Publications

Displaying 1 - 82 of 82
  • Alcock, K., Meints, K., & Rowland, C. F. (2020). The UK communicative development inventories: Words and gestures. Guilford, UK: J&R Press Ltd.
  • Ameka, F. K. (2012). Ewe: Its grammatical constructions and illocutionary devices. München: LINCOM EUROPA.

    Abstract

    his work offers a modern description of Ewe(GBE), a Kwa (Niger-Congo) language of West Africa. It assumes that the “essence of linguistics is the quest for meaning” (Whorf) and investigates the meanings of grammatical constructions and illocutionary devices representing them in Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) style explications. The explications account for the range of use of the constructions suggested by data from diversified mediated discourse: television and radio interviews and drama, written plays and fiction as well as insider knowledge of and observed behaviour both as participant and observer in Ewe communities of practice. The author draws ecumenically on insights from functional and formal linguistic approaches. The work opens with an overview of Ewe structural grammar. The rest of the work is divided into three parts. Part II concentrates on property denoting expressions, imperfective aspect constructions and possession. Part III examines the grammatical resources available to the Ewe speaker for packaging information in a clause: scene-setting constructions, a “capability passive” construction and experiential constructions. In Part IV illocutionary devices such as formulaic and routine expressions, address terms and interjections are described paying attention to their socio-cultural dimensions of use. This work is of interest to Africanists and linguists interested in grammatical description, typology, semantics and pragmatics as well as anthropologists interested in ethnography of communication and the relation between language and culture.
  • Azar, Z. (2020). Effect of language contact on speech and gesture: The case of Turkish-Dutch bilinguals in the Netherlands. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Baranova, J. (2020). Reasons for every-day activities. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Barthel, M. (2020). Speech planning in dialogue: Psycholinguistic studies of the timing of turn taking. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Bauer, B. L. M. (2017). Nominal apposition in Indo-European: Its forms and functions, and its evolution in Latin-Romance. Berlin: De Gruyter.

    Abstract

    Nominal apposition—the combining of two equivalent nouns—has been a neglected topic in (Indo-European) linguistics, despite its prominence in syntax and morphology (i.c. composition). This book presents an extensive comparative and diachronic analysis of nominal apposition in Indo-European, examining its occurrence, its syntactic and morphological characteristics and functions in the early languages, identifying parallels with similar phenomena elsewhere (e.g. noun classification and script determinatives), and tracing its evolution in Latin-Romance.
    While nominal apposition is not exclusive to Indo-European, its development fits the evolution of Indo-European grammar.
  • Behnke, K. (1998). The acquisition of phonetic categories in young infants: A self-organising artificial neural network approach. PhD Thesis, University of Twente, Enschede. doi:10.17617/2.2057688.
  • Bordulk, D., Dalak, N., Tukumba, M., Bennett, L., Bordro Tingey, R., Katherine, M., Cutfield, S., Pamkal, M., & Wightman, G. (2012). Dalabon plants and animals: Aboriginal biocultural knowledge from southern Arnhem Land, north Australia. Palmerston, NT, Australia: Department of Land and Resource Management, Northern Territory Government.
  • Bowerman, M., & Eling, P. (1983). Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics: Annual Report nr. 4 1983. Nijmegen: MPI for Psycholinguistics.
  • Brand, S. (2017). The processing of reduced word pronunciation variants by natives and learners: Evidence from French casual speech. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Creemers, A. (2020). Morphological processing and the effects of semantic transparency. PhD Thesis, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
  • Cutfield, S. (2012). Demonstratives in Dalabon: A language of southwestern Arnhem Land. PhD Thesis, Monash University, Melbourne.

    Abstract

    This study is a comprehensive description of the nominal demonstratives in Dalabon, a severely endangered Gunwinyguan non-Pama-Nyungan language of southwestern Arnhem Land, northern Australia. Demonstratives are attested in the basic vocabulary of every language, yet remain heretofore underdescribed in Australian languages. Traditional definitions of demonstratives as primarily making spatial reference have recently evolved at a great pace, with close analyses of demonstratives-in-use revealing that their use in spatial reference, in narrative discourse, and in interaction is significantly more complex than previously assumed, and that definitions of demonstrative forms are best developed after consideration of their use across these contexts. The present study reinforces findings of complexity in demonstrative use, and the significance of a multidimensional characterization of demonstrative forms. This study is therefore a contribution to the description of Dalabon, to the analysis of demonstratives in Australian languages, and to the theory and typology of demonstratives cross-linguistically. In this study, I present a multi-dimensional analysis of Dalabon demonstratives, using a variety of theoretical frameworks and research tools including descriptive linguistics, lexical-functional grammar, discourse analysis, gesture studies and pragmatics. Using data from personal narratives, improvised interactions and elicitation sessions to investigate the demonstratives, this study takes into account their morphosyntactic distribution, uses in the speech situation, interactional factors, discourse phenomena, concurrent gesture, and uses in personal narratives. I conclude with a unified account of the intenstional and extensional semantics of each form surveyed. The Dalabon demonstrative paradigm divides into two types, those which are spatially-specific and those which are non-spatial. The spatially-specific demonstratives nunda ‘this (in the here-space)’ and djakih ‘that (in the there-space)’ are shown not to encode the location of the referent per se, rather its relative position to dynamic physical and social elements of the speech situation such as the speaker’s engagement area and here-space. Both forms are also used as spatial adverbs to mean ‘here’ and ‘there’ respectively, while only nunda is also used as a temporal adverb ‘now, today’. The spatially-specific demonstratives are limited to situational use in narratives. The non-spatial demonstratives kanh/kanunh ‘that (identifiable)’ and nunh ‘that (unfamiliar, contrastive)’ are used in both the speech situation and personal narratives to index referents as ‘identifiable’ or ‘unfamiliar’ respectively. Their use in the speech situation can conversationally implicate that the referent is distal. The non-spatial demonstratives display the greatest diversity of use in narratives, each specializing for certain uses, yet their wide distribution across discourse usage types can be described on account of their intensional semantics. The findings of greatest typological interest in this study are that speakers’ choice of demonstrative in the speech situation is influenced by multiple simultaneous deictic parameters (including gesture); that oppositions in the Dalabon demonstrative paradigm are not equal, nor exclusively semantic; that the form nunh ‘that (unfamiliar, contrastive)’ is used to index a referent as somewhat inaccessible or unexpected; that the ‘recognitional’ form kanh/kanunh is instead described as ‘identifiable’; and that speakers use demonstratives to index emotional deixis to a referent, or to their addressee.
  • Cutler, A. (2012). Eentaalpsychologie is geen taalpsychologie: Part II. [Valedictory lecture Radboud University]. Nijmegen: Radboud University.

