Publications

Abstract

This paper describes the linguistic treatment of placement events in the Rossel Island (Papua New Guinea) language Yélî Dnye. Yélî Dnye is unusual in treating PUT and TAKE events symmetrically with a remarkable consistency. In what follows, we first provide a brief background for the language, then describe the six core PUT/TAKE verbs that were drawn upon by Yélî Dnye speakers to describe the great majority of the PUT/TAKE stimuli clips, along with some of their grammatical properties. In Section 5 we describe alternative verbs usable in particular circumstances and give an indication of the basis for variability in responses across speakers. Section 6 presents some reasons why the Yélî verb pattern for expressing PUT and TAKE events is of broad interest.

Abstract

This entry contains: 1. An invitation to think about to what extent the grammar of space and time share lexical and morphosyntactic resources − the suggestions here are only prompts, since it would take a long questionnaire to fully explore this; 2. A suggestion about how to collect gestural data that might show us to what extent the spatial and temporal domains, have a psychological continuity. This is really the goal − but you need to do the linguistic work first or in addition. The goal of this task is to explore the extent to which time is conceptualised on a spatial basis.

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of the Papuan and the Oceanic languages (a branch of Austronesian) in Northern Island Melanesia, as well as phenomena arising through contact between these groups. It shows how linguistics can contribute to the understanding of the history of languages and speakers, and what the findings of those methods have been. The location of the homeland of speakers of Proto-Oceanic is indicated (in northeast New Britain); many facets of the lives of those speakers are shown; and the patterns of their subsequent spread across Island Melanesia and beyond into Remote Oceania are indicated, followed by a second wave overlaying the first into New Guinea and as far as halfway through the Solomon Islands. Regarding the Papuan languages of this region, at least some are older than the 6,000-10,000 ceiling of the Comparative Method, and their relations are explored with the aid of a database of 125 non-lexical structural features. The results reflect archipelago-based clustering with the Central Solomons Papuan languages forming a clade either with the Bismarcks or with Bougainville languages. Papuan languages in Bougainville are less influenced by Oceanic languages than those in the Bismarcks and the Solomons. The chapter considers a variety of scenarios to account for their findings, concluding that the results are compatible with multiple pre-Oceanic waves of arrivals into the area after initial settlement.

Abstract

This paper investigates infant pointing at 12 months. Three recent experimental studies from our lab are reported and contrasted with existing accounts on infant communicative and social-cognitive abilities. The new results show that infant pointing at 12 months already is a communicative act which involves the intentional transmission of information to share interest with, or provide information for other persons. It is argued that infant pointing is an inherently social and cooperative act which is used to share psychological relations between interlocutors and environment, repairs misunderstandings in proto-conversational turn-taking, and helps others by providing information. Infant pointing builds on an understanding of others as persons with attentional states and attitudes. Findings do not support lean accounts on early infant pointing which posit that it is initially non-communicative, does not serve the function of indicating, or is purely self-centered. It is suggested to investigate the emergence of reference and the motivation to jointly engage with others also before pointing has emerged.

Abstract

There are two tasks for conducting systematic observation of child-caregiver joint attention interactions. Task 1 – a “decorated room” designed to elicit infant and caregiver pointing. Task 2 – videotaped interviews about infant pointing behaviour. The goal of this task is to document the ontogenetic emergence of referential communication in caregiver infant interaction in different cultures, during the critical age of 8-15 months when children come to understand and share others’ intentions. This is of interest to all students of interaction and human communication; it does not require specialist knowledge of children.

Abstract

This Field Manual entry has been superceded by the 2009 version:
https://doi.org/10.17617/2.883570

Abstract

In this task we aim to find what the best exemplars or “focal colours” of each basic colour term is in our field languages. This is an important part of the evidence we need in order to understand the colour data collected using 'The Language of Vision I: Colour'. This task consists of an experiment where participants pick out the best exemplar for the colour terms in their language. The goal is to establish language specific focal colours.

