Publications

Displaying 1 - 100 of 203
  • Abma, R., Breeuwsma, G., & Poletiek, F. H. (2001). Toetsen in het onderwijs. De Psycholoog, 36, 638-639.
  • Alibali, M. W., Flevares, L. M., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (1997). Assessing knowledge conveyed in gesture: Do teachers have the upper hand? Journal of Educational Psychology, 89(1), 183-193. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.89.1.183.

    Abstract

    Children's gestures can reveal important information about their problem-solving strategies. This study investigated whether the information children express only in gesture is accessible to adults not trained in gesture coding. Twenty teachers and 20 undergraduates viewed videotaped vignettes of 12 children explaining their solutions to equations. Six children expressed the same strategy in speech and gesture, and 6 expressed different strategies. After each vignette, adults described the child's reasoning. For children who expressed different strategies in speech and gesture, both teachers and undergraduates frequently described strategies that children had not expressed in speech. These additional strategies could often be traced
    to the children's gestures. Sensitivity to gesture was comparable for teachers and
    undergraduates. Thus, even without training, adults glean information, not only from children's words but also from their hands.
  • Ameka, F. K. (1999). [Review of M. E. Kropp Dakubu: Korle meets the sea: a sociolinguistic history of Accra]. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 62, 198-199. doi:10.1017/S0041977X0001836X.
  • Ameka, F. K. (1989). [Review of The case for lexicase: An outline of lexicase grammatical theory by Stanley Starosta]. Studies in Language, 13(2), 506-518.
  • Ameka, F. K. (1999). Partir c'est mourir un peu: Universal and culture specific features of leave taking. RASK International Journal of Language and Communication, 9/10, 257-283.
  • Ameka, F. K. (1999). Spatial information packaging in Ewe and Likpe: A comparative perspective. Frankfurter Afrikanistische Blätter, 11, 7-34.
  • Ameka, F. K. (1999). The typology and semantics of complex nominal duplication in Ewe. Anthropological Linguistics, 41, 75-106.
  • Baayen, R. H., Dijkstra, T., & Schreuder, R. (1997). Singulars and Plurals in Dutch: Evidence for a Parallel Dual-Route Model. Journal of Memory and Language, 37(1), 94-117. doi:10.1006/jmla.1997.2509.

    Abstract

    Are regular morphologically complex words stored in the mental lexicon? Answers to this question have ranged from full listing to parsing for every regular complex word. We investigated the roles of storage and parsing in the visual domain for the productive Dutch plural suffix -en.Two experiments are reported that show that storage occurs for high-frequency noun plurals. A mathematical formalization of a parallel dual-route race model is presented that accounts for the patterns in the observed reaction time data with essentially one free parameter, the speed of the parsing route. Parsing for noun plurals appears to be a time-costly process, which we attribute to the ambiguity of -en,a suffix that is predominantly used as a verbal ending. A third experiment contrasted nouns and verbs. This experiment revealed no effect of surface frequency for verbs, but again a solid effect for nouns. Together, our results suggest that many noun plurals are stored in order to avoid the time-costly resolution of the subcategorization conflict that arises when the -ensuffix is attached to nouns.

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  • Baayen, R. H. (1997). The pragmatics of the 'tenses' in biblical Hebrew. Studies in Language, 21(2), 245-285. doi:10.1075/sl.21.2.02baa.

    Abstract

    In this paper, I present an analysis of the so-called tense forms of Biblical Hebrew. While there is fairly broad consensus on the interpretation of the yiqtol tense form, the interpretation of the qdtal tense form has led to considerable controversy. I will argue that the qātal form has no intrinsic semantic value and that it serves a pragmatic function only, namely, signaling to the hearer that the event or state expressed by the verb cannot be tightly integrated into the discourse representation of the hearer, given the speaker's estimate of their common ground.
  • Baayen, R. H., Lieber, R., & Schreuder, R. (1997). The morphological complexity of simplex nouns. Linguistics, 35, 861-877. doi:10.1515/ling.1997.35.5.861.
  • Baayen, R. H., & Lieber, R. (1997). Word frequency distributions and lexical semantics. Computers and the Humanities, 30, 281-291.

    Abstract

    This paper addresses the relation between meaning, lexical productivity, and frequency of use. Using density estimation as a visualization tool, we show that differences in semantic structure can be reflected in probability density functions estimated for word frequency distributions. We call attention to an example of a bimodal density, and suggest that bimodality arises when distributions of well-entrenched lexical tems, which appear to be lognormal, are mixed with distributions of productively reated nonce formations
  • Bastiaansen, M. C. M., Böcker, K. B. E., Brunia, C. H. M., De Munck, J. C., & Spekreijse, H. (2001). Desynchronization during anticipatory attention for an upcoming stimulus: A comparative EEG/MEG study. Clinical Neurophysiology, 112, 393-403.

    Abstract

    Objectives: Our neurophysiological model of anticipatory behaviour (e.g. Acta Psychol 101 (1999) 213; Bastiaansen et al., 1999a) predicts an activation of (primary) sensory cortex during anticipatory attention for an upcoming stimulus. In this paper we attempt to demonstrate this by means of event-related desynchronization (ERD). Methods: Five subjects performed a time estimation task, and were informed about the quality of their time estimation by either visual or auditory stimuli providing Knowledge of Results (KR). EEG and MEG were recorded in separate sessions, and ERD was computed in the 8± 10 and 10±12 Hz frequency bands for both datasets. Results: Both in the EEG and the MEG we found an occipitally maximal ERD preceding the visual KR for all subjects. Preceding the auditory KR, no ERD was present in the EEG, whereas in the MEG we found an ERD over the temporal cortex in two of the 5 subjects. These subjects were also found to have higher levels of absolute power over temporal recording sites in the MEG than the other subjects, which we consider to be an indication of the presence of a `tau' rhythm (e.g. Neurosci Lett 222 (1997) 111). Conclusions: It is concluded that the results are in line with the predictions of our neurophysiological model.
  • Bastiaansen, M. C. M., & Brunia, C. H. M. (2001). Anticipatory attention: An event-related desynchronization approach. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 43, 91-107.

    Abstract

    This paper addresses the question of whether anticipatory attention - i.e. attention directed towards an upcoming stimulus in order to facilitate its processing - is realized at the neurophysiological level by a pre-stimulus desynchronization of the sensory cortex corresponding to the modality of the anticipated stimulus, reflecting then opening of a thalamocortical gate in the relevant sensory modality. It is argued that a technique called Event-Related Desynchronization (ERD) of rhythmic 10-Hz activity is well suited to study the thalamocortical processes that are thought to mediate anticipatory attention. In a series of experiments, ERD was computed on EEG and MEG data, recorded while subjects performed a time estimation task and were informed about the quality of their time estimation by stimuli providing Knowledge of Results (KR). The modality of the KR stimuli (auditory, visual, or somatosensory) was manipulated both within and between experiments. The results indicate to varying degrees that preceding the presentation of the KR stimuli, ERD is present over the sensory cortex, which corresponds to the modality of the KR stimulus. The general pattern of results supports the notion that a thalamocortical gating mechanism forms the neurophysiological basis of anticipatory attention. Furthermore, the results support the notion that Event-Related Potential(ERP) and ERD measures reflect fundamentally different neurophysiological processes.
  • Bastiaansen, M. C. M., Böcker, K. B. E., Cluitmans, P. J. M., & Brunia, C. H. M. (1999). Event-related desynchronization related to the anticipation of a stimulus providing knowledge of results. Clinical Neurophysiology, 110, 250-260.

