Publications

Displaying 201 - 300 of 327
  • Little, H., & Eryilmaz, K. (2014). The effect of physical articulation constraints on the emergence of combinatorial structure. In B. De Boer, & T. Verhoef (Eds.), Proceedings of Evolang X, Workshop on Signals, Speech, and Signs (pp. 11-17).
  • Little, H., & De Boer, B. (2014). The effect of size of articulation space on the emergence of combinatorial structure. In E. Cartmill A., S. Roberts, H. Lyn, & H. Cornish (Eds.), The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 10th international conference (EvoLangX) (pp. 479-481). Singapore: World Scientific.
  • Liu, Z., Chen, A., & Van de Velde, H. (2014). Prosodic focus marking in Bai. In N. Campbell, D. Gibbon, & D. Hirst (Eds.), Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2014 (pp. 628-631).

    Abstract

    This study investigates prosodic marking of focus in Bai, a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in the Southwest of China, by adopting a semi-spontaneous experimental approach. Our data show that Bai speakers increase the duration of the focused constituent and reduce the duration of the post-focus constituent to encode focus. However, duration is not used in Bai to distinguish focus types differing in size and contrastivity. Further, pitch plays no role in signaling focus and differentiating focus types. The results thus suggest that Bai uses prosody to mark focus, but to a lesser extent, compared to Mandarin Chinese, with which Bai has been in close contact for centuries, and Cantonese, to which Bai is similar in the tonal system, although Bai is similar to Cantonese in its reliance on duration in prosodic focus marking.
  • Martin, A., & Van Turennout, M. (2002). Searching for the neural correlates of object priming. In L. R. Squire, & D. L. Schacter (Eds.), The Neuropsychology of Memory (pp. 239-247). New York: Guilford Press.
  • Martins, M., Raju, A., & Ravignani, A. (2014). Evaluating the role of quantitative modeling in language evolution. In L. McCrohon, B. Thompson, T. Verhoef, & H. Yamauchi (Eds.), The Past, Present and Future of Language Evolution Research: Student volume of the 9th International Conference on the Evolution of Language (pp. 84-93). Tokyo: EvoLang9 Organising Committee.

    Abstract

    Models are a flourishing and indispensable area of research in language evolution. Here we
    highlight critical issues in using and interpreting models, and suggest viable approaches. First,
    contrasting models can explain the same data and similar modelling techniques can lead to
    diverging conclusions. This should act as a reminder to use the extreme malleability of
    modelling parsimoniously when interpreting results. Second, quantitative techniques similar to
    those used in modelling language evolution have proven themselves inadequate in other
    disciplines. Cross-disciplinary fertilization is crucial to avoid mistakes which have previously
    occurred in other areas. Finally, experimental validation is necessary both to sharpen models'
    hypotheses, and to support their conclusions. Our belief is that models should be interpreted as
    quantitative demonstrations of logical possibilities, rather than as direct sources of evidence.
    Only an integration of theoretical principles, quantitative proofs and empirical validation can
    allow research in the evolution of language to progress.
  • Matic, D. (2014). Clues to information structure in field data. In D. El Zarka, & S. Heidinger (Eds.), Methodological Issues in the Study of Information Structure (pp. 25-42). Graz: Graz University Press.
  • Matic, D., & Nikolaeva, I. (2014). Focus feature percolation: Evidence from Tundra Nenets and Tundra Yukaghir. In S. Müller (Ed.), Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG 2014) (pp. 299-317). Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.

    Abstract

    Two Siberian languages, Tundra Nenets and Tundra Yukaghir, do not obey strong island constraints in questioning: any sub-constituent of a relative or adverbial clause can be questioned. We argue that this has to do with how focusing works in these languages. The focused sub-constituent remains in situ, but there is abundant morphosyntactic evidence that the focus feature is passed up to the head of the clause. The result is the formation of a complex focus structure in which both the head and non head daughter are overtly marked as focus, and they are interpreted as a pairwise list such that the focus background is applicable to this list, but not to other alternative lists
  • Matić, D., Van Gijn, R., & Van Valin Jr., R. D. (2014). Information structure and reference tracking in complex sentences: An overview. In R. van Gijn, J. Hammond, D. Matić, S. van Putten, & A. Galucio (Eds.), Information structure and reference tracking in complex sentences. (pp. 1-42). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    This volume is dedicated to exploring the crossroads where complex sentences and information management – more specifically information structure (IS) and reference tracking (RT) – come together. Complex sentences are a highly relevant but understudied domain for studying notions of IS and RT. On the one hand, a complex sentence can be studied as a mini-unit of discourse consisting of two or more elements describing events, situations, or processes, with its own internal information-structural and referential organisation. On the other hand, complex sentences can be studied as parts of larger discourse structures, such as narratives or conversations, in terms of how their information-structural characteristics relate to this wider context.We first focus on the interrelatedness of IS and RT (Section 1) and then define and discuss the notion of complex sentences and their subtypes in Section 2. Section 3 surveys issues of IS in complex sentences, while Section 4 focuses on RT in complex sentences. Sections 5 and 6 briefly consider IS and RT in a wider discourse context. Section 5 discusses the interaction between IS, RT, and other discourse factors, and Section 6 focuses on ways in which a specific RT system, switch reference, can function as an RT device beyond the sentence.
  • Matić, D. (2014). Questions and syntactic islands in Tundra Yukaghir. In R. van Gijn, J. Hammond, D. Matić, S. van Putten, & A. Galucio (Eds.), Information structure and reference tracking in complex sentences (pp. 127-162). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    No island effects are observable in Tundra Yukaghir questions, which are possible in virtually all syntactic environments. It is argued that this feature of Tundra Yukaghir relates to its capability of explicitly marking focus domains. If a question word occurs in a syntactic island, the whole island is morphologically treated as a focus domain. In order to take scope and function as question markers, question words must remain within the focus domain, i.e. in the island clause. This syntactic configuration is reflected in the semantics of question islands, which are used to inquire about the identity of the whole island, not merely the denotation of the question word.
  • Matsuo, A., & Duffield, N. (2002). Assessing the generality of knowledge about English ellipsis in SLA. In J. Costa, & M. J. Freitas (Eds.), Proceedings of the GALA 2001 Conference on Language Acquisition (pp. 49-53). Lisboa: Associacao Portuguesa de Linguistica.
  • Matsuo, A., & Duffield, N. (2002). Finiteness and parallelism: Assessing the generality of knowledge about English ellipsis in SLA. In B. Skarabela, S. Fish, & A.-H.-J. Do (Eds.), Proceedings of the 26th Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 197-207). Somerville, Massachusetts: Cascadilla Press.
  • Mauner, G., Koenig, J.-P., Melinger, A., & Bienvenue, B. (2002). The lexical source of unexpressed participants and their role in sentence and discourse understanding. In P. Merlo, & S. Stevenson (Eds.), The Lexical Basis of Sentence Processing: Formal, Computational and Experimental Issues (pp. 233-254). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • 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. (1998). Morphology in word recognition. In A. M. Zwicky, & A. Spencer (Eds.), The handbook of morphology (pp. 406-427). Oxford: Blackwell.
  • McQueen, J. M., & Cutler, A. (1998). Spotting (different kinds of) words in (different kinds of) context. In R. Mannell, & J. Robert-Ribes (Eds.), Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Spoken Language Processing: Vol. 6 (pp. 2791-2794). Sydney: ICSLP.

