Publications

Displaying 201 - 241 of 241
  • Senft, G. (2011). To have and have not: Kilivila reciprocals. In N. Evans, A. Gaby, S. C. Levinson, & A. Majid (Eds.), Reciprocals and semantic typology (pp. 225-232). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    Kilivila is one of the languages of the world that lacks dedicated reciprocal forms. After a short introduction the paper briefly shows how reciprocity is either not expressed at all, is only implicated in an utterance, or expressed periphrastically.
  • Senft, G. (1998). Zeichenkonzeptionen in Ozeanien. In R. Posner, T. Robering, & T.. Sebeok (Eds.), Semiotics: A handbook on the sign-theoretic foundations of nature and culture (Vol. 2) (pp. 1971-1976). Berlin: de Gruyter.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1991). Formalism and ecologism in linguistics. In E. Feldbusch, R. Pogarell, & C. Weiss (Eds.), Neue Fragen der Linguistik: Akten des 25. Linguistischen Kolloquiums, Paderborn 1990. Band 1: Bestand und Entwicklung (pp. 73-88). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1991). Modale klokkenhuizen. In M. Klein (Ed.), Nieuwe eskapades in de neerlandistiek: Opstellen van vrienden voor M.C. van den Toorn bij zijn afscheid als hoogleraar Nederlandse taalkunde aan de Katholieke Universiteit te Nijmegen (pp. 202-236). Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1991). The definition of serial verbs. In F. Byrne, & T. Huebner (Eds.), Development and structures of Creole languages: Essays in honor of Derek Bickerton (pp. 193-205). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1991). Präsuppositionen. In A. Von Stechow, & D. Wunderlich (Eds.), Semantik: Ein internationales Handbuch der zeitgenössischen Forschung (pp. 286-318). Berlin: De Gruyter.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (2011). Western linguistics: An historical introduction [Reprint]. In D. Archer, & P. Grundy (Eds.), The pragmatics reader (pp. 55-67). London: Routledge.

    Abstract

    Reproduced with permission of Blackwell Publishing from: Seuren, P. A. M. (1998) Western linguistics, 25: pp. 426-428, 430-441. Oxford Blackwell Publishers
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1998). Towards a discourse-semantic account of donkey anaphora. In S. Botley, & T. McEnery (Eds.), New Approaches to Discourse Anaphora: Proceedings of the Second Colloquium on Discourse Anaphora and Anaphor Resolution (DAARC2) (pp. 212-220). Lancaster: Universiy Centre for Computer Corpus Research on Language, Lancaster University.
  • Shao, Z., & Meyer, A. S. (2018). Word priming and interference paradigms. In A. M. B. De Groot, & P. Hagoort (Eds.), Research methods in psycholinguistics and the neurobiology of language: A practical guide (pp. 111-129). Hoboken: Wiley.
  • Sicoli, M. A. (2011). Agency and ideology in language shift and language maintenance. In T. Granadillo, & H. A. Orcutt-Gachiri (Eds.), Ethnographic contributions to the study of endangered languages (pp. 161-176). Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.
  • Skiba, R. (1991). Eine Datenbank für Deutsch als Zweitsprache Materialien: Zum Einsatz von PC-Software bei Planung von Zweitsprachenunterricht. In H. Barkowski, & G. Hoff (Eds.), Berlin interkulturell: Ergebnisse einer Berliner Konferenz zu Migration und Pädagogik. (pp. 131-140). Berlin: Colloquium.
  • Slobin, D. I., Bowerman, M., Brown, P., Eisenbeiss, S., & Narasimhan, B. (2011). Putting things in places: Developmental consequences of linguistic typology. In J. Bohnemeyer, & E. Pederson (Eds.), Event representation in language and cognition (pp. 134-165). New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Abstract

