Publications

Displaying 101 - 153 of 153
  • Roberts, S. G. (2014). Monolingual Biases in Simulations of Cultural Transmission. In V. Dignum, & F. Dignum (Eds.), Perspectives on Culture and Agent-based Simulations (pp. 111-125). Cham: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-01952-9_7.

    Abstract

    Recent research suggests that the evolution of language is affected by the inductive biases of its learners. I suggest that there is an implicit assumption that one of these biases is to expect a single linguistic system in the input. Given the prevalence of bilingual cultures, this may not be a valid abstraction. This is illustrated by demonstrating that the ‘minimal naming game’ model, in which a shared lexicon evolves in a population of agents, includes an implicit mutual exclusivity bias. Since recent research suggests that children raised in bilingual cultures do not exhibit mutual exclusivity, the individual learning algorithm of the agents is not as abstract as it appears to be. A modification of this model demonstrates that communicative success can be achieved without mutual exclusivity. It is concluded that complex cultural phenomena, such as bilingualism, do not necessarily result from complex individual learning mechanisms. Rather, the cultural process itself can bring about this complexity.
  • Roberts, S. G., & Quillinan, J. (2014). The Chimp Challenge: Working memory in chimps and humans. In L. McCrohon, B. Thompson, T. Verhoef, & H. Yamauchi (Eds.), The Past, Present and Future of Language Evolution Research: Student volume of the 9th International Conference on the Evolution of Language (pp. 31-39). Tokyo: EvoLang9 Organising Committee.

    Abstract

    Matsuzawa (2012) presented work at Evolang demonstrating the working memory abilities of chimpanzees. (Inoue & Matsuzawa, 2007) found that chimpanzees can correctly remember the location of 9 randomly arranged numerals displayed for 210ms - shorter than an average human eye saccade. Humans, however, perform poorly at this task. Matsuzawa suggests a semantic link hypothesis: while chimps have good visual, eidetic memory, humans are good at symbolic associations. The extra information in the semantic, linguistic links that humans possess increase the load on working memory and make this task difficult for them. We were interested to see if a wider search could find humans that matched the performance of the chimpanzees. We created an online version of the experiment and challenged people to play. We also attempted to run a non-semantic version of the task to see if this made the task easier. We found that, while humans can perform better than Inoue and Matsuzawa (2007) suggest, chimpanzees can perform better still. We also found no evidence to support the semantic link hypothesis.
  • Rossi, G. (2014). When do people not use language to make requests? In P. Drew, & E. Couper-Kuhlen (Eds.), Requesting in social interaction (pp. 301-332). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Abstract

    In everyday joint activities (e.g. playing cards, preparing potatoes, collecting empty plates), participants often request others to pass, move or otherwise deploy objects. In order to get these objects to or from the requestee, requesters need to manipulate them, for example by holding them out, reaching for them, or placing them somewhere. As they perform these manual actions, requesters may or may not accompany them with language (e.g. Take this potato and cut it or Pass me your plate). This study shows that adding or omitting language in the design of a request is influenced in the first place by a criterion of recognition. When the requested action is projectable from the advancement of an activity, presenting a relevant object to the requestee is enough for them to understand what to do; when, on the other hand, the requested action is occasioned by a contingent development of the activity, requesters use language to specify what the requestee should do. This criterion operates alongside a perceptual criterion, to do with the affordances of the visual and auditory modality. When the requested action is projectable but the requestee is not visually attending to the requester’s manual behaviour, the requester can use just enough language to attract the requestee’s attention and secure immediate recipiency. This study contributes to a line of research concerned with the organisation of verbal and nonverbal resources for requesting. Focussing on situations in which language is not – or only minimally – used, it demonstrates the role played by visible bodily behaviour and by the structure of everyday activities in the formation and understanding of requests.
  • Rowland, C. F., Noble, C. H., & Chan, A. (2014). Competition all the way down: How children learn word order cues to sentence meaning. In B. MacWhinney, A. Malchukov, & E. Moravcsik (Eds.), Competing Motivations in Grammar and Usage (pp. 125-143). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Abstract

