Publications

Displaying 1 - 88 of 88
  • Ameka, F. K. (1989). [Review of The case for lexicase: An outline of lexicase grammatical theory by Stanley Starosta]. Studies in Language, 13(2), 506-518.
  • Bauer, B. L. M. (1994). [Review of the book Du latin aux langues romanes ed. by Maria Iliescu and Dan Slusanski]. Studies in Language, 18(2), 502-509. doi:10.1075/sl.18.2.08bau.
  • Bauer, B. L. M. (1994). The development of Latin absolute constructions: From stative to transitive structures. General Linguistics, 18, 64-83.
  • Bickel, B. (1994). In the vestibule of meaning: Transivity inversion as a morphological phenomenon. Studies in Language, 19(1), 73-127.
  • Bowerman, M. (1975). Commentary on L. Bloom, P. Lightbown, & L. Hood, “Structure and variation in child language”. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 40(2), 80-90. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1165986.
  • Bowerman, M. (1994). From universal to language-specific in early grammatical development. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 346, 34-45. doi:10.1098/rstb.1994.0126.

    Abstract

    Attempts to explain children's grammatical development often assume a close initial match between units of meaning and units of form; for example, agents are said to map to sentence-subjects and actions to verbs. The meanings themselves, according to this view, are not influenced by language, but reflect children's universal non-linguistic way of understanding the world. This paper argues that, contrary to this position, meaning as it is expressed in children's early sentences is, from the beginning, organized on the basis of experience with the grammar and lexicon of a particular language. As a case in point, children learning English and Korean are shown to express meanings having to do with direct motion according to language-specific principles of semantic and grammatical structuring from the earliest stages of word combination
  • Brown, P. (1989). [Review of the book Language, gender, and sex in comparative perspective ed. by Susan U. Philips, Susan Steeleand Christine Tanz]. Man, 24(1), 192.
  • Brown, P. (1994). The INs and ONs of Tzeltal locative expressions: The semantics of static descriptions of location. Linguistics, 32, 743-790.

    Abstract

    This paper explores how static topological spatial relations such as contiguity, contact, containment, and support are expressed in the Mayan language Tzeltal. Three distinct Tzeltal systems for describing spatial relationships - geographically anchored (place names, geographical coordinates), viewer-centered (deictic), and object-centered (body parts, relational nouns, and dispositional adjectives) - are presented, but the focus here is on the object-centered system of dispositional adjectives in static locative expressions. Tzeltal encodes shape/position/configuration gestalts in verb roots; predicates formed from these are an essential element in locative descriptions. Specificity of shape in the predicate allows spatial reltaions between figure and ground objects to be understood by implication. Tzeltal illustrates an alternative stragegy to that of prepositional languages like English: rather than elaborating shape distinctions in the nouns and minimizing them in the locatives, Tzeltal encodes shape and configuration very precisely in verb roots, leaving many object nouns unspecified for shape. The Tzeltal case thus presents a direct challenge to cognitive science claims that, in both languge and cognition, WHAT is kept distinct from WHERE.
  • Cox, S., Rösler, D., & Skiba, R. (1989). A tailor-made database for language teaching material. Literary & Linguistic Computing, 4(4), 260-264.
  • Cutler, A., Howard, D., & Patterson, K. E. (1989). Misplaced stress on prosody: A reply to Black and Byng. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 6, 67-83.

    Abstract

    The recent claim by Black and Byng (1986) that lexical access in reading is subject to prosodic constraints is examined and found to be unsupported. The evidence from impaired reading which Black and Byng report is based on poorly controlled stimulus materials and is inadequately analysed and reported. An alternative explanation of their findings is proposed, and new data are reported for which this alternative explanation can account but their model cannot. Finally, their proposal is shown to be theoretically unmotivated and in conflict with evidence from normal reading.
  • Cutler, A., Norris, D., & McQueen, J. M. (1994). Modelling lexical access from continuous speech input. Dokkyo International Review, 7, 193-215.