Abstract

La ciencia moderna nace de la conjunción entre postulados teóricos y el desarrollo de una infraestructura tecnológica que permite observar los hechos de manera adecuada, realizar experimentos y verificar las hipótesis. Desde Galileo, ciencia y tecnología han avanzado conjuntamente. En el mundo occidental, la ciencia ha evolucionado desde pro-puestas puramente especulativas (basadas en postulados apriorísticos) hasta el uso de métodos experimentales y estadísticos para explicar mejor nuestras observaciones. La tecnología se hermana con la ciencia facilitando al investigador una aproximación adecuada a los hechos que pretende explicar. Así, Galileo, para observar los cuerpos celestes, mejoró el utillaje óptico, lo que le permitió un acercamiento más preciso al objeto de estudio y, en consecuencia, unos fundamentos más sólidos para su propuesta teórica. De modo similar, actualmente el desarrollo tecnológico digital ha posibilitado la extracción masiva de datos y el análisis estadístico de éstos para verificar las hipótesis de partida: la lingüística no ha podido dar el paso desde la pura especulación hacia el análisis estadístico de los hechos hasta la aparición de las tecnologías digitales.

Abstract

In most of our everyday conversations, we not only hear but also see each other talk. Our understanding of speech benefits from having the speaker's face present. This finding immediately necessitates the question of how the information from the different perceptual sources is used to reach the best overall decision. This need for processing of multiple sources of information also exists in auditory speech perception, however. Audiovisual speech simply shifts the focus from intramodal to intermodal sources but does not necessitate a qualitatively different form of processing. It is essential that a model of speech perception operationalizes the concept of processing multiple sources of information so that quantitative predictions can be made. This chapter gives an overview of the main research questions and findings unique to audiovisual speech perception and word recognition research as well as what general questions about speech perception and cognition the research in this field can answer. The main theoretical approaches to explain integration and audiovisual speech perception are introduced and critically discussed. The chapter also provides an overview of the role of visual speech as a language learning tool in multimodal training.

Abstract

This chapter is a review of the literature in experimental psycholinguistics on spoken word recognition. It is organized around eight questions. 1. Why are psycholinguists interested in spoken word recognition? 2. What information in the speech signal is used in word recognition? 3. Where are the words in the continuous speech stream? 4. Which words did the speaker intend? 5. When, as the speech signal unfolds over time, are the phonological forms of words recognized? 6. How are words recognized? 7. Whither spoken word recognition? 8. Who are the researchers in the field?

Abstract

The goal of speech perception is understanding a speaker's message. To achieve this, listeners must recognize the words that comprise a spoken utterance. This in turn implies distinguishing these words from other minimally different words (e.g., word from bird, etc.), and this involves making phonemic distinctions. The article summarizes research on the perception of phonemic distinctions, on how listeners cope with the continuity and variability of speech signals, and on how phonemic information is mapped onto the representations of words. Particular attention is paid to theories of speech perception and word recognition.

Abstract

The present doctoral thesis investigates the temporal characteristics of the retrieval of semantic and syntactic word properties in language comprehension. In particular, an attempt is made to assess the retrieval order of semantic category and grammatical gender information, using the lateralized readiness potential and the inhibition-related N2 effect. Chapter 1 contains a general introduction. Chapter 2 reports an experiment that employs the two-choice go/nogo task in combination with EEG recordings to establish the retrieval order of semantic category and grammatical gender for written words presented in isolation. The results point to a time course where semantic information becomes available before syntactic information. Chapter 3 focuses on the retrieval of grammatical gender. In order to examine whether gender retrieval can be speeded up by context, nouns are presented in gender congruent and gender incongruent prime-target pairs and reaction times for gender decisions are measured. For stimulus onset asynchronies of 100 ms and 0 ms, gender congruent pairs show faster responses than incongruent ones, whereas there is no effect of gender congruity for a stimulus onset asynchrony of 300 ms. A simulation with a localist computational model that implements competition between gender representations (WEAVER; Roelofs, 1992) is able to capture these findings. In chapter 4, the gender congruency manipulation is transferred to another ERP experiment with the two-choice go/nogo task. As the time course of gender retrieval is altered through primes, the order relative to semantic category retrieval is assessed again. The results indicate that with gender congruent primes, grammatical gender becomes available before semantic category. Such a reversal of retrieval order, as compared to chapter 2, implies a parallel rather than a serial discrete arrangement of the retrieval processes, since the latter variant precludes changes in retrieval order. Finally, chapter 5 offers a summary and general discussion of the main findings.

