Publications

Displaying 1 - 90 of 90
  • Beattie, G. W., Cutler, A., & Pearson, M. (1982). Why is Mrs Thatcher interrupted so often? [Letters to Nature]. Nature, 300, 744-747. doi:10.1038/300744a0.

    Abstract

    If a conversation is to proceed smoothly, the participants have to take turns to speak. Studies of conversation have shown that there are signals which speakers give to inform listeners that they are willing to hand over the conversational turn1−4. Some of these signals are part of the text (for example, completion of syntactic segments), some are non-verbal (such as completion of a gesture), but most are carried by the pitch, timing and intensity pattern of the speech; for example, both pitch and loudness tend to drop particularly low at the end of a speaker's turn. When one speaker interrupts another, the two can be said to be disputing who has the turn. Interruptions can occur because one participant tries to dominate or disrupt the conversation. But it could also be the case that mistakes occur in the way these subtle turn-yielding signals are transmitted and received. We demonstrate here that many interruptions in an interview with Mrs Margaret Thatcher, the British Prime Minister, occur at points where independent judges agree that her turn appears to have finished. It is suggested that she is unconsciously displaying turn-yielding cues at certain inappropriate points. The turn-yielding cues responsible are identified.
  • Bowerman, M. (1971). [Review of A. Bar Adon & W.F. Leopold (Eds.), Child language: A book of readings (Prentice Hall, 1971)]. Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 16, 808-809.
  • Bowerman, M. (1983). How do children avoid constructing an overly general grammar in the absence of feedback about what is not a sentence? Papers and Reports on Child Language Development, 22, 23-35.

    Abstract

    The theory that language acquisition is guided and constrained by inborn linguistic knowledge is assessed. Specifically, the "no negative evidence" view, the belief that linguistic theory should be restricted in such a way that the grammars it allows can be learned by children on the basis of positive evidence only, is explored. Child language data are cited in order to investigate influential innatist approaches to language acquisition. Baker's view that children are innately constrained in significant ways with respect to language acquisition is evaluated. Evidence indicates that children persistently make overgeneralizations of the sort that violate the constrained view of language acquisition. Since children eventually do develop correct adult grammar, they must have other mechanisms for cutting back on these overgeneralizations. Thus, any hypothesized constraints cannot be justified on grounds that without them the child would end up with overly general grammar. It is necessary to explicate the mechanisms by which children eliminate their tendency toward overgeneralization.
  • Bowerman, M. (1982). Evaluating competing linguistic models with language acquisition data: Implications of developmental errors with causative verbs. Quaderni di semantica, 3, 5-66.
  • Brown, P. (1983). [Review of the book Conversational routine: Explorations in standardized communication situations and prepatterned speech ed. by Florian Coulmas]. Language, 59, 215-219.
  • Brown, P. (1983). [Review of the books Mayan Texts I, II, and III ed. by Louanna Furbee-Losee]. International Journal of American Linguistics, 49, 337-341.
  • Cutler, A., Mehler, J., Norris, D., & Segui, J. (1983). A language-specific comprehension strategy [Letters to Nature]. Nature, 304, 159-160. doi:10.1038/304159a0.

    Abstract

    Infants acquire whatever language is spoken in the environment into which they are born. The mental capability of the newborn child is not biased in any way towards the acquisition of one human language rather than another. Because psychologists who attempt to model the process of language comprehension are interested in the structure of the human mind, rather than in the properties of individual languages, strategies which they incorporate in their models are presumed to be universal, not language-specific. In other words, strategies of comprehension are presumed to be characteristic of the human language processing system, rather than, say, the French, English, or Igbo language processing systems. We report here, however, on a comprehension strategy which appears to be used by native speakers of French but not by native speakers of English.
  • Cutler, A. (1979). Contemporary reaction to Rudolf Meringer’s speech error research. Historiograpia Linguistica, 6, 57-76.
  • Cutler, A. (1985). Cross-language psycholinguistics. Linguistics, 23, 659-667.
  • Cutler, A. (1971). [Review of the book Probleme der Aufgabenanalyse bei der Erstellung von Sprachprogrammen by K. Bung]. Babel, 7, 29-31.
  • Cutler, A. (1982). Idioms: the older the colder. Linguistic Inquiry, 13(2), 317-320. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4178278?origin=JSTOR-pdf.
  • Cutler, A., Mehler, J., Norris, D., & Segui, J. (1988). Limits on bilingualism [Letters to Nature]. Nature, 340, 229-230. doi:10.1038/340229a0.