    Abstract

    The recognition of speech involves the segmentation of continuous utterances into their component words. Cross-linguistic evidence is briefly reviewed which suggests that although there are language-specific solutions to this segmentation problem, they have one thing in common: they are all based on language rhythm. In English, segmentation is stress-based: strong syllables are postulated to be the onsets of words. Segmentation, however, can also be achieved by a process of competition between activated lexical hypotheses, as in the Shortlist model. A series of experiments is summarised showing that segmentation of continuous speech depends on both lexical competition and a metrically-guided procedure. In the final section, the implementation of metrical segmentation in the Shortlist model is described: the activation of lexical hypotheses matching strong syllables in the input is boosted and that of hypotheses mismatching strong syllables in the input is penalised.
  • Cutler, A., & Otake, T. (1994). Mora or phoneme? Further evidence for language-specific listening. Journal of Memory and Language, 33, 824-844. doi:10.1006/jmla.1994.1039.

    Abstract

    Japanese listeners detect speech sound targets which correspond precisely to a mora (a phonological unit which is the unit of rhythm in Japanese) more easily than targets which do not. English listeners detect medial vowel targets more slowly than consonants. Six phoneme detection experiments investigated these effects in both subject populations, presented with native- and foreign-language input. Japanese listeners produced faster and more accurate responses to moraic than to nonmoraic targets both in Japanese and, where possible, in English; English listeners responded differently. The detection disadvantage for medial vowels appeared with English listeners both in English and in Japanese; again, Japanese listeners responded differently. Some processing operations which listeners apply to speech input are language-specific; these language-specific procedures, appropriate for listening to input in the native language, may be applied to foreign-language input irrespective of whether they remain appropriate.
  • Cutler, A., Mehler, J., Norris, D., & Segui, J. (1988). Limits on bilingualism [Letters to Nature]. Nature, 340, 229-230. doi:10.1038/340229a0.

    Abstract

    SPEECH, in any language, is continuous; speakers provide few reliable cues to the boundaries of words, phrases, or other meaningful units. To understand speech, listeners must divide the continuous speech stream into portions that correspond to such units. This segmentation process is so basic to human language comprehension that psycholinguists long assumed that all speakers would do it in the same way. In previous research1,2, however, we reported that segmentation routines can be language-specific: speakers of French process spoken words syllable by syllable, but speakers of English do not. French has relatively clear syllable boundaries and syllable-based timing patterns, whereas English has relatively unclear syllable boundaries and stress-based timing; thus syllabic segmentation would work more efficiently in the comprehension of French than in the comprehension of English. Our present study suggests that at this level of language processing, there are limits to bilingualism: a bilingual speaker has one and only one basic language.
  • Cutler, A. (1989). Straw modules [Commentary/Massaro: Speech perception]. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 12, 760-762.
  • Cutler, A. (1989). The new Victorians. New Scientist, (1663), 66.
  • Cutler, A. (1994). The perception of rhythm in language. Cognition, 50, 79-81. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(94)90021-3.
  • Cutler, A., & Norris, D. (1988). The role of strong syllables in segmentation for lexical access. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 14, 113-121. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.14.1.113.

    Abstract

    A model of speech segmentation in a stress language is proposed, according to which the occurrence of a strong syllable triggers segmentation of the speech signal, whereas occurrence of a weak syllable does not trigger segmentation. We report experiments in which listeners detected words embedded in nonsense bisyllables more slowly when the bisyllable had two strong syllables than when it had a strong and a weak syllable; mint was detected more slowly in mintayve than in mintesh. According to our proposed model, this result is an effect of segmentation: When the second syllable is strong, it is segmented from the first syllable, and successful detection of the embedded word therefore requires assembly of speech material across a segmentation position. Speech recognition models involving phonemic or syllabic recoding, or based on strictly left-to-right processes, do not predict this result. It is argued that segmentation at strong syllables in continuous speech recognition serves the purpose of detecting the most efficient locations at which to initiate lexical access. (C) 1988 by the American Psychological Association
  • Cutler, A., & Fay, D. (1975). You have a Dictionary in your Head, not a Thesaurus. Texas Linguistic Forum, 1, 27-40.
  • Eisenbeiß, S., Bartke, S., Weyerts, H., & Clahsen, H. (1994). Elizitationsverfahren in der Spracherwerbsforschung: Nominalphrasen, Kasus, Plural, Partizipien. Theorie des Lexikons, 57.
  • Fisher, S. E., Black, G. C. M., Lloyd, S. E., Wrong, O. M., Thakker, R. V., & Craig, I. W. (1994). Isolation and partial characterization of a chloride channel gene which is expressed in kidney and is a candidate for Dent's disease (an X-linked hereditary nephrolithiasis). Human Molecular Genetics, 3, 2053-2059.