    Abstract

    The results of a word-spotting experiment are presented in which Dutch listeners tried to spot different types of bisyllabic Dutch words embedded in different types of nonsense contexts. Embedded verbs were not reliably harder to spot than embedded nouns; this suggests that nouns and verbs are recognised via the same basic processes. Iambic words were no harder to spot than trochaic words, suggesting that trochaic words are not in principle easier to recognise than iambic words. Words were harder to spot in consonantal contexts (i.e., contexts which themselves could not be words) than in longer contexts which contained at least one vowel (i.e., contexts which, though not words, were possible words of Dutch). A control experiment showed that this difference was not due to acoustic differences between the words in each context. The results support the claim that spoken-word recognition is sensitive to the viability of sound sequences as possible words.
  • Mickan, A., Schiefke, M., & Anatol, S. (2014). Key is a llave is a Schlüssel: A failure to replicate an experiment from Boroditsky et al. 2003. In M. Hilpert, & S. Flach (Eds.), Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association (pp. 39-50). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. doi:doi.org/10.1515/gcla-2014-0004.

    Abstract

    In this paper, we present two attempts to replicate a widely-cited but never fully published experiment in which German and Spanish speakers were asked to associate adjectives with nouns of masculine and feminine grammati-cal gender (Boroditsky et al. 2003). The researchers claim that speakers associ-ated more stereotypically female adjectives with grammatically feminine nouns and more stereotypically male adjectives with grammatically masculine nouns. We were not able to replicate the results either in a word association task or in an analogous primed lexical decision task. This suggests that the results of the original experiment were either an artifact of some non-documented aspect of the experimental procedure or a statistical fluke. The question whether speakers assign sex-based interpretations to grammatical gender categories at all cannot be answered definitively, as the results in the published literature vary consider-ably. However, our experiments show that if such an effect exists, it is not strong enough to be measured indirectly via the priming of adjectives by nouns.
  • Micklos, A. (2014). The nature of language in interaction. In E. Cartmill, S. Roberts, H. Lyn, & H. Cornish (Eds.), The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference.
  • Mizera, P., Pollak, P., Kolman, A., & Ernestus, M. (2014). Impact of irregular pronunciation on phonetic segmentation of Nijmegen corpus of Casual Czech. In P. Sojka, A. Horák, I. Kopecek, & K. Pala (Eds.), Text, Speech and Dialogue: 17th International Conference, TSD 2014, Brno, Czech Republic, September 8-12, 2014. Proceedings (pp. 499-506). Heidelberg: Springer.

    Abstract

    This paper describes the pilot study of phonetic segmentation applied to Nijmegen Corpus of Casual Czech (NCCCz). This corpus contains informal speech of strong spontaneous nature which influences the character of produced speech at various levels. This work is the part of wider research related to the analysis of pronunciation reduction in such informal speech. We present the analysis of the accuracy of phonetic segmentation when canonical or reduced pronunciation is used. The achieved accuracy of realized phonetic segmentation provides information about general accuracy of proper acoustic modelling which is supposed to be applied in spontaneous speech recognition. As a byproduct of presented spontaneous speech segmentation, this paper also describes the created lexicon with canonical pronunciations of words in NCCCz, a tool supporting pronunciation check of lexicon items, and finally also a minidatabase of selected utterances from NCCCz manually labelled on phonetic level suitable for evaluation purposes
  • Moulin, C. A., Souchay, C., Bradley, R., Buchanan, S., Karadöller, D. Z., & Akan, M. (2014). Déjà vu in older adults. In B. L. Schwartz, & A. S. Brown (Eds.), Tip-of-the-tongue states and related phenomena (pp. 281-304). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Muysken, P., Hammarström, H., Birchall, J., Danielsen, S., Eriksen, L., Galucio, A. V., Van Gijn, R., Van de Kerke, S., Kolipakam, V., Krasnoukhova, O., Müller, N., & O'Connor, L. (2014). The languages of South America: Deep families, areal relationships, and language contact. In P. Muysken, & L. O'Connor (Eds.), Language contact in South America (pp. 299-323). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • 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.
  • Nordhoff, S., & Hammarström, H. (2014). Archiving grammatical descriptions. In P. K. Austin (Ed.), Language Documentation and Description. Vol. 12 (pp. 164-186). London: SOAS.
  • O'Connor, L., & Kolipakam, V. (2014). Human migrations, dispersals, and contacts in South America. In L. O'Connor, & P. Muysken (Eds.), The native languages of South America: Origins, development, typology (pp. 29-55). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Oostdijk, N., Goedertier, W., Van Eynde, F., Boves, L., Martens, J.-P., Moortgat, M., & Baayen, R. H. (2002). Experiences from the Spoken Dutch Corpus Project. In Third international conference on language resources and evaluation (pp. 340-347). Paris: European Language Resources Association.
  • Ortega, G., Sumer, B., & Ozyurek, A. (2014). Type of iconicity matters: Bias for action-based signs in sign language acquisition. In P. Bello, M. Guarini, M. McShane, & B. Scassellati (Eds.), Proceedings of the 36th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2014) (pp. 1114-1119). Austin, Tx: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    Early studies investigating sign language acquisition claimed
    that signs whose structures are motivated by the form of their
    referent (iconic) are not favoured in language development.
    However, recent work has shown that the first signs in deaf
    children’s lexicon are iconic. In this paper we go a step
    further and ask whether different types of iconicity modulate
    learning sign-referent links. Results from a picture description
    task indicate that children and adults used signs with two
    possible variants differentially. While children signing to
    adults favoured variants that map onto actions associated with
    a referent (action signs), adults signing to another adult
    produced variants that map onto objects’ perceptual features
    (perceptual signs). Parents interacting with children used
    more action variants than signers in adult-adult interactions.
    These results are in line with claims that language
    development is tightly linked to motor experience and that
    iconicity can be a communicative strategy in parental input.
  • Ozyurek, A. (1998). An analysis of the basic meaning of Turkish demonstratives in face-to-face conversational interaction. In S. Santi, I. Guaitella, C. Cave, & G. Konopczynski (Eds.), Oralite et gestualite: Communication multimodale, interaction: actes du colloque ORAGE 98 (pp. 609-614). Paris: L'Harmattan.
  • Ozyurek, A. (2002). Speech-gesture relationship across languages and in second language learners: Implications for spatial thinking and speaking. In B. Skarabela, S. Fish, & A. H. Do (Eds.), Proceedings of the 26th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 500-509). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
  • Pederson, E., & Wilkins, D. (1996). A cross-linguistic questionnaire on 'demonstratives'. In S. C. Levinson (Ed.), Manual for the 1996 Field Season (pp. 1-11). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.3003259.