    Abstract

    In the present paper, event-related desynchronization (ERD) in the alpha and beta frequency bands is quantified in order to investigate the processes related to the anticipation of a knowledge of results (KR) stimulus. In a time estimation task, 10 subjects were instructed to press a button 4 s after the presentation of an auditory stimulus. Two seconds after the response they received auditory or visual feedback on the timing of their response. Preceding the button press, a centrally maximal ERD is found. Preceding the visual KR stimulus, an ERD is present that has an occipital maximum. Contrary to expectation, preceding the auditory KR stimulus there are no signs of a modalityspecific ERD. Results are related to a thalamo-cortical gating model which predicts a correspondence between negative slow potentials and ERD during motor preparation and stimulus anticipation.
  • Bauer, B. L. M. (1997). Response to David Lightfoot’s Review of The Emergence and Development of SVO Patterning in Latin and French: Diachronic and Psycholinguistic Perspectives. Language, 73(2), 352-358.
  • Bierwisch, M. (1997). Universal Grammar and the Basic Variety. Second Language Research, 13(4), 348-366. doi:10.1177/026765839701300403.

    Abstract

    The Basic Variety (BV) as conceived by Klein and Perdue (K&P) is a relatively stable state in the process of spontaneous (adult) second language acquisition, characterized by a small set of phrasal, semantic and pragmatic principles. These principles are derived by inductive generalization from a fairly large body of data. They are considered by K&P as roughly equivalent to those of Universal Grammar (UG) in the sense of Chomsky's Minimalist Program, with the proviso that the BV allows for only weak (or unmarked) formal features. The present article first discusses the viability of the BV principles proposed by K&P, arguing that some of them are in need of clarification with learner varieties, and that they are, in any case, not likely to be part of UG, as they exclude phenomena (e.g., so-called psych verbs) that cannot be ruled out even from the core of natural language. The article also considers the proposal that learner varieties of the BV type are completely unmarked instantiations of UG. Putting aside problems arising from the Minimalist Program, especially the question whether a grammar with only weak features would be a factual possibility and what it would look like, it is argued that the BV as characterized by K&P must be considered as the result of a process that crucially differs from first language acquisition as furnished by UG for a number of reasons, including properties of the BV itself. As a matter of fact, several of the properties claimed for the BV by K&P are more likely the result of general learning strategies than of language-specific principles. If this is correct, the characterization of the BV is a fairly interesting result, albeit of a rather different type than K&P suggest.
  • Bock, K., Eberhard, K. M., Cutting, J. C., Meyer, A. S., & Schriefers, H. (2001). Some attractions of verb agreement. Cognitive Psychology, 43(2), 83-128. doi:10.1006/cogp.2001.0753.

    Abstract

    In English, words like scissors are grammatically plural but conceptually singular, while words like suds are both grammatically and conceptually plural. Words like army can be construed plurally, despite being grammatically singular. To explore whether and how congruence between grammatical and conceptual number affected the production of subject-verb number agreement in English, we elicited sentence completions for complex subject noun phrases like The advertisement for the scissors. In these phrases, singular subject nouns were followed by distractor words whose grammatical and conceptual numbers varied. The incidence of plural attraction (the use of plural verbs after plural distractors) increased only when distractors were grammatically plural, and revealed no influence from the distractors' number meanings. Companion experiments in Dutch offered converging support for this account and suggested that similar agreement processes operate in that language. The findings argue for a component of agreement that is sensitive primarily to the grammatical reflections of number. Together with other results, the evidence indicates that the implementation of agreement in languages like English and Dutch involves separable processes of number marking and number morphing, in which number meaning plays different parts.

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  • Böcker, K. B. E., Bastiaansen, M. C. M., Vroomen, J., Brunia, C. H. M., & de Gelder, B. (1999). An ERP correlate of metrical stress in spoken word recognition. Psychophysiology, 36, 706-720. doi:10.1111/1469-8986.3660706.

    Abstract

    Rhythmic properties of spoken language such as metrical stress, that is, the alternation of strong and weak syllables, are important in speech recognition of stress-timed languages such as Dutch and English. Nineteen subjects listened passively to or discriminated actively between sequences of bisyllabic Dutch words, which started with either a weak or a strong syllable. Weak-initial words, which constitute 12% of the Dutch lexicon, evoked more negativity than strong-initial words in the interval between P2 and N400 components of the auditory event-related potential. This negativity was denoted as N325. The N325 was larger during stress discrimination than during passive listening. N325 was also larger when a weak-initial word followed sequence of strong-initial words than when it followed words with the same stress pattern. The latter difference was larger for listeners who performed well on stress discrimination. It was concluded that the N325 is probably a manifestation of the extraction of metrical stress from the acoustic signal and its transformation into task requirements.
  • 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.
  • Broersma, M., & De Bot, K. (2001). De triggertheorie voor codewisseling: De oorspronkelijke en een aangepaste versie (‘The trigger theory for codeswitching: The original and an adjusted version’). Toegepaste Taalwetenschap in Artikelen, 65(1), 41-54.
  • Brown, C. M., Hagoort, P., & Ter Keurs, M. (1999). Electrophysiological signatures of visual lexical processing: open en closed-class words. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 11(3), 261-281.

    Abstract

    In this paper presents evidence of the disputed existence of an electrophysiological marker for the lexical-categorical distinction between open- and closed-class words. Event-related brain potentials were recorded from the scalp while subjects read a story. Separate waveforms were computed for open- and closed-class words. Two aspects of the waveforms could be reliably related to vocabulary class. The first was an early negativity in the 230- to 350-msec epoch, with a bilateral anterior predominance. This negativity was elicited by open- and closed-class words alike, was not affected by word frequency or word length, and had an earlier peak latency for closed-class words. The second was a frontal slow negative shift in the 350- to 500-msec epoch, largest over the left side of the scalp. This late negativity was only elicited by closed-class words. Although the early negativity cannot serve as a qualitative marker of the open- and closed-class distinction, it does reflect the earliest electrophysiological manifestation of the availability of categorical information from the mental lexicon. These results suggest that the brain honors the distinction between open- and closed-class words, in relation to the different roles that they play in on-line sentence processing.
  • Brown, P. (1999). Anthropologie cognitive. Anthropologie et Sociétés, 23(3), 91-119.

    Abstract

    In reaction to the dominance of universalism in the 1970s and '80s, there have recently been a number of reappraisals of the relation between language and cognition, and the field of cognitive anthropology is flourishing in several new directions in both America and Europe. This is partly due to a renewal and re-evaluation of approaches to the question of linguistic relativity associated with Whorf, and partly to the inspiration of modern developments in cognitive science. This review briefly sketches the history of cognitive anthropology and surveys current research on both sides of the Atlantic. The focus is on assessing current directions, considering in particular, by way of illustration, recent work in cultural models and on spatial language and cognition. The review concludes with an assessment of how cognitive anthropology could contribute directly both to the broader project of cognitive science and to the anthropological study of how cultural ideas and practices relate to structures and processes of human cognition.
  • Brown, P. (1989). [Review of the book Language, gender, and sex in comparative perspective ed. by Susan U. Philips, Susan Steeleand Christine Tanz]. Man, 24(1), 192.
  • Brown, P. (1999). Repetition [Encyclopedia entry for 'Lexicon for the New Millenium', ed. Alessandro Duranti]. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 9(2), 223-226. doi:10.1525/jlin.1999.9.1-2.223.

