Publications

Displaying 1 - 72 of 72
  • Ambridge, B., Rowland, C. F., Theakston, A. L., & Twomey, K. E. (2020). Introduction. In C. F. Rowland, A. L. Theakston, B. Ambridge, & K. E. Twomey (Eds.), Current Perspectives on Child Language Acquisition: How children use their environment to learn (pp. 1-7). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi:10.1075/tilar.27.int.
  • Amora, K. K., Garcia, R., & Gagarina, N. (2020). Tagalog adaptation of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives: History, process and preliminary results. In N. Gagarina, & J. Lindgren (Eds.), New language versions of MAIN: Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives – Revised (pp. 221-233).

    Abstract

    This paper briefly presents the current situation of bilingualism in the Philippines,
    specifically that of Tagalog-English bilingualism. More importantly, it describes the process of adapting the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN) to Tagalog, the basis of Filipino, which is the country’s national language.
    Finally, the results of a pilot study conducted on Tagalog-English bilingual children and
    adults (N=27) are presented. The results showed that Story Structure is similar across the
    two languages and that it develops significantly with age.
  • Bauer, B. L. M. (2020). Appositive compounds in dialectal and sociolinguistic varieties of French. In M. Maiden, & S. Wolfe (Eds.), Variation and change in Gallo-Romance (pp. 326-346). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Bowerman, M. (1986). First steps in acquiring conditionals. In E. C. Traugott, A. G. t. Meulen, J. S. Reilly, & C. A. Ferguson (Eds.), On conditionals (pp. 285-308). Cambridge University Press.

    Abstract

    This chapter is about the initial flowering of conditionals, if-(then) constructions, in children's spontaneous speech. It is motivated by two major theoretical interests. The first and most immediate is to understand the acquisition process itself. Conditionals are conceptually, and in many languages morphosyntactically, complex. What aspects of cognitive and grammatical development are implicated in their acquisition? Does learning take place in the context of particular interactions with other speakers? Where do conditionals fit in with the acquisition of other complex sentences? What are the semantic, syntactic and pragmatic properties of the first conditionals? Underlying this first interest is a second, more strictly linguistic one. Research of recent years has found increasing evidence that natural languages are constrained in certain ways. The source of these constraints is not yet clearly understood, but it is widely assumed that some of them derive ultimately from properties of children's capacity for language acquisition.

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  • Bowerman, M. (1976). Le relazioni strutturali nel linguaggio infantile: sintattiche o semantiche? [Reprint]. In F. Antinucci, & C. Castelfranchi (Eds.), Psicolinguistica: Percezione, memoria e apprendimento del linguaggio (pp. 303-321). Bologna: Il Mulino.

    Abstract

    Reprinted from Bowerman, M. (1973). Structural relationships in children's utterances: Semantic or syntactic? In T. Moore (Ed.), Cognitive development and the acquisition of language (pp. 197 213). New York: Academic Press
  • Bowerman, M. (1989). Learning a semantic system: What role do cognitive predispositions play? In M. L. Rice, & R. L. Schiefelbusch (Eds.), The teachability of language (pp. 133-169). Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes.
  • Bowerman, M. (1976). Semantic factors in the acquisition of rules for word use and sentence construction. In D. Morehead, & A. Morehead (Eds.), Directions in normal and deficient language development (pp. 99-179). Baltimore: University Park Press.
  • Bowerman, M. (1980). The structure and origin of semantic categories in the language learning child. In M. Foster, & S. Brandes (Eds.), Symbol as sense (pp. 277-299). New York: Academic Press.
  • Brown, C. M., & Hagoort, P. (1989). De LAT-relatie tussen lichaam en geest: Over de implicaties van neurowetenschap voor onze kennis van cognitie. In C. Brown, P. Hagoort, & T. Meijering (Eds.), Vensters op de geest: Cognitie op het snijvlak van filosofie en psychologie (pp. 50-81). Utrecht: Grafiet.
  • Brown, P. (1980). How and why are women more polite: Some evidence from a Mayan community. In S. McConnell-Ginet, R. Borker, & N. Furman (Eds.), Women and language in literature and society (pp. 111-136). New York: Praeger.
  • Wu, D. H., & Bulut, T. (2020). The contribution of statistical learning to language and literacy acquisition. In K. D. Federmeier, & H. W. Huang (Eds.), Psychology of Learning and Motivation (pp. 283-318). doi:10.1016/bs.plm.2020.02.001.

