Publications

Displaying 601 - 627 of 627
  • Van Turennout, M., Hagoort, P., & Brown, C. M. (1999). The time course of grammatical and phonological processing during speaking: evidence from event-related brain potentials. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 28(6), 649-676. doi:10.1023/A:1023221028150.

    Abstract

    Motor-related brain potentials were used to examine the time course of grammatical and phonological processes during noun phrase production in Dutch. In the experiments, participants named colored pictures using a no-determiner noun phrase. On half of the trials a syntactic-phonological classification task had to be performed before naming. Depending on the outcome of the classifications, a left or a right push-button response was given (go trials), or no push-button response was given (no-go trials). Lateralized readiness potentials (LRPs) were derived to test whether syntactic and phonological information affected the motor system at separate moments in time. The results showed that when syntactic information determined the response-hand decision, an LRP developed on no-go trials. However, no such effect was observed when phonological information determined response hand. On the basis of the data, it can be estimated that an additional period of at least 40 ms is needed to retrieve a word's initial phoneme once its lemma has been retrieved. These results provide evidence for the view that during speaking, grammatical processing precedes phonological processing in time.
  • Verhoeven, L., Schreuder, R., & Baayen, R. H. (2003). Units of analysis in reading Dutch bisyllabic pseudowords. Scientific Studies of Reading, 7(3), 255-271. doi:10.1207/S1532799XSSR0703_4.

    Abstract

    Two experiments were carried out to explore the units of analysis is used by children to read Dutch bisyllabic pseudowords. Although Dutch orthography is highly regular, several deviations from a one-to-one correspondence occur. In polysyllabic words, the grapheme e may represent three different vowels:/∊/, /e/, or /λ/. In Experiment 1, Grade 6 elementary school children were presented lists of bisyllabic pseudowords containing the grapheme e in the initial syllable representing a content morpheme, a prefix, or a random string. On the basis of general word frequency data, we expected the interpretation of the initial syllable as a random string to elicit the pronunciation of a stressed /e/, the interpretation of the initial syllable as a content morpheme to elicit the pronunciation of a stressed /∊/, the interpretation of the initial syllable as a content morpheme to elicit the pronunciation of a stressed /∊/, and the interpretation as a prefix to elicit the pronunciation of an unstressed /&lamda;/. We found both the pronunciation and the stress assignment for pseudowords to depend on word type, which shows morpheme boundaries and prefixes to be identified. However, the identification of prefixes could also be explained by the correspondence of the prefix boundaries in the pseudowords to syllable boundaries. To exclude this alternative explanation, a follow-up experiment with the same group of children was conducted using bisyllabic pseudowords containing prefixes that did not coincide with syllable boundaries versus similar pseudowords with no prefix. The results of the first experiment were replicated. That is, the children identified prefixes and shifted their assignment of word stress accordingly. The results are discussed with reference to a parallel dual-route model of word decoding
  • Von Stutterheim, C., Carroll, M., & Klein, W. (2003). Two ways of construing complex temporal structures. In F. Lenz (Ed.), Deictic conceptualization of space, time and person (pp. 97-133). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Vonk, W., & Cozijn, R. (2003). On the treatment of saccades and regressions in eye movement measures of reading time. In J. Hyönä, R. Radach, & H. Deubel (Eds.), The mind's eye: Cognitive and applied aspects of eye movement research (pp. 291-312). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
  • Wagner, A., & Braun, A. (2003). Is voice quality language-dependent? Acoustic analyses based on speakers of three different languages. In Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2003) (pp. 651-654). Adelaide: Causal Productions.
  • Waller, D., & Haun, D. B. M. (2003). Scaling techniques for modeling directional knowledge. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 35(2), 285-293.

    Abstract

    A common way for researchers to model or graphically portray spatial knowledge of a large environment is by applying multidimensional scaling (MDS) to a set of pairwise distance estimations. We introduce two MDS-like techniques that incorporate people’s knowledge of directions instead of (or in addition to) their knowledge of distances. Maps of a familiar environment derived from these procedures were more accurate and were rated by participants as being more accurate than those derived from nonmetric MDS. By incorporating people’s relatively accurate knowledge of directions, these methods offer spatial cognition researchers and behavioral geographers a sharper analytical tool than MDS for studying cognitive maps.
  • Walsh Dickey, L. (1999). Syllable count and Tzeltal segmental allomorphy. In J. Rennison, & K. Kühnhammer (Eds.), Phonologica 1996. Proceedings of the 8th International Phonology Meeting (pp. 323-334). Holland Academic Graphics.

