Publications

Displaying 1 - 100 of 296
  • Alhama, R. G., Scha, R., & Zudema, W. (2015). How should we evaluate models of segmentation in artificial language learning? In N. A. Taatgen, M. K. van Vugt, J. P. Borst, & K. Mehlhorn (Eds.), Proceedings of ICCM 2015 (pp. 172-173). Groningen: University of Groningen.

    Abstract

    One of the challenges that infants have to solve when learn- ing their native language is to identify the words in a con- tinuous speech stream. Some of the experiments in Artificial Grammar Learning (Saffran, Newport, and Aslin (1996); Saf- fran, Aslin, and Newport (1996); Aslin, Saffran, and Newport (1998) and many more) investigate this ability. In these ex- periments, subjects are exposed to an artificial speech stream that contains certain regularities. Adult participants are typ- ically tested with 2-alternative Forced Choice Tests (2AFC) in which they have to choose between a word and another sequence (typically a partword, a sequence resulting from misplacing boundaries).
  • Allen, S. E. M. (1998). A discourse-pragmatic explanation for the subject-object asymmetry in early null arguments. In A. Sorace, C. Heycock, & R. Shillcock (Eds.), Proceedings of the GALA '97 Conference on Language Acquisition (pp. 10-15). Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press.

    Abstract

    The present paper assesses discourse-pragmatic factors as a potential explanation for the subject-object assymetry in early child language. It identifies a set of factors which characterize typical situations of informativeness (Greenfield & Smith, 1976), and uses these factors to identify informative arguments in data from four children aged 2;0 through 3;6 learning Inuktitut as a first language. In addition, it assesses the extent of the links between features of informativeness on one hand and lexical vs. null and subject vs. object arguments on the other. Results suggest that a pragmatics account of the subject-object asymmetry can be upheld to a greater extent than previous research indicates, and that several of the factors characterizing informativeness are good indicators of those arguments which tend to be omitted in early child language.
  • Ameka, F. K. (2010). Information packaging constructions in Kwa: Micro-variation and typology. In E. O. Aboh, & J. Essegbey (Eds.), Topics in Kwa syntax (pp. 141-176). Dordrecht: Springer.

    Abstract

    Kwa languages such as Akye, Akan, Ewe, Ga, Likpe, Yoruba etc. are not prototypically “topic-prominent” like Chinese nor “focus-prominent” like Somali, yet they have dedicated structural positions in the clause, as well as morphological markers for signalling the information status of the component parts of information units. They could thus be seen as “discourse configurational languages” (Kiss 1995). In this chapter, I first argue for distinct positions in the left periphery of the clause in these languages for scene-setting topics, contrastive topics and focus. I then describe the morpho-syntactic properties of various information packaging constructions and the variations that we find across the languages in this domain.
  • Anderson, P., Harandi, N. M., Moisik, S. R., Stavness, I., & Fels, S. (2015). A comprehensive 3D biomechanically-driven vocal tract model including inverse dynamics for speech research. In Proceedings of Interspeech 2015: The 16th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (pp. 2395-2399).

    Abstract

    We introduce a biomechanical model of oropharyngeal structures that adds the soft-palate, pharynx, and larynx to our previous models of jaw, skull, hyoid, tongue, and face in a unified model. The model includes a comprehensive description of the upper airway musculature, using point-to-point muscles that may either be embedded within the deformable structures or operate exter- nally. The airway is described by an air-tight mesh that fits and deforms with the surrounding articulators, which enables dynamic coupling to our articulatory speech synthesizer. We demonstrate that the biomechanics, in conjunction with the skinning, supports a range from physically realistic to simplified vocal tract geometries to investigate different approaches to aeroacoustic modeling of vocal tract. Furthermore, our model supports inverse modeling to support investigation of plausible muscle activation patterns to generate speech.
  • Arnhold, A., Vainio, M., Suni, A., & Järvikivi, J. (2010). Intonation of Finnish verbs. Speech Prosody 2010, 100054, 1-4. Retrieved from http://speechprosody2010.illinois.edu/papers/100054.pdf.

    Abstract

    A production experiment investigated the tonal shape of Finnish finite verbs in transitive sentences without narrow focus. Traditional descriptions of Finnish stating that non-focused finite verbs do not receive accents were only partly supported. Verbs were found to have a consistently smaller pitch range than words in other word classes, but their pitch contours were neither flat nor explainable by pure interpolation.
  • Auer, E., Wittenburg, P., Sloetjes, H., Schreer, O., Masneri, S., Schneider, D., & Tschöpel, S. (2010). Automatic annotation of media field recordings. In C. Sporleder, & K. Zervanou (Eds.), Proceedings of the ECAI 2010 Workshop on Language Technology for Cultural Heritage, Social Sciences, and Humanities (LaTeCH 2010) (pp. 31-34). Lisbon: University de Lisbon. Retrieved from http://ilk.uvt.nl/LaTeCH2010/.

    Abstract

    In the paper we describe a new attempt to come to automatic detectors processing real scene audio-video streams that can be used by researchers world-wide to speed up their annotation and analysis work. Typically these recordings are taken in field and experimental situations mostly with bad quality and only little corpora preventing to use standard stochastic pattern recognition techniques. Audio/video processing components are taken out of the expert lab and are integrated in easy-to-use interactive frameworks so that the researcher can easily start them with modified parameters and can check the usefulness of the created annotations. Finally a variety of detectors may have been used yielding a lattice of annotations. A flexible search engine allows finding combinations of patterns opening completely new analysis and theorization possibilities for the researchers who until were required to do all annotations manually and who did not have any help in pre-segmenting lengthy media recordings.
  • Auer, E., Russel, A., Sloetjes, H., Wittenburg, P., Schreer, O., Masnieri, S., Schneider, D., & Tschöpel, S. (2010). ELAN as flexible annotation framework for sound and image processing detectors. In N. Calzolari, B. Maegaard, J. Mariani, J. Odjik, K. Choukri, S. Piperidis, M. Rosner, & D. Tapias (Eds.), Proceedings of the Seventh conference on International Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'10) (pp. 890-893). European Language Resources Association (ELRA).

    Abstract

    Annotation of digital recordings in humanities research still is, to a largeextend, a process that is performed manually. This paper describes the firstpattern recognition based software components developed in the AVATecH projectand their integration in the annotation tool ELAN. AVATecH (AdvancingVideo/Audio Technology in Humanities Research) is a project that involves twoMax Planck Institutes (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen,Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle) and two FraunhoferInstitutes (Fraunhofer-Institut für Intelligente Analyse- undInformationssysteme IAIS, Sankt Augustin, Fraunhofer Heinrich-Hertz-Institute,Berlin) and that aims to develop and implement audio and video technology forsemi-automatic annotation of heterogeneous media collections as they occur inmultimedia based research. The highly diverse nature of the digital recordingsstored in the archives of both Max Planck Institutes, poses a huge challenge tomost of the existing pattern recognition solutions and is a motivation to makesuch technology available to researchers in the humanities.
  • Bardhan, N. P., Aslin, R., & Tanenhaus, M. (2010). Adults' self-directed learning of an artificial lexicon: The dynamics of neighborhood reorganization. In S. Ohlsson, & R. Catrambone (Eds.), Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 364-368). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.
  • Bauer, B. L. M. (2010). Fore-runners of Romance -mente adverbs in Latin prose and poetry. In E. Dickey, & A. Chahoud (Eds.), Colloquial and literary Latin (pp. 339-353). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Bauer, B. L. M. (2015). Origins of the indefinite HOMO constructions. In G. Haverling (Ed.), Latin Linguistics in the Early 21st Century: Acts of the 16th International Colloquium on Latin Linguistics (pp. 542-553). Uppsala: Uppsala University.
  • Bergmann, C., Paulus, M., & Fikkert, J. (2010). A closer look at pronoun comprehension: Comparing different methods. In J. Costa, A. Castro, M. Lobo, & F. Pratas (Eds.), Language Acquisition and Development: Proceedings of GALA 2009 (pp. 53-61). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

    Abstract

    1. Introduction External input is necessary to acquire language. Consequently, the comprehension of various constituents of language, such as lexical items or syntactic and semantic structures should emerge at the same time as or even precede their production. However, in the case of pronouns this general assumption does not seem to hold. On the contrary, while children at the age of four use pronouns and reflexives appropriately during production (de Villiers, et al. 2006), a number of comprehension studies across different languages found chance performance in pronoun trials up to the age of seven, which co-occurs with a high level of accuracy in reflexive trials (for an overview see e.g. Conroy, et al. 2009; Elbourne 2005).
  • Bergmann, C., Gubian, M., & Boves, L. (2010). Modelling the effect of speaker familiarity and noise on infant word recognition. In Proceedings of the 11th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association [Interspeech 2010] (pp. 2910-2913). ISCA.

