Publications

Displaying 1 - 100 of 299
  • Aarts, E. (2009). Resisting temptation: The role of the anterior cingulate cortex in adjusting cognitive control. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Ameka, F. K. (2009). Access rituals in West Africa: An ethnopragmatic perspective. In G. Senft, & E. B. Basso (Eds.), Ritual communication (pp. 127-151). Oxford: Berg.
  • Ameka, F. K. (2005). "The woman is seeable" and "The woman perceives seeing": Undergoer voice constructions in Ewe and Likpe. In M. Dakubu, & E. Osam (Eds.), Studies in languages of the Volta Basin (pp. 43-62). Legon: University of Ghana. Department of Linguistics.
  • Ameka, F. K. (2005). Forms of secondary predication in serializing languages: On depictives in Ewe. In N. P. Himmelmann, & E. Schultze-Berndt (Eds.), Secondary predication and adverbial modification: The typology of depictives (pp. 335-378). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Ameka, F. K. (2005). Multiverb constructions on the West African littoral: Microvariation and areal typology. In M. Vulchanova, & T. A. Afarli (Eds.), Grammar and beyond: Essays in honour of Lars Hellan (pp. 15-42). Oslo: Novus.
  • Ameka, F. K. (2009). Likpe. In G. J. Dimmendaal (Ed.), Coding participant marking: Construction types in twelve African languages (pp. 239-280). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Baayen, R. H. (2005). Data mining at the intersection of psychology and linguistics. In A. Cutler (Ed.), Twenty-first century psycholinguistics: Four cornerstones (pp. 69-83). Mahwah: Erlbaum.
  • Baggio, G. (2009). Semantics and the electrophysiology of meaning: Tense, aspect, event structure. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Basso, E. B., & Senft, G. (2009). Introduction. In G. Senft, & E. B. Basso (Eds.), Ritual communication (pp. 1-19). Oxford: Berg.
  • Bauer, B. L. M. (2000). From Latin to French: The linear development of word order. In B. Bichakjian, T. Chernigovskaya, A. Kendon, & A. Müller (Eds.), Becoming Loquens: More studies in language origins (pp. 239-257). Frankfurt am Main: Lang.
  • Bauer, B. L. M. (2005). Innovation in Old French syntax and its Latin origins. In S. Kiss, L. Mondin, & G. Salvi (Eds.), Latin et langues romanes: Etudes de linguistique offertes à Jozsef Herman à l’occasion de son 80ème anniversaire (pp. 507-521). Tübingen: Niemeyer.
  • Bauer, B. L. M. (2005). Living in two worlds. In W. R. Louis (Ed.), Burnt orange Britannia (pp. 732-744). Austin: Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center.
  • Bauer, B. L. M. (2009). Residues as an aid in internal reconstruction. In J. E. Rasmussen, & T. Olander (Eds.), Internal reconstruction in Indo-European: Methods, results, and problems (pp. 17-31). Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press.
  • Bauer, B. L. M. (2009). Strategies of definiteness in Latin: Implications for early Indo-European. In V. Bubenik, J. Hewson, & S. Rose (Eds.), Grammatical change in Indo-European languages: Papers presented at the workshop on Indo-European Linguistics at the XVIIIth International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Montreal, 2007 (pp. 71-87). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Bauer, B. L. M. (2009). Word order. In P. Baldi, & P. Cuzzolin (Eds.), New Perspectives on Historical Latin Syntax: Vol 1: Syntax of the Sentence (pp. 241-316). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • 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.
  • Blythe, J. (2018). Genesis of the trinity: The convergent evolution of trirelational kinterms. In P. McConvell, & P. Kelly (Eds.), Skin, kin and clan: The dynamics of social categories in Indigenous Australia (pp. 431-471). Canberra: ANU EPress.
  • Bohnemeyer, J. (1998). Temporale Relatoren im Hispano-Yukatekischen Sprachkontakt. In A. Koechert, & T. Stolz (Eds.), Convergencia e Individualidad - Las lenguas Mayas entre hispanización e indigenismo (pp. 195-241). Hannover, Germany: Verlag für Ethnologie.
  • Bohnemeyer, J. (1998). Sententiale Topics im Yukatekischen. In Z. Dietmar (Ed.), Deskriptive Grammatik und allgemeiner Sprachvergleich (pp. 55-85). Tübingen, Germany: Max-Niemeyer-Verlag.
  • Bohnemeyer, J. (2000). Where do pragmatic meanings come from? In W. Spooren, T. Sanders, & C. van Wijk (Eds.), Samenhang in Diversiteit; Opstellen voor Leo Noorman, aangeboden bij gelegenheid van zijn zestigste verjaardag (pp. 137-153).
  • De Bot, K., Broersma, M., & Isurin, L. (2009). Sources of triggering in code-switching. In L. Isurin, D. Winford, & K. De Bot (Eds.), Multidisciplinary approaches to code switching (pp. 103-128). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Bowerman, M. (2005). Why can't you "open" a nut or "break" a cooked noodle? Learning covert object categories in action word meanings. In L. Gershkoff-Stowe, & D. H. Rakison (Eds.), Building object categories in developmental time (pp. 209-243). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
  • Bowerman, M. (2005). Linguistics. In B. Hopkins (Ed.), The Cambridge encyclopedia of child development (pp. 497-501). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Bowerman, M. (1986). First steps in acquiring conditionals. In E. C. Traugott, A. G. t. Meulen, J. S. Reilly, & C. A. Ferguson (Eds.), On conditionals (pp. 285-308). Cambridge University Press.

    Abstract

    This chapter is about the initial flowering of conditionals, if-(then) constructions, in children's spontaneous speech. It is motivated by two major theoretical interests. The first and most immediate is to understand the acquisition process itself. Conditionals are conceptually, and in many languages morphosyntactically, complex. What aspects of cognitive and grammatical development are implicated in their acquisition? Does learning take place in the context of particular interactions with other speakers? Where do conditionals fit in with the acquisition of other complex sentences? What are the semantic, syntactic and pragmatic properties of the first conditionals? Underlying this first interest is a second, more strictly linguistic one. Research of recent years has found increasing evidence that natural languages are constrained in certain ways. The source of these constraints is not yet clearly understood, but it is widely assumed that some of them derive ultimately from properties of children's capacity for language acquisition.