    Abstract

    Tzeltal, a Mayan language spoken in southern Mexico, exhibits allo-morphy of an unusual type. The vowel quality of the perfective suffix is determined by the number of syllables in the stem to which it is attaching. This paper presents previously unpublished data of this allomorphy and demonstrates that a syllable-count analysis of the phenomenon is the proper one. This finding is put in a more general context of segment-prosody interaction in allomorphy.
  • Warner, N. (2003). Rapid perceptibility as a factor underlying universals of vowel inventories. In A. Carnie, H. Harley, & M. Willie (Eds.), Formal approaches to function in grammar, in honor of Eloise Jelinek (pp. 245-261). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Wassenaar, M., Hagoort, P., & Brown, C. M. (1997). Syntactic ERP effects in Broca's aphasics with agrammatic comprehension. Brain and Language, 60, 61-64. doi:10.1006/brln.1997.1911.
  • Weber, A., & Smits, R. (2003). Consonant and vowel confusion patterns by American English listeners. In M. J. Solé, D. Recasens, & J. Romero (Eds.), Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences.

    Abstract

    This study investigated the perception of American English phonemes by native listeners. Listeners identified either the consonant or the vowel in all possible English CV and VC syllables. The syllables were embedded in multispeaker babble at three signal-to-noise ratios (0 dB, 8 dB, and 16 dB). Effects of syllable position, signal-to-noise ratio, and articulatory features on vowel and consonant identification are discussed. The results constitute the largest source of data that is currently available on phoneme confusion patterns of American English phonemes by native listeners.
  • Weber, A., & Smits, R. (2003). Consonant and vowel confusion patterns by American English listeners. In Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2003) (pp. 1437-1440). Adelaide: Causal Productions.

    Abstract

    This study investigated the perception of American English phonemes by native listeners. Listeners identified either the consonant or the vowel in all possible English CV and VC syllables. The syllables were embedded in multispeaker babble at three signalto-noise ratios (0 dB, 8 dB, and 16 dB). Effects of syllable position, signal-to-noise ratio, and articulatory features on vowel and consonant identification are discussed. The results constitute the largest source of data that is currently available on phoneme confusion patterns of American English phonemes by native listeners.
  • 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.
  • Weber, A., & Cutler, A. (2003). Perceptual similarity co-existing with lexical dissimilarity [Abstract]. Abstracts of the 146th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 114(4 Pt. 2), 2422. doi:10.1121/1.1601094.

    Abstract

    The extreme case of perceptual similarity is indiscriminability, as when two second‐language phonemes map to a single native category. An example is the English had‐head vowel contrast for Dutch listeners; Dutch has just one such central vowel, transcribed [E]. We examine whether the failure to discriminate in phonetic categorization implies indiscriminability in other—e.g., lexical—processing. Eyetracking experiments show that Dutch‐native listeners instructed in English to ‘‘click on the panda’’ look (significantly more than native listeners) at a pictured pencil, suggesting that pan‐ activates their lexical representation of pencil. The reverse, however, is not the case: ‘‘click on the pencil’’ does not induce looks to a panda, suggesting that pen‐ does not activate panda in the lexicon. Thus prelexically undiscriminated second‐language distinctions can nevertheless be maintained in stored lexical representations. The problem of mapping a resulting unitary input to two distinct categories in lexical representations is solved by allowing input to activate only one second‐language category. For Dutch listeners to English, this is English [E], as a result of which no vowels in the signal ever map to words containing [ae]. We suggest that the choice of category is here motivated by a more abstract, phonemic, metric of similarity.
  • 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.
  • Wender, K. F., Haun, D. B. M., Rasch, B. H., & Blümke, M. (2003). Context effects in memory for routes. In C. Freksa, W. Brauer, C. Habel, & K. F. Wender (Eds.), Spatial cognition III: Routes and navigation, human memory and learning, spatial representation and spatial learning (pp. 209-231). Berlin: Springer.
  • Wheeldon, L. (2003). Inhibitory from priming of spoken word production. Language and Cognitive Processes, 18(1), 81-109. doi:10.1080/01690960143000470.

