Publications

Displaying 301 - 333 of 333
  • Uddén, J., Folia, V., Forkstam, C., Ingvar, M., Fernández, G., Overeem, S., Van Elswijk, G., Hagoort, P., & Petersson, K. M. (2008). The inferior frontal cortex in artificial syntax processing: An rTMS study. Brain Research, 1224, 69-78. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2008.05.070.

    Abstract

    The human capacity to implicitly acquire knowledge of structured sequences has recently been investigated in artificial grammar learning using functional magnetic resonance imaging. It was found that the left inferior frontal cortex (IFC; Brodmann's area (BA) 44/45) was related to classification performance. The objective of this study was to investigate whether the IFC (BA 44/45) is causally related to classification of artificial syntactic structures by means of an off-line repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) paradigm. We manipulated the stimulus material in a 2 × 2 factorial design with grammaticality status and local substring familiarity as factors. The participants showed a reliable effect of grammaticality on classification of novel items after 5days of exposure to grammatical exemplars without performance feedback in an implicit acquisition task. The results show that rTMS of BA 44/45 improves syntactic classification performance by increasing the rejection rate of non-grammatical items and by shortening reaction times of correct rejections specifically after left-sided stimulation. A similar pattern of results is observed in FMRI experiments on artificial syntactic classification. These results suggest that activity in the inferior frontal region is causally related to artificial syntax processing.
  • Van Berkum, J. J. A., Van den Brink, D., Tesink, C. M. J. Y., Kos, M., & Hagoort, P. (2008). The neural integration of speaker and message. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20(4), 580-591. doi:10.1162/jocn.2008.20054.

    Abstract

    When do listeners take into account who the speaker is? We asked people to listen to utterances whose content sometimes did not match inferences based on the identity of the speaker (e.g., “If only I looked like Britney Spears” in a male voice, or “I have a large tattoo on my back” spoken with an upper-class accent). Event-related brain responses revealed that the speaker's identity is taken into account as early as 200–300 msec after the beginning of a spoken word, and is processed by the same early interpretation mechanism that constructs sentence meaning based on just the words. This finding is difficult to reconcile with standard “Gricean” models of sentence interpretation in which comprehenders initially compute a local, context-independent meaning for the sentence (“semantics”) before working out what it really means given the wider communicative context and the particular speaker (“pragmatics”). Because the observed brain response hinges on voice-based and usually stereotype-dependent inferences about the speaker, it also shows that listeners rapidly classify speakers on the basis of their voices and bring the associated social stereotypes to bear on what is being said. According to our event-related potential results, language comprehension takes very rapid account of the social context, and the construction of meaning based on language alone cannot be separated from the social aspects of language use. The linguistic brain relates the message to the speaker immediately.
  • Van Berkum, J. J. A. (2008). Understanding sentences in context: What brain waves can tell us. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17(6), 376-380. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8721.2008.00609.x.

    Abstract

    Language comprehension looks pretty easy. You pick up a novel and simply enjoy the plot, or ponder the human condition. You strike a conversation and listen to whatever the other person has to say. Although what you're taking in is a bunch of letters and sounds, what you really perceive—if all goes well—is meaning. But how do you get from one to the other so easily? The experiments with brain waves (event-related brain potentials or ERPs) reviewed here show that the linguistic brain rapidly draws upon a wide variety of information sources, including prior text and inferences about the speaker. Furthermore, people anticipate what might be said about whom, they use heuristics to arrive at the earliest possible interpretation, and if it makes sense, they sometimes even ignore the grammar. Language comprehension is opportunistic, proactive, and, above all, immediately context-dependent.
  • Van Turennout, M., Hagoort, P., & Brown, C. M. (1998). Brain activitity during speaking: From syntax to phonology in 40 milliseconds. Science, 280, 572-574.