    The concept of 'event' has been posited as an ontological primitive in natural language semantics, yet relatively little research has explored patterns of event encoding. Our study explored how adults and children describe placement events (e.g., putting a book on a table) in a range of different languages (Finnish, English, German, Russian, Hindi, Tzeltal Maya, Spanish, and Turkish). Results show that the eight languages grammatically encode placement events in two main ways (Talmy, 1985, 1991), but further investigation reveals fine-grained crosslinguistic variation within each of the two groups. Children are sensitive to these finer-grained characteristics of the input language at an early age, but only when such features are perceptually salient. Our study demonstrates that a unitary notion of 'event' does not suffice to characterize complex but systematic patterns of event encoding crosslinguistically, and that children are sensitive to multiple influences, including the distributional properties of the target language in constructing these patterns in their own speech.
  • De Smedt, K., & Kempen, G. (1991). Segment Grammar: A formalism for incremental sentence generation. In C. Paris, W. Swartout, & W. Mann (Eds.), Natural language generation and computational linguistics (pp. 329-349). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

    Abstract

    Incremental sentence generation imposes special constraints on the representation of the grammar and the design of the formulator (the module which is responsible for constructing the syntactic and morphological structure). In the model of natural speech production presented here, a formalism called Segment Grammar is used for the representation of linguistic knowledge. We give a definition of this formalism and present a formulator design which relies on it. Next, we present an object- oriented implementation of Segment Grammar. Finally, we compare Segment Grammar with other formalisms.
  • Speed, L. J., Wnuk, E., & Majid, A. (2018). Studying psycholinguistics out of the lab. In A. De Groot, & P. Hagoort (Eds.), Research methods in psycholinguistics and the neurobiology of language: A practical guide (pp. 190-207). Hoboken: Wiley.

    Abstract

    Traditional psycholinguistic studies take place in controlled experimental labs and typically involve testing undergraduate psychology or linguistics students. Investigating psycholinguistics in this manner calls into question the external validity of findings, that is, the extent to which research findings generalize across languages and cultures, as well as ecologically valid settings. Here we consider three ways in which psycholinguistics can be taken out of the lab. First, researchers can conduct cross-cultural fieldwork in diverse languages and cultures. Second, they can conduct online experiments or experiments in institutionalized public spaces (e.g., museums) to obtain large, diverse participant samples. And, third, researchers can perform studies in more ecologically valid settings, to increase the real-world generalizability of findings. By moving away from the traditional lab setting, psycholinguists can enrich their understanding of language use in all its rich and diverse contexts.
  • Stivers, T., Enfield, N. J., & Levinson, S. C. (2007). Person reference in interaction. In N. J. Enfield, & T. Stivers (Eds.), Person reference in interaction: Linguistic, cultural, and social perspectives (pp. 1-20). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Stivers, T. (2007). Alternative recognitionals in person reference. In N. Enfield, & T. Stivers (Eds.), Person reference in interaction: Linguistic, cultural, and social perspectives (pp. 73-96). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Stivers, T. (2011). Morality and question design: 'Of course' as contesting a presupposition of askability. In T. Stivers, L. Mondada, & J. Steensig (Eds.), The morality of knowledge in conversation (pp. 82-106). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Stivers, T., Mondada, L., & Steensig, J. (2011). Knowledge, morality and affiliation in social interaction. In T. Stivers, L. Mondada, & J. Steensig (Eds.), The morality of knowledge in conversation (pp. 3-26). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Stolker, C. J. J. M., & Poletiek, F. H. (1998). Smartengeld - Wat zijn we eigenlijk aan het doen? Naar een juridische en psychologische evaluatie. In F. Stadermann (Ed.), Bewijs en letselschade (pp. 71-86). Lelystad, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Vermande.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Trilsbeek, P., & Wittenburg, P. (2007). "Los acervos lingüísticos digitales y sus desafíos". In J. Haviland, & F. Farfán (Eds.), Bases de la documentacíon lingüística (pp. 359-385). Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas.

