Publications

Displaying 1 - 100 of 102
  • Ameka, F. K. (1999). Interjections. In K. Brown, & J. Miller (Eds.), Concise encyclopedia of grammatical categories (pp. 213-216). Oxford: Elsevier.
  • Ameka, F. K., De Witte, C., & Wilkins, D. (1999). Picture series for positional verbs: Eliciting the verbal component in locative descriptions. In D. Wilkins (Ed.), Manual for the 1999 Field Season (pp. 48-54). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.2573831.

    Abstract

    How do different languages encode location and position meanings? In conjunction with the BowPed picture series and Caused Positions task, this elicitation tool is designed to help researchers (i) identify a language’s resources for encoding topological relations; (ii) delimit the pragmatics of use of such resources; and (iii) determine the semantics of select spatial terms. The task focuses on the exploration of the predicative component of topological expressions (e.g., ‘the cassavas are lying in the basket’), especially the contrastive elicitation of positional verbs. The materials consist of a set of photographs of objects (e.g., bottles, cloths, sticks) in specific configurations with various ground items (e.g., basket, table, tree).

    Additional information

    1999_Positional_verbs_stimuli.zip
  • Bauer, B. L. M. (1999). Impersonal HABET constructions: At the cross-roads of Indo-European innovation. In E. Polomé, & C. Justus (Eds.), Language change and typological variation. Vol II. Grammatical universals and typology (pp. 590-612). Washington: Institute for the study of man.
  • Bauer, B. L. M. (1997). Nominal syntax in Italic: A diachronic perspective. In Language change and functional explanations (pp. 273-301). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Bohnemeyer, J. (1999). A questionnaire on event integration. In D. Wilkins (Ed.), Manual for the 1999 Field Season (pp. 87-95). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.3002691.

    Abstract

    How do we decide where events begin and end? Like the ECOM clips, this questionnaire is designed to investigate how a language divides and/or integrates complex scenarios into sub-events and macro-events. The questionnaire focuses on events of motion, caused state change (e.g., breaking), and transfer (e.g., giving). It provides a checklist of scenarios that give insight into where a language “draws the line” in event integration, based on known cross-linguistic differences.
  • Bohnemeyer, J. (1999). Event representation and event complexity: General introduction. In D. Wilkins (Ed.), Manual for the 1999 Field Season (pp. 69-73). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.3002741.

    Abstract

    How do we decide where events begin and end? In some languages it makes sense to say something like Dan broke the plate, but in other languages it is necessary to treat this action as a complex scenario composed of separate stages (Dan dropped the plate and then the plate broke). This document introduces issues concerning the linguistic and cognitive representations of event complexity and integration, and provides an overview of tasks that are relevant to this topic, including the ECOM clips, the Questionnaire on Event integration, and the Questionnaire on motion lexicalisation and motion description.
  • 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., & Caelen, M. (1999). The ECOM clips: A stimulus for the linguistic coding of event complexity. In D. Wilkins (Ed.), Manual for the 1999 Field Season (pp. 74-86). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.874627.

    Abstract

    How do we decide where events begin and end? In some languages it makes sense to say something like Dan broke the plate, but in other languages it is necessary to treat this action as a complex scenario composed of separate stages (Dan dropped the plate and then the plate broke). The “Event Complexity” (ECOM) clips are designed to explore how languages differ in dividing and/or integrating complex scenarios into sub-events and macro-events. The stimuli consist of animated clips of geometric shapes that participate in different scenarios (e.g., a circle “hits” a triangle and “breaks” it). Consultants are asked to describe the scenes, and then to comment on possible alternative descriptions.

    Additional information

    1999_The_ECOM_clips.zip
  • Bohnemeyer, J. (1998). Sententiale Topics im Yukatekischen. In Z. Dietmar (Ed.), Deskriptive Grammatik und allgemeiner Sprachvergleich (pp. 55-85). Tübingen, Germany: Max-Niemeyer-Verlag.
  • Böttner, M. (1997). Natural Language. In C. Brink, W. Kahl, & G. Schmidt (Eds.), Relational Methods in computer science (pp. 229-249). Vienna, Austria: Springer-Verlag.
  • Bowden, J. (1997). The meanings of Directionals in Taba. In G. Senft (Ed.), Referring to Space: Studies in Austronesian and Papuan Languages (pp. 251-268). New York, NJ: Oxford 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. (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. (1997). Isolating the CVC root in Tzeltal Mayan: A study of children's first verbs. In E. V. Clark (Ed.), Proceedings of the 28th Annual Child Language Research Forum (pp. 41-52). Stanford, CA: CSLI/University of Chicago Press.