    Abstract

    Rede uitgesproken bij het afscheid als hoogleraar Vergelijkende taalpsychologie aan de Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen van de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen op donderdag 20 september 2012
  • Cutler, A. (2012). Native listening: Language experience and the recognition of spoken words. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Abstract

    Understanding speech in our native tongue seems natural and effortless; listening to speech in a nonnative language is a different experience. In this book, Anne Cutler argues that listening to speech is a process of native listening because so much of it is exquisitely tailored to the requirements of the native language. Her cross-linguistic study (drawing on experimental work in languages that range from English and Dutch to Chinese and Japanese) documents what is universal and what is language specific in the way we listen to spoken language. Cutler describes the formidable range of mental tasks we carry out, all at once, with astonishing speed and accuracy, when we listen. These include evaluating probabilities arising from the structure of the native vocabulary, tracking information to locate the boundaries between words, paying attention to the way the words are pronounced, and assessing not only the sounds of speech but prosodic information that spans sequences of sounds. She describes infant speech perception, the consequences of language-specific specialization for listening to other languages, the flexibility and adaptability of listening (to our native languages), and how language-specificity and universality fit together in our language processing system. Drawing on her four decades of work as a psycholinguist, Cutler documents the recent growth in our knowledge about how spoken-word recognition works and the role of language structure in this process. Her book is a significant contribution to a vibrant and rapidly developing field.
  • Cutler, A., & Ladd, D. R. (Eds.). (1983). Prosody: Models and measurements. Heidelberg: Springer.
  • Dimitrova, D. V. (2012). Neural correlates of prosody and information structure. PhD Thesis, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.

    Abstract

    The present dissertation investigates what neurocognitive processes are activated in the brain when listeners comprehend spoken language and in particular the melody and rhythm of speech, also referred to as prosody. The findings of several electrophysiological studies show that prosody influences the early and late stages of spoken language processing. When words are accented, listeners consider them important, and the brain responds to accentuation already 200 milliseconds after stimulus onset. The processing of prosodic prominence occurs whether or not a context is present and whether or not accent is congruent with context, although the responses to accentuation may be modified by either of these factors and by the focus particle only. Listeners are sensitive not only to the presence of prosodic prominence but also to the type of accents speakers use: corrective prosody activates additional interpretation mechanisms related to the construction of corrective meaning. The parallel between accents across clauses impacts the disambiguation of sentences with verb ellipsis. By interpreting prosodically parallel elements as syntactically parallel, listeners arrive at less preferred interpretations of conjoined clauses. The research indentifies early correlates of incongruous prosody in strongly predictive contexts as well as late integration processes for prosody comprehension, which are related to the processing of structural complexity in isolated and ambiguous sentences. The dissertation provides evidence that the brain is sensitive to differences in prosody even in the absence of prosodic judgment. However, by changing the task, one modulates the neural mechanisms of prosody processing.
  • Favier, S. (2020). Individual differences in syntactic knowledge and processing: Exploring the role of literacy experience. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Filippi, P. (2012). Sintassi, Prosodia e Socialità: le Origini del Linguaggio Verbale. PhD Thesis, Università degli Studi di Palermo, Palermo.

