Publications

Displaying 1 - 45 of 45
  • Beattie, G. W., Cutler, A., & Pearson, M. (1982). Why is Mrs Thatcher interrupted so often? [Letters to Nature]. Nature, 300, 744-747. doi:10.1038/300744a0.

    Abstract

    If a conversation is to proceed smoothly, the participants have to take turns to speak. Studies of conversation have shown that there are signals which speakers give to inform listeners that they are willing to hand over the conversational turn1−4. Some of these signals are part of the text (for example, completion of syntactic segments), some are non-verbal (such as completion of a gesture), but most are carried by the pitch, timing and intensity pattern of the speech; for example, both pitch and loudness tend to drop particularly low at the end of a speaker's turn. When one speaker interrupts another, the two can be said to be disputing who has the turn. Interruptions can occur because one participant tries to dominate or disrupt the conversation. But it could also be the case that mistakes occur in the way these subtle turn-yielding signals are transmitted and received. We demonstrate here that many interruptions in an interview with Mrs Margaret Thatcher, the British Prime Minister, occur at points where independent judges agree that her turn appears to have finished. It is suggested that she is unconsciously displaying turn-yielding cues at certain inappropriate points. The turn-yielding cues responsible are identified.
  • Bowerman, M. (1982). Evaluating competing linguistic models with language acquisition data: Implications of developmental errors with causative verbs. Quaderni di semantica, 3, 5-66.
  • Cutler, A. (1986). Forbear is a homophone: Lexical prosody does not constrain lexical access. Language and Speech, 29, 201-220.

    Abstract

    Because stress can occur in any position within an Eglish word, lexical prosody could serve as a minimal distinguishing feature between pairs of words. However, most pairs of English words with stress pattern opposition also differ vocalically: OBject an obJECT, CONtent and content have different vowels in their first syllables an well as different stress patters. To test whether prosodic information is made use in auditory word recognition independently of segmental phonetic information, it is necessary to examine pairs like FORbear – forBEAR of TRUSty – trusTEE, semantically unrelated words which echbit stress pattern opposition but no segmental difference. In a cross-modal priming task, such words produce the priming effects characteristic of homophones, indicating that lexical prosody is not used in the same was as segmental structure to constrain lexical access.
  • Cutler, A. (1982). Idioms: the older the colder. Linguistic Inquiry, 13(2), 317-320. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4178278?origin=JSTOR-pdf.
  • Cutler, A., & Fay, D. A. (1982). One mental lexicon, phonologically arranged: Comments on Hurford’s comments. Linguistic Inquiry, 13, 107-113. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4178262.
  • Cutler, A. (1986). Phonological structure in speech recognition. Phonology Yearbook, 3, 161-178. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4615397.

    Abstract

    Two bodies of recent research from experimental psycholinguistics are summarised, each of which is centred upon a concept from phonology: LEXICAL STRESS and the SYLLABLE. The evidence indicates that neither construct plays a role in prelexical representations during speech recog- nition. Both constructs, however, are well supported by other performance evidence. Testing phonological claims against performance evidence from psycholinguistics can be difficult, since the results of studies designed to test processing models are often of limited relevance to phonological theory.
  • Cutler, A., & Swinney, D. A. (1986). Prosody and the development of comprehension. Journal of Child Language, 14, 145-167.

    Abstract

    Four studies are reported in which young children’s response time to detect word targets was measured. Children under about six years of age did not show response time advantage for accented target words which adult listeners show. When semantic focus of the target word was manipulated independently of accent, children of about five years of age showed an adult-like response time advantage for focussed targets, but children younger than five did not. Id is argued that the processing advantage for accented words reflect the semantic role of accent as an expression of sentence focus. Processing advantages for accented words depend on the prior development of representations of sentence semantic structure, including the concept of focus. The previous literature on the development of prosodic competence shows an apparent anomaly in that young children’s productive skills appear to outstrip their receptive skills; however, this anomaly disappears if very young children’s prosody is assumed to be produced without an underlying representation of the relationship between prosody and semantics.
  • Cutler, A., Mehler, J., Norris, D., & Segui, J. (1986). The syllable’s differing role in the segmentation of French and English. Journal of Memory and Language, 25, 385-400. doi:10.1016/0749-596X(86)90033-1.