    Abstract

    How do children isolate the semantic package contained in verb roots in the Mayan language Tzeltal? One might imagine that the canonical CVC shape of roots characteristic of Mayan languages would make the job simple, but the root is normally preceded and followed by affixes which mask its identity. Pye (1983) demonstrated that, in Kiche' Mayan, prosodic salience overrides semantic salience, and children's first words in Kiche' are often composed of only the final (stressed) syllable constituted by the final consonant of the CVC root and a 'meaningless' termination suffix. Intonation thus plays a crucial role in early Kiche' morphological development. Tzeltal presents a rather different picture: The first words of children around the age of 1;6 are bare roots, children strip off all prefixes and suffixes which are obligatory in adult speech. They gradually add them, starting with the suffixes (which receive the main stress), but person prefixes are omitted in some contexts past a child's third birthday, and one obligatory aspectual prefix (x-) is systematically omitted by the four children in my longitudinal study even after they are four years old. Tzeltal children's first verbs generally show faultless isolation of the root. An account in terms of intonation or stress cannot explain this ability (the prefixes are not all syllables; the roots are not always stressed). This paper suggests that probable clues include the fact that the CVC root stays constant across contexts (with some exceptions) whereas the affixes vary, that there are some linguistic contexts where the root occurs without any prefixes (relatively frequent in the input), and that the Tzeltal discourse convention of responding by repeating with appropriate deictic alternation (e.g., "I see it." "Oh, you see it.") highlights the root.
  • Brown, C. M., & Hagoort, P. (1999). The cognitive neuroscience of language: Challenges and future directions. In C. M. Brown, & P. Hagoort (Eds.), The neurocognition of language (pp. 3-14). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1998). Politeness, introduction to the reissue: A review of recent work. In A. Kasher (Ed.), Pragmatics: Vol. 6 Grammar, psychology and sociology (pp. 488-554). London: Routledge.

    Abstract

    This article is a reprint of chapter 1, the introduction to Brown and Levinson, 1987, Politeness: Some universals in language usage (Cambridge University Press).
  • Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1999). Politeness: Some universals in language usage [Reprint]. In A. Jaworski, & N. Coupland (Eds.), The discourse reader (pp. 321-335). 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).
  • Chen, H.-C., & Cutler, A. (1997). Auditory priming in spoken and printed word recognition. In H.-C. Chen (Ed.), Cognitive processing of Chinese and related Asian languages (pp. 77-81). Hong Kong: Chinese University Press.
  • 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.
  • Crago, M. B., Allen, S. E. M., & Hough-Eyamie, W. P. (1997). Exploring innateness through cultural and linguistic variation. In M. Gopnik (Ed.), The inheritance and innateness of grammars (pp. 70-90). New York City, NY, USA: Oxford University Press, Inc.
  • Cutler, A., & Clifton, Jr., C. (1999). Comprehending spoken language: A blueprint of the listener. In C. M. Brown, & P. Hagoort (Eds.), The neurocognition of language (pp. 123-166). Oxford University Press.
  • Cutler, A. (1999). Foreword. In Slips of the Ear: Errors in the perception of Casual Conversation (pp. xiii-xv). New York City, NY, USA: Academic Press.
  • Cutler, A. (1983). Lexical complexity and sentence processing. In G. B. Flores d'Arcais, & R. J. Jarvella (Eds.), The process of language understanding (pp. 43-79). Chichester, Sussex: Wiley.
  • 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. (1999). Prosodische Struktur und Worterkennung bei gesprochener Sprache. In A. D. Friedrici (Ed.), Enzyklopädie der Psychologie: Sprachrezeption (pp. 49-83). Göttingen: Hogrefe.
  • Cutler, A. (1999). Prosody and intonation, processing issues. In R. A. Wilson, & F. C. Keil (Eds.), MIT encyclopedia of the cognitive sciences (pp. 682-683). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  • Cutler, A. (1997). Prosody and the structure of the message. In Y. Sagisaka, N. Campbell, & N. Higuchi (Eds.), Computing prosody: Computational models for processing spontaneous speech (pp. 63-66). Heidelberg: Springer.
  • Cutler, A. (1983). Speakers’ conceptions of the functions of prosody. In A. Cutler, & D. R. Ladd (Eds.), Prosody: Models and measurements (pp. 79-91). Heidelberg: Springer.
  • Cutler, A. (1999). Spoken-word recognition. In R. A. Wilson, & F. C. Keil (Eds.), MIT encyclopedia of the cognitive sciences (pp. 796-798). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  • Dijkstra, T., & Kempen, G. (1997). Het taalgebruikersmodel. In H. Hulshof, & T. Hendrix (Eds.), De taalcentrale. Amsterdam: Bulkboek.
  • Eibl-Eibesfeldt, I., Senft, B., & Senft, G. (1998). Trobriander (Ost-Neuguinea, Trobriand Inseln, Kaile'una) Fadenspiele 'ninikula'. In Ethnologie - Humanethologische Begleitpublikationen von I. Eibl-Eibesfeldt und Mitarbeitern. Sammelband I, 1985-1987. Göttingen: Institut für den Wissenschaftlichen Film.
  • Eisenbeiss, S., McGregor, B., & Schmidt, C. M. (1999). Story book stimulus for the elicitation of external possessor constructions and dative constructions ('the circle of dirt'). In D. Wilkins (Ed.), Manual for the 1999 Field Season (pp. 140-144). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.3002750.

