Publications

Displaying 1 - 100 of 362
  • Ameka, F. K. (2002). The progressive aspect in Likpe: Its implications for aspect and word order in Kwa. In F. K. Ameka, & E. K. Osam (Eds.), New directions in Ghanaian linguistics: Essays in honor of the 3Ds (pp. 85-111). Accra: Black Mask.
  • Ameka, F. K. (1995). Body parts in Ewe grammar. In H. Chapell, & W. McGregor (Eds.), The grammar of inalienability: A typological perspective on body part terms and the part-whole relation (pp. 783-840). Berlin: De Gruyter.
  • 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. (2008). Aspect and modality in Ewe: A survey. In F. K. Ameka, & M. E. Kropp Dakubu (Eds.), Aspect and modality in Kwa languages (pp. 135-194). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Ameka, F. K. (2002). Constituent order and grammatical relations in Ewe in typological perspective. In K. Davidse, & B. Lamiroy (Eds.), The nominative & accusative and their counterparts (pp. 319-352). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • Ameka, F. K. (2008). He died old dying to be dead right: Transitivity and semantic shifts of 'die' in Ewe in crosslinguistic perspective. In M. Bowerman, & P. Brown (Eds.), Crosslinguistic perspectives on argument structure: Implications for learnability (pp. 231-254). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

    Abstract

    This paper examines some of the claims of the Unaccusativity hypothesis.It shows that the supposedly unaccusative ‘die’ verb in Ewe (Kwa), kú can appear as both a one-place and a two-place predicate and has three senses which do not correlate with the number of surface arguments of the verb. For instance, the same sense is involved in both a one-place construction (e.g. she died) and a two-place cognate object construction (she died a wicked death). By contrast, different senses are expressed by formally identical two-place constructions, e.g. ‘the garment die dirt’ (= the garment is dead dirty; intensity) vs., ‘he died ear (to the matter)’ (=he does not want to hear; negative desiderative). The paper explores the learnability problems posed by the non-predictability of the different senses of Ewe ‘die’ from its syntactic frame and suggests that since the meanings are indirectly related to the properties of the event participants, such as animacy, a learner must pay close attention to the properties of the verb’s participants. The paper concludes by demonstrating that the meaning shifts observed in Ewe are also attested in other typologically and genetically unrelated languages such as Japanese, Arrernte (Australian), Oluta (Mixean), Dutch and English.
  • Ameka, F. K., & Kropp Dakubu, M. E. (2008). Imperfective constructions: Progressive and prospective in Ewe and Dangme. In F. K. Ameka, & M. E. Kropp Dakubu (Eds.), Aspect and modality in Kwa languages (pp. 215-289). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • 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., & Kropp Dakubu, M. E. (2008). Introduction. In F. K. Ameka, & M. E. Kropp Dakubu (Eds.), Aspect and modality in Kwa languages (pp. 1-7). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Aslin, R., Clayards, M., & Bardhan, N. P. (2008). Mechanisms of auditory reorganization during development: From sounds to words. In C. Nelson, & M. Luciana (Eds.), Handbook of developmental cognitive neuroscience (2nd, pp. 97-116). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  • Baayen, R. H. (2014). Productivity in language production. In D. Sandra, & M. Taft (Eds.), Morphological Structure, Lexical Representation and Lexical Access: A Special Issue of Language and Cognitive Processes (pp. 447-469). London: Routledge.