    Most work on competing cues in language acquisition has focussed on what happens when cues compete within a certain construction. There has been far less work on what happens when constructions themselves compete. The aim of the present chapter was to explore how the acquisition mechanism copes when constructions compete in a language. We present three experimental studies, all of which focus on the acquisition of the syntactic function of word order as a marker of the Theme-Recipient relation in ditransitives (form-meaning mapping). In Study 1 we investigated how quickly English children acquire form-meaning mappings when there are two competing structures in the language. We demonstrated that English speaking 4-year- olds, but not 3-year-olds, correctly interpreted both preposition al and double object datives, assigning Theme and Recipient participant roles on the basis of word order cues. There was no advantage for the double object dative despite its greater frequency in child directed speech. In Study 2 we looked at acquisition in a language which has no dative alternation –Welsh–to investigate how quickly children acquire form-meaning mapping when there is no competing structure. We demonstrated that Welsh children (Study 2) acquired the prepositional dative at age 3 years, which was much earlier than English children. Finally, in Study 3 we examined bei2 (give) ditransitives in Cantonese, to investigate what happens when there is no dative alternation (as in Welsh), but when the child hears alternative, and possibly competing, word orders in the input. Like the English 3-year-olds, the Cantonese 3-year-olds had not yet acquired the word order marking constraints of bei2 ditransitives. We conclude that there is not only competition between cues but competition between constructions in language acquisition. We suggest an extension to the competition model (Bates & MacWhinney, 1982) whereby generalisations take place across constructions as easily as they take place within constructions, whenever there are salient similarities to form the basis of the generalisation.
  • Schoffelen, J.-M., & Gross, J. (2014). Studying dynamic neural interactions with MEG. In S. Supek, & C. J. Aine (Eds.), Magnetoencephalography: From signals to dynamic cortical networks (pp. 405-427). Berlin: Springer.
  • Senft, G. (1994). Darum gehet hin und lehret alle Völker: Mission, Kultur- und Sprachwandel am Beispiel der Trobriand-Insulaner von Papua-Neuguinea. In P. Stüben (Ed.), Seelenfischer: Mission, Stammesvölker und Ökologie (pp. 71-91). Gießen: Focus.
  • Senft, G. (1998). 'Noble Savages' and the 'Islands of Love': Trobriand Islanders in 'Popular Publications'. In J. Wassmann (Ed.), Pacific answers to Western hegemony: Cultural practices of identity construction (pp. 119-140). Oxford: Berg Publishers.
  • Senft, G. (1998). Zeichenkonzeptionen in Ozeanien. In R. Posner, T. Robering, & T.. Sebeok (Eds.), Semiotics: A handbook on the sign-theoretic foundations of nature and culture (Vol. 2) (pp. 1971-1976). Berlin: de Gruyter.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1974). Autonomous versus semantic syntax. In P. A. M. Seuren (Ed.), Semantic syntax (pp. 96-122). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1994). Categorial presupposition. In R. E. Asher, & J. M. Y. Simpson (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (vol. 2) (pp. 477-478). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1994). Accommodation and presupposition. In R. E. Asher, & J. M. Y. Simpson (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (vol. 1) (pp. 15-16). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1994). Denotation in discourse semantics. In R. E. Asher, & J. M. Y. Simpson (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (vol. 2) (pp. 859-860). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1994). Donkey sentences. In R. E. Asher, & J. M. Y. Simpson (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (vol. 2) (pp. 1059-1060). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1994). Discourse domain. In R. E. Asher, & J. M. Y. Simpson (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (vol. 2) (pp. 964-965). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1994). Discourse semantics. In R. E. Asher, & J. M. Y. Simpson (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (vol. 2) (pp. 982-993). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1994). Factivity. In R. E. Asher, & J. M. Y. Simpson (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (vol. 3) (pp. 1205). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1994). Function, set-theoretical. In R. E. Asher, & J. M. Y. Simpson (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (vol. 3) (pp. 1314). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1994). Incrementation. In R. E. Asher, & J. M. Y. Simpson (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (vol. 3) (pp. 1646). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1994). Lexical conditions. In R. E. Asher, & J. M. Y. Simpson (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (vol. 4) (pp. 2140-2141). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1974). Introduction. In P. A. M. Seuren (Ed.), Semantic syntax (pp. 1-28). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1974). Negative's travels. In P. A. M. Seuren (Ed.), Semantic syntax (pp. 183-208). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1994). Existence predicate (discourse semantics). In R. E. Asher, & J. M. Y. Simpson (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (vol. 3) (pp. 1190-1191). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1994). Existential presupposition. In R. E. Asher, & J. M. Y. Simpson (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (vol. 3) (pp. 1191-1192). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1994). Presupposition. In R. E. Asher, & J. M. Y. Simpson (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (vol. 6) (pp. 3311-3320). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1994). Projection problem. In R. E. Asher, & J. M. Y. Simpson (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (vol. 6) (pp. 3358-3360). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1994). Sign. In R. E. Asher, & J. M. Y. Simpson (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (vol. 7) (pp. 3885-3888). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1994). Syntax and semantics: Relationship. In R. E. Asher, & J. M. Y. Simpson (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (vol. 8) (pp. 4494-4500). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1994). Prediction and retrodiction. In R. E. Asher, & J. M. Y. Simpson (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (vol. 6) (pp. 3302-3303). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1998). Towards a discourse-semantic account of donkey anaphora. In S. Botley, & T. McEnery (Eds.), New Approaches to Discourse Anaphora: Proceedings of the Second Colloquium on Discourse Anaphora and Anaphor Resolution (DAARC2) (pp. 212-220). Lancaster: Universiy Centre for Computer Corpus Research on Language, Lancaster University.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (2014). Universe restriction in the logic of language. In J. Hoeksema, & D. Gilbers (Eds.), Black Book: A Festschrift in Honor of Frans Zwarts (pp. 282-300). Groningen: University of Groningen.
  • Sidnell, J., & Enfield, N. J. (2014). Deixis and the interactional foundations of reference. In Y. Huang (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of pragmatics.
  • Sidnell, J., Kockelman, P., & Enfield, N. J. (2014). Community and social life. In N. J. Enfield, P. Kockelman, & J. Sidnell (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of linguistic anthropology (pp. 481-483). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Sidnell, J., Enfield, N. J., & Kockelman, P. (2014). Interaction and intersubjectivity. In N. J. Enfield, P. Kockelman, & J. Sidnell (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of linguistic anthropology (pp. 343-345). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Sidnell, J., & Enfield, N. J. (2014). The ontology of action, in interaction. In N. J. Enfield, P. Kockelman, & J. Sidnell (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of linguistic anthropology (pp. 423-446). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Sloetjes, H. (2014). ELAN: Multimedia annotation application. In J. Durand, U. Gut, & G. Kristoffersen (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Corpus Phonology (pp. 305-320). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Smith, A. C., Monaghan, P., & Huettig, F. (2014). Modelling language – vision interactions in the hub and spoke framework. In J. Mayor, & P. Gomez (Eds.), Computational Models of Cognitive Processes: Proceedings of the 13th Neural Computation and Psychology Workshop (NCPW13). (pp. 3-16). Singapore: World Scientific Publishing.