    Abstract

    How involved in an event is a person that possesses one of the event participants? Some languages can treat such “external possessors” as very closely involved, even marking them on the verb along with core roles such as subject and object. Other languages only allow possessors to be expressed as non-core participants. This task explores possibilities for the encoding of possessors and other related roles such as beneficiaries. The materials consist of a sequence of thirty drawings designed to elicit target construction types.

    Additional information

    1999_Story_book_booklet.pdf
  • Enfield, N. J. (1999). Lao as a national language. In G. Evans (Ed.), Laos: Culture and society (pp. 258-290). Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books.
  • Hagoort, P., & Indefrey, P. (1997). De neurale architectuur van het menselijk taalvermogen. In H. Peters (Ed.), Handboek stem-, spraak-, en taalpathologie (pp. 1-36). Houten: Bohn Stafleu Van Loghum.
  • Hagoort, P., & Van Turennout, M. (1997). The electrophysiology of speaking: Possibilities of event-related potential research for speech production. In W. Hulstijn, H. Peters, & P. Van Lieshout (Eds.), Speech motor production and fluency disorders: Brain research in speech production (pp. 351-361). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
  • Hagoort, P., & Wassenaar, M. (1997). Taalstoornissen: Van theorie tot therapie. In B. Deelman, P. Eling, E. De Haan, A. Jennekens, & A. Van Zomeren (Eds.), Klinische Neuropsychologie (pp. 232-248). Meppel: Boom.
  • Hagoort, P., Brown, C. M., & Osterhout, L. (1999). The neurocognition of syntactic processing. In C. M. Brown, & P. Hagoort (Eds.), The neurocognition of language (pp. 273-317). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • 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.
  • Hagoort, P. (1999). The uniquely human capacity for language communication: from 'pope' to [po:p] in half a second. In J. Russell, M. Murphy, T. Meyering, & M. Arbib (Eds.), Neuroscience and the person: Scientific perspectives on divine action (pp. 45-56). California: Berkeley.
  • Hagoort, P. (1997). Zonder fosfor geen gedachten: Gagarin, geest en brein. In Brain & Mind (pp. 6-14). Utrecht: Reünistenvereniging Veritas.
  • Indefrey, P. (1997). PET research in language production. In W. Hulstijn, H. F. M. Peters, & P. H. H. M. Van Lieshout (Eds.), Speech production: motor control, brain research and fluency disorders (pp. 269-278). Amsterdam: Elsevier.

