Publications

Abstract

Controlled vocabularies of various kinds (e.g., thesauri, classification schemes) play an integral part in making Cultural Heritage collections accessible. The various institutions participating in the Dutch CATCH programme maintain and make use of a rich and diverse set of vocabularies. This makes it hard to provide a uniform point of access to all collections at once. Our SKOS-based vocabulary and alignment repository aims at providing technology for managing the various vocabularies, and for exploiting semantic alignments across any two of them. The repository system exposes web services that effectively support the construction of tools for searching and browsing across vocabularies and collections or for collection curation (indexing), as we demonstrate.

Abstract

Multivariate analysis allows decoding of single trial data in individual subjects. Since different models are obtained for each subject it becomes hard to perform an analysis on the group level. We introduce a new algorithm for Bayesian multi-task learning which imposes a coupling between single-subject models. Using
the CMU fMRI dataset it is shown that the algorithm can be used for concept classification
based on the average activation of regions in the AAL atlas. Concepts which were most easily classified correspond to the categories shelter,manipulation and eating, which is in accordance with the literature. The multi-task learning algorithm is shown to find regions of interest that are common to all subjects which
therefore facilitates interpretation of the obtained
models.

Abstract

Previous research suggests that bilinguals presented with low and high predictability sentences benefit from semantics in clear but not in conversational speech [1]. In everyday speech, however, many words are not highly predictable. Previous research has shown that native listeners can use also more subtle semantic contextual information [2]. The present study reports two auditory lexical decision experiments investigating to what extent late Asian-English bilinguals benefit from subtle semantic cues in their processing of English unreduced and reduced speech. Our results indicate that these bilinguals are less sensitive to semantic cues than native listeners for both speech registers.

Abstract

Over the years, the field of Language Resources and Technology (LRT) hasdeveloped a tremendous amount of resources and tools. However, there is noready-to-use map that researchers could use to gain a good overview andsteadfast orientation when searching for, say corpora or software tools tosupport their studies. It is rather the case that information is scatteredacross project- or organisation-specific sites, which makes it hard if notimpossible for less-experienced researchers to gather all relevant material.Clearly, the provision of metadata is central to resource and softwareexploration. However, in the LRT field, metadata comes in many forms, tastesand qualities, and therefore substantial harmonization and curation efforts arerequired to provide researchers with metadata-based guidance. To address thisissue a broad alliance of LRT providers (CLARIN, the Linguist List, DOBES,DELAMAN, DFKI, ELRA) have initiated the Virtual Language Observatory portal toprovide a low-barrier, easy-to-follow entry point to language resources andtools; it can be accessed via http://www.clarin.eu/vlo

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of phoneme durations of emotional speech in two languages: Dutch and Korean. The analyzed corpus of emotional speech has been specifically developed for the purpose of cross-linguistic comparison, and is more balanced than any similar corpus available so far: a) it contains expressions by both Dutch and Korean actors and is based on judgments by both Dutch and Korean listeners; b) the same elicitation technique and recording procedure were used for recordings of both languages; and c) the phonetics of the carrier phrase were constructed to be permissible in both languages. The carefully controlled phonetic content of the carrier phrase allows for analysis of the role of specific phonetic features, such as phoneme duration, in emotional expression in Dutch and Korean. In this study the mutual effect of language and emotion on phoneme duration is presented.

Abstract

In this paper we investigate a computational model of word learning, that is embedded in a cognitively and ecologically plausible framework. Multi-modal stimuli from four different speakers form a varied source of experience. The model incorporates active learning, attention to a communicative setting and clarity of the visual scene. The model's ability to learn associations between speech utterances and visual concepts is evaluated during training to investigate the influence of active learning under conditions of uncertain input. The results show the importance of shared attention in word learning and the model's robustness against noise.

Abstract

This paper investigates the production and perception of epenthetic stops at syllable boundaries in Dutch and compares the experimental data with lexical statistics for Dutch and English. This extends past work on epenthesis in coda position [1]. The current work is particularly informative regarding the question of phonotactic constraints’ influence on parsing of speech variability.

Abstract

This paper presents articulatory data on the production of /l/ in various environments in Dutch, and shows that the direction of movement of the tongue dorsum varies across environments. This makes it impossible to measure tongue position at the peak of the dorsal gesture. We argue for an alternative method in such cases: measurement of position of one articulator at a time point defined by the gesture of another. We present new data measured this way which confirms a previous finding on the articulation of Dutch /l/.

