electricity post') from genuine absolute reference points ('uphill'/'downhill'/’across’), and shows that adults in this task use absolute ('cow uphill of horse'), intrinsic ('at the tree's side') and landmark ('cow facing Red Cliffs') descriptions to communicate the spatial relations depicted. The youngest children, however, do not use landmark cues at all but rely instead on deictics and on the absolute 'uphill/downhill' terms; landmark terms are still rare at age 8-10. Despite arguments that landmarks are a simpler, more natural, basis for spatial reckoning than absolute terms, there is no evidence for a developmental progression from landmark-based to absolute-based strategies. We relate these observations to Slobin’s ‘thinking for speaking’ argument.
  • Brown, P. (1991). Sind Frauen höflicher? Befunde aus einer Maya-Gemeinde. In S. Günther, & H. Kotthoff (Eds.), Von fremden Stimmen: Weibliches und männliches Sprechen im Kulturvergleich. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

    Abstract

    This is a German translation of Brown 1980, How and why are women more polite: Some evidence from a Mayan community.
  • Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1979). Social structure, groups and interaction. In H. Giles, & K. R. Scherer (Eds.), Social markers in speech (pp. 291-341). Cambridge University Press.
  • Brown, P., & Fraser, C. (1979). Speech as a marker of situation. In H. Giles, & K. Scherer (Eds.), Social markers in speech (pp. 33-62). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (2009). Politeness: Some universals in language usage [chapter 1, reprint]. In N. Coupland, & A. Jaworski (Eds.), Sociolinguistics: critical concepts [volume III: Interactional sociolinguistics] (pp. 311-323). London: Routledge.
  • Brucato, N., Cassar, O., Tonasso, L., Guitard, E., Migot-Nabias, F., Tortevoye, P., Plancoulaine, S., Larrouy, G., Gessain, A., & Dugoujon, J.-M. (2009). Genetic diversity and dynamics of the Noir Marron settlement in French Guyana: A study combining mitochondrial DNA, Y chromosome and HTLV-1 genotyping [Abstract]. AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses, 25(11), 1258. doi:10.1089/aid.2009.9992.

    Abstract

    The Noir Marron are the direct descendants of thousands of African slaves deported to the Guyanas during the Atlantic Slave Trade and later escaped mainly from Dutch colonial plantations. Six ethnic groups are officially recognized, four of which are located in French Guyana: the Aluku, the Ndjuka, the Saramaka, and the Paramaka. The aim of this study was: (1) to determine the Noir Marron settlement through genetic exchanges with other communities such as Amerindians and Europeans; (2) to retrace their origins in Africa. Buffy-coat DNA from 142 Noir Marron, currently living in French Guyana, were analyzed using mtDNA (typing of SNP coding regions and sequencing of HVSI/II) and Y chromosomes (typing STR and SNPs) to define their genetic profile. Results were compared to an African database composed by published data, updated with genotypes of 82 Fon from Benin, and 128 Ahizi and 63 Yacouba from the Ivory-Coast obtained in this study for the same markers. Furthermore, the determination of the genomic subtype of HTLV-1 strains (env gp21 and LTR regions), which can be used as a marker of migration of infected populations, was performed for samples from 23 HTLV-1 infected Noir Marron and compared with the corresponding database. MtDNA profiles showed a high haplotype diversity, in which 99% of samples belonged to the major haplogroup L, frequent in Africa. Each haplotype was largely represented on the West African coast, but notably higher homologies were obtained with the samples present in the Gulf of Guinea. Y Chromosome analysis revealed the same pattern, i.e. a conservation of the African contribution to the Noir Marron genetic profile, with 98% of haplotypes belonging to the major haplogroup E1b1a, frequent in West Africa. The genetic diversity was higher than those observed in African populations, proving the large Noir Marron’s fatherland, but a predominant identity in the Gulf of Guinea can be suggested. Concerning HTLV-1 genotyping, all the Noir Marron strains belonged to the large Cosmopolitan A subtype. However, among them 17/23 (74%) clustered with the West African clade comprizing samples originating from Ivory-Coast, Ghana, Burkina-Fasso and Senegal, while 3 others clustered in the Trans-Sahelian clade and the remaining 3 were similar to strains found in individuals in South America. Through the combined analyses of three approaches, we have provided a conclusive image of the genetic profile of the Noir Marron communities studied. The high degree of preservation of the African gene pool contradicts the expected gene flow that would correspond to the major cultural exchanges observed between Noir Marron, Europeans and Amerindians. Marital practices and historical events could explain these observations. Corresponding to historical and cultural data, the origin of the ethnic groups is widely dispatched throughout West Africa. However, all results converge to suggest an individualization from a major birthplace in the Gulf of Guinea.
  • Brucato, N., Tortevoye, P., Plancoulaine, S., Guitard, E., Sanchez-Mazas, A., Larrouy, G., Gessain, A., & Dugoujon, J.-M. (2009). The genetic diversity of three peculiar populations descending from the slave trade: Gm study of Noir Marron from French Guiana. Comptes Rendus Biologies, 332(10), 917-926. doi:10.1016/j.crvi.2009.07.005.