    Abstract

    In normal conversation, speakers translate thoughts into words at high speed. To enable this speed, the retrieval of distinct types of linguistic knowledge has to be orchestrated with millisecond precision. The nature of this orchestration is still largely unknown. This report presents dynamic measures of the real-time activation of two basic types of linguistic knowledge, syntax and phonology. Electrophysiological data demonstrate that during noun-phrase production speakers retrieve the syntactic gender of a noun before its abstract phonological properties. This two-step process operates at high speed: the data show that phonological information is already available 40 milliseconds after syntactic properties have been retrieved.
  • Van Turennout, M., Hagoort, P., & Brown, C. M. (1998). Brain activity during speaking: From syntax to phonology in 40 milliseconds. Science, 280(5363), 572-574. doi:10.1126/science.280.5363.572.
  • Van den Bos, E., & Poletiek, F. H. (2008). Effects of grammar complexity on artificial grammar learning. Memory & Cognition, 36(6), 1122-1131. doi:10.3758/MC.36.6.1122.

    Abstract

    The present study identified two aspects of complexity that have been manipulated in the implicit learning literature and investigated how they affect implicit and explicit learning of artificial grammars. Ten finite state grammars were used to vary complexity. The results indicated that dependency length is more relevant to the complexity of a structure than is the number of associations that have to be learned. Although implicit learning led to better performance on a grammaticality judgment test than did explicit learning, it was negatively affected by increasing complexity: Performance decreased as there was an increase in the number of previous letters that had to be taken into account to determine whether or not the next letter was a grammatical continuation. In particular, the results suggested that implicit learning of higher order dependencies is hampered by the presence of longer dependencies. Knowledge of first-order dependencies was acquired regardless of complexity and learning mode.
  • Van de Geer, J. P., & Levelt, W. J. M. (1963). Detection of visual patterns disturbed by noise: An exploratory study. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 15, 192-204. doi:10.1080/17470216308416324.

    Abstract

    An introductory study of the perception of stochastically specified events is reported. The initial problem was to determine whether the perceiver can split visual input data of this kind into random and determined components. The inability of subjects to do so with the stimulus material used (a filmlike sequence of dot patterns), led to the more general question of how subjects code this kind of visual material. To meet the difficulty of defining the subjects' responses, two experiments were designed. In both, patterns were presented as a rapid sequence of dots on a screen. The patterns were more or less disturbed by “noise,” i.e. the dots did not appear exactly at their proper places. In the first experiment the response was a rating on a semantic scale, in the second an identification from among a set of alternative patterns. The results of these experiments give some insight in the coding systems adopted by the subjects. First, noise appears to be detrimental to pattern recognition, especially to patterns with little spread. Second, this shows connections with the factors obtained from analysis of the semantic ratings, e.g. easily disturbed patterns show a large drop in the semantic regularity factor, when only a little noise is added.
  • Van Heuven, W. J. B., Schriefers, H., Dijkstra, T., & Hagoort, P. (2008). Language conflict in the bilingual brain. Cerebral Cortex, 18(11), 2706-2716. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhn030.

    Abstract

    The large majority of humankind is more or less fluent in 2 or even more languages. This raises the fundamental question how the language network in the brain is organized such that the correct target language is selected at a particular occasion. Here we present behavioral and functional magnetic resonance imaging data showing that bilingual processing leads to language conflict in the bilingual brain even when the bilinguals’ task only required target language knowledge. This finding demonstrates that the bilingual brain cannot avoid language conflict, because words from the target and nontarget languages become automatically activated during reading. Importantly, stimulus-based language conflict was found in brain regions in the LIPC associated with phonological and semantic processing, whereas response-based language conflict was only found in the pre-supplementary motor area/anterior cingulate cortex when language conflict leads to response conflicts.
  • Van den Bos, E., & Poletiek, F. H. (2008). Intentional artificial grammar learning: When does it work? European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 20(4), 793-806. doi:10.1080/09541440701554474.

    Abstract

    Actively searching for the rules of an artificial grammar has often been shown to produce no more knowledge than memorising exemplars without knowing that they have been generated by a grammar. The present study investigated whether this ineffectiveness of intentional learning could be overcome by removing dual task demands and providing participants with more specific instructions. The results only showed a positive effect of learning intentionally for participants specifically instructed to find out which letters are allowed to follow each other. These participants were also unaffected by a salient feature. In contrast, for participants who did not know what kind of structure to expect, intentional learning was not more effective than incidental learning and knowledge acquisition was guided by salience.
  • Van Geenhoven, V. (1998). On the Argument Structure of some Noun Incorporating Verbs in West Greenlandic. In M. Butt, & W. Geuder (Eds.), The Projection of Arguments - Lexical and Compositional Factors (pp. 225-263). Stanford, CA, USA: CSLI Publications.
  • Van Wingen, G. A., Van Broekhoven, F., Verkes, R. J., Petersson, K. M., Bäckström, T., Buitelaar, J. K., & Fernández, G. (2008). Progesterone selectively increases amygdala reactivity in women. Molecular Psychiatry, 13, 325-333. doi:doi:10.1038/sj.mp.4002030.

