Publications

Displaying 1 - 100 of 115
  • Aarts, E. (2009). Resisting temptation: The role of the anterior cingulate cortex in adjusting cognitive control. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Allen, S. E. M. (1998). A discourse-pragmatic explanation for the subject-object asymmetry in early null arguments. In A. Sorace, C. Heycock, & R. Shillcock (Eds.), Proceedings of the GALA '97 Conference on Language Acquisition (pp. 10-15). Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press.

    Abstract

    The present paper assesses discourse-pragmatic factors as a potential explanation for the subject-object assymetry in early child language. It identifies a set of factors which characterize typical situations of informativeness (Greenfield & Smith, 1976), and uses these factors to identify informative arguments in data from four children aged 2;0 through 3;6 learning Inuktitut as a first language. In addition, it assesses the extent of the links between features of informativeness on one hand and lexical vs. null and subject vs. object arguments on the other. Results suggest that a pragmatics account of the subject-object asymmetry can be upheld to a greater extent than previous research indicates, and that several of the factors characterizing informativeness are good indicators of those arguments which tend to be omitted in early child language.
  • Ameka, F. K. (1991). Ewe: Its grammatical constructions and illocutionary devices. PhD Thesis, Australian National University, Canberra.
  • Araújo, S., Faísca, L., Petersson, K. M., & Reis, A. (2009). Cognitive profiles in Portuguese children with dyslexia. In Abstracts presented at the International Neuropsychological Society, Finnish Neuropsychological Society, Joint Mid-Year Meeting July 29-August 1, 2009. Helsinki, Finland & Tallinn, Estonia (pp. 23). Retrieved from http://www.neuropsykologia.fi/ins2009/INS_MY09_Abstract.pdf.
  • Araújo, S., Faísca, L., Petersson, K. M., & Reis, A. (2009). Visual processing factors contribute to object naming difficulties in dyslexic readers. In Abstracts presented at the International Neuropsychological Society, Finnish Neuropsychological Society, Joint Mid-Year Meeting July 29-August 1, 2009. Helsinki, Finland & Tallinn, Estonia (pp. 39). Retrieved from http://www.neuropsykologia.fi/ins2009/INS_MY09_Abstract.pdf.
  • Baggio, G. (2009). Semantics and the electrophysiology of meaning: Tense, aspect, event structure. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Behnke, K. (1998). The acquisition of phonetic categories in young infants: A self-organising artificial neural network approach. PhD Thesis, University of Twente, Enschede. doi:10.17617/2.2057688.
  • Bethard, S., Lai, V. T., & Martin, J. (2009). Topic model analysis of metaphor frequency for psycholinguistic stimuli. In Proceedings of the NAACL HLT Workshop on Computational Approaches to Linguistic Creativity, Boulder, Colorado, June 4, 2009 (pp. 9-16). Stroudsburg, PA: Association for Computational Linguistics.

    Abstract

    Psycholinguistic studies of metaphor processing must control their stimuli not just for word frequency but also for the frequency with which a term is used metaphorically. Thus, we consider the task of metaphor frequency estimation, which predicts how often target words will be used metaphorically. We develop metaphor classifiers which represent metaphorical domains through Latent Dirichlet Allocation, and apply these classifiers to the target words, aggregating their decisions to estimate the metaphorical frequencies. Training on only 400 sentences, our models are able to achieve 61.3 % accuracy on metaphor classification and 77.8 % accuracy on HIGH vs. LOW metaphorical frequency estimation.
  • Boves, L., Carlson, R., Hinrichs, E., House, D., Krauwer, S., Lemnitzer, L., Vainio, M., & Wittenburg, P. (2009). Resources for speech research: Present and future infrastructure needs. In Proceedings of the 10th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2009) (pp. 1803-1806).

    Abstract

    This paper introduces the EU-FP7 project CLARIN, a joint effort of over 150 institutions in Europe, aimed at the creation of a sustainable language resources and technology infrastructure for the humanities and social sciences research community. The paper briefly introduces the vision behind the project and how it relates to speech research with a focus on the contributions that CLARIN can and will make to research in spoken language processing.
  • Bramão, I., Faísca, L., Forkstam, C., Inácio, K., Petersson, K. M., & Reis, A. (2009). Interaction between perceptual color and color knowledge information in object recognition: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence. In Abstracts presented at the International Neuropsychological Society, Finnish Neuropsychological Society, Joint Mid-Year Meeting July 29-August 1, 2009. Helsinki, Finland & Tallinn, Estonia (pp. 39). Retrieved from http://www.neuropsykologia.fi/ins2009/INS_MY09_Abstract.pdf.
  • Burnham, D., Ambikairajah, E., Arciuli, J., Bennamoun, M., Best, C. T., Bird, S., Butcher, A. R., Cassidy, S., Chetty, G., Cox, F. M., Cutler, A., Dale, R., Epps, J. R., Fletcher, J. M., Goecke, R., Grayden, D. B., Hajek, J. T., Ingram, J. C., Ishihara, S., Kemp, N. and 10 moreBurnham, D., Ambikairajah, E., Arciuli, J., Bennamoun, M., Best, C. T., Bird, S., Butcher, A. R., Cassidy, S., Chetty, G., Cox, F. M., Cutler, A., Dale, R., Epps, J. R., Fletcher, J. M., Goecke, R., Grayden, D. B., Hajek, J. T., Ingram, J. C., Ishihara, S., Kemp, N., Kinoshita, Y., Kuratate, T., Lewis, T. W., Loakes, D. E., Onslow, M., Powers, D. M., Rose, P., Togneri, R., Tran, D., & Wagner, M. (2009). A blueprint for a comprehensive Australian English auditory-visual speech corpus. In M. Haugh, K. Burridge, J. Mulder, & P. Peters (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 2008 HCSNet Workshop on Designing the Australian National Corpus (pp. 96-107). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.

