Publications

Displaying 1 - 100 of 169
  • Ambridge, B., Rowland, C. F., Theakston, A. L., & Twomey, K. E. (2020). Introduction. In C. F. Rowland, A. L. Theakston, B. Ambridge, & K. E. Twomey (Eds.), Current Perspectives on Child Language Acquisition: How children use their environment to learn (pp. 1-7). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi:10.1075/tilar.27.int.
  • Ameka, F. K. (2002). The progressive aspect in Likpe: Its implications for aspect and word order in Kwa. In F. K. Ameka, & E. K. Osam (Eds.), New directions in Ghanaian linguistics: Essays in honor of the 3Ds (pp. 85-111). Accra: Black Mask.
  • Ameka, F. K. (2002). Constituent order and grammatical relations in Ewe in typological perspective. In K. Davidse, & B. Lamiroy (Eds.), The nominative & accusative and their counterparts (pp. 319-352). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • Ameka, F. K. (2001). Ideophones and the nature of the adjective word class in Ewe. In F. K. E. Voeltz, & C. Kilian-Hatz (Eds.), Ideophones (pp. 25-48). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Ameka, F. K. (2001). Ewe. In J. Garry, & C. Rubino (Eds.), Facts about the world’s languages: An encyclopedia of the world's major languages past and present (pp. 207-213). New York: H.W. Wilson Press.
  • Amora, K. K., Garcia, R., & Gagarina, N. (2020). Tagalog adaptation of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives: History, process and preliminary results. In N. Gagarina, & J. Lindgren (Eds.), New language versions of MAIN: Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives – Revised (pp. 221-233).

    Abstract

    This paper briefly presents the current situation of bilingualism in the Philippines,
    specifically that of Tagalog-English bilingualism. More importantly, it describes the process of adapting the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN) to Tagalog, the basis of Filipino, which is the country’s national language.
    Finally, the results of a pilot study conducted on Tagalog-English bilingual children and
    adults (N=27) are presented. The results showed that Story Structure is similar across the
    two languages and that it develops significantly with age.
  • Bauer, B. L. M. (2020). Appositive compounds in dialectal and sociolinguistic varieties of French. In M. Maiden, & S. Wolfe (Eds.), Variation and change in Gallo-Romance (pp. 326-346). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Bock, K., & Levelt, W. J. M. (2002). Language production: Grammatical encoding. In G. T. Altmann (Ed.), Psycholinguistics: Critical concepts in psychology (pp. 405-452). London: Routledge.
  • Bohnemeyer, J. (2001). Motionland films version 2: Referential communication task with motionland stimulus. In S. C. Levinson, & N. J. Enfield (Eds.), Manual for the field season 2001 (pp. 97-99). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.874623.

    Abstract

    How do languages express ideas of movement, and how do they package different components of moving, such as manner and path? This task supports detailed investigation of motion descriptions. The specific study goals are: (a) the coding of “via” grounds (i.e., ground objects which the figure moves along, over, around, through, past, etc.); (b) the coding of direction changes; (c) the spontaneous segmentation of complex motion scenarios; and (d) the gestural representation of motion paths. The stimulus set is 5 simple 3D animations (7-17 seconds long) that show a ball rolling through a landscape. The task is a director-matcher task for two participants. The director describes the path of the ball in each clip to the matcher, who is asked to trace the path with a pen in a 2D picture.

    Additional information

    2001_Motionland_films_v2.zip
  • Bohnemeyer, J., Eisenbeiss, S., & Narasimhan, B. (2001). Event triads. In S. C. Levinson, & N. J. Enfield (Eds.), Manual for the field season 2001 (pp. 100-114). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.874630.

    Abstract

    Judgments we make about how similar or different events are to each other can reveal the features we find useful in classifying the world. This task is designed to investigate how speakers of different languages classify events, and to examine how linguistic and gestural encoding relates to non-linguistic classification. Specifically, the task investigates whether speakers judge two events to be similar on the basis of (a) the path versus manner of motion, (b) sub-events versus larger complex events, (c) participant identity versus event identity, and (d) different participant roles. In the task, participants are asked to make similarity judgments concerning sets of 2D animation clips.
  • Bohnemeyer, J. (2001). A questionnaire on event integration. In S. C. Levinson, & N. J. Enfield (Eds.), Manual for the field season 2001 (pp. 177-184). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
  • Bohnemeyer, J., Bowerman, M., & Brown, P. (2001). Cut and break clips. In S. C. Levinson, & N. J. Enfield (Eds.), Manual for the field season 2001 (pp. 90-96). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.874626.

    Abstract

    How do different languages treat a particular semantic domain? It has already been established that languages have widely varied words for talking about “cutting” and “breaking” things: for example, English has a very general verb break, but K’iche’ Maya has many different ‘break’ verbs that are used for different kinds of objects (e.g., brittle, flexible, long). The aim of this task is to map out cross-linguistic lexicalisation patterns in the cutting/breaking domain. The stimuli comprise 61 short video clips that show one or two actors breaking various objects (sticks, carrots, pieces of cloth or string, etc.) using various instruments (a knife, a hammer, an axe, their hands, etc.), or situations in which various kinds of objects break spontaneously. The clips are used to elicit descriptions of actors’ actions and the state changes that the objects undergo.