    Abstract

    What is the key cognitive ability that makes humans unique among all the other animals? Our work aims at contributing to this research question adopting a comparative and philosophical approach to the origins of verbal language. In particular, we adopt three strands of analysis that are relevant in the context of comparative investigation on the the origins of verbal language: a) research on the evolutionary ‘homologies’, which provides information on the phylogenetic traits that humans and other primates share with their common ancestor; b) investigations on “analogous” traits, aimed at finding the evolutionary pressures that guided the emergence of the same biological traits that evolved independently in phylogenetically distant species; the ontogenetic development of the ability to produce and understand verbal language in human infants. Within this comparative approach, we focus on three key apsects that we addressed bridging recent empiric evidence on language processing with philosophical investigations on verbal language: (i) pattern processing as a biologocal precursor of syntax and algebraic rule acquisition, (ii) sound modulation as a guide to pattern comprehension in speech, animal vocalization and music, (iii) social strategies for mutual understanding, survival and group cohesion. We conclude emphasizing the interplay between these three sets of cognitive processes as a fundamental dimension grounding the emergence of the human ability for propositional language.
  • Furman, R. (2012). Caused motion events in Turkish: Verbal and gestural representation in adults and children. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen/LOT.

    Abstract

    Caused motion events (e.g. a boy pulls a box into a room) are basic events where an Agent (the boy) performs an Action (pulling) that causes a Figure (box) to move in a spatial Path (into) to a Goal (the room). These semantic elements are mapped onto lexical and syntactic structures differently across languages This dissertation investigates the encoding of caused motion events in Turkish, and the development of this encoding in speech and gesture. First, a linguistic analysis shows that Turkish does not fully fit into the expected typological patterns, and that the encoding of caused motion is determined by the fine-grained lexical semantics of a verb as well as the syntactic construction the verb is integrated into. A grammaticality judgment study conducted with adult Turkish speakers further establishes the fundamentals of the encoding patterns. An event description study compares adults’ verbal and gestural representations of caused motion to those of children aged 3 to 5. The findings indicate that although language-specificity is evident in children’s speech and gestures, the development of adult patterns takes time and occurs after the age of 5. A final study investigates a longitudinal video corpus of the spontaneous speech of Turkish-speaking children aged 1 to 3, and finds that language-specificity is evident from the start in both children’s speech and gesture. Apart from contributing to the literature on the development of Turkish, this dissertation furthers our understanding of the interaction between language-specificity and the multimodal expression of semantic information in event descriptions.
  • Gerakaki, S. (2020). The moment in between: Planning speech while listening. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Grabe, E. (1998). Comparative intonational phonology: English and German. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen. doi:10.17617/2.2057683.
  • Guadalupe, T. (2017). The biology of variation in anatomical brain asymmetries. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Gullberg, M. (1998). Gesture as a communication strategy in second language discourse: A study of learners of French and Swedish. Lund: Lund University Press.

    Abstract

    Gestures are often regarded as the most typical compensatory device used by language learners in communicative trouble. Yet gestural solutions to communicative problems have rarely been studied within any theory of second language use. The work pre­sented in this volume aims to account for second language learners’ strategic use of speech-associated gestures by combining a process-oriented framework for communi­cation strategies with a cognitive theory of gesture. Two empirical studies are presented. The production study investigates Swedish lear­ners of French and French learners of Swedish and their use of strategic gestures. The results, which are based on analyses of both individual and group behaviour, contradict popular opinion as well as theoretical assumptions from both fields. Gestures are not primarily used to replace speech, nor are they chiefly mimetic. Instead, learners use gestures with speech, and although they do exploit mimetic gestures to solve lexical problems, they also use more abstract gestures to handle discourse-related difficulties and metalinguistic commentary. The influence of factors such as proficiency, task, culture, and strategic competence on gesture use is discussed, and the oral and gestural strategic modes are compared. In the evaluation study, native speakers’ assessments of learners’ gestures, and the potential effect of gestures on evaluations of proficiency are analysed and discussed in terms of individual communicative style. Compensatory gestures function at multiple communicative levels. This has implica­tions for theories of communication strategies, and an expansion of the existing frameworks is discussed taking both cognitive and interactive aspects into account.
  • Hartung, F. (2017). Getting under your skin: The role of perspective and simulation of experience in narrative comprehension. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Heyselaar, E. (2017). Influences on the magnitude of syntactic priming. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Hoey, E. (2017). Lapse organization in interaction. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Hubers, F. (2020). Two of a kind: Idiomatic expressions by native speakers and second language learners. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Iacozza, S. (2020). Exploring social biases in language processing. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Jordanoska, I. (2020). The pragmatics of sentence final and second position particles in Wolof. PhD Thesis, University of Vienna, Vienna.
  • Jordens, P. (2012). Language acquisition and the functional category system. Berlin: De Gruyter.

    Abstract

    Research on spontaneous language acquisition both in children learning their mother tongue and in adults learning a second language has shown that language development proceeds in a stagewise manner. Learner utterances are accounted for in terms of so-called 'learner languages'. Learner languages of both children and adults are language systems that are initially rather simple. The present monograph shows how these learner languages develop both in child L1 and in adult L2 Dutch. At the initial stage of both L1 and L2 Dutch, learner systems are lexical systems. This means that utterance structure is determined by the lexical projection of a predicate-argument structure, while the functional properties of the target language are absent. At some point in acquisition, this lexical-semantic system develops into a target-like system. With this target-like system, learners have reached a stage at which their language system has the morpho-syntactic features to express the functional properties of finiteness and topicality. Evidence of this is word order variation and the use of linguistic elements such as auxiliaries, tense, and agreement markers and determiners. Looking at this process of language acquisition from a functional point of view, the author focuses on questions such as the following. What is the driving force behind the process that causes learners to give up a simple lexical-semantic system in favour of a functional-pragmatic one? What is the added value of linguistic features such as the morpho-syntactic properties of inflection, word order variation, and definiteness?
  • Ketrez, F. N., Kuntay, A. C., Ozcaliskan, S., & Ozyurek, A. (Eds.). (2017). Social environment and cognition in language development: Studies in honor of Ayhan Aksu-Koc. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Abstract