    Abstract

    The aim of this paper is to discuss an inherent difficulty of PET (and fMRI) research in language production. On the one hand, language production presupposes some degree of freedom for the subject, on the other hand, interpretability of results presupposes restrictions of this freedom. This difficulty is reflected in the existing PET literature in some neglect of the general principle to design experiments in such a way that the results do not allow for alternative interpretations. It is argued that by narrowing down the scope of experiments a gain in interpretability can be achieved.
  • 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.
  • Kempen, G. (1983). Het artificiële-intelligentieparadigma. Ervaringen met een nieuwe methodologie voor cognitief-psychologisch onderzoek. In J. Raaijmakers, P. Hudson, & A. Wertheim (Eds.), Metatheoretische aspekten van de psychonomie (pp. 85-98). Deventer: Van Loghum Slaterus.
  • Kempen, G. (1983). Natural language facilities in information systems: Asset or liability? In J. Van Apeldoorn (Ed.), Man and information technology: Towards friendlier systems (pp. 81-86). Delft University Press.
  • Kempen, G. (1998). Sentence parsing. In A. D. Friederici (Ed.), Language comprehension: A biological perspective (pp. 213-228). Berlin: Springer.
  • Kempen, G. (1997). Taalpsychologie week. In Wetenschappelijke Scheurkalender 1998. Beek: Natuur & Techniek.

    Abstract

    [Seven one-page psycholinguistic sketches]
  • Kempen, G. (1999). Visual Grammar: Multimedia for grammar and spelling instruction in primary education. In K. Cameron (Ed.), CALL: Media, design, and applications (pp. 223-238). Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger.
  • Kita, S. (1997). Miburi to Kotoba [gesture and speech]. In H. Kobayashi, & M. Sasaki (Eds.), Kodomotachi no gengokakutoku [Child language development] (pp. 68-84). Tokyo, Japan: Taishukan.
  • Kita, S., & Ozyurek, A. (1999). Semantische Koordination zwischen Sprache und spontanen ikonischen Gesten: Eine sprachvergleichende Untersuchung. In Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (Ed.), Jahrbuch 1998 (pp. 388-391). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
  • Klein, W. (1983). Deixis and spatial orientation in route directions. In H. Pick, & L. Acredolo (Eds.), Spatial orientation theory: Research, and application (pp. 283-311). New York: Plenum.
  • Klein, W. (1983). Der Ausdruck der Temporalität im ungesteuerten Spracherwerb. In G. Rauh (Ed.), Essays on Deixis (pp. 149-168). Tübingen: Narr.
  • 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. (1999). Die Lehren des Zweitspracherwerbs. In N. Dittmar, & A. Ramat (Eds.), Grammatik und Diskurs: Studien zum Erwerb des Deutschen und des Italienischen (pp. 279-290). Tübingen: Stauffenberg.
  • 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., & Nüse, R. (1997). La complexité du simple: L'éxpression de la spatialité dans le langage humain. In M. Denis (Ed.), Langage et cognition spatiale (pp. 1-23). Paris: Masson.
  • Klein, W. (1997). On the "Imperfective paradox" and related problems. In M. Schwarz, C. Dürscheid, & K.-H. Ramers (Eds.), Sprache im Fokus: Festschrift für Heinz Vater (pp. 387-397). Tübingen: Niemeyer.
  • 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. (1997). Und nur dieses allein haben wir. In D. Rosenstein, & A. Kreutz (Eds.), Begegnungen, Facetten eines Jahrhunderts (pp. 445-449). Siegen: Carl Boeschen Verlag.
  • 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.
  • Ladd, D. R., & Cutler, A. (1983). Models and measurements in the study of prosody. In A. Cutler, & D. R. Ladd (Eds.), Prosody: Models and measurements (pp. 1-10). Heidelberg: Springer.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1999). Language. In G. Adelman, & B. H. Smith (Eds.), Elsevier's encyclopedia of neuroscience (2nd enlarged and revised edition) (pp. 1005-1008). Amsterdam: Elsevier Science.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1962). Motion breaking and the perception of causality. In A. Michotte (Ed.), Causalité, permanence et réalité phénoménales: Etudes de psychologie expérimentale (pp. 244-258). Louvain: Publications Universitaires.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1997). Language. In G. Adelman, & B. H. Smith (Eds.), Elsevier's encyclopedia of neuroscience (CD-ROM edition). Amsterdam: Elsevier Science.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1999). Producing spoken language: A blueprint of the speaker. In C. M. Brown, & P. Hagoort (Eds.), The neurocognition of language (pp. 83-122). Oxford University Press.
  • Levinson, S. C. (1997). Contextualizing 'contextualization cues'. In S. Eerdmans, C. Prevignano, & P. Thibault (Eds.), Discussing communication analysis 1: John J. Gumperz (pp. 24-30). Lausanne: Beta Press.
  • Levinson, S. C. (1997). Deixis. In P. V. Lamarque (Ed.), Concise encyclopedia of philosophy of language (pp. 214-219). Oxford: Elsevier.
  • Levinson, S. C. (1999). Deixis. In K. Brown, & J. Miller (Eds.), Concise encyclopedia of grammatical categories (pp. 132-136). Oxford: Elsevier.
  • Levinson, S. C. (1998). Deixis. In J. L. Mey (Ed.), Concise encyclopedia of pragmatics (pp. 200-204). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
  • Levinson, S. C. (1999). Deixis and Demonstratives. In D. Wilkins (Ed.), Manual for the 1999 Field Season (pp. 29-40). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.2573810.

