Publications

Displaying 1 - 48 of 48
  • Baayen, R. H., & Schreuder, R. (2003). Morphological structure in language processing. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Bauer, B. L. M., & Pinault, G.-J. (Eds.). (2003). Language in time and space: A festschrift for Werner Winter on the occasion of his 80th birthday. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Bauer, B. L. M. (1995). The emergence and development of SVO patterning in Latin and French. Diachronic and psycholinguistic perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Abstract

    This book examines Latin word order, its historical origins in Proto-Indo-European and the shift in ordering patterns that took place in syntax and morphology in the history of Latin and (early) French (OV or left branching giving way to VO or right branching). Subsequently, analysis of the acquisition of ordering patterns shows that the archaic structuration—when complex—is acquired with difficulty. Diachronic and psycholinguistic analysis therefore demonstrates that the order of grammatical structures in Modern French, for example, is the result of a long-lasting development that psycholinguistic data can account for.
  • Bowerman, M., & Meyer, A. (1991). Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics: Annual Report Nr.12 1991. Nijmegen: MPI for Psycholinguistics.
  • Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge University Press.

    Abstract

    This study is about the principles for constructing polite speech. The core of it was published as Brown and Levinson (1978); here it is reissued with a new introduction which surveys the now considerable literature in linguistics, psychology and the social sciences that the original extended essay stimulated, and suggests new directions for research. We describe and account for some remarkable parallelisms in the linguistic construction of utterances with which people express themselves in different languges and cultures. A motive for these parallels is isolated - politeness, broadly defined to include both polite friendliness and polite formality - and a universal model is constructed outlining the abstract principles underlying polite usages. This is based on the detailed study of three unrelated languages and cultures: the Tamil of south India, the Tzeltal spoken by Mayan Indians in Chiapas, Mexico, and the English of the USA and England, supplemented by examples from other cultures. Of general interest is the point that underneath the apparent diversity of polite behaviour in different societies lie some general pan-human principles of social interaction, and the model of politeness provides a tool for analysing the quality of social relations in any society.
  • Coulson, S., & Lai, V. T. (Eds.). (2016). The metaphorical brain [Research topic]. Lausanne: Frontiers Media. doi:10.3389/978-2-88919-772-9.

    Abstract

    This Frontiers Special Issue will synthesize current findings on the cognitive neuroscience of metaphor, provide a forum for voicing novel perspectives, and promote new insights into the metaphorical brain.
  • Dietrich, R., Klein, W., & Noyau, C. (1995). The acquisition of temporality in a second language. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Dimroth, C., & Starren, M. (Eds.). (2003). Information structure and the dynamics of language acquisition. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Abstract

    The papers in this volume focus on the impact of information structure on language acquisition, thereby taking different linguistic approaches into account. They start from an empirical point of view, and examine data from natural first and second language acquisition, which cover a wide range of varieties, from early learner language to native speaker production and from gesture to Creole prototypes. The central theme is the interplay between principles of information structure and linguistic structure and its impact on the functioning and development of the learner's system. The papers examine language-internal explanatory factors and in particular the communicative and structural forces that push and shape the acquisition process, and its outcome. On the theoretical level, the approach adopted appeals both to formal and communicative constraints on a learner’s language in use. Two empirical domains provide a 'testing ground' for the respective weight of grammatical versus functional determinants in the acquisition process: (1) the expression of finiteness and scope relations at the utterance level and (2) the expression of anaphoric relations at the discourse level.
  • Doherty, M., & Klein, W. (Eds.). (1991). Übersetzung [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (84).
  • Dunn, M., Levinson, S. C., Lindström, E., Reesink, G., & Terrill, A. (2003). Island Melanesia elicitation materials. Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.885547.