    Abstract

    Lexical statistics and a production experiment are used to gauge the extent to which the linguistic notion of morphological productivity is relevant for psycholinguistic theories of speech production in languages such as Dutch and English. Lexical statistics of productivity show that despite the relatively poor morphology of Dutch, new words are created often enough for the marginalisation of word formation in theories of speech production to be theoretically unattractive. This conclusion is supported by the results of a production experiment in which subjects freely created hundreds of productive, but only a handful of unproductive, neologisms. A tentative solution is proposed as to why the opposite pattern has been observed in the speech of jargonaphasics.
  • Basso, E. B., & Senft, G. (2009). Introduction. In G. Senft, & E. B. Basso (Eds.), Ritual communication (pp. 1-19). Oxford: Berg.
  • 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.
  • Behne, T., Carpenter, M., Gräfenhain, M., Liebal, K., Liszkowski, U., Moll, H., Rakoczy, H., Tomasello, M., Warneken, F., & Wyman, E. (2008). Cultural learning and cultural creation. In U. Müller, J. Carpendale, N. Budwig, & B. Sokol (Eds.), Social life and social knowledge: Toward a process account of development (pp. 65-102). Hove: Psychology Press.
  • Bercelli, F., Rossano, F., & Viaro, M. (2008). Clients' responses to therapists' reinterpretations. In A. Peräkylä, C. Antaki, S. Vehviläinen, & I. Leudar (Eds.), Conversation analysis and psychotherapy (pp. 43-61). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Bock, K., & Levelt, W. J. M. (2002). Language production: Grammatical encoding. In G. T. Altmann (Ed.), Psycholinguistics: Critical concepts in psychology (pp. 405-452). London: Routledge.
  • Bohnemeyer, J., & Majid, A. (2002). ECOM causality revisited version 4. In S. Kita (Ed.), 2002 Supplement (version 3) for the “Manual” for the field season 2001 (pp. 35-38). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
  • 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.
  • Bohnemeyer, J. (2008). The pitfalls of getting from here to there. In M. Bowerman, & P. Brown (Eds.), Crosslinguistic Perspectives on Argument Structure: Implications for Learnability (pp. 49-68). New York City, NY, USA: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
  • Boroditsky, L., Gaby, A., & Levinson, S. C. (2008). Time in space. In A. Majid (Ed.), Field Manual Volume 11 (pp. 52-76). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.492932.

    Abstract

    How do different languages and cultures conceptualise time? This question is part of a broader set of questions about how humans come to represent and reason about abstract entities – things we cannot see or touch. For example, how do we come to represent and reason about abstract domains like justice, ideas, kinship, morality, or politics? There are two aspects of this project: (1) Time arrangement tasks to assess the way people arrange time either as temporal progressions expressed in picture cards or done using small tokens or points in space. (2) A time & space language inventory to discover and document the linguistic coding of time and its relation to space, as well as the cultural knowledge structures related to time.

    Additional information

    2008_Time_in_space_stimuli.zip
  • 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.
  • Bowerman, M. (2002). Taalverwerving, cognitie en cultuur. In T. Janssen (Ed.), Taal in gebruik: Een inleiding in de taalwetenschap (pp. 27-44). The Hague: Sdu.
  • Bowerman, M., & Croft, W. (2008). The acquisition of the English causative alternation. In M. Bowerman, & P. Brown (Eds.), Crosslinguistic perspectives on argument structure: Implications for learnability (pp. 279-306). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
  • Bowerman, M., & Brown, P. (2008). Introduction. In M. Bowerman, & P. Brown (Eds.), Crosslinguistic perspectives on argument structure: Implications for learnability (pp. 1-26). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

    Abstract

    This chapter outlines two influential "bootstrapping" proposals that draw on presumed universals of argument structure to account for young children's acquisition of grammar (semantic bootstrapping) and verb meaning (syntactic bootstrapping), discusses controversial issues raised by these proposals, and summarizes the new insights contributed to the debate by each of the chapters in this volume.
  • Bowerman, M. (2002). Mapping thematic roles onto syntactic functions: Are children helped by innate linking rules? [Reprint]. In Mouton Classics: From syntax to cognition, from phonology to text (vol.2) (pp. 495-531). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Abstract

    Reprinted from: Bowerman, M. (1990). Mapping thematic roles onto syntactic functions: Are children helped by innate linking rules? Linguistics, 28, 1253-1289.
  • 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).
  • Broeder, D., & Van Uytvanck, D. (2014). Metadata formats. In J. Durand, U. Gut, & G. Kristoffersen (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Corpus Phonology (pp. 150-165). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • 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.
  • Brouwer, S., Cornips, L., & Hulk, A. (2008). Misrepresentation of Dutch neuter gender in older bilingual children? In B. Hazdenar, & E. Gavruseva (Eds.), Current trends in child second language acquisition: A generative perspective (pp. 83-96). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Brown, P. (2008). Verb specificity and argument realization in Tzeltal child language. In M. Bowerman, & P. Brown (Eds.), Crosslinguistic perspectives on argument structure: Implications for learnability (pp. 167-189). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