    Abstract

    Demonstratives are key items in understanding how a language constructs and interprets spatial relationships. They are also multi-functional, with applications to non-spatial deictic fields such as time, perception, person and discourse, and uses in anaphora and affect marking. This item consists of an overview of theoretical distinctions in demonstrative systems, followed by a set of practical queries and elicitation suggestions for demonstratives in “table top” space, wider spatial fields, and naturalistic data.
  • Levinson, S. C. (1997). From outer to inner space: Linguistic categories and non-linguistic thinking. In J. Nuyts, & E. Pederson (Eds.), Language and conceptualization (pp. 13-45). Cambridge University Press.
  • Levinson, S. C. (1999). General Questions About Topological Relations in Adpositions and Cases. In D. Wilkins (Ed.), Manual for the 1999 Field Season (pp. 57-68). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.2615829.

    Abstract

    The world’s languages encode a diverse range of topological relations. However, cross-linguistic investigation suggests that the relations IN, AT and ON are especially fundamental to the grammaticised expression of space. The purpose of this questionnaire is to collect information about adpositions, case markers, and spatial nominals that are involved in the expression of core IN/AT/ON meanings. The task explores the more general parts of a language’s topological system, with a view to testing certain hypotheses about the packaging of spatial concepts. The questionnaire consists of target translation sentences that focus on a number of dimensions including animacy, caused location and motion.
  • Levinson, S. C. (1999). Hypotheses concerning basic locative constructions and the verbal elements within them. In D. Wilkins (Ed.), Manual for the 1999 Field Season (pp. 55-56). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.3002711.

    Abstract

    Languages differ widely in terms of how they encode the fundamental concepts of location and position. For some languages, verbs have an important role to play in describing situations (e.g., whether a bottle is standing or lying on the table); for others, verbs are not used in describing location at all. This item outlines certain hypotheses concerning four “types” of languages: those that have verbless basic locatives; those that use a single verb; those that have several verbs available to express location; and those that use positional verbs. The document was originally published as an appendix to the 'Picture series for positional verbs' (https://doi.org/10.17617/2.2573831).
  • Levinson, S. C. (1998). Minimization and conversational inference. In A. Kasher (Ed.), Pragmatics: Vol. 4 Presupposition, implicature and indirect speech acts (pp. 545-612). London: Routledge.
  • Levinson, S. C. (1999). Language and culture. In R. Wilson, & F. Keil (Eds.), MIT encyclopedia of the cognitive sciences (pp. 438-440). Cambridge: MIT press.
  • Levinson, S. C., Pederson, E., & Senft, G. (1997). Sprache und menschliche Orientierungsfähigkeiten. In Jahrbuch der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (pp. 322-327). München: Generalverwaltung der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft.
  • McDonough, L., Choi, S., Bowerman, M., & Mandler, J. M. (1998). The use of preferential looking as a measure of semantic development. In C. Rovee-Collier, L. P. Lipsitt, & H. Hayne (Eds.), Advances in Infancy Research. Volume 12. (pp. 336-354). Stamford, CT: Ablex Publishing.
  • McQueen, J. M., & Cutler, A. (1997). Cognitive processes in speech perception. In W. J. Hardcastle, & J. D. Laver (Eds.), The handbook of phonetic sciences (pp. 556-585). Oxford: Blackwell.
  • McQueen, J. M., & Cutler, A. (1998). Morphology in word recognition. In A. M. Zwicky, & A. Spencer (Eds.), The handbook of morphology (pp. 406-427). Oxford: Blackwell.
  • Nijhof, S., & Zwitserlood, I. (1999). Pluralization in Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT). In J. Don, & T. Sanders (Eds.), OTS Yearbook 1998-1999 (pp. 58-78). Utrecht: UiL OTS.
  • Noordman, L. G., & Vonk, W. (1998). Discourse comprehension. In A. D. Friederici (Ed.), Language comprehension: a biological perspective (pp. 229-262). Berlin: Springer.