    Abstract

    In the present paper we show that a general-purpose word learning model can simulate several important findings from recent experiments in language acquisition. Both the addition of background noise and varying the speaker have been found to influence infants’ performance during word recognition experiments. We were able to replicate this behaviour in our artificial word learning agent. We use the results to discuss both advantages and limitations of computational models of language acquisition.
  • Blythe, J. (2010). From ethical datives to number markers in Murriny Patha. In R. Hendery, & J. Hendriks (Eds.), Grammatical change: Theory and description (pp. 157-187). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
  • Blythe, J. (2010). Self-association in Murriny Patha talk-in-interaction. In I. Mushin, & R. Gardner (Eds.), Studies in Australian Indigenous Conversation [Special issue] (pp. 447-469). Australian Journal of Linguistics. doi:10.1080/07268602.2010.518555.

    Abstract

    When referring to persons in talk-in-interaction, interlocutors recruit the particular referential expressions that best satisfy both cultural and interactional contingencies, as well as the speaker’s own personal objectives. Regular referring practices reveal cultural preferences for choosing particular classes of reference forms for engaging in particular types of activities. When speakers of the northern Australian language Murriny Patha refer to each other, they display a clear preference for associating the referent to the current conversation’s participants. This preference for Association is normally achieved through the use of triangular reference forms such as kinterms. Triangulations are reference forms that link the person being spoken about to another specified person (e.g. Bill’s doctor). Triangulations are frequently used to associate the referent to the current speaker (e.g.my father), to an addressed recipient (your uncle) or co-present other (this bloke’s cousin). Murriny Patha speakers regularly associate key persons to themselves when making authoritative claims about items of business and important events. They frequently draw on kinship links when attempting to bolster their epistemic position. When speakers demonstrate their relatedness to the event’s protagonists, they ground their contribution to the discussion as being informed by appropriate genealogical connections (effectively, ‘I happen to know something about that. He was after all my own uncle’).
  • 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.
  • Bosker, H. R., Tjiong, V., Quené, H., Sanders, T., & De Jong, N. H. (2015). Both native and non-native disfluencies trigger listeners' attention. In Disfluency in Spontaneous Speech: DISS 2015: An ICPhS Satellite Meeting. Edinburgh: DISS2015.

    Abstract

    Disfluencies, such as uh and uhm, are known to help the listener in speech comprehension. For instance, disfluencies may elicit prediction of less accessible referents and may trigger listeners’ attention to the following word. However, recent work suggests differential processing of disfluencies in native and non-native speech. The current study investigated whether the beneficial effects of disfluencies on listeners’ attention are modulated by the (non-)native identity of the speaker. Using the Change Detection Paradigm, we investigated listeners’ recall accuracy for words presented in disfluent and fluent contexts, in native and non-native speech. We observed beneficial effects of both native and non-native disfluencies on listeners’ recall accuracy, suggesting that native and non-native disfluencies trigger listeners’ attention in a similar fashion.
  • Bosker, H. R., & Reinisch, E. (2015). Normalization for speechrate in native and nonnative speech. In M. Wolters, J. Livingstone, B. Beattie, R. Smith, M. MacMahon, J. Stuart-Smith, & J. Scobbie (Eds.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congresses of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015). London: International Phonetic Association.

    Abstract

    Speech perception involves a number of processes that deal with variation in the speech signal. One such process is normalization for speechrate: local temporal cues are perceived relative to the rate in the surrounding context. It is as yet unclear whether and how this perceptual effect interacts with higher level impressions of rate, such as a speaker’s nonnative identity. Nonnative speakers typically speak more slowly than natives, an experience that listeners take into account when explicitly judging the rate of nonnative speech. The present study investigated whether this is also reflected in implicit rate normalization. Results indicate that nonnative speech is implicitly perceived as faster than temporally-matched native speech, suggesting that the additional cognitive load of listening to an accent speeds up rate perception. Therefore, rate perception in speech is not dependent on syllable durations alone but also on the ease of processing of the temporal signal.
  • Bosker, H. R., Briaire, J., Heeren, W., van Heuven, V. J., & Jongman, S. R. (2010). Whispered speech as input for cochlear implants. In J. Van Kampen, & R. Nouwen (Eds.), Linguistics in the Netherlands 2010 (pp. 1-14).
  • Bottini, R., & Casasanto, D. (2010). Implicit spatial length modulates time estimates, but not vice versa. In C. Hölscher, T. F. Shipley, M. Olivetti Belardinelli, J. A. Bateman, & N. Newcombe (Eds.), Spatial Cognition VII. International Conference, Spatial Cognition 2010, Mt. Hood/Portland, OR, USA, August 15-19, 2010. Proceedings (pp. 152-162). Berlin Heidelberg: Springer.

    Abstract

    How are space and time represented in the human mind? Here we evaluate two theoretical proposals, one suggesting a symmetric relationship between space and time (ATOM theory) and the other an asymmetric relationship (metaphor theory). In Experiment 1, Dutch-speakers saw 7-letter nouns that named concrete objects of various spatial lengths (tr. pencil, bench, footpath) and estimated how much time they remained on the screen. In Experiment 2, participants saw nouns naming temporal events of various durations (tr. blink, party, season) and estimated the words’ spatial length. Nouns that named short objects were judged to remain on the screen for a shorter time, and nouns that named longer objects to remain for a longer time. By contrast, variations in the duration of the event nouns’ referents had no effect on judgments of the words’ spatial length. This asymmetric pattern of cross-dimensional interference supports metaphor theory and challenges ATOM.
  • Bottini, R., & Casasanto, D. (2010). Implicit spatial length modulates time estimates, but not vice versa. In S. Ohlsson, & R. Catrambone (Eds.), Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1348-1353). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    Why do people accommodate to each other’s linguistic behavior? Studies of natural interactions (Giles, Taylor & Bourhis, 1973) suggest that speakers accommodate to achieve interactional goals, influencing what their interlocutor thinks or feels about them. But is this the only reason speakers accommodate? In real-world conversations, interactional motivations are ubiquitous, making it difficult to assess the extent to which they drive accommodation. Do speakers still accommodate even when interactional goals cannot be achieved, for instance, when their interlocutor cannot interpret their accommodation behavior? To find out, we asked participants to enter an immersive virtual reality (VR) environment and to converse with a virtual interlocutor. Participants accommodated to the speech rate of their virtual interlocutor even though he could not interpret their linguistic behavior, and thus accommodation could not possibly help them to achieve interactional goals. Results show that accommodation does not require explicit interactional goals, and suggest other social motivations for accommodation.
  • Bowerman, M. (1977). The acquisition of word meaning: An investigation of some current concepts. In P. Johnson Laird, & P. Wason (Eds.), Thinking: Readings in cognitive science (pp. 239-253). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Brand, S., & Ernestus, M. (2015). Reduction of obstruent-liquid-schwa clusters in casual French. In Scottish consortium for ICPhS 2015, M. Wolters, J. Livingstone, B. Beattie, R. Smith, M. MacMahon, J. Stuart-Smith, & J. Scobbie (Eds.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015). Glasgow: University of Glasgow.

    Abstract

    This study investigated pronunciation variants of word-final obstruent-liquid-schwa (OLS) clusters in casual French and the variables predicting the absence of the phonemes in these clusters. In a dataset of 291 noun tokens extracted from a corpus of casual conversations, we observed that in 80.7% of the tokens, at least one phoneme was absent and that in no less than 15.5% the whole cluster was absent (e.g., /mis/ for ministre). Importantly, the probability of a phoneme being absent was higher if the following phoneme was absent as well. These data show that reduction can affect several phonemes at once and is not restricted to just a handful of (function) words. Moreover, our results demonstrate that the absence of each single phoneme is affected by the speaker's tendency to increase ease of articulation and to adapt a word's pronunciation variant to the time available.
  • Braun, B., & Tagliapietra, L. (2010). The role of contrastive intonation contours in the retrieval of contextual alternatives. In D. G. Watson, M. Wagner, & E. Gibson (Eds.), Experimental and theoretical advances in prosody (pp. 1024-1043). Hove: Psychology Press.