    Additional information

    2001_Cut_and_break_clips.zip
  • Bohnemeyer, J., & Majid, A. (2002). ECOM causality revisited version 4. In S. Kita (Ed.), 2002 Supplement (version 3) for the “Manual” for the field season 2001 (pp. 35-38). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
  • 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. (2001). Toponym questionnaire. In S. C. Levinson, & N. J. Enfield (Eds.), Manual for the field season 2001 (pp. 55-61). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.874620.

    Abstract

    Place-names (toponyms) are at the intersection of spatial language, culture, and cognition. This questionnaire prepares the researcher to answer three overarching questions: how to formally identify place-names in the research language (i.e. according to morphological and syntactic criteria); what places place-names are employed to refer to (e.g. human settlements, landscape sites); and how places are semantically construed for this purpose. The questionnaire can in principle be answered using an existing database. However, additional elicitation with language consultants is recommended.
  • Bowerman, M. (2002). Taalverwerving, cognitie en cultuur. In T. Janssen (Ed.), Taal in gebruik: Een inleiding in de taalwetenschap (pp. 27-44). The Hague: Sdu.
  • Bowerman, M. (2002). Mapping thematic roles onto syntactic functions: Are children helped by innate linking rules? [Reprint]. In Mouton Classics: From syntax to cognition, from phonology to text (vol.2) (pp. 495-531). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Abstract

    Reprinted from: Bowerman, M. (1990). Mapping thematic roles onto syntactic functions: Are children helped by innate linking rules? Linguistics, 28, 1253-1289.
  • Bowerman, M., & Choi, S. (2001). Shaping meanings for language: Universal and language-specific in the acquisition of semantic categories. In M. Bowerman, & S. C. Levinson (Eds.), Language acquisition and conceptual development (pp. 475-511). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • 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. (2002). Everyone has to lie in Tzeltal. In S. Blum-Kulka, & C. E. Snow (Eds.), Talking to adults: The contribution of multiparty discourse to language acquisition (pp. 241-275). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

    Abstract

    In a famous paper Harvey Sacks (1974) argued that the sequential properties of greeting conventions, as well as those governing the flow of information, mean that 'everyone has to lie'. In this paper I show this dictum to be equally true in the Tzeltal Mayan community of Tenejapa, in southern Mexico, but for somewhat different reasons. The phenomenon of interest is the practice of routine fearsome threats to small children. Based on a longitudinal corpus of videotaped and tape-recorded naturally-occurring interaction between caregivers and children in five Tzeltal families, the study examines sequences of Tzeltal caregivers' speech aimed at controlling the children's behaviour and analyzes the children's developing pragmatic skills in handling such controlling utterances, from prelinguistic infants to age five and over. Infants in this society are considered to be vulnerable, easily scared or shocked into losing their 'souls', and therefore at all costs to be protected and hidden from outsiders and other dangers. Nonetheless, the chief form of control (aside from physically removing a child from danger) is to threaten, saying things like "Don't do that, or I'll take you to the clinic for an injection," These overt scare-threats - rarely actually realized - lead Tzeltal children by the age of 2;6 to 3;0 to the understanding that speech does not necessarily convey true propositions, and to a sensitivity to the underlying motivations for utterances distinct from their literal meaning. By age 4;0 children perform the same role to their younger siblings;they also begin to use more subtle non-true (e.g. ironic) utterances. The caretaker practice described here is related to adult norms of social lying, to the sociocultural context of constraints on information flow, social control through gossip, and the different notion of 'truth' that arises in the context of non-verifiability characteristic of a small-scale nonliterate society.
  • Brown, P. (2002). Language as a model for culture: Lessons from the cognitive sciences. In R. G. Fox, & B. J. King (Eds.), Anthropology beyond culture (pp. 169-192). Oxford: Berg.

    Abstract

    This paper surveys the concept of culture as used in recent work in cognitive science, assessing the very different (and sometimes minimal) role 'culture' plays in different branches and schools of linguistics: generative approaches, descriptive/comparative linguistics, typology, cognitive linguistics, semantics, pragmatics, psycholinguistics, linguistic and cognitive anthropology. The paper then describes research on one specific topic, spatial language and conceptualization, describes a methodology for studying it cross-linguistically and cross-culturally. Finally, it considers the implications of results in this area for how we can fruitfully conceptualize 'culture', arguing for an approach which shifts back and forth between individual mind and collective representations, between universals and particulars, and ties 'culture' to our biological roots.
  • Brown, P. (2001). Learning to talk about motion UP and DOWN in Tzeltal: Is there a language-specific bias for verb learning? In M. Bowerman, & S. C. Levinson (Eds.), Language acquisition and conceptual development (pp. 512-543). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Abstract