    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. (1986). Why readers of this newsletter should run cross-linguistic experiments. European Psycholinguistics Association Newsletter, 13, 4-8.
  • Dietrich, R., & Klein, W. (1986). Simple language. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 11(2), 110-117.
  • Friederici, A. D., & Levelt, W. J. M. (1986). Cognitive processes of spatial coordinate assignment: On weighting perceptual cues. Naturwissenschaften, 73, 455-458.
  • Kempen, G., Schotel, H., & Hoenkamp, E. (1982). Analyse-door-synthese van Nederlandse zinnen [Abstract]. De Psycholoog, 17, 509.
  • Kempen, G., & Kolk, H. (1986). Het voortbrengen van normale en agrammatische taal. Van Horen Zeggen, 27(2), 36-40.
  • Kempen, G. (1986). RIKS: Kennistechnologisch centrum voor bedrijfsleven en wetenschap. Informatie, 28, 122-125.
  • Klein, W., & Rieck, B.-O. (1982). Der Erwerb der Personalpronomina im ungesteuerten Spracherwerb. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 45, 35-71.
  • Klein, W. (1986). Der Wahn vom Sprachverfall und andere Mythen. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 62, 11-28.
  • Klein, W. (1982). Einige Bemerkungen zur Frageintonation. Deutsche Sprache, 4, 289-310.

    Abstract

    In the first, critical part of this study, a small sample of simple German sentences with their empirically determined pitch contours is used to demonstrate the incorrectness of numerous currently hold views of German sentence intonation. In the second, more constructive part, several interrogative sentence types are analysed and an attempt is made to show that intonation, besides other functions, indicates the permantently changing 'thematic score' in on-going discourse as well as certain validity claims.
  • Klein, W. (1982). Einleitung. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik; Metzler, Stuttgart, 12, 7-8.
  • Klein, W. (1986). Einleitung. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik; Metzler, Stuttgart, 16(62), 9-10.
  • Klein, W. (1982). Pronoms personnels et formes d'acquisition. Encrages, 8/9, 42-46.
  • Klein, W. (1986). Über Ansehen und Wirkung der deutschen Sprachwissenschaft heute. Linguistische Berichte, 100, 511-520.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1982). Het lineariseringsprobleem van de spreker. Tijdschrift voor Taal- en Tekstwetenschap (TTT), 2(1), 1-15.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1967). Note on the distribution of dominance times in binocular rivalry. British Journal of Psychology, 58, 143-145.
  • Levelt, W. J. M., & Kelter, S. (1982). Surface form and memory in question answering. Cognitive Psychology, 14, 78-106. doi:10.1016/0010-0285(82)90005-6.

    Abstract

    Speakers tend to repeat materials from previous talk. This tendency is experimentally established and manipulated in various question-answering situations. It is shown that a question's surface form can affect the format of the answer given, even if this form has little semantic or conversational consequence, as in the pair Q: (At) what time do you close. A: “(At)five o'clock.” Answerers tend to match the utterance to the prepositional (nonprepositional) form of the question. This “correspondence effect” may diminish or disappear when, following the question, additional verbal material is presented to the answerer. The experiments show that neither the articulatory buffer nor long-term memory is normally involved in this retention of recent speech. Retaining recent speech in working memory may fulfill a variety of functions for speaker and listener, among them the correct production and interpretation of surface anaphora. Reusing recent materials may, moreover, be more economical than regenerating speech anew from a semantic base, and thus contribute to fluency. But the realization of this strategy requires a production system in which linguistic formulation can take place relatively independent of, and parallel to, conceptual planning.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1982). Science policy: Three recent idols, and a goddess. IPO Annual Progress Report, 17, 32-35.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1982). Zelfcorrecties in het spreekproces. KNAW: Mededelingen van de afdeling letterkunde, nieuwe reeks, 45(8), 215-228.
  • Pijls, F., & Kempen, G. (1986). Een psycholinguïstisch model voor grammatische samentrekking. De Nieuwe Taalgids, 79, 217-234.
  • Rösler, D., & Skiba, R. (1986). Ein vernetzter Lehrmaterial-Steinbruch für Deutsch als Zweitsprache (Projekt EKMAUS, FU Berlin). Deutsch Lernen: Zeitschrift für den Sprachunterricht mit ausländischen Arbeitnehmern, 2, 68-71. Retrieved from http://www.daz-didaktik.de/html/1986.html.
  • Senft, G. (1986). [Review of the book Under the Tumtum tree: From nonsense to sense in nonautomatic comprehension by Marlene Dolitsky]. Journal of Pragmatics, 10, 273-278. doi:10.1016/0378-2166(86)90094-9.
  • Senft, B., & Senft, G. (1986). Ninikula - Fadenspiele auf den Trobriand Inseln: Untersuchungen zum Spiele-Repertoire unter besonderer Berürcksichtigung der Spiel-begeleitenden Texte. Baessler Archiv: Beiträge zur Völkerkunde, N.F. 34, 92-235.
  • Senft, G., & Senft, B. (1986). Ninikula Fadenspiele auf den Trobriand-Inseln, Papua-Neuguinea: Untersuchungen zum Spiele-Repertoire unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Spiel-begleitendenden Texte. Baessler-Archiv: Beiträge zur Völkerkunde, 34(1), 93-235.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1986). Adjectives as adjectives in Sranan. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, 1(1), 123-134.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1982). De spellingsproblematiek in Suriname: Een inleiding. OSO, 1(1), 71-79.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1986). Formal theory and the ecology of language. Theoretical Linguistics, 13(1), 1-18. doi:10.1515/thli.1986.13.1-2.1.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1963). Naar aanleiding van Dr. F. Balk-Smit Duyzentkunst "De Grammatische Functie". Levende Talen, 219, 179-186.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1986). La transparence sémantique et la genèse des langues créoles: Le cas du Créole mauricien. Études Créoles, 9, 169-183.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1986). Helpen en helpen is twee. Glot, 9(1/2), 110-117.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1982). Internal variability in competence. Linguistische Berichte, 77, 1-31.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1967). Negation in Dutch. Neophilologus, 51(4), 327-363.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1986). The self-styling of relevance theory [Review of the book Relevance, Communication and Cognition by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson]. Journal of Semantics, 5(2), 123-143. doi:10.1093/jos/5.2.123.
  • Van Berkum, J. J. A. (1986). De cognitieve psychologie op zoek naar grondslagen. Kennis en Methode: Tijdschrift voor wetenschapsfilosofie en methodologie, X, 348-360.
  • Van Wijk, C., & Kempen, G. (1982). De ontwikkeling van syntactische formuleervaardigheid bij kinderen van 9 tot 16 jaar. Nederlands Tijdschrift voor de Psychologie en haar Grensgebieden, 37(8), 491-509.