    Abstract

    Multimodal integration is a central characteristic of human cognition. However our understanding of the interaction between modalities and its influence on behaviour is still in its infancy. This paper examines the value of the Hub & Spoke framework (Plaut, 2002; Rogers et al., 2004; Dilkina et al., 2008; 2010) as a tool for exploring multimodal interaction in cognition. We present a Hub and Spoke model of language–vision information interaction and report the model’s ability to replicate a range of phonological, visual and semantic similarity word-level effects reported in the Visual World Paradigm (Cooper, 1974; Tanenhaus et al, 1995). The model provides an explicit connection between the percepts of language and the distribution of eye gaze and demonstrates the scope of the Hub-and-Spoke architectural framework by modelling new aspects of multimodal cognition.
  • Stolker, C. J. J. M., & Poletiek, F. H. (1998). Smartengeld - Wat zijn we eigenlijk aan het doen? Naar een juridische en psychologische evaluatie. In F. Stadermann (Ed.), Bewijs en letselschade (pp. 71-86). Lelystad, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Vermande.
  • Suppes, P., Böttner, M., & Liang, L. (1998). Machine Learning of Physics Word Problems: A Preliminary Report. In A. Aliseda, R. van Glabbeek, & D. Westerståhl (Eds.), Computing Natural Language (pp. 141-154). Stanford, CA, USA: CSLI Publications.
  • De Swart, P., & Van Bergen, G. (2014). Unscrambling the lexical nature of weak definites. In A. Aguilar-Guevara, B. Le Bruyn, & J. Zwarts (Eds.), Weak referentiality (pp. 287-310). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    We investigate how the lexical nature of weak definites influences the phenomenon of direct object scrambling in Dutch. Earlier experiments have indicated that weak definites are more resistant to scrambling than strong definites. We examine how the notion of weak definiteness used in this experimental work can be reduced to lexical connectedness. We explore four different ways of quantifying the relation between a direct object and the verb. Our results show that predictability of a verb given the object (verb cloze probability) provides the best fit to the weak/strong distinction used in the earlier experiments
  • Trilsbeek, P., & Koenig, A. (2014). Increasing the future usage of endangered language archives. In D. Nathan, & P. Austin (Eds.), Language Documentation and Description vol 12 (pp. 151-163). London: SOAS. Retrieved from http://www.elpublishing.org/PID/142.
  • Van Leeuwen, T. M., Petersson, K. M., Langner, O., Rijpkema, M., & Hagoort, P. (2014). Color specificity in the human V4 complex: An fMRI repetition suppression study. In T. D. Papageorgiou, G. I. Cristopoulous, & S. M. Smirnakis (Eds.), Advanced Brain Neuroimaging Topics in Health and Disease - Methods and Applications (pp. 275-295). Rijeka, Croatia: Intech. doi:10.5772/58278.
  • Van Putten, S. (2014). Left-dislocation and subordination in Avatime (Kwa). In R. Van Gijn, J. Hammond, D. Matic, S. van Putten, & A.-V. Galucio (Eds.), Information Structure and Reference Tracking in Complex Sentences. (pp. 71-98). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Abstract