    Abstract

    Sentences with a contrastive intonation contour are usually produced when the speaker entertains alternatives to the accented words. However, such contrastive sentences are frequently produced without making the alternatives explicit for the listener. In two cross-modal associative priming experiments we tested in Dutch whether such contextual alternatives become available to listeners upon hearing a sentence with a contrastive intonation contour compared with a sentence with a non-contrastive one. The first experiment tested the recognition of contrastive associates (contextual alternatives to the sentence-final primes), the second one the recognition of non-contrastive associates (generic associates which are not alternatives). Results showed that contrastive associates were facilitated when the primes occurred in sentences with a contrastive intonation contour but not in sentences with a non-contrastive intonation. Non-contrastive associates were weakly facilitated independent of intonation. Possibly, contrastive contours trigger an accommodation mechanism by which listeners retrieve the contrast available for the speaker.
  • Broeder, D., Kemps-Snijders, M., Van Uytvanck, D., Windhouwer, M., Withers, P., Wittenburg, P., & Zinn, C. (2010). A data category registry- and component-based metadata framework. In N. Calzolari, B. Maegaard, J. Mariani, J. Odjik, K. Choukri, S. Piperidis, M. Rosner, & D. Tapias (Eds.), Proceedings of the Seventh conference on International Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'10) (pp. 43-47). European Language Resources Association (ELRA).

    Abstract

    We describe our computer-supported framework to overcome the rule of metadata schism. It combines the use of controlled vocabularies, managed by a data category registry, with a component-based approach, where the categories can be combined to yield complex metadata structures. A metadata scheme devised in this way will thus be grounded in its use of categories. Schema designers will profit from existing prefabricated larger building blocks, motivating re-use at a larger scale. The common base of any two metadata schemes within this framework will solve, at least to a good extent, the semantic interoperability problem, and consequently, further promote systematic use of metadata for existing resources and tools to be shared.
  • Broersma, M. (2010). Dutch listener's perception of Korean fortis, lenis, and aspirated stops: First exposure. In K. Dziubalska-Kołaczyk, M. Wrembel, & M. Kul (Eds.), Proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on the Acquisition of Second Language Speech, New Sounds 2010, Poznań, Poland, 1-3 May 2010 (pp. 49-54).
  • Broersma, M. (2010). Korean lenis, fortis, and aspirated stops: Effect of place of articulation on acoustic realization. In Proceedings of the 11th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2010), Makuhari, Japan. (pp. 941-944).

    Abstract

    Unlike most of the world's languages, Korean distinguishes three types of voiceless stops, namely lenis, fortis, and aspirated stops. All occur at three places of articulation. In previous work, acoustic measurements are mostly collapsed over the three places of articulation. This study therefore provides acoustic measurements of Korean lenis, fortis, and aspirated stops at all three places of articulation separately. Clear differences are found among the acoustic characteristics of the stops at the different places of articulation
  • Brookshire, G., Casasanto, D., & Ivry, R. (2010). Modulation of motor-meaning congruity effects for valenced words. In S. Ohlsson, & R. Catrambone (Eds.), Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2010) (pp. 1940-1945). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    We investigated the extent to which emotionally valenced words automatically cue spatio-motor representations. Participants made speeded button presses, moving their hand upward or downward while viewing words with positive or negative valence. Only the color of the words was relevant to the response; on target trials, there was no requirement to read the words or process their meaning. In Experiment 1, upward responses were faster for positive words, and downward for negative words. This effect was extinguished, however, when words were repeated. In Experiment 2, participants performed the same primary task with the addition of distractor trials. Distractors either oriented attention toward the words’ meaning or toward their color. Congruity effects were increased with orientation to meaning, but eliminated with orientation to color. When people read words with emotional valence, vertical spatio-motor representations are activated highly automatically, but this automaticity is modulated by repetition and by attentional orientation to the words’ form or meaning.
  • Brouwer, H., Fitz, H., & Hoeks, J. C. (2010). Modeling the noun phrase versus sentence coordination ambiguity in Dutch: Evidence from Surprisal Theory. In Proceedings of the 2010 Workshop on Cognitive Modeling and Computational Linguistics, ACL 2010 (pp. 72-80). Association for Computational Linguistics.

    Abstract

    This paper investigates whether surprisal theory can account for differential processing difficulty in the NP-/S-coordination ambiguity in Dutch. Surprisal is estimated using a Probabilistic Context-Free Grammar (PCFG), which is induced from an automatically annotated corpus. We find that our lexicalized surprisal model can account for the reading time data from a classic experiment on this ambiguity by Frazier (1987). We argue that syntactic and lexical probabilities, as specified in a PCFG, are sufficient to account for what is commonly referred to as an NP-coordination preference.
  • Brouwer, S., & Bradlow, A. R. (2015). The effect of target-background synchronicity on speech-in-speech recognition. In Scottish consortium for ICPhS 2015, M. Wolters, J. Livingstone, B. Beattie, R. Smith, M. MacMahon, J. Stuart-Smith, & J. Scobbie (Eds.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015). Glasgow: University of Glasgow.

    Abstract

    The aim of the present study was to investigate whether speech-in-speech recognition is affected by variation in the target-background timing relationship. Specifically, we examined whether within trial synchronous or asynchronous onset and offset of the target and background speech influenced speech-in-speech recognition. Native English listeners were presented with English target sentences in the presence of English or Dutch background speech. Importantly, only the short-term temporal context –in terms of onset and offset synchrony or asynchrony of the target and background speech– varied across conditions. Participants’ task was to repeat back the English target sentences. The results showed an effect of synchronicity for English-in-English but not for English-in-Dutch recognition, indicating that familiarity with the English background lead in the asynchronous English-in-English condition might have attracted attention towards the English background. Overall, this study demonstrated that speech-in-speech recognition is sensitive to the target-background timing relationship, revealing an important role for variation in the local context of the target-background relationship as it extends beyond the limits of the time-frame of the to-be-recognized target sentence.
  • 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. (2010). Cognitive anthropology. In L. Cummings (Ed.), The pragmatics encyclopedia (pp. 43-46). London: Routledge.

    Abstract

    This is an encyclopedia entry surveying anthropological approaches to cognition and culture.
  • Brown, P. (2015). Language, culture, and spatial cognition. In F. Sharifian (Ed.), Routledge Handbook on Language and Culture (pp. 294-309). London: Routledge.
  • 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. (2015). Space: Linguistic expression of. In J. D. Wright (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (2nd ed.) Vol. 23 (pp. 89-93). Amsterdam: Elsevier. doi:10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.57017-2.
  • Brown, P. (2015). Politeness and language. In J. D. Wright (Ed.), The International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioural Sciences (IESBS), (2nd ed.) (pp. 326-330). Amsterdam: Elsevier. doi:10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.53072-4.
  • 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. (2010). Todo el mundo tiene que mentir en Tzeltal: Amenazas y mentiras en la socialización de los niños tzeltales de Tenejapa, Chiapas. In L. de León Pasquel (Ed.), Socialización, lenguajes y culturas infantiles: Estudios interdisciplinarios (pp. 231-271). Mexico: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS).

    Abstract

    This is a Spanish translation of Brown 2002, 'Everyone has to lie in Tzeltal'. Translated by B. E. Alvaraz Klein
  • Bruggeman, L., & Janse, E. (2015). Older listeners' decreased flexibility in adjusting to changes in speech signal reliability. In M. Wolters, J. Linvingstone, B. Beattie, M. MacMahon, J. Stuart-Smith, & J. Scobbie (Eds.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015). London: International Phonetic Association.