    Abstract

    How do children learn a language whose arguments are freely ellipsed? The Mayan language Tzeltal, spoken in southern Mexico, is such a language. The acquisition pattern for Tzeltal is distinctive, in at least two ways: verbs predominate even in children’s very early production vocabulary, and these verbs are often very specific in meaning. This runs counter to the patterns found in most Indo-European languages, where nouns tend to predominate in early vocabulary and children’s first verbs tend to be ‘light’ or semantically general. Here I explore the idea that noun ellipsis and ‘heavy’ verbs are related: the ‘heavy’ verbs restrict the nominal reference and so allow recovery of the ‘missing’ nouns. Using data drawn from videotaped interaction of four Tzeltal children and their caregivers, I examined transitive clauses in an adult input sample and in child speech, and tested the hypothesis that direct object arguments are less likely to be realized overtly with semantically specific verbs than with general verbs. This hypothesis was confirmed, both for the adult input and for the speech of the children (aged 3;4-3;9). It is therefore possible that argument ellipsis could provide a clue to verb semantics (specific vs. general) for the Tzeltal child.
  • 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. (2002). Everyone has to lie in Tzeltal. In S. Blum-Kulka, & C. E. Snow (Eds.), Talking to adults: The contribution of multiparty discourse to language acquisition (pp. 241-275). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

    Abstract

    In a famous paper Harvey Sacks (1974) argued that the sequential properties of greeting conventions, as well as those governing the flow of information, mean that 'everyone has to lie'. In this paper I show this dictum to be equally true in the Tzeltal Mayan community of Tenejapa, in southern Mexico, but for somewhat different reasons. The phenomenon of interest is the practice of routine fearsome threats to small children. Based on a longitudinal corpus of videotaped and tape-recorded naturally-occurring interaction between caregivers and children in five Tzeltal families, the study examines sequences of Tzeltal caregivers' speech aimed at controlling the children's behaviour and analyzes the children's developing pragmatic skills in handling such controlling utterances, from prelinguistic infants to age five and over. Infants in this society are considered to be vulnerable, easily scared or shocked into losing their 'souls', and therefore at all costs to be protected and hidden from outsiders and other dangers. Nonetheless, the chief form of control (aside from physically removing a child from danger) is to threaten, saying things like "Don't do that, or I'll take you to the clinic for an injection," These overt scare-threats - rarely actually realized - lead Tzeltal children by the age of 2;6 to 3;0 to the understanding that speech does not necessarily convey true propositions, and to a sensitivity to the underlying motivations for utterances distinct from their literal meaning. By age 4;0 children perform the same role to their younger siblings;they also begin to use more subtle non-true (e.g. ironic) utterances. The caretaker practice described here is related to adult norms of social lying, to the sociocultural context of constraints on information flow, social control through gossip, and the different notion of 'truth' that arises in the context of non-verifiability characteristic of a small-scale nonliterate society.
  • Brown, P. (2002). Language as a model for culture: Lessons from the cognitive sciences. In R. G. Fox, & B. J. King (Eds.), Anthropology beyond culture (pp. 169-192). Oxford: Berg.

    Abstract

    This paper surveys the concept of culture as used in recent work in cognitive science, assessing the very different (and sometimes minimal) role 'culture' plays in different branches and schools of linguistics: generative approaches, descriptive/comparative linguistics, typology, cognitive linguistics, semantics, pragmatics, psycholinguistics, linguistic and cognitive anthropology. The paper then describes research on one specific topic, spatial language and conceptualization, describes a methodology for studying it cross-linguistically and cross-culturally. Finally, it considers the implications of results in this area for how we can fruitfully conceptualize 'culture', arguing for an approach which shifts back and forth between individual mind and collective representations, between universals and particulars, and ties 'culture' to our biological roots.
  • Brown, P. (2014). Gestures in native Mexico and Central America. In C. Müller, A. Cienki, E. Fricke, S. Ladewig, D. McNeill, & J. Bressem (Eds.), Body -language – communication: An international handbook on multimodality in human interaction. Volume 2 (pp. 1206-1215). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Abstract

    The systematic study of kinesics, gaze, and gestural aspects of communication in Central American cultures is a recent phenomenon, most of it focussing on the Mayan cultures of southern Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. This article surveys ethnographic observations and research reports on bodily aspects of speaking in three domains: gaze and kinesics in social interaction, indexical pointing in adult and caregiver-child interactions, and co-speech gestures associated with “absolute” (geographically-based) systems of spatial reference. In addition, it reports how the indigenous co-speech gesture repertoire has provided the basis for developing village sign languages in the region. It is argued that studies of the embodied aspects of speech in the Mayan areas of Mexico and Central America have contributed to the typology of gestures and of spatial frames of reference. They have refined our understanding of how spatial frames of reference are invoked, communicated, and switched in conversational interaction and of the importance of co-speech gestures in understanding language use, language acquisition, and the transmission of culture-specific cognitive styles.
  • Brown, P., & Gaskins, S. (2014). Language acquisition and language socialization. In N. J. Enfield, P. Kockelman, & J. Sidnell (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of linguistic anthropology (pp. 187-226). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • 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. (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. (1995). Politeness strategies and the attribution of intentions: The case of Tzeltal irony. In E. Goody (Ed.), Social intelligence and interaction (pp. 153-174). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Abstract