    The spatial vocabulary of the Mayan language Tzeltal is dominated by an Absolute system of spatial reckoning, whereby an "uphill/downhill" coordinate abstracted from the lay of the land is used to reckon spatial relationships on the horizontal in both small-scale and long distance space. This system is used in lieu of a Front/Back/Left/Right system which does not exist in this language. The spatial vocabulary dedicated to this system (which I refer to in general as the UP/DOWN vocabulary) includes intransitive motion verbs (roughly translatable as "ascend"/"descend"), their transitivized counterparts ("make it ascend/descend"), directional adverbs ("uphillwards"/"downhillwards"), and possessed relational nouns ("uphill/downhill in relation to it"). This same vocabulary applies to spatial relations on the vertical axis. Two seemingly contradictory observations about children's early meanings for the spatial verbs dedicated to this system motivate the proposal put forward in this paper. On the one hand, Tzeltal children's UP/DOWN vocabulary shows very early sensitivity to the semantic structure of the language they are learning: the meanings for these verbs are from the first usages attached to the slope of the land, and to particular places; there is no evidence of an initial preference for the vertical meaning. On the other hand, children's meanings remain for a long time too specific, and errors of interpretation/production (using the verbs to mean 'local slope of land' rather than 'overall N/S slope of land direction) are evident in verbal productions of some children as late as age 7 or 8. The proposal is made that the highly specific nature of Tzeltal verbs at the basic level influences the children's hypotheses about what kinds of meanings verbs can have.
  • 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, P. (2001). Repetition. In K. Duranti (Ed.), Key terms in language and culture (pp. 219-222). Oxford: Blackwell.

    Abstract

    This is a reprint of the Brown 1999 article.
  • Brown, P. (2001). Politeness and language. In N. Smelser, & P. Baltes (Eds.), International encyclopedia of the social and behavioral sciences (pp. 11620-11624). Oxford: Elsevier Sciences.

    Abstract

    This is an encyclopedia entry surveying research and theoretical approaches to politeness phenomena in language usage.
  • 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).
  • Wu, D. H., & Bulut, T. (2020). The contribution of statistical learning to language and literacy acquisition. In K. D. Federmeier, & H. W. Huang (Eds.), Psychology of Learning and Motivation (pp. 283-318). doi:10.1016/bs.plm.2020.02.001.

    Abstract

    Acquisition and processing of written and spoken language is an impressive cognitive accomplishment considering the complexity of the tasks. While only humans seem to have evolved to the fullest extent the capacity that underpins these remarkable feats of development and civilization, the exact nature of such capacity has been subject to ongoing research. In this chapter, we focus on language competence and what makes it unique among the communication systems of different species. We then elaborate on the classical debate between nativist and environmentalist accounts of language acquisition, with reference to evidence for and against the critical period hypothesis. After introducing the regularity embedded in different languages and particularly in drastically different orthographies, we present behavioral and neurophysiological evidence for the sensitivity to systematic mapping between orthography and phonology. Because learning to read is to master such mapping, we assume that the ability to use statistical learning to appreciate the dependency among items would contribute to literacy acquisition. Empirical results from behavioral and neuroimaging experiments conducted in our and other laboratories provide support for the close link between statistical learning and literacy acquisition in native and foreign language. Such findings highlight the significance of domain-general statistical learning to domain-specific language acquisition, and point to an important direction for theories and practices of language education.

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  • Burenhult, N. (2020). Foraging and the history of languages in the Malay Peninsula. In T. Güldemann, P. McConvell, & R. Rhodes (Eds.), The language of Hunter-Gatherers (pp. 164-197). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Casillas, M., & Hilbrink, E. (2020). Communicative act development. In K. P. Schneider, & E. Ifantidou (Eds.), Developmental and Clinical Pragmatics (pp. 61-88). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

    Abstract

    How do children learn to map linguistic forms onto their intended meanings? This chapter begins with an introduction to some theoretical and analytical tools used to study communicative acts. It then turns to communicative act development in spoken and signed language acquisition, including both the early scaffolding and production of communicative acts (both non-verbal and verbal) as well as their later links to linguistic development and Theory of Mind. The chapter wraps up by linking research on communicative act development to the acquisition of conversational skills, cross-linguistic and individual differences in communicative experience during development, and human evolution. Along the way, it also poses a few open questions for future research in this domain.
  • Clahsen, H., Prüfert, P., Eisenbeiss, S., & Cholin, J. (2002). Strong stems in the German mental lexicon: Evidence from child language acquisition and adult processing. In I. Kaufmann, & B. Stiebels (Eds.), More than words. Festschrift for Dieter Wunderlich (pp. 91-112). Berlin: Akadamie Verlag.
  • 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.
  • Cutler, A. (2002). Phonological processing: Comments on Pierrehumbert, Moates et al., Kubozono, Peperkamp & Dupoux, and Bradlow. In C. Gussenhoven, & N. Warner (Eds.), Papers in Laboratory Phonology VII (pp. 275-296). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Cutler, A., & Norris, D. (2002). The role of strong syllables in segmentation for lexical access. In G. T. Altmann (Ed.), Psycholinguistics: Critical concepts in psychology (pp. 157-177). London: Routledge.
  • Cutler, A., Mehler, J., Norris, D., & Segui, J. (2002). The syllable's differing role in the segmentation of French and English. In G. T. Altmann (Ed.), Psycholinguistics: Critical concepts in psychology (pp. 115-135). London: Routledge.