    Abstract

    Under noise or speech reductions, young adult listeners flexibly adjust the parameters of lexical activation and competition to allow for speech signal unreliability. Consequently, mismatches in the input are treated more leniently such that lexical candidates are not immediately deactivated. Using eyetracking, we assessed whether this modulation of recognition dynamics also occurs for older listeners. Dutch participants (aged 60+) heard Dutch sentences containing a critical word while viewing displays of four line drawings. The name of one picture shared either onset or rhyme with the critical word (i.e., was a phonological competitor). Sentences were either clear and noise-free, or had several phonemes replaced by bursts of noise. A larger preference for onset competitors than for rhyme competitors was observed in both clear and noise conditions; performance did not alter across condition. This suggests that dynamic adjustment of spoken-word recognition parameters in response to noise is less available to older listeners.
  • Burenhult, N., & Levinson, S. C. (2010). Semplates: A guide to identification and elicitation. In E. Norcliffe, & N. J. Enfield (Eds.), Field manual volume 13 (pp. 17-23). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
  • Carota, F., Desmurget, M., & Sirigu, A. (2010). Forward Modeling Mediates Motor Awareness. In W. Sinnott-Armstrong, & L. Nadel (Eds.), Conscious Will and Responsibility - A Tribute to Benjamin Libet (pp. 97-108). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Abstract

    This chapter focuses on the issue of motor awareness. It addresses three main questions: What exactly are we aware of when making a movement? What is the contribution of afferent and efferent signals to motor awareness? What are the neural bases of motor awareness? It reviews evidence that the motor system is mainly aware of its intention. As long as the goal is achieved, nothing reaches awareness about the kinematic details of the ongoing movements, even when substantial corrections have to be implemented to attain the intended state. The chapter also shows that motor awareness relies mainly on the central predictive computations carried out within the posterior parietal cortex. The outcome of these computations is contrasted with the peripheral reafferent input to build a veridical motor awareness. Some evidence exists that this process involves the premotor areas.
  • Casasanto, D., & Bottini, R. (2010). Can mirror-reading reverse the flow of time? In C. Hölscher, T. F. Shipley, M. Olivetti Belardinelli, J. A. Bateman, & N. S. Newcombe (Eds.), Spatial Cognition VII. International Conference, Spatial Cognition 2010, Mt. Hood/Portland, OR, USA, August 15-19, 2010. Proceedings (pp. 335-345). Berlin Heidelberg: Springer.

    Abstract

    Across cultures, people conceptualize time as if it flows along a horizontal timeline, but the direction of this implicit timeline is culture-specific: in cultures with left-to-right orthography (e.g., English-speaking cultures) time appears to flow rightward, but in cultures with right-to-left orthography (e.g., Arabic-speaking cultures) time flows leftward. Can orthography influence implicit time representations independent of other cultural and linguistic factors? Native Dutch speakers performed a space-time congruity task with the instructions and stimuli written in either standard Dutch or mirror-reversed Dutch. Participants in the Standard Dutch condition were fastest to judge past-oriented phrases by pressing the left button and future-oriented phrases by pressing the right button. Participants in the Mirror-Reversed Dutch condition showed the opposite pattern of reaction times, consistent with results found previously in native Arabic and Hebrew speakers. These results demonstrate a causal role for writing direction in shaping implicit mental representations of time.
  • Casasanto, D., & Bottini, R. (2010). Can mirror-reading reverse the flow of time? In S. Ohlsson, & R. Catrambone (Eds.), Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2010) (pp. 1342-1347). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    Across cultures, people conceptualize time as if it flows along a horizontal timeline, but the direction of this implicit timeline is culture-specific: in cultures with left-to-right orthography (e.g., English-speaking cultures) time appears to flow rightward, but in cultures with right-to-left orthography (e.g., Arabic-speaking cultures) time flows leftward. Can orthography influence implicit time representations independent of other cultural and linguistic factors? Native Dutch speakers performed a space-time congruity task with the instructions and stimuli written in either standard Dutch or mirror-reversed Dutch. Participants in the Standard Dutch condition were fastest to judge past-oriented phrases by pressing the left button and future-oriented phrases by pressing the right button. Participants in the Mirror-Reversed Dutch condition showed the opposite pattern of reaction times, consistent with results found previously in native Arabic and Hebrew speakers. These results demonstrate a causal role for writing direction in shaping implicit mental representations of time.
  • Casasanto, D. (2010). En qué casos una metáfora lingüística constituye una metáfora conceptual? In D. Pérez, S. Español, L. Skidelsky, & R. Minervino (Eds.), Conceptos: Debates contemporáneos en filosofía y psicología. Buenos Airos: Catálogos.
  • Casasanto, D., & Bottini, R. (2010). Mirror-reading can reverse the flow of time [Abstract]. In Proceedings of the 16th Annual Conference on Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing [AMLaP 2010] (pp. 57). York: University of York.
  • Casasanto, D., & Jasmin, K. (2010). Good and bad in the hands of politicians: Spontaneous gestures during positive and negative speech [Abstract]. In Proceedings of the 16th Annual Conference on Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing [AMLaP 2010] (pp. 137). York: University of York.
  • Casasanto, D. (2010). Wie der Körper Sprache und Vorstellungsvermögen im Gehirn formt. In Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. Jahrbuch 2010. München: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. Retrieved from http://www.mpg.de/jahrbuch/forschungsbericht?obj=454607.

    Abstract

    Wenn unsere geistigen Fähigkeiten zum Teil von der Struktur unserer Körper abhängen, dann sollten Menschen mit unterschiedlichen Körpertypen unterschiedlich denken. Um dies zu überprüfen, haben Wissenschaftler des MPI für Psycholinguistik neurale Korrelate von Sprachverstehen und motorischen Vorstellungen untersucht, die durch Aktionsverben hervorgerufen werden. Diese Verben bezeichnen Handlungen, die Menschen zumeist mit ihrer dominanten Hand ausführen (z. B. schreiben, werfen). Das Verstehen dieser Verben sowie die Vorstellung entsprechender motorischer Handlungen wurde in Gehirnen von Rechts- und Linkshändern unterschiedlich lateralisiert. Bilden Menschen mit unterschiedlichen Körpertypen verschiedene Konzepte und Wortbedeutungen? Gemäß der Körperspezifitätshypothese sollten sie das tun [1]. Weil geistige Fähigkeiten vom Körper abhängen, sollten Menschen mit unterschiedlichen Körpertypen auch unterschiedlich denken. Diese Annahme stellt die klassische Auffassung in Frage, dass Konzepte universal und Wortbedeutungen identisch sind für alle Sprecher einer Sprache. Untersuchungen im Projekt „Sprache in Aktion“ am MPI für Psycholinguistik zeigen, dass die Art und Weise, wie Sprecher ihre Körper nutzen, die Art und Weise beeinflusst, wie sie sich im Gehirn Handlungen vorstellen und wie sie Sprache, die solche Handlungen thematisiert, im Gehirn verarbeiten.
  • Casillas, M., De Vos, C., Crasborn, O., & Levinson, S. C. (2015). The perception of stroke-to-stroke turn boundaries in signed conversation. In D. C. Noelle, R. Dale, A. S. Warlaumont, J. Yoshimi, T. Matlock, C. D. Jennings, & P. R. Maglio (Eds.), Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2015) (pp. 315-320). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    Speaker transitions in conversation are often brief, with minimal vocal overlap. Signed languages appear to defy this pattern with frequent, long spans of simultaneous signing. But recent evidence suggests that turn boundaries in signed language may only include the content-bearing parts of the turn (from the first stroke to the last), and not all turn-related movement (from first preparation to final retraction). We tested whether signers were able to anticipate “stroke-to-stroke” turn boundaries with only minimal conversational context. We found that, indeed, signers anticipated turn boundaries at the ends of turn-final strokes. Signers often responded early, especially when the turn was long or contained multiple possible end points. Early responses for long turns were especially apparent for interrogatives—long interrogative turns showed much greater anticipation compared to short ones.
  • Chen, A. (2010). Ab wann nutzen Kinder die Intonation zum Ausdruck neuer Information? In Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. Jahrbuch 2010. München: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. Retrieved from http://www.mpg.de/jahrbuch/forschungsbericht?obj=447900.