    Abstract

    Demonstrative terms (e.g., this and that) are key items in understanding how a language constructs and interprets spatial relationships. This in-depth questionnaire explores how demonstratives (and similar spatial deixis forms) function in the research language, covering such topics as their morphology and syntax, semantic dimensions, and co-occurring gesture practices. Questionnaire responses should ideally be based on natural, situated discourse as well as elicitation with consultants.
  • Pederson, E., & Senft, G. (1996). Route descriptions: interactive games with Eric's maze task. In S. C. Levinson (Ed.), Manual for the 1996 Field Season (pp. 15-17). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.3003287.

    Abstract

    What are the preferred ways to describe spatial relationships in different linguistic and cultural groups, and how does this interact with non-linguistic spatial awareness? This game was devised as an interactive supplement to several items that collect information on the encoding and understanding of spatial relationships, especially as relevant to “route descriptions”. This is a director-matcher task, where one consultant has access to stimulus materials that shows a “target” situation, and directs another consultant (who cannot see the target) to recreate this arrangement.
  • Peeters, D., Azar, Z., & Ozyurek, A. (2014). The interplay between joint attention, physical proximity, and pointing gesture in demonstrative choice. In P. Bello, M. Guarini, M. McShane, & B. Scassellati (Eds.), Proceedings of the 36th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2014) (pp. 1144-1149). Austin, Tx: Cognitive Science Society.
  • Perlman, M., Clark, N., & Tanner, J. (2014). Iconicity and ape gesture. In E. A. Cartmill, S. G. Roberts, H. Lyn, & H. Cornish (Eds.), The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference (pp. 236-243). New Jersey: World Scientific.

    Abstract

    Iconic gestures are hypothesized to be c rucial to the evolution of language. Yet the important question of whether apes produce iconic gestures is the subject of considerable debate. This paper presents the current state of research on iconicity in ape gesture. In particular, it describes some of the empirical evidence suggesting that apes produce three different kinds of iconic gestures; it compares the iconicity hypothesis to other major hypotheses of ape gesture; and finally, it offers some directions for future ape gesture research
  • Petersson, K. M. (2002). Brain physiology. In R. Behn, & C. Veranda (Eds.), Proceedings of The 4th Southern European School of the European Physical Society - Physics in Medicine (pp. 37-38). Montreux: ESF.
  • Ravignani, A., Bowling, D., & Kirby, S. (2014). The psychology of biological clocks: A new framework for the evolution of rhythm. In E. A. Cartmill, S. G. Roberts, & H. Lyn (Eds.), The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference (pp. 262-269). Singapore: World Scientific.
  • Reesink, G. (2002). The Eastern bird's head languages. In G. Reesink (Ed.), Languages of the Eastern Bird's Head (pp. 1-44). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
  • Reesink, G. (2002). A grammar sketch of Sougb. In G. Reesink (Ed.), Languages of the Eastern Bird's Head (pp. 181-275). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
  • Reesink, G. (2002). Mansim, a lost language of the Bird's Head. In G. Reesink (Ed.), Languages of the Eastern Bird's Head (pp. 277-340). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
  • Reesink, G. (2014). Topic management and clause combination in the Papuan language Usan. In R. Van Gijn, J. Hammond, D. Matic, S. van Putten, & A.-V. Galucio (Eds.), Information Structure and Reference Tracking in Complex Sentences. (pp. 231-262). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Abstract

    This chapter describes topic management in the Papuan language Usan. The notion of ‘topic’ is defined by its pre-theoretical meaning ‘what someone’s speech is about’. This notion cannot be restricted to simple clausal or sentential constructions, but requires the wider context of long stretches of natural text. The tracking of a topic is examined in its relationship to clause combining mechanisms. Coordinating clause chaining with its switch reference mechanism is contrasted with subordinating strategies called ‘domain-creating’ constructions. These different strategies are identified by language-specific signals, such as intonation and morphosyntactic cues like nominalizations and scope of negation and other modalities.
  • Roberts, S. G., Dediu, D., & Levinson, S. C. (2014). Detecting differences between the languages of Neandertals and modern humans. In E. A. Cartmill, S. G. Roberts, H. Lyn, & H. Cornish (Eds.), The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference (pp. 501-502). Singapore: World Scientific.

    Abstract

    Dediu and Levinson (2013) argue that Neandertals had essentially modern language and speech, and that they were in genetic contact with the ancestors of modern humans during our dispersal out of Africa. This raises the possibility of cultural and linguistic contact between the two human lineages. If such contact did occur, then it might have influenced the cultural evolution of the languages. Since the genetic traces of contact with Neandertals are limited to the populations outside of Africa, Dediu & Levinson predict that there may be structural differences between the present-day languages derived from languages in contact with Neanderthals, and those derived from languages that were not influenced by such contact. Since the signature of such deep contact might reside in patterns of features, they suggested that machine learning methods may be able to detect these differences. This paper attempts to test this hypothesis and to estimate particular linguistic features that are potential candidates for carrying a signature of Neandertal languages.
  • Roberts, S. G., & De Vos, C. (2014). Gene-culture coevolution of a linguistic system in two modalities. In B. De Boer, & T. Verhoef (Eds.), Proceedings of Evolang X, Workshop on Signals, Speech, and Signs (pp. 23-27).

    Abstract

    Complex communication can take place in a range of modalities such as auditory, visual, and tactile modalities. In a very general way, the modality that individuals use is constrained by their biological biases (humans cannot use magnetic fields directly to communicate to each other). The majority of natural languages have a large audible component. However, since humans can learn sign languages just as easily, it’s not clear to what extent the prevalence of spoken languages is due to biological biases, the social environment or cultural inheritance. This paper suggests that we can explore the relative contribution of these factors by modelling the spontaneous emergence of sign languages that are shared by the deaf and hearing members of relatively isolated communities. Such shared signing communities have arisen in enclaves around the world and may provide useful insights by demonstrating how languages evolve as the deaf proportion of its members has strong biases towards the visual language modality. In this paper we describe a model of cultural evolution in two modalities, combining aspects that are thought to impact the emergence of sign languages in a more general evolutionary framework. The model can be used to explore hypotheses about how sign languages emerge.
  • Roberts, S. G. (2014). Monolingual Biases in Simulations of Cultural Transmission. In V. Dignum, & F. Dignum (Eds.), Perspectives on Culture and Agent-based Simulations (pp. 111-125). Cham: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-01952-9_7.

    Abstract

    Recent research suggests that the evolution of language is affected by the inductive biases of its learners. I suggest that there is an implicit assumption that one of these biases is to expect a single linguistic system in the input. Given the prevalence of bilingual cultures, this may not be a valid abstraction. This is illustrated by demonstrating that the ‘minimal naming game’ model, in which a shared lexicon evolves in a population of agents, includes an implicit mutual exclusivity bias. Since recent research suggests that children raised in bilingual cultures do not exhibit mutual exclusivity, the individual learning algorithm of the agents is not as abstract as it appears to be. A modification of this model demonstrates that communicative success can be achieved without mutual exclusivity. It is concluded that complex cultural phenomena, such as bilingualism, do not necessarily result from complex individual learning mechanisms. Rather, the cultural process itself can bring about this complexity.
  • Roberts, S. G., & Quillinan, J. (2014). The Chimp Challenge: Working memory in chimps and humans. In L. McCrohon, B. Thompson, T. Verhoef, & H. Yamauchi (Eds.), The Past, Present and Future of Language Evolution Research: Student volume of the 9th International Conference on the Evolution of Language (pp. 31-39). Tokyo: EvoLang9 Organising Committee.