    Abstract

    This is an encyclopedia entry describing conversational and interactional uses of linguistic repetition.
  • Choi, S., McDonough, L., Bowerman, M., & Mandler, J. M. (1999). Early sensitivity to language-specific spatial categories in English and Korean. Cognitive Development, 14, 241-268. doi:10.1016/S0885-2014(99)00004-0.

    Abstract

    This study investigates young children’s comprehension of spatial terms in two languages that categorize space strikingly differently. English makes a distinction between actions resulting in containment (put in) versus support or surface attachment (put on), while Korean makes a cross-cutting distinction between tight-fit relations (kkita) versus loose-fit or other contact relations (various verbs). In particular, the Korean verb kkita refers to actions resulting in a tight-fit relation regardless of containment or support. In a preferential looking study we assessed the comprehension of in by 20 English learners and kkita by 10 Korean learners, all between 18 and 23 months. The children viewed pairs of scenes while listening to sentences with and without the target word. The target word led children to gaze at different and language-appropriate aspects of the scenes. We conclude that children are sensitive to language-specific spatial categories by 18–23 months.
  • Clahsen, H., Eisenbeiss, S., Hadler, M., & Sonnenstuhl, I. (2001). The Mental Representation of Inflected Words: An Experimental Study of Adjectives and Verbs in German. Language, 77(3), 510-534. doi:10.1353/lan.2001.0140.

    Abstract

    The authors investigate how morphological relationships between inflected word forms are represented in the mental lexicon, focusing on paradigmatic relations between regularly inflected word forms and relationships between different stem forms of the same lexeme. We present results from a series of psycholinguistic experiments investigating German adjectives (which are inflected for case, number, and gender) and the so-called strong verbs of German, which have different stem forms when inflected for person, number, tense, or mood. Evidence from three lexical-decision experiments indicates that regular affixes are stripped off from their stems for processing purposes. It will be shown that this holds for both unmarked and marked stem forms. Another set of experiments revealed priming effects between different paradigmatically related affixes and between different stem forms of the same lexeme. We will show that associative models of inflection do not capture these findings, and we explain our results in terms of combinatorial models of inflection in which regular affixes are represented in inflectional paradigms and stem variants are represented in structured lexical entries. We will also argue that the morphosyntactic features of stems and affixes form abstract underspecified entries. The experimental results indicate that the human language processor makes use of these representations.

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  • Clifton, Jr., C., Cutler, A., McQueen, J. M., & Van Ooijen, B. (1999). The processing of inflected forms. [Commentary on H. Clahsen: Lexical entries and rules of language.]. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22, 1018-1019.

    Abstract

    Clashen proposes two distinct processing routes, for regularly and irregularly inflected forms, respectively, and thus is apparently making a psychological claim. We argue his position, which embodies a strictly linguistic perspective, does not constitute a psychological processing model.
  • Cox, S., Rösler, D., & Skiba, R. (1989). A tailor-made database for language teaching material. Literary & Linguistic Computing, 4(4), 260-264.
  • Cutler, A., & Otake, T. (1997). Contrastive studies of spoken-language processing. Journal of Phonetic Society of Japan, 1, 4-13.
  • Cutler, A. (1971). [Review of the book Probleme der Aufgabenanalyse bei der Erstellung von Sprachprogrammen by K. Bung]. Babel, 7, 29-31.
  • Cutler, A., Howard, D., & Patterson, K. E. (1989). Misplaced stress on prosody: A reply to Black and Byng. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 6, 67-83.

    Abstract

    The recent claim by Black and Byng (1986) that lexical access in reading is subject to prosodic constraints is examined and found to be unsupported. The evidence from impaired reading which Black and Byng report is based on poorly controlled stimulus materials and is inadequately analysed and reported. An alternative explanation of their findings is proposed, and new data are reported for which this alternative explanation can account but their model cannot. Finally, their proposal is shown to be theoretically unmotivated and in conflict with evidence from normal reading.
  • Cutler, A., & Chen, H.-C. (1997). Lexical tone in Cantonese spoken-word processing. Perception and Psychophysics, 59, 165-179. Retrieved from http://www.psychonomic.org/search/view.cgi?id=778.

    Abstract

    In three experiments, the processing of lexical tone in Cantonese was examined. Cantonese listeners more often accepted a nonword as a word when the only difference between the nonword and the word was in tone, especially when the F0 onset difference between correct and erroneous tone was small. Same–different judgments by these listeners were also slower and less accurate when the only difference between two syllables was in tone, and this was true whether the F0 onset difference between the two tones was large or small. Listeners with no knowledge of Cantonese produced essentially the same same-different judgment pattern as that produced by the native listeners, suggesting that the results display the effects of simple perceptual processing rather than of linguistic knowledge. It is argued that the processing of lexical tone distinctions may be slowed, relative to the processing of segmental distinctions, and that, in speeded-response tasks, tone is thus more likely to be misprocessed than is segmental structure.
  • Cutler, A. (2001). Listening to a second language through the ears of a first. Interpreting, 5, 1-23.
  • Cutler, A., Dahan, D., & Van Donselaar, W. (1997). Prosody in the comprehension of spoken language: A literature review. Language and Speech, 40, 141-201.

    Abstract

    Research on the exploitation of prosodic information in the recognition of spoken language is reviewed. The research falls into three main areas: the use of prosody in the recognition of spoken words, in which most attention has been paid to the question of whether the prosodic structure of a word plays a role in initial contact with stored lexical representations; the use of prosody in the computation of syntactic structure, in which the resolution of global and local ambiguities has formed the central focus; and the role of prosody in the processing of discourse structure, in which there has been a preponderance of work on the contribution of accentuation and deaccentuation to integration of concepts with an existing discourse model. The review reveals that in each area progress has been made towards new conceptions of prosody's role in processing, and in particular this has involved abandonment of previously held deterministic views of the relationship between prosodic structure and other aspects of linguistic structure
  • Cutler, A. (1997). The comparative perspective on spoken-language processing. Speech Communication, 21, 3-15. doi:10.1016/S0167-6393(96)00075-1.

    Abstract

    Psycholinguists strive to construct a model of human language processing in general. But this does not imply that they should confine their research to universal aspects of linguistic structure, and avoid research on language-specific phenomena. First, even universal characteristics of language structure can only be accurately observed cross-linguistically. This point is illustrated here by research on the role of the syllable in spoken-word recognition, on the perceptual processing of vowels versus consonants, and on the contribution of phonetic assimilation phonemena to phoneme identification. In each case, it is only by looking at the pattern of effects across languages that it is possible to understand the general principle. Second, language-specific processing can certainly shed light on the universal model of language comprehension. This second point is illustrated by studies of the exploitation of vowel harmony in the lexical segmentation of Finnish, of the recognition of Dutch words with and without vowel epenthesis, and of the contribution of different kinds of lexical prosodic structure (tone, pitch accent, stress) to the initial activation of candidate words in lexical access. In each case, aspects of the universal processing model are revealed by analysis of these language-specific effects. In short, the study of spoken-language processing by human listeners requires cross-linguistic comparison.
  • Cutler, A., & Norris, D. (1999). Sharpening Ockham’s razor (Commentary on W.J.M. Levelt, A. Roelofs & A.S. Meyer: A theory of lexical access in speech production). Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22, 40-41.