    Abstract

    In einer Studie am Max-Planck-Institut in Nijmegen wurde untersucht, wie und wann Kinder die Regeln der Intonation in der niederländischen Sprache beherrschen. Die Ergebnisse zeigten, dass sie mehrere Entwicklungsstufen durchlaufen, bevor sie im Alter von sieben oder acht Jahren so intonieren wie die Erwachsenen, die einen Fokus (sprich: neue Information) mit einem fallenden Akzent markieren.
  • Chen, A. (2015). Children’s use of intonation in reference and the role of input. In L. Serratrice, & S. E. M. Allen (Eds.), The acquisition of reference (pp. 83-104). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    Studies on children’s use of intonation in reference are few in number but are diverse in terms of theoretical frameworks and intonational parameters. In the current review, I present a re-analysis of the referents in each study, using a three-dimension approach (i.e. referential givenness-newness, relational givenness-newness, contrast), discuss the use of intonation at two levels (phonetic, phonological), and compare findings from different studies within a single framework. The patterns stemming from these studies may be limited in generalisability but can serve as initial hypotheses for future work. Furthermore, I examine the role of input as available in infant direct speech in the acquisition of intonational encoding of referents. In addition, I discuss how future research can advance our knowledge.

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  • Chen, A., & Destruel, E. (2010). Intonational encoding of focus in Toulousian French. Speech Prosody 2010, 100233, 1-4. Retrieved from http://speechprosody2010.illinois.edu/papers/100233.pdf.

    Abstract

    Previous studies on focus marking in French have shown that post-focus deaccentuation, phrasing and phonetic cues like peak height and duration are employed to encode narrow focus but tonal patterns appear to be irrelevant. These studies either examined Standard French or did not control for the regional varieties spoken by the speakers. The present study investigated the use of all these cues in expressing narrow focus in naturally spoken declarative sentences in Toulousian French. It was found that similar to Standard French, Toulousian French uses post-focus deaccentuation and phrasing to mark focus. Different from Standard French, Toulousian French does not use the phonetic cues but use tonal patterns to encode focus. Tonal patterns ending with H\% occur more frequently in the VPs when the subject is in focus but tonal patterns ending with L\% occur more frequently in the VPs when the object is in focus. Our study thus provides a first insight into the similarities and differences in focus marking between Toulousian French and Standard French.
  • Choi, J., Broersma, M., & Cutler, A. (2015). Enhanced processing of a lost language: Linguistic knowledge or linguistic skill? In Proceedings of Interspeech 2015: 16th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (pp. 3110-3114).

    Abstract

    Same-different discrimination judgments for pairs of Korean stop consonants, or of Japanese syllables differing in phonetic segment length, were made by adult Korean adoptees in the Netherlands, by matched Dutch controls, and Korean controls. The adoptees did not outdo either control group on either task, although the same individuals had performed significantly better than matched controls on an identification learning task. This suggests that early exposure to multiple phonetic systems does not specifically improve acoustic-phonetic skills; rather, enhanced performance suggests retained language knowledge.
  • Collins, J. (2015). ‘Give’ and semantic maps. In B. Nolan, G. Rawoens, & E. Diedrichsen (Eds.), Causation, permission, and transfer: Argument realisation in GET, TAKE, PUT, GIVE and LET verbs (pp. 129-146). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • Coridun, S., Ernestus, M., & Ten Bosch, L. (2015). Learning pronunciation variants in a second language: Orthographic effects. In Scottish consortium for ICPhS 2015, M. Wolters, J. Livingstone, B. Beattie, R. Smith, M. MacMahon, J. Stuart-Smith, & J. Scobbie (Eds.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015). Glasgow: University of Glasgow.

    Abstract

    The present study investigated the effect of orthography on the learning and subsequent processing of pronunciation variants in a second language. Dutch learners of French learned reduced pronunciation variants that result from schwa-zero alternation in French (e.g., reduced /ʃnij/ from chenille 'caterpillar'). Half of the participants additionally learnt the words' spellings, which correspond more closely to the full variants with schwa. On the following day, participants performed an auditory lexical decision task, in which they heard half of the words in their reduced variants, and the other half in their full variants. Participants who had exclusively learnt the auditory forms performed significantly worse on full variants than participants who had also learnt the spellings. This shows that learners integrate phonological and orthographic information to process pronunciation variants. There was no difference between both groups in their performances on reduced variants, suggesting that the exposure to spelling does not impede learners' processing of these variants.
  • 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.
  • Crago, M. B., Allen, S. E. M., & Pesco, D. (1998). Issues of Complexity in Inuktitut and English Child Directed Speech. In Proceedings of the twenty-ninth Annual Stanford Child Language Research Forum (pp. 37-46).
  • Croijmans, I., & Majid, A. (2015). Odor naming is difficult, even for wine and coffee experts. In D. C. Noelle, R. Dale, A. S. Warlaumont, J. Yoshimi, T. Matlock, C. D. Jennings, & P. P. Maglio (Eds.), Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2015) (pp. 483-488). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. Retrieved from https://mindmodeling.org/cogsci2015/papers/0092/index.html.

    Abstract

    Odor naming is difficult for people, but recent cross-cultural research suggests this difficulty is culture-specific. Jahai speakers (hunter-gatherers from the Malay Peninsula) name odors as consistently as colors, and much better than English speakers (Majid & Burenhult, 2014). In Jahai the linguistic advantage for smells correlates with a cultural interest in odors. Here we ask whether sub-cultures in the West with odor expertise also show superior odor naming. We tested wine and coffee experts (who have specialized odor training) in an odor naming task. Both wine and coffee experts were no more accurate or consistent than novices when naming odors. Although there were small differences in naming strategies, experts and non-experts alike relied overwhelmingly on source-based descriptions. So the specific language experts speak continues to constrain their ability to express odors. This suggests expertise alone is not sufficient to overcome the limits of language in the domain of smell.
  • Cutler, A., & Otake, T. (1998). Assimilation of place in Japanese and Dutch. In R. Mannell, & J. Robert-Ribes (Eds.), Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Spoken Language Processing: vol. 5 (pp. 1751-1754). Sydney: ICLSP.

    Abstract

    Assimilation of place of articulation across a nasal and a following stop consonant is obligatory in Japanese, but not in Dutch. In four experiments the processing of assimilated forms by speakers of Japanese and Dutch was compared, using a task in which listeners blended pseudo-word pairs such as ranga-serupa. An assimilated blend of this pair would be rampa, an unassimilated blend rangpa. Japanese listeners produced significantly more assimilated than unassimilated forms, both with pseudo-Japanese and pseudo-Dutch materials, while Dutch listeners produced significantly more unassimilated than assimilated forms in each materials set. This suggests that Japanese listeners, whose native-language phonology involves obligatory assimilation constraints, represent the assimilated nasals in nasal-stop sequences as unmarked for place of articulation, while Dutch listeners, who are accustomed to hearing unassimilated forms, represent the same nasal segments as marked for place of articulation.
  • Cutler, A., El Aissati, A., Hanulikova, A., & McQueen, J. M. (2010). Effects on speech parsing of vowelless words in the phonology. In Abstracts of Laboratory Phonology 12 (pp. 115-116).
  • Cutler, A. (1998). How listeners find the right words. In Proceedings of the Sixteenth International Congress on Acoustics: Vol. 2 (pp. 1377-1380). Melville, NY: Acoustical Society of America.

    Abstract

    Languages contain tens of thousands of words, but these are constructed from a tiny handful of phonetic elements. Consequently, words resemble one another, or can be embedded within one another, a coup stick snot with standing. me process of spoken-word recognition by human listeners involves activation of multiple word candidates consistent with the input, and direct competition between activated candidate words. Further, human listeners are sensitive, at an early, prelexical, stage of speeeh processing, to constraints on what could potentially be a word of the language.
  • Cutler, A., Eisner, F., McQueen, J. M., & Norris, D. (2010). How abstract phonemic categories are necessary for coping with speaker-related variation. In C. Fougeron, B. Kühnert, M. D'Imperio, & N. Vallée (Eds.), Laboratory phonology 10 (pp. 91-111). Berlin: de Gruyter.
  • Cutler, A. (2015). Lexical stress in English pronunciation. In M. Reed, & J. M. Levis (Eds.), The Handbook of English Pronunciation (pp. 106-124). Chichester: Wiley.
  • Cutler, A., Treiman, R., & Van Ooijen, B. (1998). Orthografik inkoncistensy ephekts in foneme detektion? In R. Mannell, & J. Robert-Ribes (Eds.), Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Spoken Language Processing: Vol. 6 (pp. 2783-2786). Sydney: ICSLP.