    Abstract

    Dent's disease, an X-linked renal tubular disorder, is a form of Fanconi syndrome which is characterized by proteinuria, hypercalciuria, nephrocalcinosis, kidney stones and renal failure. Previous studies localised the gene responsible to Xp11.22, within a microdeletion involving the hypervariable locus DXS255. Further analysis using new probes which flank this locus indicate that the deletion is less than 515 kb. A 185 kb YAC containing DXS255 was used to screen a cDNA library from adult kidney in order to isolate coding sequences falling within the deleted region which may be implicated in the disease aetiology. We identified two clones which are evolutionarily conserved, and detect a 9.5 kb transcript which is expressed predominantly in the kidney. Sequence analysis of 780 bp of ORF from the clones suggests that the identified gene, termed hCIC-K2, encodes a new member of the CIC family of voltage-gated chloride channels. Genomic fragments detected by the cDNA clones are completely absent in patients who have an associated microdeletion. On the basis of the expression pattern, proposed function and deletion mapping, hCIC-K2 is a strong candidate for Dent's disease.
  • Hagoort, P. (1994). Afasie als een tekort aan tijd voor spreken en verstaan. De Psycholoog, 4, 153-154.
  • Hagoort, P. (1994). Het brein op een kier: Over hersenen gesproken. Psychologie, 13, 42-46.
  • Hagoort, P. (1989). Processing of lexical ambiguities: a comment on Milberg, Blumstein, and Dworetzky (1987). Brain and Language, 36, 335-348. doi:10.1016/0093-934X(89)90070-9.

    Abstract

    In a study by Milberg, Blumstein, and Dworetzky (1987), normal control subjects and Wernicke's and Broca's aphasics performed a lexical decision task on the third element of auditorily presented triplets of words with either a word or a nonword as target. In three of the four types of word triplets, the first and the third words were related to one or both meanings of the second word, which was semantically ambiguous. The fourth type of word triplet consisted of three unrelated, unambiguous words, functioning as baseline. Milberg et al. (1987) claim that the results for their control subjects are similar to those reported by Schvaneveldt, Meyer, and Becker's original study (1976) with the same prime types, and so interpret these as evidence for a selective lexical access of the different meanings of ambiguous words. It is argued here that Milberg et al. only partially replicate the Schvaneveldt et al. results. Moreover, the results of Milberg et al. are not fully in line with the selective access hypothesis adopted. Replication of the Milberg et al. (1987) study with Dutch materials, using both a design without and a design with repetition of the same target words for the same subjects led to the original pattern as reported by Schvaneveldt et al. (1976). In the design with four separate presentations of the same target word, a strong repetition effect was found. It is therefore argued that the discrepancy between the Milberg et al. results on the one hand, and the Schvaneveldt et al. results on the other, might be due to the absence of a control for repetition effects in the within-subject design used by Milberg et al. It is concluded that this makes the results for both normal and aphasic subjects in the latter study difficult to interpret in terms of a selective access model for normal processing.
  • Heeschen, C., Ryalls, J., & Hagoort, P. (1988). Psychological stress in Broca's versus Wernicke's aphasia. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 2, 309-316. doi:10.3109/02699208808985262.

    Abstract

    We advance the hypothesis here that the higher-than-average vocal pitch (FO) found for speech of Broca's aphasics in experimental settings is due, in part, to increased psychological stress. Two experiments were conducted which manipulated conversational constraints and the sentence forms to be produced by aphasic patients. Our study revealed significant differences between changes in vocal pitch of agrammatic Broca's aphasics versus those of Wernicke's aphasics and normal controls. It is suggested that the greater psychological stress experienced by the Broca's aphasics, but not by the Wernicke's aphasics, accounts for these observed differences.
  • Henderson, L., Coltheart, M., Cutler, A., & Vincent, N. (1988). Preface. Linguistics, 26(4), 519-520. doi:10.1515/ling.1988.26.4.519.
  • Jescheniak, J. D., & Levelt, W. J. M. (1994). Word frequency effects in speech production: Retrieval of syntactic information and of phonological form. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 20(4), 824-843.