    Abstract

    Speech segmentation procedures may differ in speakers of different languages. Earlier work based on French speakers listening to French words suggested that the syllable functions as a segmentation unit in speech processing. However, while French has relatively regular and clearly bounded syllables, other languages, such as English, do not. No trace of syllabifying segmentation was found in English listeners listening to English words, French words, or nonsense words. French listeners, however, showed evidence of syllabification even when they were listening to English words. We conclude that alternative segmentation routines are available to the human language processor. In some cases speech segmentation may involve the operation of more than one procedure.
  • Cutler, A. (2001). Entries on: Acquisition of language by non-human primates; bilingualism; compound (linguistic); development of language-specific phonology; gender (linguistic); grammar; infant speech perception; language; lexicon; morphology; motor theory of speech perception; perception of second languages; phoneme; phonological store; phonology; prosody; sign language; slips of the tongue; speech perception; speech production; stress (linguistic); syntax; word recognition; words. In P. Winn (Ed.), Dictionary of biological psychology. London: Routledge.
  • Cutler, A. (2002). Lexical access. In L. Nadel (Ed.), Encyclopedia of cognitive science (pp. 858-864). London: Nature Publishing Group.
  • Cutler, A., McQueen, J. M., Norris, D., & Somejuan, A. (2002). Le rôle de la syllable. In E. Dupoux (Ed.), Les langages du cerveau: Textes en l’honneur de Jacques Mehler (pp. 185-197). Paris: Odile Jacob.
  • 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., McQueen, J. M., Norris, D., & Somejuan, A. (2001). The roll of the silly ball. In E. Dupoux (Ed.), Language, brain and cognitive development: Essays in honor of Jacques Mehler (pp. 181-194). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  • Dingemanse, M. (2020). Recruiting assistance and collaboration: A West-African corpus study. In S. Floyd, G. Rossi, & N. J. Enfield (Eds.), Getting others to do things: A pragmatic typology of recruitments (pp. 369-241). Berlin: Language Science Press. doi:10.5281/zenodo.4018388.

    Abstract

    Doing things for and with others is one of the foundations of human social life. This chapter studies a systematic collection of 207 requests for assistance and collaboration from a video corpus of everyday conversations in Siwu, a Kwa language of Ghana. A range of social action formats and semiotic resources reveals how language is adapted to the interactional challenges posed by recruiting assistance. While many of the formats bear a language-specific signature, their sequential and interactional properties show important commonalities across languages. Two tentative findings are put forward for further cross-linguistic examination: a “rule of three” that may play a role in the organisation of successive response pursuits, and a striking commonality in animal-oriented recruitments across languages that may be explained by convergent cultural evolution. The Siwu recruitment system emerges as one instance of a sophisticated machinery for organising collaborative action that transcends language and culture.
  • Drude, S. (2002). Fala masculina e feminina em Awetí. In A. D. Rodrigues, & A. S. A. C. Cabral (Eds.), Línguas indígenas Brasileiras: Fonologia, gramática e história. (Atas do I Encontro Internacional do Grupo de Trabalho sobre Línguas Indígenas da ANPOLL). vol. 1 (pp. 177-190). 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.
  • Enfield, N. J. (2002). Semantics and combinatorics of 'sit', 'stand', and 'lie' in Lao. In J. Newman (Ed.), The linguistics of sitting, standing, and lying (pp. 25-41). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Enfield, N. J., Levinson, S. C., & Meira, S. (2001). Recognitional deixis. In S. C. Levinson, & N. J. Enfield (Eds.), Manual for the field season 2001 (pp. 78-81). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.874641.

    Abstract

    “Recognitional” words and constructions enshrine our systematic reliance on shared knowledge in dedicated morphological forms and usage patterns. For example, English has a large range of terms for use when a speaker cannot locate the word or name for something or someone (e.g., whatsit, what’s-his-name), but thinks that the interlocutor knows, or can easily work out, what the speaker is talking about. This task aims to identify and investigate these kinds of expressions in the research language, including their grammaticalised status, meaning, distribution, and productivity. The task consists of a questionnaire with examples of relevant hypothetical scenarios that can be used in eliciting the relevant terms. The researcher is then encouraged to pursue further questions in regard to these items.
  • Enfield, N. J. (2001). Body. In S. C. Levinson, & N. J. Enfield (Eds.), Manual for the field season 2001 (pp. 62-77). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.874633.