Abstract

Many languages have general or “light” verbs used by speakers to describe a wide range of situations owing to their relatively schematic meanings, e.g., the English verb do that can be used to describe many different kinds of actions, or the verb put that labels a range of types of placement of objects at locations. Such semantically bleached verbs often become grammaticalized and used to encode an extended (set of) meaning(s), e.g., Tamil veyyii ‘put/place’ is used to encode causative meaning in periphrastic causatives (e.g., okkara veyyii ‘make sit’, nikka veyyii ‘make stand’). But do general verbs in different languages have the same kinds of (schematic) meanings and extensional ranges? Or do they reveal different, perhaps even cross-cutting, ways of structuring the same semantic domain in different languages? These questions require detailed crosslinguistic investigation using comparable methods of eliciting data. The present study is a first step in this direction, and focuses on the use of general verbs to describe events of placement and removal in two South Asian languages, Hindi and Tamil.

Abstract

The human language processor is conceived as a system that consists of several interrelated subsystems. Each subsystem performs a specific task in the complex process of language comprehension and production. A subsystem receives a particular input, performs certain specific operations on this input and yields a particular output. The subsystems can be characterized in terms of the transformations that relate the input representations to the output representations. An important issue in describing the language processing system is to identify the subsystems and to specify the relations between the subsystems. These relations can be conceived in two different ways. In one conception the subsystems are autonomous. They are related to each other only by the input-output channels. The operations in one subsystem are not affected by another system. The subsystems are modular, that is they are independent. In the other conception, the different subsystems influence each other. A subsystem affects the processes in another subsystem. In this conception there is an interaction between the subsystems.

Abstract

This article explores the expression of placement and removal events in Moroccan Arabic, particularly the semantic features of ‘putting’ and ‘taking’ verbs, classified in accordance with their combination with Goal and/or Source NPs. Moroccan Arabic verbs encode a variety of components of placement and removal events, including containment, attachment, features of the figure, and trajectory. Furthermore, accidental events are distinguished from deliberate events either by the inherent semantics of predicates or denoted syntactically. The postures of the Figures, in spite of some predicates distinguishing them, are typically not specified as they are in other languages, such as Dutch. Although Ground locations are frequently mentioned in both source-oriented and goal-oriented clauses, they are used more often in goal-oriented clauses.

Abstract

This paper offers a structural and semantic analysis of expressions of caused motion in Lowland Chontal of Oaxaca, an indigenous language of southern Mexico. The data were collected using a video stimulus designed to elicit a wide range of caused motion event descriptions. The most frequent event types in the corpus depict caused motion to and from relations of support and containment, fundamental notions in the de­scription of spatial relations between two entities and critical semantic components of the linguistic encoding of caused motion in this language. Formal features of verbal construction type and argument realization are examined by sorting event descriptions into semantic types of placement and removal, to and from support and to and from containment. Together with typological factors that shape the distribution of spatial semantics and referent expression, separate treatments of support and containment relations serve to clarify notable asymmetries in patterns of predicate type and argument realization.

Abstract

This dissertation documents the emergence of a new language, Light Warlpiri, in the multilingual community of Lajamanu in northern Australia. It then examines the acquisition of Light Warlpiri language, and of the heritage language, Lajamanu Warlpiri, by children. Light Warlpiri has arisen from contact between Lajamanu Warlpiri (a Pama-Nyungan language), Kriol (an English-based creole), and varieties of English. It is a Mixed Language, meaning that none of its source languages can be considered to be the sole parent language. Most verbs and the verbal morphology are from Aboriginal English or Kriol, while most nouns and the nominal morphology are from Warlpiri. The language input to children is complex. Adults older than about thirty speak Lajamanu Warlpiri and code-switch into Aboriginal English or Kriol. Younger adults, the parents of the current cohort of children, speak Light Warlpiri and code-switch into Lajamanu Warlpiri and into Aboriginal English or Kriol. Lajamanu Warlpiri and Light Warlpiri, the two main input languages to children, both indicate A arguments with ergative case-marking (and they share one allomorph of the marker), but Lajamanu Warlpiri includes the marker much more consistently than Light Warlpiri. Word order is variable in both languages. Children learn both languages from birth, but they target Light Warlpiri as the language of their everyday interactions, and they speak it almost exclusively until four to six years of age. Adults and children show similar patterns of ergative marking and word order in Light Warlpiri. But differences between age groups are found in ergative marking in Lajamanu Warlpiri - for the oldest group of adults, ergative marking is obligatory, but for younger adults and children, it is not. Determining when children differentiate between two input languages has been a major goal in the study of bilingual acquisition. The two languages in this study share lexical and grammatical properties, making distinctions between them quite subtle. Both adults and children distribute ergative marking differently in the two languages, but show similar word order patterns in both. However the children show a stronger correlation between ergative marking and word order patterns than do the adults, suggesting that they are spearheading processes of language change. In their comprehension of sentences in both Lajamanu Warlpiri and Light Warlpiri, adults use a case-marking strategy to identify the A argument (i.e. N+erg = A argument, N-erg = O argument). The children are not adult-like in using this strategy at age 5, when they also used a word order strategy, but they gradually move towards being adult-like with increased age.