    Abstract

    In 7 experiments the authors investigated the locus of word frequency effects in speech production. Experiment 1 demonstrated a frequency effect in picture naming that was robust over repetitions. Experiments 2, 3, and 7 excluded contributions from object identification and initiation of articulation. Experiments 4 and 5 investigated whether the effect arises in accessing the syntactic word (lemma) by using a grammatical gender decision task. Although a frequency effect was found, it dissipated under repeated access to word's gender. Experiment 6 tested whether the robust frequency effect arises in accessing the phonological form (lexeme) by having Ss translate words that produced homophones. Low-frequent homophones behaved like high-frequent controls, inheriting the accessing speed of their high-frequent homophone twins. Because homophones share the lexeme, not the lemma, this suggests a lexeme-level origin of the robust effect.
  • Kempen, G. (1994). De mythe van het woordbeeld: Spellingherziening taalpsychologisch doorgelicht. Spektator, tijdschrift voor Neerlandistiek, 23, 292-301.
  • Kempen, G. (1975). De taalgebruiker in de mens: Schets van zijn bouw en funktie, toepassingen op moedertaal en vreemde taal verwerving. Forum der Letteren, 16, 132-158.
  • Kempen, G. (1994). In de grammaticadiscussie is de empirie aan zet. Levende Talen, 486, 27-28.
  • Kempen, G., & Vosse, T. (1989). Incremental syntactic tree formation in human sentence processing: A cognitive architecture based on activation decay and simulated annealing. Connection Science, 1(3), 273-290. doi:10.1080/09540098908915642.

    Abstract

    A new cognitive architecture is proposed for the syntactic aspects of human sentence processing. The architecture, called Unification Space, is biologically inspired but not based on neural nets. Instead it relies on biosynthesis as a basic metaphor. We use simulated annealing as an optimization technique which searches for the best configuration of isolated syntactic segments or subtrees in the final parse tree. The gradually decaying activation of individual syntactic nodes determines the ‘global excitation level’ of the system. This parameter serves the function of ‘computational temperature’ in simulated annealing. We have built a computer implementation of the architecture which simulates well-known sentence understanding phenomena. We report successful simulations of the psycholinguistic effects of clause embedding, minimal attachment, right association and lexical ambiguity. In addition, we simulated impaired sentence understanding as observable in agrammatic patients. Since the Unification Space allows for contextual (semantic and pragmatic) influences on the syntactic tree formation process, it belongs to the class of interactive sentence processing models.
  • Kempen, G. (1994). Klare taal: Zicht op zinsbouw. Natuur en Techniek, 62, 380-391.
  • Kempen, G. (1994). Nederlands als computertaal. EMNET: Nieuwsbrief Elektronische Media, 2, 9-12.
  • Kempen, G. (1984). Taaltechnologie voor het Nederlands: Vorderingen bij de bouw van een Nederlandstalig dialoog- en auteursysteem. Toegepaste Taalwetenschap in Artikelen, 19, 48-58.
  • Kempen, G., Konst, L., & De Smedt, K. (1984). Taaltechnologie voor het Nederlands: Vorderingen bij de bouw van een Nederlandstalig dialoog- en auteursysteem. Informatie, 26, 878-881.
  • Kempen, G. (1988). Preface. Acta Psychologica, 69(3), 205-206. doi:10.1016/0001-6918(88)90032-7.
  • Kempen, G. (1975). Theoretiseren en experimenteren in de cognitieve psychologie. Gedrag: Tijdschrift voor Psychologie, 6, 341-347.
  • Klein, W. (1975). Eine Theorie der Wortstellungsveränderung: Einige kritische Bemerkungen zu Vennemanns Theorie der Sprachentwicklung. Linguistische Berichte, 37(75), 46-57.
  • Klein, W. (1975). Einleitung. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik; Metzler, Stuttgart, 5(18), 7-8.
  • Klein, W., & Dittmar, N. (1994). Einleitung. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik; Metzler, Stuttgart, (93), 7-8.
  • Klein, W. (1988). Einleitung. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik; Metzler, Stuttgart, 18(69), 7-8.
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1989). Kindersprache [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (73).
  • Klein, W., & Dittmar, N. (Eds.). (1994). Interkulturelle Kommunikation [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (93).
  • Klein, W. (1989). Introspection into what? Review of C. Faerch & G. Kaspar (Eds.) Introspection in second language research 1987. Contemporary Psychology, 34(12), 1119-1120.
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1984). Textverständlichkeit - Textverstehen [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (55).
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1975). Sprache ausländischer Arbeiter [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (18).
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1988). Sprache Kranker [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (69).
  • Klein, W. (1988). Sprache und Krankheit: Ein paar Anmerkungen. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 69, 9-20.
  • Klein, W. (1989). Sprechen lernen - das Selbstverständlichste von der Welt: Einleitung. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 73, 7-17.
  • Klein, W. (1989). Schreiben oder Lesen, aber nicht beides, oder: Vorschlag zur Wiedereinführung der Keilschrift mittels Hammer und Meißel. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 74, 116-119.
  • Klein, W. (1975). Zur Sprache ausländischer Arbeiter: Syntaktische Analysen und Aspekte des kommunikativen Verhaltens. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 18, 78-121.
  • Levelt, W. J. M., & Wheeldon, L. (1994). Do speakers have access to a mental syllabary? Cognition, 50, 239-269. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(94)90030-2.