    Abstract

    Matsuzawa (2012) presented work at Evolang demonstrating the working memory abilities of chimpanzees. (Inoue & Matsuzawa, 2007) found that chimpanzees can correctly remember the location of 9 randomly arranged numerals displayed for 210ms - shorter than an average human eye saccade. Humans, however, perform poorly at this task. Matsuzawa suggests a semantic link hypothesis: while chimps have good visual, eidetic memory, humans are good at symbolic associations. The extra information in the semantic, linguistic links that humans possess increase the load on working memory and make this task difficult for them. We were interested to see if a wider search could find humans that matched the performance of the chimpanzees. We created an online version of the experiment and challenged people to play. We also attempted to run a non-semantic version of the task to see if this made the task easier. We found that, while humans can perform better than Inoue and Matsuzawa (2007) suggest, chimpanzees can perform better still. We also found no evidence to support the semantic link hypothesis.
  • Roberts, S. G., Thompson, B., & Smith, K. (2014). Social interaction influences the evolution of cognitive biases for language. In E. A. Cartmill, S. G. Roberts, & H. Lyn (Eds.), The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference (pp. 278-285). Singapore: World Scientific. doi:0.1142/9789814603638_0036.

    Abstract

    Models of cultural evolution demonstrate that the link between individual biases and population- level phenomena can be obscured by the process of cultural transmission (Kirby, Dowman, & Griffiths, 2007). However, recent extensions to these models predict that linguistic diversity will not emerge and that learners should evolve to expect little linguistic variation in their input (Smith & Thompson, 2012). We demonstrate that this result derives from assumptions that privilege certain kinds of social interaction by exploring a range of alternative social models. We find several evolutionary routes to linguistic diversity, and show that social interaction not only influences the kinds of biases which could evolve to support language, but also the effects those biases have on a linguistic system. Given the same starting situation, the evolution of biases for language learning and the distribution of linguistic variation are affected by the kinds of social interaction that a population privileges.
  • Roelofs, A. (2002). Storage and computation in spoken word production. In S. Nooteboom, F. Weerman, & F. Wijnen (Eds.), Storage and computation in the language faculty (pp. 183-216). Dordrecht: Kluwer.
  • Roelofs, A. (2002). Modeling of lexical access in speech production: A psycholinguistic perspective on the lexicon. In L. Behrens, & D. Zaefferer (Eds.), The lexicon in focus: Competition and convergence in current lexicology (pp. 75-92). Frankfurt am Main: Lang.
  • Rossi, G. (2014). When do people not use language to make requests? In P. Drew, & E. Couper-Kuhlen (Eds.), Requesting in social interaction (pp. 301-332). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Abstract

    In everyday joint activities (e.g. playing cards, preparing potatoes, collecting empty plates), participants often request others to pass, move or otherwise deploy objects. In order to get these objects to or from the requestee, requesters need to manipulate them, for example by holding them out, reaching for them, or placing them somewhere. As they perform these manual actions, requesters may or may not accompany them with language (e.g. Take this potato and cut it or Pass me your plate). This study shows that adding or omitting language in the design of a request is influenced in the first place by a criterion of recognition. When the requested action is projectable from the advancement of an activity, presenting a relevant object to the requestee is enough for them to understand what to do; when, on the other hand, the requested action is occasioned by a contingent development of the activity, requesters use language to specify what the requestee should do. This criterion operates alongside a perceptual criterion, to do with the affordances of the visual and auditory modality. When the requested action is projectable but the requestee is not visually attending to the requester’s manual behaviour, the requester can use just enough language to attract the requestee’s attention and secure immediate recipiency. This study contributes to a line of research concerned with the organisation of verbal and nonverbal resources for requesting. Focussing on situations in which language is not – or only minimally – used, it demonstrates the role played by visible bodily behaviour and by the structure of everyday activities in the formation and understanding of requests.
  • Rowland, C. F., Noble, C. H., & Chan, A. (2014). Competition all the way down: How children learn word order cues to sentence meaning. In B. MacWhinney, A. Malchukov, & E. Moravcsik (Eds.), Competing Motivations in Grammar and Usage (pp. 125-143). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Abstract

    Most work on competing cues in language acquisition has focussed on what happens when cues compete within a certain construction. There has been far less work on what happens when constructions themselves compete. The aim of the present chapter was to explore how the acquisition mechanism copes when constructions compete in a language. We present three experimental studies, all of which focus on the acquisition of the syntactic function of word order as a marker of the Theme-Recipient relation in ditransitives (form-meaning mapping). In Study 1 we investigated how quickly English children acquire form-meaning mappings when there are two competing structures in the language. We demonstrated that English speaking 4-year- olds, but not 3-year-olds, correctly interpreted both preposition al and double object datives, assigning Theme and Recipient participant roles on the basis of word order cues. There was no advantage for the double object dative despite its greater frequency in child directed speech. In Study 2 we looked at acquisition in a language which has no dative alternation –Welsh–to investigate how quickly children acquire form-meaning mapping when there is no competing structure. We demonstrated that Welsh children (Study 2) acquired the prepositional dative at age 3 years, which was much earlier than English children. Finally, in Study 3 we examined bei2 (give) ditransitives in Cantonese, to investigate what happens when there is no dative alternation (as in Welsh), but when the child hears alternative, and possibly competing, word orders in the input. Like the English 3-year-olds, the Cantonese 3-year-olds had not yet acquired the word order marking constraints of bei2 ditransitives. We conclude that there is not only competition between cues but competition between constructions in language acquisition. We suggest an extension to the competition model (Bates & MacWhinney, 1982) whereby generalisations take place across constructions as easily as they take place within constructions, whenever there are salient similarities to form the basis of the generalisation.
  • Saito, H., & Kita, S. (2002). "Jesuchaa, kooi, imi" no hennshuu ni atat te [On the occasion of editing "Jesuchaa, Kooi, imi"]. In H. Saito, & S. Kita (Eds.), Kooi, jesuchaa, imi [Action, gesture, meaning] (pp. v-xi). Tokyo: Kyooritsu Shuppan.
  • Scharenborg, O., Boves, L., & de Veth, J. (2002). ASR in a human word recognition model: Generating phonemic input for Shortlist. In J. H. L. Hansen, & B. Pellom (Eds.), ICSLP 2002 - INTERSPEECH 2002 - 7th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (pp. 633-636). ISCA Archive.

    Abstract

    The current version of the psycholinguistic model of human word recognition Shortlist suffers from two unrealistic constraints. First, the input of Shortlist must consist of a single string of phoneme symbols. Second, the current version of the search in Shortlist makes it difficult to deal with insertions and deletions in the input phoneme string. This research attempts to fully automatically derive a phoneme string from the acoustic signal that is as close as possible to the number of phonemes in the lexical representation of the word. We optimised an Automatic Phone Recogniser (APR) using two approaches, viz. varying the value of the mismatch parameter and optimising the APR output strings on the output of Shortlist. The approaches show that it will be very difficult to satisfy the input requirements of the present version of Shortlist with a phoneme string generated by an APR.
  • Scharenborg, O., & Boves, L. (2002). Pronunciation variation modelling in a model of human word recognition. In Pronunciation Modeling and Lexicon Adaptation for Spoken Language Technology [PMLA-2002] (pp. 65-70).