Abstract

The primary goal of psycholinguistic research is to understand the architectures and mechanisms that underlie human language comprehension and production. This entails an understanding of how linguistic knowledge is represented and organized in the brain and a theory of how that knowledge is accessed when we use language. Research has traditionally emphasized purely linguistic aspects of on-line comprehension, such as the influence of lexical, syntactic, semantic and discourse constraints, and their tim -course. It has become increasingly clear, however, that nonlinguistic information, such as the visual environment, are also actively exploited by situated language comprehenders.

Abstract

Recent studies using phoneme detection tasks have shown that spoken-language processing is neither facilitated nor interfered with by optional assimilation, but is inhibited by violation of obligatory assimilation. Interpretation of these results depends on an assessment of their generality, specifically, whether they also obtain when listeners are processing nonnative language. Two separate experiments are presented in which native listeners of German and native listeners of Dutch had to detect a target fricative in legal monosyllabic Dutch nonwords. All of the nonwords were correct realisations in standard Dutch. For German listeners, however, half of the nonwords contained phoneme strings which violate the German fricative assimilation rule. Whereas the Dutch listeners showed no significant effects, German listeners detected the target fricative faster when the German fricative assimilation was violated than when no violation occurred. The results might suggest that violation of assimilation rules does not have to make processing more difficult per se.

Abstract

This study investigates the influence of both phonotactic and acoustic cues on the segmentation of spoken English. Listeners detected embedded English words in nonsense sequences (word spotting). Words aligned with phonotactic boundaries were easier to detect than words without such alignment. Acoustic cues to boundaries could also have signaled word boundaries, especially when word onsets lacked phonotactic alignment. However, only one of several durational boundary cues showed a marginally significant correlation with response times (RTs). The results suggest that word segmentation in English is influenced primarily by phonotactic constraints and only secondarily by acoustic aspects of the speech signal.

Abstract

Previous research has shown that listeners make use of their knowledge of phonotactic constraints to segment speech into individual words. The present study investigates the influence of phonotactics when segmenting a non-native language. German and English listeners detected embedded English words in nonsense sequences. German listeners also had knowledge of English, but English listeners had no knowledge of German. Word onsets were either aligned with a syllable boundary or not, according to the phonotactics of the two languages. Words aligned with either German or English phonotactic boundaries were easier for German listeners to detect than words without such alignment. Responses of English listeners were influenced primarily by English phonotactic alignment. The results suggest that both native and non-native phonotactic constraints influence lexical segmentation of a non-native, but familiar, language.

Abstract

Here we review evidence from cognitive neuroscience for a tight relation between language and action in the brain. We focus on two types of relation between language and action. First, we investigate whether the perception of speech and speech sounds leads to activation of parts of the cortical motor system also involved in speech production. Second, we evaluate whether understanding action-related language involves the activation of parts of the motor system. We conclude that whereas there is considerable evidence that understanding language can involve parts of our motor cortex, this relation is best thought of as inherently flexible. As we explain, the exact nature of the input as well as the intention with which language is perceived influences whether and how motor cortex plays a role in language processing.

Abstract

In foreign-accented speech, listeners have to handle noticeable deviations from the standard pronunciation of a target language. Three cross-modal priming experiments investigated how short- and long-term experiences with a foreign accent influence word recognition by native listeners. In experiment 1, German-accented words were presented to Dutch listeners who had either extensive or limited prior experience with German-accented Dutch. Accented words either contained a diphthong substitution that deviated acoustically quite largely from the canonical form (huis [hys], "house", pronounced as [hoys]), or that deviated acoustically to a lesser extent (lijst [lst], "list", pronounced as [lst]). The mispronunciations never created lexical ambiguity in Dutch. While long-term experience facilitated word recognition for both types of substitutions, limited experience facilitated recognition only of words with acoustically smaller deviations. In experiment 2, Dutch listeners with limited experience listened to the German speaker for 4 min before participating in the cross-modal priming experiment. The results showed that speaker-specific learning effects for acoustically large deviations can be obtained already after a brief exposure, as long as the exposure contains evidence of the deviations. Experiment 3 investigates whether these short-term adaptation effects for foreign-accented speech are speaker-independent.