    Abstract

    The first, theoretical part of this paper sketches a framework for phonological encoding in which the speaker successively generates phonological syllables in connected speech. The final stage of this process, phonetic encoding, consists of accessing articulatory gestural scores for each of these syllables in a "mental syllabary". The second, experimental part studies various predictions derived from this theory. The main finding is a syllable frequency effect: words ending in a high-frequent syllable are named faster than words ending in a low-frequent syllable. As predicted, this syllable frequency effect is independent of and additive to the effect of word frequency on naming latency. The effect, moreover, is not due to the complexity of the word-final syllable. In the General Discussion, the syllabary model is further elaborated with respect to phonological underspecification and activation spreading. Alternative accounts of the empirical findings in terms of core syllables and demisyllables are considered.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1989). Hochleistung in Millisekunden: Sprechen und Sprache verstehen. Universitas, 44(511), 56-68.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1994). Hoofdstukken uit de psychologie. Nederlands tijdschrift voor de psychologie, 49, 1-14.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1988). Onder sociale wetenschappen. Mededelingen van de Afdeling Letterkunde, 51(2), 41-55.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1984). Sprache und Raum. Texten und Schreiben, 20, 18-21.
  • Levinson, S. C. (1989). A review of Relevance [book review of Dan Sperber & Deirdre Wilson, Relevance: communication and cognition]. Journal of Linguistics, 25, 455-472.
  • Levinson, S. C., & Brown, P. (1994). Immanuel Kant among the Tenejapans: Anthropology as empirical philosophy. Ethos, 22(1), 3-41. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/640467.

    Abstract

    This paper confronts Kant’s (1768) view of human conceptions of space as fundamentally divided along the three planes of the human body with an empirical case study in the Mayan community of Tenejapa in southern Mexico, whose inhabitants do not use left/right distinctions to project regions in space. Tenejapans have names for the left hand and the right hand, and also a term for hand/arm in general, but they do not generalize the distinction to spatial regions -- there is no linguistic expression glossing as 'to the left' or 'on the left-hand side', for example. Tenejapans also show a remarkable indifference to incongruous counterparts. Nor is there any system of value associations with the left and the right. The Tenejapan evidence that speaks to these Kantian themes points in two directions: (a) Kant was wrong to think that the structure of spatial regions founded on the human frame, and in particular the distinctions based on left and right, are in some sense essential human intuitions; (b) Kant may have been right to think that the left/right opposition, the perception of enantiomorphs, clockwiseness, East-West dichotomies, etc., are intimately connected to an overall system of spatial conception.
  • Levinson, S. C., & Haviland, J. B. (1994). Introduction: Spatial conceptualization in Mayan languages. Linguistics, 32(4/5), 613-622.
  • Levinson, S. C., & Haviland, J. B. (Eds.). (1994). Space in Mayan languages [Special Issue]. Linguistics, 32(4/5).
  • Levinson, S. C. (1994). Vision, shape and linguistic description: Tzeltal body-part terminology and object description. Linguistics, 32(4/5), 791-856.
  • McQueen, J. M., Norris, D., & Cutler, A. (1994). Competition in spoken word recognition: Spotting words in other words. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 20, 621-638.

    Abstract

    Although word boundaries are rarely clearly marked, listeners can rapidly recognize the individual words of spoken sentences. Some theories explain this in terms of competition between multiply activated lexical hypotheses; others invoke sensitivity to prosodic structure. We describe a connectionist model, SHORTLIST, in which recognition by activation and competition is successful with a realistically sized lexicon. Three experiments are then reported in which listeners detected real words embedded in nonsense strings, some of which were themselves the onsets of longer words. Effects both of competition between words and of prosodic structure were observed, suggesting that activation and competition alone are not sufficient to explain word recognition in continuous speech. However, the results can be accounted for by a version of SHORTLIST that is sensitive to prosodic structure.
  • Mehta, G., & Cutler, A. (1988). Detection of target phonemes in spontaneous and read speech. Language and Speech, 31, 135-156.