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  • Bowerman, M. (2009). Introduction (Part IV: Language and cognition: Universals and typological comparisons). In J. Guo, E. Lieven, N. Budwig, S. Ervin-Tripp, K. Nakamura, & S. Ozcaliskan (Eds.), Crosslinguistic approaches to the psychology of language: Research in the tradition of Dan Isaac Slobin (pp. 443-449).
  • Bowerman, M. (2000). Where do children's word meanings come from? Rethinking the role of cognition in early semantic development. In L. Nucci, G. Saxe, & E. Turiel (Eds.), Culture, thought and development (pp. 199-230). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
  • Brehm, L., & Goldrick, M. (2018). Connectionist principles in theories of speech production. In S.-A. Rueschemeyer, & M. G. Gaskell (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics (2nd ed., pp. 372-397). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Abstract

    This chapter focuses on connectionist modeling in language production, highlighting how
    core principles of connectionism provide coverage for empirical observations about
    representation and selection at the phonological, lexical, and sentence levels. The first
    section focuses on the connectionist principles of localist representations and spreading
    activation. It discusses how these two principles have motivated classic models of speech
    production and shows how they cover results of the picture-word interference paradigm,
    the mixed error effect, and aphasic naming errors. The second section focuses on how
    newer connectionist models incorporate the principles of learning and distributed
    representations through discussion of syntactic priming, cumulative semantic
    interference, sequencing errors, phonological blends, and code-switching
  • Broersma, M. (2005). Phonetic and lexical processing in a second language. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen. doi:10.17617/2.58294.
  • Broersma, M., Isurin, L., Bultena, S., & De Bot, K. (2009). Triggered code-switching: Evidence from Dutch-English and Russian-English bilinguals. In L. Isurin, D. Winford, & K. De Bot (Eds.), Multidisciplinary approaches to code switching (pp. 85-102). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Brown, P. (1998). Early Tzeltal verbs: Argument structure and argument representation. In E. Clark (Ed.), Proceedings of the 29th Annual Stanford Child Language Research Forum (pp. 129-140). Stanford: CSLI Publications.

    Abstract

    The surge of research activity focussing on children's acquisition of verbs (e.g., Tomasello and Merriman 1996) addresses some fundamental questions: Just how variable across languages, and across individual children, is the process of verb learning? How specific are arguments to particular verbs in early child language? How does the grammatical category 'Verb' develop? The position of Universal Grammar, that a verb category is early, contrasts with that of Tomasello (1992), Pine and Lieven and their colleagues (1996, in press), and many others, that children develop a verb category slowly, gradually building up subcategorizations of verbs around pragmatic, syntactic, and semantic properties of the language they are exposed to. On this latter view, one would expect the language which the child is learning, the cultural milieu and the nature of the interactions in which the child is engaged, to influence the process of acquiring verb argument structures. This paper explores these issues by examining the development of argument representation in the Mayan language Tzeltal, in both its lexical and verbal cross-referencing forms, and analyzing the semantic and pragmatic factors influencing the form argument representation takes. Certain facts about Tzeltal (the ergative/ absolutive marking, the semantic specificity of transitive and positional verbs) are proposed to affect the representation of arguments. The first 500 multimorpheme combinations of 3 children (aged between 1;8 and 2;4) are examined. It is argued that there is no evidence of semantically light 'pathbreaking' verbs (Ninio 1996) leading the way into word combinations. There is early productivity of cross-referencing affixes marking A, S, and O arguments (although there are systematic omissions). The paper assesses the respective contributions of three kinds of factors to these results - structural (regular morphology), semantic (verb specificity) and pragmatic (the nature of Tzeltal conversational interaction).
  • Brown, P. (2000). ’He descended legs-upwards‘: Position and motion in Tzeltal frog stories. In E. V. Clark (Ed.), Proceedings of the 30th Stanford Child Language Research Forum (pp. 67-75). Stanford: CSLI.

    Abstract

    How are events framed in narrative? Speakers of English (a 'satellite-framed' language), when 'reading' Mercer Mayer's wordless picture book 'Frog, Where Are You?', find the story self-evident: a boy has a dog and a pet frog; the frog escapes and runs away; the boy and dog look for it across hill and dale, through woods and over a cliff, until they find it and return home with a baby frog child of the original pet frog. In Tzeltal, as spoken in a Mayan community in southern Mexico, the story is somewhat different, because the language structures event descriptions differently. Tzeltal is in part a 'verb-framed' language with a set of Path-encoding motion verbs, so that the bare bones of the Frog story can consist of verbs translating as 'go'/'pass by'/'ascend'/ 'descend'/ 'arrive'/'return'. But Tzeltal also has satellite-framing adverbials, grammaticized from the same set of motion verbs, which encode the direction of motion or the orientation of static arrays. Furthermore, vivid pictorial detail is provided by positional verbs which can describe the position of the Figure as an outcome of a motion event; motion and stasis are thereby combined in a single event description. (For example:  jipot jawal "he has been thrown (by the deer) lying­_face_upwards_spread-eagled". This paper compares the use of these three linguistic resources in Frog Story narratives from  Tzeltal adults and children, looks at their development in the narratives of children, and considers the results in relation to those from Berman and Slobin's (1996) comparative study of adult and child Frog stories.
  • Brown, P. (2005). Linguistic politeness. In U. Ammon, N. Dittmar, K. J. Mattheier, & P. Trudgill (Eds.), Sociolinguistics: An international handbook of the science of language and society (pp. 1410-1416). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Abstract

    This is an encyclopedia entry surveying research and theoretical approaches to politeness phenomena in language usage.
  • Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (2000). Frames of spatial reference and their acquisition in Tenejapan Tzeltal. In L. Nucci, G. Saxe, & E. Turiel (Eds.), Culture, thought, and development (pp. 167-197). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
  • Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (2009). Language as mind tools: Learning how to think through speaking. In J. Guo, E. V. Lieven, N. Budwig, S. Ervin-Tripp, K. Nakamura, & S. Ozcaliskan (Eds.), Crosslinguistic approaches to the psychology of language: Research in the traditions of Dan Slobin (pp. 451-464). New York: Psychology Press.