Abstract

Gestures are meaningful movements of the body, the hands, and the face during communication,
which accompany the production of both spoken and signed utterances. Recent
research has shown that gestures are an integral part of language and that they contribute
semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic information to the linguistic utterance. Furthermore,
they reveal internal representations of the language user during communication in ways
that might not be encoded in the verbal part of the utterance. Firstly, this chapter summarizes
research on the role of gesture in spoken languages. Subsequently, it gives an overview
of how gestural components might manifest themselves in sign languages, that is,
in a situation in which both gesture and sign are expressed by the same articulators.
Current studies are discussed that address the question of whether gestural components are the same or different in the two language modalities from a semiotic as well as from a cognitive and processing viewpoint. Understanding the role of gesture in both sign and
spoken language contributes to our knowledge of the human language faculty as a multimodal communication system.

Abstract

What are the relations between linguistic encoding and gestural representations of events during online speaking? The few studies that have been conducted on this topic have yielded somewhat incompatible results with regard to whether and how gestural representations of events change with differences in the preferred semantic and syntactic encoding possibilities of languages. Here we provide large scale semantic, syntactic and temporal analyses of speech- gesture pairs that depict 10 different motion events from 20 Turkish and 20 English speakers. We find that the gestural representations of the same events differ across languages when they are encoded by different syntactic frames (i.e., verb-framed or satellite-framed). However, where there are similarities across languages, such as omission of a certain element of the event in the linguistic encoding, gestural representations also look similar and omit the same content. The results are discussed in terms of what gestures reveal about the influence of language specific encoding on on-line thinking patterns and the underlying interactions between speech and gesture during the speaking process.

Abstract

Wanneer iemand goed is in het spreken van meerdere talen, wordt wel gezegd dat zo iemand een talenknobbel heeft. Iedereen weet dat dat niet letterlijk bedoeld is: iemand met een talenknobbel herkennen we niet aan een grote bult op zijn hoofd. Toch dacht men vroeger wel degelijk dat mensen een letterlijke talenknobbel konden ontwikkelen. Een goed ontwikkeld taalvermogen zou gepaard gaan met het groeien van het hersengebied dat hiervoor verantwoordelijk was. Dit deel van het brein zou zelfs zo groot kunnen worden dat het van binnenuit tegen de schedel drukte, met name rond de ogen. Nu weten we wel beter. Maar waar in het brein bevindt de taal zich dan wel precies?

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the expression of spatial relationships in German Sign Language (Deutsche Gebärdensprache, DGS). The analysis focuses on linguistic expression in the spatial domain in two types of discourse: static scene description (location) and event narratives (location and motion). Its primary theoretical objectives are to characterize the structure of locative descriptions in DGS; to explain the use of frames of reference and perspective in the expression of location and motion; to clarify the interrelationship between the systems of frames of reference, signing perspective, and classifier predicates; and to characterize the interplay between iconicity principles, on the one hand, and grammatical and discourse constraints, on the other hand, in the use of these spatial devices. In more general terms, the dissertation provides a usage-based account of iconic mapping in the visual-spatial modality. The use of space in sign language expression is widely assumed to be guided by iconic principles, which are furthermore assumed to hold in the same way across sign languages. Thus, there has been little expectation of variation between sign languages in the spatial domain in the use of spatial devices. Consequently, perhaps, there has been little systematic investigation of linguistic expression in the spatial domain in individual sign languages, and less investigation of spatial language in extended signed discourse. This dissertation provides an investigation of spatial expressions in DGS by investigating the impact of different constraints on iconicity in sign language structure. The analyses have important implications for our understanding of the role of iconicity in the visual-spatial modality, the possible language-specific variation within the spatial domain in the visual-spatial modality, the structure of spatial language in both natural language modalities, and the relationship between spatial language and cognition