    Abstract

    Although spontaneous speech occurs more frequently in most listeners’ experience than read speech, laboratory studies of human speech recognition typically use carefully controlled materials read from a script. The phonological and prosodic characteristics of spontaneous and read speech differ considerably, however, which suggests that laboratory results may not generalize to the recognition of spontaneous and read speech materials, and their response time to detect word-initial target phonemes was measured. Response were, overall, equally fast in each speech mode. However analysis of effects previously reported in phoneme detection studies revealed significant differences between speech modes. In read speech but not in spontaneous speech, later targets were detected more rapidly than earlier targets, and targets preceded by long words were detected more rapidly than targets preceded by short words. In contrast, in spontaneous speech but not in read speech, targets were detected more rapidly in accented than unaccented words and in strong than in weak syllables. An explanation for this pattern is offered in terms of characteristic prosodic differences between spontaneous and read speech. The results support claim from previous work that listeners pay great attention to prosodic information in the process of recognizing speech.
  • Meyer, A. S. (1994). Timing in sentence production. Journal of Memory and Language, 33, 471-492. doi:doi:10.1006/jmla.1994.1022.

    Abstract

    Recently, a new theory of timing in sentence production has been proposed by Ferreira (1993). This theory assumes that at the phonological level, each syllable of an utterance is assigned one or more abstract timing units depending on its position in the prosodic structure. The number of timing units associated with a syllable determines the time interval between its onset and the onset of the next syllable. An interesting prediction from the theory, which was confirmed in Ferreira's experiments with speakers of American English, is that the time intervals between syllable onsets should only depend on the syllables' positions in the prosodic structure, but not on their segmental content. However, in the present experiments, which were carried out in Dutch, the intervals between syllable onsets were consistently longer for phonetically long syllables than for short syllables. The implications of this result for models of timing in sentence production are discussed.
  • Norris, D., & Cutler, A. (1988). Speech recognition in French and English. MRC News, 39, 30-31.
  • Norris, D., & Cutler, A. (1988). The relative accessibility of phonemes and syllables. Perception and Psychophysics, 43, 541-550. Retrieved from http://www.psychonomic.org/search/view.cgi?id=8530.

    Abstract

    Previous research comparing detection times for syllables and for phonemes has consistently found that syllables are responded to faster than phonemes. This finding poses theoretical problems for strictly hierarchical models of speech recognition, in which smaller units should be able to be identified faster than larger units. However, inspection of the characteristics of previous experiments’stimuli reveals that subjects have been able to respond to syllables on the basis of only a partial analysis of the stimulus. In the present experiment, five groups of subjects listened to identical stimulus material. Phoneme and syllable monitoring under standard conditions was compared with monitoring under conditions in which near matches of target and stimulus occurred on no-response trials. In the latter case, when subjects were forced to analyze each stimulus fully, phonemes were detected faster than syllables.
  • Praamstra, P., Meyer, A. S., & Levelt, W. J. M. (1994). Neurophysiological manifestations of auditory phonological processing: Latency variation of a negative ERP component timelocked to phonological mismatch. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 6(3), 204-219. doi:10.1162/jocn.1994.6.3.204.

    Abstract

    Two experiments examined phonological priming effects on reaction times, error rates, and event-related brain potential (ERP) measures in an auditory lexical decision task. In Experiment 1 related prime-target pairs rhymed, and in Experiment 2 they alliterated (i.e., shared the consonantal onset and vowel). Event-related potentials were recorded in a delayed response task. Reaction times and error rates were obtained both for the delayed and an immediate response task. The behavioral data of Experiment 1 provided evidence for phonological facilitation of word, but not of nonword decisions. The brain potentials were more negative to unrelated than to rhyming word-word pairs between 450 and 700 msec after target onset. This negative enhancement was not present for word-nonword pairs. Thus, the ERP results match the behavioral data. The behavioral data of Experiment 2 provided no evidence for phonological Facilitation. However, between 250 and 450 msec after target onset, i.e., considerably earlier than in Experiment 1, brain potentials were more negative for unrelated than for alliterating word and word-nonword pairs. It is argued that the ERP effects in the two experiments could be modulations of the same underlying component, possibly the N400. The difference in the timing of the effects is likely to be due to the fact that the shared segments in related stimulus pairs appeared in different word positions in the two experiments.
  • Rösler, D., & Skiba, R. (1988). Möglichkeiten für den Einsatz einer Lehrmaterial-Datenbank in der Lehrerfortbildung. Deutsch lernen, 14(1), 24-31.
  • Scott, D. R., & Cutler, A. (1984). Segmental phonology and the perception of syntactic structure. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 23, 450-466. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science//journal/00225371.