    Abstract

    Language production and comprehension are intimately interrelated; and models of production and comprehension should, we argue, be constrained by common architectural guidelines. Levelt et al.'s target article adopts as guiding principle Ockham's razor: the best model of production is the simplest one. We recommend adoption of the same principle in comprehension, with consequent simplification of some well-known types of models.
  • Cutler, A. (1989). Straw modules [Commentary/Massaro: Speech perception]. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 12, 760-762.
  • Cutler, A., & Otake, T. (1999). Pitch accent in spoken-word recognition in Japanese. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 105, 1877-1888.

    Abstract

    Three experiments addressed the question of whether pitch-accent information may be exploited in the process of recognizing spoken words in Tokyo Japanese. In a two-choice classification task, listeners judged from which of two words, differing in accentual structure, isolated syllables had been extracted ~e.g., ka from baka HL or gaka LH!; most judgments were correct, and listeners’ decisions were correlated with the fundamental frequency characteristics of the syllables. In a gating experiment, listeners heard initial fragments of words and guessed what the words were; their guesses overwhelmingly had the same initial accent structure as the gated word even when only the beginning CV of the stimulus ~e.g., na- from nagasa HLL or nagashi LHH! was presented. In addition, listeners were more confident in guesses with the same initial accent structure as the stimulus than in guesses with different accent. In a lexical decision experiment, responses to spoken words ~e.g., ame HL! were speeded by previous presentation of the same word ~e.g., ame HL! but not by previous presentation of a word differing only in accent ~e.g., ame LH!. Together these findings provide strong evidence that accentual information constrains the activation and selection of candidates for spoken-word recognition.
  • Cutler, A. (1989). The new Victorians. New Scientist, (1663), 66.
  • Cutler, A. (1997). The syllable’s role in the segmentation of stress languages. Language and Cognitive Processes, 12, 839-845. doi:10.1080/016909697386718.
  • Cutler, A., & Van Donselaar, W. (2001). Voornaam is not a homophone: Lexical prosody and lexical access in Dutch. Language and Speech, 44, 171-195. doi:10.1177/00238309010440020301.

    Abstract

    Four experiments examined Dutch listeners’ use of suprasegmental information in spoken-word recognition. Isolated syllables excised from minimal stress pairs such as VOORnaam/voorNAAM could be reliably assigned to their source words. In lexical decision, no priming was observed from one member of minimal stress pairs to the other, suggesting that the pairs’ segmental ambiguity was removed by suprasegmental information.Words embedded in nonsense strings were harder to detect if the nonsense string itself formed the beginning of a competing word, but a suprasegmental mismatch to the competing word significantly reduced this inhibition. The same nonsense strings facilitated recognition of the longer words of which they constituted the beginning, butagain the facilitation was significantly reduced by suprasegmental mismatch. Together these results indicate that Dutch listeners effectively exploit suprasegmental cues in recognizing spoken words. Nonetheless, suprasegmental mismatch appears to be somewhat less effective in constraining activation than segmental mismatch.
  • Damian, M. F., Vigliocco, G., & Levelt, W. J. M. (2001). Effects of semantic context in the naming of pictures and words. Cognition, 81, B77-B86. doi:10.1016/S0010-0277(01)00135-4.

    Abstract

    Two experiments investigated whether lexical retrieval for speaking can be characterized as a competitive process by assessing the effects of semantic context on picture and word naming in German. In Experiment 1 we demonstrated that pictures are named slower in the context of same-category items than in the context of items from various semantic categories, replicating findings by Kroll and Stewart (Journal of Memory and Language, 33 (1994) 149). In Experiment 2 we used words instead of pictures. Participants either named the words in the context of same- or different-category items, or produced the words together with their corresponding determiner. While in the former condition words were named faster in the context of samecategory items than of different-category items, the opposite pattern was obtained for the latter condition. These findings confirm the claim that the interfering effect of semantic context reflects competition in the retrieval of lexical entries in speaking.
  • Dobel, C., Pulvermüller, F., Härle, M., Cohen, R., Köbbel, P., Schönle, P. W., & Rockstroh, B. (2001). Syntactic and semantic processing in the healthy and aphasic human brain. Experimental Brain Research, 140(1), 77-85. doi:10.1007/s002210100794.

    Abstract

    A syntactic and a semantic task were per-formed by German-speaking healthy subjects and apha-sics with lesions in the dominant left hemisphere. In both
    tasks, pictures of objects were presented that had to be classified by pressing buttons. The classification was into grammatical gender in the syntactic task (masculine or feminine gender?) and into semantic category in the se-
    mantic task (man- or nature made?). Behavioral data revealed a significant Group by Task interaction, with
    aphasics showing most pronounced problems with syn-
    tax. Brain event-related potentials 300–600 ms following picture onset showed different task-dependent laterality
    patterns in the two groups. In controls, the syntax task
    induced a left-lateralized negative ERP, whereas the semantic task produced more symmetric responses over the hemispheres. The opposite was the case in the patients, where, paradoxically, stronger laterality of physio-logical brain responses emerged in the semantic task than in the syntactic task. We interpret these data based on neuro-psycholinguistic models of word processing and current theories about the roles of the hemispheres in language recovery.
  • Drude, S. (2001). Entschlüsselung einer unbekannten Indianersprache: Ein Projekt zur Dokumentation der bedrohten brasilianischen Indianersprache Awetí. Fundiert: Das Wissenschaftsmagazin der Freien Universität Berlin, 2, 112-121. Retrieved from http://www.elfenbeinturm.net/archiv/2001/lust3.html.

    Abstract

    Die Awetí sind ein kleiner Indianerstamm in Zentralbrasilien, der bislang nur wenig Kontakt mit Weißen hatte. Im Zuge eines Programms der Volkswagenstiftung zur Dokumentation bedrohter Sprachen wird unser Autor die Awetí erneut besuchen und berichtet als „jüngerer Bruder des Häuptlings“ über seine Bemühungen, die Sprache der Awetí für künftige Generationen festzuhalten.
  • Edlinger, G., Bastiaansen, M. C. M., Brunia, C., Neuper, C., & Pfurtscheller, G. (1999). Cortical oscillatory activity assessed by combined EEG and MEG recordings and high resolution ERD methods. Biomedizinische Technik, 44(2), 131-134.
  • Enfield, N. J. (2001). ‘Lip-pointing’: A discussion of form and function with reference to data from Laos. Gesture, 1(2), 185-211. doi:10.1075/gest.1.2.06enf.

    Abstract

    ‘Lip-pointing’ is a widespread but little-documented form of deictic gesture, which may involve not just protruding one or both lips, but also raising the head, sticking out the chin, lifting the eyebrows, among other things. This paper discusses form and function of lip-pointing with reference to a set of examples collected on video in Laos. There are various parameters with respect to which the conventional form of a lip-pointing gesture may vary. There is also a range of ways in which lip-pointing gestures can be coordinated with other kinds of deictic gesture such as various forms of hand pointing. The attested coordinating/sequencing possibilities can be related to specific functional properties of lip-pointing among Lao speakers, particularly in the context of other forms of deictic gesture, which have different functional properties. It is argued that the ‘vector’ of lip-pointing is in fact defined by gaze, and that the lip-pointing action itself (like other kinds of ‘pointing’ involving the head area) is a ‘gaze-switch’, i.e. it indicates that the speaker is now pointing out something with his or her gaze. Finally, I consider the position of lip-pointing in the broader deictic gesture system of Lao speakers, firstly as a ‘lower register’ form, and secondly as a form of deictic gesture which may contrast with forms of hand pointing.
  • Enfield, N. J. (1999). On the indispensability of semantics: Defining the ‘vacuous’. Rask: internationalt tidsskrift for sprog og kommunikation, 9/10, 285-304.
  • Enfield, N. J. (2001). Remarks on John Haiman, 1999. ‘Auxiliation in Khmer: the case of baan.’ Studies in Language 23:1. Studies in Language, 25(1), 115-124. doi:10.1075/sl.25.1.05enf.
  • Enfield, N. J. (1997). Review of 'Give: a cognitive linguistic study', by John Newman. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 17(1), 89-92. doi:10.1080/07268609708599546.
  • Enfield, N. J. (1997). Review of 'Plastic glasses and church fathers: semantic extension from the ethnoscience tradition', by David Kronenfeld. Anthropological Linguistics, 39(3), 459-464. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/30028999.
  • Fernald, A., Swingley, D., & Pinto, J. P. (2001). When half a word is enough: infants can recognize spoken words using partial phonetic information. Child Development, 72, 1003-1015. doi:10.1111/1467-8624.00331.