    Abstract

    Speakers of the Mayan language Tzeltal use two frames of reference for spatial reckoning: an absolute system (based on the south/north axis abstracted from the overall slope of the land) and an intrinsic system utilizing spatial axes of the reference object to establish body parts. This paper examines the use of absolute, intrinsic, and landmark cues in descriptions of spatial relations by 22 pairs of Tzeltal children aged between 5 and 17. The data are drawn from interactive space games, where a Director describes a spatial layout in a photo and the Matcher reproduces it with toys. The paper distinguishes use of ad hoc landmarks ('Red Cliffs', 'the electricity post') from genuine absolute reference points ('uphill'/'downhill'/’across’), and shows that adults in this task use absolute ('cow uphill of horse'), intrinsic ('at the tree's side') and landmark ('cow facing Red Cliffs') descriptions to communicate the spatial relations depicted. The youngest children, however, do not use landmark cues at all but rely instead on deictics and on the absolute 'uphill/downhill' terms; landmark terms are still rare at age 8-10. Despite arguments that landmarks are a simpler, more natural, basis for spatial reckoning than absolute terms, there is no evidence for a developmental progression from landmark-based to absolute-based strategies. We relate these observations to Slobin’s ‘thinking for speaking’ argument.
  • Brown, P. (1998). How and why are women more polite: Some evidence from a Mayan community. In J. Coates (Ed.), Language and gender (pp. 81-99). Oxford: Blackwell.
  • Brown, C. M., & Hagoort, P. (2000). On the electrophysiology of language comprehension: Implications for the human language system. In M. W. Crocker, M. Pickering, & C. Clifton jr. (Eds.), Architectures and mechanisms for language processing (pp. 213-237). Cambridge University Press.
  • Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1998). Politeness, introduction to the reissue: A review of recent work. In A. Kasher (Ed.), Pragmatics: Vol. 6 Grammar, psychology and sociology (pp. 488-554). London: Routledge.

    Abstract

    This article is a reprint of chapter 1, the introduction to Brown and Levinson, 1987, Politeness: Some universals in language usage (Cambridge University Press).
  • Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (2009). Politeness: Some universals in language usage [chapter 1, reprint]. In N. Coupland, & A. Jaworski (Eds.), Sociolinguistics: critical concepts [volume III: Interactional sociolinguistics] (pp. 311-323). London: Routledge.
  • Brown, C. M., Hagoort, P., & Kutas, M. (2000). Postlexical integration processes during language comprehension: Evidence from brain-imaging research. In M. S. Gazzaniga (Ed.), The new cognitive neurosciences (2nd., pp. 881-895). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  • Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (2018). Tzeltal: The demonstrative system. In S. C. Levinson, S. Cutfield, M. Dunn, N. J. Enfield, & S. Meira (Eds.), Demonstratives in cross-linguistic perspective (pp. 150-177). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Burenhult, N., & Levinson, S. C. (2009). Semplates: A guide to identification and elicitation. In A. Majid (Ed.), Field manual volume 12 (pp. 44-50). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.883556.

    Abstract

    Semplates are a new descriptive and theoretical concept in lexical semantics, borne out of recent L&C work in several domains. A semplate can be defined as a configuration consisting of distinct layers of lexemes, each layer drawn from a different form class, mapped onto the same abstract semantic template. Within such a lexical layer, the sense relations between the lexical items are inherited from the underlying template. Thus, the whole set of lexical layers and the underlying template form a cross-categorial configuration in the lexicon. The goal of this task is to find new kinds of macrostructure in the lexicon, with a view to cross-linguistic comparison.
  • Casasanto, D. (2009). Space for thinking. In V. Evans, & P. Chilton (Eds.), Language, cognition and space: State of the art and new directions (pp. 453-478). London: Equinox Publishing.
  • Casasanto, D. (2009). When is a linguistic metaphor a conceptual metaphor? In V. Evans, & S. Pourcel (Eds.), New directions in cognitive linguistics (pp. 127-145). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Chen, A. (2009). The phonetics of sentence-initial topic and focus in adult and child Dutch. In M. Vigário, S. Frota, & M. Freitas (Eds.), Phonetics and Phonology: Interactions and interrelations (pp. 91-106). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Clark, E. V., & Bowerman, M. (1986). On the acquisition of final voiced stops. In J. A. Fishman (Ed.), The Fergusonian impact: in honor of Charles A. Ferguson on the occasion of his 65th birthday. Volume 1: From phonology to society (pp. 51-68). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Corps, R. E. (2018). Coordinating utterances during conversational dialogue: The role of content and timing predictions. PhD Thesis, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh.
  • Crago, M. B., & Allen, S. E. M. (1998). Acquiring Inuktitut. In O. L. Taylor, & L. Leonard (Eds.), Language Acquisition Across North America: Cross-Cultural And Cross-Linguistic Perspectives (pp. 245-279). San Diego, CA, USA: Singular Publishing Group, Inc.
  • Croijmans, I. (2018). Wine expertise shapes olfactory language and cognition. PhD Thesis, Radboud University, Nijmegen.
  • Cutler, A., & Broersma, M. (2005). Phonetic precision in listening. In W. J. Hardcastle, & J. M. Beck (Eds.), A figure of speech: A Festschrift for John Laver (pp. 63-91). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
  • Cutler, A., Klein, W., & Levinson, S. C. (2005). The cornerstones of twenty-first century psycholinguistics. In A. Cutler (Ed.), Twenty-first century psycholinguistics: Four cornerstones (pp. 1-20). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
  • Cutler, A. (2005). Lexical stress. In D. B. Pisoni, & R. E. Remez (Eds.), The handbook of speech perception (pp. 264-289). Oxford: Blackwell.
  • Cutler, A. (2000). How the ear comes to hear. In New Trends in Modern Linguistics [Part of Annual catalogue series] (pp. 6-10). Tokyo, Japan: Maruzen Publishers.
  • Cutler, A. (2000). Hoe het woord het oor verovert. In Voordrachten uitgesproken tijdens de uitreiking van de SPINOZA-premies op 15 februari 2000 (pp. 29-41). The Hague, The Netherlands: Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO).
  • Cutler, A., & Farrell, J. (2018). Listening in first and second language. In J. I. Liontas (Ed.), The TESOL encyclopedia of language teaching. New York: Wiley. doi:10.1002/9781118784235.eelt0583.