    Abstract

    Acquisition and processing of written and spoken language is an impressive cognitive accomplishment considering the complexity of the tasks. While only humans seem to have evolved to the fullest extent the capacity that underpins these remarkable feats of development and civilization, the exact nature of such capacity has been subject to ongoing research. In this chapter, we focus on language competence and what makes it unique among the communication systems of different species. We then elaborate on the classical debate between nativist and environmentalist accounts of language acquisition, with reference to evidence for and against the critical period hypothesis. After introducing the regularity embedded in different languages and particularly in drastically different orthographies, we present behavioral and neurophysiological evidence for the sensitivity to systematic mapping between orthography and phonology. Because learning to read is to master such mapping, we assume that the ability to use statistical learning to appreciate the dependency among items would contribute to literacy acquisition. Empirical results from behavioral and neuroimaging experiments conducted in our and other laboratories provide support for the close link between statistical learning and literacy acquisition in native and foreign language. Such findings highlight the significance of domain-general statistical learning to domain-specific language acquisition, and point to an important direction for theories and practices of language education.

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  • Burenhult, N. (2020). Foraging and the history of languages in the Malay Peninsula. In T. Güldemann, P. McConvell, & R. Rhodes (Eds.), The language of Hunter-Gatherers (pp. 164-197). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Casillas, M., & Hilbrink, E. (2020). Communicative act development. In K. P. Schneider, & E. Ifantidou (Eds.), Developmental and Clinical Pragmatics (pp. 61-88). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

    Abstract

    How do children learn to map linguistic forms onto their intended meanings? This chapter begins with an introduction to some theoretical and analytical tools used to study communicative acts. It then turns to communicative act development in spoken and signed language acquisition, including both the early scaffolding and production of communicative acts (both non-verbal and verbal) as well as their later links to linguistic development and Theory of Mind. The chapter wraps up by linking research on communicative act development to the acquisition of conversational skills, cross-linguistic and individual differences in communicative experience during development, and human evolution. Along the way, it also poses a few open questions for future research in this domain.
  • Clark, E. V., & Bowerman, M. (1986). On the acquisition of final voiced stops. In J. A. Fishman (Ed.), The Fergusonian impact: in honor of Charles A. Ferguson on the occasion of his 65th birthday. Volume 1: From phonology to society (pp. 51-68). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Cutler, A. (1989). Auditory lexical access: Where do we start? In W. Marslen-Wilson (Ed.), Lexical representation and process (pp. 342-356). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Abstract

    The lexicon, considered as a component of the process of recognizing speech, is a device that accepts a sound image as input and outputs meaning. Lexical access is the process of formulating an appropriate input and mapping it onto an entry in the lexicon's store of sound images matched with their meanings. This chapter addresses the problems of auditory lexical access from continuous speech. The central argument to be proposed is that utterance prosody plays a crucial role in the access process. Continuous listening faces problems that are not present in visual recognition (reading) or in noncontinuous recognition (understanding isolated words). Aspects of utterance prosody offer a solution to these particular problems.
  • Cutler, A. (1980). Errors of stress and intonation. In V. A. Fromkin (Ed.), Errors in linguistic performance: Slips of the tongue, ear, pen and hand (pp. 67-80). New York: Academic Press.
  • Cutler, A. (1980). Syllable omission errors and isochrony. In H. W. Dechet, & M. Raupach (Eds.), Temporal variables in speech: studies in honour of Frieda Goldman-Eisler (pp. 183-190). The Hague: Mouton.
  • Cutler, A., & Isard, S. D. (1980). The production of prosody. In B. Butterworth (Ed.), Language production (pp. 245-269). London: Academic Press.
  • Dingemanse, M. (2020). Recruiting assistance and collaboration: A West-African corpus study. In S. Floyd, G. Rossi, & N. J. Enfield (Eds.), Getting others to do things: A pragmatic typology of recruitments (pp. 369-241). Berlin: Language Science Press. doi:10.5281/zenodo.4018388.