    Abstract

    The acute neural effects of progesterone are mediated by its neuroactive metabolites allopregnanolone and pregnanolone. These neurosteroids potentiate the inhibitory actions of c-aminobutyric acid (GABA). Progesterone is known to produce anxiolytic effects in animals, but recent animal studies suggest that pregnanolone increases anxiety after a period of low allopregnanolone concentration. This effect is potentially mediated by the amygdala and related to the negative mood symptoms in humans that are observed during increased allopregnanolone levels. Therefore, we investigated with functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) whether a single progesterone administration to healthy young women in their follicular phase modulates the amygdala response to salient, biologically relevant stimuli. The progesterone administration increased the plasma concentrations of progesterone and allopregnanolone to levels that are reached during the luteal phase and early pregnancy. The imaging results show that progesterone selectively increased amygdala reactivity. Furthermore, functional connectivity analyses indicate that progesterone modulated functional coupling of the amygdala with distant brain regions. These results reveal a neural mechanism by which progesterone may mediate adverse effects on anxiety and mood.
  • Van Valin Jr., R. D. (1998). The acquisition of WH-questions and the mechanisms of language acquisition. In M. Tomasello (Ed.), The new psychology of language: Cognitive and functional approaches to language structure (pp. 221-249). Mahwah, New Jersey: Erlbaum.
  • Van de Geer, J. P., Levelt, W. J. M., & Plomp, R. (1962). The connotation of musical consonance. Acta Psychologica, 20, 308-319.

    Abstract

    As a preliminary to further research on musical consonance an explanatory investigation was made on the different modes of judgment of musical intervals. This was done by way of a semantic differential. Subjects rated 23 intervals against 10 scales. In a factor analysis three factors appeared: pitch, evaluation and fusion. The relation between these factors and some physical characteristics has been investigated. The scale consonant-dissonant showed to be purely evaluative (in opposition to Stumpf's theory). This evaluative connotation is not in accordance with the musicological meaning of consonance. Suggestions to account for this difference have been given.
  • Van Valin Jr., R. D. (2008). Some remarks on universal grammar. In J. Guo, E. Lieven, N. Budwig, S. Ervin-Tripp, K. Nakamura, & S. Ozcaliskan (Eds.), Crosslinguistic approaches to the psychology of language: Research in the tradition of Dan Isaac Slobin (pp. 311-320). New York: Psychology Press.
  • Van Valin Jr., R. D. (2008). RPs and the nature of lexical and syntactic categories in role and reference grammar. In R. D. Van Valin Jr. (Ed.), Investigations of the syntax-semantics-pragmatics interface (pp. 161-178). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Verkerk, A., & Lestrade, S. (2008). The encoding of adjectives. In M. Van Koppen, & B. Botma (Eds.), Linguistics in the Netherlands 2008 (pp. 157-168). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    In this paper, we will give a unified account of the cross-linguistic variation in the encoding of adjectives in predicative and attributive constructions. Languages may differ in the encoding strategy of adjectives in the predicative domain (Stassen 1997), and sometimes change this strategy in the attributive domain (Verkerk 2007). We will show that the interaction of two principles, that of faithfulness to the semantic class of a lexical root and that of faithfulness to discourse functions, can account for all attested variation in the encoding of adjectives.
  • Vernes, S. C., Newbury, D. F., Abrahams, B. S., Winchester, L., Nicod, J., Groszer, M., Alarcón, M., Oliver, P. L., Davies, K. E., Geschwind, D. H., Monaco, A. P., & Fisher, S. E. (2008). A functional genetic link between distinct developmental language disorders. New England Journal of Medicine, 359(22), 2337 -2345. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa0802828.