    Abstract

    The Noir Marron communities are the direct descendants of African slaves brought to the Guianas during the four centuries (16th to 19th) of the Atlantic slave trade. Among them, three major ethnic groups have been studied: the Aluku, the Ndjuka and the Saramaka. Their history led them to share close relationships with Europeans and Amerindians, as largely documented in their cultural records. The study of Gm polymorphisms of immunoglobulins may help to estimate the amount of gene flow linked to these cultural exchanges. Surprisingly, very low levels of European contribution (2.6%) and Amerindian contribution (1.7%) are detected in the Noir Marron gene pool. On the other hand, an African contribution of 95.7% redraws their origin to West Africa (FSTless-than-or-equals, slant0.15). This highly preserved African gene pool of the Noir Marron is unique in comparison to other African American populations of Latin America, who are notably more admixed

    Additional information

    Table 4
  • Burenhult, N. (2009). [Commentary on M. Meschiari, 'Roots of the savage mind: Apophenia and imagination as cognitive process']. Quaderni di semantica, 30(2), 239-242. doi:10.1400/127893.
  • Burenhult, N. (2005). A grammar of Jahai. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
  • Burenhult, N., & Levinson, S. C. (2009). Semplates: A guide to identification and elicitation. In A. Majid (Ed.), Field manual volume 12 (pp. 44-50). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.883556.

    Abstract

    Semplates are a new descriptive and theoretical concept in lexical semantics, borne out of recent L&C work in several domains. A semplate can be defined as a configuration consisting of distinct layers of lexemes, each layer drawn from a different form class, mapped onto the same abstract semantic template. Within such a lexical layer, the sense relations between the lexical items are inherited from the underlying template. Thus, the whole set of lexical layers and the underlying template form a cross-categorial configuration in the lexicon. The goal of this task is to find new kinds of macrostructure in the lexicon, with a view to cross-linguistic comparison.
  • Burenhult, N., & Wegener, C. (2009). Preliminary notes on the phonology, orthography and vocabulary of Semnam (Austroasiatic, Malay Peninsula). Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society, 1, 283-312. Retrieved from http://www.jseals.org/.