    Abstract

    Listeners' recognition of spoken language involves complex decoding processes: The continuous speech stream must be segmented into its component words, and words must be recognized despite great variability in their pronunciation (due to talker differences, or to influence of phonetic context, or to speech register) and despite competition from many spuriously present forms supported by the speech signal. L1 listeners deal more readily with all levels of this complexity than L2 listeners. Fortunately, the decoding processes necessary for competent L2 listening can be taught in the classroom. Evidence-based methodologies targeted at the development of efficient speech decoding include teaching of minimal pairs, of phonotactic constraints, and of reduction processes, as well as the use of dictation and L2 video captions.
  • Cutler, A. (1998). Prosodic structure and word recognition. In A. D. Friederici (Ed.), Language comprehension: A biological perspective (pp. 41-70). Heidelberg: Springer.
  • Cutler, A. (2009). Psycholinguistics in our time. In P. Rabbitt (Ed.), Inside psychology: A science over 50 years (pp. 91-101). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Cutler, A. (2000). Real words, phantom words and impossible words. In D. Burnham, S. Luksaneeyanawin, C. Davis, & M. Lafourcade (Eds.), Interdisciplinary approaches to language processing: The international conference on human and machine processing of language and speech (pp. 32-42). Bangkok: NECTEC.
  • Davids, N. (2009). Neurocognitive markers of phonological processing: A clinical perspective. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Dimroth, C., & Watorek, M. (2005). Additive scope particles in advanced learner and native speaker discourse. In Hendriks, & Henriëtte (Eds.), The structure of learner varieties (pp. 461-488). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Dimroth, C. (2009). Stepping stones and stumbling blocks: Why negation accelerates and additive particles delay the acquisition of finiteness in German. In C. Dimroth, & P. Jordens (Eds.), Functional Categories in Learner Language (pp. 137-170). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Dingemanse, M., Blythe, J., & Dirksmeyer, T. (2018). Formats for other-initiation of repair across languages: An exercise in pragmatic typology. In I. Nikolaeva (Ed.), Linguistic Typology: Critical Concepts in Linguistics. Vol. 4 (pp. 322-357). London: Routledge.

    Abstract

    In conversation, people regularly deal with problems of speaking, hearing, and understanding. We report on a cross-linguistic investigation of the conversational structure of other-initiated repair (also known as collaborative repair, feedback, requests for clarification, or grounding sequences). We take stock of formats for initiating repair across languages (comparable to English huh?, who?, y’mean X?, etc.) and find that different languages make available a wide but remarkably similar range of linguistic resources for this function. We exploit the patterned variation as evidence for several underlying concerns addressed by repair initiation: characterising trouble, managing responsibility, and handling knowledge. The concerns do not always point in the same direction and thus provide participants in interaction with alternative principles for selecting one format over possible others. By comparing conversational structures across languages, this paper contributes to pragmatic typology: the typology of systems of language use and the principles that shape them.
  • Dirksmeyer, T. (2005). Why do languages die? Approaching taxonomies, (re-)ordering causes. In J. Wohlgemuth, & T. Dirksmeyer (Eds.), Bedrohte Vielfalt. Aspekte des Sprach(en)tods – Aspects of language death (pp. 53-68). Berlin: Weißensee.

    Abstract

    Under what circumstances do languages die? Why has their “mortality rate” increased dramatically in the recent past? What “causes of death” can be identified for historical cases, to what extent are these generalizable, and how can they be captured in an explanatory theory? In pursuing these questions, it becomes apparent that in typical cases of language death various causes tend to interact in multiple ways. Speakers’ attitudes towards their language play a critical role in all of this. Existing categorial taxonomies do not succeed in modeling the complex relationships between these factors. Therefore, an alternative, dimensional approach is called for to more adequately address (and counter) the causes of language death in a given scenario.
  • Drozdova, P. (2018). The effects of nativeness and background noise on the perceptual learning of voices and ambiguous sounds. PhD Thesis, Radboud University, Nijmegen.
  • Drude, S. (2005). A contribuição alemã à Lingüística e Antropologia dos índios do Brasil, especialmente da Amazônia. In J. J. A. Alves (Ed.), Múltiplas Faces da Históriadas Ciência na Amazônia (pp. 175-196). Belém: EDUFPA.
  • Eibl-Eibesfeldt, I., Senft, B., & Senft, G. (1998). Trobriander (Ost-Neuguinea, Trobriand Inseln, Kaile'una) Fadenspiele 'ninikula'. In Ethnologie - Humanethologische Begleitpublikationen von I. Eibl-Eibesfeldt und Mitarbeitern. Sammelband I, 1985-1987. Göttingen: Institut für den Wissenschaftlichen Film.
  • Eisenbeiss, S. (2000). The acquisition of Determiner Phrase in German child language. In M.-A. Friedemann, & L. Rizzi (Eds.), The Acquisition of Syntax (pp. 26-62). Harlow, UK: Pearson Education Ltd.
  • Eisner, F., & McQueen, J. M. (2018). Speech perception. In S. Thompson-Schill (Ed.), Stevens’ handbook of experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience (4th ed.). Volume 3: Language & thought (pp. 1-46). Hoboken: Wiley. doi:10.1002/9781119170174.epcn301.