    Abstract

    Due to pronunciation variation, many insertions and deletions of phones occur in spontaneous speech. The psycholinguistic model of human speech recognition Shortlist is not well able to deal with phone insertions and deletions and is therefore not well suited for dealing with real-life input. The research presented in this paper explains how Shortlist can benefit from pronunciation variation modelling in dealing with real-life input. Pronunciation variation was modelled by including variants into the lexicon of Shortlist. A series of experiments was carried out to find the optimal acoustic model set for transcribing the training material that was used as basis for the generation of the variants. The Shortlist experiments clearly showed that Shortlist benefits from pronunciation variation modelling. However, the performance of Shortlist stays far behind the performance of other, more conventional speech recognisers.
  • Schiller, N. O., Costa, A., & Colomé, A. (2002). Phonological encoding of single words: In search of the lost syllable. In C. Gussenhoven, & N. Warner (Eds.), Laboratory Phonology VII (pp. 35-59). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Schiller, N. O., Schmitt, B., Peters, J., & Levelt, W. J. M. (2002). 'BAnana'or 'baNAna'? Metrical encoding during speech production [Abstract]. In M. Baumann, A. Keinath, & J. Krems (Eds.), Experimentelle Psychologie: Abstracts der 44. Tagung experimentell arbeitender Psychologen. (pp. 195). TU Chemnitz, Philosophische Fakultät.

    Abstract

    The time course of metrical encoding, i.e. stress, during speech production is investigated. In a first experiment, participants were presented with pictures whose bisyllabic Dutch names had initial or final stress (KAno 'canoe' vs. kaNON 'cannon'; capital letters indicate stressed syllables). Picture names were matched for frequency and object recognition latencies. When participants were asked to judge whether picture names had stress on the first or second syllable, they showed significantly faster decision times for initially stressed targets than for targets with final stress. Experiment 2 replicated this effect with trisyllabic picture names (faster RTs for penultimate stress than for ultimate stress). In our view, these results reflect the incremental phonological encoding process. Wheeldon and Levelt (1995) found that segmental encoding is a process running from the beginning to the end of words. Here, we present evidence that the metrical pattern of words, i.e. stress, is also encoded incrementally.
  • Schiller, N. O. (2002). From phonetics to cognitive psychology: Psycholinguistics has it all. In A. Braun, & H. Masthoff (Eds.), Phonetics and its Applications. Festschrift for Jens-Peter Köster on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday. [Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik; 121] (pp. 13-24). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.
  • Schmidt, J., Janse, E., & Scharenborg, O. (2014). Age, hearing loss and the perception of affective utterances in conversational speech. In Proceedings of Interspeech 2014: 15th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (pp. 1929-1933).

    Abstract

    This study investigates whether age and/or hearing loss influence the perception of the emotion dimensions arousal (calm vs. aroused) and valence (positive vs. negative attitude) in conversational speech fragments. Specifically, this study focuses on the relationship between participants' ratings of affective speech and acoustic parameters known to be associated with arousal and valence (mean F0, intensity, and articulation rate). Ten normal-hearing younger and ten older adults with varying hearing loss were tested on two rating tasks. Stimuli consisted of short sentences taken from a corpus of conversational affective speech. In both rating tasks, participants estimated the value of the emotion dimension at hand using a 5-point scale. For arousal, higher intensity was generally associated with higher arousal in both age groups. Compared to younger participants, older participants rated the utterances as less aroused, and showed a smaller effect of intensity on their arousal ratings. For valence, higher mean F0 was associated with more negative ratings in both age groups. Generally, age group differences in rating affective utterances may not relate to age group differences in hearing loss, but rather to other differences between the age groups, as older participants' rating patterns were not associated with their individual hearing loss.
  • Schmiedtová, V., & Schmiedtová, B. (2002). The color spectrum in language: The case of Czech: Cognitive concepts, new idioms and lexical meanings. In H. Gottlieb, J. Mogensen, & A. Zettersten (Eds.), Proceedings of The 10th International Symposium on Lexicography (pp. 285-292). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.

    Abstract

    The representative corpus SYN2000 in the Czech National Corpus (CNK) project containing 100 million word forms taken from different types of texts. I have tried to determine the extent and depth of the linguistic material in the corpus. First, I chose the adjectives indicating the basic colors of the spectrum and other parts of speech (names and adverbs) derived from these adjectives. An analysis of three examples - black, white and red - shows the extent of the linguistic wealth and diversity we are looking at: because of size limitations, no existing dictionary is capable of embracing all analyzed nuances. Currently, we can only hope that the next dictionary of contemporary Czech, built on the basis of the Czech National Corpus, will be electronic. Without the size limitations, we would be able us to include many of the fine nuances of language
  • Schoffelen, J.-M., & Gross, J. (2014). Studying dynamic neural interactions with MEG. In S. Supek, & C. J. Aine (Eds.), Magnetoencephalography: From signals to dynamic cortical networks (pp. 405-427). Berlin: Springer.
  • Schriefers, H., Meyer, A. S., & Levelt, W. J. M. (2002). Exploring the time course of lexical access in language production: Picture word interference studies. In G. Altmann (Ed.), Psycholinguistics: Critical Concepts in Psychology [vol. 5] (pp. 168-191). London: Routledge.
  • Seifart, F. (2002). Shape-distinctions picture-object matching task, with 2002 supplement. In S. Kita (Ed.), 2002 Supplement (version 3) for the “Manual” for the field season 2001 (pp. 15-17). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
  • Senft, G. (2002). What should the ideal online-archive documenting linguistic data of various (endangered) languages and cultures offer to interested parties? Some ideas of a technically naive linguistic field researcher and potential user. In P. Austin, H. Dry, & P. Wittenburg (Eds.), Proceedings of the international LREC workshop on resources and tools in field linguistics (pp. 11-15). Paris: European Language Resources Association.
  • 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.
  • Senft, G. (2002). Feldforschung in einer deutschen Fabrik - oder: Trobriand ist überall. In H. Fischer (Ed.), Feldforschungen. Erfahrungsberichte zur Einführung (Neufassung) (pp. 207-226). Berlin: Reimer.
  • Senft, G. (2002). Linguistische Feldforschung. In H. M. Müller (Ed.), Arbeitsbuch Linguistik (pp. 353-363). Paderborn: Schöningh UTB.
  • Senft, G. (1996). Phatic communion. In J. Verschueren, J.-O. Östman, & J. Blommaert (Eds.), Handbook of Pragmatics (loose leaf installment) (loose leaf installment, 1995). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • Senft, G. (1998). Zeichenkonzeptionen in Ozeanien. In R. Posner, T. Robering, & T.. Sebeok (Eds.), Semiotics: A handbook on the sign-theoretic foundations of nature and culture (Vol. 2) (pp. 1971-1976). Berlin: de Gruyter.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (2002). Pseudoarguments and pseudocomplements. In B. Nevin (Ed.), The legacy of Zellig Harris: Language and information into the 21st Century: 1 Philosophy of Science, Syntax, and Semantics (pp. 179-206). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (2002). Clitic clusters in French and Italian. In H. Jacobs, & L. Wetzels (Eds.), Liber Amicorum Bernard Bichakjian (pp. 217-233). Maastricht: Shaker.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (2002). Existential import. In D. De Jongh, M. Nilsenová, & H. Zeevat (Eds.), Proceedings of The 3rd and 4th International Symposium on Language, Logic and Computation. Amsterdam: ILLC Scientific Publ. U. of Amsterdam.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1996). Parameters van variatie. In R. Van Hout, & J. Kruijsen (Eds.), Taalvariaties: Toonzettingen en modulaties op een thema (pp. 211-221). Dordrecht: Foris.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (2014). Scope and external datives. In B. Cornillie, C. Hamans, & D. Jaspers (Eds.), Proceedings of a mini-symposium on Pieter Seuren's 80th birthday organised at the 47th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea.