    In this paper I take up the idea that human thinking is systematically biased in the direction of interactive thinking (E. Goody's anticipatory interactive planning), that is, that humans are peculiarly good at, and inordinately prone to, attributing intentions and goals to one other (as well as to non-humans), and that they routinely orient to presumptions about each other's intentions in what they say and do. I explore the implications of that idea for an understanding of politeness in interaction, taking as a starting point the Brown and Levinson (1987) model of politeness, which assumes interactive thinking, a notion implicit in the formulation of politeness as strategic orientation to face. Drawing on an analysis of the phenomenon of conventionalized ‘irony’ in Tzeltal, I emphasize that politeness does not inhere in linguistic form per se but is a matter of conveying a polite intention, and argue that Tzeltal irony provides a prime example of one way in which humans' highly-developed intellectual machinery for inferring alter's intentions is put to the service of social relationships.
  • 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. (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.
  • Brown, P. (2014). The interactional context of language learning in Tzeltal. In I. Arnon, M. Casillas, C. Kurumada, & B. Estigarriba (Eds.), Language in Interaction: Studies in honor of Eve V. Clark (pp. 51-82). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    This paper addresses the theories of Eve Clark about how children learn word meanings in western middle-class interactional contexts by examining child language data from a Tzeltal Maya society in southern Mexico where interaction patterns are radically different. Through examples of caregiver interactions with children 12-30 months old, I ask what lessons we can learn from how the details of these interactions unfold in this non-child-centered cultural context, and specifically, what aspects of the Tzeltal linguistic and interactional context might help to focus children’s attention on the meanings and the conventional forms of words being used around them.
  • 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.
  • Burkhardt, P. (2008). Dependency precedes independence: Online evidence from discourse processing. In A. Benz, & P. Kühnlein (Eds.), Constraints in discourse (pp. 141-158). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    This paper investigates the integration of definite determiner phrases (DPs) as a function of their contextual salience, which is reflected in the degree of dependency on prior information. DPs depend on previously established discourse referents or introduce a new, independent discourse referent. This paper presents a formal model that explains how discourse referents are represented in the language system and what kind of mechanisms are implemented during DP interpretation. Experimental data from an event-related potential study are discussed that demonstrate how definite DPs are integrated in real-time processing. The data provide evidence for two distinct mechanisms – Specify R and Establish Independent File Card – and substantiate a model that includes various processes and constraints at the level of discourse representation.
  • Casasanto, D. (2008). Who's afraid of the big bad Whorf? Crosslinguistic differences in temporal language and thought. In P. Indefrey, & M. Gullberg (Eds.), Time to speak: Cognitive and neural prerequisites for time in language (pp. 63-79). Oxford: Wiley.

    Abstract

    The idea that language shapes the way we think, often associated with Benjamin Whorf, has long been decried as not only wrong but also fundamentally wrong-headed. Yet, experimental evidence has reopened debate about the extent to which language influences nonlinguistic cognition, particularly in the domain of time. In this article, I will first analyze an influential argument against the Whorfian hypothesis and show that its anti-Whorfian conclusion is in part an artifact of conflating two distinct questions: Do we think in language? and Does language shape thought? Next, I will discuss crosslinguistic differences in spatial metaphors for time and describe experiments that demonstrate corresponding differences in nonlinguistic mental representations. Finally, I will sketch a simple learning mechanism by which some linguistic relativity effects appear to arise. Although people may not think in language, speakers of different languages develop distinctive conceptual repertoires as a consequence of ordinary and presumably universal neural and cognitive processes.
  • 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.
  • Casillas, M. (2014). Taking the floor on time: Delay and deferral in children’s turn taking. In I. Arnon, M. Casillas, C. Kurumada, & B. Estigarribia (Eds.), Language in Interaction: Studies in honor of Eve V. Clark (pp. 101-114). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    A key part of learning to speak with others is figuring out when to start talking and how to hold the floor in conversation. For young children, the challenge of planning a linguistic response can slow down their response latencies, making misunderstanding, repair, and loss of the floor more likely. Like adults, children can mitigate their delays by using fillers (e.g., uh and um) at the start of their turns. In this chapter I analyze the onset and development of fillers in five children’s spontaneous speech from ages 1;6–3;6. My findings suggest that children start using fillers by 2;0, and use them to effectively mitigate delay in making a response.
  • Casillas, M. (2014). Turn-taking. In D. Matthews (Ed.), Pragmatic development in first language acquisition (pp. 53-70). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    Conversation is a structured, joint action for which children need to learn a specialized set skills and conventions. Because conversation is a primary source of linguistic input, we can better grasp how children become active agents in their own linguistic development by studying their acquisition of conversational skills. In this chapter I review research on children’s turn-taking. This fundamental skill of human interaction allows children to gain feedback, make clarifications, and test hypotheses at every stage of development. I broadly review children’s conversational experiences, the types of turn-based contingency they must acquire, how they ask and answer questions, and when they manage to make timely responses
  • Chang, F., & Fitz, H. (2014). Computational models of sentence production: A dual-path approach. In M. Goldrick, & M. Miozzo (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of language production (pp. 70-89). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Abstract