    Abstract

    This chapter reviews the computational processes that are responsible for recognizing word forms in the speech stream. We outline the different stages in a processing hierarchy from the extraction of general acoustic features, through speech‐specific prelexical processes, to the retrieval and selection of lexical representations. We argue that two recurring properties of the system as a whole are abstraction and adaptability. We also present evidence for parallel processing of information on different timescales, more specifically that segmental material in the speech stream (its consonants and vowels) is processed in parallel with suprasegmental material (the prosodic structures of spoken words). We consider evidence from both psycholinguistics and neurobiology wherever possible, and discuss how the two fields are beginning to address common computational problems. The challenge for future research in speech perception will be to build an account that links these computational problems, through functional mechanisms that address them, to neurobiological implementation.
  • Enfield, N. J. (2009). 'Case relations' in Lao, a radically isolating language. In A. L. Malčukov, & A. Spencer (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of case (pp. 808-819). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Enfield, N. J. (2005). Depictive and other secondary predication in Lao. In N. P. Himmelmann, & E. Schultze-Berndt (Eds.), Secondary predication and adverbial modification (pp. 379-392). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Enfield, N. J. (2005). Micro and macro dimensions in linguistic systems. In S. Marmaridou, K. Nikiforidou, & E. Antonopoulou (Eds.), Reviewing linguistic thought: Converging trends for the 21st Century (pp. 313-326). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Enfield, N. J., & Levinson, S. C. (2009). Metalanguage for speech acts. In A. Majid (Ed.), Field manual volume 12 (pp. 51-53). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.883559.

    Abstract

    People of all cultures have some degree of concern with categorizing types of communicative social action. All languages have words with meanings like speak, say, talk, complain, curse, promise, accuse, nod, wink, point and chant. But the exact distinctions they make will differ in both quantity and quality. How is communicative social action categorised across languages and cultures? The goal of this task is to establish a basis for cross-linguistic comparison of native metalanguages for social action.
  • Enfield, N. J. (2009). Language and culture. In L. Wei, & V. Cook (Eds.), Contemporary Applied Linguistics Volume 2 (pp. 83-97). London: Continuum.
  • Enfield, N. J. (2009). Everyday ritual in the residential world. In G. Senft, & E. B. Basso (Eds.), Ritual communication (pp. 51-80). Oxford: Berg.
  • Enfield, N. J. (2000). On linguocentrism. In M. Pütz, & M. H. Verspoor (Eds.), Explorations in linguistic relativity (pp. 125-157). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Enfield, N. J., Levinson, S. C., & Stivers, T. (2009). Social action formulation: A "10-minutes" task. In A. Majid (Ed.), Field manual volume 12 (pp. 54-55). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.883564.

    Abstract

    Human actions in the social world – like greeting, requesting, complaining, accusing, asking, confirming, etc. – are recognised through the interpretation of signs. Language is where much of the action is, but gesture, facial expression and other bodily actions matter as well. The goal of this task is to establish a maximally rich description of a representative, good quality piece of conversational interaction, which will serve as a reference point for comparative exploration of the status of social actions and their formulation across language
  • Ernestus, M., & Smith, R. (2018). Qualitative and quantitative aspects of phonetic variation in Dutch eigenlijk. In F. Cangemi, M. Clayards, O. Niebuhr, B. Schuppler, & M. Zellers (Eds.), Rethinking reduction: Interdisciplinary perspectives on conditions, mechanisms, and domains for phonetic variation (pp. 129-163). Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.
  • Estruch, S. B. (2018). Characterization of transcription factors in monogenic disorders of speech and language. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Fedor, A., Pléh, C., Brauer, J., Caplan, D., Friederici, A. D., Gulyás, B., Hagoort, P., Nazir, T., & Singer, W. (2009). What are the brain mechanisms underlying syntactic operations? In D. Bickerton, & E. Szathmáry (Eds.), Biological foundations and origin of syntax (pp. 299-324). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Abstract

    This chapter summarizes the extensive discussions that took place during the Forum as well as the subsequent months thereafter. It assesses current understanding of the neuronal mechanisms that underlie syntactic structure and processing.... It is posited that to understand the neurobiology of syntax, it might be worthwhile to shift the balance from comprehension to syntactic encoding in language production
  • Filippi, P. (2005). Gilbert Ryle: Pensare la Mente. Master Thesis, Università degli Studi di Palermo, Palermo.

    Abstract

    This study focuses on the main work of Gilbert Ryle, “The concept of Mind” (1949). Here the author demolishes what he refers to as the cartesian dogma of “the ghost in the machine”, highlighting the absurdity of categorical ordering in dualist systems, where mental activities are explained as separate from physical actions. Surprisingly, the Italian translator of “The concept of Mind”, Ferruccio Rossi-Landi, missed this key aspect of Ryle’s work, writing up what resulted into a significantly misleading translation. This can be clearly noticed from the title already: “Lo spirito come comportamento” [The ghost as behavior]. This erroneous translation affected the interpretation of “The concept of Mind” as a mere study on behavioral reductionism in Italy. Here, I argue in favor of the originality of Ryle’s approach in pointing out the socio-cultural dynamics as the non - physical dimensions of the human mind, and yet, linked to the human brain. In doing so, I trace the crucial influence of Wittgenstein’s philosophy in Ryle’s interpretation of the concept of mind, which helps in grasping a better understanding of his work. Wittgenstein’s influence shows clearly in Ryle’s conceptual operation of grounding the acquisition of dispositions and competences - which ultimately define the rational subjects as rational agents – in the shared background of social and cultural dynamics. In a nutshell, this social dimension is the defining characteristic of the human mind and of all human actions in Ryle’s philosophy. As Ryle argues in “On thinking” (1979), this intrinsic quality of human actions can reveal itself in actions that one performs absent-mindendly in everyday life, as well as in more complex ones: for instance, when the mind reflects upon itself.
  • Fitz, H. (2009). Neural syntax. PhD Thesis, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Institute for Logic, Language, and Computation.