    Abstract

    In this study it is argued that scope, as a property of scope‐creating operators, is a real and important element in the semantico‐grammatical description of languages. The notion of scope is illustrated and, as far as possible, defined. A first idea is given of the ‘grammar of scope’, which defines the relation between scope in the logically structured semantic analysis (SA) of sentences on the one hand and surface structure on the other. Evidence is adduced showing that peripheral preposition phrases (PPPs) in the surface structure of sentences represent scope‐creating operators in SA, and that external datives fall into this category: they are scope‐creating PPPs. It follows that, in English and Dutch, the internal dative (I gave John a book) and the external dative (I gave a book to John) are not simple syntactic variants expressing the same meaning. Instead, internal datives are an integral part of the argument structure of the matrix predicate, whereas external datives represent scope‐creating operators in SA. In the Romance languages, the (non‐pronominal) external dative has been re‐analysed as an argument type dative, but this has not happened in English and Dutch, which have many verbs that only allow for an external dative (e.g. donate, reveal). When both datives are allowed, there are systematic semantic differences, including scope differences.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1996). What a universal semantic interlingua can do. In A. Zamulin (Ed.), Perspectives of System Informatics. Proceedings of the Andrei Ershov Second International Memorial Conference, Novosibirsk, Akademgorodok, June 25-28,1996 (pp. 41-42). Novosibirsk: A.P. Ershov Institute of Informatics Systems.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1998). Towards a discourse-semantic account of donkey anaphora. In S. Botley, & T. McEnery (Eds.), New Approaches to Discourse Anaphora: Proceedings of the Second Colloquium on Discourse Anaphora and Anaphor Resolution (DAARC2) (pp. 212-220). Lancaster: Universiy Centre for Computer Corpus Research on Language, Lancaster University.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (2014). Universe restriction in the logic of language. In J. Hoeksema, & D. Gilbers (Eds.), Black Book: A Festschrift in Honor of Frans Zwarts (pp. 282-300). Groningen: University of Groningen.
  • Shkaravska, O., Van Eekelen, M., & Tamalet, A. (2014). Collected size semantics for strict functional programs over general polymorphic lists. In U. Dal Lago, & R. Pena (Eds.), Foundational and Practical Aspects of Resource Analysis: Third International Workshop, FOPARA 2013, Bertinoro, Italy, August 29-31, 2013, Revised Selected Papers (pp. 143-159). Berlin: Springer.

    Abstract

    Size analysis can be an important part of heap consumption analysis. This paper is a part of ongoing work about typing support for checking output-on-input size dependencies for function definitions in a strict functional language. A significant restriction for our earlier results is that inner data structures (e.g. in a list of lists) all must have the same size. Here, we make a big step forwards by overcoming this limitation via the introduction of higher-order size annotations such that variate sizes of inner data structures can be expressed. In this way the analysis becomes applicable for general, polymorphic nested lists.
  • Sidnell, J., & Enfield, N. J. (2014). Deixis and the interactional foundations of reference. In Y. Huang (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of pragmatics.
  • Sidnell, J., Kockelman, P., & Enfield, N. J. (2014). Community and social life. In N. J. Enfield, P. Kockelman, & J. Sidnell (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of linguistic anthropology (pp. 481-483). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Sidnell, J., Enfield, N. J., & Kockelman, P. (2014). Interaction and intersubjectivity. In N. J. Enfield, P. Kockelman, & J. Sidnell (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of linguistic anthropology (pp. 343-345). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Sidnell, J., & Enfield, N. J. (2014). The ontology of action, in interaction. In N. J. Enfield, P. Kockelman, & J. Sidnell (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of linguistic anthropology (pp. 423-446). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Slobin, D. I. (2002). Cognitive and communicative consequences of linguistic diversity. In S. Strömqvist (Ed.), The diversity of languages and language learning (pp. 7-23). Lund, Sweden: Lund University, Centre for Languages and Literature.
  • Sloetjes, H. (2014). ELAN: Multimedia annotation application. In J. Durand, U. Gut, & G. Kristoffersen (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Corpus Phonology (pp. 305-320). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • De Smedt, K., & Kempen, G. (1996). Discontinuous constituency in Segment Grammar. In H. C. Bunt, & A. Van Horck (Eds.), Discontinuous constituency (pp. 141-163). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • De Smedt, K., Hinrichs, E., Meurers, D., Skadiņa, I., Sanford Pedersen, B., Navarretta, C., Bel, N., Lindén, K., Lopatková, M., Hajič, J., Andersen, G., & Lenkiewicz, P. (2014). CLARA: A new generation of researchers in common language resources and their applications. In N. Calzolari, K. Choukri, T. Declerck, H. Loftsson, B. Maegaard, J. Mariani, A. Moreno, J. Odijk, & S. Piperidis (Eds.), Proceedings of LREC 2014: 9th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (pp. 2166-2174).
  • Smith, A. C., Monaghan, P., & Huettig, F. (2014). Examining strains and symptoms of the ‘Literacy Virus’: The effects of orthographic transparency on phonological processing in a connectionist model of reading. In P. Bello, M. Guarini, M. McShane, & B. Scassellati (Eds.), Proceedings of the 36th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2014). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    The effect of literacy on phonological processing has been described in terms of a virus that “infects all speech processing” (Frith, 1998). Empirical data has established that literacy leads to changes to the way in which phonological information is processed. Harm & Seidenberg (1999) demonstrated that a connectionist network trained to map between English orthographic and phonological representations display’s more componential phonological processing than a network trained only to stably represent the phonological forms of words. Within this study we use a similar model yet manipulate the transparency of orthographic-to-phonological mappings. We observe that networks trained on a transparent orthography are better at restoring phonetic features and phonemes. However, networks trained on non-transparent orthographies are more likely to restore corrupted phonological segments with legal, coarser linguistic units (e.g. onset, coda). Our study therefore provides an explicit description of how differences in orthographic transparency can lead to varying strains and symptoms of the ‘literacy virus’.
  • Smith, A. C., Monaghan, P., & Huettig, F. (2014). A comprehensive model of spoken word recognition must be multimodal: Evidence from studies of language-mediated visual attention. In P. Bello, M. Guarini, M. McShane, & B. Scassellati (Eds.), Proceedings of the 36th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2014). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    When processing language, the cognitive system has access to information from a range of modalities (e.g. auditory, visual) to support language processing. Language mediated visual attention studies have shown sensitivity of the listener to phonological, visual, and semantic similarity when processing a word. In a computational model of language mediated visual attention, that models spoken word processing as the parallel integration of information from phonological, semantic and visual processing streams, we simulate such effects of competition within modalities. Our simulations raised untested predictions about stronger and earlier effects of visual and semantic similarity compared to phonological similarity around the rhyme of the word. Two visual world studies confirmed these predictions. The model and behavioral studies suggest that, during spoken word comprehension, multimodal information can be recruited rapidly to constrain lexical selection to the extent that phonological rhyme information may exert little influence on this process.
  • Smith, A. C., Monaghan, P., & Huettig, F. (2014). Modelling language – vision interactions in the hub and spoke framework. In J. Mayor, & P. Gomez (Eds.), Computational Models of Cognitive Processes: Proceedings of the 13th Neural Computation and Psychology Workshop (NCPW13). (pp. 3-16). Singapore: World Scientific Publishing.