    Abstract

    Adults process speech incrementally, rapidly identifying spoken words on the basis of initial phonetic information sufficient to distinguish them from alternatives. In this study, infants in the second year also made use of word-initial information to understand fluent speech. The time course of comprehension was examined by tracking infants' eye movements as they looked at pictures in response to familiar spoken words, presented both as whole words in intact form and as partial words in which only the first 300 ms of the word was heard. In Experiment 1, 21-month-old infants (N = 32) recognized partial words as quickly and reliably as they recognized whole words; in Experiment 2, these findings were replicated with 18-month-old infants (N = 32). Combining the data from both experiments, efficiency in spoken word recognition was examined in relation to level of lexical development. Infants with more than 100 words in their productive vocabulary were more accurate in identifying familiar words than were infants with less than 60 words. Grouped by response speed, infants with faster mean reaction times were more accurate in word recognition and also had larger productive vocabularies than infants with slower response latencies. These results show that infants in the second year are capable of incremental speech processing even before entering the vocabulary spurt, and that lexical growth is associated with increased speed and efficiency in understanding spoken language.
  • Fisher, S. E., Stein, J. F., & Monaco, A. P. (1999). A genome-wide search strategy for identifying quantitative trait loci involved in reading and spelling disability (developmental dyslexia). European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 8(suppl. 3), S47-S51. doi:10.1007/PL00010694.

    Abstract

    Family and twin studies of developmental dyslexia have consistently shown that there is a significant heritable component for this disorder. However, any genetic basis for the trait is likely to be complex, involving reduced penetrance, phenocopy, heterogeneity and oligogenic inheritance. This complexity results in reduced power for traditional parametric linkage analysis, where specification of the correct genetic model is important. One strategy is to focus on large multigenerational pedigrees with severe phenotypes and/or apparent simple Mendelian inheritance, as has been successfully demonstrated for speech and language impairment. This approach is limited by the scarcity of such families. An alternative which has recently become feasible due to the development of high-throughput genotyping techniques is the analysis of large numbers of sib-pairs using allele-sharing methodology. This paper outlines our strategy for conducting a systematic genome-wide search for genes involved in dyslexia in a large number of affected sib-pair familites from the UK. We use a series of psychometric tests to obtain different quantitative measures of reading deficit, which should correlate with different components of the dyslexia phenotype, such as phonological awareness and orthographic coding ability. This enable us to use QTL (quantitative trait locus) mapping as a powerful tool for localising genes which may contribute to reading and spelling disability.
  • Fisher, S. E., Marlow, A. J., Lamb, J., Maestrini, E., Williams, D. F., Richardson, A. J., Weeks, D. E., Stein, J. F., & Monaco, A. P. (1999). A quantitative-trait locus on chromosome 6p influences different aspects of developmental dyslexia. American Journal of Human Genetics, 64(1), 146-156. doi:10.1086/302190.

    Abstract

    Recent application of nonparametric-linkage analysis to reading disability has implicated a putative quantitative-trait locus (QTL) on the short arm of chromosome 6. In the present study, we use QTL methods to evaluate linkage to the 6p25-21.3 region in a sample of 181 sib pairs from 82 nuclear families that were selected on the basis of a dyslexic proband. We have assessed linkage directly for several quantitative measures that should correlate with different components of the phenotype, rather than using a single composite measure or employing categorical definitions of subtypes. Our measures include the traditional IQ/reading discrepancy score, as well as tests of word recognition, irregular-word reading, and nonword reading. Pointwise analysis by means of sib-pair trait differences suggests the presence, in 6p21.3, of a QTL influencing multiple components of dyslexia, in particular the reading of irregular words (P=.0016) and nonwords (P=.0024). A complementary statistical approach involving estimation of variance components supports these findings (irregular words, P=.007; nonwords, P=.0004). Multipoint analyses place the QTL within the D6S422-D6S291 interval, with a peak around markers D6S276 and D6S105 consistently identified by approaches based on trait differences (irregular words, P=.00035; nonwords, P=.0035) and variance components (irregular words, P=.007; nonwords, P=.0038). Our findings indicate that the QTL affects both phonological and orthographic skills and is not specific to phoneme awareness, as has been previously suggested. Further studies will be necessary to obtain a more precise localization of this QTL, which may lead to the isolation of one of the genes involved in developmental dyslexia.
  • Fisher, S. E., Ciccodicola, A., Tanaka, K., Curci, A., Desicato, S., D'urso, M., & Craig, I. W. (1997). Sequence-based exon prediction around the synaptophysin locus reveals a gene-rich area containing novel genes in human proximal Xp. Genomics, 45, 340-347. doi:10.1006/geno.1997.4941.

    Abstract

    The human Xp11.23-p11.22 interval has been implicated in several inherited diseases including Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome; three forms of X-linked hypercalciuric nephrolithiaisis; and the eye disorders retinitis pigmentosa 2, congenital stationary night blindness, and Aland Island eye disease. In constructing YAC contigs spanning Xp11. 23-p11.22, we have previously shown that the region around the synaptophysin (SYP) gene is refractory to cloning in YACs, but highly stable in cosmids. Preliminary analysis of the latter suggested that this might reflect a high density of coding sequences and we therefore undertook the complete sequencing of a SYP-containing cosmid. Sequence data were extensively analyzed using computer programs such as CENSOR (to mask repeats), BLAST (for homology searches), and GRAIL and GENE-ID (to predict exons). This revealed the presence of 29 putative exons, organized into three genes, in addition to the 7 exons of the complete SYP coding region, all mapping within a 44-kb interval. Two genes are novel, one (CACNA1F) showing high homology to alpha1 subunits of calcium channels, the other (LMO6) encoding a product with significant similarity to LIM-domain proteins. RT-PCR and Northern blot studies confirmed that these loci are indeed transcribed. The third locus is the previously described, but not previously localized, A4 differentiation-dependent gene. Given that the intron-exon boundaries predicted by the analysis are consistent with previous information where available, we have been able to suggest the genomic organization of the novel genes with some confidence. The region has an elevated GC content (>53%), and we identified CpG islands associated with the 5' ends of SYP, A4, and LMO6. The order of loci was Xpter-A4-LMO6-SYP-CACNA1F-Xcen, with intergenic distances ranging from approximately 300 bp to approximately 5 kb. The density of transcribed sequences in this area (>80%) is comparable to that found in the highly gene-rich chromosomal band Xq28. Further studies may aid our understanding of the long-range organization surrounding such gene-enriched regions.
  • Fransson, P., Merboldt, K.-D., Ingvar, M., Petersson, K. M., & Frahm, J. (2001). Functional MRI with reduced susceptibility artifact: High-resolution mapping of episodic memory encoding. Neuroreport, 12, 1415-1420.