    Language development is driven by multiple factors involving both the individual child and the environments that surround the child. The chapters in this volume highlight several such factors as potential contributors to developmental change, including factors that examine the role of immediate social environment (i.e., parent SES, parent and sibling input, peer interaction) and factors that focus on the child’s own cognitive and social development, such as the acquisition of theory of mind, event knowledge, and memory. The discussion of the different factors is presented largely from a crosslinguistic framework, using a multimodal perspective (speech, gesture, sign). The book celebrates the scholarly contributions of Prof. Ayhan Aksu-Koç – a pioneer in the study of crosslinguistic variation in language acquisition, particularly in the domain of evidentiality and theory of mind. This book will serve as an important resource for researchers in the field of developmental psychology, cognitive science, and linguistics across the globe
  • Klein, W., & Dittmar, N. (1979). Developing grammars. Berlin: Springer.
  • Knudsen, B. (2012). Infants’ appreciation of others’ mental states in prelinguistic communication. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Kopecka, A., & Narasimhan, B. (Eds.). (2012). Events of putting and taking: A crosslinguistic perspective. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    Events of putting things in places, and removing them from places, are fundamental activities of human experience. But do speakers of different languages construe such events in the same way when describing them? This volume investigates placement and removal event descriptions from 18 areally, genetically, and typologically diverse languages. Each chapter describes the lexical and grammatical means used to describe such events, and further investigates one of the following themes: syntax-semantics mappings, lexical semantics, and asymmetries in the encoding of placement versus removal events. The chapters demonstrate considerable crosslinguistic variation in the encoding of this domain, as well as commonalities, e.g. in the semantic distinctions that recur across languages, and in the asymmetric treatment of placement versus removal events. This volume provides a significant contribution within the emerging field of semantic typology, and will be of interest to researchers interested in the language-cognition interface, including linguists, psychologists, anthropologists, and philosophers.
  • Kunert, R. (2017). Music and language comprehension in the brain. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Lam, N. H. L. (2017). Comprehending comprehension: Insights from neuronal oscillations on the neuronal basis of language. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Lattenkamp, E. Z. (2020). Vocal learning in the pale spear-nosed bat, Phyllostomus discolor. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Levelt, W. J. M., Drenth, P., & Noort, E. (Eds.). (2012). Flawed science: The fraudulent research practices of social psychologist Diederik Stapel. Tilburg: Commissioned by the Tilburg University, University of Amsterdam and the University of Groningen.

    Abstract

    Final report Stapel investigation
  • Levinson, S. C. (2020). On technologies of the intellect: Goody Lecture 2020. Halle: Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology.
  • Levinson, S. C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Lewis, A. G. (2017). Explorations of beta-band neural oscillations during language comprehension: Sentence processing and beyond. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Lockwood, G. (2017). Talking sense: The behavioural and neural correlates of sound symbolism. PhD Thesis, Radboud University, Nijmegen.
  • Manrique, E. (2017). Achieving mutual understanding in Argentine Sign Language (LSA). PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Moers, C. (2017). The neighbors will tell you what to expect: Effects of aging and predictability on language processing. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Mongelli, V. (2020). The role of neural feedback in language unification: How awareness affects combinatorial processing. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Montero-Melis, G. (2017). Thoughts in Motion: The Role of Long-Term L1 and Short-Term L2 Experience when Talking and Thinking of Caused Motion. PhD Thesis, Stockholm University, Centre for Research on Bilingualism, Stockholm.

    Abstract

    This thesis is about whether language affects thinking. It deals with the linguistic relativity hypothesis, which proposes that the language we speak influences the way we think. This hypothesis is investigated in the domain of caused motion (e.g., ‘The man rolled the tyre into the garage’), by looking at Spanish and Swedish, two languages that show striking differences in how motion events are encoded. The thesis consists of four studies. The first two focus on native speakers of Spanish and Swedish. Study I compares how Spanish and Swedish speakers describe the same set of caused motion events, directing the spotlight at how variable the descriptions are in each language. The results confirm earlier findings from semantic typology regarding the dominant ways of expressing the events in each language: Spanish behaves like a verb-framed language and Swedish like a satellite-framed language (Talmy, 2000). Going beyond previous findings, the study demonstrates—using the tools of entropy and Monte Carlo simulations—that there is markedly more variability in Spanish than in Swedish descriptions. Study II tests whether differences in how Spanish and Swedish speakers describe caused motion events are reflected in how they think about such events. Using a novel similarity arrangement task, it is found that Spanish and Swedish speakers partly differ in how they represent caused motion events if they can access language during the task. However, the differences disappear when the possibility to use language is momentarily blocked by an interference task. The last two studies focus on Swedish learners of Spanish as a second language (L2). Study III explores how Swedish learners (compared to native Spanish speakers) adapt their Spanish motion descriptions to recently encountered input. Using insights from the literature on structural priming, we find that Swedish learners initially expect to encounter in their L2, Spanish, those verb types that are typical in Swedish (manner verbs like ‘roll’) but that, with increasing proficiency, their expectations become increasingly attuned to the typical Spanish pattern of using path verbs (like ‘enter’). These expectations are reflected in the way L2 learners adapt their own production to the Spanish input. Study IV asks whether recent linguistic experience in an L2 can affect how L2 learners think about motion events. It is found that encountering motion descriptions in the L2 that emphasize different types of information (path or manner) leads L2 speakers to perceive similarity along different dimensions in a subsequent similarity arrangement task. Taken together, the thesis argues that the study of the relation between language and thought affords more valuable insights when not posed as an either-or question (i.e., does language affect thought or not?). In this spirit, the thesis contributes to the wider aim of investigating the conditions under which language does or does not affect thought and explores what the different outcomes tell us about language, thought, and the intricate mechanisms that relate them.
  • Neger, T. M. (2017). Learning from the (un)expected: Age and individual differences in statistical learning and perceptual learning in speech. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen. doi:10.17617/2.2482848.
  • Poulsen, M.-E. (Ed.). (2020). The Jerome Bruner Library: From New York to Nijmegen. Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.