    Abstract

    Large auditory-visual (AV) speech corpora are the grist of modern research in speech science, but no such corpus exists for Australian English. This is unfortunate, for speech science is the brains behind speech technology and applications such as text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis, automatic speech recognition (ASR), speaker recognition and forensic identification, talking heads, and hearing prostheses. Advances in these research areas in Australia require a large corpus of Australian English. Here the authors describe a blueprint for building the Big Australian Speech Corpus (the Big ASC), a corpus of over 1,100 speakers from urban and rural Australia, including speakers of non-indigenous, indigenous, ethnocultural, and disordered forms of Australian English, each of whom would be sampled on three occasions in a range of speech tasks designed by the researchers who would be using the corpus.
  • Campisi, E. (2009). La gestualità co-verbale tra comunicazione e cognizione: In che senso i gesti sono intenzionali. In F. Parisi, & M. Primo (Eds.), Natura, comunicazione, neurofilosofie. Atti del III convegno 2009 del CODISCO. Rome: Squilibri.
  • Casasanto, D., Willems, R. M., & Hagoort, P. (2009). Body-specific representations of action verbs: Evidence from fMRI in right- and left-handers. In N. Taatgen, & H. Van Rijn (Eds.), Proceedings of the 31st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 875-880). Austin: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    According to theories of embodied cognition, understanding a verb like throw involves unconsciously simulating the action throwing, using areas of the brain that support motor planning. If understanding action words involves mentally simulating our own actions, then the neurocognitive representation of word meanings should differ for people with different kinds of bodies, who perform actions in systematically different ways. In a test of the body-specificity hypothesis (Casasanto, 2009), we used fMRI to compare premotor activity correlated with action verb understanding in right- and left-handers. Right-handers preferentially activated left premotor cortex during lexical decision on manual action verbs (compared with non-manual action verbs), whereas left-handers preferentially activated right premotor areas. This finding helps refine theories of embodied semantics, suggesting that implicit mental simulation during language processing is body-specific: Right and left-handers, who perform actions differently, use correspondingly different areas of the brain for representing action verb meanings.
  • Casasanto, D., & Jasmin, K. (2009). Emotional valence is body-specific: Evidence from spontaneous gestures during US presidential debates. In N. Taatgen, & H. Van Rijn (Eds.), Proceedings of the 31st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1965-1970). Austin: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    What is the relationship between motor action and emotion? Here we investigated whether people associate good things more strongly with the dominant side of their bodies, and bad things with the non-dominant side. To find out, we analyzed spontaneous gestures during speech expressing ideas with positive or negative emotional valence (e.g., freedom, pain, compassion). Samples of speech and gesture were drawn from the 2004 and 2008 US presidential debates, which involved two left-handers (Obama, McCain) and two right-handers (Kerry, Bush). Results showed a strong association between the valence of spoken clauses and the hands used to make spontaneous co-speech gestures. In right-handed candidates, right-hand gestures were more strongly associated with positive-valence clauses, and left-hand gestures with negative-valence clauses. Left-handed candidates showed the opposite pattern. Right- and left-handers implicitly associated positive valence more strongly with their dominant hand: the hand they can use more fluently. These results support the body-specificity hypothesis, (Casasanto, 2009), and suggest a perceptuomotor basis for even our most abstract ideas.
  • Casasanto, D., Fotakopoulou, O., & Boroditsky, L. (2009). Space and time in the child's mind: Evidence for a cross-dimensional asymmetry. In N. Taatgen, & H. Van Rijn (Eds.), Proceedings of the 31st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1090-1095). Austin: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    What is the relationship between space and time in the human mind? Studies in adults show an asymmetric relationship between mental representations of these basic dimensions of experience: representations of time depend on space more than representations of space depend on time. Here we investigated the relationship between space and time in the developing mind. Native Greek-speaking children (N=99) watched movies of two animals traveling along parallel paths for different distances or durations and judged the spatial and temporal aspects of these events (e.g., Which animal went for a longer time, or a longer distance?) Results showed a reliable cross-dimensional asymmetry: for the same stimuli, spatial information influenced temporal judgments more than temporal information influenced spatial judgments. This pattern was robust to variations in the age of the participants and the type of language used to elicit responses. This finding demonstrates a continuity between space-time representations in children and adults, and informs theories of analog magnitude representation.
  • Cavaco, P., Curuklu, B., & Petersson, K. M. (2009). Artificial grammar recognition using two spiking neural networks. Frontiers in Neuroinformatics. Conference abstracts: 2nd INCF Congress of Neuroinformatics. doi:10.3389/conf.neuro.11.2009.08.096.

    Abstract

    In this paper we explore the feasibility of artificial (formal) grammar recognition (AGR) using spiking neural networks. A biologically inspired minicolumn architecture is designed as the basic computational unit. A network topography is defined based on the minicolumn architecture, here referred to as nodes, connected with excitatory and inhibitory connections. Nodes in the network represent unique internal states of the grammar’s finite state machine (FSM). Future work to improve the performance of the networks is discussed. The modeling framework developed can be used by neurophysiological research to implement network layouts and compare simulated performance characteristics to actual subject performance.
  • Chu, M., & Kita, S. (2009). Co-speech gestures do not originate from speech production processes: Evidence from the relationship between co-thought and co-speech gestures. In N. Taatgen, & H. Van Rijn (Eds.), Proceedings of the Thirty-First Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 591-595). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    When we speak, we spontaneously produce gestures (co-speech gestures). Co-speech gestures and speech production are closely interlinked. However, the exact nature of the link is still under debate. To addressed the question that whether co-speech gestures originate from the speech production system or from a system independent of the speech production, the present study examined the relationship between co-speech and co-thought gestures. Co-thought gestures, produced during silent thinking without speaking, presumably originate from a system independent of the speech production processes. We found a positive correlation between the production frequency of co-thought and co-speech gestures, regardless the communicative function that co-speech gestures might serve. Therefore, we suggest that co-speech gestures and co-thought gestures originate from a common system that is independent of the speech production processes
  • Crago, M. B., Allen, S. E. M., & Pesco, D. (1998). Issues of Complexity in Inuktitut and English Child Directed Speech. In Proceedings of the twenty-ninth Annual Stanford Child Language Research Forum (pp. 37-46).
  • Cutler, A., & Otake, T. (1998). Assimilation of place in Japanese and Dutch. In R. Mannell, & J. Robert-Ribes (Eds.), Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Spoken Language Processing: vol. 5 (pp. 1751-1754). Sydney: ICLSP.

    Abstract

    Assimilation of place of articulation across a nasal and a following stop consonant is obligatory in Japanese, but not in Dutch. In four experiments the processing of assimilated forms by speakers of Japanese and Dutch was compared, using a task in which listeners blended pseudo-word pairs such as ranga-serupa. An assimilated blend of this pair would be rampa, an unassimilated blend rangpa. Japanese listeners produced significantly more assimilated than unassimilated forms, both with pseudo-Japanese and pseudo-Dutch materials, while Dutch listeners produced significantly more unassimilated than assimilated forms in each materials set. This suggests that Japanese listeners, whose native-language phonology involves obligatory assimilation constraints, represent the assimilated nasals in nasal-stop sequences as unmarked for place of articulation, while Dutch listeners, who are accustomed to hearing unassimilated forms, represent the same nasal segments as marked for place of articulation.
  • Cutler, A., & Fear, B. D. (1991). Categoricality in acceptability judgements for strong versus weak vowels. In J. Llisterri (Ed.), Proceedings of the ESCA Workshop on Phonetics and Phonology of Speaking Styles (pp. 18.1-18.5). Barcelona, Catalonia: Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona.

    Abstract

    A distinction between strong and weak vowels can be drawn on the basis of vowel quality, of stress, or of both factors. An experiment was conducted in which sets of contextually matched word-intial vowels ranging from clearly strong to clearly weak were cross-spliced, and the naturalness of the resulting words was rated by listeners. The ratings showed that in general cross-spliced words were only significantly less acceptable than unspliced words when schwa was not involved; this supports a categorical distinction based on vowel quality.
  • Cutler, A. (1987). Components of prosodic effects in speech recognition. In Proceedings of the Eleventh International Congress of Phonetic Sciences: Vol. 1 (pp. 84-87). Tallinn: Academy of Sciences of the Estonian SSR, Institute of Language and Literature.

    Abstract

    Previous research has shown that listeners use the prosodic structure of utterances in a predictive fashion in sentence comprehension, to direct attention to accented words. Acoustically identical words spliced into sentence contexts arc responded to differently if the prosodic structure of the context is \ aricd: when the preceding prosody indicates that the word will he accented, responses are faster than when the preceding prosodv is inconsistent with accent occurring on that word. In the present series of experiments speech hybridisation techniques were first used to interchange the timing patterns within pairs of prosodic variants of utterances, independently of the pitch and intensity contours. The time-adjusted utterances could then serve as a basis lor the orthogonal manipulation of the three prosodic dimensions of pilch, intensity and rhythm. The overall pattern of results showed that when listeners use prosody to predict accent location, they do not simply rely on a single prosodic dimension, hut exploit the interaction between pitch, intensity and rhythm.
  • Cutler, A. (1998). How listeners find the right words. In Proceedings of the Sixteenth International Congress on Acoustics: Vol. 2 (pp. 1377-1380). Melville, NY: Acoustical Society of America.

    Abstract

    Languages contain tens of thousands of words, but these are constructed from a tiny handful of phonetic elements. Consequently, words resemble one another, or can be embedded within one another, a coup stick snot with standing. me process of spoken-word recognition by human listeners involves activation of multiple word candidates consistent with the input, and direct competition between activated candidate words. Further, human listeners are sensitive, at an early, prelexical, stage of speeeh processing, to constraints on what could potentially be a word of the language.
  • Cutler, A., & Butterfield, S. (1989). Natural speech cues to word segmentation under difficult listening conditions. In J. Tubach, & J. Mariani (Eds.), Proceedings of Eurospeech 89: European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology: Vol. 2 (pp. 372-375). Edinburgh: CEP Consultants.