    Abstract

    Visual episodic memory encoding was investigated using echoplanar magnetic resonance imaging at 2.0 x 2.0 mm2 resolution and 1.0 mm section thickness, which allows for functional mapping of hippocampal, parahippocampal, and ventral occipital regions with reduced magnetic susceptibility artifact. The memory task was based on 54 image pairs each consisting of a complex visual scene and the face of one of six different photographers. A second group of subjects viewed the same set of images without memory instruction as well as a reversing checkerboard. Apart from visual activation in occipital cortical areas, episodic memory encoding revealed consistent activation in the parahippocampal gyrus but not in the hippocampus proper. This ®nding was most prominently evidenced in sagittal maps covering the right hippocampal formation. Mean activated volumes were 432±293 µl and 259±179 µl for intentional memory encoding and non-instructed viewing, respectively. In contrast, the checkerboard paradigm elicited pure visual activation without parahippocampal involvement.
  • Gullberg, M., & Holmqvist, K. (1999). Keeping an eye on gestures: Visual perception of gestures in face-to-face communication. Pragmatics & Cognition, 7(1), 35-63. doi:10.1075/pc.7.1.04gul.

    Abstract

    Since listeners usually look at the speaker's face, gestural information has to be absorbed through peripheral visual perception. In the literature, it has been suggested that listeners look at gestures under certain circumstances: 1) when the articulation of the gesture is peripheral; 2) when the speech channel is insufficient for comprehension; and 3) when the speaker him- or herself indicates that the gesture is worthy of attention. The research here reported employs eye tracking techniques to study the perception of gestures in face-to-face interaction. The improved control over the listener's visual channel allows us to test the validity of the above claims. We present preliminary findings substantiating claims 1 and 3, and relate them to theoretical proposals in the literature and to the issue of how visual and cognitive attention are related.
  • Hagoort, P. (1997). De rappe prater als gewoontedier [Review of the book Smooth talkers: The linguistic performance of auctioneers and sportscasters, by Koenraad Kuiper]. Psychologie, 16, 22-23.
  • Hagoort, P. (1999). De toekomstige eeuw zonder psychologie. Psychologie Magazine, 18, 35-36.
  • Hagoort, P., & Brown, C. M. (1999). Gender electrified: ERP evidence on the syntactic nature of gender processing. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 28(6), 715-728. doi:10.1023/A:1023277213129.

    Abstract

    The central issue of this study concerns the claim that the processing of gender agreement in online sentence comprehension is a syntactic rather than a conceptual/semantic process. This claim was tested for the grammatical gender agreement in Dutch between the definite article and the noun. Subjects read sentences in which the definite article and the noun had the same gender and sentences in which the gender agreement was violated, While subjects read these sentences, their electrophysiological activity was recorded via electrodes placed on the scalp. Earlier research has shown that semantic and syntactic processing events manifest themselves in different event-related brain potential (ERP) effects. Semantic integration modulates the amplitude of the so-called N400.The P600/SPS is an ERP effect that is more sensitive to syntactic processes. The violation of grammatical gender agreement was found to result in a P600/SPS. For violations in sentence-final position, an additional increase of the N400 amplitude was observed. This N400 effect is interpreted as resulting from the consequence of a syntactic violation for the sentence-final wrap-up. The overall pattern of results supports the claim that the on-line processing of gender agreement information is not a content driven but a syntactic-form driven process.
  • Hagoort, P. (1989). Processing of lexical ambiguities: a comment on Milberg, Blumstein, and Dworetzky (1987). Brain and Language, 36, 335-348. doi:10.1016/0093-934X(89)90070-9.

    Abstract

    In a study by Milberg, Blumstein, and Dworetzky (1987), normal control subjects and Wernicke's and Broca's aphasics performed a lexical decision task on the third element of auditorily presented triplets of words with either a word or a nonword as target. In three of the four types of word triplets, the first and the third words were related to one or both meanings of the second word, which was semantically ambiguous. The fourth type of word triplet consisted of three unrelated, unambiguous words, functioning as baseline. Milberg et al. (1987) claim that the results for their control subjects are similar to those reported by Schvaneveldt, Meyer, and Becker's original study (1976) with the same prime types, and so interpret these as evidence for a selective lexical access of the different meanings of ambiguous words. It is argued here that Milberg et al. only partially replicate the Schvaneveldt et al. results. Moreover, the results of Milberg et al. are not fully in line with the selective access hypothesis adopted. Replication of the Milberg et al. (1987) study with Dutch materials, using both a design without and a design with repetition of the same target words for the same subjects led to the original pattern as reported by Schvaneveldt et al. (1976). In the design with four separate presentations of the same target word, a strong repetition effect was found. It is therefore argued that the discrepancy between the Milberg et al. results on the one hand, and the Schvaneveldt et al. results on the other, might be due to the absence of a control for repetition effects in the within-subject design used by Milberg et al. It is concluded that this makes the results for both normal and aphasic subjects in the latter study difficult to interpret in terms of a selective access model for normal processing.
  • Hagoort, P., & Brown, C. M. (1999). The consequences of the temporal interaction between syntactic and semantic processes for haemodynamic studies of language. NeuroImage, 9, S1024-S1024.
  • Hagoort, P. (1997). Semantic priming in Broca's aphasics at a short SOA: No support for an automatic access deficit. Brain and Language, 56, 287-300. doi:10.1006/brln.1997.1849.

    Abstract

    This study tests the recent claim that Broca’s aphasics are impaired in automatic lexical access, including the retrieval of word meaning. Subjects are required to perform a lexical decision on visually presented prime target pairs. Half of the word targets are preceded by a related word, half by an unrelated word. Primes and targets are presented with a long stimulus-onset-asynchrony (SOA) of 1400 msec and with a short SOA of 300 msec. Normal priming effects are observed in Broca’s aphasics for both SOAs. This result is discussed in the context of the claim that Broca’s aphasics suffer from an impairment in the automatic access of lexical–semantic information. It is argued that none of the current priming studies provides evidence supporting this claim, since with short SOAs priming effects have been reliably obtained in Broca’s aphasics. The results are more compatible with the claim that in many Broca’s aphasics the functional locus of their comprehension deficit is at the level of postlexical integration processes.
  • Hagoort, P., Ramsey, N., Rutten, G.-J., & Van Rijen, P. (1999). The role of the left anterior temporal cortex in language processing. Brain and Language, 69, 322-325. doi:10.1006/brln.1999.2169.
  • Hagoort, P., Indefrey, P., Brown, C. M., Herzog, H., Steinmetz, H., & Seitz, R. J. (1999). The neural circuitry involved in the reading of german words and pseudowords: A PET study. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 11(4), 383-398. doi:10.1162/089892999563490.