    Abstract

    The phoneme detection task is widely used in spoken word recognition research. Alphabetically literate participants, however, are more used to explicit representations of letters than of phonemes. The present study explored whether phoneme detection is sensitive to how target phonemes are, or may be, orthographically realised. Listeners detected the target sounds [b,m,t,f,s,k] in word-initial position in sequences of isolated English words. Response times were faster to the targets [b,m,t], which have consistent word-initial spelling, than to the targets [f,s,k], which are inconsistently spelled, but only when listeners’ attention was drawn to spelling by the presence in the experiment of many irregularly spelled fillers. Within the inconsistent targets [f,s,k], there was no significant difference between responses to targets in words with majority and minority spellings. We conclude that performance in the phoneme detection task is not necessarily sensitive to orthographic effects, but that salient orthographic manipulation can induce such sensitivity.
  • Cutler, A., Mitterer, H., Brouwer, S., & Tuinman, A. (2010). Phonological competition in casual speech. In Proceedings of DiSS-LPSS Joint Workshop 2010 (pp. 43-46).
  • 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. (1977). The context-dependence of "intonational meanings". In W. Beach, S. Fox, & S. Philosoph (Eds.), Papers from the Thirteenth Regional Meeting, Chicago Linguistic Society (pp. 104-115). Chicago, Ill.: CLS.
  • Cutler, A. (1977). The psychological reality of word formation and lexical stress rules. In E. Fischer-Jørgensen, J. Rischel, & N. Thorsen (Eds.), Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences: Vol. 2 (pp. 79-85). Copenhagen: Institute of Phonetics, University of Copenhagen.
  • Cutler, A. (1998). The recognition of spoken words with variable representations. In D. Duez (Ed.), Proceedings of the ESCA Workshop on Sound Patterns of Spontaneous Speech (pp. 83-92). Aix-en-Provence: Université de Aix-en-Provence.
  • Cutler, A., & Shanley, J. (2010). Validation of a training method for L2 continuous-speech segmentation. In Proceedings of the 11th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2010), Makuhari, Japan (pp. 1844-1847).

    Abstract

    Recognising continuous speech in a second language is often unexpectedly difficult, as the operation of segmenting speech is so attuned to native-language structure. We report the initial steps in development of a novel training method for second-language listening, focusing on speech segmentation and employing a task designed for studying this: word-spotting. Listeners detect real words in sequences consisting of a word plus a minimal context. The present validation study shows that learners from varying non-English backgrounds successfully perform a version of this task in English, and display appropriate sensitivity to structural factors that also affect segmentation by native English listeners.
  • Dediu, D. (2010). Linguistic and genetic diversity - how and why are they related? In M. Brüne, F. Salter, & W. McGrew (Eds.), Building bridges between anthropology, medicine and human ethology: Tributes to Wulf Schiefenhövel (pp. 169-178). Bochum: Europäischer Universitätsverlag.

    Abstract

    There are some 6000 languages spoken today, classfied in approximately 90 linguistic families and many isolates, and also differing across structural, typological, dimensions. Genetically, the human species is remarkably homogeneous, with the existant genetic diversity mostly explain by intra-population differences between individuals, but the remaining inter-population differences have a non-trivial structure. Populations splits and contacts influence both languages and genes, in principle allowing them to evolve in parallel ways. The farming/language co-dispersal hypothesis is a well-known such theory, whereby farmers spreading agriculture from its places of origin also spread their genes and languages. A different type of relationship was recently proposed, involving a genetic bias which influences the structural properties of language as it is transmitted across generations. Such a bias was proposed to explain the correlations between the distribution of tone languages and two brain development-related human genes and, if confirmed by experimental studies, it could represent a new factor explaining the distrbution of diversity. The present chapter overviews these related topics in the hope that a truly interdisciplinary approach could allow a better understanding of our complex (recent as well as evolutionary) history.
  • Dietrich, W., & Drude, S. (Eds.). (2015). Variation in Tupi languages: Genealogy, language change, and typology [Special Issue]. Boletim do Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi:Ciencias Humanas, 10(2).
  • Dimroth, C. (2010). The acquisition of negation. In L. R. Horn (Ed.), The expression of negation (pp. 39-73). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Dingemanse, M. (2010). Folk definitions of ideophones. In E. Norcliffe, & N. J. Enfield (Eds.), Field manual volume 13 (pp. 24-29). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.529151.

    Abstract

    Ideophones are marked words that depict sensory events, for example English hippety-hoppety ‘in a limping and hobbling manner’ or Siwu mukumuku ‘mouth movements of a toothless person eating’. They typically have special sound patterns and distinct grammatical properties. Ideophones are found in many languages of the world, suggesting a common fascination with detailed sensory depiction, but reliable data on their meaning and use is still very scarce. This task involves video-recording spontaneous, informal explanations (“folk definitions”) of individual ideophones by native speakers, in their own language. The approach facilitates collection of rich primary data in a planned context while ensuring a large amount of spontaneity and freedom.
  • Dingemanse, M. (2015). Folk definitions in linguistic fieldwork. In J. Essegbey, B. Henderson, & F. Mc Laughlin (Eds.), Language documentation and endangerment in Africa (pp. 215-238). Amsterdam: Benjamins. doi:10.1075/clu.17.09din.

    Abstract

    Informal paraphrases by native speaker consultants are crucial tools in linguistic fieldwork. When recorded, archived, and analysed, they offer rich data that can be mined for many purposes, from lexicography to semantic typology and from ethnography to the investigation of gesture and speech. This paper describes a procedure for the collection and analysis of folk definitions that are native (in the language under study rather than the language of analysis), informal (spoken rather than written), and multi-modal (preserving the integrity of gesture-speech composite utterances). The value of folk definitions is demonstrated using the case of ideophones, words that are notoriously hard to study using traditional elicitation methods. Three explanatory strategies used in a set of folk definitions of ideophones are examined: the offering of everyday contexts of use, the use of depictive gestures, and the use of sense relations as semantic anchoring points. Folk definitions help elucidate word meanings that are hard to capture, bring to light cultural background knowledge that often remains implicit, and take seriously the crucial involvement of native speaker consultants in linguistic fieldwork. They provide useful data for language documentation and are an essential element of any toolkit for linguistic and ethnographic field research.
  • Dolscheid, S., Shayan, S., Ozturk, O., Majid, A., & Casasanto, D. (2010). Language shapes mental representations of musical pitch: Implications for metaphorical language processing [Abstract]. In Proceedings of the 16th Annual Conference on Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing [AMLaP 2010] (pp. 137). York: University of York.