    Abstract

    One of a listener's major tasks in understanding continuous speech is segmenting the speech signal into separate words. When listening conditions are difficult, speakers can help listeners by deliberately speaking more clearly. In three experiments, we examined how word boundaries are produced in deliberately clear speech. We found that speakers do indeed attempt to mark word boundaries; moreover, they differentiate between word boundaries in a way which suggests they are sensitive to listener needs. Application of heuristic segmentation strategies makes word boundaries before strong syllables easiest for listeners to perceive; but under difficult listening conditions speakers pay more attention to marking word boundaries before weak syllables, i.e. they mark those boundaries which are otherwise particularly hard to perceive.
  • Cutler, A., Davis, C., & Kim, J. (2009). Non-automaticity of use of orthographic knowledge in phoneme evaluation. In Proceedings of the 10th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2009) (pp. 380-383). Causal Productions Pty Ltd.

    Abstract

    Two phoneme goodness rating experiments addressed the role of orthographic knowledge in the evaluation of speech sounds. Ratings for the best tokens of /s/ were higher in words spelled with S (e.g., bless) than in words where /s/ was spelled with C (e.g., voice). This difference did not appear for analogous nonwords for which every lexical neighbour had either S or C spelling (pless, floice). Models of phonemic processing incorporating obligatory influence of lexical information in phonemic processing cannot explain this dissociation; the data are consistent with models in which phonemic decisions are not subject to necessary top-down lexical influence.
  • Cutler, A., Treiman, R., & Van Ooijen, B. (1998). Orthografik inkoncistensy ephekts in foneme detektion? In R. Mannell, & J. Robert-Ribes (Eds.), Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Spoken Language Processing: Vol. 6 (pp. 2783-2786). Sydney: ICSLP.

    Abstract

    The phoneme detection task is widely used in spoken word recognition research. Alphabetically literate participants, however, are more used to explicit representations of letters than of phonemes. The present study explored whether phoneme detection is sensitive to how target phonemes are, or may be, orthographically realised. Listeners detected the target sounds [b,m,t,f,s,k] in word-initial position in sequences of isolated English words. Response times were faster to the targets [b,m,t], which have consistent word-initial spelling, than to the targets [f,s,k], which are inconsistently spelled, but only when listeners’ attention was drawn to spelling by the presence in the experiment of many irregularly spelled fillers. Within the inconsistent targets [f,s,k], there was no significant difference between responses to targets in words with majority and minority spellings. We conclude that performance in the phoneme detection task is not necessarily sensitive to orthographic effects, but that salient orthographic manipulation can induce such sensitivity.
  • Cutler, A. (1980). Productivity in word formation. In J. Kreiman, & A. E. Ojeda (Eds.), Papers from the Sixteenth Regional Meeting, Chicago Linguistic Society (pp. 45-51). Chicago, Ill.: CLS.
  • Cutler, A. (1991). Prosody in situations of communication: Salience and segmentation. In Proceedings of the Twelfth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences: Vol. 1 (pp. 264-270). Aix-en-Provence: Université de Provence, Service des publications.

    Abstract

    Speakers and listeners have a shared goal: to communicate. The processes of speech perception and of speech production interact in many ways under the constraints of this communicative goal; such interaction is as characteristic of prosodic processing as of the processing of other aspects of linguistic structure. Two of the major uses of prosodic information in situations of communication are to encode salience and segmentation, and these themes unite the contributions to the symposium introduced by the present review.
  • Cutler, A., & Carter, D. (1987). The prosodic structure of initial syllables in English. In J. Laver, & M. Jack (Eds.), Proceedings of the European Conference on Speech Technology: Vol. 1 (pp. 207-210). Edinburgh: IEE.
  • Cutler, A. (1998). The recognition of spoken words with variable representations. In D. Duez (Ed.), Proceedings of the ESCA Workshop on Sound Patterns of Spontaneous Speech (pp. 83-92). Aix-en-Provence: Université de Aix-en-Provence.
  • Davids, N. (2009). Neurocognitive markers of phonological processing: A clinical perspective. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Dimitrova, D. V., Redeker, G., & Hoeks, J. C. J. (2009). Did you say a BLUE banana? The prosody of contrast and abnormality in Bulgarian and Dutch. In 10th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association [Interspeech 2009] (pp. 999-1002). ISCA Archive.

    Abstract

    In a production experiment on Bulgarian that was based on a previous study on Dutch [1], we investigated the role of prosody when linguistic and extra-linguistic information coincide or contradict. Speakers described abnormally colored fruits in conditions where contrastive focus and discourse relations were varied. We found that the coincidence of contrast and abnormality enhances accentuation in Bulgarian as it did in Dutch. Surprisingly, when both factors are in conflict, the prosodic prominence of abnormality often overruled focus accentuation in both Bulgarian and Dutch, though the languages also show marked differences.
  • Dimroth, C., & Narasimhan, B. (2009). Accessibility and topicality in children's use of word order. In J. Chandlee, M. Franchini, S. Lord, & G. M. Rheiner (Eds.), Proceedings of the 33rd annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (BULCD) (pp. 133-138).
  • Dingemanse, M. (2009). Ideophones in unexpected places. In P. K. Austin, O. Bond, M. Charette, D. Nathan, & P. Sells (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory (pp. 83-97). London: School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).
  • Doherty, M., & Klein, W. (Eds.). (1991). Übersetzung [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (84).
  • Drozd, K. F. (1998). No as a determiner in child English: A summary of categorical evidence. In A. Sorace, C. Heycock, & R. Shillcock (Eds.), Proceedings of the Gala '97 Conference on Language Acquisition (pp. 34-39). Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press,.

    Abstract

    This paper summarizes the results of a descriptive syntactic category analysis of child English no which reveals that young children use and represent no as a determiner and negatives like no pen as NPs, contra standard analyses.
  • Ernestus, M. (2009). The roles of reconstruction and lexical storage in the comprehension of regular pronunciation variants. In Proceedings of the 10th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2009) (pp. 1875-1878). Causal Productions Pty Ltd.

    Abstract

    This paper investigates how listeners process regular pronunciation variants, resulting from simple general reduction processes. Study 1 shows that when listeners are presented with new words, they store the pronunciation variants presented to them, whether these are unreduced or reduced. Listeners thus store information on word-specific pronunciation variation. Study 2 suggests that if participants are presented with regularly reduced pronunciations, they also reconstruct and store the corresponding unreduced pronunciations. These unreduced pronunciations apparently have special status. Together the results support hybrid models of speech processing, assuming roles for both exemplars and abstract representations.
  • Fitz, H. (2009). Neural syntax. PhD Thesis, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Institute for Logic, Language, and Computation.