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the semantic and pragmatic uses of space. The questions addressed concern how sign space (i.e. the area of space in front of the signer’s body) is used for meaning construction, how locations in sign space are associated with discourse referents, and how signers choose to structure sign space for their communicative intents. The chapter gives an overview of linguistic analyses of the use of space, starting with the distinction between syntactic and topographic uses of space and the different types of signs that function to establish referent-location associations, and moving to analyses based on mental spaces and conceptual blending theories. Semantic-pragmatic conventions for organizing sign space are discussed, as well as spatial devices notable in the visual-spatial modality (particularly, classifier predicates and signing perspective), which influence and determine the way meaning is created in sign space. Finally, the special role of simultaneity in sign languages is discussed, focusing on the semantic and discourse-pragmatic functions of simultaneous constructions.

Abstract

In Kalasha, an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Northwest Pakistan, the linguistic encoding of ‘put’ and ‘take’ events reveals a symmetry between lexical ‘put’ and ‘take’ verbs that implies ‘placement on’ and ‘removal from’ a supporting surface. As regards ‘placement in’ and ‘removal from’ an enclosure, the data reveal a lexical asymmetry as ‘take’ verbs display a larger degree of linguistic elaboration of the Figure-Ground relation and the type of caused motion than ‘put’ verbs. When considering syntactic patterns, more instances of asymmetry between these two event types show up. The analysis presented here supports the proposal that an asymmetry exists in the encoding of goals versus sources as suggested in Nam (2004) and Ikegami (1987), but it calls into question the statement put forward by Regier and Zheng (2007) that endpoints (goals) are more finely differentiated semantically than starting points (sources).

Abstract

Literacy and education represent essential aspects of contemporary society and subserve important aspects of socialization and cultural transmission. The study of illiterate subjects represents one approach to investigate the interactions between neurobiological and cultural factors in cognitive development, individual learning, and their influence on the functional organization of the brain. In this chapter we review some recent cognitive, neuroanatomic, and functional neuroimaging results indicating that formal education influences important aspects of the human brain. Taken together this provides strong support for the idea that the brain is modulated by literacy and formal education, which in turn change the brains capacity to interact with its environment, including the individual's contemporary culture. In other words, the individual is able to participate in, interact with, and actively contribute to the process of cultural transmission in new ways through acquired cognitive skills.

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the roles of several probabilistic variables in the production and comprehension of reduced Dutch affixes. The central hypothesis is that linguistic units with a high probability of occurrence are
more likely to be reduced (Jurafsky et al., 2001; Aylett & Turk, 2004). This hypothesis is tested by analyzing the acoustic realizations of affixes, which are meaning-carrying elements embedded in larger lexical units. Most of the results prove to be compatible with the main hypothesis, but some appear to run counter to its predictions. The final chapter of the thesis discusses the implications of these findings for models of speech production, models of speech perception, and probability-based accounts of reduction.

Abstract

For the beginning language learner, communicative input is not based on linguistic codes alone. This study investigated two extralinguistic factors which are important for infants’ language development: the type of ongoing shared activity and non-verbal, deictic gestures. The natural interactions of 39 caregivers and their 12-month-old infants were recorded in two semi-natural contexts: a free play situation based on action and manipulation of objects, and a situation based on regard of objects, broadly analogous to an exhibit. Results show that the type of shared activity structures both caregivers’ language usage and caregivers’ and infants’ gesture usage. Further, there is a specific pattern with regard to how caregivers integrate speech with particular deictic gesture types. The findings demonstrate a pervasive influence of shared activities on human communication, even before language has emerged. The type of shared activity and caregivers’ systematic integration of specific forms of deictic gestures with language provide infants with a multimodal scaffold for a usage-based acquisition of language.