    Abstract

    Speakers often use spatial metaphors to talk about musical pitch (e.g., a low note, a high soprano). Previous experiments suggest that English speakers also think about pitches as high or low in space, even when theyʼre not using language or musical notation (Casasanto, 2010). Do metaphors in language merely reflect pre-existing associations between space and pitch, or might language also shape these non-linguistic metaphorical mappings? To investigate the role of language in pitch tepresentation, we conducted a pair of non-linguistic spacepitch interference experiments in speakers of two languages that use different spatial metaphors. Dutch speakers usually describe pitches as ʻhighʼ (hoog) and ʻlowʼ (laag). Farsi speakers, however, often describe high-frequency pitches as ʻthinʼ (naazok) and low-frequency pitches as ʻthickʼ (koloft). Do Dutch and Farsi speakers mentally represent pitch differently? To find out, we asked participants to reproduce musical pitches that they heard in the presence of irrelevant spatial information (i.e., lines that varied either in height or in thickness). For the Height Interference experiment, horizontal lines bisected a vertical reference line at one of nine different locations. For the Thickness Interference experiment, a vertical line appeared in the middle of the screen in one of nine thicknesses. In each experiment, the nine different lines were crossed with nine different pitches ranging from C4 to G#4 in semitone increments, to produce 81 distinct trials. If Dutch and Farsi speakers mentally represent pitch the way they talk about it, using different kinds of spatial representations, they should show contrasting patterns of cross-dimensional interference: Dutch speakersʼ pitch estimates should be more strongly affected by irrelevant height information, and Farsi speakersʼ by irrelevant thickness information. As predicted, Dutch speakersʼ pitch estimates were significantly modulated by spatial height but not by thickness. Conversely, Farsi speakersʼ pitch estimates were modulated by spatial thickness but not by height (2x2 ANOVA on normalized slopes of the effect of space on pitch: F(1,71)=17,15 p<.001). To determine whether language plays a causal role in shaping pitch representations, we conducted a training experiment. Native Dutch speakers learned to use Farsi-like metaphors, describing pitch relationships in terms of thickness (e.g., a cello sounds ʻthickerʼ than a flute). After training, Dutch speakers showed a significant effect of Thickness interference in the non-linguistic pitch reproduction task, similar to native Farsi speakers: on average, pitches accompanied by thicker lines were reproduced as lower in pitch (effect of thickness on pitch: r=-.22, p=.002). By conducting psychophysical tasks, we tested the ʻWhorfianʼ question without using words. Yet, results also inform theories of metaphorical language processing. According to psycholinguistic theories (e.g., Bowdle & Gentner, 2005), highly conventional metaphors are processed without any active mapping from the source to the target domain (e.g., from space to pitch). Our data, however, suggest that when people use verbal metaphors they activate a corresponding non-linguistic mapping from either height or thickness to pitch, strengthening this association at the expense of competing associations. As a result, people who use different metaphors in their native languages form correspondingly different representations of musical pitch. Casasanto, D. (2010). Space for Thinking. In Language, Cognition and Space: State of the art and new directions. V. Evans & P. Chilton (Eds.), 453-478, London: Equinox Publishing. Bowdle, B. & Gentner, D. (2005). The career of metaphor. Psychological Review, 112, 193-216.
  • Dolscheid, S., Hunnius, S., & Majid, A. (2015). When high pitches sound low: Children's acquisition of space-pitch metaphors. In D. C. Noelle, R. Dale, A. S. Warlaumont, J. Yoshimi, T. Matlock, C. D. Jennings, & P. P. Maglio (Eds.), Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2015) (pp. 584-598). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. Retrieved from https://mindmodeling.org/cogsci2015/papers/0109/index.html.

    Abstract

    Some languages describe musical pitch in terms of spatial height; others in terms of thickness. Differences in pitch metaphors also shape adults’ nonlinguistic space-pitch representations. At the same time, 4-month-old infants have both types of space-pitch mappings available. This tension between prelinguistic space-pitch associations and their subsequent linguistic mediation raises questions about the acquisition of space-pitch metaphors. To address this issue, 5-year-old Dutch children were tested on their linguistic knowledge of pitch metaphors, and nonlinguistic space-pitch associations. Our results suggest 5-year-olds understand height-pitch metaphors in a reversed fashion (high pitch = low). Children displayed good comprehension of a thickness-pitch metaphor, despite its absence in Dutch. In nonlinguistic tasks, however, children did not show consistent space-pitch associations. Overall, pitch representations do not seem to be influenced by linguistic metaphors in 5-year-olds, suggesting that effects of language on musical pitch arise rather late during development.
  • Drijvers, L., Zaadnoordijk, L., & Dingemanse, M. (2015). Sound-symbolism is disrupted in dyslexia: Implications for the role of cross-modal abstraction processes. In D. Noelle, R. Dale, A. S. Warlaumont, J. Yoshimi, T. Matlock, C. D. Jennings, & P. P. Maglio (Eds.), Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2015) (pp. 602-607). Austin, Tx: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    Research into sound-symbolism has shown that people can
    consistently associate certain pseudo-words with certain referents;
    for instance, pseudo-words with rounded vowels and
    sonorant consonants are linked to round shapes, while pseudowords
    with unrounded vowels and obstruents (with a noncontinuous
    airflow), are associated with sharp shapes. Such
    sound-symbolic associations have been proposed to arise from
    cross-modal abstraction processes. Here we assess the link between
    sound-symbolism and cross-modal abstraction by testing
    dyslexic individuals’ ability to make sound-symbolic associations.
    Dyslexic individuals are known to have deficiencies
    in cross-modal processing. We find that dyslexic individuals
    are impaired in their ability to make sound-symbolic associations
    relative to the controls. Our results shed light on the cognitive
    underpinnings of sound-symbolism by providing novel
    evidence for the role —and disruptability— of cross-modal abstraction
    processes in sound-symbolic eects.
  • Drozd, K. F. (1998). No as a determiner in child English: A summary of categorical evidence. In A. Sorace, C. Heycock, & R. Shillcock (Eds.), Proceedings of the Gala '97 Conference on Language Acquisition (pp. 34-39). Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press,.

    Abstract

    This paper summarizes the results of a descriptive syntactic category analysis of child English no which reveals that young children use and represent no as a determiner and negatives like no pen as NPs, contra standard analyses.
  • Drozdova, P., Van Hout, R., & Scharenborg, O. (2015). The effect of non-nativeness and background noise on lexical retuning. In Scottish consortium for ICPhS 2015, M. Wolters, J. Livingstone, B. Beattie, R. Smith, M. MacMahon, J. Stuart-Smith, & J. Scobbie (Eds.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015). Glasgow: University of Glasgow.

    Abstract

    Previous research revealed remarkable flexibility of native and non-native listeners’ perceptual system, i.e., native and non-native phonetic category boundaries can be quickly recalibrated in the face of ambiguous input.
    The present study investigates the limitations of the flexibility of the non-native perceptual system. In two lexically-guided perceptual learning experiments, Dutch listeners were exposed to a short story in English, where either all /l/ or all /ɹ/ sounds were replaced by an ambiguous [l/ɹ] sound. In the first experiment, the story was presented in clean, while in the second experiment, intermittent noise was added to the story, although never on the critical words. Lexically-guided perceptual learning was only observed in the clean condition. It is argued that the introduction of intermittent noise reduced the reliability of the evidence of hearing a particular word, which in turn blocked retuning of the phonetic categories.
  • Dugoujon, J.-M., Larrouy, G., Mazières, S., Brucato, N., Sevin, A., Cassar, O., & Gessain, A. (2010). Histoire et dynamique du peuplement humain en Amazonie: L’exemple de la Guyane. In A. Pavé, & G. Fornet (Eds.), Amazonie: Une aventure scientifique et humaine du CNRS (pp. 128-132). Paris: Galaade Éditions.
  • 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., Weber, A., & Melinger, A. (2010). Generalization of learning in pre-lexical adjustments to word-final devoicing [Abstract]. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 128, 2323.

    Abstract

    Pre-lexical representations of speech sounds have been to shown to change dynamically through a mechanism of lexically driven learning. [Norris et al. (2003).] Here we investigated whether this type of learning occurs in native British English (BE) listeners for a word-final stop contrast which is commonly de-voiced in Dutch-accented English. Specifically, this study asked whether the change in pre-lexical representation also encodes information about the position of the critical sound within a word. After exposure to a native Dutch speaker's productions of de-voiced stops in word-final position (but not in any other positions), BE listeners showed evidence of perceptual learning in a subsequent cross-modal priming task, where auditory primes with voiceless final stops (e.g., [si:t], “seat”) facilitated recognition of visual targets with voiced final stops (e.g., “seed”). This learning generalized to test pairs where the critical contrast was in word-initial position, e.g., auditory primes such as [taun] (“town”), facilitated recognition of visual targets like “down”. Control listeners, who had not heard any stops by the speaker during exposure, showed no learning effects. The results suggest that under these exposure conditions, word position is not encoded in the pre-lexical adjustment to the accented phoneme contras
  • Enfield, N. J., Levinson, S. C., De Ruiter, J. P., & Stivers, T. (2010). Building a corpus of multimodal interaction in your field site. In E. Norcliffe, & N. J. Enfield (Eds.), Field manual volume 13 (pp. 30-33). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
  • Enfield, N. J., & Levinson, S. C. (2010). Metalanguage for speech acts. In Field manual volume 13 (pp. 34-36). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.