    Abstract

    Children learn their mother tongue spontaneously and effortlessly through communicative interaction with their environment; they do not have to be taught explicitly or learn how to learn first. The ambient language to which children are exposed, however, is highly variable and arguably deficient with regard to the learning target. Nonetheless, most normally developing children learn their native language rapidly and with ease. To explain this accomplishment, many theories of acquisition posit innate constraints on learning, or even a biological endowment for language which is specific to language. Usage-based theories, on the other hand, place more emphasis on the role of experience and domain-general learning mechanisms than on innate language-specific knowledge. But languages are lexically open and combinatorial in structure, so no amount of experience covers their expressivity. Usage-based theories therefore have to explain how children can generalize the properties of their linguistic input to an adult-like grammar. In this thesis I provide an explicit computational mechanism with which usage-based theories of language can be tested and evaluated. The focus of my work lies on complex syntax and the human ability to form sentences which express more than one proposition by means of relativization. This `capacity for recursion' is a hallmark of an adult grammar and, as some have argued, the human language faculty itself. The manuscript is organized as follows. In the second chapter, I give an overview of results that characterize the properties of neural networks as mathematical objects and review previous attempts at modelling the acquisition of complex syntax with such networks. The chapter introduces the conceptual landscape in which the current work is located. In the third chapter, I argue that the construction and use of meaning is essential in child language acquisition and adult processing. Neural network models need to incorporate this dimension of human linguistic behavior. I introduce the Dual-path model of sentence production and syntactic development which is able to represent semantics and learns from exposure to sentences paired with their meaning (cf. Chang et al. 2006). I explain the architecture of this model, motivate critical assumptions behind its design, and discuss existing research using this model. The fourth chapter describes and compares several extensions of the basic architecture to accommodate the processing of multi-clause utterances. These extensions are evaluated against computational desiderata, such as good learning and generalization performance and the parsimony of input representations. A single-best solution for encoding the meaning of complex sentences with restrictive relative clauses is identified, which forms the basis for all subsequent simulations. Chapter five analyzes the learning dynamics in more detail. I first examine the model's behavior for different relative clause types. Syntactic alternations prove to be particularly difficult to learn because they complicate the meaning-to-form mapping the model has to acquire. In the second part, I probe the internal representations the model has developed during learning. It is argued that the model acquires the argument structure of the construction types in its input language and represents the hierarchical organization of distinct multi-clause utterances. The juice of this thesis is contained in chapters six to eight. In chapter six, I test the Dual-path model's generalization capacities in a variety of tasks. I show that its syntactic representations are sufficiently transparent to allow structural generalization to novel complex utterances. Semantic similarities between novel and familiar sentence types play a critical role in this task. The Dual-path model also has a capacity for generalizing familiar words to novel slots in novel constructions (strong semantic systematicity). Moreover, I identify learning conditions under which the model displays recursive productivity. It is argued that the model's behavior is consistent with human behavior in that production accuracy degrades with depth of embedding, and right-branching is learned faster than center-embedding recursion. In chapter seven, I address the issue of learning complex polar interrogatives in the absence of positive exemplars in the input. I show that the Dual-path model can acquire the syntax of these questions from simpler and similar structures which are warranted in a child's linguistic environment. The model's errors closely match children's errors, and it is suggested that children might not require an innate learning bias to acquire auxiliary fronting. Since the model does not implement a traditional kind of language-specific universal grammar, these results are relevant to the poverty of the stimulus debate. English relative clause constructions give rise to similar performance orderings in adult processing and child language acquisition. This pattern matches the typological universal called the noun phrase accessibility hierarchy. I propose an input-based explanation of this data in chapter eight. The Dual-path model displays this ordering in syntactic development when exposed to plausible input distributions. But it is possible to manipulate and completely remove the ordering by varying properties of the input from which the model learns. This indicates, I argue, that patterns of interference and facilitation among input structures can explain the hierarchy when all structures are simultaneously learned and represented over a single set of connection weights. Finally, I draw conclusions from this work, address some unanswered questions, and give a brief outlook on how this research might be continued.

    Additional information

    http://dare.uva.nl/record/328271
  • Fitz, H., & Chang, F. (2009). Syntactic generalization in a connectionist model of sentence production. In J. Mayor, N. Ruh, & K. Plunkett (Eds.), Connectionist models of behaviour and cognition II: Proceedings of the 11th Neural Computation and Psychology Workshop (pp. 289-300). River Edge, NJ: World Scientific Publishing.

    Abstract

    We present a neural-symbolic learning model of sentence production which displays strong semantic systematicity and recursive productivity. Using this model, we provide evidence for the data-driven learnability of complex yes/no- questions.
  • Floyd, S. (2009). Nexos históricos, gramaticales y culturales de los números en cha'palaa [Historical, grammatical and cultural connections of Cha'palaa numerals]. In Proceedings of the Conference on Indigenous Languages of Latin America (CILLA) -IV.

    Abstract

    Los idiomas sudamericanas tienen una diversidad de sistemas numéricos, desde sistemas con solamente dos o tres términos en algunos idiomas amazónicos hasta sistemas con numerales extendiendo a miles. Una mirada al sistema del idioma cha’palaa de Ecuador demuestra rasgos de base-2, base-5, base-10 y base-20, ligados a diferentes etapas de cambio, desarrollo y contacto lingüístico. Conocer estas etapas nos permite proponer algunas correlaciones con lo que conocemos de la historia de contactos culturales en la región. The South American languages have diverse types of numeral systems, from systems of just two or three terms in some Amazonian languages to systems extending into the thousands. A look a the system of the Cha'palaa language of Ecuador demonstrates base-2, base-5, base-10 and base-20 features, linked to different stages of change, development and language contact. Learning about these stages permits up to propose some correlations between them and what we know about the history of cultural contact in the region.
  • Folia, V., Forkstam, C., Hagoort, P., & Petersson, K. M. (2009). Language comprehension: The interplay between form and content. In N. Taatgen, & H. van Rijn (Eds.), Proceedings of the 31th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1686-1691). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    In a 2x2 event-related FMRI study we find support for the idea that the inferior frontal cortex, centered on Broca’s region and its homologue, is involved in constructive unification operations during the structure-building process in parsing for comprehension. Tentatively, we provide evidence for a role of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex centered on BA 9/46 in the control component of the language system. Finally, the left temporo-parietal cortex, in the vicinity of Wernicke’s region, supports the interaction between the syntax of gender agreement and sentence-level semantics.
  • Forkstam, C., Jansson, A., Ingvar, M., & Petersson, K. M. (2009). Modality transfer of acquired structural regularities: A preference for an acoustic route. In N. Taatgen, & H. Van Rijn (Eds.), Proceedings of the 31th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    Human implicit learning can be investigated with implicit artificial grammar learning, a simple model for aspects of natural language acquisition. In this paper we investigate the remaining effect of modality transfer in syntactic classification of an acquired grammatical sequence structure after implicit grammar acquisition. Participants practiced either on acoustically presented syllable sequences or visually presented consonant letter sequences. During classification we independently manipulated the statistical frequency-based and rule-based characteristics of the classification stimuli. Participants performed reliably above chance on the within modality classification task although more so for those working on syllable sequence acquisition. These subjects were also the only group that kept a significant performance level in transfer classification. We speculate that this finding is of particular relevance in consideration of an ecological validity in the input signal in the use of artificial grammar learning and in language learning paradigms at large.
  • Friederici, A., & Levelt, W. J. M. (1987). Spatial description in microgravity: Aspects of cognitive adaptation. In P. R. Sahm, R. Jansen, & M. Keller (Eds.), Proceedings of the Norderney Symposium on Scientific Results of the German Spacelab Mission D1 (pp. 518-524). Köln, Germany: Wissenschaftliche Projektführung DI c/o DFVLR.
  • Garcia, N., Lenkiewicz, P., Freire, M., & Monteiro, P. (2009). A new architecture for optical burst switching networks based on cooperative control. In Proceeding of the 8th IEEE International Symposium on Network Computing and Applications (IEEE NCA09) (pp. 310-313).

    Abstract

    This paper presents a new architecture for optical burst switched networks where the control plane of the network functions in a cooperative manner. Each node interprets the data conveyed by the control packet and forwards it to the next nodes, making the control plane of the network distribute the relevant information to all the nodes in the network. A cooperation transmission tree is used, thus allowing all the nodes to store the information related to the traffic management in the network, and enabling better network resource planning at each node. A model of this network architecture is proposed, and its performance is evaluated.
  • Goldin-Meadow, S., Gentner, D., Ozyurek, A., & Gurcanli, O. (2009). Spatial language supports spatial cognition: Evidence from deaf homesigners [abstract]. Cognitive Processing, 10(Suppl. 2), S133-S134.
  • Grabe, E. (1998). Comparative intonational phonology: English and German. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen. doi:10.17617/2.2057683.
  • Gubian, M., Torreira, F., Strik, H., & Boves, L. (2009). Functional data analysis as a tool for analyzing speech dynamics a case study on the French word c'était. In Proceedings of the 10th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2009) (pp. 2199-2202).