Abstract

This paper compares the acquisition of verb morphology in five Mayan languages, using a comparative method based on historical linguistics to establish precise equivalences between linguistic categories in the five languages. Earlier work on the acquisition of these languages, based on examination of longitudinal samples of naturally-occuring child language, established that in some of the languages (Tzeltal, Tzotzil) bare roots were the predominant forms for children’s early verbs, but in three other languages (Yukatek, K’iche’, Q’anjobal) unanalyzed portions of the final part of the verb were more likely. That is, children acquiring different Mayan languages initially produce different parts of the adult verb forms. In this paper we analyse the structures of verbs in caregiver speech to these same children, using samples from two-year-old children and their caregivers, and assess the degree to which features of the input might account for the children’s early verb forms in these five Mayan languages. We found that the frequency with which adults produce verbal roots at the extreme right of words and sentences influences the frequency with which children produce bare verb roots in their early verb expressions, while production of verb roots at the extreme left does not, suggesting that the children ignore the extreme left of verbs and sentences when extracting verb roots.

Abstract

This paper explores the semantics of placement and removal verbs in Ākhoe Hai om based on event descriptions elicited with a set of video stimuli. After a brief sketch of the morphosyntax of placement/removal constructions in Ākhoe Haiom, four situation types are identified semantically that cover both placement and removal events. The language exhibits a clear tendency to make more fine-grained semantic distinctions in placement verbs, as opposed to semantically more general removal verbs.

Abstract

n applied linguistics (AL), researchers have always been concerned with second language (L2) learners' knowledge of the target language (TL), investigating the development of TL grammar, vocabulary, and phonology, for instance.

Abstract

The authors discuss the issue of how visual orienting, selective stimulus processing, and vocal response planning are related in Stroop-like tasks. The evidence suggests that visual orienting is dependent on both visual processing and verbal response planning. They also discuss the issue of selective perceptual processing in Stroop-like tasks. The evidence suggests that space-based and object-based attention lead to a Trojan horse effect in the classic Stroop task, which can be moderated by increasing the spatial distance between colour and word and by making colour and word part of different objects. Reducing the presentation duration of the colour-word stimulus or the duration of either the colour or word dimension reduces Stroop interference. This paradoxical finding was correctly simulated by the WEAVER++ model. Finally, the authors discuss evidence on the neural correlates of executive attention, in particular, the ACC. The evidence suggests that the ACC plays a role in regulation itself rather than only signalling the need for regulation.

Abstract

Wat doen onze ogen als we met andere mensen praten? In zijn proefschrift beschrijft Federico Rossano hoe mensen hun ogen gebruiken tijdens face-to-face interacties. Onze oogbewegingen blijken opvallend geordend en voorspelbaar: zo is het bijvoorbeeld mogelijk om met uitsluitend de ogen een reactie uit te lokken als de gesprekspartner niet direct reageert. Ook wanneer bijvoorbeeld een vraag-antwoordreeks ten einde loopt, coördineren gespreksdeelnemers hun oogbewegingen op een specifieke manier. Daarnaast heeft luisteren naar een verhaal of luisteren naar een vraag verschillende implicaties voor oogbewegingen. Dit proefschrift bevat daarom belangrijke informatie voor experts op het gebied van kunstmatige intelligentie en computerwetenschappers: de voorspelbaarheid en reproduceerbaarheid van natuurlijke oogbewegingen kan onder andere gebruikt worden bij de ontwikkeling van robots of avatars.

Abstract

Human communication is often thought about in terms of transmitted messages in a conventional code like a language. But communication requires a specialized interactive intelligence. Senders have to be able to perform recipient design, while receivers need to be able to do intention recognition, knowing that recipient design has taken place. To study this interactive intelligence in the lab, we developed a new task that taps directly into the underlying abilities to communicate in the absence of a conventional code. We show that subjects are remarkably successful communicators under these conditions, especially when senders get feedback from receivers. Signaling is accomplished by the manner in which an instrumental action is performed, such that instrumentally dysfunctional components of an action are used to convey communicative intentions. The findings have important implications for the nature of the human communicative infrastructure, and the task opens up a line of experimentation on human communication.

