Publications

Displaying 101 - 144 of 144
  • Ozyurek, A. (2017). Function and processing of gesture in the context of language. In R. B. Church, M. W. Alibali, & S. D. Kelly (Eds.), Why gesture? How the hands function in speaking, thinking and communicating (pp. 39-58). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. doi:10.1075/gs.7.03ozy.

    Abstract

    Most research focuses function of gesture independent of its link to the speech it accompanies and the coexpressive functions it has together with speech. This chapter instead approaches gesture in relation to its communicative function in relation to speech, and demonstrates how it is shaped by the linguistic encoding of a speaker’s message. Drawing on crosslinguistic research with adults and children as well as bilinguals on iconic/pointing gesture production it shows that the specific language speakers use modulates the rate and the shape of the iconic gesture production of the same events. The findings challenge the claims aiming to understand gesture’s function for “thinking only” in adults and during development.
  • Petrich, P., Piedrasanta, R., Figuerola, H., & Le Guen, O. (2010). Variantes y variaciones en la percepción de los antepasados entre los Mayas. In A. Monod Becquelin, A. Breton, & M. H. Ruz (Eds.), Figuras Mayas de la diversidad (pp. 255-275). Mérida, Mexico: Universidad autónoma de México.
  • Pluymaekers, M., Ernestus, M., Baayen, R. H., & Booij, G. (2010). Morphological effects on fine phonetic detail: The case of Dutch -igheid. In C. Fougeron, B. Kühnert, M. D'Imperio, & N. Vallée (Eds.), Laboratory Phonology 10 (pp. 511-532). Berlin: De Gruyter.
  • Rapold, C. J. (2010). Beneficiary and other roles of the dative in Tashelhiyt. In F. Zúñiga, & S. Kittilä (Eds.), Benefactives and malefactives: Typological perspectives and case studies (pp. 351-376). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    This paper explores the semantics of the dative in Tashelhiyt, a Berber language from Morocco. After a brief morphosyntactic overview of the dative in this language, I identify a wide range of its semantic roles, including possessor, experiencer, distributive and unintending causer. I arrange these roles in a semantic map and propose semantic links between the roles such as metaphorisation and generalisation. In the light of the Tashelhiyt data, the paper also proposes additions to previous semantic maps of the dative (Haspelmath 1999, 2003) and to Kittilä’s 2005 typology of beneficiary coding.
  • Rapold, C. J. (2010). Defining converbs ten years on - A hitchhikers'guide. In S. Völlmin, A. Amha, C. J. Rapold, & S. Zaugg-Coretti (Eds.), Converbs, medial verbs, clause chaining and related issues (pp. 7-30). Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.
  • Reesink, G. (2010). The difference a word makes. In K. A. McElhannon, & G. Reesink (Eds.), A mosaic of languages and cultures: Studies celebrating the career of Karl J. Franklin (pp. 434-446). Dallas, TX: SIL International.