    Abstract

    In this paper we introduce Functional Data Analysis (FDA) as a tool for analyzing dynamic transitions in speech signals. FDA makes it possible to perform statistical analyses of sets of mathematical functions in the same way as classical multivariate analysis treats scalar measurement data. We illustrate the use of FDA with a reduction phenomenon affecting the French word c'était /setε/ 'it was', which can be reduced to [stε] in conversational speech. FDA reveals that the dynamics of the transition from [s] to [t] in fully reduced cases may still be different from the dynamics of [s] - [t] transitions in underlying /st/ clusters such as in the word stage.
  • Le Guen, O. (2009). Geocentric gestural deixis among Yucatecan Maya (Quintana Roo, México). In 18th IACCP Book of Selected Congress Papers (pp. 123-136). Athens, Greece: Pedio Books Publishing.
  • Hammond, J. (2009). The grammar of nouns and verbs in Whitesands, an oceanic language of Southern Vanuatu. Master Thesis, University of Sydney, Sydney.

    Abstract

    Whitesands is an under-described language of southern Vanuatu, and this thesis presents Whitesands-specific data based on primary in-situ field research. The thesis addresses the distinction of noun and verb word classes in the language. It claims that current linguistic syntax theory cannot account for the argument structure of canonical object-denoting roots. It is shown that there are distinct lexical noun and verb classes in Whitesands but this is only a weak dichotomy. Stronger is the NP and VP distinction, and this is achieved by employing a new theoretical approach that proposes functional categories and their selection of complements as crucial tests of distinction. This approach contrasts with previous analyses of parts of speech in Oceanic languages and cross-linguistically. It ultimately explains many of the syntactic phenomena seen in the language family, including the above argument assignment dilemma, the alienable possession of nouns with classifiers and also the nominalisation processes.
  • Hanulikova, A., & Davidson, D. (2009). Inflectional entropy in Slovak. In J. Levicka, & R. Garabik (Eds.), Slovko 2009, NLP, Corpus Linguistics, Corpus Based Grammar Research (pp. 145-151). Bratislava, Slovakia: Slovak Academy of Sciences.
  • Hanulikova, A., & Weber, A. (2009). Experience with foreign accent influences non-native (L2) word recognition: The case of th-substitutions [Abstract]. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 125(4), 2762-2762.
  • Harbusch, K., & Kempen, G. (2009). Clausal coordinate ellipsis and its varieties in spoken German: A study with the TüBa-D/S Treebank of the VERBMOBIL corpus. In M. Passarotti, A. Przepiórkowski, S. Raynaud, & F. Van Eynde (Eds.), Proceedings of the The Eighth International Workshop on Treebanks and Linguistic Theories (pp. 83-94). Milano: EDUCatt.
  • Harbusch, K., & Kempen, G. (2009). Generating clausal coordinate ellipsis multilingually: A uniform approach based on postediting. In 12th European Workshop on Natural Language Generation: Proceedings of the Workshop (pp. 138-145). The Association for Computational Linguistics.

    Abstract

    Present-day sentence generators are often in-capable of producing a wide variety of well-formed elliptical versions of coordinated clauses, in particular, of combined elliptical phenomena (Gapping, Forward and Back-ward Conjunction Reduction, etc.). The ap-plicability of the various types of clausal co-ordinate ellipsis (CCE) presupposes detailed comparisons of the syntactic properties of the coordinated clauses. These nonlocal comparisons argue against approaches based on local rules that treat CCE structures as special cases of clausal coordination. We advocate an alternative approach where CCE rules take the form of postediting rules ap-plicable to nonelliptical structures. The ad-vantage is not only a higher level of modu-larity but also applicability to languages be-longing to different language families. We describe a language-neutral module (called Elleipo; implemented in JAVA) that gener-ates as output all major CCE versions of co-ordinated clauses. Elleipo takes as input linearly ordered nonelliptical coordinated clauses annotated with lexical identity and coreferentiality relationships between words and word groups in the conjuncts. We dem-onstrate the feasibility of a single set of postediting rules that attains multilingual coverage.
  • Janse, E. (2009). Hearing and cognitive measures predict elderly listeners' difficulty ignoring competing speech. In M. Boone (Ed.), Proceedings of the International Conference on Acoustics (pp. 1532-1535).
  • Jesse, A., & Janse, E. (2009). Visual speech information aids elderly adults in stream segregation. In B.-J. Theobald, & R. Harvey (Eds.), Proceedings of the International Conference on Auditory-Visual Speech Processing 2009 (pp. 22-27). Norwich, UK: School of Computing Sciences, University of East Anglia.

    Abstract

    Listening to a speaker while hearing another speaker talks is a challenging task for elderly listeners. We show that elderly listeners over the age of 65 with various degrees of age-related hearing loss benefit in this situation from also seeing the speaker they intend to listen to. In a phoneme monitoring task, listeners monitored the speech of a target speaker for either the phoneme /p/ or /k/ while simultaneously hearing a competing speaker. Critically, on some trials, the target speaker was also visible. Elderly listeners benefited in their response times and accuracy levels from seeing the target speaker when monitoring for the less visible /k/, but more so when monitoring for the highly visible /p/. Visual speech therefore aids elderly listeners not only by providing segmental information about the target phoneme, but also by providing more global information that allows for better performance in this adverse listening situation.
  • Kempen, G., & Harbusch, K. (1998). A 'tree adjoining' grammar without adjoining: The case of scrambling in German. In Fourth International Workshop on Tree Adjoining Grammars and Related Frameworks (TAG+4).
  • Kempen, G., & Hoenkamp, E. (1982). Incremental sentence generation: Implications for the structure of a syntactic processor. In J. Horecký (Ed.), COLING 82. Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Prague, July 5-10, 1982 (pp. 151-156). Amsterdam: North-Holland.

    Abstract

    Human speakers often produce sentences incrementally. They can start speaking having in mind only a fragmentary idea of what they want to say, and while saying this they refine the contents underlying subsequent parts of the utterance. This capability imposes a number of constraints on the design of a syntactic processor. This paper explores these constraints and evaluates some recent computational sentence generators from the perspective of incremental production.
  • Khetarpal, N., Majid, A., & Regier, T. (2009). Spatial terms reflect near-optimal spatial categories. In N. Taatgen, & H. Van Rijn (Eds.), Proceedings of the Thirty-First Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 2396-2401). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    Spatial terms in the world’s languages appear to reflect both universal conceptual tendencies and linguistic convention. A similarly mixed picture in the case of color naming has been accounted for in terms of near-optimal partitions of color space. Here, we demonstrate that this account generalizes to spatial terms. We show that the spatial terms of 9 diverse languages near-optimally partition a similarity space of spatial meanings, just as color terms near-optimally partition color space. This account accommodates both universal tendencies and cross-language differences in spatial category extension, and identifies general structuring principles that appear to operate across different semantic domains.
  • Kita, S., van Gijn, I., & van der Hulst, H. (1998). Movement phases in signs and co-speech gestures, and their transcription by human coders. In Gesture and Sign-Language in Human-Computer Interaction (Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence - LNCS Subseries, Vol. 1371) (pp. 23-35). Berlin, Germany: Springer-Verlag.

    Abstract

    The previous literature has suggested that the hand movement in co-speech gestures and signs consists of a series of phases with qualitatively different dynamic characteristics. In this paper, we propose a syntagmatic rule system for movement phases that applies to both co-speech gestures and signs. Descriptive criteria for the rule system were developed for the analysis video-recorded continuous production of signs and gesture. It involves segmenting a stream of body movement into phases and identifying different phase types. Two human coders used the criteria to analyze signs and cospeech gestures that are produced in natural discourse. It was found that the criteria yielded good inter-coder reliability. These criteria can be used for the technology of automatic recognition of signs and co-speech gestures in order to segment continuous production and identify the potentially meaningbearing phase.
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1980). Argumentation [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (38/39).
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1989). Kindersprache [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (73).
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1998). Kaleidoskop [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (112).
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1976). Psycholinguistik [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (23/24).
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1987). Sprache und Ritual [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (65).
  • Klein, W., & Dimroth, C. (Eds.). (2009). Worauf kann sich der Sprachunterricht stützen? [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 153.
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1982). Zweitspracherwerb [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (45).
  • Koenig, A., Ringersma, J., & Trilsbeek, P. (2009). The Language Archiving Technology domain. In Z. Vetulani (Ed.), Human Language Technologies as a Challenge for Computer Science and Linguistics (pp. 295-299).