    Abstract

    This chapter describes the challenges that modern digital language archives are faced with. One essential aspect of such an archive is to have a rich metadata catalog such that the archived resources can be easily discovered. The challenge of the archive is to obtain these rich metadata descriptions from the depositors without creating too much overhead for them. The rapid changes in storage technology, file formats and encoding standards make it difficult to build a long-lasting repository, therefore archives need to be set up in such a way that a straightforward and automated migration process to newer technology is possible whenever certain technology becomes obsolete. Other problems arise from the fact that there are many different groups of users of the archive, each of them with their own specific expectations and demands. Often conflicts exist between the requirements for different purposes of the archive, e.g. between long-term preservation of the data versus direct access to the resources via the web. The task of the archive is to come up with a technical solution that works well for most usage scenarios.
  • Tufvesson, S. (2007). Expressives. In A. Majid (Ed.), Field Manual Volume 10 (pp. 53-58). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.492919.
  • 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
  • Udden, J., & Männel, C. (2018). Artificial grammar learning and its neurobiology in relation to language processing and development. In S.-A. Rueschemeyer, & M. G. Gaskell (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics (2nd ed., pp. 755-783). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Abstract

    The artificial grammar learning (AGL) paradigm enables systematic investigation of the acquisition of linguistically relevant structures. It is a paradigm of interest for language processing research, interfacing with theoretical linguistics, and for comparative research on language acquisition and evolution. This chapter presents a key for understanding major variants of the paradigm. An unbiased summary of neuroimaging findings of AGL is presented, using meta-analytic methods, pointing to the crucial involvement of the bilateral frontal operculum and regions in the right lateral hemisphere. Against a background of robust posterior temporal cortex involvement in processing complex syntax, the evidence for involvement of the posterior temporal cortex in AGL is reviewed. Infant AGL studies testing for neural substrates are reviewed, covering the acquisition of adjacent and non-adjacent dependencies as well as algebraic rules. The language acquisition data suggest that comparisons of learnability of complex grammars performed with adults may now also be possible with children.
  • Ünal, E., & Papafragou, A. (2018). Evidentials, information sources and cognition. In A. Y. Aikhenvald (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Evidentiality (pp. 175-184). Oxford University Press.
  • Ünal, E., & Papafragou, A. (2018). The relation between language and mental state reasoning. In J. Proust, & M. Fortier (Eds.), Metacognitive diversity: An interdisciplinary approach (pp. 153-169). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Van Alphen, P. M. (2007). Prevoicing in Dutch initial plosives: Production, perception, and word recognition. In J. van de Weijer, & E. van der Torre (Eds.), Voicing in Dutch (pp. 99-124). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    Prevoicing is the presence of vocal fold vibration during the closure of initial voiced plosives (negative VOT). The presence or absence of prevoicing is generally used to describe the voicing distinction in Dutch initial plosives. However, a phonetic study showed that prevoicing is frequently absent in Dutch. This article discusses the role of prevoicing in the production and perception of Dutch plosives. Furthermore, two cross-modal priming experiments are presented that examined the effect of prevoicing variation on word recognition. Both experiments showed no difference between primes with 12, 6 or 0 periods of prevoicing, even though a third experiment indicated that listeners could discriminate these words. These results are discussed in light of another priming experiment that did show an effect of the absence of prevoicing, but only when primes had a voiceless word competitor. Phonetic detail appears to influence lexical access only when it helps to distinguish between lexical candidates.
  • 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.
  • 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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  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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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  • Wilkins, D., Kita, S., & Enfield, N. J. (2007). 'Ethnography of pointing' - field worker's guide. In A. Majid (Ed.), Field Manual Volume 10 (pp. 89-95). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.492922.

    Abstract

    Pointing gestures are recognised to be a primary manifestation of human social cognition and communicative capacity. The goal of this task is to collect empirical descriptions of pointing practices in different cultural settings.
  • Willems, R. M., & Cristia, A. (2018). Hemodynamic methods: fMRI and fNIRS. In A. M. B. De Groot, & P. Hagoort (Eds.), Research methods in psycholinguistics and the neurobiology of language: A practical guide (pp. 266-287). Hoboken: Wiley.
  • Willems, R. M., & Van Gerven, M. (2018). New fMRI methods for the study of language. In S.-A. Rueschemeyer, & M. G. Gaskell (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics (2nd ed., pp. 975-991). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • 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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