    Abstract

    Three experiments were designed to examine the effect on picture naming of the prior production of a word related in phonological form. In Experiment 1, the latency to produce Dutch words in response to pictures (e.g., hoed , hat) was longer following the production of a form-related word (e.g., hond , dog) in response to a definition on a preceding trial, than when the preceding definition elicited an unrelated word (e.g., kerk , church). Experiment 2 demonstrated that the inhibitory effect disappears when one unrelated word is produced intervening prime and target productions (e.g., hond-kerk-hoed ). The size of the inhibitory effect was not significantly affected by the frequency of the prime words or the target picture names. In Experiment 3, facilitation was observed for word pairs that shared offset segments (e.g., kurk-jurk , cork-dress), whereas inhibition was observed for shared onset segments (e.g., bloed-bloem , blood-flower). However, no priming was observed for prime and target words with shared phonemes but no mismatching segments (e.g., oom-boom , uncle-tree; hex-hexs , fence-witch). These findings are consistent with a process of phoneme competition during phonological encoding.
  • Wilkins, D. (1999). A questionnaire on motion lexicalisation and motion description. In D. Wilkins (Ed.), Manual for the 1999 Field Season (pp. 96-115). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.3002706.

    Abstract

    How do languages express ideas of movement, and how do they package features that can be part of motion, such as path and cause? This questionnaire is used to gain a picture of the lexical resources a language draws on for motion expressions. It targets issues of semantic conflation (i.e., what other semantic information besides motion may be encoded in a verb root) and patterns of semantic distribution (i.e., what types of information are encoded in the morphemes that come together to build a description of a motion event). It was originally designed for Australian languages, but has since been used around the world.
  • Wilkins, D. (1999). Eliciting contrastive use of demonstratives for objects within close personal space (all objects well within arm’s reach). In D. Wilkins (Ed.), Manual for the 1999 Field Season (pp. 25-28). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.2573796.

    Abstract

    Contrastive reference, where a speaker presents or identifies one item in explicit contrast to another (I like this book but that one is boring), has special communicative and information structure properties. This can be reflected in rules of demonstrative use. For example, in some languages, terms equivalent to this and that can be used for contrastive reference in almost any spatial context. But other two-term languages stick more closely to “distance rules” for demonstratives, allowing a this-like term in close space only. This task elicits data concerning one context of contrastive reference, focusing on whether (and how) non-proximal demonstratives can be used to distinguish objects within a proximal area. The task runs like a memory game, with the consultant being asked to identify the locations of two or three hidden items arranged within arm’s reach.
  • Wilkins, D. (1999). The 1999 demonstrative questionnaire: “This” and “that” in comparative perspective. In D. Wilkins (Ed.), Manual for the 1999 Field Season (pp. 1-24). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.2573775.

    Abstract

    Demonstrative terms (e.g., this and that) are key to understanding how a language constructs and interprets spatial relationships. They are tricky to pin down, typically having functions that do not match “idealized” uses, and that can become invisible in narrow elicitation settings. This questionnaire is designed to identify the range(s) of use of certain spatial demonstrative terms, and help assess the roles played by gesture, access, attention, and addressee knowledge in demonstrative use. The stimuli consist of 25 diagrammed “elicitation settings” to be created by the researcher.
  • 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.
  • Wittek, A. (1999). Zustandsveränderungsverben im Deutschen - wie lernt das Kind die komplexe Semantik? In J. Meibauer, & M. Rothweiler (Eds.), Das Lexikon im Spracherwerb (pp. 278-296). Tübingen: Francke.

    Abstract

    Angelika Wittek untersuchte Zustandsveränderungsverben bei vier- bis sechsjährigen Kindern. Englischsprechende Kinder verstehen bis zum Alter von 8 Jahren diese Verben als Bewegungsverben und ignorieren, daß sie zusätzlich die Information über einen Endzustand im Sinne der Negation des Ausgangszustands beeinhalten. Wittek zeigte, daß entgegen der Erwartung transparente, morphologisch komplexe Formen (wachmachen), in denen die Partikel den Endzustand explizit macht, nicht besser verstanden werden als Simplizia (wecken). Zudem diskutierte sie, inwieweit die Verwendung des Adverbs wieder in restitutiver Lesart Hinweise auf den Erwerb dieser Verben geben kann.
  • Wittenburg, P. (2003). The DOBES model of language documentation. Language Documentation and Description, 1, 122-139.
  • Zavala, R. (1997). Functional analysis of Akatek voice constructions. International Journal of American Linguistics, 63(4), 439-474.