    Abstract

    The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (MPI) manages an archive of linguistic research data with a current size of almost 20 Terabytes. Apart from in-house researchers other projects also store their data in the archive, most notably the Documentation of Endangered Languages (DoBeS) projects. The archive is available online and can be accessed by anybody with Internet access. To be able to manage this large amount of data the MPI's technical group has developed a software suite called Language Archiving Technology (LAT) that on the one hand helps researchers and archive managers to manage the data and on the other hand helps users in enriching their primary data with additional layers. All the MPI software is Java-based and developed according to open source principles (GNU, 2007). All three major operating systems (Windows, Linux, MacOS) are supported and the software works similarly on all of them. As the archive is online, many of the tools, especially the ones for accessing the data, are browser based. Some of these browser-based tools make use of Adobe Flex to create nice-looking GUIs. The LAT suite is a complete set of management and enrichment tools, and given the interaction between the tools the result is a complete LAT software domain. Over the last 10 years, this domain has proven its functionality and use, and is being deployed to servers in other institutions. This deployment is an important step in getting the archived resources back to the members of the speech communities whose languages are documented. In the paper we give an overview of the tools of the LAT suite and we describe their functionality and role in the integrated process of archiving, management and enrichment of linguistic data.
  • Kreuzer, H. (Ed.). (1971). Methodische Perspektiven [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (1/2).
  • Kuzla, C. (2009). Prosodic structure in speech production and perception. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Lausberg, H., & Sloetjes, H. (2009). NGCS/ELAN - Coding movement behaviour in psychotherapy [Meeting abstract]. PPmP - Psychotherapie · Psychosomatik · Medizinische Psychologie, 59: A113, 103.

    Abstract

    Individual and interactive movement behaviour (non-verbal behaviour / communication) specifically reflects implicit processes in psychotherapy [1,4,11]. However, thus far, the registration of movement behaviour has been a methodological challenge. We will present a coding system combined with an annotation tool for the analysis of movement behaviour during psychotherapy interviews [9]. The NGCS coding system enables to classify body movements based on their kinetic features alone [5,7]. The theoretical assumption behind the NGCS is that its main kinetic and functional movement categories are differentially associated with specific psychological functions and thus, have different neurobiological correlates [5-8]. ELAN is a multimodal annotation tool for digital video media [2,3,12]. The NGCS / ELAN template enables to link any movie to the same coding system and to have different raters independently work on the same file. The potential of movement behaviour analysis as an objective tool for psychotherapy research and for supervision in the psychosomatic practice is discussed by giving examples of the NGCS/ELAN analyses of psychotherapy sessions. While the quality of kinetic turn-taking and the therapistrsquor;s (implicit) adoption of the patientrsquor;s movements may predict therapy outcome, changes in the patientrsquor;s movement behaviour pattern may indicate changes in cognitive concepts and emotional states and thus, may help to identify therapeutically relevant processes [10].
  • Lenkiewicz, P., Pereira, M., Freire, M. M., & Fernandes, J. (2009). A new 3D image segmentation method for parallel architectures. In Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo [ICME 2009] June 28 – July 3, 2009, New York (pp. 1813-1816).

    Abstract

    This paper presents a novel model for 3D image segmentation and reconstruction. It has been designed with the aim to be implemented over a computer cluster or a multi-core platform. The required features include a nearly absolute independence between the processes participating in the segmentation task and providing amount of work as equal as possible for all the participants. As a result, it is avoid many drawbacks often encountered when performing a parallelization of an algorithm that was constructed to operate in a sequential manner. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm based on the new segmentation model is efficient and shows a very good, nearly linear performance growth along with the growing number of processing units.
  • Lenkiewicz, P., Pereira, M., Freire, M., & Fernandes, J. (2009). The dynamic topology changes model for unsupervised image segmentation. In Proceedings of the 11th IEEE International Workshop on Multimedia Signal Processing (MMSP'09) (pp. 1-5).

    Abstract

    Deformable models are a popular family of image segmentation techniques, which has been gaining significant focus in the last two decades, serving both for real-world applications as well as the base for research work. One of the features that the deformable models offer and that is considered a much desired one, is the ability to change their topology during the segmentation process. Using this characteristic it is possible to perform segmentation of objects with discontinuities in their bodies or to detect an undefined number of objects in the scene. In this paper we present our model for handling the topology changes in image segmentation methods based on the Active Volumes solution. The said model is capable of performing the changes in the structure of objects while the segmentation progresses, what makes it efficient and suitable for implementations over powerful execution environment, like multi-core architectures or computer clusters.
  • Lenkiewicz, P., Pereira, M., Freire, M., & Fernandes, J. (2009). The whole mesh Deformation Model for 2D and 3D image segmentation. In Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP 2009) (pp. 4045-4048).

    Abstract

    In this paper we present a novel approach for image segmentation using Active Nets and Active Volumes. Those solutions are based on the Deformable Models, with slight difference in the method for describing the shapes of interests - instead of using a contour or a surface they represented the segmented objects with a mesh structure, which allows to describe not only the surface of the objects but also to model their interiors. This is obtained by dividing the nodes of the mesh in two categories, namely internal and external ones, which will be responsible for two different tasks. In our new approach we propose to negate this separation and use only one type of nodes. Using that assumption we manage to significantly shorten the time of segmentation while maintaining its quality.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1991). Lexical access in speech production: Stages versus cascading. In H. Peters, W. Hulstijn, & C. Starkweather (Eds.), Speech motor control and stuttering (pp. 3-10). Amsterdam: Excerpta Medica.
  • Levelt, W. J. M., & Schriefers, H. (1987). Stages of lexical access. In G. A. Kempen (Ed.), Natural language generation: new results in artificial intelligence, psychology and linguistics (pp. 395-404). Dordrecht: Nijhoff.
  • Levinson, S. C. (1987). Minimization and conversational inference. In M. Bertuccelli Papi, & J. Verschueren (Eds.), The pragmatic perspective: Selected papers from the 1985 International Pragmatics Conference (pp. 61-129). Benjamins.
  • McDonough, J., Lehnert-LeHouillier, H., & Bardhan, N. P. (2009). The perception of nasalized vowels in American English: An investigation of on-line use of vowel nasalization in lexical access. In Nasal 2009.

    Abstract

    The goal of the presented study was to investigate the use of coarticulatory vowel nasalization in lexical access by native speakers of American English. In particular, we compare the use of coart culatory place of articulation cues to that of coarticulatory vowel nasalization. Previous research on lexical access has shown that listeners use cues to the place of articulation of a postvocalic stop in the preceding vowel. However, vowel nasalization as cue to an upcoming nasal consonant has been argued to be a more complex phenomenon. In order to establish whether coarticulatory vowel nasalization aides in the process of lexical access in the same way as place of articulation cues do, we conducted two perception experiments: an off-line 2AFC discrimination task and an on-line eyetracking study using the visual world paradigm. The results of our study suggest that listeners are indeed able to use vowel nasalization in similar ways to place of articulation information, and that both types of cues aide in lexical access.
  • 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.
  • Musgrave, S., & Cutfield, S. (2009). Language documentation and an Australian National Corpus. In M. Haugh, K. Burridge, J. Mulder, & P. Peters (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 2008 HCSNet Workshop on Designing the Australian National Corpus: Mustering Languages (pp. 10-18). Somerville: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.