    Abstract

    Recent research in speech production has shown that syntactic structure is reflected in segmental phonology--the application of certain phonological rules of English (e.g., palatalization and alveolar flapping) is inhibited across phrase boundaries. We examined whether such segmental effects can be used in speech perception as cues to syntactic structure, and the relation between the use of these segmental features as syntactic markers in production and perception. Speakers of American English (a dialect in which the above segmental effects occur) could indeed use the segmental cues in syntax perception; speakers of British English (in which the effects do not occur) were unable to make use of them, while speakers of British English who were long-term residents of the United States showed intermediate performance.
  • Senft, G. (1988). A grammar of Manam by Frantisek Lichtenberk [Book review]. Language and linguistics in Melanesia, 18, 169-173.
  • Senft, G. (1994). Ein Vorschlag, wie man standardisiert Daten zum Thema 'Sprache, Kognition und Konzepte des Raumes' in verschiedenen Kulturen erheben kann. Linguistische Berichte, 154, 413-429.
  • Senft, G. (1988). [Review of the book Functional syntax: Anaphora, discourse and empathy by Susumu Kuno]. Journal of Pragmatics, 12, 396-399. doi:10.1016/0378-2166(88)90040-9.
  • Senft, G. (1994). [Review of the book Language, culture and society: An introduction by Zdenek Salzmann]. Man, 29, 756-757.
  • Senft, G. (1994). Grammaticalisation of body-part terms in Kilivila. Language and Linguistics in Melanesia, 25, 98-99.
  • Senft, G. (1994). Spatial reference in Kilivila: The Tinkertoy Matching Games - A case study. Language and Linguistics in Melanesia, 25, 55-93.
  • Senft, G. (1994). These 'Procrustean' feelings: Some of my problems in describing Kilivila. Semaian, 11, 86-105.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1994). [Review of the Dictionary of St. Lucian Creole, part 1: Kweyol- English', part 2: English-Kweyol compiled by Jones E. Mondesir and ed. by Lawrence D. Carrington]. Linguistics, 32(1), 157-158. doi:10.1515/ling.1991.29.4.719.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1988). [Review of the book Pidgin and Creole linguistics by P. Mühlhäusler]. Studies in Language, 12(2), 504-513.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1988). [Review of the Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary (Collins Birmingham University International Language Database)]. Journal of Semantics, 6, 169-174. doi:10.1093/jos/6.1.169.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1963). Naar aanleiding van Dr. F. Balk-Smit Duyzentkunst "De Grammatische Functie". Levende Talen, 219, 179-186.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1989). Neue Entwicklungen im Wahrheitsbegriff. Studia Leibnitiana, 21(2), 155-173.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1984). Operator lowering. Linguistics, 22(5), 573-627. doi:10.1515/ling.1984.22.5.573.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1988). Presupposition and negation. Journal of Semantics, 6(3/4), 175-226. doi:10.1093/jos/6.1.175.

