Publications

Displaying 1 - 46 of 46
  • Ameka, F. K. (1991). Ewe: Its grammatical constructions and illocutionary devices. PhD Thesis, Australian National University, Canberra.
  • Andics, A. (2013). Who is talking? Behavioural and neural evidence for norm-based coding in voice identity learning. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Brand, S. (2017). The processing of reduced word pronunciation variants by natives and learners: Evidence from French casual speech. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Doherty, M., & Klein, W. (Eds.). (1991). Übersetzung [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (84).
  • Dolscheid, S. (2013). High pitches and thick voices: The role of language in space-pitch associations. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Guadalupe, T. (2017). The biology of variation in anatomical brain asymmetries. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Hanique, I. (2013). Mental representation and processing of reduced words in casual speech. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Hartung, F. (2017). Getting under your skin: The role of perspective and simulation of experience in narrative comprehension. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Hayano, K. (2013). Territories of knowledge in Japanese conversation. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.

    Abstract

    This thesis focuses on one aspect of interactional competence: competence to manage knowledge distribution in conversation. In order to be considered competent in everyday interaction, participants need not only to index one another's knowledge states but also to engage in dynamic negotiation of knowledge distribution. Adopting the methodology of conversation analysis, the thesis investigates how participants' orientations to knowledge distribution, 'epistemicity', are manifested. The thesis examines three interactional environments: assessment sequences, informing sequences and polar question-answer sequences. A systematic analysis reveals that interactants orient to different aspects of knowledge in different environments, employing different grammatical resources. When they assess an object, they are concerned about who possesses 'epistemic primacy'. Japanese final particles and the practices of intensification serve together to claim epistemic primacy and provide support for the claim. It is also reported that interactants are oriented to achieve 'epistemic congruence' − consensus regarding how knowledge is distributed among them. When one provides the other with new information, the exchange commonly develops into a four-turn sequence, instead of a minimal adjacency pair. It is shown that this sequence organization allows interactants to achieve a balance between territories of experience, affiliation and empathy. In polar question-answer sequences, how (un)expected or novel a given piece of information is becomes an issue. Answers are found to be formulated such that they adopt epistemic stances that are assertive enough to match the level of (un)certainty expressed by questioners. The thesis contributes to our understanding of how social interaction is organized. It becomes clear from the findings that a wide range of aspects of language use and interactional organization are dominated by interactants' orientations to epistemicity. Participants manage knowledge distribution in everyday interaction, which may be the most fundamental means of managing their social statuses and relations.

    Additional information

    full text via Radboud Repository
  • Heyselaar, E. (2017). Influences on the magnitude of syntactic priming. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Hoey, E. (2017). Lapse organization in interaction. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1976). Psycholinguistik [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (23/24).
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (2000). Sprache des Rechts [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (118).
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1987). Sprache und Ritual [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (65).
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1986). Sprachverfall [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (62).
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1985). Schriftlichkeit [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (59).
  • Krämer, I. (2000). Interpreting indefinites: An experimental study of children's language comprehension. PhD Thesis, University of Utrecht, Utrecht. doi:10.17617/2.2057626.
  • Kreuzer, H. (Ed.). (1971). Methodische Perspektiven [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (1/2).
  • Kunert, R. (2017). Music and language comprehension in the brain. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Lam, N. H. L. (2017). Comprehending comprehension: Insights from neuronal oscillations on the neuronal basis of language. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Lewis, A. G. (2017). Explorations of beta-band neural oscillations during language comprehension: Sentence processing and beyond. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Liszkowski, U. (2000). A belief about theory of mind: The relation between children's inhibitory control and their common sense psychological knowledge. Master Thesis, University of Essex.
  • Little, H. (Ed.). (2017). Special Issue on the Emergence of Sound Systems [Special Issue]. The Journal of Language Evolution, 2(1).
  • Lockwood, G. (2017). Talking sense: The behavioural and neural correlates of sound symbolism. PhD Thesis, Radboud University, Nijmegen.
  • Manrique, E. (2017). Achieving mutual understanding in Argentine Sign Language (LSA). PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Moers, C. (2017). The neighbors will tell you what to expect: Effects of aging and predictability on language processing. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Montero-Melis, G. (2017). Thoughts in Motion: The Role of Long-Term L1 and Short-Term L2 Experience when Talking and Thinking of Caused Motion. PhD Thesis, Stockholm University, Centre for Research on Bilingualism, Stockholm.