    Abstract

    Silent reading and reading aloud of German words and pseudowords were used in a PET study using (15O)butanol to examine the neural correlates of reading and of the phonological conversion of legal letter strings, with or without meaning.
    The results of 11 healthy, right-handed volunteers in the age range of 25 to 30 years showed activation of the lingual gyri during silent reading in comparison with viewing a fixation cross. Comparisons between the reading of words and pseudowords suggest the involvement of the middle temporal gyri in retrieving both the phonological and semantic code for words. The reading of pseudowords activates the left inferior frontal gyrus, including the ventral part of Broca’s area, to a larger extent than the reading of words. This suggests that this area might be involved in the sublexical conversion of orthographic input strings into phonological output codes. (Pre)motor areas were found to be activated during both silent reading and reading aloud. On the basis of the obtained activation patterns, it is hypothesized that the articulation of high-frequency syllables requires the retrieval of their concomitant articulatory gestures from the SMA and that the articulation of lowfrequency syllables recruits the left medial premotor cortex.
  • Hagoort, P. (1997). Valt er nog te lachen zonder de rechter hersenhelft? Psychologie, 16, 52-55.
  • Heritage, J., & Stivers, T. (1999). Online commentary in acute medical visits: A method of shaping patient expectations. Social Science and Medicine, 49(11), 1501-1517. doi:10.1016/S0277-9536(99)00219-1.
  • Indefrey, P., & Levelt, W. J. M. (1999). A meta-analysis of neuroimaging experiments on word production. Neuroimage, 7, 1028.
  • Indefrey, P., Brown, C. M., Hellwig, F. M., Amunts, K., Herzog, H., Seitz, R. J., & Hagoort, P. (2001). A neural correlate of syntactic encoding during speech production. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 98, 5933-5936. doi:10.1073/pnas.101118098.

    Abstract

    Spoken language is one of the most compact and structured ways to convey information. The linguistic ability to structure individual words into larger sentence units permits speakers to express a nearly unlimited range of meanings. This ability is rooted in speakers’ knowledge of syntax and in the corresponding process of syntactic encoding. Syntactic encoding is highly automatized, operates largely outside of conscious awareness, and overlaps closely in time with several other processes of language production. With the use of positron emission tomography we investigated the cortical activations during spoken language production that are related to the syntactic encoding process. In the paradigm of restrictive scene description, utterances varying in complexity of syntactic encoding were elicited. Results provided evidence that the left Rolandic operculum, caudally adjacent to Broca’s area, is involved in both sentence-level and local (phrase-level) syntactic encoding during speaking.
  • Indefrey, P., Kleinschmidt, A., Merboldt, K.-D., Krüger, G., Brown, C. M., Hagoort, P., & Frahm, J. (1997). Equivalent responses to lexical and nonlexical visual stimuli in occipital cortex: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Neuroimage, 5, 78-81. doi:10.1006/nimg.1996.0232.

    Abstract

    Stimulus-related changes in cerebral blood oxygenation were measured using high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging sequentially covering visual occipital areas in contiguous sections. During dynamic imaging, healthy subjects silently viewed pseudowords, single false fonts, or length-matched strings of the same false fonts. The paradigm consisted of a sixfold alternation of an activation and a control task. With pseudowords as activation vs single false fonts as control, responses were seen mainly in medial occipital cortex. These responses disappeared when pseudowords were alternated with false font strings as the control and reappeared when false font strings instead of pseudowords served as activation and were alternated with single false fonts. The string-length contrast alone, therefore, is sufficient to account for the activation pattern observed in medial visual cortex when word-like stimuli are contrasted with single characters.
  • Indefrey, P. (1999). Some problems with the lexical status of nondefault inflection. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22(6), 1025. doi:10.1017/S0140525X99342229.

    Abstract

    Clahsen's characterization of nondefault inflection as based exclusively on lexical entries does not capture the full range of empirical data on German inflection. In the verb system differential effects of lexical frequency seem to be input-related rather than affecting morphological production. In the noun system, the generalization properties of -n and -e plurals exceed mere analogy-based productivity.
  • Indefrey, P., Hagoort, P., Herzog, H., Seitz, R. J., & Brown, C. M. (2001). Syntactic processing in left prefrontal cortex is independent of lexical meaning. Neuroimage, 14, 546-555. doi:10.1006/nimg.2001.0867.

    Abstract

    In language comprehension a syntactic representation is built up even when the input is semantically uninterpretable. We report data on brain activation during syntactic processing, from an experiment on the detection of grammatical errors in meaningless sentences. The experimental paradigm was such that the syntactic processing was distinguished from other cognitive and linguistic functions. The data reveal that in syntactic error detection an area of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, adjacent to Broca’s area, is specifically involved in the syntactic processing aspects, whereas other prefrontal areas subserve general error detection processes.
  • Jordan, F., & Gray, R. D. (2001). Comment on Terrell, Kelly and Rainbird. Current Anthropology, 42(1), 114-115.
  • Jordens, P. (1997). Introducing the basic variety. Second Language Research, 13(4), 289-300. doi:10.1191%2F026765897672176425.
  • 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. (1999). Fiets en (centri)fuge. Onze Taal, 68, 88.
  • Kempen, G., & Vosse, T. (1989). Incremental syntactic tree formation in human sentence processing: A cognitive architecture based on activation decay and simulated annealing. Connection Science, 1(3), 273-290. doi:10.1080/09540098908915642.

    Abstract

    A new cognitive architecture is proposed for the syntactic aspects of human sentence processing. The architecture, called Unification Space, is biologically inspired but not based on neural nets. Instead it relies on biosynthesis as a basic metaphor. We use simulated annealing as an optimization technique which searches for the best configuration of isolated syntactic segments or subtrees in the final parse tree. The gradually decaying activation of individual syntactic nodes determines the ‘global excitation level’ of the system. This parameter serves the function of ‘computational temperature’ in simulated annealing. We have built a computer implementation of the architecture which simulates well-known sentence understanding phenomena. We report successful simulations of the psycholinguistic effects of clause embedding, minimal attachment, right association and lexical ambiguity. In addition, we simulated impaired sentence understanding as observable in agrammatic patients. Since the Unification Space allows for contextual (semantic and pragmatic) influences on the syntactic tree formation process, it belongs to the class of interactive sentence processing models.
  • 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. (1997). Van taalbarrières naar linguïstische snelwegen: Inrichting van een technische taalinfrastructuur voor het Nederlands. Grenzen aan veeltaligheid: Taalgebruik en bestuurlijke doeltreffendheid in de instellingen van de Europese Unie, 43-48.
  • Kita, S. (1997). Two-dimensional semantic analysis of Japanese mimetics. Linguistics, 35, 379-415. doi:10.1515/ling.1997.35.2.379.
  • Klein, W., & Musan, R. (Eds.). (1999). Das deutsche Perfekt [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (113).
  • Klein, W. (2001). Ein Gemeinwesen, in dem das Volk herrscht, darf nicht von Gesetzen beherrscht werden, die das Volk nicht versteht. Rechtshistorisches Journal, 20, 621-628.
  • Klein, W. (1971). Eine kommentierte Bibliographie zur Computerlinguistik. Linguistische Berichte, (11), 101-134.
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1989). Kindersprache [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (73).
  • Klein, W. (1997). Learner varieties are the normal case. The Clarion, 3, 4-6.
  • Klein, W. (1989). Introspection into what? Review of C. Faerch & G. Kaspar (Eds.) Introspection in second language research 1987. Contemporary Psychology, 34(12), 1119-1120.
  • Klein, W. (1997). Nobels Vermächtnis, oder die Wandlungen des Idealischen. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 107, 6-18.

    Abstract

    Nobel's legacy, or the metamorphosis of what is idealistic Ever since the first Nobel prize in literature was awarded to Prudhomme in 1901, the decisions of the Swedish Academy have been subject to criticism. What is surprising in the changing decision policy as well as in its criticism is the fact that Alfred Nobel's original intentions are hardly ever taken into account: the Nobel prize is a philanthropic prize, it is not meant to select and honour the most eminent literary work but the work with maximal benefit to human beings. What is even more surprising is the fact that no one seems to care that the donator's Last Will is regularly broken.
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1997). Technologischer Wandel in den Philologien [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (106).
  • Klein, W., & Perdue, C. (1997). The basic variety (or: Couldn't natural languages be much simpler?). Second Language Research, 13, 301-347. doi:10.1191/026765897666879396.