    Abstract

    This paper reports tentatively some features of Semnam, a Central Aslian language spoken by some 250 people in the Perak valley, Peninsular Malaysia. It outlines the unusually rich phonemic system of this hitherto undescribed language (e.g. a vowel system comprising 36 distinctive nuclei), and proposes a practical orthography for it. It also includes the c. 1,250- item wordlist on which the analysis is based, collected intermittently in the field 2006-2008.
  • Burnham, D., Ambikairajah, E., Arciuli, J., Bennamoun, M., Best, C. T., Bird, S., Butcher, A. R., Cassidy, S., Chetty, G., Cox, F. M., Cutler, A., Dale, R., Epps, J. R., Fletcher, J. M., Goecke, R., Grayden, D. B., Hajek, J. T., Ingram, J. C., Ishihara, S., Kemp, N. and 10 moreBurnham, D., Ambikairajah, E., Arciuli, J., Bennamoun, M., Best, C. T., Bird, S., Butcher, A. R., Cassidy, S., Chetty, G., Cox, F. M., Cutler, A., Dale, R., Epps, J. R., Fletcher, J. M., Goecke, R., Grayden, D. B., Hajek, J. T., Ingram, J. C., Ishihara, S., Kemp, N., Kinoshita, Y., Kuratate, T., Lewis, T. W., Loakes, D. E., Onslow, M., Powers, D. M., Rose, P., Togneri, R., Tran, D., & Wagner, M. (2009). A blueprint for a comprehensive Australian English auditory-visual speech corpus. In M. Haugh, K. Burridge, J. Mulder, & P. Peters (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 2008 HCSNet Workshop on Designing the Australian National Corpus (pp. 96-107). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.

    Abstract

    Large auditory-visual (AV) speech corpora are the grist of modern research in speech science, but no such corpus exists for Australian English. This is unfortunate, for speech science is the brains behind speech technology and applications such as text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis, automatic speech recognition (ASR), speaker recognition and forensic identification, talking heads, and hearing prostheses. Advances in these research areas in Australia require a large corpus of Australian English. Here the authors describe a blueprint for building the Big Australian Speech Corpus (the Big ASC), a corpus of over 1,100 speakers from urban and rural Australia, including speakers of non-indigenous, indigenous, ethnocultural, and disordered forms of Australian English, each of whom would be sampled on three occasions in a range of speech tasks designed by the researchers who would be using the corpus.
  • Campisi, E. (2009). La gestualità co-verbale tra comunicazione e cognizione: In che senso i gesti sono intenzionali. In F. Parisi, & M. Primo (Eds.), Natura, comunicazione, neurofilosofie. Atti del III convegno 2009 del CODISCO. Rome: Squilibri.
  • Casasanto, D., Willems, R. M., & Hagoort, P. (2009). Body-specific representations of action verbs: Evidence from fMRI in right- and left-handers. In N. Taatgen, & H. Van Rijn (Eds.), Proceedings of the 31st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 875-880). Austin: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    According to theories of embodied cognition, understanding a verb like throw involves unconsciously simulating the action throwing, using areas of the brain that support motor planning. If understanding action words involves mentally simulating our own actions, then the neurocognitive representation of word meanings should differ for people with different kinds of bodies, who perform actions in systematically different ways. In a test of the body-specificity hypothesis (Casasanto, 2009), we used fMRI to compare premotor activity correlated with action verb understanding in right- and left-handers. Right-handers preferentially activated left premotor cortex during lexical decision on manual action verbs (compared with non-manual action verbs), whereas left-handers preferentially activated right premotor areas. This finding helps refine theories of embodied semantics, suggesting that implicit mental simulation during language processing is body-specific: Right and left-handers, who perform actions differently, use correspondingly different areas of the brain for representing action verb meanings.
  • Casasanto, D. (2009). Embodiment of abstract concepts: Good and bad in right- and left-handers. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 138, 351-367. doi:10.1037/a0015854.

