Publications

Displaying 201 - 230 of 230
  • 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.
  • Ten Bosch, L., Hämäläinen, A., & Ernestus, M. (2011). Assessing acoustic reduction: Exploiting local structure in speech. In Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2011), Florence, Italy (pp. 2665-2668).

    Abstract

    This paper presents a method to quantify the spectral characteristics of reduction in speech. Hämäläinen et al. (2009) proposes a measure of spectral reduction which is able to predict a substantial amount of the variation in duration that linguistically motivated variables do not account for. In this paper, we continue studying acoustic reduction in speech by developing a new acoustic measure of reduction, based on local manifold structure in speech. We show that this measure yields significantly improved statistical models for predicting variation in duration.
  • Terrill, A. (2011). Limits of the substrate: Substrate grammatical influence in Solomon Islands Pijin. In C. Lefebvre (Ed.), Creoles, their substrates, and language typology (pp. 513-529). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Abstract

    What grammatical elements of a substrate language find their way into a creole? Grammatical features of the Oceanic substrate languages have been shown to be crucial in the development of Solomon Islands Pijin and of Melanesian Pidgin as a whole (Keesing 1988), so one might expect constructions which are very stable in the Oceanic family of languages to show up as substrate influence in the creole. This paper investigates three constructions in Oceanic languages which have been stable over thousands of years and persist throughout a majority of the Oceanic languages spoken in the Solomon Islands. The paper asks whether these are the sorts of constructions which could be expected to be reflected in Solomon Islands Pijin and shows that none of these persistent constructions appears in Solomon Islands Pijin at all. The absence of these constructions in Solomon Islands Pijin could be due to simplification: Creole genesis involves simplification of the substrate grammars. However, while simplification could be the explanation, it is not necessarily the case that all complex structures become simplified. For instance Solomon Islands Pijin pronoun paradigms are more complex than those in English, but the complexity is similar to that of the substrate languages. Thus it is not the case that all areas of a creole language are necessarily simplified. One must therefore look further than just simplification for an explanation of the presence or absence of stable grammatical features deriving from the substrate in creole languages. An account based on constraints in specific domains (Siegel 1999) is a better predictor of the behaviour of substrate constructions in Solomon Islands Pijin.
  • Tice, M., & Henetz, T. (2011). Turn-boundary projection: Looking ahead. In L. Carlson, C. Hölscher, & T. Shipley (Eds.), Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 838-843). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    Coordinating with others is hard; and yet we accomplish this every day when we take turns in a conversation. How do we do this? The present study introduces a new method of measuring turn-boundary projection that enables researchers to achieve more valid, flexible, and temporally informative data on online turn projection: tracking an observer’s gaze from the current speaker to the next speaker. In this preliminary investigation, participants consistently looked at the current speaker during their turn. Additionally, they looked to the next speaker before her turn began, and sometimes even before the current speaker finished speaking. This suggests that observer gaze is closely aligned with perceptual processes of turn-boundary projection, and thus may equip the field with the tools to explore how we manage to take turns.
  • Tschöpel, S., Schneider, D., Bardeli, R., Schreer, O., Masneri, S., Wittenburg, P., Sloetjes, H., Lenkiewicz, P., & Auer, E. (2011). AVATecH: Audio/Video technology for humanities research. In C. Vertan, M. Slavcheva, P. Osenova, & S. Piperidis (Eds.), Proceedings of the Workshop on Language Technologies for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage, Hissar, Bulgaria, 16 September 2011 (pp. 86-89). Shoumen, Bulgaria: Incoma Ltd.

    Abstract

    In the AVATecH project the Max-Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (MPI) and the Fraunhofer institutes HHI and IAIS aim to significantly speed up the process of creating annotations of audio-visual data for humanities research. For this we integrate state-of-theart audio and video pattern recognition algorithms into the widely used ELAN annotation tool. To address the problem of heterogeneous annotation tasks and recordings we provide modular components extended by adaptation and feedback mechanisms to achieve competitive annotation quality within significantly less annotation time. Currently we are designing a large-scale end-user evaluation of the project.
  • Tuinman, A., & Cutler, A. (2011). L1 knowledge and the perception of casual speech processes in L2. In M. Wrembel, M. Kul, & K. Dziubalska-Kolaczyk (Eds.), Achievements and perspectives in SLA of speech: New Sounds 2010. Volume I (pp. 289-301). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