    Abstract

    Published in September 2020 by the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics to commemorate the arrival and the new beginning of the Jerome Bruner Library in Nijmegen
  • Raviv, L. (2020). Language and society: How social pressures shape grammatical structure. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Rodd, J. (2020). How speaking fast is like running: Modelling control of speaking rate. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Rossano, F. (2012). Gaze behavior in face-to-face interaction. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.

    Abstract

    Wat doen onze ogen als we met andere mensen praten? In zijn proefschrift beschrijft Federico Rossano hoe mensen hun ogen gebruiken tijdens face-to-face interacties. Onze oogbewegingen blijken opvallend geordend en voorspelbaar: zo is het bijvoorbeeld mogelijk om met uitsluitend de ogen een reactie uit te lokken als de gesprekspartner niet direct reageert. Ook wanneer bijvoorbeeld een vraag-antwoordreeks ten einde loopt, coördineren gespreksdeelnemers hun oogbewegingen op een specifieke manier. Daarnaast heeft luisteren naar een verhaal of luisteren naar een vraag verschillende implicaties voor oogbewegingen. Dit proefschrift bevat daarom belangrijke informatie voor experts op het gebied van kunstmatige intelligentie en computerwetenschappers: de voorspelbaarheid en reproduceerbaarheid van natuurlijke oogbewegingen kan onder andere gebruikt worden bij de ontwikkeling van robots of avatars.

    Additional information

    full text via Radboud Repository
  • Rowland, C. F., Theakston, A. L., Ambridge, B., & Twomey, K. E. (Eds.). (2020). Current Perspectives on Child Language Acquisition: How children use their environment to learn. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi:10.1075/tilar.27.

    Abstract

    In recent years the field has seen an increasing realisation that the full complexity of language acquisition demands theories that (a) explain how children integrate information from multiple sources in the environment, (b) build linguistic representations at a number of different levels, and (c) learn how to combine these representations in order to communicate effectively. These new findings have stimulated new theoretical perspectives that are more centered on explaining learning as a complex dynamic interaction between the child and her environment. This book is the first attempt to bring some of these new perspectives together in one place. It is a collection of essays written by a group of researchers who all take an approach centered on child-environment interaction, and all of whom have been influenced by the work of Elena Lieven, to whom this collection is dedicated.
  • De Ruiter, J. P. (1998). Gesture and speech production. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen. doi:10.17617/2.2057686.
  • Sauppe, S. (2017). The role of voice and word order in incremental sentence processing: Studies on sentence production and comprehension in Tagalog and German. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Schoot, L. (2017). Language processing in a conversation context. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Schuerman, W. L. (2017). Sensorimotor experience in speech perception. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Segaert, K. (2012). Structuring language: Contributions to the neurocognition of syntax. PhD Thesis, Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

    Abstract

    Sprekers hebben een sterke neiging om syntactische structuren te hergebruiken in nieuwe zinnen. Wanneer we een situatie beschrijven met een passieve zin bijvoorbeeld: 'De vrouw wordt begroet door de man', zullen we voor de beschrijving van een nieuwe situatie gemakkelijker opnieuw een passieve zin gebruiken. Vooral bij moeilijke syntactische structuren is de neiging om ze te hergebruiken erg sterk. Voor gemakkelijke zinsconstructies geldt dat minder. Maar als deze toch hergebruikt worden dan gaat dit samen met een sneller initiëren van de beschrijving. Ook in het brein zien we dat het herhalen van syntactische structuren de verwerking ervan vergemakkelijkt. Bepaalde hersengebieden die zorgen voor de verwerking van syntactische structuren zijn zeer actief de eerste keer dat een syntactische structuur wordt verwerkt, en minder actief de tweede keer. Het gaat hier om een gebiedje in de frontaalkwab en een gebiedje in de temporaalkwab. Opvallend is ook dat deze gebieden de verwerking van syntactische structuren ondersteunen zowel tijdens het spreken als tijdens het luisteren.

    Additional information

    full text via Radboud Repository
  • Seifart, F., Haig, G., Himmelmann, N. P., Jung, D., Margetts, A., & Trilsbeek, P. (Eds.). (2012). Potentials of language documentation: Methods, analyses, and utilization. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.