    Abstract

    SPEECH, in any language, is continuous; speakers provide few reliable cues to the boundaries of words, phrases, or other meaningful units. To understand speech, listeners must divide the continuous speech stream into portions that correspond to such units. This segmentation process is so basic to human language comprehension that psycholinguists long assumed that all speakers would do it in the same way. In previous research1,2, however, we reported that segmentation routines can be language-specific: speakers of French process spoken words syllable by syllable, but speakers of English do not. French has relatively clear syllable boundaries and syllable-based timing patterns, whereas English has relatively unclear syllable boundaries and stress-based timing; thus syllabic segmentation would work more efficiently in the comprehension of French than in the comprehension of English. Our present study suggests that at this level of language processing, there are limits to bilingualism: a bilingual speaker has one and only one basic language.
  • Cutler, A., & Fay, D. A. (1982). One mental lexicon, phonologically arranged: Comments on Hurford’s comments. Linguistic Inquiry, 13, 107-113. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4178262.
  • Cutler, A., & Norris, D. (1988). The role of strong syllables in segmentation for lexical access. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 14, 113-121. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.14.1.113.

    Abstract

    A model of speech segmentation in a stress language is proposed, according to which the occurrence of a strong syllable triggers segmentation of the speech signal, whereas occurrence of a weak syllable does not trigger segmentation. We report experiments in which listeners detected words embedded in nonsense bisyllables more slowly when the bisyllable had two strong syllables than when it had a strong and a weak syllable; mint was detected more slowly in mintayve than in mintesh. According to our proposed model, this result is an effect of segmentation: When the second syllable is strong, it is segmented from the first syllable, and successful detection of the embedded word therefore requires assembly of speech material across a segmentation position. Speech recognition models involving phonemic or syllabic recoding, or based on strictly left-to-right processes, do not predict this result. It is argued that segmentation at strong syllables in continuous speech recognition serves the purpose of detecting the most efficient locations at which to initiate lexical access. (C) 1988 by the American Psychological Association
  • Cutler, A., Hawkins, J. A., & Gilligan, G. (1985). The suffixing preference: A processing explanation. Linguistics, 23, 723-758.
  • Drolet, M., & Kempen, G. (1985). IPG: A cognitive approach to sentence generation. CCAI: The Journal for the Integrated Study of Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science and Applied Epistemology, 2, 37-61.
  • Frauenfelder, U. H., & Cutler, A. (1985). Preface. Linguistics, 23(5). doi:10.1515/ling.1985.23.5.657.
  • Heeschen, C., Ryalls, J., & Hagoort, P. (1988). Psychological stress in Broca's versus Wernicke's aphasia. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 2, 309-316. doi:10.3109/02699208808985262.

    Abstract

    We advance the hypothesis here that the higher-than-average vocal pitch (FO) found for speech of Broca's aphasics in experimental settings is due, in part, to increased psychological stress. Two experiments were conducted which manipulated conversational constraints and the sentence forms to be produced by aphasic patients. Our study revealed significant differences between changes in vocal pitch of agrammatic Broca's aphasics versus those of Wernicke's aphasics and normal controls. It is suggested that the greater psychological stress experienced by the Broca's aphasics, but not by the Wernicke's aphasics, accounts for these observed differences.
  • Henderson, L., Coltheart, M., Cutler, A., & Vincent, N. (1988). Preface. Linguistics, 26(4), 519-520. doi:10.1515/ling.1988.26.4.519.
  • Kempen, G., Schotel, H., & Hoenkamp, E. (1982). Analyse-door-synthese van Nederlandse zinnen [Abstract]. De Psycholoog, 17, 509.
  • Kempen, G. (1971). [Review of the book General Psychology by N. Dember and J.J. Jenkins]. Nijmeegs Tijdschrift voor Psychologie, 19, 132-133.
  • Kempen, G. (1979). La mise en paroles, aspects psychologiques de l'expression orale. Études de Linguistique Appliquée, 33, 19-28.