    Abstract

    Do people with different kinds of bodies think differently? According to the body-specificity hypothesis, people who interact with their physical environments in systematically different ways should form correspondingly different mental representations. In a test of this hypothesis, 5 experiments investigated links between handedness and the mental representation of abstract concepts with positive or negative valence (e.g., honesty, sadness, intelligence). Mappings from spatial location to emotional valence differed between right- and left-handed participants. Right-handers tended to associate rightward space with positive ideas and leftward space with negative ideas, but left-handers showed the opposite pattern, associating rightward space with negative ideas and leftward with positive ideas. These contrasting mental metaphors for valence cannot be attributed to linguistic experience, because idioms in English associate good with right but not with left. Rather, right- and left-handers implicitly associated positive valence more strongly with the side of space on which they could act more fluently with their dominant hands. These results support the body-specificity hypothesis and provide evidence for the perceptuomotor basis of even the most abstract ideas.
  • Casasanto, D., & Jasmin, K. (2009). Emotional valence is body-specific: Evidence from spontaneous gestures during US presidential debates. In N. Taatgen, & H. Van Rijn (Eds.), Proceedings of the 31st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1965-1970). Austin: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    What is the relationship between motor action and emotion? Here we investigated whether people associate good things more strongly with the dominant side of their bodies, and bad things with the non-dominant side. To find out, we analyzed spontaneous gestures during speech expressing ideas with positive or negative emotional valence (e.g., freedom, pain, compassion). Samples of speech and gesture were drawn from the 2004 and 2008 US presidential debates, which involved two left-handers (Obama, McCain) and two right-handers (Kerry, Bush). Results showed a strong association between the valence of spoken clauses and the hands used to make spontaneous co-speech gestures. In right-handed candidates, right-hand gestures were more strongly associated with positive-valence clauses, and left-hand gestures with negative-valence clauses. Left-handed candidates showed the opposite pattern. Right- and left-handers implicitly associated positive valence more strongly with their dominant hand: the hand they can use more fluently. These results support the body-specificity hypothesis, (Casasanto, 2009), and suggest a perceptuomotor basis for even our most abstract ideas.
  • Casasanto, D. (2009). [Review of the book Music, language, and the brain by Aniruddh D. Patel]. Language and Cognition, 1(1), 143-146. doi:10.1515/LANGCOG.2009.007.
  • Casasanto, D., Fotakopoulou, O., & Boroditsky, L. (2009). Space and time in the child's mind: Evidence for a cross-dimensional asymmetry. In N. Taatgen, & H. Van Rijn (Eds.), Proceedings of the 31st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1090-1095). Austin: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    What is the relationship between space and time in the human mind? Studies in adults show an asymmetric relationship between mental representations of these basic dimensions of experience: representations of time depend on space more than representations of space depend on time. Here we investigated the relationship between space and time in the developing mind. Native Greek-speaking children (N=99) watched movies of two animals traveling along parallel paths for different distances or durations and judged the spatial and temporal aspects of these events (e.g., Which animal went for a longer time, or a longer distance?) Results showed a reliable cross-dimensional asymmetry: for the same stimuli, spatial information influenced temporal judgments more than temporal information influenced spatial judgments. This pattern was robust to variations in the age of the participants and the type of language used to elicit responses. This finding demonstrates a continuity between space-time representations in children and adults, and informs theories of analog magnitude representation.
  • Casasanto, D. (2009). Space for thinking. In V. Evans, & P. Chilton (Eds.), Language, cognition and space: State of the art and new directions (pp. 453-478). London: Equinox Publishing.
  • Casasanto, D. (2009). When is a linguistic metaphor a conceptual metaphor? In V. Evans, & S. Pourcel (Eds.), New directions in cognitive linguistics (pp. 127-145). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Cavaco, P., Curuklu, B., & Petersson, K. M. (2009). Artificial grammar recognition using two spiking neural networks. Frontiers in Neuroinformatics. Conference abstracts: 2nd INCF Congress of Neuroinformatics. doi:10.3389/conf.neuro.11.2009.08.096.

    Abstract

    In this paper we explore the feasibility of artificial (formal) grammar recognition (AGR) using spiking neural networks. A biologically inspired minicolumn architecture is designed as the basic computational unit. A network topography is defined based on the minicolumn architecture, here referred to as nodes, connected with excitatory and inhibitory connections. Nodes in the network represent unique internal states of the grammar’s finite state machine (FSM). Future work to improve the performance of the networks is discussed. The modeling framework developed can be used by neurophysiological research to implement network layouts and compare simulated performance characteristics to actual subject performance.
  • Chen, A., & De Ruiter, J. P. (2005). The role of pitch accent type in interpreting information status. Proceedings from the Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 41(1), 33-48.