    Abstract

    Multimodal integration is a central characteristic of human cognition. However our understanding of the interaction between modalities and its influence on behaviour is still in its infancy. This paper examines the value of the Hub & Spoke framework (Plaut, 2002; Rogers et al., 2004; Dilkina et al., 2008; 2010) as a tool for exploring multimodal interaction in cognition. We present a Hub and Spoke model of language–vision information interaction and report the model’s ability to replicate a range of phonological, visual and semantic similarity word-level effects reported in the Visual World Paradigm (Cooper, 1974; Tanenhaus et al, 1995). The model provides an explicit connection between the percepts of language and the distribution of eye gaze and demonstrates the scope of the Hub-and-Spoke architectural framework by modelling new aspects of multimodal cognition.
  • Stolker, C. J. J. M., & Poletiek, F. H. (1998). Smartengeld - Wat zijn we eigenlijk aan het doen? Naar een juridische en psychologische evaluatie. In F. Stadermann (Ed.), Bewijs en letselschade (pp. 71-86). Lelystad, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Vermande.
  • Stolz, C. (1996). Bloxes: an interactive task for the elicitation of dimensional expressions. In S. C. Levinson (Ed.), Manual for the 1996 Field Season (pp. 25-31). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.3003352.

    Abstract

    “Dimensional expressions” single out and describe one symmetric axis of a 1D, 2D, or 3D object (e.g., The road is long). “Bloxes” is an interactive, object-matching task that elicits descriptions of dimensional contrasts between simple geometrical objects (rectangular blocks, rectangular boxes, and cylinders). The aim is to explore the linguistic encoding of dimensions, focusing on features of axis, orientation, flatness/solidity, size and shape. See also 'Suggestions for field research on dimensional expressions' (https://doi.org/10.17617/2.3003382).
  • Stolz, C. (1996). Suggestions for field research on dimensional expressions. In S. C. Levinson (Ed.), Manual for the 1996 Field Season (pp. 32-45). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.3003382.

    Abstract

    The aim of this task is to explore the linguistic expression of “dimensions” — e.g., the height, width or depth — of objects in the world around us. In a dimensional expression, one symmetric axis of a 1D, 2D, or 3D object is singled out and described (e.g., That man is tall). Dimensional expressions in different languages show a range of different combinatorial and extensional uses. This document guides the researcher through some spatial situations where contrastive features of dimensional expressions are likely to be observable.
  • Sumer, B., Perniss, P., Zwitserlood, I., & Ozyurek, A. (2014). Learning to express "left-right" & "front-behind" in a sign versus spoken language. In P. Bello, M. Guarini, M. McShane, & B. Scassellati (Eds.), Proceedings of the 36th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2014) (pp. 1550-1555). Austin, Tx: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    Developmental studies show that it takes longer for
    children learning spoken languages to acquire viewpointdependent
    spatial relations (e.g., left-right, front-behind),
    compared to ones that are not viewpoint-dependent (e.g.,
    in, on, under). The current study investigates how
    children learn to express viewpoint-dependent relations
    in a sign language where depicted spatial relations can be
    communicated in an analogue manner in the space in
    front of the body or by using body-anchored signs (e.g.,
    tapping the right and left hand/arm to mean left and
    right). Our results indicate that the visual-spatial
    modality might have a facilitating effect on learning to
    express these spatial relations (especially in encoding of
    left-right) in a sign language (i.e., Turkish Sign
    Language) compared to a spoken language (i.e.,
    Turkish).
  • Suppes, P., Böttner, M., & Liang, L. (1998). Machine Learning of Physics Word Problems: A Preliminary Report. In A. Aliseda, R. van Glabbeek, & D. Westerståhl (Eds.), Computing Natural Language (pp. 141-154). Stanford, CA, USA: CSLI Publications.
  • De Swart, P., & Van Bergen, G. (2014). Unscrambling the lexical nature of weak definites. In A. Aguilar-Guevara, B. Le Bruyn, & J. Zwarts (Eds.), Weak referentiality (pp. 287-310). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    We investigate how the lexical nature of weak definites influences the phenomenon of direct object scrambling in Dutch. Earlier experiments have indicated that weak definites are more resistant to scrambling than strong definites. We examine how the notion of weak definiteness used in this experimental work can be reduced to lexical connectedness. We explore four different ways of quantifying the relation between a direct object and the verb. Our results show that predictability of a verb given the object (verb cloze probability) provides the best fit to the weak/strong distinction used in the earlier experiments
  • Ten Bosch, L., Ernestus, M., & Boves, L. (2014). Comparing reaction time sequences from human participants and computational models. In Proceedings of Interspeech 2014: 15th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (pp. 462-466).

    Abstract

    This paper addresses the question how to compare reaction times computed by a computational model of speech comprehension with observed reaction times by participants. The question is based on the observation that reaction time sequences substantially differ per participant, which raises the issue of how exactly the model is to be assessed. Part of the variation in reaction time sequences is caused by the so-called local speed: the current reaction time correlates to some extent with a number of previous reaction times, due to slowly varying variations in attention, fatigue etc. This paper proposes a method, based on time series analysis, to filter the observed reaction times in order to separate the local speed effects. Results show that after such filtering the between-participant correlations increase as well as the average correlation between participant and model increases. The presented technique provides insights into relevant aspects that are to be taken into account when comparing reaction time sequences
  • Torreira, F., Roberts, S. G., & Hammarström, H. (2014). Functional trade-off between lexical tone and intonation: Typological evidence from polar-question marking. In C. Gussenhoven, Y. Chen, & D. Dediu (Eds.), Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Language (pp. 100-103).