    Abstract

    This task investigates the extensional meaning of body part terms, in particular the terms for the upper and lower limbs. Two questions are addressed, namely (i) are the boundaries of these body parts universal, guided by proposed universals of object recognition? (ii) How can we compare the extensional meanings of body part terms within and across different systems of nomenclature? Consultants receive booklets with line drawings of a body and are asked to colour in specific parts of the body.
  • Enfield, N. J. (2002). Body 2002. In S. Kita (Ed.), 2002 Supplement (version 3) for the “Manual” for the field season 2001 (pp. 19-32). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
  • Enfield, N. J. (2002). “Fish trap” task. In S. Kita (Ed.), 2002 Supplement (version 3) for the “Manual” for the field season 2001 (pp. 61). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
  • Enfield, N. J. (2002). Cultural logic and syntactic productivity: Associated posture constructions in Lao. In N. Enfield (Ed.), Ethnosyntax: Explorations in culture and grammar (pp. 231-258). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Enfield, N. J. (2002). Ethnosyntax: Introduction. In N. Enfield (Ed.), Ethnosyntax: Explorations in culture and grammar (pp. 1-30). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Enfield, N. J. (2002). Combinatoric properties of natural semantic metalanguage expressions in Lao. In C. Goddard, & A. Wierzbicka (Eds.), Meaning and universal grammar: Theory and empirical findings (pp. 145-256). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • Enfield, N. J. (2002). Functions of 'give' and 'take' in Lao complex predicates. In R. S. Bauer (Ed.), Collected papers on Southeast Asian and Pacific languages (pp. 13-36). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
  • Enfield, N. J., & Bohnemeyer, J. (2001). Hidden colour-chips task: Demonstratives, attention, and interaction. In S. C. Levinson, & N. J. Enfield (Eds.), Manual for the field season 2001 (pp. 21-28). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.874636.

    Abstract

    Demonstratives are typically described as encoding degrees of physical distance between the object referred to, and the speaker or addressee. For example, this in English is used to talk about things that are physically near the speaker, and that for things that are not. But is this how speakers really choose between these words in actual talk? This task aims to generate spontaneous language data concerning deixis, gesture, and demonstratives, and to investigate the significance of different factors (e.g., physical distance, attention) in demonstrative selection. In the presence of one consultant (the “memoriser”), sixteen colour chips are hidden under objects in a specified array. Another consultant enters the area and asks the memoriser to recount the locations of the chips. The task is designed to create a situation where the speaker genuinely attempts to manipulate the addressee’s attention on objects in the immediate physical space.
  • Enfield, N. J. (2001). Linguistic evidence for a Lao perspective on facial expression of emotion. In J. Harkins, & A. Wierzbicka (Eds.), Emotions in crosslinguistic perspective (pp. 149-166). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Enfield, N. J. (2001). On genetic and areal linguistics in Mainland South-East Asia: Parallel polyfunctionality of ‘acquire’. In A. Y. Aikhenvald, & R. M. Dixon (Eds.), Areal diffusion and genetic inheritance: Problems in comparative linguistics (pp. 255-290). Oxford University Press.
  • Enfield, N. J., & Dunn, M. (2001). Supplements to the Wilkins 1999 demonstrative questionnaire. In S. C. Levinson, & N. J. Enfield (Eds.), Manual for the field season 2001 (pp. 82-84). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.874638.
  • Faller, M. (2002). Remarks on evidential hierarchies. In D. I. Beaver, L. D. C. Martinez, B. Z. Clark., & S. Kaufmann (Eds.), The construction of meaning (pp. 89-111). Stanford: CSLI Publications.
  • Fernald, A., McRoberts, G. W., & Swingley, D. (2001). Infants' developing competence in recognizing and understanding words in fluent speech. In J. Weissenborn, & B. Höhle (Eds.), Approaches to Bootstrapping: Phonological, lexical, syntactic and neurophysiological aspects of early language acquisition. Volume 1 (pp. 97-123). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Fisher, S. E. (2002). Isolation of the genetic factors underlying speech and language disorders. In R. Plomin, J. C. DeFries, I. W. Craig, & P. McGuffin (Eds.), Behavioral genetics in the postgenomic era (pp. 205-226). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

    Abstract

    This chapter highlights the research in isolating genetic factors underlying specific language impairment (SLI), or developmental dysphasia, which exploits newly developed genotyping technology, novel statistical methodology, and DNA sequence data generated by the Human Genome Project. The author begins with an overview of results from family, twin, and adoption studies supporting genetic involvement and then goes on to outline progress in a number of genetic mapping efforts that have been recently completed or are currently under way. It has been possible for genetic researchers to pinpoint the specific mutation responsible for some speech and language disorders, providing an example of how the availability of human genomic sequence data can greatly accelerate the pace of disease gene discovery. Finally, the author discusses future prospects on how molecular genetics may offer new insight into the etiology underlying speech and language disorders, leading to improvements in diagnosis and treatment.
  • Fisher, S. E., & Smith, S. (2001). Progress towards the identification of genes influencing developmental dyslexia. In A. Fawcett (Ed.), Dyslexia: Theory and good practice (pp. 39-64). London: Whurr.
  • Fox, E. (2020). Literary Jerry and justice. In M. E. Poulsen (Ed.), The Jerome Bruner Library: From New York to Nijmegen. Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
  • Frost, R. L. A., & Monaghan, P. (2020). Insights from studying statistical learning. In C. F. Rowland, A. L. Theakston, B. Ambridge, & K. E. Twomey (Eds.), Current Perspectives on Child Language Acquisition: How children use their environment to learn (pp. 65-89). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi:10.1075/tilar.27.03fro.