    Abstract

    The Island Melanesia project was initiated to collect data on the little-known Papuan languages of Island Melanesia, and to explore the origins of and relationships between these languages. The project materials from the 2003 field season focus on language related to cultural domains (e.g., material culture) and on targeted grammatical description. Five tasks are included: Proto-Oceanic lexicon, Grammatical questionnaire and lexicon, Kinship questionnaire, Domains of likely pre-Austronesian terminology, and Botanical collection questionnaire.
  • Eibl-Eibesfeldt, I., & Senft, G. (1987). Studienbrief Rituelle Kommunikation. Hagen: FernUniversität Gesamthochschule Hagen, Fachbereich Erziehungs- und Sozialwissenschaften, Soziologie, Kommunikation - Wissen - Kultur.
  • Enfield, N. J. (2003). Linguistic epidemiology: Semantics and grammar of language contact in mainland Southeast Asia. London: Routledge Curzon.
  • Enfield, N. J. (Ed.). (2003). Field research manual 2003, part I: Multimodal interaction, space, event representation. Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
  • Fernandez-Vest, M. M. J., & Van Valin Jr., R. D. (Eds.). (2016). Information structure and spoken language in a cross-linguistics perspective. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Floccia, C., Sambrook, T. D., Delle Luche, C., Kwok, R., Goslin, J., White, L., Cattani, A., Sullivan, E., Abbot-Smith, K., Krott, A., Mills, D., Rowland, C. F., Gervain, J., & Plunkett, K. (2018). Vocabulary of 2-year-olds learning learning English and an additional language: Norms and effects of linguistic distance. Hoboken: Wiley. doi:10.1111/mono.12348.
  • Flores d'Arcais, G., & Lahiri, A. (1987). Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics: Annual Report Nr.8 1987. Nijmegen: MPI for Psycholinguistics.
  • Floyd, S., Norcliffe, E., & San Roque, L. (Eds.). (2018). Egophoricity. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • De Groot, A. M. B., & Hagoort, P. (Eds.). (2018). Research methods in psycholinguistics and the neurobiology of language: A practical guide. Oxford: Wiley.
  • Hendriks, H., & McQueen, J. M. (1995). Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics: Annual Report Nr.16 1995. Nijmegen: MPI for Psycholinguistics.
  • Holler, J., Kendrick, K. H., Casillas, M., & Levinson, S. C. (Eds.). (2016). Turn-Taking in Human Communicative Interaction. Lausanne: Frontiers Media. doi:10.3389/978-2-88919-825-2.

    Abstract

    The core use of language is in face-to-face conversation. This is characterized by rapid turn-taking. This turn-taking poses a number central puzzles for the psychology of language.

    Consider, for example, that in large corpora the gap between turns is on the order of 100 to 300 ms, but the latencies involved in language production require minimally between 600ms (for a single word) or 1500 ms (for as simple sentence). This implies that participants in conversation are predicting the ends of the incoming turn and preparing in advance. But how is this done? What aspects of this prediction are done when? What happens when the prediction is wrong? What stops participants coming in too early? If the system is running on prediction, why is there consistently a mode of 100 to 300 ms in response time?

    The timing puzzle raises further puzzles: it seems that comprehension must run parallel with the preparation for production, but it has been presumed that there are strict cognitive limitations on more than one central process running at a time. How is this bottleneck overcome? Far from being 'easy' as some psychologists have suggested, conversation may be one of the most demanding cognitive tasks in our everyday lives. Further questions naturally arise: how do children learn to master this demanding task, and what is the developmental trajectory in this domain?

    Research shows that aspects of turn-taking such as its timing are remarkably stable across languages and cultures, but the word order of languages varies enormously. How then does prediction of the incoming turn work when the verb (often the informational nugget in a clause) is at the end? Conversely, how can production work fast enough in languages that have the verb at the beginning, thereby requiring early planning of the whole clause? What happens when one changes modality, as in sign languages -- with the loss of channel constraints is turn-taking much freer? And what about face-to-face communication amongst hearing individuals -- do gestures, gaze, and other body behaviors facilitate turn-taking? One can also ask the phylogenetic question: how did such a system evolve? There seem to be parallels (analogies) in duetting bird species, and in a variety of monkey species, but there is little evidence of anything like this among the great apes.

    All this constitutes a neglected set of problems at the heart of the psychology of language and of the language sciences. This research topic welcomes contributions from right across the board, for example from psycholinguists, developmental psychologists, students of dialogue and conversation analysis, linguists interested in the use of language, phoneticians, corpus analysts and comparative ethologists or psychologists. We welcome contributions of all sorts, for example original research papers, opinion pieces, and reviews of work in subfields that may not be fully understood in other subfields.
  • Huettig, F., Kolinsky, R., & Lachmann, T. (Eds.). (2018). The effects of literacy on cognition and brain functioning [Special Issue]. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 33(3).
  • Johnson, E., & Matsuo, A. (2003). Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics: Annual Report 2003. Nijmegen: MPI for Psycholinguistics.
  • Kempen, G. (1976). De taalgebruiker in de mens: Een uitzicht over de taalpsychologie. Groningen: H.D. Tjeenk Willink.
  • Kempen, G., & De Vroomen, P. (Eds.). (1991). Informatiewetenschap 1991: Wetenschappelijke bijdragen aan de eerste STINFON-conferentie. Leiden: STINFON.
  • Kempen, G. (Ed.). (1987). Natural language generation: New results in artificial intelligence, psychology and linguistics. Dordrecht: Nijhoff.
  • Kempen, G. (Ed.). (1987). Natuurlijke taal en kunstmatige intelligentie: Taal tussen mens en machine. Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff.
  • Kita, S. (Ed.). (2003). Pointing: Where language, culture, and cognition meet. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1995). Epoche [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (100).
  • Klein, W., & Franceschini, R. (Eds.). (2003). Einfache Sprache [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 131.
  • Klein, W. (2018). Looking at language. Berlin: De Gruyter.