    Sentence production is the process we use to create language-specific sentences that convey particular meanings. In production, there are complex interactions between meaning, words, and syntax at different points in sentences. Computational models can make these interactions explicit and connectionist learning algorithms have been useful for building such models. Connectionist models use domaingeneral mechanisms to learn internal representations and these mechanisms can also explain evidence of long-term syntactic adaptation in adult speakers. This paper will review work showing that these models can generalize words in novel ways and learn typologically-different languages like English and Japanese. It will also present modeling work which shows that connectionist learning algorithms can account for complex sentence production in children and adult production phenomena like structural priming, heavy NP shift, and conceptual/lexical accessibility.
  • 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.
  • Clahsen, H., Prüfert, P., Eisenbeiss, S., & Cholin, J. (2002). Strong stems in the German mental lexicon: Evidence from child language acquisition and adult processing. In I. Kaufmann, & B. Stiebels (Eds.), More than words. Festschrift for Dieter Wunderlich (pp. 91-112). Berlin: Akadamie Verlag.
  • 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. (2002). Phonological processing: Comments on Pierrehumbert, Moates et al., Kubozono, Peperkamp & Dupoux, and Bradlow. In C. Gussenhoven, & N. Warner (Eds.), Papers in Laboratory Phonology VII (pp. 275-296). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Cutler, A., & Norris, D. (2002). The role of strong syllables in segmentation for lexical access. In G. T. Altmann (Ed.), Psycholinguistics: Critical concepts in psychology (pp. 157-177). London: Routledge.
  • Cutler, A., Mehler, J., Norris, D., & Segui, J. (2002). The syllable's differing role in the segmentation of French and English. In G. T. Altmann (Ed.), Psycholinguistics: Critical concepts in psychology (pp. 115-135). London: Routledge.

    Abstract

    Speech segmentation procedures may differ in speakers of different languages. Earlier work based on French speakers listening to French words suggested that the syllable functions as a segmentation unit in speech processing. However, while French has relatively regular and clearly bounded syllables, other languages, such as English, do not. No trace of syllabifying segmentation was found in English listeners listening to English words, French words, or nonsense words. French listeners, however, showed evidence of syllabification even when they were listening to English words. We conclude that alternative segmentation routines are available to the human language processor. In some cases speech segmentation may involve the operation of more than one procedure.
  • Cutler, A. (2002). Lexical access. In L. Nadel (Ed.), Encyclopedia of cognitive science (pp. 858-864). London: Nature Publishing Group.
  • Cutler, A., McQueen, J. M., Norris, D., & Somejuan, A. (2002). Le rôle de la syllable. In E. Dupoux (Ed.), Les langages du cerveau: Textes en l’honneur de Jacques Mehler (pp. 185-197). Paris: Odile Jacob.
  • Cutler, A., & McQueen, J. M. (2014). How prosody is both mandatory and optional. In J. Caspers, Y. Chen, W. Heeren, J. Pacilly, N. O. Schiller, & E. Van Zanten (Eds.), Above and Beyond the Segments: Experimental linguistics and phonetics (pp. 71-82). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    Speech signals originate as a sequence of linguistic units selected by speakers, but these units are necessarily realised in the suprasegmental dimensions of time, frequency and amplitude. For this reason prosodic structure has been viewed as a mandatory target of language processing by both speakers and listeners. In apparent contradiction, however, prosody has also been argued to be ancillary rather than core linguistic structure, making processing of prosodic structure essentially optional. In the present tribute to one of the luminaries of prosodic research for the past quarter century, we review evidence from studies of the processing of lexical stress and focal accent which reconciles these views and shows that both claims are, each in their own way, fully true.
  • Cutler, A. (1998). Prosodic structure and word recognition. In A. D. Friederici (Ed.), Language comprehension: A biological perspective (pp. 41-70). Heidelberg: Springer.
  • Cutler, A. (2009). Psycholinguistics in our time. In P. Rabbitt (Ed.), Inside psychology: A science over 50 years (pp. 91-101). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Cutler, A. (1995). Spoken word recognition and production. In J. L. Miller, & P. D. Eimas (Eds.), Speech, language and communication (pp. 97-136). New York: Academic Press.