Abstract

Sprekers hebben een sterke neiging om syntactische structuren te hergebruiken in nieuwe zinnen. Wanneer we een situatie beschrijven met een passieve zin bijvoorbeeld: 'De vrouw wordt begroet door de man', zullen we voor de beschrijving van een nieuwe situatie gemakkelijker opnieuw een passieve zin gebruiken. Vooral bij moeilijke syntactische structuren is de neiging om ze te hergebruiken erg sterk. Voor gemakkelijke zinsconstructies geldt dat minder. Maar als deze toch hergebruikt worden dan gaat dit samen met een sneller initiëren van de beschrijving. Ook in het brein zien we dat het herhalen van syntactische structuren de verwerking ervan vergemakkelijkt. Bepaalde hersengebieden die zorgen voor de verwerking van syntactische structuren zijn zeer actief de eerste keer dat een syntactische structuur wordt verwerkt, en minder actief de tweede keer. Het gaat hier om een gebiedje in de frontaalkwab en een gebiedje in de temporaalkwab. Opvallend is ook dat deze gebieden de verwerking van syntactische structuren ondersteunen zowel tijdens het spreken als tijdens het luisteren.

Abstract

Based on the conversation analysts’ insights into the various forms of third person reference in English, this paper first presents the inventory of forms Kilivila, the Austronesian language of the Trobriand Islanders of Papua New Guinea, offers its speakers for making such references. To illustrate such references to third persons in talk-in-interaction in Kilivila, a case study on gossiping is presented in the second part of the paper. This case study shows that ambiguous anaphoric references to two first mentioned third persons turn out to not only exceed and even violate the frame of a clearly defined situational-intentional variety of Kilivila that is constituted by the genre “gossip”, but also that these references are extremely dangerous for speakers in the Trobriand Islanders’ society. I illustrate how this culturally dangerous situation escalates and how other participants of the group of gossiping men try to “repair” this violation of the frame of a culturally defined and metalinguistically labelled “way of speaking”. The paper ends with some general remarks on how the understanding of forms of person reference in a language is dependent on the culture specific context in which they are produced.

Abstract

This paper presents preliminary remarks on some of the central linguistic means speakers of Kilivila use in expressing their conceptions of space and for referring to objects, persons, and events in space . After a brief characterisation of the language and its speakers, I sketch how specific topological relations are encoded, how motion events are described, and what frames of spatial reference are preferred in what contexts for what means and ends.

Abstract

One of the central aims of the "Cognitive Anthropology Research Group" (since 1998 the "Department of Language and Cognition of the MPI for Psycholinguistics") is to research the relationship between language, culture and cognition and the conceptualization of space in various languages and cultures. Ever since its foundation in 1991 the group has been developing methods to elicit cross-culturally and cross-linguistically comparable data for this research project. After a brief summary of the central considerations that served as guidelines for the developing of these elicitation devices, this paper first presents a broad selection of the "space games" developed and used for data elicitation in the groups' various fieldsites so far. The paper then discusses the advantages and shortcomings of these data elicitation devices. Finally, it is argued that methodologists developing such devices find themselves in a position somewhere between Scylla and Charybdis - at least, if they take the requirement seriously that the elicited data should be comparable not only cross-culturally but also cross-linguistically.

Abstract

The paper describes how the documentation of a popular song of the adolescents of Tauwema in 1982 lead to the collection of the myth of Imdeduya and Yolina, one of the most important myths of the Trobriand Islands. When I returned to my fieldsite in 1989 Tokunupei, one of my best consultants in Tauwema, remembered my interest in the myth and provided me with further information on this topic. Tokunupei's teachings open up an important access to Trobriand eschatology.