    Abstract

    This thesis is about whether language affects thinking. It deals with the linguistic relativity hypothesis, which proposes that the language we speak influences the way we think. This hypothesis is investigated in the domain of caused motion (e.g., ‘The man rolled the tyre into the garage’), by looking at Spanish and Swedish, two languages that show striking differences in how motion events are encoded. The thesis consists of four studies. The first two focus on native speakers of Spanish and Swedish. Study I compares how Spanish and Swedish speakers describe the same set of caused motion events, directing the spotlight at how variable the descriptions are in each language. The results confirm earlier findings from semantic typology regarding the dominant ways of expressing the events in each language: Spanish behaves like a verb-framed language and Swedish like a satellite-framed language (Talmy, 2000). Going beyond previous findings, the study demonstrates—using the tools of entropy and Monte Carlo simulations—that there is markedly more variability in Spanish than in Swedish descriptions. Study II tests whether differences in how Spanish and Swedish speakers describe caused motion events are reflected in how they think about such events. Using a novel similarity arrangement task, it is found that Spanish and Swedish speakers partly differ in how they represent caused motion events if they can access language during the task. However, the differences disappear when the possibility to use language is momentarily blocked by an interference task. The last two studies focus on Swedish learners of Spanish as a second language (L2). Study III explores how Swedish learners (compared to native Spanish speakers) adapt their Spanish motion descriptions to recently encountered input. Using insights from the literature on structural priming, we find that Swedish learners initially expect to encounter in their L2, Spanish, those verb types that are typical in Swedish (manner verbs like ‘roll’) but that, with increasing proficiency, their expectations become increasingly attuned to the typical Spanish pattern of using path verbs (like ‘enter’). These expectations are reflected in the way L2 learners adapt their own production to the Spanish input. Study IV asks whether recent linguistic experience in an L2 can affect how L2 learners think about motion events. It is found that encountering motion descriptions in the L2 that emphasize different types of information (path or manner) leads L2 speakers to perceive similarity along different dimensions in a subsequent similarity arrangement task. Taken together, the thesis argues that the study of the relation between language and thought affords more valuable insights when not posed as an either-or question (i.e., does language affect thought or not?). In this spirit, the thesis contributes to the wider aim of investigating the conditions under which language does or does not affect thought and explores what the different outcomes tell us about language, thought, and the intricate mechanisms that relate them.
  • Mulder, K. (2013). Family and neighbourhood relations in the mental lexicon: A cross-language perspective. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.

    Abstract

    We lezen en horen dagelijks duizenden woorden zonder dat het ons enige moeite lijkt te kosten. Toch speelt zich in ons brein ondertussen een complex mentaal proces af, waarbij tal van andere woorden dan het aangeboden woord, ook actief worden. Dit gebeurt met name wanneer die andere woorden overeenkomen met de feitelijk aangeboden woorden in spelling, uitspraak of betekenis. Deze activatie als gevolg van gelijkenis strekt zich zelfs uit tot andere talen: ook daarin worden gelijkende woorden actief. Waar liggen de grenzen van dit activatieproces? Activeer je bij het verwerken van het Engelse woord 'steam' ook het Nederlandse woord 'stram'(een zogenaamd 'buurwoord)? En activeer je bij 'clock' zowel 'clockwork' als 'klokhuis' ( twee morfolologische familieleden uit verschillende talen)? Kimberley Mulder onderzocht hoe het leesproces van Nederlands-Engelse tweetaligen wordt beïnvloed door zulke relaties. In meerdere experimentele studies vond ze dat tweetaligen niet alleen morfologische familieleden en orthografische buren activeren uit de taal waarin ze op dat moment lezen, maar ook uit de andere taal die ze kennen. Het lezen van een woord beperkt zich dus geenszins tot wat je eigenlijk ziet, maar activeert een heel netwerk van woorden in je brein.

    Additional information

    full text via Radboud Repository
  • Neger, T. M. (2017). Learning from the (un)expected: Age and individual differences in statistical learning and perceptual learning in speech. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen. doi:10.17617/2.2482848.
  • Ortega, G. (2013). Acquisition of a signed phonological system by hearing adults: The Role of sign structure and iconcity. PhD Thesis, University College London, London.

    Abstract

    The phonological system of a sign language comprises meaningless sub-lexical units that define the structure of a sign. A number of studies have examined how learners of a sign language as a first language (L1) acquire these components. However, little is understood about the mechanism by which hearing adults develop visual phonological categories when learning a sign language as a second language (L2). Developmental studies have shown that sign complexity and iconicity, the clear mapping between the form of a sign and its referent, shape in different ways the order of emergence of a visual phonology. The aim of the present dissertation was to investigate how these two factors affect the development of a visual phonology in hearing adults learning a sign language as L2. The empirical data gathered in this dissertation confirms that sign structure and iconicity are important factors that determine L2 phonological development. Non-signers perform better at discriminating the contrastive features of phonologically simple signs than signs with multiple elements. Handshape was the parameter most difficult to learn, followed by movement, then orientation and finally location which is the same order of acquisition reported in L1 sign acquisition. In addition, the ability to access the iconic properties of signs had a detrimental effect in phonological development because iconic signs were consistently articulated less accurately than arbitrary signs. Participants tended to retain the iconic elements of signs but disregarded their exact phonetic structure. Further, non-signers appeared to process iconic signs as iconic gestures at least at the early stages of sign language acquisition. The empirical data presented in this dissertation suggest that non-signers exploit their gestural system as scaffolding of the new manual linguistic system and that sign L2 phonological development is strongly influenced by the structural complexity of a sign and its degree of iconicity.
  • Poellmann, K. (2013). The many ways listeners adapt to reductions in casual speech. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Puccini, D. (2013). The use of deictic versus representational gestures in infancy. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Rommers, J. (2013). Seeing what's next: Processing and anticipating language referring to objects. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Rowland, C. F. (2000). The grammatical acquisition of wh-questions in early English multi-word speech. PhD Thesis, University of Nottingham, UK.