    Abstract

    This paper offers some thoughts on the question what effect language has on the understanding and hence behavior of a human being. It reviews some issues of linguistic relativity, known as the “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis,” suggesting that the culture we grow up in is reflected in the language and that our cognition (and our worldview) is shaped or colored by the conventions developed by our ancestors and peers. This raises questions for the degree of translatability, illustrated by the comparison of two poems by a Dutch poet who spent most of his life in the USA. Mutual understanding, I claim, is possible because we have the cognitive apparatus that allows us to enter different emic systems.
  • Reesink, G. (2010). Prefixation of arguments in West Papuan languages. In M. Ewing, & M. Klamer (Eds.), East Nusantara, typological and areal analyses (pp. 71-95). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
  • Reis, A., Petersson, K. M., & Faísca, L. (2010). Neuroplasticidade: Os efeitos de aprendizagens específicas no cérebro humano. In C. Nunes, & S. N. Jesus (Eds.), Temas actuais em Psicologia (pp. 11-26). Faro: Universidade do Algarve.
  • Roberts, L. (2010). Parsing the L2 input, an overview: Investigating L2 learners’ processing of syntactic ambiguities and dependencies in real-time comprehension. In G. D. Véronique (Ed.), Language, Interaction and Acquisition [Special issue] (pp. 189-205). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    The acquisition of second language (L2) syntax has been central to the study of L2 acquisition, but recently there has been an interest in how learners apply their L2 syntactic knowledge to the input in real-time comprehension. Investigating L2 learners’ moment-by-moment syntactic analysis during listening or reading of sentence as it unfolds — their parsing of the input — is important, because language learning involves both the acquisition of knowledge and the ability to use it in real time. Using methods employed in monolingual processing research, investigations often focus on the processing of temporary syntactic ambiguities and structural dependencies. Investigating ambiguities involves examining parsing decisions at points in a sentence where there is a syntactic choice and this can offer insights into the nature of the parsing mechanism, and in particular, its processing preferences. Studying the establishment of syntactic dependencies at the critical point in the input allows for an investigation of how and when different kinds of information (e.g., syntactic, semantic, pragmatic) are put to use in real-time interpretation. Within an L2 context, further questions are of interest and familiar from traditional L2 acquisition research. Specifically, how native-like are the parsing procedures that L2 learners apply when processing the L2 input? What is the role of the learner’s first language (L1)? And, what are the effects of individual factors such as age, proficiency/dominance and working memory on L2 parsing? In the current paper I will provide an overview of the findings of some experimental research designed to investigate these questions.
  • Rojas-Berscia, L. M., & Shi, J. A. (2017). Hakka as spoken in Suriname. In K. Yakpo, & P. C. Muysken (Eds.), Boundaries and bridges: Language contact in multilingual ecologies (pp. 179-196). Berlin: De Gruyter.
  • Rossi, G., & Zinken, J. (2017). Social agency and grammar. In N. J. Enfield, & P. Kockelman (Eds.), Distributed agency: The sharing of intention, cause, and accountability (pp. 79-86). New York: Oxford University Press.

    Abstract

    One of the most conspicuous ways in which people distribute agency among each other is by asking another for help. Natural languages give people a range of forms to do this, the distinctions among which have consequences for how agency is distributed. Forms such as imperatives (e.g. ‘pass the salt’) and recurrent types of interrogatives (e.g. ‘can you pass the salt?’) designate another person as the doer of the action. In contrast to this, impersonal deontic statements (e.g. ‘it is necessary to get the salt’) express the need for an action without tying it to any particular individual. This can generate interactions in which the identity of the doer must be sorted out among participants, allowing us to observe the distribution of agency in vivo. The case of impersonal deontic statements demonstrates the importance of grammar as a resource for managing human action and sociality.
  • Rossi, G. (2017). Secondary and deviant uses of the imperative for requesting in Italian. In M.-L. Sorjonen, L. Raevaara, & E. Couper-Kuhlen (Eds.), Imperative turns at talk: The design of directives in action (pp. 103-137). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Abstract