Abstract

Arbeitet man als muttersprachlicher Sprecher des Deutschen mit Corpora gesprochener oder geschriebener deutscher Sprache, dann reflektiert man in aller Regel nur selten über die Vielzahl von kulturspezifischen Informationen, die in solchen Texten kodifiziert sind – vor allem, wenn es sich bei diesen Daten um Texte aus der Gegenwart handelt. In den meisten Fällen hat man nämlich keinerlei Probleme mit dem in den Daten präsupponierten und als allgemein bekannt erachteten Hintergrundswissen. Betrachtet man dagegen Daten in Corpora, die andere – vor allem nicht-indoeuropäische – Sprachen dokumentieren, dann wird einem schnell bewußt, wieviel an kulturspezifischem Wissen nötig ist, um diese Daten adäquat zu verstehen. In meinem Vortrag illustriere ich diese Beobachtung an einem Beispiel aus meinem Corpus des Kilivila, der austronesischen Sprache der Trobriand-Insulaner von Papua-Neuguinea. Anhand eines kurzen Auschnitts einer insgesamt etwa 26 Minuten dauernden Dokumentation, worüber und wie sechs Trobriander miteinander tratschen und klatschen, zeige ich, was ein Hörer oder Leser eines solchen kurzen Daten-Ausschnitts wissen muß, um nicht nur dem Gespräch überhaupt folgen zu können, sondern auch um zu verstehen, was dabei abläuft und wieso ein auf den ersten Blick absolut alltägliches Gespräch plötzlich für einen Trobriander ungeheuer an Brisanz und Bedeutung gewinnt. Vor dem Hintergrund dieses Beispiels weise ich dann zum Schluß meines Beitrags darauf hin, wie unbedingt nötig und erforderlich es ist, in allen Corpora bei der Erschließung und Kommentierung von Datenmaterialien durch sogenannte Metadaten solche kulturspezifischen Informationen explizit zu machen.

Abstract

This handbook chapter summarizes some of the problems of nominal classification in language, presents and illustrates the various systems or techniques of nominal classification, and points out why nominal classification is one of the most interesting topics in Cognitive Linguistics.

Abstract

This chapter first compares data collected on Kilivila colour terms in 1983 with data collected in 2008. The Kilivila lexicon has changed from a typical stage IIIb into a stage VII colour term lexicon (Berlin and Kay 1969). The chapter then compares data on the Kilivila taste vocabulary collected in 1982/83 with data collected in 2008. No substantial change was found. Finally the chapter compares the 2008 results on taste terms with a paper on the taste vocabulary of the Torres Strait Islanders published in 1904 by Charles S. Myers. Kilivila provides evidence that traditional terms used for talking about colour and terms used to refer to tastes have remained relatively stable over time.

Abstract

1. Introduction 2. A generative grammar as an algorithm 3. The semantic component 4. Bibliography 1. Introduction Throughout the 20th century up to the present day grammar and semantics have been uneasy bedfellows. A look at the historical background will make it clear how this curious situation came about. 20th-century linguistics has been characterized by an almost exclusive concern with the structure of words, word groups and sentences. This concern was reinforced, especially on the American side of the Atlantic, by the sudden rise and subsequent dominance of behaviorism during the 1920s. It started in psychology but quickly permeated all the human sciences, including linguistics, until the early 1960s, when it collapsed as suddenly as it had arisen.

Abstract

Presupposition is a semantic device built into natural language to make sentences fit for use in certain contexts but not in others. A sentence carrying a presupposition thus evokes a context in which that presupposition is fulfilled. The study of presupposition was triggered by the behavior of natural language negation, which tends to preserve presuppositions either as invited inferences or as entailments. As the role of discourse became more apparent in semantics, presupposition began to be seen increasingly as a discourse-semantic phenomenon with consequences for the logic of language.

Abstract

The property of presuppositions to be sometimes preserved through embeddings, albeit often in a weakened form, is called projection. The projection problem consists in formulating the conditions under which the presuppositions of an embedded clause (a) are kept as presuppositions of the superordinate structure, or (b) remain as an invited inference that can be overruled by context, or (c) are canceled. Over the past 25 years it has been recognized that the projection problem is to be solved in the context of a wider theory of presupposition and discourse incrementation.

Abstract

Logic was discovered by Aristotle when he saw that the semantic behavior of the negation word not is different in sentences with a definite and in those with a quantified subject term. Until the early 20th century, logic remained firmly language-based, but for the past century it has been mainly a tool in the hands of mathematicians, which has meant an alienation from linguistic reality. With the help of new techniques, it is now possible to revert to the logic of language, which is seen as based on a semantic analysis of the logical words (constants) involved. This new perspective, combined with much improved insights into the semantically defined discourse dependency of natural language sentences, leads to a novel and more functionally oriented approach to logic and to a reappraisal of traditional predicate calculus, whose main fault, undue existential import, evaporates when discourse dependency, in particular the presuppositional aspect, is brought into play. Traditional predicate calculus is seen to have a much greater logical power and a much greater functionality than modern predicate calculus. There is also full isomorphism, neglected in modern logic, between traditional predicate calculus and propositional calculus, which raises the question of any possible deeper causes.