    Abstract

    Children learn their mother tongue spontaneously and effortlessly through communicative interaction with their environment; they do not have to be taught explicitly or learn how to learn first. The ambient language to which children are exposed, however, is highly variable and arguably deficient with regard to the learning target. Nonetheless, most normally developing children learn their native language rapidly and with ease. To explain this accomplishment, many theories of acquisition posit innate constraints on learning, or even a biological endowment for language which is specific to language. Usage-based theories, on the other hand, place more emphasis on the role of experience and domain-general learning mechanisms than on innate language-specific knowledge. But languages are lexically open and combinatorial in structure, so no amount of experience covers their expressivity. Usage-based theories therefore have to explain how children can generalize the properties of their linguistic input to an adult-like grammar. In this thesis I provide an explicit computational mechanism with which usage-based theories of language can be tested and evaluated. The focus of my work lies on complex syntax and the human ability to form sentences which express more than one proposition by means of relativization. This `capacity for recursion' is a hallmark of an adult grammar and, as some have argued, the human language faculty itself. The manuscript is organized as follows. In the second chapter, I give an overview of results that characterize the properties of neural networks as mathematical objects and review previous attempts at modelling the acquisition of complex syntax with such networks. The chapter introduces the conceptual landscape in which the current work is located. In the third chapter, I argue that the construction and use of meaning is essential in child language acquisition and adult processing. Neural network models need to incorporate this dimension of human linguistic behavior. I introduce the Dual-path model of sentence production and syntactic development which is able to represent semantics and learns from exposure to sentences paired with their meaning (cf. Chang et al. 2006). I explain the architecture of this model, motivate critical assumptions behind its design, and discuss existing research using this model. The fourth chapter describes and compares several extensions of the basic architecture to accommodate the processing of multi-clause utterances. These extensions are evaluated against computational desiderata, such as good learning and generalization performance and the parsimony of input representations. A single-best solution for encoding the meaning of complex sentences with restrictive relative clauses is identified, which forms the basis for all subsequent simulations. Chapter five analyzes the learning dynamics in more detail. I first examine the model's behavior for different relative clause types. Syntactic alternations prove to be particularly difficult to learn because they complicate the meaning-to-form mapping the model has to acquire. In the second part, I probe the internal representations the model has developed during learning. It is argued that the model acquires the argument structure of the construction types in its input language and represents the hierarchical organization of distinct multi-clause utterances. The juice of this thesis is contained in chapters six to eight. In chapter six, I test the Dual-path model's generalization capacities in a variety of tasks. I show that its syntactic representations are sufficiently transparent to allow structural generalization to novel complex utterances. Semantic similarities between novel and familiar sentence types play a critical role in this task. The Dual-path model also has a capacity for generalizing familiar words to novel slots in novel constructions (strong semantic systematicity). Moreover, I identify learning conditions under which the model displays recursive productivity. It is argued that the model's behavior is consistent with human behavior in that production accuracy degrades with depth of embedding, and right-branching is learned faster than center-embedding recursion. In chapter seven, I address the issue of learning complex polar interrogatives in the absence of positive exemplars in the input. I show that the Dual-path model can acquire the syntax of these questions from simpler and similar structures which are warranted in a child's linguistic environment. The model's errors closely match children's errors, and it is suggested that children might not require an innate learning bias to acquire auxiliary fronting. Since the model does not implement a traditional kind of language-specific universal grammar, these results are relevant to the poverty of the stimulus debate. English relative clause constructions give rise to similar performance orderings in adult processing and child language acquisition. This pattern matches the typological universal called the noun phrase accessibility hierarchy. I propose an input-based explanation of this data in chapter eight. The Dual-path model displays this ordering in syntactic development when exposed to plausible input distributions. But it is possible to manipulate and completely remove the ordering by varying properties of the input from which the model learns. This indicates, I argue, that patterns of interference and facilitation among input structures can explain the hierarchy when all structures are simultaneously learned and represented over a single set of connection weights. Finally, I draw conclusions from this work, address some unanswered questions, and give a brief outlook on how this research might be continued.

    Additional information

    http://dare.uva.nl/record/328271
  • Flecken, M., & Von Stutterheim, C. (2018). Sprache und Kognition: Sprachvergleichende und lernersprachliche Untersuchungen zur Ereigniskonzeptualisierung. In S. Schimke, & H. Hopp (Eds.), Sprachverarbeitung im Zweitspracherwerb (pp. 325-356). Berlin: De Gruyter. doi:10.1515/9783110456356-014.
  • Floyd, S. (2018). Egophoricity and argument structure in Cha'palaa. In S. Floyd, E. Norcliffe, & L. San Roque (Eds.), Egophoricity (pp. 269-304). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    The Cha’palaa language of Ecuador (Barbacoan) features verbal morphology for marking knowledge-based categories that, in usage, show a variant of the cross-linguistically recurrent pattern of ‘egophoric distribution': specific forms associate with speakers in contrast to others in statements and with addressees in contrast to others in questions. These are not person markers, but rather are used by speakers to portray their involvement in states of affairs as active, agentive participants (ego) versus other types of involvement (non-ego). They interact with person and argument structure, but through pragmatic ‘person sensitivities’ rather than through grammatical agreement. Not only does this pattern appear in verbal morphology, it also can be observed in alternations of predicate construction types and case alignment, helping to show how egophoric marking is a pervasive element of Cha'palaa's linguistic system. This chapter gives a first account of egophoricity in Cha’palaa, beginning with a discussion of person sensitivity, egophoric distribution, and issues of flexibility of marking with respect to degree of volition or control. It then focuses on a set of intransitive experiencer (or ‘endopathic') predicates that refer to internal states which mark egophoric values for the undergoer role, not the actor role, showing ‘quirky’ accusative marking instead of nominative case. It concludes with a summary of how egophoricity in Cha'palaa interacts with issues of argument structure in comparison to a language with person agreement, here represented by examples from Cha’palaa’s neighbor Ecuadorian Highland Quechua.
  • Forkel, S. J., & Catani, M. (2018). Structural Neuroimaging. In A. De Groot, & P. Hagoort (Eds.), Research Methods in Psycholinguistics and the Neurobiology of Language: A Practical Guide (pp. 288-308). Hoboken: Wiley. doi:10.1002/9781394259762.ch15.