    Abstract

    Doing things for and with others is one of the foundations of human social life. This chapter studies a systematic collection of 207 requests for assistance and collaboration from a video corpus of everyday conversations in Siwu, a Kwa language of Ghana. A range of social action formats and semiotic resources reveals how language is adapted to the interactional challenges posed by recruiting assistance. While many of the formats bear a language-specific signature, their sequential and interactional properties show important commonalities across languages. Two tentative findings are put forward for further cross-linguistic examination: a “rule of three” that may play a role in the organisation of successive response pursuits, and a striking commonality in animal-oriented recruitments across languages that may be explained by convergent cultural evolution. The Siwu recruitment system emerges as one instance of a sophisticated machinery for organising collaborative action that transcends language and culture.
  • Fox, E. (2020). Literary Jerry and justice. In M. E. Poulsen (Ed.), The Jerome Bruner Library: From New York to Nijmegen. Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
  • Frost, R. L. A., & Monaghan, P. (2020). Insights from studying statistical learning. In C. F. Rowland, A. L. Theakston, B. Ambridge, & K. E. Twomey (Eds.), Current Perspectives on Child Language Acquisition: How children use their environment to learn (pp. 65-89). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi:10.1075/tilar.27.03fro.

    Abstract

    Acquiring language is notoriously complex, yet for the majority of children this feat is accomplished with remarkable ease. Usage-based accounts of language acquisition suggest that this success can be largely attributed to the wealth of experience with language that children accumulate over the course of language acquisition. One field of research that is heavily underpinned by this principle of experience is statistical learning, which posits that learners can perform powerful computations over the distribution of information in a given input, which can help them to discern precisely how that input is structured, and how it operates. A growing body of work brings this notion to bear in the field of language acquisition, due to a developing understanding of the richness of the statistical information contained in speech. In this chapter we discuss the role that statistical learning plays in language acquisition, emphasising the importance of both the distribution of information within language, and the situation in which language is being learnt. First, we address the types of statistical learning that apply to a range of language learning tasks, asking whether the statistical processes purported to support language learning are the same or distinct across different tasks in language acquisition. Second, we expand the perspective on what counts as environmental input, by determining how statistical learning operates over the situated learning environment, and not just sequences of sounds in utterances. Finally, we address the role of variability in children’s input, and examine how statistical learning can accommodate (and perhaps even exploit) this during language acquisition.
  • Güldemann, T., & Hammarström, H. (2020). Geographical axis effects in large-scale linguistic distributions. In M. Crevels, & P. Muysken (Eds.), Language Dispersal, Diversification, and Contact. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Hagoort, P. (2020). Taal. In O. Van den Heuvel, Y. Van der Werf, B. Schmand, & B. Sabbe (Eds.), Leerboek neurowetenschappen voor de klinische psychiatrie (pp. 234-239). Amsterdam: Boom Uitgevers.
  • Heeschen, V., Eibl-Eibesfeldt, I., Grammer, K., Schiefenhövel, W., & Senft, G. (1986). Sprachliches Verhalten. In Generalverwaltung der MPG (Ed.), Max-Planck-Gesellschaft Jahrbuch 1986 (pp. 394-396). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht.
  • Kastens, K. (2020). The Jerome Bruner Library treasure. In M. E. Poulsen (Ed.), The Jerome Bruner Library: From New York to Nijmegen (pp. 29-34). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
  • Kempen, G. (1986). Beyond word processing. In E. Cluff, & G. Bunting (Eds.), Information management yearbook 1986 (pp. 178-181). London: IDPM Publications.
  • Kempen, G. (1989). Informatiegedragskunde: Pijler van de moderne informatieverzorging. In A. F. Marks (Ed.), Sociaal-wetenschappelijke informatie en kennisvorming in onderzoek, onderzoeksbeleid en beroep (pp. 31-35). Amsterdam: SWIDOC.
  • Kempen, G. (1986). Kunstmatige intelligentie en gezond verstand. In P. Hagoort, & R. Maessen (Eds.), Geest, computer, kunst (pp. 118-123). Utrecht: Stichting Grafiet.
  • Kempen, G. (1989). Language generation systems. In I. S. Bátori, W. Lenders, & W. Putschke (Eds.), Computational linguistics: An international handbook on computer oriented language research and applications (pp. 471-480). Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter.
  • Kidd, E., Bigood, A., Donnelly, S., Durrant, S., Peter, M. S., & Rowland, C. F. (2020). Individual differences in first language acquisition and their theoretical implications. In C. F. Rowland, A. L. Theakston, B. Ambridge, & K. E. Twomey (Eds.), Current Perspectives on Child Language Acquisition: How children use their environment to learn (pp. 189-219). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi:10.1075/tilar.27.09kid.