Abstract

In the emerging e-Science scenario users should be able to easily combine data resources and tools/services; and machines should automatically be able to trace paths and carry out interpretations. Users who want to participate need to move from a down-load first to a cyberinfrastructure paradigm, thus increasing their dependency on the seamless operation of all components in the Internet. Such a scenario is inherently complex and requires compliance to guidelines and standards to keep it working smoothly. Only a change in our culture of dealing with research data and awareness about the way we do data lifecycle management will lead to success. Since we have so many legacy resources that are not compliant with the required guidelines, since we need to admit obvious problems in particular with standardization in the area of semantics and since it will take much time to establish trust at the side of researchers, the e-Science scenario can only be achieved stepwise which will take much time.

Abstract

Lexica play an important role in every linguistic discipline. We are confronted with many types of lexica. Depending on the type of lexicon and the language we are currently faced with a large variety of structures from very simple tables to complex graphs, as was indicated by a recent overview of structures found in dictionaries from field linguistics and language engineering. It is important to assess these differences and aim at the integration of lexical resources in order to improve lexicon creation, exchange and reuse. This paper describes the first step towards the integration of existing structures and standards into a flexible abstract model.

Abstract

The increasing quantity and complexity of language resources leads to new management problems for those that collect and those that need to preserve them. At the same time the desire to make these resources available on the Internet demands an efficient way characterizing their properties to allow discovery and re-use. The use of metadata is seen as a solution for both these problems. However, the question is what specific requirements there are for the specific domain and if these are met by existing frameworks. Any possible solution should be evaluated with respect to its merit for solving the domain specific problems but also with respect to its future embedding in “global” metadata frameworks as part of the Semantic Web activities.

Abstract

In this paper, we describe the core pillars of a large archive oflanguage material recorded worldwide partly about languages that are highly endangered. The bases for the documentation of these languages are audio/video recordings which are then annotated at several linguistic layers. The digital age completely changed the requirements of long-term preservation and it is discussed how the archive met these new challenges. An extensive solution for data replication has been worked out to guarantee bit-stream preservation. Due to an immediate conversion of the incoming data to standards -based formats and checks at upload time lifecycle management of all 50 Terabyte of data is widely simplified. A suitable metadata framework not only allowing users to describe and discover resources, but also allowing them to organize their resources is enabling the management of this amount of resources very efficiently. Finally, it is the Language Archiving Technology software suite which allows users to create, manipulate, access and enrich all archived resources given that they have access permissions.

Abstract

Currently, research infrastructures are being designed and established in manydisciplines since they all suffer from an enormous fragmentation of theirresources and tools. In the domain of language resources and tools the CLARINinitiative has been funded since 2008 to overcome many of the integration andinteroperability hurdles. CLARIN can build on knowledge and work from manyprojects that were carried out during the last years and wants to build stableand robust services that can be used by researchers. Here service centres willplay an important role that have the potential of being persistent and thatadhere to criteria as they have been established by CLARIN. In the last year ofthe so-called preparatory phase these centres are currently developing four usecases that can demonstrate how the various pillars CLARIN has been working oncan be integrated. All four use cases fulfil the criteria of beingcross-national.

Abstract

The amount of research data in the Humanities is increasing at fastspeed. Metadata helps describing and making accessible this data tointerested researchers within and across institutions. While metadatainteroperability is an issue that is being recognised and addressed,the systematic and user-driven provision of annotations and thelinking together of resources into new organisational layers havereceived much less attention. This paper gives an overview of ourevolving technological eScience environment to support suchfunctionality. It describes two tools, ADDIT and ViCoS, which enableresearchers, rather than archive managers, to organise and reorganiseresearch data to fit their particular needs. The two tools, which areembedded into our institute's existing software landscape, are aninitial step towards an eScience environment that gives our scientistseasy access to (multimodal) research data of their interest, andempowers them to structure, enrich, link together, and share such dataas they wish.

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that components in a set of simple signs in Nederlandse Gebarentaal (also called Sign Language of the Netherlands; henceforth: NGT), i.e. hand configuration (including orientation), movement and place of articulation, can also have morphological status. Evidence for this is provided by: firstly, the fact that handshape, orientation, movement and place of articulation show regular meaningful patterns in signs, which patterns also occur in newly formed signs, and secondly, the gradual change of formerly noninflecting predicates into inflectional predicates. The morphological complexity of signs can best be accounted for in autosegmental morphological templates.