    Abstract

    Recent studies of wh-question acquisition have tended to come from the nativist side of the language acquisition debate with little input from a constructivist perspective. The present work was designed to redress the balance, first by presenting a detailed description of young children's wh-question acquisition data, second, by providing detailed critiques of two nativist theories of wh- question acquisition, and third, by presenting a preliminary account of young children's wh-question development from a constructivist perspective. Analyses of the data from twelve 2 to 3 year old children collected over a year and of data from an older child (Adam from the Brown corpus, 1973) are described and three conclusions are drawn. First it is argued that the data suggest that children's knowledge of how to form wh-questions builds up gradually as they learn how to combine lexical items such as wh-words and auxiliaries in specific ways. Second, it is concluded that two nativist theories of grammatical development (Radford, 1990, 1992, 1995, 1996, Valian, Lasser & Mandelbaum, 1992) fail to account successfully for the wh-question data produced by the children. Third, it is asserted that the lexically-specific nature of children's early wh-questions is compatible with a lexical constructivist view of development, which proposes that the language learning mechanism learns by picking up high frequency lexical patterns from the input. The implications of these conclusions for theories of language development and future research are discussed.
  • Sauppe, S. (2017). The role of voice and word order in incremental sentence processing: Studies on sentence production and comprehension in Tagalog and German. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Schoot, L. (2017). Language processing in a conversation context. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Schuerman, W. L. (2017). Sensorimotor experience in speech perception. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Schultze-Berndt, E. (2000). Simple and complex verbs in Jaminjung: A study of event categorisation in an Australian language. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen. doi:10.17617/2.2057716.
  • Shao, Z. (2013). Contributions of executive control to individual differences in word production. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • De Vaan, L. (2017). Mental representations of Dutch regular morphologically complex neologisms. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Van der Zande, P. (2013). Hearing and seeing speech: Perceptual adjustments in auditory-visual speech processing. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Vanlangendonck, F. (2017). Finding common ground: On the neural mechanisms of communicative language production. PhD Thesis, Radboud University, Nijmegen.
  • von Stutterheim, C., & Flecken, M. (Eds.). (2013). Principles of information organization in L2 discourse [Special Issue]. International Review of Applied linguistics in Language Teaching (IRAL), 51(2).
  • Witteman, M. J. (2013). Lexical processing of foreign-accented speech: Rapid and flexible adaptation. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • De Zubicaray, G., & Fisher, S. E. (Eds.). (2017). Genes, brain and language [Special Issue]. Brain and Language, 172.
  • De Zubicaray, G. I., Acheson, D. J., & Hartsuiker, R. J. (Eds.). (2013). Mind what you say - general and specific mechanisms for monitoring in speech production [Research topic] [Special Issue]. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. Retrieved from http://www.frontiersin.org/human_neuroscience/researchtopics/mind_what_you_say_-_general_an/1197.

    Abstract

    Psycholinguistic research has typically portrayed speech production as a relatively automatic process. This is because when errors are made, they occur as seldom as one in every thousand words we utter. However, it has long been recognised that we need some form of control over what we are currently saying and what we plan to say. This capacity to both monitor our inner speech and self-correct our speech output has often been assumed to be a property of the language comprehension system. More recently, it has been demonstrated that speech production benefits from interfacing with more general cognitive processes such as selective attention, short-term memory (STM) and online response monitoring to resolve potential conflict and successfully produce the output of a verbal plan. The conditions and levels of representation according to which these more general planning, monitoring and control processes are engaged during speech production remain poorly understood. Moreover, there remains a paucity of information about their neural substrates, despite some of the first evidence of more general monitoring having come from electrophysiological studies of error related negativities (ERNs). While aphasic speech errors continue to be a rich source of information, there has been comparatively little research focus on instances of speech repair. The purpose of this Frontiers Research Topic is to provide a forum for researchers to contribute investigations employing behavioural, neuropsychological, electrophysiological, neuroimaging and virtual lesioning techniques. In addition, while the focus of the research topic is on novel findings, we welcome submission of computational simulations, review articles and methods papers.

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