    Abstract

    BACKGROUND: Rare mutations affecting the FOXP2 transcription factor cause a monogenic speech and language disorder. We hypothesized that neural pathways downstream of FOXP2 influence more common phenotypes, such as specific language impairment. METHODS: We performed genomic screening for regions bound by FOXP2 using chromatin immunoprecipitation, which led us to focus on one particular gene that was a strong candidate for involvement in language impairments. We then tested for associations between single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in this gene and language deficits in a well-characterized set of 184 families affected with specific language impairment. RESULTS: We found that FOXP2 binds to and dramatically down-regulates CNTNAP2, a gene that encodes a neurexin and is expressed in the developing human cortex. On analyzing CNTNAP2 polymorphisms in children with typical specific language impairment, we detected significant quantitative associations with nonsense-word repetition, a heritable behavioral marker of this disorder (peak association, P=5.0x10(-5) at SNP rs17236239). Intriguingly, this region coincides with one associated with language delays in children with autism. CONCLUSIONS: The FOXP2-CNTNAP2 pathway provides a mechanistic link between clinically distinct syndromes involving disrupted language.

    Additional information

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  • Viaro, M., Bercelli, F., & Rossano, F. (2008). Una relazione terapeutica: Il terapeuta allenatore. Connessioni: Rivista di consulenza e ricerca sui sistemi umani, 20, 95-105.
  • De Vos, C. (2008). Janger Kolok: de Balinese dovendans. Woord en Gebaar, 12-13.
  • Wagner, A., & Ernestus, M. (2008). Identification of phonemes: Differences between phoneme classes and the effect of class size. Phonetica, 65(1-2), 106-127. doi:10.1159/000132389.

    Abstract

    This study reports general and language-specific patterns in phoneme identification. In a series of phoneme monitoring experiments, Castilian Spanish, Catalan, Dutch, English, and Polish listeners identified vowel, fricative, and stop consonant targets that are phonemic in all these languages, embedded in nonsense words. Fricatives were generally identified more slowly than vowels, while the speed of identification for stop consonants was highly dependent on the onset of the measurements. Moreover, listeners' response latencies and accuracy in detecting a phoneme correlated with the number of categories within that phoneme's class in the listener's native phoneme repertoire: more native categories slowed listeners down and decreased their accuracy. We excluded the possibility that this effect stems from differences in the frequencies of occurrence of the phonemes in the different languages. Rather, the effect of the number of categories can be explained by general properties of the perception system, which cause language-specific patterns in speech processing.
  • Weber, K., & Lavric, A. (2008). Syntactic anomaly elicits a lexico-semantic (N400) ERP effect in the second but not in the first language. Psychophysiology, 45(6), 920-925. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8986.2008.00691.x.

    Abstract

    Recent brain potential research into first versus second language (L1 vs. L2) processing revealed striking responses to morphosyntactic features absent in the mother tongue. The aim of the present study was to establish whether the presence of comparable morphosyntactic features in L1 leads to more similar electrophysiological L1 and L2 profiles. ERPs were acquired while German-English bilinguals and native speakers of English read sentences. Some sentences were meaningful and well formed, whereas others contained morphosyntactic or semantic violations in the final word. In addition to the expected P600 component, morphosyntactic violations in L2 but not L1 led to an enhanced N400. This effect may suggest either that resolution of morphosyntactic anomalies in L2 relies on the lexico-semantic system or that the weaker/slower morphological mechanisms in L2 lead to greater sentence wrap-up difficulties known to result in N400 enhancement.
  • Weber, A. (2008). What eye movements can tell us about spoken-language processing: A psycholinguistic survey. In C. M. Riehl (Ed.), Was ist linguistische Evidenz: Kolloquium des Zentrums Sprachenvielfalt und Mehrsprachigkeit, November 2006 (pp. 57-68). Aachen: Shaker.
  • Widlok, T., Rapold, C. J., & Hoymann, G. (2008). Multimedia analysis in documentation projects: Kinship, interrogatives and reciprocals in ǂAkhoe Haiǁom. In K. D. Harrison, D. S. Rood, & A. Dwyer (Eds.), Lessons from documented endangered languages (pp. 355-370). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    This contribution emphasizes the role of multimedia data not only for archiving languages but also for creating opportunities for innovative analyses. In the case at hand, video material was collected as part of the documentation of Akhoe Haiom, a Khoisan language spoken in northern Namibia. The multimedia documentation project brought together linguistic and anthropological work to highlight connections between specialized domains, namely kinship terminology, interrogatives and reciprocals. These connections would have gone unnoticed or undocumented in more conventional modes of language description. It is suggested that such an approach may be particularly appropriate for the documentation of endangered languages since it directs the focus of attention away from isolated traits of languages towards more complex practices of communication that are also frequently threatened with extinction.
  • Widlok, T. (2008). Landscape unbounded: Space, place, and orientation in ≠Akhoe Hai// om and beyond. Language Sciences, 30(2/3), 362-380. doi:10.1016/j.langsci.2006.12.002.