    Abstract

    Structural imaging based on computerized tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has progressively replaced traditional post‐mortem studies in the process of identifying the neuroanatomical basis of language. In the clinical setting, the information provided by structural imaging has been used to confirm the exact diagnosis and formulate an individualized treatment plan. In the research arena, neuroimaging has permitted to understand neuroanatomy at the individual and group level. The possibility to obtain quantitative measures of lesions has improved correlation analyses between severity of symptoms, lesion load, and lesion location. More recently, the development of structural imaging based on diffusion MRI has provided valid solutions to two major limitations of more conventional imaging. In stroke patients, diffusion can visualize early changes due to a stroke that are otherwise not detectable with more conventional structural imaging, with important implications for the clinical management of acute stroke patients. Beyond the sensitivity to early changes, diffusion imaging tractography presents the possibility of visualizing the trajectories of individual white matter pathways connecting distant regions. A pathway analysis based on tractography is offering a new perspective in neurolinguistics. First, it permits to formulate new anatomical models of language function in the healthy brain and allows to directly test these models in the human population without any reliance on animal models. Second, by defining the exact location of the damage to specific white matter connections we can understand the contribution of different mechanisms to the emergence of language deficits (e.g., cortical versus disconnection mechanisms). Finally, a better understanding of the anatomical variability of different language networks is helping to identify new anatomical predictors of language recovery. In this chapter we will focus on the principles of structural MRI and, in particular, diffusion imaging and tractography and present examples of how these methods have informed our understanding of variance in language performances in the healthy brain and language deficits in patient populations.
  • Francks, C. (2009). 13 - LRRTM1: A maternally suppressed genetic effect on handedness and schizophrenia. In I. E. C. Sommer, & R. S. Kahn (Eds.), Cerebral lateralization and psychosis (pp. 181-196). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Abstract

    The molecular, developmental, and evolutionary bases of human brain asymmetry are almost completely unknown. Genetic linkage and association mapping have pin-pointed a gene called LRRTM1 (leucine-rich repeat transmembrane neuronal 1) that may contribute to variability in human handedness. Here I describe how LRRTM1's involvement in handedness was discovered, and also the latest knowledge of its functions in brain development and disease. The association of LRRTM1 with handedness was derived entirely from the paternally inherited gene, and follow-up analysis of gene expression confirmed that LRRTM1 is one of a small number of genes that are imprinted in the human genome, for which the maternally inherited copy is suppressed. The same variation at LRRTM1 that was associated paternally with mixed-/left-handedness was also over-transmitted paternally to schizophrenic patients in a large family study.
    LRRTM1 is expressed in specific regions of the developing and adult forebrain by post-mitotic neurons, and the protein may be involved in axonal trafficking. Thus LRRTM1 has a probable role in neurodevelopment, and its association with handedness suggests that one of its functions may be in establishing or consolidating human brain asymmetry.
    LRRTM1 is the first gene for which allelic variation has been associated with human handedness. The genetic data also suggest indirectly that the epigenetic regulation of this gene may yet prove more important than DNA sequence variation for influencing brain development and disease.
    Intriguingly, the parent-of-origin activity of LRRTM1 suggests that men and women have had conflicting interests in relation to the outcome of lateralized brain development in their offspring.
  • Franken, M. K. (2018). Listening for speaking: Investigations of the relationship between speech perception and production. PhD Thesis, Radboud University, Nijmegen.

    Abstract

    Speaking and listening are complex tasks that we perform on a daily basis, almost without conscious effort. Interestingly, speaking almost never occurs without listening: whenever we speak, we at least hear our own speech. The research in this thesis is concerned with how the perception of our own speech influences our speaking behavior. We show that unconsciously, we actively monitor this auditory feedback of our own speech. This way, we can efficiently take action and adapt articulation when an error occurs and auditory feedback does not correspond to our expectation. Processing the auditory feedback of our speech does not, however, automatically affect speech production. It is subject to a number of constraints. For example, we do not just track auditory feedback, but also its consistency. If auditory feedback is more consistent over time, it has a stronger influence on speech production. In addition, we investigated how auditory feedback during speech is processed in the brain, using magnetoencephalography (MEG). The results suggest the involvement of a broad cortical network including both auditory and motor-related regions. This is consistent with the view that the auditory center of the brain is involved in comparing auditory feedback to our expectation of auditory feedback. If this comparison yields a mismatch, motor-related regions of the brain can be recruited to alter the ongoing articulations.

    Additional information

    full text via Radboud Repository
  • Gaby, A. R. (2005). Some participants are more equal than others: Case and the composition of arguments in Kuuk Thaayorre. In M. Amberber, & H. d. Hoop (Eds.), Competition and variation in natural languages: the case for the case (pp. 9-39). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
  • Gentner, D., & Bowerman, M. (2009). Why some spatial semantic categories are harder to learn than others: The typological prevalence hypothesis. In J. Guo, E. Lieven, N. Budwig, S. Ervin-Tripp, K. Nakamura, & S. Ozcaliskan (Eds.), Crosslinguistic approaches to the psychology of language: Research in the tradition of Dan Isaac Slobin (pp. 465-480). New York: Psychology Press.
  • Gingras, B., Honing, H., Peretz, I., Trainor, L. J., & Fisher, S. E. (2018). Defining the biological bases of individual differences in musicality. In H. Honing (Ed.), The origins of musicality (pp. 221-250). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  • Goldin-Meadow, S., Ozyurek, A., Sancar, B., & Mylander, C. (2009). Making language around the globe: A cross-linguistic study of homesign in the United States, China, and Turkey. In J. Guo, E. Lieven, N. Budwig, S. Ervin-Tripp, K. Nakamura, & S. Ozcaliskan (Eds.), Crosslinguistic approaches to the psychology of language: Research in the tradition of Dan Isaac Slobin (pp. 27-39). New York: Psychology Press.
  • Goudbeek, M., Smits, R., Cutler, A., & Swingley, D. (2005). Acquiring auditory and phonetic categories. In H. Cohen, & C. Lefebvre (Eds.), Handbook of categorization in cognitive science (pp. 497-513). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
  • Grabe, E. (1998). Comparative intonational phonology: English and German. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen. doi:10.17617/2.2057683.
  • Le Guen, O. (2009). The ethnography of emotions: A field worker's guide. In A. Majid (Ed.), Field manual volume 12 (pp. 31-34). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.446076.