    Abstract

    The volume presents an essential selection collected from the essays of Wolfgang Klein. In addition to journal and book articles, many of them published by Mouton, this book features new and unpublished texts by the author. It focuses, among other topics, on information structure, the expression of grammatical categories and the structure of learner varieties.
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1976). Psycholinguistik [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (23/24).
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1987). Sprache und Ritual [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (65).
  • Kuiper, K., McCann, H., Quinn, H., Aitchison, T., & Van der Veer, K. (2003). A syntactically annotated idiom dataset (SAID). Philadelphia: Linguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania.
  • Levinson, S. C. (2003). Space in language and cognition: Explorations in cognitive diversity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Levinson, S. C., Cutfield, S., Dunn, M., Enfield, N. J., & Meira, S. (Eds.). (2018). Demonstratives in cross-linguistic perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Abstract

    Demonstratives play a crucial role in the acquisition and use of language. Bringing together a team of leading scholars this detailed study, a first of its kind, explores meaning and use across fifteen typologically and geographically unrelated languages to find out what cross-linguistic comparisons and generalizations can be made, and how this might challenge current theory in linguistics, psychology, anthropology and philosophy. Using a shared experimental task, rounded out with studies of natural language use, specialists in each of the languages undertook extensive fieldwork for this comparative study of semantics and usage. An introduction summarizes the shared patterns and divergences in meaning and use that emerge.
  • Mani, N., Mishra, R. K., & Huettig, F. (Eds.). (2018). The interactive mind: Language, vision and attention. Chennai: Macmillan Publishers India.
  • Meyer, A. S., & Huettig, F. (Eds.). (2016). Speaking and Listening: Relationships Between Language Production and Comprehension [Special Issue]. Journal of Memory and Language, 89.
  • Nederstigt, U. (2003). Auch and noch in child and adult German. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Rösler, D., & Skiba, R. (1987). Eine Datenbank für den Sprachunterricht: Ein Lehrmaterial-Steinbruch für Deutsch als Zweitsprache. Mainz: Werkmeister.
  • Schiller, N. O., & Meyer, A. S. (Eds.). (2003). Phonetics and phonology in language comprehension and production. Differences and similarities. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Schmid, M. S., Berends, S. M., Bergmann, C., Brouwer, S., Meulman, N., Seton, B., Sprenger, S., & Stowe, L. A. (2016). Designing research on bilingual development: Behavioral and neurolinguistic experiments. Berlin: Springer.
  • Senft, G., & Wilkins, D. (1995). A man, a tree, and forget about the pigs: Space games, spatial reference and cross-linguistic comparison. Plenary paper presented by at the 19th international LAUD symposium "Language and space" Duisburg. Mimeo: Nijmegen.
  • Senft, B., & Senft, G. (2018). Growing up on the Trobriand Islands in Papua New Guinea - Childhood and educational ideologies in Tauwema. Amsterdam: Benjamins. doi:10.1075/clu.21.

    Abstract

    This volume deals with the children’s socialization on the Trobriands. After a survey of ethnographic studies on childhood, the book zooms in on indigenous ideas of conception and birth-giving, the children’s early development, their integration into playgroups, their games and their education within their `own little community’ until they reach the age of seven years. During this time children enjoy much autonomy and independence. Attempts of parental education are confined to a minimum. However, parents use subtle means to raise their children. Educational ideologies are manifest in narratives and in speeches addressed to children. They provide guidelines for their integration into the Trobrianders’ “balanced society” which is characterized by cooperation and competition. It does not allow individual accumulation of wealth – surplus property gained has to be redistributed – but it values the fame acquired by individuals in competitive rituals. Fame is not regarded as threatening the balance of their society.
  • Seuren, P. A. M., & Kempen, G. (Eds.). (2003). Verb constructions in German and Dutch. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (2016). Excursies in de tijd: Episodes uit de geschiedenis van onze beschaving. Beilen: Pharos uitgevers.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (2018). Semantic syntax (2nd rev. ed.). Leiden: Brill.

    Abstract

    This book presents a detailed formal machinery for the conversion of the Semantic Analyses (SAs) of sentences into surface structures of English, French, German, Dutch, and to some extent Turkish. The SAs are propositional structures consisting of a predicate and one, two or three argument terms, some of which can themselves be propositional structures. The surface structures are specified up to, but not including, the morphology. The book is thus an implementation of the programme formulated first by Albert Sechehaye (1870-1946) and then, independently, by James McCawley (1938-1999) in the school of Generative Semantics. It is the first, and so far the only formally precise and empirically motivated machinery in existence converting meaning representations into sentences of natural languages.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (2018). Saussure and Sechehaye: A study in the history of linguistics and the foundations of language. Leiden: Brill.
  • Terrill, A. (2003). A grammar of Lavukaleve. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

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