    The use of the imperative for requesting has been mostly explained on the basis of estimations of social distance, relative power, and entitlement. More recent research, however, has identified other selection factors to do with the functional and sequential relation of the action requested to the trajectory of the ongoing interaction. In everyday activities among family and friends, the imperative is typically warranted by an earlier commitment of the requestee to a joint project or shared goal which the action requested contributes to. The chapter argues this to be the primary use of the imperative for requesting in Italian informal interaction, and distinguishes it from other uses of the imperative that do not conform to the predominant pattern. These other uses are of two kinds: (i) secondary, that is, less frequent and formally marked imperatives that still orient to social-interactional conditions supporting an expectation of compliance, and (ii) deviant, where the imperative is selected in deliberate violation of the social-interactional conditions that normally support it, attracting special attention and accomplishing more than just requesting. This study extends prior findings on the functional distribution of imperative requests and makes a point of relating and classifying distinct uses of a same form of action, offering new insights into more general aspects of language use such as markedness and normativity.
  • San Roque, L., & Norcliffe, E. (2010). Knowledge asymmetries in grammar and interaction. In E. Norcliffe, & N. J. Enfield (Eds.), Field manual volume 13 (pp. 37-44). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.529153.
  • Schäfer, M., & Haun, D. B. M. (2010). Sharing among children across cultures. In E. Norcliffe, & N. J. Enfield (Eds.), Field manual volume 13 (pp. 45-49). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.529154.
  • Schiller, N. O., & Verdonschot, R. G. (2017). Is bilingual speech production language-specific or non-specific? The case of gender congruency in Dutch – English bilinguals. In H. Reckman, L.-L.-S. Cheng, M. Hijzelendoorn, & R. Sybesma (Eds.), Crossroads semantics: Computation, experiment and grammar (pp. 139-154). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    The present paper looks at semantic interference and gender congruency effects during bilingual picture-word naming. According to Costa, Miozzo & Caramazza (1999), only the activation from lexical nodes within a language is considered during lexical selection. If this is accurate, these findings should uphold with respect to semantic and gender/determiner effects even though the distractors are in another language. In the present study three effects were found, (1) a main effect of language, (2) semantic effects for both target language and non-target language distractors, and (3) gender congruency effects for targets with target-language distractors only. These findings are at odds with the language-specific proposal of Costa et al. (1999). Implications of these findings are discussed.
  • Senft, G. (2010). Culture change - language change: Missionaries and moribund varieties of Kilivila. In G. Senft (Ed.), Endangered Austronesian and Australian Aboriginal languages: Essays on language documentation, archiving, and revitalization (pp. 69-95). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
  • Senft, G., & Labov, W. (1978). Einige Prinzipien linguistischer Methodologie [transl. from English by Gunter Senft]. In N. Dittmar, & B. O. Rieck (Eds.), William Labov: Sprache im sozialen Kontext, vol. 2 (pp. 187-207). Königstein: Scriptor.
  • Senft, G. (2017). "Control your emotions! If teasing provokes you, you've lost your face.." The Trobriand Islanders' control of their public display of emotions. In A. Storch (Ed.), Consensus and Dissent: Negotiating Emotion in the Public Space (pp. 59-80). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Abstract

    Kilivila, the Austronesian language of the Trobriand Islanders of Papua New Guinea, has a rich inventory of terms - nouns, verbs, adjectives and idiomatic phrases and expressions - to precisely refer to, and to differentiate emotions and inner feelings. This paper describes how the Trobriand Islanders of Papua New Guinea deal with the public display of emotions. Forms of emotion control in public encounters are discussed and explained on the basis of ritual communication which pervades the Trobrianders' verbal and non-verbal behaviour. Especially highlighted is the Trobrianders' metalinguistic concept of "biga sopa" with its important role for emotion control in encounters that may run the risk of escalating from argument and conflict to aggression and violence.
  • Senft, G. (1998). 'Noble Savages' and the 'Islands of Love': Trobriand Islanders in 'Popular Publications'. In J. Wassmann (Ed.), Pacific answers to Western hegemony: Cultural practices of identity construction (pp. 119-140). Oxford: Berg Publishers.
  • Senft, G., & Labov, W. (1978). Hyperkorrektheit der unteren Mittelschicht als Faktor im Sprachwandel; [transl. from English by Gunter Senft]. In N. Dittmar, & B. O. Rieck (Eds.), William Labov: Sprache im sozialen Kontext, Vol.2 (pp. 129-146). Königstein: Scriptor.
  • Senft, G. (2010). Introduction. In G. Senft (Ed.), Endangered Austronesian and Australian Aboriginal languages: Essays on language documentation, archiving, and revitalization (pp. 1-13). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
  • Senft, G. (2017). Expressions for emotions - and inner feelings - in Kilivila, the language of the Trobriand Islanders: A descriptive and methodological critical essay. In N. Tersis, & P. Boyeldieu (Eds.), Le langage de l'emotion: Variations linguistiques et culturelles (pp. 349-376). Paris: Peeters.

    Abstract

    This paper reports on the results of my research on the lexical means Kilivila offers its speakers to refer to emotions and inner feelings. Data were elicited with 18 “Ekman’s faces” in which photos of the faces of one woman and two men illustrate the allegedly universal basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise) and with film stimuli staging standard emotions. The data are discussed on the basis of the following research questions: * How “effable” are they or do we observe ineffability – the difficulty of putting experiences into words – within the domain of emotions? * Do consultants agree with one another in how they name emotions? * Are facial expressions or situations better cues for labeling?
  • Senft, G. (2017). The Coral Gardens are Losing Their Magic: The Social and Cultural Impact of Climate Change and Overpopulation for the Trobriand Islanders. In A. T. von Poser, & A. von Poser (Eds.), Facets of Fieldwork - Essay in Honor of Jürg Wassmann (pp. 57-68). Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter.