    Abstract

    People of all cultures have some degree of concern with categorizing types of communicative social action. All languages have words with meanings like speak, say, talk, complain, curse, promise, accuse, nod, wink, point and chant. But the exact distinctions they make will differ in both quantity and quality. How is communicative social action categorised across languages and cultures? The goal of this task is to establish a basis for cross-linguistic comparison of native metalanguages for social action.
  • Ernestus, M., & Giezenaar, G. (2015). Een goed verstaander heeft maar een half woord nodig. In B. Bossers (Ed.), Klassiek vakwerk II: Achtergronden van het NT2-onderwijs (pp. 143-155). Amsterdam: Boom.
  • Esling, J. H., Benner, A., & Moisik, S. R. (2015). Laryngeal articulatory function and speech origins. In H. Little (Ed.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015) Satellite Event: The Evolution of Phonetic Capabilities: Causes constraints, consequences (pp. 2-7). Glasgow: ICPhS.

    Abstract

    The larynx is the essential articulatory mechanism that primes the vocal tract. Far from being only a glottal source of voicing, the complex laryngeal mechanism entrains the ontogenetic acquisition of speech and, through coarticulatory coupling, guides the production of oral sounds in the infant vocal tract. As such, it is not possible to speculate as to the origins of the speaking modality in humans without considering the fundamental role played by the laryngeal articulatory mechanism. The Laryngeal Articulator Model, which divides the vocal tract into a laryngeal component and an oral component, serves as a basis for describing early infant speech and for positing how speech sounds evolving in various hominids may be related phonetically. To this end, we offer some suggestions for how the evolution and development of vocal tract anatomy fit with our infant speech acquisition data and discuss the implications this has for explaining phonetic learning and for interpreting the biological evolution of the human vocal tract in relation to speech and speech acquisition.
  • Fawcett, C., & Liszkowski, U. (2015). Social referencing during infancy and early childhood across cultures. In J. D. Wright (Ed.), International encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences (2nd ed., pp. 556-562). doi:10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.23169-3.
  • Filippi, P. (2015). Before Babel: The Evolutionary Roots of Human Language. In E. Velmezova, K. Kull, & S. J. Cowley (Eds.), Biosemiotic Perspectives on Language and Linguistics (pp. 191-204). Springer International Publishing. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-20663-9_10.

    Abstract

    The aim of the present work is to identify the evolutionary origins of the ability to speak and understand a natural language. I will adopt Botha’s “Windows Approach” (Language and Communication, 2006, 26, pp. 129–143) in order to justify the following two assumptions, which concern the evolutionary continuity between human language and animals’ communication systems: (a) despite the uniqueness of human language in sharing and conveying utterances with an open-ended structure, some isolated components of our linguistic competence are shared with non- human primates, grounding a line of evolutionary continuity; (b) the very first “linguistic” utterances were holistic, that is, whole bunches of sounds able to convey information despite their lack of modern syntax. I will address such suppositions through the comparative analysis of three constitutive features of human language: syntax, the semantic value of utterances, and the ability to attribute mental states to conspecifics, i.e. the theory of mind.
  • Fisher, S. E. (2015). Translating the genome in human neuroscience. In G. Marcus, & J. Freeman (Eds.), The future of the brain: Essays by the world's leading neuroscientists (pp. 149-159). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
  • Fitz, H. (2010). Statistical learning of complex questions. In S. Ohlsson, & R. Catrambone (Eds.), Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 2692-2698). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    The problem of auxiliary fronting in complex polar questions occupies a prominent position within the nature versus nurture controversy in language acquisition. We employ a model of statistical learning which uses sequential and semantic information to produce utterances from a bag of words. This linear learner is capable of generating grammatical questions without exposure to these structures in its training environment. We also demonstrate that the model performs superior to n-gram learners on this task. Implications for nativist theories of language acquisition are discussed.
  • Folia, V., Uddén, J., De Vries, M., Forkstam, C., & Petersson, K. M. (2010). Artificial language learning in adults and children. In M. Gullberg, & P. Indefrey (Eds.), The earliest stages of language learning (pp. 188-220). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
  • Franken, M. K., McQueen, J. M., Hagoort, P., & Acheson, D. J. (2015). Assessing the link between speech perception and production through individual differences. In Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Glasgow: the University of Glasgow.

    Abstract

    This study aims to test a prediction of recent
    theoretical frameworks in speech motor control: if speech production targets are specified in auditory
    terms, people with better auditory acuity should have more precise speech targets.
    To investigate this, we had participants perform speech perception and production tasks in a counterbalanced order. To assess speech perception acuity, we used an adaptive speech discrimination
    task. To assess variability in speech production, participants performed a pseudo-word reading task; formant values were measured for each recording.
    We predicted that speech production variability to correlate inversely with discrimination performance.
    The results suggest that people do vary in their production and perceptual abilities, and that better discriminators have more distinctive vowel production targets, confirming our prediction. This
    study highlights the importance of individual
    differences in the study of speech motor control, and sheds light on speech production-perception interaction.
  • Furman, R., Ozyurek, A., & Küntay, A. C. (2010). Early language-specificity in Turkish children's caused motion event expressions in speech and gesture. In K. Franich, K. M. Iserman, & L. L. Keil (Eds.), Proceedings of the 34th Boston University Conference on Language Development. Volume 1 (pp. 126-137). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
  • Goudbeek, M., & Broersma, M. (2010). The Demo/Kemo corpus: A principled approach to the study of cross-cultural differences in the vocal expression and perception of emotion. In Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2010) (pp. 2211-2215). Paris: ELRA.

    Abstract

    This paper presents the Demo / Kemo corpus of Dutch and Korean emotional speech. The corpus has been specifically developed for the purpose of cross-linguistic comparison, and is more balanced than any similar corpus available so far: a) it contains expressions by both Dutch and Korean actors as well as judgments by both Dutch and Korean listeners; b) the same elicitation technique and recording procedure was used for recordings of both languages; c) the same nonsense sentence, which was constructed to be permissible in both languages, was used for recordings of both languages; and d) the emotions present in the corpus are balanced in terms of valence, arousal, and dominance. The corpus contains a comparatively large number of emotions (eight) uttered by a large number of speakers (eight Dutch and eight Korean). The counterbalanced nature of the corpus will enable a stricter investigation of language-specific versus universal aspects of emotional expression than was possible so far. Furthermore, given the carefully controlled phonetic content of the expressions, it allows for analysis of the role of specific phonetic features in emotional expression in Dutch and Korean.
  • Gubian, M., Bergmann, C., & Boves, L. (2010). Investigating word learning processes in an artificial agent. In Proceedings of the IXth IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL). Ann Arbor, MI, 18-21 Aug. 2010 (pp. 178 -184). IEEE.

    Abstract

    Researchers in human language processing and acquisition are making an increasing use of computational models. Computer simulations provide a valuable platform to reproduce hypothesised learning mechanisms that are otherwise very difficult, if not impossible, to verify on human subjects. However, computational models come with problems and risks. It is difficult to (automatically) extract essential information about the developing internal representations from a set of simulation runs, and often researchers limit themselves to analysing learning curves based on empirical recognition accuracy through time. The associated risk is to erroneously deem a specific learning behaviour as generalisable to human learners, while it could also be a mere consequence (artifact) of the implementation of the artificial learner or of the input coding scheme. In this paper a set of simulation runs taken from the ACORNS project is investigated. First a look `inside the box' of the learner is provided by employing novel quantitative methods for analysing changing structures in large data sets. Then, the obtained findings are discussed in the perspective of their ecological validity in the field of child language acquisition.
  • Gullberg, M., Roberts, L., Dimroth, C., Veroude, K., & Indefrey, P. (2010). Adult language learning after minimal exposure to an unknown natural language. In M. Gullberg, & P. Indefrey (Eds.), The earliest stages of language learning (pp. 5-24). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
  • Gullberg, M., De Bot, K., & Volterra, V. (2010). Gestures and some key issues in the study of language development. In M. Gullberg, & K. De Bot (Eds.), Gestures in language development (pp. 3-33). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Gullberg, M., & Indefrey, P. (Eds.). (2010). The earliest stages of language learning [Special Issue]. Language Learning, 60(Supplement s2).
  • Hagoort, P. (2015). Het talige brein. In A. Aleman, & H. E. Hulshoff Pol (Eds.), Beeldvorming van het brein: Imaging voor psychiaters en psychologen (pp. 169-176). Utrecht: De Tijdstroom.
  • Hagoort, P. (2015). Spiegelneuronen. In J. Brockmann (Ed.), Wetenschappelijk onkruid: 179 hardnekkige ideeën die vooruitgang blokkeren (pp. 455-457). Amsterdam: Maven Publishing.

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