    Abstract

    Remarques sur les facteurs intervenant dans le processus de formulation des énoncés.
  • Kempen, G. (1971). Het onthouden van eenvoudige zinnen met zijn en hebben als werkwoorden: Een experiment met steekwoordreaktietijden. Nijmeegs Tijdschrift voor Psychologie, 19, 262-274.
  • Kempen, G. (1971). Opslag van woordbetekenissen in het semantisch geheugen. Nijmeegs Tijdschrift voor Psychologie, 19, 36-50.
  • Kempen, G. (1985). Psychologie 2000. Toegepaste psychologie in de informatiemaatschappij. Computers in de psychologie, 13-21.
  • Kempen, G. (1979). Psychologie van de zinsbouw: Een Wundtiaanse inleiding. Nederlands Tijdschrift voor de Psychologie, 34, 533-551.

    Abstract

    The psychology of language as developed by Wilhelm Wundt in his fundamental work Die Sprache (1900) has a strongly mentalistic character. The dominating positions held by behaviorism in psychology and structuralism in linguistics have overruled Wundt’s language theory to the effect that it has remained relatively unknown. This situation has changed recently under the influence of transformational linguistics and cognitive psychology. The paper discusses how Wundt applied the basic psychological concepts of apperception and association to language behavior, in particular to the construction and production of sentences during unprepared speech. The final part of the paper is devoted to the work, published in 1917, of the Dutch linguistic scholar Jacques van Ginneken, who elaborated Wundt’s ideas towards an explanation of some syntactic phenomena during the language acquisition of children.
  • Kempen, G. (1988). Preface. Acta Psychologica, 69(3), 205-206. doi:10.1016/0001-6918(88)90032-7.
  • Kempen, G., & Huijbers, P. (1983). The lexicalization process in sentence production and naming: Indirect election of words. Cognition, 14(2), 185-209. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(83)90029-X.

    Abstract

    A series of experiments is reported in which subjects describe simple visual scenes by means of both sentential and non-sentential responses. The data support the following statements about the lexicalization (word finding) process. (1) Words used by speakers in overt naming or sentence production responses are selected by a sequence of two lexical retrieval processes, the first yielding abstract pre-phonological items (Ll -items), the second one adding their phonological shapes (L2-items). (2) The selection of several Ll-items for a multi-word utterance can take place simultaneously. (3) A monitoring process is watching the output of Ll-lexicalization to check if it is in keeping with prevailing constraints upon utterance format. (4) Retrieval of the L2-item which corresponds with a given LI-item waits until the Ld-item has been checked by the monitor, and all other Ll-items needed for the utterance under construction have become available. A coherent picture of the lexicalization process begins to emerge when these characteristics are brought together with other empirical results in the area of naming and sentence production, e.g., picture naming reaction times (Seymour, 1979), speech errors (Garrett, 1980), and word order preferences (Bock, 1982).
  • Kempen, G. (1983). Wat betekent taalvaardigheid voor informatiesystemen? TNO project: Maandblad voor toegepaste wetenschappen, 11, 401-403.
  • Kempen, G. (1979). Woordwaarde. De Psycholoog, 14, 577.
  • Klein, W., & Rieck, B.-O. (1982). Der Erwerb der Personalpronomina im ungesteuerten Spracherwerb. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 45, 35-71.
  • Klein, W. (1982). Einige Bemerkungen zur Frageintonation. Deutsche Sprache, 4, 289-310.