    Abstract

    The present study set out to pin down the role of four pitch accents, fall (H*L), rise-fall (L*HL), rise (L*H), fall-rise (H*LH), as well as deaccentuation, in interpreting new vs. given information in British English by the eyetracking paradigm. The pitch accents in question were claimed to convey information status in theories of English intonational meaning. There is, however, no consensus on the postulated roles of these pitch accents. Results clearly show that pitch accent type can and does matter when interpreting information status. The effects can be reflected in the mean proportions of fixations to the competitor in a selected time window. These patterns are also present in proportions of fixations to the target but to a lesser extent. Interestingly, the effects of pitch accent types are also reflected in how fast the participants could adjust their decision as to which picture to move before the name of the picture was fully revealed. For example, when the competitor was a given entity, the proportion of fixations to the competitor increased initially in most accent conditions in the first as a result of subjects' bias towards a given entity, but started to decrease substantially earlier in the H*L condition than in the L*H and deaccentuation conditions.
  • Chen, A. (2005). Universal and language-specific perception of paralinguistic intonational meaning. Utrecht: LOT.
  • Chen, A., & Den Os, E. (2005). Effects of pitch accent type on interpreting information status in synthetic speech. In Proceedings of the 9th European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology (pp. 1913-1916).
  • Chen, J. (2005). Interpreting state-change: Learning the meaning of verbs and verb compounds in Mandarin. In Proceedings of the 29th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development.

    Abstract

    This study investigates how Mandarin-speaking children interpret state-change verbs. In Mandarin, state-change is typically encoded with resultative verb compounds (RVCs), in which the first verb (V1) specifies an action and the second (V2) a result, for example, zhai-xia 'pick-descend' (= pick, pick off/down). Unlike English state-change verb such as pick, smash, mix and fill, the action verb (V1) may imply a state-change but it does not entail it; the state-change is specified by the additional result verb (V2). Previous studies have shown that children learning English and German tend to neglect the state-change meaning in monomorphemic state-change verbs like mix and fill (Gentner, 1978; Gropen et al, 1991) and verb-particle constructions like abplücken 'pick off' (Wittek, 1999, 2000) - they do not realize that this meaning is entailed. This study examines how Mandarin-speaking children interpret resultative verb compounds and the first verb of an RVC. Four groups of Mandarin-speaking children (mean ages 2;6, 3;6, 4;6, 6;1) and an adult group participated in a judgment task. The results show that Mandarin-speaking children know from a very young age that RVCs entail a state-change; ironically, however, they make a mistake that is just the opposite to that made by the learners of English and German: they often incorrectly interpret the action verb (V1) of an RVC as if it, in itself, also entails a state-change, even though it does not. This result suggests that children do not have a uniform strategy for interpreting verb meaning, but are influenced by the language-specific lexicalization patterns they encounter in their language.
  • Chen, X. S., Collins, L. J., Biggs, P. J., & Penny, D. (2009). High throughput genome-wide survey of small RNAs from the parasitic protists giardia intestinalis and trichomonas vaginalis. Genome biology and evolution, 1, 165-175. doi:10.1093/gbe/evp017.

    Abstract

    RNA interference (RNAi) is a set of mechanisms which regulate gene expression in eukaryotes. Key elements of RNAi are small sense and antisense RNAs from 19 to 26 nucleotides generated from double-stranded RNAs. miRNAs are a major type of RNAi-associated small RNAs and are found in most eukaryotes studied to date. To investigate whether small RNAs associated with RNAi appear to be present in all eukaryotic lineages, and therefore present in the ancestral eukaryote, we studied two deep-branching protozoan parasites, Giardia intestinalis and Trichomonas vaginalis. Little is known about endogenous small RNAs involved in RNAi of these organisms. Using Illumina Solexa sequencing and genome-wide analysis of small RNAs from these distantly related deep-branching eukaryotes, we identified 10 strong miRNA candidates from Giardia and 11 from Trichomonas. We also found evidence of Giardia siRNAs potentially involved in the expression of variant-specific-surface proteins. In addition, 8 new snoRNAs from Trichomonas are identified. Our results indicate that miRNAs are likely to be general in ancestral eukaryotes, and therefore are likely to be a universal feature of eukaryotes.
  • Chen, A. (2009). Intonation and reference maintenance in Turkish learners of Dutch: A first insight. AILE - Acquisition et Interaction en Langue Etrangère, 28(2), 67-91.