    Abstract

    Every language manifests casual speech processes, and hence every second language too. This study examined how listeners deal with second-language casual speech processes, as a function of the processes in their native language. We compared a match case, where a second-language process t/-reduction) is also operative in native speech, with a mismatch case, where a second-language process (/r/-insertion) is absent from native speech. In each case native and non-native listeners judged stimuli in which a given phoneme (in sentence context) varied along a continuum from absent to present. Second-language listeners in general mimicked native performance in the match case, but deviated significantly from native performance in the mismatch case. Together these results make it clear that the mapping from first to second language is as important in the interpretation of casual speech processes as in other dimensions of speech perception. Unfamiliar casual speech processes are difficult to adapt to in a second language. Casual speech processes that are already familiar from native speech, however, are easy to adapt to; indeed, our results even suggest that it is possible for subtle difference in their occurrence patterns across the two languages to be detected,and to be accommodated to in second-language listening
  • Tuinman, A., Mitterer, H., & Cutler, A. (2011). The efficiency of cross-dialectal word recognition. In Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2011), Florence, Italy (pp. 153-156).

    Abstract

    Dialects of the same language can differ in the casual speech processes they allow; e.g., British English allows the insertion of [r] at word boundaries in sequences such as saw ice, while American English does not. In two speeded word recognition experiments, American listeners heard such British English sequences; in contrast to non-native listeners, they accurately perceived intended vowel-initial words even with intrusive [r]. Thus despite input mismatches, cross-dialectal word recognition benefits from the full power of native-language processing.
  • Turco, G., Gubian, M., & Schertz, J. (2011). A quantitative investigation of the prosody of Verum Focus in Italian. In Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2011), Florence, Italy (pp. 961-964).

    Abstract

    prosodic marking of Verum focus (VF) in Italian, which is said to be realized with a pitch accent on the finite verb (e.g. A: Paul has not eaten the banana - B: (No), Paul HAS eaten the banana!). We tried to discover whether and how Italian speakers prosodically mark VF when producing full-fledged sentences using a semi-spontaneous production experiment on 27 speakers. Speech rate and f0 contours were extracted using automatic data processing tools and were subsequently analysed using Functional Data Analysis (FDA), which allowed for automatic visualization of patterns in the contour shapes. Our results show that the postfocal region of VF sentences exhibit faster speech rate and lower f0 compared to non-VF cases. However, an expected consistent difference of f0 effect on the focal region of the VF sentence was not found in this analysis.
  • Van Hout, A., Veenstra, A., & Berends, S. (2011). All pronouns are not acquired equally in Dutch: Elicitation of object and quantitative pronouns. In M. Pirvulescu, M. C. Cuervo, A. T. Pérez-Leroux, J. Steele, & N. Strik (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 4th Conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition North America (GALANA 2010) (pp. 106-121). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.

    Abstract

    This research reports the results of eliciting pronouns in two syntactic environments: Object pronouns and quantitative er (Q-er). Thus another type of language is added to the literature on subject and object clitic acquisition in the Romance languages (Jakubowicz et al., 1998; Hamann et al., 1996). Quantitative er is a unique pronoun in the Germanic languages; it has the same distribution as partitive clitics in Romance. Q-er is an N'-anaphor and occurs obligatorily with headless noun phrases with a numeral or weak quantifier. Q-er is licensed only when the context offers an antecedent; it binds an empty position in the NP. Data from typically-developing children aged 5;0-6;0 show that object and Q-er pronouns are not acquired equally; it is proposed that this is due to their different syntax. The use of Q-er involves more sophisticated syntactic knowledge: Q-er occurs at the left edge of the VP and binds an empty position in the NP, whereas object pronouns are simply stand-ins for full NPs and occur in the same position. These Dutch data reveal that pronouns are not used as exclusively as object clitics are in the Romance languages (Varlakosta, in prep.).
  • Van Gijn, R. (2011). Multi-verb constructions in Yurakaré. In A. Y. Aikhenvald, & P. C. Muysken (Eds.), Multi-verb constructions: A view from the Americas (pp. 255-282). Leiden: Brill.
  • 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 Gijn, R., Haude, K., & Muysken, P. (2011). Subordination in South America: An overview. In R. Van Gijn, K. Haude, & P. Muysken (Eds.), Subordination in native South-American languages (pp. 1-24). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Van Gijn, R. (2011). Semantic and grammatical integration in Yurakaré subordination. In R. Van Gijn, K. Haude, & P. Muysken (Eds.), Subordination in native South-American languages (pp. 169-192). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    Yurakaré (unclassified, central Bolivia) has five subordination strategies (on the basis of a morphosyntactic definition). In this paper I argue that the use of these different strategies is conditioned by the degree of conceptual synthesis of the two events, relating to temporal integration and participant integration. The most integrated events are characterized by shared time reference; morphosyntactically they are serial verb constructions, with syntactically fused predicates. The other constructions are characterized by less grammatical integration, which correlates either with a low degree of temporal integration of the dependent predicate and the main predicate, or with participant discontinuity.
  • Vapnarsky, V., & Le Guen, O. (2011). The guardians of space: Understanding ecological and historical relations of the contemporary Yucatec Mayas to their landscape. In C. Isendahl, & B. Liljefors Persson (Eds.), Ecology, Power, and Religion in Maya Landscapes: Proceedings of the 11th European Maya Conference. Acta Mesoamericano. vol. 23. Markt Schwaben: Saurwein.
  • Vernes, S. C., & Fisher, S. E. (2011). Functional genomic dissection of speech and language disorders. In J. D. Clelland (Ed.), Genomics, proteomics, and the nervous system (pp. 253-278). New York: Springer.