    Abstract

    This paper deals with the dramatic environmental, social and cultural changes on the Trobriand Islands which I experienced during 16 long- and short-term fieldtrips from 1982 to 2012. I first report on the climate change I experienced there over the years and provide a survey about the demographic changes on the Trobriand Islands – highlighting the situation in Tauwema, my village of residence on Kaile’una Island. Finally I report on the social and cultural impact these dramatic changes have for the Trobriand Islanders and their culture.
  • Senft, G. (1998). Zeichenkonzeptionen in Ozeanien. In R. Posner, T. Robering, & T.. Sebeok (Eds.), Semiotics: A handbook on the sign-theoretic foundations of nature and culture (Vol. 2) (pp. 1971-1976). Berlin: de Gruyter.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (2010). Donkey sentences. In A. Barber, & R. J. Stainton (Eds.), Concise encyclopedia of philosophy of language and linguistics (pp. 169-171). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (2010). Aristotle and linguistics. In A. Barber, & R. J. Stainton (Eds.), Concise encyclopedia of philosophy of language and linguistics (pp. 25-27). Amsterdam: Elsevier.

    Abstract

    Aristotle's importance in the professional study of language consists first of all in the fact that he demythologized language and made it an object of rational investigation. In the context of his theory of truth as correspondence, he also provided the first semantic analysis of propositions in that he distinguished two main constituents, the predicate, which expresses a property, and the remainder of the proposition, referring to a substance to which the property is assigned. That assignment is either true or false. Later, the ‘remainder’ was called subject term, and the Aristotelian predicate was identified with the verb in the sentence. The Aristotelian predicate, however, is more like what is now called the ‘comment,’ whereas his remainder corresponds to the topic. Aristotle, furthermore, defined nouns and verbs as word classes. In addition, he introduced the term ‘case’ for paradigmatic morphological variation.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (2010). Meaning: Cognitive dependency of lexical meaning. In A. Barber, & R. J. Stainton (Eds.), Concise encyclopedia of philosophy of language and linguistics (pp. 424-426). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1978). Language and communication in primates. In D. J. Chivers, & J. Herbert (Eds.), Recent advances in primatology. Vol. 1: Behaviour (pp. 909-917). New York: Academic Press.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1978). Grammar as an underground process. In A. Sinclair, R. J. Jarvella, & W. J. M. Levelt (Eds.), The child's conception of language (pp. 201-223). Berlin: Springer.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (2010). Presupposition. In A. Barber, & R. J. Stainton (Eds.), Concise encyclopedia of philosophy of language and linguistics (pp. 589-596). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1998). Towards a discourse-semantic account of donkey anaphora. In S. Botley, & T. McEnery (Eds.), New Approaches to Discourse Anaphora: Proceedings of the Second Colloquium on Discourse Anaphora and Anaphor Resolution (DAARC2) (pp. 212-220). Lancaster: Universiy Centre for Computer Corpus Research on Language, Lancaster University.
  • Skiba, R. (2010). Polnisch. In S. Colombo-Scheffold, P. Fenn, S. Jeuk, & J. Schäfer (Eds.), Ausländisch für Deutsche. Sprachen der Kinder - Sprachen im Klassenzimmer (2. korrigierte und erweiterte Auflage, pp. 165-176). Freiburg: Fillibach.
  • Stolker, C. J. J. M., & Poletiek, F. H. (1998). Smartengeld - Wat zijn we eigenlijk aan het doen? Naar een juridische en psychologische evaluatie. In F. Stadermann (Ed.), Bewijs en letselschade (pp. 71-86). Lelystad, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Vermande.
  • Sumer, B., Perniss, P. M., & Ozyurek, A. (2017). A first study on the development of spatial viewpoint in sign language acquisition: The case of Turkish Sign Language. In F. N. Ketrez, A. C. Kuntay, S. Ozcalıskan, & A. Ozyurek (Eds.), Social Environment and Cognition in Language Development: Studies in Honor of Ayhan Aksu-Koc (pp. 223-240). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi:10.1075/tilar.21.14sum.