    Abstract

    In the first, critical part of this study, a small sample of simple German sentences with their empirically determined pitch contours is used to demonstrate the incorrectness of numerous currently hold views of German sentence intonation. In the second, more constructive part, several interrogative sentence types are analysed and an attempt is made to show that intonation, besides other functions, indicates the permantently changing 'thematic score' in on-going discourse as well as certain validity claims.
  • Klein, W. (1985). Einleitung. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik; Metzler, Stuttgart, 15(59), 7-8.
  • Klein, W. (1982). Einleitung. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik; Metzler, Stuttgart, 12, 7-8.
  • Klein, W. (1979). Einleitung. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik; Metzler, Stuttgart, 9(33), 7-8.
  • Klein, W. (1988). Einleitung. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik; Metzler, Stuttgart, 18(69), 7-8.
  • Klein, W. (1971). Eine kommentierte Bibliographie zur Computerlinguistik. Linguistische Berichte, (11), 101-134.
  • Klein, W. (1985). Gesprochene Sprache - geschriebene Sprache. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 59, 9-35.
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1983). Intonation [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (49).
  • Klein, W. (1982). Pronoms personnels et formes d'acquisition. Encrages, 8/9, 42-46.
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1988). Sprache Kranker [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (69).
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1979). Sprache und Kontext [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (33).
  • Klein, W. (1988). Sprache und Krankheit: Ein paar Anmerkungen. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 69, 9-20.
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1985). Schriftlichkeit [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (59).
  • Klein, W. (1979). Wegauskünfte. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 33, 9-57.
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1982). Zweitspracherwerb [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (45).
  • Klein, W. (1983). Vom Glück des Mißverstehens und der Trostlosigkeit der idealen Kommunikationsgemeinschaft. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 50, 128-140.
  • Kreuzer, H. (Ed.). (1971). Methodische Perspektiven [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (1/2).
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1983). Monitoring and self-repair in speech. Cognition, 14, 41-104. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(83)90026-4.

    Abstract

    Making a self-repair in speech typically proceeds in three phases. The first phase involves the monitoring of one’s own speech and the interruption of the flow of speech when trouble is detected. From an analysis of 959 spontaneous self-repairs it appears that interrupting follows detection promptly, with the exception that correct words tend to be completed. Another finding is that detection of trouble improves towards the end of constituents. The second phase is characterized by hesitation, pausing, but especially the use of so-called editing terms. Which editing term is used depends on the nature of the speech trouble in a rather regular fashion: Speech errors induce other editing terms than words that are merely inappropriate, and trouble which is detected quickly by the speaker is preferably signalled by the use of ‘uh’. The third phase consists of making the repair proper The linguistic well-formedness of a repair is not dependent on the speaker’s respecting the integriv of constituents, but on the structural relation between original utterance and repair. A bi-conditional well-formedness rule links this relation to a corresponding relation between the conjuncts of a coordination. It is suggested that a similar relation holds also between question and answer. In all three cases the speaker respects certain Istructural commitments derived from an original utterance. It was finally shown that the editing term plus the first word of the repair proper almost always contain sufficient information for the listener to decide how the repair should be related to the original utterance. Speakers almost never produce misleading information in this respect. It is argued that speakers have little or no access to their speech production process; self-monitoring is probably based on parsing one’s own inner or overt speech.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1982). Het lineariseringsprobleem van de spreker. Tijdschrift voor Taal- en Tekstwetenschap (TTT), 2(1), 1-15.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1988). Onder sociale wetenschappen. Mededelingen van de Afdeling Letterkunde, 51(2), 41-55.
  • Levelt, W. J. M., & Cutler, A. (1983). Prosodic marking in speech repair. Journal of semantics, 2, 205-217. doi:10.1093/semant/2.2.205.

    Abstract

    Spontaneous self-corrections in speech pose a communication problem; the speaker must make clear to the listener not only that the original Utterance was faulty, but where it was faulty and how the fault is to be corrected. Prosodic marking of corrections - making the prosody of the repair noticeably different from that of the original utterance - offers a resource which the speaker can exploit to provide the listener with such information. A corpus of more than 400 spontaneous speech repairs was analysed, and the prosodic characteristics compared with the syntactic and semantic characteristics of each repair. Prosodic marking showed no relationship at all with the syntactic characteristics of repairs. Instead, marking was associated with certain semantic factors: repairs were marked when the original utterance had been actually erroneous, rather than simply less appropriate than the repair; and repairs tended to be marked more often when the set of items encompassing the error and the repair was small rather than when it was large. These findings lend further weight to the characterization of accent as essentially semantic in function.
  • Levelt, W. J. M., & Kelter, S. (1982). Surface form and memory in question answering. Cognitive Psychology, 14, 78-106. doi:10.1016/0010-0285(82)90005-6.