    Abstract

    An essential phenomenon in the development towards syntactic maturity after early childhood is the increasing use of so-called sentence-combining transformations. Especially by using subordination, complex sentences are produced. The research reported here is an attempt to arrive at a more adequate characterization and explanation. Our starting point was an analysis of 280 texts written by Dutch-speaking pupils of the two highest grades of the primary school and the four lowest grades of three different types of secondary education. It was examined whether systematic shifts in the use of certain groups of so-called function words could be traced. We concluded that the development of the syntactic formulating ability can be characterized as an increase in connectivity: the use of all kinds of function words which explicitly mark logico-semantic relations between propositions. This development starts by inserting special adverbs and coordinating conjunctions resulting in various types of coordination. In a later stage, the syntactic patterning of the sentence is affected as well (various types of subordination). The increase in sentence complexity is only one aspect of the entire development. An explanation for the increase in connectivity is offered based upon a distinction between narrative and expository language use. The latter, but not the former, is characterized by frequent occurrence of connectives. The development in syntactic formulating ability includes a high level of skill in expository language use. Speed of development is determined by intensity of training, e.g. in scholastic and occupational settings.
  • Van Berkum, J. J. A. (1986). Doordacht gevoel: Emoties als informatieverwerking. De Psycholoog, 21(9), 417-423.
  • 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 Wijk, C., & Kempen, G. (1982). Syntactische formuleervaardigheid en het schrijven van opstellen. Pedagogische Studiën, 59, 126-136.

    Abstract

    Meermalen is getracht om syntactische formuleenuuirdigheid direct en objectief te meten aan de hand van gesproken of geschreven teksten. Uitgangspunt hierbij vormde in de regel de syntactische complexiteit van de geproduceerde taaluitingen. Dit heeft echter niet geleid tot een plausibele, duidelijk omschreven en praktisch bruikbare index. N.a.v. een kritische bespreking van de notie complexiteit wordt in dit artikel als nieuw criterium voorgesteld de connectiviteit van de taaluitingen; de expliciete aanduiding van logiscli-scmantische relaties tussen proposities. Connectiviteit is gemakkelijk scoorbaar aan de hand van functiewoorden die verschillende vormen van nevenschikkend en onderschikkend zinsverband markeren. Deze nieuwe index ondetrangt de kritiek die op complexiteit gegeven kon worden, blijkt duidelijk te discrimineren tussen groepen leerlingen die van elkaar verschillen naar leeftijd en opleidingsniveau, en sluit aan bij recente taalpsychologische en sociolinguïstische theorie. Tot besluit worden enige onderwijskundige implicaties aangegeven.

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