    Abstract

    Tone languages are often reported to make use of utterancelevel intonation as well as of lexical tone. We test the alternative hypotheses that a) the coexistence of lexical tone and utterance-level intonation in tone languages results in a diminished functional load for intonation, and b) that lexical tone and intonation can coexist in tone languages without undermining each other’s functional load in a substantial way. In order to do this, we collected data from two large typological databases, and performed mixed-effects and phylogenetic regression analyses controlling for genealogical and areal factors to estimate the probability of a language exhibiting grammatical devices for encoding polar questions given its status as a tonal or an intonation-only language. Our analyses indicate that, while both tone and intonational languages tend to develop grammatical devices for marking polar questions above chance level, tone languages do this at a significantly higher frequency, with estimated probabilities ranging between 0.88 and .98. This statistical bias provides cross-linguistic empirical support to the view that the use of tonal features to mark lexical contrasts leads to a diminished functional load for utterance-level intonation.
  • Torreira, F., Simonet, M., & Hualde, J. I. (2014). Quasi-neutralization of stress contrasts in Spanish. In N. Campbell, D. Gibbon, & D. Hirst (Eds.), Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2014 (pp. 197-201).

    Abstract

    We investigate the realization and discrimination of lexical stress contrasts in pitch-unaccented words in phrase-medial position in Spanish, a context in which intonational pitch accents are frequently absent. Results from production and perception experiments show that in this context durational and intensity cues to stress are produced by speakers and used by listeners above chance level. However, due to substantial amounts of phonetic overlap between stress categories in production, and of numerous errors in the identification of stress categories in perception, we suggest that, in the absence of intonational cues, Spanish speakers engaged in online language use must rely on contextual information in order to distinguish stress contrasts.
  • Trilsbeek, P., & Koenig, A. (2014). Increasing the future usage of endangered language archives. In D. Nathan, & P. Austin (Eds.), Language Documentation and Description vol 12 (pp. 151-163). London: SOAS. Retrieved from http://www.elpublishing.org/PID/142.
  • Trippel, T., Broeder, D., Durco, M., & Ohren, O. (2014). Towards automatic quality assessment of component metadata. In N. Calzolari, K. Choukri, T. Declerck, H. Loftsson, B. Maegaard, J. Mariani, A. Moreno, J. Odijk, & S. Piperidis (Eds.), Proceedings of LREC 2014: 9th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (pp. 3851-3856).

    Abstract

    Measuring the quality of metadata is only possible by assessing the quality of the underlying schema and the metadata instance. We propose some factors that are measurable automatically for metadata according to the CMD framework, taking into account the variability of schemas that can be defined in this framework. The factors include among others the number of elements, the (re-)use of reusable components, the number of filled in elements. The resulting score can serve as an indicator of the overall quality of the CMD instance, used for feedback to metadata providers or to provide an overview of the overall quality of metadata within a reposi-tory. The score is independent of specific schemas and generalizable. An overall assessment of harvested metadata is provided in form of statistical summaries and the distribution, based on a corpus of harvested metadata. The score is implemented in XQuery and can be used in tools, editors and repositories
  • Valtersson, E., & Torreira, F. (2014). Rising intonation in spontaneous French: How well can continuation statements and polar questions be distinguished? In N. Campbell, D. Gibbon, & D. Hirst (Eds.), Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2014 (pp. 785-789).

    Abstract

    This study investigates whether a clear distinction can be made between the prosody of continuation statements and polar questions in conversational French, which are both typically produced with final rising intonation. We show that the two utterance types can be distinguished over chance level by several pitch, duration, and intensity cues. However, given the substantial amount of phonetic overlap and the nature of the observed differences between the two utterance types (i.e. overall F0 scaling, final intensity drop and degree of final lengthening), we propose that variability in the phonetic detail of intonation rises in French is due to the effects of interactional factors (e.g. turn-taking context, type of speech act) rather than to the existence of two distinct rising intonation contour types in this language.
  • Van Leeuwen, T. M., Petersson, K. M., Langner, O., Rijpkema, M., & Hagoort, P. (2014). Color specificity in the human V4 complex: An fMRI repetition suppression study. In T. D. Papageorgiou, G. I. Cristopoulous, & S. M. Smirnakis (Eds.), Advanced Brain Neuroimaging Topics in Health and Disease - Methods and Applications (pp. 275-295). Rijeka, Croatia: Intech. doi:10.5772/58278.
  • Van Putten, S. (2014). Left-dislocation and subordination in Avatime (Kwa). In R. Van Gijn, J. Hammond, D. Matic, S. van Putten, & A.-V. Galucio (Eds.), Information Structure and Reference Tracking in Complex Sentences. (pp. 71-98). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Abstract

    Left dislocation is characterized by a sentence-initial element which is crossreferenced in the remainder of the sentence, and often set off by an intonation break. Because of these properties, left dislocation has been analyzed as an extraclausal phenomenon. Whether or not left dislocation can occur within subordinate clauses has been a matter of debate in the literature, but has never been checked against corpus data. This paper presents data from Avatime, a Kwa (Niger-Congo) language spoken in Ghana, showing that left dislocation occurs within subordinate clauses in spontaneous discourse. This poses a problem for the extraclausal analysis of left dislocation. I show that this problem can best be solved by assuming that Avatime allows the embedding of units larger than a clause
  • Van Donselaar, W., Kuijpers, C., & Cutler, A. (1996). How do Dutch listeners process words with epenthetic schwa? In H. T. Bunnell (Ed.), Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Spoken Language Processing: Vol. 1 (pp. 149-152). New York: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

    Abstract

    Dutch words with certain final consonant clusters are subject to optional schwa epenthesis. The present research aimed at investigating how Dutch listeners deal with this type of phonological variation. By means of syllable monitoring experiments, it was investigated whether Dutch listeners process words with epenthetic schwa (e.g., ’balluk’) as bisyllabic words or rather as monosyllabic words. Real words (e.g., ’balk’, ’balluk’) and pseudowords (e.g., ’golk’, ’golluk’) were compared, to examine effects of lexical representation. No difference was found between monitoring times for BAL targets in ’balluk’ carriers as compared to ’balk’ carriers. This suggests that words with epenthetic schwa are not processed as bisyllabic words. The effects for the pseudo-words paralleled those for the real words, which suggests that they are not due to lexical representation but rather to the application of phonological rules.
  • Van Valin Jr., R. D., & Mairal Usón, R. (2014). Interfacing the lexicon and an ontology in a linking system. In M. d. l. Á. Gómez González, F. J. Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, & F. Gonzálvez-García (Eds.), Theory and practice in functional-cognitive space (pp. 205-228). Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    The aim of this paper is to discuss the repercussions of a conceptual orientation on two crucial parts of the Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) linking algorithm, that is, semantic representation and constructional schemas. Firstly, it is argued that adopting FunGramKB’s notion of conceptual logical structure (CLS) over standard RRG logical structures (LSs) has numerous advantages since meaning has now access to conceptual knowledge and therefore a CLS provides a format that goes beyond those aspects that are syntactically visible. The second part introduces the notion of the grammaticon, the component where constructional schemas actually reside. RRG constructional schemas are analyzed within a conceptual framework like that provided in FunGramKB. In essence, it is shown that a conceptual orientation to the RRG linking system by the addition of CLSs enriches the semantic representations in it substantially
  • 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.

Share this page