    Abstract

    The current study examines, for the first time, the viewpoint preferences of signing children in expressing spatial relations that require imposing a viewpoint (left-right, front-behind). We elicited spatial descriptions from deaf children (4–9 years of age) acquiring Turkish Sign Language (TİD) natively from their deaf parents and from adult native signers of TİD. Adults produced these spatial descriptions from their own viewpoint and from that of their addressee depending on whether the objects were located on the lateral or the sagittal axis. TİD-acquiring children, on the other hand, described all spatial configurations from their own viewpoint. Differences were also found between children and adults in the type of linguistic devices and how they are used to express such spatial relations.
  • Suppes, P., Böttner, M., & Liang, L. (1998). Machine Learning of Physics Word Problems: A Preliminary Report. In A. Aliseda, R. van Glabbeek, & D. Westerståhl (Eds.), Computing Natural Language (pp. 141-154). Stanford, CA, USA: CSLI Publications.
  • Takashima, A., & Bakker, I. (2017). Memory consolidation. In H.-J. Schmid (Ed.), Entrenchment and the Psychology of Language Learning: How We Reorganize and Adapt Linguistic Knowledge (pp. 177-200). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
  • Terrill, A. (2010). Complex predicates and complex clauses in Lavukaleve. In J. Bowden, N. P. Himmelman, & M. Ross (Eds.), A journey through Austronesian and Papuan linguistic and cultural space: Papers in honour of Andrew K. Pawley (pp. 499-512). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
  • Van Gijn, R., Hammarström, H., Van de Kerke, S., Krasnoukhova, O., & Muysken, P. (2017). Linguistic Areas, Linguistic Convergence and River Systems in South America. In R. Hickey (Ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Areal Linguistics (pp. 964-996). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781107279872.034.
  • Van Geenhoven, V. (1998). On the Argument Structure of some Noun Incorporating Verbs in West Greenlandic. In M. Butt, & W. Geuder (Eds.), The Projection of Arguments - Lexical and Compositional Factors (pp. 225-263). Stanford, CA, USA: CSLI Publications.
  • Van Valin Jr., R. D. (1998). The acquisition of WH-questions and the mechanisms of language acquisition. In M. Tomasello (Ed.), The new psychology of language: Cognitive and functional approaches to language structure (pp. 221-249). Mahwah, New Jersey: Erlbaum.
  • Van Valin Jr., R. D. (2010). Role and reference grammar as a framework for linguistic analysis. In B. Heine, & H. Narrog (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of linguistic analysis (pp. 703-738). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Weber, A., Crocker, M., & Knoeferle, P. (2010). Conflicting constraints in resource-adaptive language comprehension. In M. W. Crocker, & J. Siekmann (Eds.), Resource-adaptive cognitive processes (pp. 119-141). New York: Springer.

    Abstract

    The primary goal of psycholinguistic research is to understand the architectures and mechanisms that underlie human language comprehension and production. This entails an understanding of how linguistic knowledge is represented and organized in the brain and a theory of how that knowledge is accessed when we use language. Research has traditionally emphasized purely linguistic aspects of on-line comprehension, such as the influence of lexical, syntactic, semantic and discourse constraints, and their tim -course. It has become increasingly clear, however, that nonlinguistic information, such as the visual environment, are also actively exploited by situated language comprehenders.
  • Willems, R. M., & Hagoort, P. (2010). Cortical motor contributions to language understanding. In L. Hermer (Ed.), Reciprocal interactions among early sensory and motor areas and higher cognitive networks (pp. 51-72). Kerala, India: Research Signpost Press.

    Abstract

    Here we review evidence from cognitive neuroscience for a tight relation between language and action in the brain. We focus on two types of relation between language and action. First, we investigate whether the perception of speech and speech sounds leads to activation of parts of the cortical motor system also involved in speech production. Second, we evaluate whether understanding action-related language involves the activation of parts of the motor system. We conclude that whereas there is considerable evidence that understanding language can involve parts of our motor cortex, this relation is best thought of as inherently flexible. As we explain, the exact nature of the input as well as the intention with which language is perceived influences whether and how motor cortex plays a role in language processing.
  • Wittenburg, P., & Trilsbeek, P. (2010). Digital archiving - a necessity in documentary linguistics. In G. Senft (Ed.), Endangered Austronesian and Australian Aboriginal languages: Essays on language documentation, archiving and revitalization (pp. 111-136). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.

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