    Abstract

    This chapter highlights that most language behavior consists of speaking and listening. The chapter also reveals differences and similarities between speaking and listening. The laboratory study of word production raises formidable problems; ensuring that a particular word is produced may subvert the spontaneous production process. Word production is investigated via slips and tip-of-the-tongue (TOT), primarily via instances of processing failure and via the technique of via the picture-naming task. The methodology of word production is explained in the chapter. The chapter also explains the phenomenon of interaction between various stages of word production and the process of speech recognition. In this context, it explores the difference between sound and meaning and examines whether or not the comparisons are appropriate between the processes of recognition and production of spoken words. It also describes the similarities and differences in the structure of the recognition and production systems. Finally, the chapter highlights the common issues in recognition and production research, which include the nuances of frequency of occurrence, morphological structure, and phonological structure.
  • Cutler, A. (1995). Spoken-word recognition. In G. Bloothooft, V. Hazan, D. Hubert, & J. Llisterri (Eds.), European studies in phonetics and speech communication (pp. 66-71). Utrecht: OTS.
  • Cutler, A. (1995). The perception of rhythm in spoken and written language. In J. Mehler, & S. Franck (Eds.), Cognition on cognition (pp. 283-288). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  • Cutler, A., & McQueen, J. M. (1995). The recognition of lexical units in speech. In B. De Gelder, & J. Morais (Eds.), Speech and reading: A comparative approach (pp. 33-47). Hove, UK: Erlbaum.
  • Danziger, E. (1995). Intransitive predicate form class survey. In D. Wilkins (Ed.), Extensions of space and beyond: manual for field elicitation for the 1995 field season (pp. 46-53). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.3004298.

    Abstract

    Different linguistic structures allow us to highlight distinct aspects of a situation. The aim of this survey is to investigate similarities and differences in the expression of situations or events as “stative” (maintaining a state), “inchoative” (adopting a state) and “agentive” (causing something to be in a state). The questionnaire focuses on the encoding of stative, inchoative and agentive possibilities for the translation equivalents of a set of English verbs.
  • Danziger, E. (1995). Posture verb survey. In D. Wilkins (Ed.), Extensions of space and beyond: manual for field elicitation for the 1995 field season (pp. 33-34). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.3004235.

    Abstract

    Expressions of human activities and states are a rich area for cross-linguistic comparison. Some languages of the world treat human posture verbs (e.g., sit, lie, kneel) as a special class of predicates, with distinct formal properties. This survey examines lexical, semantic and grammatical patterns for posture verbs, with special reference to contrasts between “stative” (maintaining a posture), “inchoative” (adopting a posture), and “agentive” (causing something to adopt a posture) constructions. The enquiry is thematically linked to the more general questionnaire 'Intransitive Predicate Form Class Survey'.
  • Dediu, D., & Graham, S. A. (2014). Genetics and Language. In M. Aronoff (Ed.), Oxford Bibliographies in Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press. Retrieved from http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199772810/obo-9780199772810-0184.xml.

    Abstract

    This article surveys what is currently known about the complex interplay between genetics and the language sciences. It focuses not only on the genetic architecture of language and speech, but also on their interactions on the cultural and evolutionary timescales. Given the complexity of these issues and their current state of flux and high dynamism, this article surveys the main findings and topics of interest while also briefly introducing the main relevant methods, thus allowing the interested reader to fully appreciate and understand them in their proper context. Of course, not all the relevant publications and resources are mentioned, but this article aims to select the most relevant, promising, or accessible for nonspecialists.