    Abstract

    In the past 10 or so years, intensive documentation activities, i.e. compilations of large, multimedia corpora of spoken endangered languages have contributed to the documentation of important linguistic and cultural aspects of dozens of languages. As laid out in Himmelmann (1998), language documentations include as their central components a collection of spoken texts from a variety of genres, recorded on video and/or audio, with time-aligned annotations consisting of transcription, translation, and also, for some data, morphological segmentation and glossing. Text collections are often complemented by elicited data, e.g. word lists, and structural descriptions such as a grammar sketch. All data are provided with metadata which serve as cataloguing devices for their accessibility in online archives. These newly available language documentation data have enormous potential.
  • Senft, G. (2017). Imdeduya - Variants of a myth of love and hate from the Trobriand Islands of Papua New Guinea. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi:10.1075/clu.20.

    Abstract

    This volume presents five variants of the Imdeduya myth: two versions of the actual myth, a short story, a song and John Kasaipwalova’s English poem “Sail the Midnight Sun”. This poem draws heavily on the Trobriand myth which introduces the protagonists Imdeduya and Yolina and reports on Yolina’s intention to marry the girl so famous for her beauty, on his long journey to Imdeduya’s village and on their tragic love story. The texts are compared with each other with a final focus on the clash between orality and scripturality. Contrary to Kasaipwalova’s fixed poetic text, the oral Imdeduya versions reveal the variability characteristic for oral tradition. This variability opens up questions about traditional stability and destabilization of oral literature, especially questions about the changing role of myth – and magic – in the Trobriand Islanders' society which gets more and more integrated into the by now “literal” nation of Papua New Guinea. This e-book is available under the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
  • Senft, G. (2017). Understanding Pragmatics (Japanese edition). Tokyo: Kaitaku-Sha.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1998). Western linguistics: An historical introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.
  • Sharoh, D. (2020). Advances in layer specific fMRI for the study of language, cognition and directed brain networks. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Skiba, R. (1998). Fachsprachenforschung in wissenschaftstheoretischer Perspektive. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.
  • Sotaro, K., & Dickey, L. W. (Eds.). (1998). Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics: Annual report 1998. Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
  • Terporten, R. (2020). The power of context: How linguistic contextual information shapes brain dynamics during sentence processing. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Terrill, A. (1998). Biri. München: Lincom Europa.

    Abstract

    This work presents a salvage grammar of the Biri language of Eastern Central Queensland, a Pama-Nyungan language belonging to the large Maric subgroup. As the language is no longer used, the grammatical description is based on old written sources and on recordings made by linguists in the 1960s and 1970s. Biri is in many ways typical of the Pama-Nyungan languages of Southern Queensland. It has split case marking systems, marking nouns according to an ergative/absolutive system and pronouns according to a nominative/accusative system. Unusually for its area, Biri also has bound pronouns on its verb, cross-referencing the person, number and case of core participants. As far as it is possible, the grammatical discussion is ‘theory neutral’. The first four chapters deal with the phonology, morphology, and syntax of the language. The last two chapters contain a substantial discussion of Biri’s place in the Pama-Nyungan family. In chapter 6 the numerous dialects of the Biri language are discussed. In chapter 7 the close linguistic relationship between Biri and the surrounding languages is examined.
  • Thorin, J. (2020). Can you hear what you cannot say? The interactions of speech perception and production during non-native phoneme learning. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Tourtouri, E. N. (2020). Rational redundancy in situated communication. PhD Thesis, Saarland University, Saarbrücken.

    Abstract

    Contrary to the Gricean maxims of Quantity (Grice, 1975), it has been repeatedly shown that speakers often include redundant information in their utterances (over- specifications). Previous research on referential communication has long debated whether this redundancy is the result of speaker-internal or addressee-oriented processes, while it is also unclear whether referential redundancy hinders or facilitates comprehension. We present a bounded-rational account of referential redundancy, according to which any word in an utterance, even if it is redundant, can be beneficial to comprehension, to the extent that it facilitates the reduction of listeners’ uncertainty regarding the target referent in a co-present visual scene. Information-theoretic metrics, such as Shannon’s entropy (Shannon, 1948), were employed in order to quantify this uncertainty in bits of information, and gain an estimate of the cognitive effort related to referential processing. Under this account, speakers may, therefore, utilise redundant adjectives in order to reduce the visually-determined entropy (and thereby their listeners’ cognitive effort) more uniformly across their utterances. In a series of experiments, we examined both the comprehension and the production of over-specifications in complex visual contexts. Our findings are in line with the bounded-rational account. Specifically, we present evidence that: (a) in view of complex visual scenes, listeners’ processing and identification of the target referent may be facilitated by the use of redundant adjectives, as well as by a more uniform reduction of uncertainty across the utterance, and (b) that, while both speaker-internal and addressee-oriented processes are at play in the production of over-specifications, listeners’ processing concerns may also influence the encoding of redundant adjectives, at least for some speakers, who encode redundant adjectives more frequently when these adjectives contribute to a more uniform reduction of referential entropy.
  • Trujillo, J. P. (2020). Movement speaks for itself: The kinematic and neural dynamics of communicative action and gesture. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Udden, J. (2012). Language as structured sequences: a causal role of Broca's region in sequence processing. PhD Thesis, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm.