    Abstract

    This paper is an attempt to show that given the available observations on the behaviour of negation and presuppositions there is no simpler explanation than to assume that natural language has two distinct negation operators, the minimal negation which preserves presuppositions and the radical negation which does not. The three-valued logic emerging from this distinction, and especially its model-theory, are discussed in detail. It is, however, stressed that the logic itself is only epiphenomenal on the structures and processes involved in the interpretation of sentences. Horn (1985) brings new observations to bear, related with metalinguistic uses of negation, and proposes a “pragmatic” ambiguity in negation to the effect that in descriptive (or “straight”) use negation is the classical bivalent operator, whereas in metalinguistic use it is non-truthfunctional but only pragmatic. Van der Sandt (to appear) accepts Horn's observations but proposes a different solution: he proposes an ambiguity in the argument clause of the negation operator (which, for him, too, is classical and bivalent), according to whether the negation takes only the strictly asserted proposition or covers also the presuppositions, the (scalar) implicatures and other implications (in particular of style and register) of the sentence expressing that proposition. These theories are discussed at some length. The three-valued analysis is defended on the basis of partly new observations, which do not seem to fit either Horn's or Van der Sandt's solution. It is then placed in the context of incremental discourse semantics, where both negations are seen to do the job of keeping increments out of the discourse domain, though each does so in its own specific way. The metalinguistic character of the radical negation is accounted for in terms of the incremental apparatus. The metalinguistic use of negation in denials of implicatures or implications of style and register is regarded as a particular form of minimal negation, where the negation denies not the proposition itself but the appropriateness of the use of an expression in it. This appropriateness negation is truth-functional and not pragmatic, but it applies to a particular, independently motivated, analysis of the argument clause. The ambiguity of negation in natural language is different from the ordinary type of ambiguity found in the lexicon. Normally, lexical ambiguities are idiosyncratic, highly contingent, and unpredictable from language to language. In the case of negation, however, the two meanings are closely related, both truth-conditionally and incrementally. Moreover, the mechanism of discourse incrementation automatically selects the right meaning. These properties are taken to provide a sufficient basis for discarding the, otherwise valid, objection that negation is unlikely to be ambiguous because no known language makes a lexical distinction between the two readings.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1984). The bioprogram hypothesis: Facts and fancy. A commentary on Bickerton "The language bioprogram hypothesis". Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 7(2), 208-209. doi:10.1017/S0140525X00044356.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1984). The comparative revisited. Journal of Semantics, 3(1), 109-141. doi:10.1093/jos/3.1-2.109.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1994). Soaps and serials. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, 9(1), 131-149. doi:10.1075/jpcl.9.1.18seu.
  • Smith, M. R., Cutler, A., Butterfield, S., & Nimmo-Smith, I. (1989). The perception of rhythm and word boundaries in noise-masked speech. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 32, 912-920.

    Abstract

    The present experiment tested the suggestion that human listeners may exploit durational information in speech to parse continuous utterances into words. Listeners were presented with six-syllable unpredictable utterances under noise-masking, and were required to judge between alternative word strings as to which best matched the rhythm of the masked utterances. For each utterance there were four alternative strings: (a) an exact rhythmic and word boundary match, (b) a rhythmic mismatch, and (c) two utterances with the same rhythm as the masked utterance, but different word boundary locations. Listeners were clearly able to perceive the rhythm of the masked utterances: The rhythmic mismatch was chosen significantly less often than any other alternative. Within the three rhythmically matched alternatives, the exact match was chosen significantly more often than either word boundary mismatch. Thus, listeners both perceived speech rhythm and used durational cues effectively to locate the position of word boundaries.
  • Van de Geer, J. P., & Levelt, W. J. M. (1963). Detection of visual patterns disturbed by noise: An exploratory study. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 15, 192-204. doi:10.1080/17470216308416324.

    Abstract

    An introductory study of the perception of stochastically specified events is reported. The initial problem was to determine whether the perceiver can split visual input data of this kind into random and determined components. The inability of subjects to do so with the stimulus material used (a filmlike sequence of dot patterns), led to the more general question of how subjects code this kind of visual material. To meet the difficulty of defining the subjects' responses, two experiments were designed. In both, patterns were presented as a rapid sequence of dots on a screen. The patterns were more or less disturbed by “noise,” i.e. the dots did not appear exactly at their proper places. In the first experiment the response was a rating on a semantic scale, in the second an identification from among a set of alternative patterns. The results of these experiments give some insight in the coding systems adopted by the subjects. First, noise appears to be detrimental to pattern recognition, especially to patterns with little spread. Second, this shows connections with the factors obtained from analysis of the semantic ratings, e.g. easily disturbed patterns show a large drop in the semantic regularity factor, when only a little noise is added.
  • Van de Geer, J. P., Levelt, W. J. M., & Plomp, R. (1962). The connotation of musical consonance. Acta Psychologica, 20, 308-319.

    Abstract

    As a preliminary to further research on musical consonance an explanatory investigation was made on the different modes of judgment of musical intervals. This was done by way of a semantic differential. Subjects rated 23 intervals against 10 scales. In a factor analysis three factors appeared: pitch, evaluation and fusion. The relation between these factors and some physical characteristics has been investigated. The scale consonant-dissonant showed to be purely evaluative (in opposition to Stumpf's theory). This evaluative connotation is not in accordance with the musicological meaning of consonance. Suggestions to account for this difference have been given.

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