    Abstract

    Corpus linguistics and language documentation are usually considered separate subdisciplines within linguistics, having developed from different traditions and often operating on different scales, but the authors will suggest that there are commonalities to the two: both aim to represent language use in a community, and both are concerned with managing digital data. The authors propose that the development of the Australian National Corpus (AusNC) be guided by the experience of language documentation in the management of multimodal digital data and its annotation, and in ethical issues pertaining to making the data accessible. This would allow an AusNC that is distributed, multimodal, and multilingual, with holdings of text, audio, and video data distributed across multiple institutions; and including Indigenous, sign, and migrant community languages. An audit of language material held by Australian institutions and individuals is necessary to gauge the diversity and volume of possible content, and to inform common technical standards.
  • Nijland, L., & Janse, E. (Eds.). (2009). Auditory processing in speakers with acquired or developmental language disorders [Special Issue]. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 23(3).
  • Norcliffe, E. (2009). Head-marking in usage and grammar: A study of variation and change in Yucatec Maya. PhD Thesis, Stanford University, Stanford, CA.

    Abstract

    Many Mayan languages make use of a special dependent verb form (the Agent Focus, or AF verb form), which alternates with the normal transitive verb form (the synthetic verb form) of main clauses when the subject of a transitive verb is focused, questioned or relativized. It has been a centerpiece of research in Mayan morphosyntax over the last forty years, due to its puzzling formal and distributional properties. In this dissertation I show how a usage-oriented approach to the phenomenon can provide important insights into this area of grammar which resists any categorical explanation. I propose that the historical origins of these special verb forms can be traced to the emergence of head marking. Drawing on cross-linguistic and historical data, I argue that the special verbs that occur in A-bar dependencies in Yucatec and a range of head-marking languages are byproducts of the frequency-sensitive gramaticalization process by which independent pronouns become pronominal inflection on verbs. I show that the relatively low frequency of adjacent pronoun-verb combinations in extraction contexts (where gaps are more frequent than resumptive pronouns) can give rise to asymmetric patterns of pronoun grammaticalization, and thus lead to the emergence of these morphological alternations. The asymmetric frequency distributions of gaps and RPs (within and across languages) in turn can be explained by processing preferences. I present three experiments which show that Yucatec speakers are more likely to use the resumptive verb form in embedded environments, and where the antecedent is indefinite. Specifically, these studies indicate the need to bring discourse-level processing principles into the account of what have often been taken to be autonomously sentence-internal phenomena: factors such as distance and the referential salience of the antecedent have been shown to influence referential form choice in discourse, suggesting that the same cognitive principles lie behind both types of variation. More generally, the Yucatec studies demonstrate that production preferences in Yucatec relative clauses reflect patterns of RP/gap distributions that have been attested across grammars. The Highest Subject Restriction (the ban on subject RPs in local dependencies), which is apparently a categorical constraint in many languages, is reflected probabilistically in Yucatec in terms of production preferences. The definiteness restriction (RPs are obligatory with indefinite antecedents), which has been reported categorically in other languages, is also visible probabilistically in Yucatec production. This lends some statistically robust support to the view that typological patterns can arise via the conventionalization of processing preferences.
  • 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.
  • Pacheco, A., Araújo, S., Faísca, L., Petersson, K. M., & Reis, A. (2009). Profiling dislexic children: Phonology and visual naming skills. In Abstracts presented at the International Neuropsychological Society, Finnish Neuropsychological Society, Joint Mid-Year Meeting July 29-August 1, 2009. Helsinki, Finland & Tallinn, Estonia (pp. 40). Retrieved from http://www.neuropsykologia.fi/ins2009/INS_MY09_Abstract.pdf.
  • Ringersma, J., Zinn, C., & Kemps-Snijders, M. (2009). LEXUS & ViCoS From lexical to conceptual spaces. In 1st International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation (ICLDC).

    Abstract

    LEXUS and ViCoS: from lexicon to conceptual spaces LEXUS is a web-based lexicon tool and the knowledge space software ViCoS is an extension of LEXUS, allowing users to create relations between objects in and across lexica. LEXUS and ViCoS are part of the Language Archiving Technology software, developed at the MPI for Psycholinguistics to archive and enrich linguistic resources collected in the framework of language documentation projects. LEXUS is of primary interest for language documentation, offering the possibility to not just create a digital dictionary, but additionally it allows the creation of multi-media encyclopedic lexica. ViCoS provides an interface between the lexical space and the ontological space. Its approach permits users to model a world of concepts and their interrelations based on categorization patterns made by the speech community. We describe the LEXUS and ViCoS functionalities using three cases from DoBeS language documentation projects: (1) Marquesan The Marquesan lexicon was initially created in Toolbox and imported into LEXUS using the Toolbox import functionality. The lexicon is enriched with multi-media to illustrate the meaning of the words in its cultural environment. Members of the speech community consider words as keys to access and describe relevant parts of their life and traditions. Their understanding of words is best described by the various associations they evoke rather than in terms of any formal theory of meaning. Using ViCoS a knowledge space of related concepts is being created. (2) Kola-Sámi Two lexica are being created in LEXUS: RuSaDic lexicon is a Russian-Kildin wordlist in which the entries are of relative limited structure and content. SaRuDiC is a more complex structured lexicon with much richer content, including multi-media fragments and derivations. Using ViCoS we have created a connection between the two lexica, so that speakers who are familiair with Russian and wish to revitalize their Kildin can enter the lexicon through the RuSaDic and from there approach the informative SaRuDic. Similary we will create relations from the two lexica to external open databases, like e.g. Álgu. (3) Beaver A speaker database including kinship relations has been created and the database has been imported into LEXUS. In the LEXUS views the relations for individual speakers are being displayed. Using ViCoS the relational information from the database will be extracted to form a kisnhip relation space with specific relation types, like e.g 'mother-of'. The whole set of relations from the database can be displayed in one ViCoS relation window, and zoom functionality is available.
  • De Ruiter, J. P. (1998). Gesture and speech production. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen. doi:10.17617/2.2057686.
  • Sauter, D., Eisner, F., Ekman, P., & Scott, S. K. (2009). Universal vocal signals of emotion. In N. Taatgen, & H. Van Rijn (Eds.), Proceedings of the 31st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2009) (pp. 2251-2255). Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    Emotional signals allow for the sharing of important information with conspecifics, for example to warn them of danger. Humans use a range of different cues to communicate to others how they feel, including facial, vocal, and gestural signals. Although much is known about facial expressions of emotion, less research has focused on affect in the voice. We compare British listeners to individuals from remote Namibian villages who have had no exposure to Western culture, and examine recognition of non-verbal emotional vocalizations, such as screams and laughs. We show that a number of emotions can be universally recognized from non-verbal vocal signals. In addition we demonstrate the specificity of this pattern, with a set of additional emotions only recognized within, but not across these cultural groups. Our findings indicate that a small set of primarily negative emotions have evolved signals across several modalities, while most positive emotions are communicated with culture-specific signals.
  • Scharenborg, O., & Okolowski, S. (2009). Lexical embedding in spoken Dutch. In INTERSPEECH 2009 - 10th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (pp. 1879-1882). ISCA Archive.

    Abstract

    A stretch of speech is often consistent with multiple words, e.g., the sequence /hæm/ is consistent with ‘ham’ but also with the first syllable of ‘hamster’, resulting in temporary ambiguity. However, to what degree does this lexical embedding occur? Analyses on two corpora of spoken Dutch showed that 11.9%-19.5% of polysyllabic word tokens have word-initial embedding, while 4.1%-7.5% of monosyllabic word tokens can appear word-initially embedded. This is much lower than suggested by an analysis of a large dictionary of Dutch. Speech processing thus appears to be simpler than one might expect on the basis of statistics on a dictionary.
  • Scharenborg, O. (2009). Using durational cues in a computational model of spoken-word recognition. In INTERSPEECH 2009 - 10th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (pp. 1675-1678). ISCA Archive.