    Abstract

    Speakers tend to repeat materials from previous talk. This tendency is experimentally established and manipulated in various question-answering situations. It is shown that a question's surface form can affect the format of the answer given, even if this form has little semantic or conversational consequence, as in the pair Q: (At) what time do you close. A: “(At)five o'clock.” Answerers tend to match the utterance to the prepositional (nonprepositional) form of the question. This “correspondence effect” may diminish or disappear when, following the question, additional verbal material is presented to the answerer. The experiments show that neither the articulatory buffer nor long-term memory is normally involved in this retention of recent speech. Retaining recent speech in working memory may fulfill a variety of functions for speaker and listener, among them the correct production and interpretation of surface anaphora. Reusing recent materials may, moreover, be more economical than regenerating speech anew from a semantic base, and thus contribute to fluency. But the realization of this strategy requires a production system in which linguistic formulation can take place relatively independent of, and parallel to, conceptual planning.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1982). Science policy: Three recent idols, and a goddess. IPO Annual Progress Report, 17, 32-35.
  • Levelt, W. J. M., Richardson, G., & La Heij, W. (1985). Pointing and voicing in deictic expressions. Journal of Memory and Language, 24, 133-164. doi:10.1016/0749-596X(85)90021-X.

    Abstract

    The present paper studies how, in deictic expressions, the temporal interdependency of speech and gesture is realized in the course of motor planning and execution. Two theoretical positions were compared. On the “interactive” view the temporal parameters of speech and gesture are claimed to be the result of feedback between the two systems throughout the phases of motor planning and execution. The alternative “ballistic” view, however, predicts that the two systems are independent during the phase of motor execution, the temporal parameters having been preestablished in the planning phase. In four experiments subjects were requested to indicate which of an array of referent lights was momentarily illuminated. This was done by pointing to the light and/or by using a deictic expression (this/that light). The temporal and spatial course of the pointing movement was automatically registered by means of a Selspot opto-electronic system. By analyzing the moments of gesture initiation and apex, and relating them to the moments of speech onset, it was possible to show that, for deictic expressions, the ballistic view is very nearly correct.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1983). Wetenschapsbeleid: Drie actuele idolen en een godin. Grafiet, 1(4), 178-184.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1982). Zelfcorrecties in het spreekproces. KNAW: Mededelingen van de afdeling letterkunde, nieuwe reeks, 45(8), 215-228.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1979). On learnability: A reply to Lasnik and Chomsky. Unpublished manuscript.
  • Levinson, S. C. (1979). Activity types and language. Linguistics, 17, 365-399.
  • Mehta, G., & Cutler, A. (1988). Detection of target phonemes in spontaneous and read speech. Language and Speech, 31, 135-156.

    Abstract

    Although spontaneous speech occurs more frequently in most listeners’ experience than read speech, laboratory studies of human speech recognition typically use carefully controlled materials read from a script. The phonological and prosodic characteristics of spontaneous and read speech differ considerably, however, which suggests that laboratory results may not generalize to the recognition of spontaneous and read speech materials, and their response time to detect word-initial target phonemes was measured. Response were, overall, equally fast in each speech mode. However analysis of effects previously reported in phoneme detection studies revealed significant differences between speech modes. In read speech but not in spontaneous speech, later targets were detected more rapidly than earlier targets, and targets preceded by long words were detected more rapidly than targets preceded by short words. In contrast, in spontaneous speech but not in read speech, targets were detected more rapidly in accented than unaccented words and in strong than in weak syllables. An explanation for this pattern is offered in terms of characteristic prosodic differences between spontaneous and read speech. The results support claim from previous work that listeners pay great attention to prosodic information in the process of recognizing speech.
  • Norris, D., & Cutler, A. (1985). Juncture detection. Linguistics, 23, 689-705.
  • Norris, D., & Cutler, A. (1988). Speech recognition in French and English. MRC News, 39, 30-31.
  • Norris, D., & Cutler, A. (1988). The relative accessibility of phonemes and syllables. Perception and Psychophysics, 43, 541-550. Retrieved from http://www.psychonomic.org/search/view.cgi?id=8530.