    Abstract

    In this thesis I approach language as a neurobiological system. I defend a sequence processing perspective on language and on the function of Broca's region in the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG). This perspective provides a way to express common structural aspects of language, music and action, which all engage the LIFG. It also facilitates the comparison of human language and structured sequence processing in animals. Research on infants, song-birds and non-human primates suggests an interesting role for non-adjacent dependencies in language acquisition and the evolution of language. In a series of experimental studies using a sequence processing paradigm called artificial grammar learning (AGL), we have investigated sequences with adjacent and non-adjacent dependencies. Our behavioral and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) studies show that healthy subjects successfully discriminate between grammatical and non-grammatical sequences after having acquired aspects of a grammar with nested or crossed non-adjacent dependencies implicitly. There were no indications of separate acquisition/processing mechanisms for sequence processing of adjacent and non-adjacent dependencies, although acquisition of non-adjacent dependencies takes more time. In addition, we studied the causal role of Broca‟s region in processing artificial syntax. Although syntactic processing has already been robustly correlated with activity in Broca's region, the causal role of Broca's region in syntactic processing, in particular syntactic comprehension has been unclear. Previous lesion studies have shown that a lesion in Broca's region is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition to induce e.g. syntactic deficits. Subsequent to transcranial magnetic stimulation of Broca‟s region, discrimination of grammatical sequences with non-adjacent dependencies from non-grammatical sequences was impaired, compared to when a language irrelevant control region (vertex) was stimulated. Two additional experiments show perturbation of discrimination performance for grammars with adjacent dependencies after stimulation of Broca's region. Together, these results support the view that Broca‟s region plays a causal role in implicit structured sequence processing.
  • Uhlmann, M. (2020). Neurobiological models of sentence processing. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • De Vaan, L. (2017). Mental representations of Dutch regular morphologically complex neologisms. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Van Es, M. W. J. (2020). On the role of oscillatory synchrony in neural processing and behavior. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Vanlangendonck, F. (2017). Finding common ground: On the neural mechanisms of communicative language production. PhD Thesis, Radboud University, Nijmegen.
  • De Vos, C. (2012). Sign-spatiality in Kata Kolok: How a village sign language in Bali inscribes its signing space. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.

    Abstract

    In a small village in the north of Bali called Bengkala, relatively many people inherit deafness. The Balinese therefore refer to this village as Desa Kolok, which means 'deaf village'. Connie de Vos studied Kata Kolok, the sign language of this village, and the ways in which the language recruits space to talk about both spatial and non-spatial matters. he small village community Bengkala in the north of Bali has almost 3,000 inhabitants. Of all the inhabitants, 57% use sign language, with varying degrees of fluency. But of this signing community (between 1,200 and 1,800 signers, depending on your definition of 'signer'), only 4% are deaf. So, not only do the deaf people of Bengkala use the sign language Kata Kolok, but also the majority of the hearing population.
    "I've worked with deaf people from all over Asia, Europe, and also some signers in America," says Connie de Vos of MPI's Language and Cognition Department, and Centre for Language Studies (RU). "What sets apart this particular deaf village is that deaf individuals are highly integrated within the village clans. There is really a huge proportion of hearing signers." The sign language currently functions in all major aspects of village life and has been acquired from birth by multiple generations of deaf, native signers. According to De Vos, Kata Kolok is a fully-fledged sign language in every sense of the word. As a collaborative project, she has initiated inclusive deaf education within the village and now Kata Kolok is used as the primary language of instruction. De Vos' primary finding is that Kata Kolok discourse uses a different system of referring to space than other sign languages. Spatial relations are represented by a so-called "absolute frame of reference", based on geographic locations and wind directions. "All sign languages, as we know, use relative constructions for spatial relations. They use signs comparable to words like 'left' and 'right' instead of 'east' and 'west'. Kata Kolok does the latter. Kata Kolok signers appear to have an internal compass to continually register their position in space."De Vos is the first sign linguist who has documented Kata Kolok extensively. She spent more than a year in the village and collected over a hundred hours of video material of spontaneous conversations. "One of the things I've noticed is that language doesn't really emerge out of nothing," she says. "Signers adopt a local gesture system and transform it into a new and much more systematic sign language. A lot of the signs refer to concepts they're familiar with. That's why hearing signers have no difficulties in picking up Kata Kolok. Kata Kolok unites the hearing and the deaf.

    Additional information

    full text via Radboud Repository
  • Weber, K. (2012). The language learning brain: Evidence from second language learning and bilingual studies of syntactic processing. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.