    Abstract

    Much of Lieven’s pioneering work has helped move the study of individual differences to the centre of child language research. The goal of the present chapter is to illustrate how the study of individual differences provides crucial insights into the language acquisition process. In part one, we summarise some of the evidence showing how pervasive individual differences are across the whole of the language system; from gestures to morphosyntax. In part two, we describe three causal factors implicated in explaining individual differences, which, we argue, must be built into any theory of language acquisition (intrinsic differences in the neurocognitive learning mechanisms, the child’s communicative environment, and developmental cascades in which each new linguistic skill that the child has to acquire depends critically on the prior acquisition of foundational abilities). In part three, we present an example study on the role of the speed of linguistic processing on vocabulary development, which illustrates our approach to individual differences. The results show evidence of a changing relationship between lexical processing speed and vocabulary over developmental time, perhaps as a result of the changing nature of the structure of the lexicon. The study thus highlights the benefits of an individual differences approach in building, testing, and constraining theories of language acquisition.
  • Klein, W. (1976). Der Prozeß des Zweitspracherwerbs und seine Beschreibung. In R. Dietrich (Ed.), Aspekte des Fremdsprachenerwerbs (pp. 100-118). Kronberg/Ts.: Athenäum.
  • Klein, W., & Perdue, C. (1986). Comment résourdre une tache verbale complexe avec peu de moyens linguistiques? In A. Giacomi, & D. Véronique (Eds.), Acquisition d'une langue étrangère (pp. 306-330). Aix-en-Provence: Service des Publications de l'Universite de Provence.
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1980). Argumentation [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (38/39).
  • Klein, W. (1976). Maschinelle Analyse des Sprachwandels. In P. Eisenberg (Ed.), Maschinelle Sprachanalyse (pp. 137-166). Berlin: de Gruyter.
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1989). Kindersprache [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (73).
  • Klein, W. (1989). La variation linguistique. In P. Cadiot, & N. Dittmar (Eds.), La sociolinguistique en pays de langue allemande (pp. 101-124). Lille: Presses Universitaires de Lille.
  • Klein, W. (1986). Intonation und Satzmodalität in einfachen Fällen: Einige Beobachtungen. In E. Slembek (Ed.), Miteinander sprechen und handeln: Festschrift für Hellmut Geissner (pp. 161-177). Königstein Ts.: Scriptor.
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1976). Psycholinguistik [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (23/24).
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1986). Sprachverfall [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (62).
  • Klein, W., & Perdue, C. (1989). The learner's problem of arranging words. In B. MacWhinney, & E. Bates (Eds.), The crosslinguistic study of sentence processing (pp. 292-327). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Klein, W. (1980). Verbal planning in route directions. In H. Dechert, & M. Raupach (Eds.), Temporal variables in speech (pp. 159-168). Den Haag: Mouton.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1989). De connectionistische mode: Symbolische en subsymbolische modellen van het menselijk gedrag. In C. M. Brown, P. Hagoort, & T. Meijering (Eds.), Vensters op de geest: Cognitie op het snijvlak van filosofie en psychologie (pp. 202-219). Utrecht: Stichting Grafiet.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1976). Formal grammars and the natural language user: A review. In A. Marzollo (Ed.), Topics in artificial intelligence (pp. 226-290). Vienna: Springer.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1986). Herdenking van Joseph Maria Franciscus Jaspars (16 maart 1934 - 31 juli 1985). In Jaarboek 1986 Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen (pp. 187-189). Amsterdam: North Holland.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1980). On-line processing constraints on the properties of signed and spoken language. In U. Bellugi, & M. Studdert-Kennedy (Eds.), Signed and spoken language: Biological constraints on linguistic form (pp. 141-160). Weinheim: Verlag Chemie.