    Abstract

    Even before it became a common place to assume that “the Eskimo have a hundred words for snow” the languages of hunting and gathering people have played an important role in debates about linguistic relativity concerning geographical ontologies. Evidence from languages of hunter-gatherers has been used in radical relativist challenges to the overall notion of a comparative typology of generic natural forms and landscapes as terms of reference. It has been invoked to emphasize a personalized relationship between humans and the non-human world. It is against this background that this contribution discusses the landscape terminology of ≠Akhoe Hai//om, a Khoisan language spoken by “Bushmen” in Namibia. Landscape vocabulary is ubiquitous in ≠Akhoe Hai//om due to the fact that the landscape plays a critical role in directionals and other forms of “topographical gossip” and due to merges between landscape and group terminology. This system of landscape-cum-group terminology is outlined and related to the use of place names in the area.
  • Widlok, T. (2008). The dilemmas of walking: A comparative view. In T. Ingold, & J. L. Vergunst (Eds.), Ways of walking: Ethnography and practice on foot (pp. 51-66). Aldershot: Ashgate.
  • Willems, R. M., Ozyurek, A., & Hagoort, P. (2008). Seeing and hearing meaning: ERP and fMRI evidence of word versus picture integration into a sentence context. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20, 1235-1249. doi:10.1162/jocn.2008.20085.

    Abstract

    Understanding language always occurs within a situational context and, therefore, often implies combining streams of information from different domains and modalities. One such combination is that of spoken language and visual information, which are perceived together in a variety of ways during everyday communication. Here we investigate whether and how words and pictures differ in terms of their neural correlates when they are integrated into a previously built-up sentence context. This is assessed in two experiments looking at the time course (measuring event-related potentials, ERPs) and the locus (using functional magnetic resonance imaging, fMRI) of this integration process. We manipulated the ease of semantic integration of word and/or picture to a previous sentence context to increase the semantic load of processing. In the ERP study, an increased semantic load led to an N400 effect which was similar for pictures and words in terms of latency and amplitude. In the fMRI study, we found overlapping activations to both picture and word integration in the left inferior frontal cortex. Specific activations for the integration of a word were observed in the left superior temporal cortex. We conclude that despite obvious differences in representational format, semantic information coming from pictures and words is integrated into a sentence context in similar ways in the brain. This study adds to the growing insight that the language system incorporates (semantic) information coming from linguistic and extralinguistic domains with the same neural time course and by recruitment of overlapping brain areas.
  • Willems, R. M., Oostenveld, R., & Hagoort, P. (2008). Early decreases in alpha and gamma band power distinguish linguistic from visual information during spoken sentence comprehension. Brain Research, 1219, 78-90. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2008.04.065.

    Abstract

    Language is often perceived together with visual information. This raises the question on how the brain integrates information conveyed in visual and/or linguistic format during spoken language comprehension. In this study we investigated the dynamics of semantic integration of visual and linguistic information by means of time-frequency analysis of the EEG signal. A modified version of the N400 paradigm with either a word or a picture of an object being semantically incongruous with respect to the preceding sentence context was employed. Event-Related Potential (ERP) analysis showed qualitatively similar N400 effects for integration of either word or picture. Time-frequency analysis revealed early specific decreases in alpha and gamma band power for linguistic and visual information respectively. We argue that these reflect a rapid context-based analysis of acoustic (word) or visual (picture) form information. We conclude that although full semantic integration of linguistic and visual information occurs through a common mechanism, early differences in oscillations in specific frequency bands reflect the format of the incoming information and, importantly, an early context-based detection of its congruity with respect to the preceding language context
  • Williams, N. M., Williams, H., Majounie, E., Norton, N., Glaser, B., Morris, H. R., Owen, M. J., & O'Donovan, M. C. (2008). Analysis of copy number variation using quantitative interspecies competitive PCR. Nucleic Acids Research, 36(17): e112. doi:10.1093/nar/gkn495.

