Publications

Displaying 201 - 212 of 212
  • Vernes, S. C., & Fisher, S. E. (2013). Genetic pathways implicated in speech and language. In S. Helekar (Ed.), Animal models of speech and language disorders (pp. 13-40). New York: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-1-4614-8400-4_2.

    Abstract

    Disorders of speech and language are highly heritable, providing strong
    support for a genetic basis. However, the underlying genetic architecture is complex,
    involving multiple risk factors. This chapter begins by discussing genetic loci associated
    with common multifactorial language-related impairments and goes on to
    detail the only gene (known as FOXP2) to be directly implicated in a rare monogenic
    speech and language disorder. Although FOXP2 was initially uncovered in
    humans, model systems have been invaluable in progressing our understanding of
    the function of this gene and its associated pathways in language-related areas of the
    brain. Research in species from mouse to songbird has revealed effects of this gene
    on relevant behaviours including acquisition of motor skills and learned vocalisations
    and demonstrated a role for Foxp2 in neuronal connectivity and signalling,
    particularly in the striatum. Animal models have also facilitated the identification of
    wider neurogenetic networks thought to be involved in language development and
    disorder and allowed the investigation of new candidate genes for disorders involving
    language, such as CNTNAP2 and FOXP1. Ongoing work in animal models promises
    to yield new insights into the genetic and neural mechanisms underlying human
    speech and language
  • Virpioja, S., Lehtonen, M., Hulten, A., Salmelin, R., & Lagus, K. (2011). Predicting reaction times in word recognition by unsupervised learning of morphology. In W. Honkela, W. Dutch, M. Girolami, & S. Kaski (Eds.), Artificial Neural Networks and Machine Learning – ICANN 2011 (pp. 275-282). Berlin: Springer.

    Abstract

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

    Abstract

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

    Abstract

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

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  • Wilkins, D. (1993). Route Description Elicitation. In S. C. Levinson (Ed.), Cognition and space kit 1.0 (pp. 15-28). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.3513141.

    Abstract

    When we want to describe a path through space, but do not share a common perceptual field with a conversation partner, language has to work doubly hard. This task investigates how people communicate the navigation of space in the absence of shared visual cues, as well as collecting data on motion verbs and the roles of symmetry and landmarks in route description. Two speakers (separated by a curtain or other barrier) are each given a model of a landscape, and one participant describes standard routes through this landscape for the other to match.
  • Wilkins, D., & Hill, D. (1993). Preliminary 'Come' and 'Go' Questionnaire. In S. C. Levinson (Ed.), Cognition and space kit 1.0 (pp. 29-46). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.3513125.

    Abstract

    The encoding of apparently ‘simple’ movement concepts such as ‘COME’ and ‘GO’ can differ widely across languages (e.g., in regard to specifying direction of motion relative to the speaker). This questionnaire is used to identify the range of use of basic motion verbs in a language, and investigate semantic parameters that are involved in high frequency ‘COME’ and ‘GO’-like terms.
  • Windhouwer, M., Petro, J., Newskaya, I., Drude, S., Aristar-Dry, H., & Gippert, J. (2013). Creating a serialization of LMF: The experience of the RELISH project. In G. Francopoulo (Ed.), LMF - Lexical Markup Framework (pp. 215-226). London: Wiley.
  • Windhouwer, M., & Wright, S. E. (2013). LMF and the Data Category Registry: Principles and application. In G. Francopoulo (Ed.), LMF: Lexical Markup Framework (pp. 41-50). London: Wiley.
  • Wittenburg, P., & Ringersma, J. (2013). Metadata description for lexicons. In R. H. Gouws, U. Heid, W. Schweickard, & H. E. Wiegand (Eds.), Dictionaries: An international encyclopedia of lexicography: Supplementary volume: Recent developments with focus on electronic and computational lexicography (pp. 1329-1335). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Wright, S. E., Windhouwer, M., Schuurman, I., & Kemps-Snijders, M. (2013). Community efforts around the ISOcat Data Category Registry. In I. Gurevych, & J. Kim (Eds.), The People's Web meets NLP: Collaboratively constructed language resources (pp. 349-374). New York: Springer.

    Abstract

    The ISOcat Data Category Registry provides a community computing environment for creating, storing, retrieving, harmonizing and standardizing data category specifications (DCs), used to register linguistic terms used in various fields. This chapter recounts the history of DC documentation in TC 37, beginning from paper-based lists created for lexicographers and terminologists and progressing to the development of a web-based resource for a much broader range of users. While describing the considerable strides that have been made to collect a very large comprehensive collection of DCs, it also outlines difficulties that have arisen in developing a fully operative web-based computing environment for achieving consensus on data category names, definitions, and selections and describes efforts to overcome some of the present shortcomings and to establish positive working procedures designed to engage a wide range of people involved in the creation of language resources.
  • Zeshan, U., & Panda, S. (2011). Reciprocals constructions in Indo-Pakistani sign language. In N. Evans, & A. Gaby (Eds.), Reciprocals and semantic typology (pp. 91-113). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    Indo-Pakistani Sign Language (IPSL) is the sign language used by deaf communities in a large region across India and Pakistan. This visual-gestural language has a dedicated construction for specifically expressing reciprocal relationships, which can be applied to agreement verbs and to auxiliaries. The reciprocal construction relies on a change in the movement pattern of the signs it applies to. In addition, IPSL has a number of other strategies which can have a reciprocal interpretation, and the IPSL lexicon includes a good number of inherently reciprocal signs. All reciprocal expressions can be modified in complex ways that rely on the grammatical use of the sign space. Considering grammaticalisation and lexicalisation processes linking some of these constructions is also important for a better understanding of reciprocity in IPSL.
  • Zwitserlood, I., Perniss, P. M., & Ozyurek, A. (2013). Expression of multiple entities in Turkish Sign Language (TİD). In E. Arik (Ed.), Current Directions in Turkish Sign Language Research (pp. 272-302). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

    Abstract

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

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