    Files private

    Request files
  • Dediu, D. (2014). Language and biology: The multiple interactions between genetics and language. In N. J. Enfield, P. Kockelman, & J. Sidnell (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of linguistic anthropology (pp. 686-707). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Dediu, D., & Levinson, S. C. (2014). The time frame of the emergence of modern language and its implications. In D. Dor, C. Knight, & J. Lewis (Eds.), The social origins of language (pp. 184-195). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Dimroth, C. (2008). Perspectives on second language acquisition at different ages. In J. Philp, R. Oliver, & A. Mackey (Eds.), Second language acquisition and the younger learner: Child's play? (pp. 53-79). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    Empirical studies addressing the age factor in second language acquisition have mainly been concerned with a comparison of end state data (from learners before and after the closure of a putative Critical Period for language acquisition) to the native speaker norm. Based on longitudinal corpus data, this paper investigates the affect of age on end state, rate and the process of acquisition and addresses the question of whether different grammatical domains are equally affected. To this end, the paper presents summarized findings from the acquisition of word order and inflectional morphology in L2 German by Russian learners of different ages and discusses theoretical implications that can be drawn from this evidence.
  • Dimroth, C., & Haberzettl, S. (2008). Je älter desto besser: Der Erwerb der Verbflexion in Kindesalter. In B. Ahrenholz, U. Bredel, W. Klein, M. Rost-Roth, & R. Skiba (Eds.), Empirische Forschung und Theoriebildung: Beiträge aus Soziolinguistik, Gesprochene-Sprache- und Zweitspracherwerbsforschung: Festschrift für Norbert Dittmar (pp. 227-238). Frankfurt am Main: Lang.
  • Dimroth, C. (2008). Kleine Unterschiede in den Lernvoraussetzungen beim ungesteuerten Zweitspracherwerb: Welche Bereiche der Zielsprache Deutsch sind besonders betroffen? In B. Ahrenholz (Ed.), Kinder und Migrationshintergrund: Spracherwerb und Fördermöglichkeiten (pp. 117-133). Freiburg: Fillibach.
  • Dimroth, C. (2009). Stepping stones and stumbling blocks: Why negation accelerates and additive particles delay the acquisition of finiteness in German. In C. Dimroth, & P. Jordens (Eds.), Functional Categories in Learner Language (pp. 137-170). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Dingemanse, M., & Floyd, S. (2014). Conversation across cultures. In N. J. Enfield, P. Kockelman, & J. Sidnell (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of linguistic anthropology (pp. 447-480). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Dingemanse, M., Hill, C., Majid, A., & Levinson, S. C. (2008). Ethnography of the senses. In A. Majid (Ed.), Field manual volume 11 (pp. 18-28). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.492935.

    Abstract

    This entry provides some orientation and task suggestions on how to explore the perceptual world of your field site and the interaction between the cultural world and the sensory lexicon in your community. The material consists of procedural texts; soundscapes; other documentary and observational tasks. The goal of this task is to explore the perceptual world of your field site and the interaction between the cultural world and the sensory lexicon in your community.
  • Drude, S., Trilsbeek, P., Sloetjes, H., & Broeder, D. (2014). Best practices in the creation, archiving and dissemination of speech corpora at the Language Archive. In S. Ruhi, M. Haugh, T. Schmidt, & K. Wörner (Eds.), Best Practices for Spoken Corpora in Linguistic Research (pp. 183-207). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
  • Drude, S. (2008). Die Personenpräfixe des Guaraní und ihre lexikographische Behandlung. In W. Dietrich, & H. Symeonidis (Eds.), Geschichte und Aktualität der deutschsprachigen Guaraní-Philologie: Akten der Guaraní-Tagung in Kiel und Berlin 25.-27. Mai 2000 (pp. 198-234). Berlin: Lit Verlag.