    Abstract

    Mutations of the human FOXP2 gene have been shown to cause severe difficulties in learning to make coordinated sequences of articulatory gestures that underlie speech (developmental verbal dyspraxia or DVD). Affected individuals are impaired in multiple aspects of expressive and receptive linguistic processing and ­display abnormal grey matter volume and functional activation patterns in cortical and subcortical brain regions. The protein encoded by FOXP2 belongs to a divergent subgroup of forkhead-box transcription factors, with a distinctive DNA-binding domain and motifs that mediate hetero- and homodimerization. This chapter describes the successful use of FOXP2 as a unique molecular window into neurogenetic pathways that are important for speech and language development, adopting several complementary strategies. These include direct functional investigations of FOXP2 splice variants and the effects of etiological mutations. FOXP2’s role as a transcription factor also enabled the development of functional genomic routes for dissecting neurogenetic mechanisms that may be relevant for speech and language. By identifying downstream target genes regulated by FOXP2, it was possible to identify common regulatory themes in modulating synaptic plasticity, neurodevelopment, and axon guidance. These targets represent novel entrypoints into in vivo pathways that may be disturbed in speech and language disorders. The identification of FOXP2 target genes has also led to the discovery of a shared neurogenetic pathway between clinically distinct language disorders; the rare Mendelian form of DVD and a complex and more common form of language ­disorder known as Specific Language Impairment.

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  • Versteegh, M., Ten Bosch, L., & Boves, L. (2011). Modelling novelty preference in word learning. In Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2011), Florence, Italy (pp. 761-764).

    Abstract

    This paper investigates the effects of novel words on a cognitively plausible computational model of word learning. The model is first familiarized with a set of words, achieving high recognition scores and subsequently offered novel words for training. We show that the model is able to recognize the novel words as different from the previously seen words, based on a measure of novelty that we introduce. We then propose a procedure analogous to novelty preference in infants. Results from simulations of word learning show that adding this procedure to our model speeds up training and helps the model attain higher recognition rates.
  • Verweij, H., Windhouwer, M., & Wittenburg, P. (2011). Knowledge management for small languages. In V. Luzar-Stiffler, I. Jarec, & Z. Bekic (Eds.), Proceedings of the ITI 2011 33rd Int. Conf. on Information Technology Interfaces, June 27-30, 2011, Cavtat, Croatia (pp. 213-218). Zagreb, Croatia: University Computing Centre, University of Zagreb.

    Abstract

    In this paper an overview of the knowledge components needed for extensive documentation of small languages is given. The Language Archive is striving to offer all these tools to the linguistic community. The major tools in relation to the knowledge components are described. Followed by a discussion on what is currently lacking and possible strategies to move forward.
  • Virpioja, S., Lehtonen, M., Hulten, A., Salmelin, R., & Lagus, K. (2011). Predicting reaction times in word recognition by unsupervised learning of morphology. In W. Honkela, W. Dutch, M. Girolami, & S. Kaski (Eds.), Artificial Neural Networks and Machine Learning – ICANN 2011 (pp. 275-282). Berlin: Springer.

