Publications

Abstract

Listeners require context to understand the casual pronunciation variants of words that are typical of spontaneous speech (Ernestus et al., 2002). The present study reports two auditory lexical decision experiments, investigating listeners' use of semantic contextual information in the comprehension of unreduced and reduced words. We found a strong semantic priming effect for low frequency unreduced words, whereas there was no such effect for reduced words. Word frequency was facilitatory for all words. These results show that semantic context is relevant especially for the comprehension of unreduced words, which is unexpected given the listener driven explanation of reduction in spontaneous speech.

Abstract

The seemingly effortless switching between languages and the merging of two languages into a coherent utterance is a hallmark of bilingual language processing, and reveals the flexibility of human speech and skilled cognitive control. That skill appears to be available not only to speakers when they produce language-switched utterances, but also to listeners and readers when presented with mixed language information. In this chapter, we review electrophysiological studies in which Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) are derived from recordings of brain activity to examine the neurocognitive aspects of comprehending and producing mixed language. Topics we discuss include the time course of brain activity associated with language switching between single stimuli and language switching of words embedded in a meaningful sentence context. The majority of ERP studies report that switching between languages incurs neurocognitive costs, but –more interestingly- ERP patterns differ as a function of L2 proficiency and the amount of daily experience with language switching, the direction of switching (switching into L2 is typically associated with higher switching costs than switching into L1), the type of language switching task, and the predictability of the language switch. Finally, we outline some future directions for this relatively new approach to the study of language switching.

Abstract

Before infants become mature speakers of their native language, they must acquire a robust word-recognition system which allows them to strike the balance between allowing some variation (mood, voice, accent) and recognizing variability that potentially changes meaning (e.g. cat vs hat). The current meta-analysis quantifies how the latter, termed mispronunciation sensitivity, changes over infants’ first three years, testing competing predictions of mainstream language acquisition theories. Our results show that infants were sensitive to mispronunciations, but accepted them as labels for target objects. Interestingly, and in contrast to predictions of mainstream theories, mispronunciation sensitivity was not modulated by infant age, suggesting that a sufficiently flexible understanding of native language phonology is in place at a young age.

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.

Abstract

Lexical recognition is typically slower in L2 than in L1. Part of the difficulty comes from a not precise enough processing of L2 phonemes. Consequently, L2 listeners fail to eliminate candidate words that L1 listeners can exclude from competing for recognition. For instance, the inability to distinguish /r/ from /l/ in rocket and locker makes for Japanese listeners both words possible candidates when hearing their onset (e.g., Cutler, Weber, and Otake, 2006). The L2 disadvantage can, however, be dispelled: For L2 listeners, but not L1 listeners, L2 speech from a non-native talker with the same language background is known to be as intelligible as L2 speech from a native talker (e.g., Bent and Bradlow, 2003). A reason for this may be that L2 listeners have ample experience with segmental deviations that are characteristic for their own accent. On this account, only phonemic deviations that are typical for the listeners’ own accent will cause spurious lexical activation in L2 listening (e.g., English magic pronounced as megic for Dutch listeners). In this talk, I will present evidence from cross-modal priming studies with a variety of L2 listener groups, showing how the processing of phonemic deviations is accent-specific but withstands fine phonetic differences.

Abstract

Field data are drawn from a particular speech community at a certain place and time. The intent of this survey is to enrich understanding of the various socio-cultural contexts in which linguistic and “cognitive” data may have been collected, so that we can explore the role which societal, cultural and contextual factors may play in this material. The questionnaire gives guidelines concerning types of ethnographic information that are important to cross-cultural and cross-linguistic enquiry, and will be especially useful to researchers who do not have specialised training in anthropology.

Abstract

How do languages encode different kinds of movement, and what features do people pay attention to when describing motion events? This document outlines topics concerning the investigation of “enter” and “exit” events. It helps contextualise research tasks that examine this domain (see 'Motion Elicitation' and 'Enter/Exit animation') and gives some pointers about what other questions can be explored.

Abstract

How do languages encode different kinds of movement, and what features do people pay attention to when describing motion events? This task investigates the expression of “enter” and “exit” activities, that is, events involving motion in(to) and motion out (of) container-like items. The researcher first uses particular stimuli (a ball, a cup, rice, etc.) to elicit descriptions of enter/exit events from one consultant, and then asks another consultant to demonstrate the event based on these descriptions. See also the related entries Enter/Exit Animation and Background Questions for Enter/Exit Research.

Abstract

Set is widely used as a kind of basic data structure. However, when it is used for large scale data set the cost of storage, search and transport is overhead. The bloom filter uses a fixed size bit string to represent elements in a static set, which can reduce storage space and search cost that is a fixed constant. The time-space efficiency is achieved at the cost of a small probability of false positive in membership query. However, for many applications the space savings and locating time constantly outweigh this drawback. Dynamic bloom filter (DBF) can support concisely representation and approximate membership queries of dynamic set instead of static set. It has been proved that DBF not only possess the advantage of standard bloom filter, but also has better features when dealing with dynamic set. This paper proposes a time-dependent multiple bit-strings bloom filter (TMBF) which roots in the DBF and targets on dynamic incremental set. TMBF uses multiple bit-strings in time order to present a dynamic increasing set and uses backward searching to test whether an element is in a set. Based on the system logs from a real P2P file sharing system, the evaluation shows a 20% reduction in searching cost compared to DBF.