    Abstract

    Over recent years small submicroscopic DNA copy-number variants (CNVs) have been highlighted as an important source of variation in the human genome, human phenotypic diversity and disease susceptibility. Consequently, there is a pressing need for the development of methods that allow the efficient, accurate and cheap measurement of genomic copy number polymorphisms in clinical cohorts. We have developed a simple competitive PCR based method to determine DNA copy number which uses the entire genome of a single chimpanzee as a competitor thus eliminating the requirement for competitive sequences to be synthesized for each assay. This results in the requirement for only a single reference sample for all assays and dramatically increases the potential for large numbers of loci to be analysed in multiplex. In this study we establish proof of concept by accurately detecting previously characterized mutations at the PARK2 locus and then demonstrating the potential of quantitative interspecies competitive PCR (qicPCR) to accurately genotype CNVs in association studies by analysing chromosome 22q11 deletions in a sample of previously characterized patients and normal controls.
  • Wittenburg, P. (2008). Die CLARIN Forschungsinfrastruktur. ÖGAI-journal (Österreichische Gesellschaft für Artificial Intelligence), 27, 10-17.
  • Wolters, G., & Poletiek, F. H. (2008). Beslissen over aangiftes van seksueel misbruik bij kinderen. De Psycholoog, 43, 29-29.
  • Li, X., Yang, Y., & Hagoort, P. (2008). Pitch accent and lexical tone processing in Chinese discourse comprehension: An ERP study. Brain Research, 1222, 192-200. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2008.05.031.

    Abstract

    In the present study, event-related brain potentials (ERP) were recorded to investigate the role of pitch accent and lexical tone in spoken discourse comprehension. Chinese was used as material to explore the potential difference in the nature and time course of brain responses to sentence meaning as indicated by pitch accent and to lexical meaning as indicated by tone. In both cases, the pitch contour of critical words was varied. The results showed that both inconsistent pitch accent and inconsistent lexical tone yielded N400 effects, and there was no interaction between them. The negativity evoked by inconsistent pitch accent had the some topography as that evoked by inconsistent lexical tone violation, with a maximum over central–parietal electrodes. Furthermore, the effect for the combined violations was the sum of effects for pure pitch accent and pure lexical tone violation. However, the effect for the lexical tone violation appeared approximately 90 ms earlier than the effect of the pitch accent violation. It is suggested that there might be a correspondence between the neural mechanism underlying pitch accent and lexical meaning processing in context. They both reflect the integration of the current information into a discourse context, independent of whether the current information was sentence meaning indicated by accentuation, or lexical meaning indicated by tone. In addition, lexical meaning was processed earlier than sentence meaning conveyed by pitch accent during spoken language processing.
  • Zwitserlood, I. (2008). Grammatica-vertaalmethode en nederlandse gebarentaal. Levende Talen Magazine, 95(5), 28-29.
  • Zwitserlood, I. (2008). Morphology below the level of the sign - frozen forms and classifier predicates. In J. Quer (Ed.), Proceedings of the 8th Conference on Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research (TISLR) (pp. 251-272). Hamburg: Signum Verlag.

    Abstract

    The lexicons of many sign languages hold large proportions of “frozen” forms, viz. signs that are generally considered to have been formed productively (as classifier predicates), but that have diachronically undergone processes of lexicalisation. Nederlandse Gebarentaal (Sign Language of the Netherlands; henceforth: NGT) also has many of these signs (Van der Kooij 2002, Zwitserlood 2003). In contrast to the general view on “frozen” forms, a few researchers claim that these signs may be formed according to productive sign formation rules, notably Brennan (1990) for BSL, and Meir (2001, 2002) for ISL. Following these claims, I suggest an analysis of “frozen” NGT signs as morphologically complex, using the framework of Distributed Morphology. The signs in question are derived in a similar way as classifier predicates; hence their similar form (but diverging characteristics). I will indicate how and why the structure and use of classifier predicates and “frozen” forms differ. Although my analysis focuses on NGT, it may also be applicable to other sign languages.

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