    Abstract

    Previous research comparing detection times for syllables and for phonemes has consistently found that syllables are responded to faster than phonemes. This finding poses theoretical problems for strictly hierarchical models of speech recognition, in which smaller units should be able to be identified faster than larger units. However, inspection of the characteristics of previous experiments’stimuli reveals that subjects have been able to respond to syllables on the basis of only a partial analysis of the stimulus. In the present experiment, five groups of subjects listened to identical stimulus material. Phoneme and syllable monitoring under standard conditions was compared with monitoring under conditions in which near matches of target and stimulus occurred on no-response trials. In the latter case, when subjects were forced to analyze each stimulus fully, phonemes were detected faster than syllables.
  • Rösler, D., & Skiba, R. (1988). Möglichkeiten für den Einsatz einer Lehrmaterial-Datenbank in der Lehrerfortbildung. Deutsch lernen, 14(1), 24-31.
  • Senft, G. (1988). A grammar of Manam by Frantisek Lichtenberk [Book review]. Language and linguistics in Melanesia, 18, 169-173.
  • Senft, G. (1985). Emic or etic or just another catch 22? A repartee to Hartmut Haberland. Journal of Pragmatics, 9, 845.
  • Senft, G. (1988). [Review of the book Functional syntax: Anaphora, discourse and empathy by Susumu Kuno]. Journal of Pragmatics, 12, 396-399. doi:10.1016/0378-2166(88)90040-9.
  • Senft, G. (1985). How to tell - and understand - a 'dirty' joke in Kilivila. Journal of Pragmatics, 9, 815-834.
  • Senft, G. (1985). Kilivila: Die Sprache der Trobriander. Studium Linguistik, 17/18, 127-138.
  • Senft, G. (1985). Klassifikationspartikel im Kilivila: Glossen zu ihrer morphologischen Rolle, ihrem Inventar und ihrer Funktion in Satz und Diskurs. Linguistische Berichte, 99, 373-393.
  • Senft, G. (1985). Weyeis Wettermagie: Eine ethnolinguistische Untersuchung von fünf magischen Formeln eines Wettermagiers auf den Trobriand Inseln. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 110(2), 67-90.
  • Senft, G. (1985). Trauer auf Trobriand: Eine ethnologisch/-linguistische Fallstudie. Anthropos, 80, 471-492.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1982). De spellingsproblematiek in Suriname: Een inleiding. OSO, 1(1), 71-79.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1971). Chomsky, man en werk. De Gids, 134, 298-308.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1979). [Review of the book Approaches to natural language ed. by K. Hintikka, J. Moravcsik and P. Suppes]. Leuvense Bijdragen, 68, 163-168.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1971). [Review of the book Introduction à la grammaire générative by Nicolas Ruwet]. Linguistics, 10(78), 111-120. doi:10.1515/ling.1972.10.78.72.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1971). [Review of the book La linguistique synchronique by Andre Martinet]. Linguistics, 10(78), 109-111. doi:10.1515/ling.1972.10.78.72.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1988). [Review of the book Pidgin and Creole linguistics by P. Mühlhäusler]. Studies in Language, 12(2), 504-513.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1971). [Review of the book Syntaxis by A. Kraak and W. Klooster]. Foundations of Language, 7(3), 441-445.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1983). [Review of the book The inheritance of presupposition by J. Dinsmore]. Journal of Semantics, 2(3/4), 356-358. doi:10.1093/semant/2.3-4.356.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1983). [Review of the book Thirty million theories of grammar by J. McCawley]. Journal of Semantics, 2(3/4), 325-341. doi:10.1093/semant/2.3-4.325.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1988). [Review of the Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary (Collins Birmingham University International Language Database)]. Journal of Semantics, 6, 169-174. doi:10.1093/jos/6.1.169.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1983). In memoriam Jan Voorhoeve. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 139(4), 403-406.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1979). Meer over minder dan hoeft. De Nieuwe Taalgids, 72(3), 236-239.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1982). Internal variability in competence. Linguistische Berichte, 77, 1-31.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1983). Overwegingen bij de spelling van het Sranan en een spellingsvoorstel. OSO, 2(1), 67-81.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1988). Presupposition and negation. Journal of Semantics, 6(3/4), 175-226. doi:10.1093/jos/6.1.175.