    Abstract

    Acquiring language is notoriously complex, yet for the majority of children this feat is accomplished with remarkable ease. Usage-based accounts of language acquisition suggest that this success can be largely attributed to the wealth of experience with language that children accumulate over the course of language acquisition. One field of research that is heavily underpinned by this principle of experience is statistical learning, which posits that learners can perform powerful computations over the distribution of information in a given input, which can help them to discern precisely how that input is structured, and how it operates. A growing body of work brings this notion to bear in the field of language acquisition, due to a developing understanding of the richness of the statistical information contained in speech. In this chapter we discuss the role that statistical learning plays in language acquisition, emphasising the importance of both the distribution of information within language, and the situation in which language is being learnt. First, we address the types of statistical learning that apply to a range of language learning tasks, asking whether the statistical processes purported to support language learning are the same or distinct across different tasks in language acquisition. Second, we expand the perspective on what counts as environmental input, by determining how statistical learning operates over the situated learning environment, and not just sequences of sounds in utterances. Finally, we address the role of variability in children’s input, and examine how statistical learning can accommodate (and perhaps even exploit) this during language acquisition.
  • Güldemann, T., & Hammarström, H. (2020). Geographical axis effects in large-scale linguistic distributions. In M. Crevels, & P. Muysken (Eds.), Language Dispersal, Diversification, and Contact. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Gullberg, M., & Holmqvist, K. (2002). Visual attention towards gestures in face-to-face interaction vs. on screen. In I. Wachsmuth, & T. Sowa (Eds.), Gesture and sign languages in human-computer interaction (pp. 206-214). Berlin: Springer.
  • Gullberg, M. (2002). Gestures, languages, and language acquisition. In S. Strömqvist (Ed.), The diversity of languages and language learning (pp. 45-56). Lund: Lund University.
  • Gullberg, M., & Holmqvist, K. (2001). Eye tracking and the perception of gestures in face-to-face interaction vs on screen. In C. Cavé, I. Guaïtella, & S. Santi (Eds.), Oralité et gestualité (2001) (pp. 381-384). Paris, France: Editions Harmattan.
  • Hagoort, P., & Ramsey, N. (2001). De gereedschapskist van de cognitieve neurowetenschap. In F. Wijnen, & F. Verstraten (Eds.), Het brein te kijk (pp. 39-67). Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger.
  • Hagoort, P. (2002). Het unieke menselijke taalvermogen: Van PAUS naar [paus] in een halve seconde. In J. G. van Hell, A. de Klerk, D. E. Strauss, & T. Torremans (Eds.), Taalontwikkeling en taalstoornissen: Theorie, diagnostiek en behandeling (pp. 51-67). Leuven/Apeldoorn: Garant.
  • Hagoort, P. (2001). De verbeelding aan de macht: Hoe het menselijk taalvermogen zichtbaar wordt in de (beeld) analyse van hersenactiviteit. In J. Joosse (Ed.), Biologie en psychologie: Naar vruchtbare kruisbestuivingen (pp. 41-60). Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen.
  • Hagoort, P. (2020). Taal. In O. Van den Heuvel, Y. Van der Werf, B. Schmand, & B. Sabbe (Eds.), Leerboek neurowetenschappen voor de klinische psychiatrie (pp. 234-239). Amsterdam: Boom Uitgevers.
  • Hagoort, P. (1998). The shadows of lexical meaning in patients with semantic impairments. In B. Stemmer, & H. Whitaker (Eds.), Handbook of neurolinguistics (pp. 235-248). New York: Academic Press.
  • Hellwig, F. M., & Lüpke, F. (2001). Caused positions. In S. C. Levinson, & N. J. Enfield (Eds.), Manual for the field season 2001 (pp. 126-128). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.874644.

    Abstract

    What kinds of resources to languages have for describing location and position? For some languages, verbs have an important role to play in describing different kinds of situations (e.g., whether a bottle is standing or lying on the table). This task is designed to examine the use of positional verbs in locative constructions, with respect to the presence or absence of a human “positioner”. Participants are asked to describe video clips showing locative states that occur spontaneously, or because of active interference from a person. The task follows on from two earlier tools for the elicitation of static locative descriptions (BowPed and the Ameka picture book task). A number of additional variables (e.g. canonical v. non-canonical orientation of the figure) are also targeted in the stimuli set.