    Abstract

    Evidence that listeners use durational cues to help resolve temporarily ambiguous speech input has accumulated over the past few years. In this paper, we investigate whether durational cues are also beneficial for word recognition in a computational model of spoken-word recognition. Two sets of simulations were carried out using the acoustic signal as input. The simulations showed that the computational model, like humans, takes benefit from durational cues during word recognition, and uses these to disambiguate the speech signal. These results thus provide support for the theory that durational cues play a role in spoken-word recognition.
  • Schimke, S. (2009). The acquisition of finiteness by Turkish learners of German and Turkish learners of French: Investigating knowledge of forms and functions in production and comprehension. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.

    Abstract

    Sarah Schimke onderzocht hoe mensen die op volwassen leeftijd naar een ander land verhuizen de taal van dit land leren, ook zonder veel taalinstructie te krijgen. Twee groepen werden onderzocht: Turkse immigranten in Frankrijk en Turkse immigranten in Duitsland. De resultaten laten zien dat volwassen leerlingen in het begin van het verwervingsproces een gemakkelijkere variatie van de doeltaal creëren. Er worden wel woorden van de doeltaal verworven en gebruikt, maar er wordt een gesimplificeerde grammatica toegepast. In het bijzonder gebruiken leerlingen in deze fase geen finietheid, dus geen morfologische variaties van werkwoorden. Schimke toont aan dat als finietheid wordt verworven, dit de grammatica van de leerlingen sterk verandert en dat deze veel sterker op de doeltaalgrammatica begint te lijken. Ook toont ze aan dat dit proces door karakteristieken van de doeltaal, zoals de woordvolgorde en de complexiteit van de morfologie, wordt beïnvloed

    Additional information

    full text via Radboud Repository
  • Schuppler, B., Van Dommelen, W., Koreman, J., & Ernestus, M. (2009). Word-final [t]-deletion: An analysis on the segmental and sub-segmental level. In Proceedings of the 10th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2009) (pp. 2275-2278). Causal Productions Pty Ltd.

    Abstract

    This paper presents a study on the reduction of word-final [t]s in conversational standard Dutch. Based on a large amount of tokens annotated on the segmental level, we show that the bigram frequency and the segmental context are the main predictors for the absence of [t]s. In a second study, we present an analysis of the detailed acoustic properties of word-final [t]s and we show that bigram frequency and context also play a role on the subsegmental level. This paper extends research on the realization of /t/ in spontaneous speech and shows the importance of incorporating sub-segmental properties in models of speech.
  • Scott, D. R., & Cutler, A. (1982). Segmental cues to syntactic structure. In Proceedings of the Institute of Acoustics 'Spectral Analysis and its Use in Underwater Acoustics' (pp. E3.1-E3.4). London: Institute of Acoustics.
  • Senft, G. (1991). Bakavilisi Biga - we can 'turn' the language - or: What happens to English words in Kilivila language? In W. Bahner, J. Schildt, & D. Viehwegger (Eds.), Proceedings of the XIVth International Congress of Linguists (pp. 1743-1746). Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (2009). Logical systems and natural logical intuitions. In Current issues in unity and diversity of languages: Collection of the papers selected from the CIL 18, held at Korea University in Seoul on July 21-26, 2008. http://www.cil18.org (pp. 53-60).

    Abstract

    The present paper is part of a large research programme investigating the nature and properties of the predicate logic inherent in natural language. The general hypothesis is that natural speakers start off with a basic-natural logic, based on natural cognitive functions, including the basic-natural way of dealing with plural objects. As culture spreads, functional pressure leads to greater generalization and mathematical correctness, yielding ever more refined systems until the apogee of standard modern predicate logic. Four systems of predicate calculus are considered: Basic-Natural Predicate Calculus (BNPC), Aritsotelian-Abelardian Predicate Calculus (AAPC), Aritsotelian-Boethian Predicate Calculus (ABPC), also known as the classic Square of Opposition, and Standard Modern Predicate Calculus (SMPC). (ABPC is logically faulty owing to its Undue Existential Import (UEI), but that fault is repaired by the addition of a presuppositional component to the logic.) All four systems are checked against seven natural logical intuitions. It appears that BNPC scores best (five out of seven), followed by ABPC (three out of seven). AAPC and SMPC finish ex aequo with two out of seven.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1991). Notes on noun phrases and quantification. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Current Issues in Computational Linguistics (pp. 19-44). Penang, Malaysia: Universiti Sains Malaysia.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1971). Qualche osservazione sulla frase durativa e iterativa in italiano. In M. Medici, & R. Simone (Eds.), Grammatica trasformazionale italiana (pp. 209-224). Roma: Bulzoni.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1982). Riorientamenti metodologici nello studio della variabilità linguistica. In D. Gambarara, & A. D'Atri (Eds.), Ideologia, filosofia e linguistica: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Rende (CS) 15-17 Settembre 1978 ( (pp. 499-515). Roma: Bulzoni.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1991). What makes a text untranslatable? In H. M. N. Noor Ein, & H. S. Atiah (Eds.), Pragmatik Penterjemahan: Prinsip, Amalan dan Penilaian Menuju ke Abad 21 ("The Pragmatics of Translation: Principles, Practice and Evaluation Moving towards the 21st Century") (pp. 19-27). Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1980). Variabele competentie: Linguïstiek en sociolinguïstiek anno 1980. In Handelingen van het 36e Nederlands Filologencongres: Gehouden te Groningen op woensdag 9, donderdag 10 en vrijdag 11 April 1980 (pp. 41-56). Amsterdam: Holland University Press.
  • Stehouwer, H., & van Zaanen, M. (2009). Language models for contextual error detection and correction. In Proceedings of the EACL 2009 Workshop on Computational Linguistic Aspects of Grammatical Inference (pp. 41-48). Association for Computational Linguistics.

    Abstract

    The problem of identifying and correcting confusibles, i.e. context-sensitive spelling errors, in text is typically tackled using specifically trained machine learning classifiers. For each different set of confusibles, a specific classifier is trained and tuned. In this research, we investigate a more generic approach to context-sensitive confusible correction. Instead of using specific classifiers, we use one generic classifier based on a language model. This measures the likelihood of sentences with different possible solutions of a confusible in place. The advantage of this approach is that all confusible sets are handled by a single model. Preliminary results show that the performance of the generic classifier approach is only slightly worse that that of the specific classifier approach
  • Stehouwer, H., & Van Zaanen, M. (2009). Token merging in language model-based confusible disambiguation. In T. Calders, K. Tuyls, & M. Pechenizkiy (Eds.), Proceedings of the 21st Benelux Conference on Artificial Intelligence (pp. 241-248).

    Abstract

    In the context of confusible disambiguation (spelling correction that requires context), the synchronous back-off strategy combined with traditional n-gram language models performs well. However, when alternatives consist of a different number of tokens, this classification technique cannot be applied directly, because the computation of the probabilities is skewed. Previous work already showed that probabilities based on different order n-grams should not be compared directly. In this article, we propose new probability metrics in which the size of the n is varied according to the number of tokens of the confusible alternative. This requires access to n-grams of variable length. Results show that the synchronous back-off method is extremely robust. We discuss the use of suffix trees as a technique to store variable length n-gram information efficiently.
  • Torreira, F., & Ernestus, M. (2009). Probabilistic effects on French [t] duration. In Proceedings of the 10th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2009) (pp. 448-451). Causal Productions Pty Ltd.

    Abstract

    The present study shows that [t] consonants are affected by probabilistic factors in a syllable-timed language as French, and in spontaneous as well as in journalistic speech. Study 1 showed a word bigram frequency effect in spontaneous French, but its exact nature depended on the corpus on which the probabilistic measures were based. Study 2 investigated journalistic speech and showed an effect of the joint frequency of the test word and its following word. We discuss the possibility that these probabilistic effects are due to the speaker’s planning of upcoming words, and to the speaker’s adaptation to the listener’s needs.

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