    Abstract

    A central question in the study of the mental lexicon is how morphologically complex words are processed. We consider this question from the viewpoint of statistical models of morphology. As an indicator of the mental processing cost in the brain, we use reaction times to words in a visual lexical decision task on Finnish nouns. Statistical correlation between a model and reaction times is employed as a goodness measure of the model. In particular, we study Morfessor, an unsupervised method for learning concatenative morphology. The results for a set of inflected and monomorphemic Finnish nouns reveal that the probabilities given by Morfessor, especially the Categories-MAP version, show considerably higher correlations to the reaction times than simple word statistics such as frequency, morphological family size, or length. These correlations are also higher than when any individual test subject is viewed as a model.
  • Vuong, L., Meyer, A. S., & Christiansen, M. H. (2011). Simultaneous online tracking of adjacent and non-adjacent dependencies in statistical learning. In L. Carlson, C. Hölscher, & T. Shipley (Eds.), Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 964-969). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.
  • Wagner, M., Tran, D., Togneri, R., Rose, P., Powers, D., Onslow, M., Loakes, D., Lewis, T., Kuratate, T., Kinoshita, Y., Kemp, N., Ishihara, S., Ingram, J., Hajek, J., Grayden, D., Göcke, R., Fletcher, J., Estival, D., Epps, J., Dale, R. and 11 moreWagner, M., Tran, D., Togneri, R., Rose, P., Powers, D., Onslow, M., Loakes, D., Lewis, T., Kuratate, T., Kinoshita, Y., Kemp, N., Ishihara, S., Ingram, J., Hajek, J., Grayden, D., Göcke, R., Fletcher, J., Estival, D., Epps, J., Dale, R., Cutler, A., Cox, F., Chetty, G., Cassidy, S., Butcher, A., Burnham, D., Bird, S., Best, C., Bennamoun, M., Arciuli, J., & Ambikairajah, E. (2011). The Big Australian Speech Corpus (The Big ASC). In M. Tabain, J. Fletcher, D. Grayden, J. Hajek, & A. Butcher (Eds.), Proceedings of the Thirteenth Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 166-170). Melbourne: ASSTA.
  • Weber, A. (1998). Listening to nonnative language which violates native assimilation rules. In D. Duez (Ed.), Proceedings of the European Scientific Communication Association workshop: Sound patterns of Spontaneous Speech (pp. 101-104).

    Abstract

    Recent studies using phoneme detection tasks have shown that spoken-language processing is neither facilitated nor interfered with by optional assimilation, but is inhibited by violation of obligatory assimilation. Interpretation of these results depends on an assessment of their generality, specifically, whether they also obtain when listeners are processing nonnative language. Two separate experiments are presented in which native listeners of German and native listeners of Dutch had to detect a target fricative in legal monosyllabic Dutch nonwords. All of the nonwords were correct realisations in standard Dutch. For German listeners, however, half of the nonwords contained phoneme strings which violate the German fricative assimilation rule. Whereas the Dutch listeners showed no significant effects, German listeners detected the target fricative faster when the German fricative assimilation was violated than when no violation occurred. The results might suggest that violation of assimilation rules does not have to make processing more difficult per se.
  • Wegener, C. (2011). Expression of reciprocity in Savosavo. In N. Evans, A. Gaby, S. C. Levinson, & A. Majid (Eds.), Reciprocals and semantic typology (pp. 213-224). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    This paper describes how reciprocity is expressed in the Papuan (i.e. non-Austronesian­) language Savosavo, spoken in the Solomon Islands. The main strategy is to use the reciprocal nominal mapamapa, which can occur in different NP positions and always triggers default third person singular masculine agreement, regardless of the number and gender of the referents. After a description of this as well as another strategy that is occasionally used (the ‘joint activity construction’), the paper will provide a detailed analysis of data elicited with set of video stimuli and show that the main strategy is used to describe even clearly asymmetric situations, as long as more than one person acts on more than one person in a joint activity.
  • Weissenborn, J. (1981). L'acquisition des prepositions spatiales: problemes cognitifs et linguistiques. In C. Schwarze (Ed.), Analyse des prépositions: IIIme colloque franco-allemand de linguistique théorique du 2 au 4 février 1981 à Constance (pp. 251-285). Tübingen: Niemeyer.
  • Weissenborn, J. (1988). Von der demonstratio ad oculos zur Deixis am Phantasma. Die Entwicklung der lokalen Referenz bei Kindern. In Karl Bühler's Theory of Language. Proceedings of the Conference held at Kirchberg, August 26, 1984 and Essen, November 21–24, 1984 (pp. 257-276). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Wilkin, K., & Holler, J. (2011). Speakers’ use of ‘action’ and ‘entity’ gestures with definite and indefinite references. In G. Stam, & M. Ishino (Eds.), Integrating gestures: The interdisciplinary nature of gesture (pp. 293-308). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Abstract