    Abstract

    In this article, we discuss the implications of the fact that adult second language learners (outside the classroom) universally develop a well-structured, efficient and simple form of language–the Basic Variety (BV). Three questions are asked as to (1) the structural properties of the BV, (2) the status of these properties and (3) why some structural properties of ‘fully fledged’ languages are more complex. First, we characterize the BV in four respects: its lexical repertoire, the principles according to which utterances are structured, and temporality and spatiality expressed. The organizational principles proposed are small in number, and interact. We analyse this interaction, describing how the BV is put to use in various complex verbal tasks, in order to establish both what its communicative potentialities are, and also those discourse contexts where the constraints come into conflict and where the variety breaks down. This latter phenomenon provides a partial answer to the third question,concerning the relative complexity of ‘fully fledged’ languages–they have devices to deal with such cases. As for the second question, it is argued firstly that the empirically established continuity of the adult acquisition process precludes any assignment of the BV to a mode of linguistic expression (e.g., ‘protolanguage’) distinct from that of ‘fully fledged’ languages and, moreover, that the organizational constraints of the BV belong to the core attributes of the human language capacity, whereas a number of complexifications not attested in the BV are less central properties of this capacity. Finally, it is shown that the notion of feature strength, as used in recent versions of Generative Grammar, allows a straightforward characterization of the BV as a special case of an I-language, in the sense of this theory. Under this perspective, the acquisition of an Ilanguage beyond the BV can essentially be described as a change in feature strength.
  • Klein, W. (1989). Sprechen lernen - das Selbstverständlichste von der Welt: Einleitung. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 73, 7-17.
  • Klein, W. (1989). Schreiben oder Lesen, aber nicht beides, oder: Vorschlag zur Wiedereinführung der Keilschrift mittels Hammer und Meißel. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 74, 116-119.
  • Klein, W. (1999). Wie sich das deutsche Perfekt zusammensetzt. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik; Metzler, Stuttgart, (113), 52-85.
  • Knösche, T. R., & Bastiaansen, M. C. M. (2001). Does the Hilbert transform improve accuracy and time resolution of ERD/ERS? Biomedizinische Technik, 46(2), 106-108.
  • Kreuzer, H. (Ed.). (1971). Methodische Perspektiven [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (1/2).
  • Lai, C. S. L., Fisher, S. E., Hurst, J. A., Vargha-Khadem, F., & Monaco, A. P. (2001). A forkhead-domain gene is mutated in a severe speech and language disorder[Letters to Nature]. Nature, 413, 519-523. doi:10.1038/35097076.

    Abstract

    Individuals affected with developmental disorders of speech and language have substantial difficulty acquiring expressive and/or receptive language in the absence of any profound sensory or neurological impairment and despite adequate intelligence and opportunity. Although studies of twins consistently indicate that a significant genetic component is involved, most families segregating speech and language deficits show complex patterns of inheritance, and a gene that predisposes individuals to such disorders has not been identified. We have studied a unique three-generation pedigree, KE, in which a severe speech and language disorder is transmitted as an autosomal-dominant monogenic trait. Our previous work mapped the locus responsible, SPCH1, to a 5.6-cM interval of region 7q31 on chromosome 7 (ref. 5). We also identified an unrelated individual, CS, in whom speech and language impairment is associated with a chromosomal translocation involving the SPCH1 interval. Here we show that the gene FOXP2, which encodes a putative transcription factor containing a polyglutamine tract and a forkhead DNA-binding domain, is directly disrupted by the translocation breakpoint in CS. In addition, we identify a point mutation in affected members of the KE family that alters an invariant amino-acid residue in the forkhead domain. Our findings suggest that FOXP2 is involved in the developmental process that culminates in speech and language
  • Ledberg, A., Fransson, P., Larsson, J., & Petersson, K. M. (2001). A 4D approach to the analysis of functional brain images: Application to fMRI data. Human Brain Mapping, 13, 185-198. doi:10.1002/hbm.1032.

    Abstract

    This paper presents a new approach to functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) data analysis. The main difference lies in the view of what comprises an observation. Here we treat the data from one scanning session (comprising t volumes, say) as one observation. This is contrary to the conventional way of looking at the data where each session is treated as t different observations. Thus instead of viewing the v voxels comprising the 3D volume of the brain as the variables, we suggest the usage of the vt hypervoxels comprising the 4D volume of the brain-over-session as the variables. A linear model is fitted to the 4D volumes originating from different sessions. Parameter estimation and hypothesis testing in this model can be performed with standard techniques. The hypothesis testing generates 4D statistical images (SIs) to which any relevant test statistic can be applied. In this paper we describe two test statistics, one voxel based and one cluster based, that can be used to test a range of hypotheses. There are several benefits in treating the data from each session as one observation, two of which are: (i) the temporal characteristics of the signal can be investigated without an explicit model for the blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) contrast response function, and (ii) the observations (sessions) can be assumed to be independent and hence inference on the 4D SI can be made by nonparametric or Monte Carlo methods. The suggested 4D approach is applied to FMRI data and is shown to accurately detect the expected signal
  • Levelt, C. C., Schiller, N. O., & Levelt, W. J. M. (1999). A developmental grammar for syllable structure in the production of child language. Brain and Language, 68, 291-299.

    Abstract

    The order of acquisition of Dutch syllable types by first language learners is analyzed as following from an initial ranking and subsequent rerankings of constraints in an optimality theoretic grammar. Initially, structural constraints are all ranked above faithfulness constraints, leading to core syllable (CV) productions only. Subsequently, faithfulness gradually rises to the highest position in the ranking, allowing more and more marked syllable types to appear in production. Local conjunctions of Structural constraints allow for a more detailed analysis.
  • Levelt, W. J. M., Roelofs, A., & Meyer, A. S. (1999). A theory of lexical access in speech production. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22, 1-38. doi:10.1017/S0140525X99001776.

    Abstract

    Preparing words in speech production is normally a fast and accurate process. We generate them two or three per second in fluent conversation; and overtly naming a clear picture of an object can easily be initiated within 600 msec after picture onset. The underlying process, however, is exceedingly complex. The theory reviewed in this target article analyzes this process as staged and feedforward. After a first stage of conceptual preparation, word generation proceeds through lexical selection, morphological and phonological encoding, phonetic encoding, and articulation itself. In addition, the speaker exerts some degree of output control, by monitoring of self-produced internal and overt speech. The core of the theory, ranging from lexical selection to the initiation of phonetic encoding, is captured in a computational model, called WEAVER + +. Both the theory and the computational model have been developed in interaction with reaction time experiments, particularly in picture naming or related word production paradigms, with the aim of accounting. for the real-time processing in normal word production. A comprehensive review of theory, model, and experiments is presented. The model can handle some of the main observations in the domain of speech errors (the major empirical domain for most other theories of lexical access), and the theory opens new ways of approaching the cerebral organization of speech production by way of high-temporal-resolution imaging.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (2001). De vlieger die (onverwacht) wel opgaat. Natuur & Techniek, 69(6), 60.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (2001). Defining dyslexia. Science, 292, 1300-1301.

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