    Abstract

    L'A. étudie les corrélations entre structure syntaxique et fonction pragmatique dans les alternances de voix en akatek, une langue maya appartenant au sous-groupe Q'anjob'ala. Les alternances pragmatiques de voix sont les mécanismes par lesquels les langues encodent les différents degrés de topicalité des deux principaux participants d'un événement sémantiquement transitif, l'agent et le patient. A l'aide d'une analyse quantitative, l'A. évalue la topicalité de ces participants et identifie les structures syntaxiques permettant d'exprimer les quatre principales fonctions de voix en akatek : active-directe, inverse, passive et antipassive
  • Zavala, R. M. (1999). External possessor in Oluta Popoluca (Mixean): Applicatives and incorporation of relational terms. In D. L. Payne, & I. Barshi (Eds.), External possession (pp. 339-372). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Zeshan, U. (2003). Aspects of Türk Işaret Dili (Turkish Sign Language). Sign Language and Linguistics, 6(1), 43-75. doi:10.1075/sll.6.1.04zes.

    Abstract

    This article provides a first overview of some striking grammatical structures in Türk Idotscedilaret Dili (Turkish Sign Language, TID), the sign language used by the Deaf community in Turkey. The data are described with a typological perspective in mind, focusing on aspects of TID grammar that are typologically unusual across sign languages. After giving an overview of the historical, sociolinguistic and educational background of TID and the language community using this sign language, five domains of TID grammar are investigated in detail. These include a movement derivation signalling completive aspect, three types of nonmanual negation — headshake, backward head tilt, and puffed cheeks — and their distribution, cliticization of the negator NOT to a preceding predicate host sign, an honorific whole-entity classifier used to refer to humans, and a question particle, its history and current status in the language. A final evaluation points out the significance of these data for sign language research and looks at perspectives for a deeper understanding of the language and its history.
  • Zwitserlood, I. (2003). Classifying hand configurations in Nederlandse Gebarentaal (Sign Language of the Netherlands). PhD Thesis, LOT, Utrecht. Retrieved from http://igitur-archive.library.uu.nl/dissertations/2003-0717-122837/UUindex.html.

    Abstract

    This study investigates the morphological and morphosyntactic characteristics of hand configurations in signs, particularly in Nederlandse Gebarentaal (NGT). The literature on sign languages in general acknowledges that hand configurations can function as morphemes, more specifically as classifiers , in a subset of signs: verbs expressing the motion, location, and existence of referents (VELMs). These verbs are considered the output of productive sign formation processes. In contrast, other signs in which similar hand configurations appear ( iconic or motivated signs) have been considered to be lexicalized signs, not involving productive processes. This research report shows that meaningful hand configurations have (at least) two very different functions in the grammar of NGT (and presumably in other sign languages, too). First, they are agreement markers on VELMs, and hence are functional elements. Second, they are roots in motivated signs, and thus lexical elements. The latter signs are analysed as root compounds and are formed from various roots by productive processes. The similarities in surface form and differences in morphosyntactic characteristics observed in comparison of VELMs and root compounds are attributed to their different structures and to the sign language interface between grammar and phonetic form
  • Zwitserlood, I. (2003). Word formation below and above little x: Evidence from Sign Language of the Netherlands. In Proceedings of SCL 19. Nordlyd Tromsø University Working Papers on Language and Linguistics (pp. 488-502).

    Abstract

    Although in many respects sign languages have a similar structure to that of spoken languages, the different modalities in which both types of languages are expressed cause differences in structure as well. One of the most striking differences between spoken and sign languages is the influence of the interface between grammar and PF on the surface form of utterances. Spoken language words and phrases are in general characterized by sequential strings of sounds, morphemes and words, while in sign languages we find that many phonemes, morphemes, and even words are expressed simultaneously. A linguistic model should be able to account for the structures that occur in both spoken and sign languages. In this paper, I will discuss the morphological/ morphosyntactic structure of signs in Nederlandse Gebarentaal (Sign Language of the Netherlands, henceforth NGT), with special focus on the components ‘place of articulation’ and ‘handshape’. I will focus on their multiple functions in the grammar of NGT and argue that the framework of Distributed Morphology (DM), which accounts for word formation in spoken languages, is also suited to account for the formation of structures in sign languages. First I will introduce the phonological and morphological structure of NGT signs. Then, I will briefly outline the major characteristics of the DM framework. Finally, I will account for signs that have the same surface form but have a different morphological structure by means of that framework.

Share this page