    Common ground is an essential prerequisite for coordination in social interaction, including language use. When referring back to a referent in discourse, this referent is ‘given information’ and therefore in the interactants’ common ground. When a referent is being referred to for the first time, a speaker introduces ‘new information’. The analyses reported here are on gestures that accompany such references when they include definite and indefinite grammatical determiners. The main finding from these analyses is that referents referred to by definite and indefinite articles were equally often accompanied by gesture, but speakers tended to accompany definite references with gestures focusing on action information and indefinite references with gestures focusing on entity information. The findings suggest that speakers use speech and gesture together to design utterances appropriate for speakers with whom they share common ground.

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  • Wittek, A. (1998). Learning verb meaning via adverbial modification: Change-of-state verbs in German and the adverb "wieder" again. In A. Greenhill, M. Hughes, H. Littlefield, & H. Walsh (Eds.), Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 779-790). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
  • Witteman, M. J., Bardhan, N. P., Weber, A., & McQueen, J. M. (2011). Adapting to foreign-accented speech: The role of delay in testing. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. Program abstracts of the 162nd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, 130(4), 2443.

    Abstract

    Understanding speech usually seems easy, but it can become noticeably harder when the speaker has a foreign accent. This is because foreign accents add considerable variation to speech. Research on foreign-accented speech shows that participants are able to adapt quickly to this type of variation. Less is known, however, about longer-term maintenance of adaptation. The current study focused on long-term adaptation by exposing native listeners to foreign-accented speech on Day 1, and testing them on comprehension of the accent one day later. Comprehension was thus not tested immediately, but only after a 24 hour period. On Day 1, native Dutch listeners listened to the speech of a Hebrew learner of Dutch while performing a phoneme monitoring task that did not depend on the talker’s accent. In particular, shortening of the long vowel /i/ into /ɪ/ (e.g., lief [li:f], ‘sweet’, pronounced as [lɪf]) was examined. These mispronunciations did not create lexical ambiguities in Dutch. On Day 2, listeners participated in a cross-modal priming task to test their comprehension of the accent. The results will be contrasted with results from an experiment without delayed testing and related to accounts of how listeners maintain adaptation to foreign-accented speech.
  • Witteman, M. J., Weber, A., & McQueen, J. M. (2011). On the relationship between perceived accentedness, acoustic similarity, and processing difficulty in foreign-accented speech. In Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2011), Florence, Italy (pp. 2229-2232).

    Abstract

    Foreign-accented speech is often perceived as more difficult to understand than native speech. What causes this potential difficulty, however, remains unknown. In the present study, we compared acoustic similarity and accent ratings of American-accented Dutch with a cross-modal priming task designed to measure online speech processing. We focused on two Dutch diphthongs: ui and ij. Though both diphthongs deviated from standard Dutch to varying degrees and perceptually varied in accent strength, native Dutch listeners recognized words containing the diphthongs easily. Thus, not all foreign-accented speech hinders comprehension, and acoustic similarity and perceived accentedness are not always predictive of processing difficulties.
  • Zeshan, U., & Panda, S. (2011). Reciprocals constructions in Indo-Pakistani sign language. In N. Evans, & A. Gaby (Eds.), Reciprocals and semantic typology (pp. 91-113). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    Indo-Pakistani Sign Language (IPSL) is the sign language used by deaf communities in a large region across India and Pakistan. This visual-gestural language has a dedicated construction for specifically expressing reciprocal relationships, which can be applied to agreement verbs and to auxiliaries. The reciprocal construction relies on a change in the movement pattern of the signs it applies to. In addition, IPSL has a number of other strategies which can have a reciprocal interpretation, and the IPSL lexicon includes a good number of inherently reciprocal signs. All reciprocal expressions can be modified in complex ways that rely on the grammatical use of the sign space. Considering grammaticalisation and lexicalisation processes linking some of these constructions is also important for a better understanding of reciprocity in IPSL.

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