    Abstract

    The goal of this task is to investigate cross-cultural emotion categories in language and thought. This entry is designed to provide researchers with some guidelines to describe the emotional repertoire of a community from an emic perspective. The first objective is to offer ethnographic tools and a questionnaire in order to understand the semantics of emotional terms and the local conception of emotions. The second objective is to identify the local display rules of emotions in communicative interactions.
  • Gullberg, M., Indefrey, P., & Muysken, P. (2009). Research techniques for the study of code-switching. In B. E. Bullock, & J. A. Toribio (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook on linguistic code-switching (pp. 21-39). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Abstract

    The aim of this chapter is to provide researchers with a tool kit of semi-experimental and experimental techniques for studying code-switching. It presents an overview of the current off-line and on-line research techniques, ranging from analyses of published bilingual texts of spontaneous conversations, to tightly controlled experiments. A multi-task approach used for studying code-switched sentence production in Papiamento-Dutch bilinguals is also exemplified.
  • Gullberg, M. (2009). Why gestures are relevant to the bilingual mental lexicon. In A. Pavlenko (Ed.), The bilingual mental lexicon: Interdisciplinary approaches (pp. 161-184). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

    Abstract

    Gestures, the symbolic movements speakers perform while they speak, are systematically related to speech and language in non-trivial ways. This chapter presents an overview of what gestures can and cannot tell us about the monolingual and the bilingual mental lexicon. Gesture analysis opens for a broader view of the mental lexicon, targeting the interface between conceptual, semantic and syntactic aspects of event construal, and offers new possibilities for examining how languages co-exist and interact in bilinguals beyond the level of surface forms. The first section of this chapter gives a brief introduction to gesture studies and outlines the current views on the relationship between gesture, speech, and language. The second section targets the key questions for the study of the monolingual and bilingual lexicon, and illustrates the methods employed for addressing these questions. It further exemplifies systematic cross-linguistic patterns in gestural behaviour in monolingual and bilingual contexts. The final section discusses some implications of an expanded view of the multilingual lexicon that includes gesture, and outlines directions for future inquiry.

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  • Hagoort, P. (2009). The fractionation of spoken language understanding by measuring electrical and magnetic brain signals. In B. C. J. Moore, L. K. Tyler, & W. Marslen-Wilson (Eds.), The perception of speech: From sound to meaning (pp. 223-248). New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Hagoort, P. (2005). Breintaal. In S. Knols, & D. Redeker (Eds.), NWO-Spinozapremies 2005 (pp. 21-34). Den Haag: NWO.
  • Hagoort, P. (2005). Broca's complex as the unification space for language. In A. Cutler (Ed.), Twenty-first century psycholinguistics: Four cornerstones (pp. 157-173). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
  • Hagoort, P. (2009). Reflections on the neurobiology of syntax. In D. Bickerton, & E. Szathmáry (Eds.), Biological foundations and origin of syntax (pp. 279-296). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Abstract

    This contribution focuses on the neural infrastructure for parsing and syntactic encoding. From an anatomical point of view, it is argued that Broca's area is an ill-conceived notion. Functionally, Broca's area and adjacent cortex (together Broca's complex) are relevant for language, but not exclusively for this domain of cognition. Its role can be characterized as providing the necessary infrastructure for unification (syntactic and semantic). A general proposal, but with required level of computational detail, is discussed to account for the distribution of labor between different components of the language network in the brain.Arguments are provided for the immediacy principle, which denies a privileged status for syntax in sentence processing. The temporal profile of event-related brain potential (ERP) is suggested to require predictive processing. Finally, since, next to speed, diversity is a hallmark of human languages, the language readiness of the brain might not depend on a universal, dedicated neural machinery for syntax, but rather on a shaping of the neural infrastructure of more general cognitive systems (e.g., memory, unification) in a direction that made it optimally suited for the purpose of communication through language.
  • Hagoort, P., Baggio, G., & Willems, R. M. (2009). Semantic unification. In M. S. Gazzaniga (Ed.), The cognitive neurosciences, 4th ed. (pp. 819-836). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Abstract

    Language and communication are about the exchange of meaning. A key feature of understanding and producing language is the construction of complex meaning from more elementary semantic building blocks. The functional characteristics of this semantic unification process are revealed by studies using event related brain potentials. These studies have found that word meaning is assembled into compound meaning in not more than 500 ms. World knowledge, information about the speaker, co-occurring visual input and discourse all have an immediate impact on semantic unification, and trigger similar electrophysiological responses as sentence-internal semantic information. Neuroimaging studies show that a network of brain areas, including the left inferior frontal gyrus, the left superior/middle temporal cortex, the left inferior parietal cortex and, to a lesser extent their right hemisphere homologues are recruited to perform semantic unification.
  • Hagoort, P. (2009). Taalontwikkeling: Meer dan woorden alleen. In M. Evenblij (Ed.), Brein in beeld: Beeldvorming bij heersenonderzoek (pp. 53-57). Den Haag: Stichting Bio-Wetenschappen en Maatschappij.

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