    Additional information

    2001_Caused_positions.zip
  • Hoiting, N., & Slobin, D. I. (2002). Transcription as a tool for understanding: The Berkeley Transcription System for sign language research (BTS). In G. Morgan, & B. Woll (Eds.), Directions in sign language acquisition (pp. 55-75). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • Hoiting, N., & Slobin, D. I. (2002). What a deaf child needs to see: Advantages of a natural sign language over a sign system. In R. Schulmeister, & H. Reinitzer (Eds.), Progress in sign language research. In honor of Siegmund Prillwitz / Fortschritte in der Gebärdensprach-forschung. Festschrift für Siegmund Prillwitz (pp. 267-277). Hamburg: Signum.
  • Jordens, P. (1998). Defaultformen des Präteritums. Zum Erwerb der Vergangenheitsmorphologie im Niederlänidischen. In H. Wegener (Ed.), Eine zweite Sprache lernen (pp. 61-88). Tübingen, Germany: Verlag Gunter Narr.
  • Kastens, K. (2020). The Jerome Bruner Library treasure. In M. E. Poulsen (Ed.), The Jerome Bruner Library: From New York to Nijmegen (pp. 29-34). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
  • Kempen, G., & Harbusch, K. (2002). Performance Grammar: A declarative definition. In A. Nijholt, M. Theune, & H. Hondorp (Eds.), Computational linguistics in the Netherlands 2001: Selected papers from the Twelfth CLIN Meeting (pp. 148-162). Amsterdam: Rodopi.

    Abstract

    In this paper we present a definition of Performance Grammar (PG), a psycholinguistically motivated syntax formalism, in declarative terms. PG aims not only at describing and explaining intuitive judgments and other data concerning the well–formedness of sentences of a language, but also at contributing to accounts of syntactic processing phenomena observable in language comprehension and language production. We highlight two general properties of human sentence generation, incrementality and late linearization,which make special demands on the design of grammar formalisms claiming psychological plausibility. In order to meet these demands, PG generates syntactic structures in a two-stage process. In the first and most important ‘hierarchical’ stage, unordered hierarchical structures (‘mobiles’) are assembled out of lexical building blocks. The key operation at work here is typed feature unification, which also delimits the positional options of the syntactic constituents in terms of so-called topological features. The second, much simpler stage takes care of arranging the branches of the mobile from left to right by ‘reading–out’ one positional option of every constituent. In this paper we concentrate on the structure assembly formalism in PG’s hierarchical component. We provide a declarative definition couched in an HPSG–style notation based on typed feature unification. Our emphasis throughout is on linear order constraints.
  • Kempen, G. (1998). Sentence parsing. In A. D. Friederici (Ed.), Language comprehension: A biological perspective (pp. 213-228). Berlin: Springer.
  • Kidd, E., Bigood, A., Donnelly, S., Durrant, S., Peter, M. S., & Rowland, C. F. (2020). Individual differences in first language acquisition and their theoretical implications. In C. F. Rowland, A. L. Theakston, B. Ambridge, & K. E. Twomey (Eds.), Current Perspectives on Child Language Acquisition: How children use their environment to learn (pp. 189-219). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi:10.1075/tilar.27.09kid.

    Abstract

    Much of Lieven’s pioneering work has helped move the study of individual differences to the centre of child language research. The goal of the present chapter is to illustrate how the study of individual differences provides crucial insights into the language acquisition process. In part one, we summarise some of the evidence showing how pervasive individual differences are across the whole of the language system; from gestures to morphosyntax. In part two, we describe three causal factors implicated in explaining individual differences, which, we argue, must be built into any theory of language acquisition (intrinsic differences in the neurocognitive learning mechanisms, the child’s communicative environment, and developmental cascades in which each new linguistic skill that the child has to acquire depends critically on the prior acquisition of foundational abilities). In part three, we present an example study on the role of the speed of linguistic processing on vocabulary development, which illustrates our approach to individual differences. The results show evidence of a changing relationship between lexical processing speed and vocabulary over developmental time, perhaps as a result of the changing nature of the structure of the lexicon. The study thus highlights the benefits of an individual differences approach in building, testing, and constraining theories of language acquisition.
  • Kita, S., Danziger, E., & Stolz, C. (2001). Cultural specificity of spatial schemas, as manifested in spontaneous gestures. In M. Gattis (Ed.), Spatial Schemas and Abstract Thought (pp. 115-146). Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press.
  • Kita, S. (2001). Locally-anchored spatial gestures, version 2: Historical description of the local environment as a gesture elicitation task. In S. C. Levinson, & N. J. Enfield (Eds.), Manual for the field season 2001 (pp. 132-135). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.874647.