    Abstract

    This paper investigates L2 learners’ use of intonation in reference maintenance in comparison to native speakers at three longitudinal points. Nominal referring expressions were elicited from two untutored Turkish learners of Dutch and five native speakers of Dutch via a film retelling task, and were analysed in terms of pitch span and word duration. Effects of two types of change in information states were examined, between new and given and between new and accessible. We found native-like use of word duration in both types of change early on but different performances between learners and development over time in one learner in the use of pitch span. Further, the use of morphosyntactic devices had different effects on the two learners. The inter-learner differences and late systematic use of pitch span, in spite of similar use of pitch span in learners’ L1 and L2, suggest that learning may play a role in the acquisition of intonation as a device for reference maintenance.
  • Chen, A. (2009). Perception of paralinguistic intonational meaning in a second language. Language Learning, 59(2), 367-409.
  • Chen, A. (2009). The phonetics of sentence-initial topic and focus in adult and child Dutch. In M. Vigário, S. Frota, & M. Freitas (Eds.), Phonetics and Phonology: Interactions and interrelations (pp. 91-106). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Cho, T., & McQueen, J. M. (2005). Prosodic influences on consonant production in Dutch: Effects of prosodic boundaries, phrasal accent and lexical stress. Journal of Phonetics, 33(2), 121-157. doi:10.1016/j.wocn.2005.01.001.

    Abstract

    Prosodic influences on phonetic realizations of four Dutch consonants (/t d s z/) were examined. Sentences were constructed containing these consonants in word-initial position; the factors lexical stress, phrasal accent and prosodic boundary were manipulated between sentences. Eleven Dutch speakers read these sentences aloud. The patterns found in acoustic measurements of these utterances (e.g., voice onset time (VOT), consonant duration, voicing during closure, spectral center of gravity, burst energy) indicate that the low-level phonetic implementation of all four consonants is modulated by prosodic structure. Boundary effects on domain-initial segments were observed in stressed and unstressed syllables, extending previous findings which have been on stressed syllables alone. Three aspects of the data are highlighted. First, shorter VOTs were found for /t/ in prosodically stronger locations (stressed, accented and domain-initial), as opposed to longer VOTs in these positions in English. This suggests that prosodically driven phonetic realization is bounded by language-specific constraints on how phonetic features are specified with phonetic content: Shortened VOT in Dutch reflects enhancement of the phonetic feature {−spread glottis}, while lengthened VOT in English reflects enhancement of {+spread glottis}. Prosodic strengthening therefore appears to operate primarily at the phonetic level, such that prosodically driven enhancement of phonological contrast is determined by phonetic implementation of these (language-specific) phonetic features. Second, an accent effect was observed in stressed and unstressed syllables, and was independent of prosodic boundary size. The domain of accentuation in Dutch is thus larger than the foot. Third, within a prosodic category consisting of those utterances with a boundary tone but no pause, tokens with syntactically defined Phonological Phrase boundaries could be differentiated from the other tokens. This syntactic influence on prosodic phrasing implies the existence of an intermediate-level phrase in the prosodic hierarchy of Dutch.
  • Cho, T. (2005). Prosodic strengthening and featural enhancement: Evidence from acoustic and articulatory realizations of /a,i/ in English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 117(6), 3867-3878. doi:10.1121/1.1861893.
  • Choi, S., & Bowerman, M. (1991). Learning to express motion events in English and Korean: The influence of language-specific lexicalization patterns. Cognition, 41, 83-121. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(91)90033-Z.