    Abstract

    This paper is an attempt to show that given the available observations on the behaviour of negation and presuppositions there is no simpler explanation than to assume that natural language has two distinct negation operators, the minimal negation which preserves presuppositions and the radical negation which does not. The three-valued logic emerging from this distinction, and especially its model-theory, are discussed in detail. It is, however, stressed that the logic itself is only epiphenomenal on the structures and processes involved in the interpretation of sentences. Horn (1985) brings new observations to bear, related with metalinguistic uses of negation, and proposes a “pragmatic” ambiguity in negation to the effect that in descriptive (or “straight”) use negation is the classical bivalent operator, whereas in metalinguistic use it is non-truthfunctional but only pragmatic. Van der Sandt (to appear) accepts Horn's observations but proposes a different solution: he proposes an ambiguity in the argument clause of the negation operator (which, for him, too, is classical and bivalent), according to whether the negation takes only the strictly asserted proposition or covers also the presuppositions, the (scalar) implicatures and other implications (in particular of style and register) of the sentence expressing that proposition. These theories are discussed at some length. The three-valued analysis is defended on the basis of partly new observations, which do not seem to fit either Horn's or Van der Sandt's solution. It is then placed in the context of incremental discourse semantics, where both negations are seen to do the job of keeping increments out of the discourse domain, though each does so in its own specific way. The metalinguistic character of the radical negation is accounted for in terms of the incremental apparatus. The metalinguistic use of negation in denials of implicatures or implications of style and register is regarded as a particular form of minimal negation, where the negation denies not the proposition itself but the appropriateness of the use of an expression in it. This appropriateness negation is truth-functional and not pragmatic, but it applies to a particular, independently motivated, analysis of the argument clause. The ambiguity of negation in natural language is different from the ordinary type of ambiguity found in the lexicon. Normally, lexical ambiguities are idiosyncratic, highly contingent, and unpredictable from language to language. In the case of negation, however, the two meanings are closely related, both truth-conditionally and incrementally. Moreover, the mechanism of discourse incrementation automatically selects the right meaning. These properties are taken to provide a sufficient basis for discarding the, otherwise valid, objection that negation is unlikely to be ambiguous because no known language makes a lexical distinction between the two readings.
  • Swinney, D. A., & Cutler, A. (1979). The access and processing of idiomatic expressions. Journal of Verbal Learning an Verbal Behavior, 18, 523-534. doi:10.1016/S0022-5371(79)90284-6.

    Abstract

    Two experiments examined the nature of access, storage, and comprehension of idiomatic phrases. In both studies a Phrase Classification Task was utilized. In this, reaction times to determine whether or not word strings constituted acceptable English phrases were measured. Classification times were significantly faster to idiom than to matched control phrases. This effect held under conditions involving different categories of idioms, different transitional probabilities among words in the phrases, and different levels of awareness of the presence of idioms in the materials. The data support a Lexical Representation Hypothesis for the processing of idioms.
  • Van Wijk, C., & Kempen, G. (1982). De ontwikkeling van syntactische formuleervaardigheid bij kinderen van 9 tot 16 jaar. Nederlands Tijdschrift voor de Psychologie en haar Grensgebieden, 37(8), 491-509.

    Abstract

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

    Abstract

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

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