    Abstract

    Gesture is an integral part of face-to-face communication, and provides a rich area for cross-cultural comparison. “Locally-anchored spatial gestures” are gestures that are roughly oriented to the actual geographical direction of referents. For example, such gestures may point to a location or a thing, trace the shape of a path, or indicate the direction of a particular area. The goal of this task is to elicit locally-anchored spatial gestures across different cultures. The task follows an interview format, where one participant prompts another to talk in detail about a specific area that the main speaker knows well. The data can be used for additional purposes such as the investigation of demonstratives.
  • Kita, S. (2001). Recording recommendations for gesture studies. In S. C. Levinson, & N. J. Enfield (Eds.), Manual for the field season 2001 (pp. 130-131). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
  • Kita, S. (2002). Preface and priorities. In S. Kita (Ed.), 2002 Supplement (version 3) for the “Manual” for the field season 2001 (pp. 3-4). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
  • Klein, W., & Von Stutterheim, C. (2002). Quaestio and L-perspectivation. In C. F. Graumann, & W. Kallmeyer (Eds.), Perspective and perspectivation in discourse (pp. 59-88). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Klein, W. (2002). The argument-time structure of recipient constructions in German. In W. Abraham, & J.-W. Zwart (Eds.), Issues in formal german(ic) typology (pp. 141-178). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    It is generally assumed that verbs have an ‘argument structure’, which imposes various constraints on the noun phrases that can or must go with the verb, and an ‘event structure’, which characterises the particular temporal characteristics of the ‘event’ which the verb relates to: this event may be a state, a process, an activity, an ‘event in the narrow sense’, and others. In this paper, it is argued that that argument structure and event structure should be brought together. The lexical content of a verb assigns descriptive properties to one or more arguments at one or more times, hence verbs have an ‘argument time-structure’ (AT-structure). Numerous morphological and syntactical operations, such as participle formation or complex verb constructions, modify this AT-structure. This is illustrated with German recipient constructions such as ein Buch geschenkt bekommen or das Fenster geöffnet kriegen.
  • Klein, W. (2002). Why case marking? In I. Kaufmann, & B. Stiebels (Eds.), More than words: Festschrift for Dieter Wunderlich (pp. 251-273). Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
  • Klein, W. (2001). Das Ende vor Augen: Deutsch als Wissenschaftssprache. In F. Debus, F. Kollmann, & U. Pörken (Eds.), Deutsch als Wissenschaftssprache im 20. Jahrhundert (pp. 289-293). Mainz: Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur.
  • Klein, W. (2001). Deiktische Orientierung. In M. Haspelmath, E. König, W. Oesterreicher, & W. Raible (Eds.), Sprachtypologie und sprachliche Universalien: Vol. 1/1 (pp. 575-590). Berlin: de Gruyter.
  • Klein, W. (1998). Ein Blick zurück auf die Varietätengrammatik. In U. Ammon, K. Mattheier, & P. Nelde (Eds.), Sociolinguistica: Internationales Jahrbuch für europäische Soziolinguistik (pp. 22-38). Tübingen: Niemeyer.
  • Klein, W. (2001). Elementary forms of linguistic organisation. In S. Ward, & J. Trabant (Eds.), The origins of language (pp. 81-102). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Klein, W. (2001). Die Linguistik ist anders geworden. In S. Anschütz, S. Kanngießer, & G. Rickheit (Eds.), A Festschrift for Manfred Briegel: Spektren der Linguistik (pp. 51-72). Wiesbaden: Deutscher Universitätsverlag.
  • Klein, W. (1998). Assertion and finiteness. In N. Dittmar, & Z. Penner (Eds.), Issues in the theory of language acquisition: Essays in honor of Jürgen Weissenborn (pp. 225-245). Bern: Peter Lang.
  • Klein, W., & Musan, R. (2002). (A)Symmetry in language: seit and bis, and others. In C. Maienborn (Ed.), (A)Symmetrien - (A)Symmetry. Beiträge zu Ehren von Ewald Lang - Papers in Honor of Ewald Lang (pp. 283-295). Tübingen: Stauffenburg.
  • Klein, W. (2001). Lexicology and lexicography. In N. Smelser, & P. Baltes (Eds.), International encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences: Vol. 13 (pp. 8764-8768). Amsterdam: Elsevier Science.
  • Klein, W. (2001). Second language acquisition. In N. Smelser, & P. Baltes (Eds.), International encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences: Vol. 20 (pp. 13768-13771). Amsterdam: Elsevier science.
  • Klein, W., & Vater, H. (1998). The perfect in English and German. In L. Kulikov, & H. Vater (Eds.), Typology of verbal categories: Papers presented to Vladimir Nedjalkov on the occasion of his 70th birthday (pp. 215-235). Tübingen: Niemeyer.
  • Klein, W. (2001). Time and again. In C. Féry, & W. Sternefeld (Eds.), Audiatur vox sapientiae: A festschrift for Arnim von Stechow (pp. 267-286). Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
  • Klein, W. (2001). Typen und Konzepte des Spracherwerbs. In L. Götze, G. Helbig, G. Henrici, & H. Krumm (Eds.), Deutsch als Fremdsprache (pp. 604-616). Berlin: de Gruyter.
  • Krott, A., Schreuder, R., & Baayen, R. H. (2002). Analogical hierarchy: Exemplar-based modeling of linkers in Dutch noun-noun compounds. In R. Skousen (Ed.), Analogical modeling: An exemplar-based approach to language (pp. 181-206). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Kuijpers, C. T., Coolen, R., Houston, D., & Cutler, A. (1998). Using the head-turning technique to explore cross-linguistic performance differences. In C. Rovee-Collier, L. Lipsitt, & H. Hayne (Eds.), Advances in infancy research: Vol. 12 (pp. 205-220). Stamford: Ablex.

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