    Abstract

    Der vorliegende Beitrag zum Kieler Symposium1 stellt die Resultate eines Teilbereichs meiner Arbeit zum Guarani vor, nämlich einen Vorschlag zur Analyse der Personenpräfixe dieser Sprache und der mit ihnen verbundenen grammatischen Kategorien. Die im Titel angedeutete lexikographische Fragestellung bedarf einer näheren Erläuterung, die ich im Zusammenhang mit einer kurzen Darstellung der Motivation für meine Untersuchungen geben will
  • Drude, S. (2002). Fala masculina e feminina em Awetí. In A. D. Rodrigues, & A. S. A. C. Cabral (Eds.), Línguas indígenas Brasileiras: Fonologia, gramática e história. (Atas do I Encontro Internacional do Grupo de Trabalho sobre Línguas Indígenas da ANPOLL). vol. 1 (pp. 177-190). Belém: EDUFPA.
  • Drude, S. (2008). Inflectional units and their effects: The case of verbal prefixes in Guaraní. In R. Sackmann (Ed.), Explorations in integrational linguistics: Four essays on German, French, and Guaraní (pp. 153-189). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    With the present essay I pursue a threefold aim as will be explained in the following paragraphs. Since I cannot expect my readers to be familiar with the language studied, Guaran´ı, more information about this language will be given in the next subsection.
  • Drude, S. (2014). Reduplication as a tool for morphological and phonological analysis in Awetí. In G. G. Gómez, & H. Van der Voort (Eds.), Reduplication in Indigenous languages of South America (pp. 185-216). Leiden: Brill.
  • Drude, S. (2008). Tense, aspect and mood in Awetí verb paradigms: Analytic and synthetic forms. In K. D. Harrison, D. S. Rood, & A. Dwyer (Eds.), Lessons from documented endangered languages (pp. 67-110). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    This paper describes the verbal Tense-Aspect-Mood system of Awetí (Tupian, Central Brazil) in a Word-and-Paradigm approach. One classification of Awetí verb forms contains clear aspect categories. A second set of independent classifications renders at least four moods and contains a third major TAM classification, factuality, that has one mainly temporal category Future, while others are partially or wholly modal. Structural categories reflect the formal composition of the forms. Some forms are synthetic, ‘marked’ only by means of affixes, but many are analytic, containing auxiliary particles. With selected sample forms we demonstrate in detail the interplay of structural and functional categories in Awetí verb paradigms.
  • Dunn, M. (2014). Gender determined dialect variation. In G. G. Corbett (Ed.), The expression of gender (pp. 39-68). Berlin: De Gruyter.
  • Dunn, M. (2014). Language phylogenies. In C. Bowern, & B. Evans (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of historical linguistics (pp. 190-211). London: Routlege.
  • 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., & Scott, S. K. (2008). Speech and auditory processing in the cortex: Evidence from functional neuroimaging. In A. Cacace, & D. McFarland (Eds.), Controversies in central auditory processing disorder. San Diego, Ca: Plural Publishing.
  • Emmorey, K., & Ozyurek, A. (2014). Language in our hands: Neural underpinnings of sign language and co-speech gesture. In M. S. Gazzaniga, & G. R. Mangun (Eds.), The cognitive neurosciences (5th ed., pp. 657-666). Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
  • Enfield, N. J. (2002). Semantics and combinatorics of 'sit', 'stand', and 'lie' in Lao. In J. Newman (Ed.), The linguistics of sitting, standing, and lying (pp. 25-41). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Enfield, N. J. (2008). Verbs and multi-verb construction in Lao. In A. V. Diller, J. A. Edmondson, & Y. Luo (Eds.), The Tai-Kadai languages (pp. 83-183). London: Routledge.
  • Enfield, N. J. (2002). Body 2002. In S. Kita (Ed.), 2002 Supplement (version 3) for the “Manual” for the field season 2001 (pp. 19-32). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
  • Enfield, N. J. (2014). Causal dynamics of language. In N. J. Enfield, P. Kockelman, & J. Sidnell (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of linguistic anthropology (pp. 325-342). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Enfield, N. J., & Majid, A. (2008). Constructions in 'language and perception'. In A. Majid (Ed.), Field Manual Volume 11 (pp. 11-17). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.492949.

    Abstract

    This field guide is for eliciting information about grammatical resources used in describing perceptual events and perception-based properties and states. A list of leading questions outlines an underlying semantic space for events/states of perception, against which language-specific constructions may be defined. It should be used as an entry point into a flexible exploration of the structures and constraints which are specific to the language you are working on. The goal is to provide a cross-linguistically comparable description of the constructions of a language used in describing perceptual events and states. The core focus is to discover any sensory asymmetries, i.e., ways in which different sensory modalities are treated differently with respect to these constructions.
  • Enfield, N. J. (2002). “Fish trap” task. In S. Kita (Ed.), 2002 Supplement (version 3) for the “Manual” for the field season 2001 (pp. 61). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
  • Enfield, N. J. (2009). 'Case relations' in Lao, a radically isolating language. In A. L. Malčukov, & A. Spencer (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of case (pp. 808-819). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Enfield, N. J. (2002). Cultural logic and syntactic productivity: Associated posture constructions in Lao. In N. Enfield (Ed.), Ethnosyntax: Explorations in culture and grammar (pp. 231-258). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Enfield, N. J. (2002). Ethnosyntax: Introduction. In N. Enfield (Ed.), Ethnosyntax: Explorations in culture and grammar (pp. 1-30). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Enfield, N. J. (2002). Combinatoric properties of natural semantic metalanguage expressions in Lao. In C. Goddard, & A. Wierzbicka (Eds.), Meaning and universal grammar: Theory and empirical findings (pp. 145-256). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • Enfield, N. J. (2008). Common ground as a resource for social affiliation. In I. Kecskes, & J. L. Mey (Eds.), Intention, common ground and the egocentric speaker-hearer (pp. 223-254). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Share this page