    Abstract

    Many people speak a second language next to their mother tongue. How do they learn this language and how does the brain process it compared to the native language? A second language can be learned without explicit instruction. Our brains automatically pick up grammatical structures, such as word order, when these structures are repeated frequently during learning. The learning takes place within hours or days and the same brain areas, such as frontal and temporal brain regions, that process our native language are very quickly activated. When people master a second language very well, even the same neuronal populations in these language brain areas are involved. This is especially the case when the grammatical structures are similar. In conclusion, it appears that a second language builds on the existing cognitive and neural mechanisms of the native language as much as possible.
  • Whorf, B. L. (2012). Language, thought, and reality: selected writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf [2nd ed.]: introduction by John B. Carroll; foreword by Stephen C. Levinson. (J. B. Carroll, S. C. Levinson, & P. Lee, Eds.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Abstract

    The pioneering linguist Benjamin Whorf (1897–1941) grasped the relationship between human language and human thinking: how language can shape our innermost thoughts. His basic thesis is that our perception of the world and our ways of thinking about it are deeply influenced by the structure of the languages we speak. The writings collected in this volume include important papers on the Maya, Hopi, and Shawnee languages, as well as more general reflections on language and meaning. Whorf’s ideas about the relation of language and thought have always appealed to a wide audience, but their reception in expert circles has alternated between dismissal and applause. Recently the language sciences have headed in directions that give Whorf’s thinking a renewed relevance. Hence this new edition of Whorf’s classic work is especially timely. The second edition includes all the writings from the first edition as well as John Carroll’s original introduction, a new foreword by Stephen Levinson of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics that puts Whorf’s work in historical and contemporary context, and new indexes. In addition, this edition offers Whorf’s “Yale Report,” an important work from Whorf’s mature oeuvre.
  • Xiang, H. (2012). The language networks of the brain. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.

    Abstract

    In recent decades, neuroimaging studies on the neural infrastructure of language are usually (or mostly) conducted with certain on-line language processing tasks. These functional neuroimaging studies helped to localize the language areas in the brain and to investigate the brain activity during explicit language processing. However, little is known about what is going on with the language areas when the brain is ‘at rest’, i.e., when there is no explicit language processing running. Taking advantage of the fcMRI and DTI techniques, this thesis is able to investigate the language function ‘off-line’ at the neuronal network level and the connectivity among language areas in the brain. Based on patient studies, the traditional, classical model on the perisylvian language network specifies a “Broca’ area – Arcuate Fasciculus – Werinicke’s area” loop (Ojemann 1991). With the help of modern neuroimaging techniques, researchers have been able to track language pathways that involve more brain structures than are in the classical model, and relate them to certain language functions. In such a background, a large part of this thesis made a contribution to the study of the topology of the language networks. It revealed that the language networks form a topographical functional connectivity pattern in the left hemisphere for the right-handers. This thesis also revealed the importance of structural hubs, such as Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas, which have more connectivity to other brain areas and play a central role in the language networks. Furthermore, this thesis revealed both functionally and structurally lateralized language networks in the brain. The consistency between what is found in this thesis and what has been known from previous functional studies seems to suggest, that the human brain is optimized and ‘ready’ for the language function even when there is currently no explicit language-processing running.
  • Zeshan, U., & De Vos, C. (Eds.). (2012). Sign languages in village communities: Anthropological and linguistic insights. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Abstract

    The book is a unique collection of research on sign languages that have emerged in rural communities with a high incidence of, often hereditary, deafness. These sign languages represent the latest addition to the comparative investigation of languages in the gestural modality, and the book is the first compilation of a substantial number of different "village sign languages".Written by leading experts in the field, the volume uniquely combines anthropological and linguistic insights, looking at both the social dynamics and the linguistic structures in these village communities. The book includes primary data from eleven different signing communities across the world, including results from Jamaica, India, Turkey, Thailand, and Bali. All known village sign languages are endangered, usually because of pressure from larger urban sign languages, and some have died out already. Ironically, it is often the success of the larger sign language communities in urban centres, their recognition and subsequent spread, which leads to the endangerment of these small minority sign languages. The book addresses this specific type of language endangerment, documentation strategies, and other ethical issues pertaining to these sign languages on the basis of first-hand experiences by Deaf fieldworkers
  • Zheng, X. (2020). Control and monitoring in bilingual speech production: Language selection, switching and intrusion. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Zimianiti, E. (2020). Verb production and comprehension in dementia: A verb argument structure approach. Master Thesis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece.

    Abstract

    The purpose of this study is to shed light to the linguistic deficit in populations with dementia, and more specifically with Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer’s Disease; by examining the assignment of thematic roles (θ-roles) in sentences including psychological verbs.
    The interest in types of dementia and its precursor is due to the relevance of the disease in present-day world society (Caloi, 2017). 47 millions of people worldwide were reported by the World Alzheimer Report in 2016 (Prince et al. 2016) as people with a type of dementia. This number surpasses the number of inhabitants in Spain, a whole country, and it is expected, according to the report, to triplicate until 2050 reaching the number of 131 million. The impact of this disease is observed not only at the social level but also in the economic one, because of their need for assistance in their everyday life. What is worrying, is the lack of total treatment once the disease has started. Despite the efforts of medicine, dementia is problematic in terms of its diagnosis, because a variety of cognitive abilities is assessed in combination with medical workup. Language is a crucial component in the procedure of diagnosis as linguistic deficits are among the first symptoms that accompany the onset of the disease. Therefore, further investigation of linguistic impairment is a necessity in order to enhance the diagnostic techniques used nowadays. Furthermore, the lack of efficient drugs for the treatment of the disease has necessitated the development of training programs for maintenance and increase of the cognitive abilities in people with either Mild Cognitive Impairment or a type of dementia …
  • Zormpa, E. (2020). Memory for speaking and listening. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.

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