    Left dislocation is characterized by a sentence-initial element which is crossreferenced in the remainder of the sentence, and often set off by an intonation break. Because of these properties, left dislocation has been analyzed as an extraclausal phenomenon. Whether or not left dislocation can occur within subordinate clauses has been a matter of debate in the literature, but has never been checked against corpus data. This paper presents data from Avatime, a Kwa (Niger-Congo) language spoken in Ghana, showing that left dislocation occurs within subordinate clauses in spontaneous discourse. This poses a problem for the extraclausal analysis of left dislocation. I show that this problem can best be solved by assuming that Avatime allows the embedding of units larger than a clause
  • Van Valin Jr., R. D., & Mairal Usón, R. (2014). Interfacing the lexicon and an ontology in a linking system. In M. d. l. Á. Gómez González, F. J. Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, & F. Gonzálvez-García (Eds.), Theory and practice in functional-cognitive space (pp. 205-228). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    The aim of this paper is to discuss the repercussions of a conceptual orientation on two crucial parts of the Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) linking algorithm, that is, semantic representation and constructional schemas. Firstly, it is argued that adopting FunGramKB’s notion of conceptual logical structure (CLS) over standard RRG logical structures (LSs) has numerous advantages since meaning has now access to conceptual knowledge and therefore a CLS provides a format that goes beyond those aspects that are syntactically visible. The second part introduces the notion of the grammaticon, the component where constructional schemas actually reside. RRG constructional schemas are analyzed within a conceptual framework like that provided in FunGramKB. In essence, it is shown that a conceptual orientation to the RRG linking system by the addition of CLSs enriches the semantic representations in it substantially
  • Van Valin Jr., R. D. (1994). Extraction restrictions, competing theories and the argument from the poverty of the stimulus. In S. D. Lima, R. Corrigan, & G. K. Iverson (Eds.), The reality of linguistic rules (pp. 243-259). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Van Geenhoven, V. (1998). On the Argument Structure of some Noun Incorporating Verbs in West Greenlandic. In M. Butt, & W. Geuder (Eds.), The Projection of Arguments - Lexical and Compositional Factors (pp. 225-263). Stanford, CA, USA: CSLI Publications.
  • Van Valin Jr., R. D. (1998). The acquisition of WH-questions and the mechanisms of language acquisition. In M. Tomasello (Ed.), The new psychology of language: Cognitive and functional approaches to language structure (pp. 221-249). Mahwah, New Jersey: Erlbaum.
  • Van Valin Jr., R. D. (2014). Role and Reference Grammar. In A. Carnie, Y. Sato, & D. Siddiqi (Eds.), Routledge handbook of syntax (pp. 579-603). London: Routledge.
  • Van Gijn, R. (2014). Yurakaré. In M. Crevels, & P. C. Muysken (Eds.), Las lenguas de Bolivia. Vol. 3: Oriente (pp. 135-174). La Paz: Plural Editores.
  • Verkerk, A. (2014). Where Alice fell into: Motion events from a parallel corpus. In B. Szmrecsanyi, & B. Wälchli (Eds.), Aggregating dialectology, typology, and register analysis: Linguistic variation in text and speech (pp. 324-354). Berlin: De Gruyter.
  • Weissenborn, J., & Stralka, R. (1984). Das Verstehen von Mißverständnissen. Eine ontogenetische Studie. In Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik (pp. 113-134). Stuttgart: Metzler.
  • Weissenborn, J. (1984). La genèse de la référence spatiale en langue maternelle et en langue seconde: similarités et différences. In G. Extra, & M. Mittner (Eds.), Studies in second language acquisition by adult immigrants (pp. 262-286). Tilburg: Tilburg University.
  • Wittenburg, P., Trilsbeek, P., & Wittenburg, F. (2014). Corpus archiving and dissemination. In J. Durand, U. Gut, & G. Kristoffersen (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Corpus Phonology (pp. 133-149). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Zwitserlood, I. (2014). Meaning at the feature level in sign languages. The case of name signs in Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT). In R. Kager (Ed.), Where the Principles Fail. A Festschrift for Wim Zonneveld on the occasion of his 64th birthday (pp. 241-251). Utrecht: Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS.

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