    Abstract

    English and Korean differ in how they lexicalize the components of motionevents. English characteristically conflates Motion with Manner, Cause, or Deixis, and expresses Path separately. Korean, in contrast, conflates Motion with Path and elements of Figure and Ground in transitive clauses for caused Motion, but conflates motion with Deixis and spells out Path and Manner separately in intransitive clauses for spontaneous motion. Children learningEnglish and Korean show sensitivity to language-specific patterns in the way they talk about motion from as early as 17–20 months. For example, learners of English quickly generalize their earliest spatial words — Path particles like up, down, and in — to both spontaneous and caused changes of location and, for up and down, to posture changes, while learners of Korean keep words for spontaneous and caused motion strictly separate and use different words for vertical changes of location and posture changes. These findings challenge the widespread view that children initially map spatial words directly to nonlinguistic spatial concepts, and suggest that they are influenced by the semantic organization of their language virtually from the beginning. We discuss how input and cognition may interact in the early phases of learning to talk about space.
  • Cholin, J., & Levelt, W. J. M. (2009). Effects of syllable preparation and syllable frequency in speech production: Further evidence for syllabic units at a post-lexical level. Language and Cognitive Processes, 24, 662-684. doi:10.1080/01690960802348852.

    Abstract

    In the current paper, we asked at what level in the speech planning process speakers retrieve stored syllables. There is evidence that syllable structure plays an essential role in the phonological encoding of words (e.g., online syllabification and phonological word formation). There is also evidence that syllables are retrieved as whole units. However, findings that clearly pinpoint these effects to specific levels in speech planning are scarce. We used a naming variant of the implicit priming paradigm to contrast voice onset latencies for frequency-manipulated disyllabic Dutch pseudo-words. While prior implicit priming studies only manipulated the item's form and/or syllable structure overlap we introduced syllable frequency as an additional factor. If the preparation effect for syllables obtained in the implicit priming paradigm proceeds beyond phonological planning, i.e., includes the retrieval of stored syllables, then the preparation effect should differ for high- and low frequency syllables. The findings reported here confirm this prediction: Low-frequency syllables benefit significantly more from the preparation than high-frequency syllables. Our findings support the notion of a mental syllabary at a post-lexical level, between the levels of phonological and phonetic encoding.
  • Chu, M., & Kita, S. (2009). Co-speech gestures do not originate from speech production processes: Evidence from the relationship between co-thought and co-speech gestures. In N. Taatgen, & H. Van Rijn (Eds.), Proceedings of the Thirty-First Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 591-595). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    When we speak, we spontaneously produce gestures (co-speech gestures). Co-speech gestures and speech production are closely interlinked. However, the exact nature of the link is still under debate. To addressed the question that whether co-speech gestures originate from the speech production system or from a system independent of the speech production, the present study examined the relationship between co-speech and co-thought gestures. Co-thought gestures, produced during silent thinking without speaking, presumably originate from a system independent of the speech production processes. We found a positive correlation between the production frequency of co-thought and co-speech gestures, regardless the communicative function that co-speech gestures might serve. Therefore, we suggest that co-speech gestures and co-thought gestures originate from a common system that is independent of the speech production processes
  • Collins, L. J., & Chen, X. S. (2009). Ancestral RNA: The RNA biology of the eukaryotic ancestor. RNA Biology, 6(5), 495-502. doi:10.4161/rna.6.5.9551.

    Abstract

    Our knowledge of RNA biology within eukaryotes has exploded over the last five years. Within new research we see that some features that were once thought to be part of multicellular life have now been identified in several protist lineages. Hence, it is timely to ask which features of eukaryote RNA biology are ancestral to all eukaryotes. We focus on RNA-based regulation and epigenetic mechanisms that use small regulatory ncRNAs and long ncRNAs, to highlight some of the many questions surrounding eukaryotic ncRNA evolution.

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