    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.
  • Noordman, L. G., & Vonk, W. (1997). The different functions of a conjunction in constructing a representation of the discourse. In J. Costermans, & M. Fayol (Eds.), Processing interclausal relationships: studies in the production and comprehension of text (pp. 75-94). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
  • Schiller, N. O., Van Lieshout, P. H. H. M., Meyer, A. S., & Levelt, W. J. M. (1999). Does the syllable affiliation of intervocalic consonants have an articulatory basis? Evidence from electromagnetic midsagittal artculography. In B. Maassen, & P. Groenen (Eds.), Pathologies of speech and language. Advances in clinical phonetics and linguistics (pp. 342-350). London: Whurr Publishers.
  • Senft, G. (1999). Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski. In J. Verschueren, J.-O. Östman, J. Blommaert, & C. Bulcaen (Eds.), Handbook of pragmatics: 1997 installment. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Senft, G. (1998). 'Noble Savages' and the 'Islands of Love': Trobriand Islanders in 'Popular Publications'. In J. Wassmann (Ed.), Pacific answers to Western hegemony: Cultural practices of identity construction (pp. 119-140). Oxford: Berg Publishers.
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  • Wilkins, D. (1999). A questionnaire on motion lexicalisation and motion description. In D. Wilkins (Ed.), Manual for the 1999 Field Season (pp. 96-115). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.3002706.

    Abstract

    How do languages express ideas of movement, and how do they package features that can be part of motion, such as path and cause? This questionnaire is used to gain a picture of the lexical resources a language draws on for motion expressions. It targets issues of semantic conflation (i.e., what other semantic information besides motion may be encoded in a verb root) and patterns of semantic distribution (i.e., what types of information are encoded in the morphemes that come together to build a description of a motion event). It was originally designed for Australian languages, but has since been used around the world.
  • Wilkins, D. (1999). Eliciting contrastive use of demonstratives for objects within close personal space (all objects well within arm’s reach). In D. Wilkins (Ed.), Manual for the 1999 Field Season (pp. 25-28). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.2573796.

    Abstract

    Contrastive reference, where a speaker presents or identifies one item in explicit contrast to another (I like this book but that one is boring), has special communicative and information structure properties. This can be reflected in rules of demonstrative use. For example, in some languages, terms equivalent to this and that can be used for contrastive reference in almost any spatial context. But other two-term languages stick more closely to “distance rules” for demonstratives, allowing a this-like term in close space only. This task elicits data concerning one context of contrastive reference, focusing on whether (and how) non-proximal demonstratives can be used to distinguish objects within a proximal area. The task runs like a memory game, with the consultant being asked to identify the locations of two or three hidden items arranged within arm’s reach.
  • Wilkins, D. (1999). The 1999 demonstrative questionnaire: “This” and “that” in comparative perspective. In D. Wilkins (Ed.), Manual for the 1999 Field Season (pp. 1-24). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.2573775.

    Abstract

    Demonstrative terms (e.g., this and that) are key to understanding how a language constructs and interprets spatial relationships. They are tricky to pin down, typically having functions that do not match “idealized” uses, and that can become invisible in narrow elicitation settings. This questionnaire is designed to identify the range(s) of use of certain spatial demonstrative terms, and help assess the roles played by gesture, access, attention, and addressee knowledge in demonstrative use. The stimuli consist of 25 diagrammed “elicitation settings” to be created by the researcher.

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