    Abstract

    It is argued that the dominantly successive nature of language is largely mode-independent and holds equally for sign and for spoken language. A preliminary distinction is made between what is simultaneous or successive in the signal, and what is in the process; these need not coincide, and it is the successiveness of the process that is at stake. It is then discussed extensively for the word/sign level, and in a more preliminary fashion for the clause and discourse level that online processes are parallel in that they can simultaneously draw on various sources of knowledge (syntactic, semantic, pragmatic), but successive in that they can work at the interpretation of only one unit at a time. This seems to hold for both sign and spoken language. In the final section, conjectures are made about possible evolutionary explanations for these properties of language processing.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (2020). The alpha and omega of Jerome Bruner's contributions to the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. In M. E. Poulsen (Ed.), The Jerome Bruner Library: From New York to Nijmegen (pp. 11-18). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.

    Abstract

    Presentation of the official opening of the Jerome Bruner Library, January 8th, 2020
  • Levelt, W. J. M., & Kempen, G. (1976). Taal. In J. Michon, E. Eijkman, & L. De Klerk (Eds.), Handboek der Psychonomie (pp. 492-523). Deventer: Van Loghum Slaterus.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1980). Toegepaste aspecten van het taal-psychologisch onderzoek: Enkele inleidende overwegingen. In J. Matter (Ed.), Toegepaste aspekten van de taalpsychologie (pp. 3-11). Amsterdam: VU Boekhandel.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1989). Working models of perception: Five general issues. In B. A. Elsendoorn, & H. Bouma (Eds.), Working models of perception (pp. 489-503). London: Academic Press.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1986). Zur sprachlichen Abbildung des Raumes: Deiktische und intrinsische Perspektive. In H. Bosshardt (Ed.), Perspektiven auf Sprache. Interdisziplinäre Beiträge zum Gedenken an Hans Hörmann (pp. 187-211). Berlin: De Gruyter.
  • Levinson, S. C. (1989). Conversation. In E. Barnouw (Ed.), International encyclopedia of communications (pp. 407-410). New York: Oxford University Press.
  • McQueen, J. M., & Dilley, L. C. (2020). Prosody and spoken-word recognition. In C. Gussenhoven, & A. Chen (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of language prosody (pp. 509-521). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Abstract

    This chapter outlines a Bayesian model of spoken-word recognition and reviews how
    prosody is part of that model. The review focuses on the information that assists the lis­
    tener in recognizing the prosodic structure of an utterance and on how spoken-word
    recognition is also constrained by prior knowledge about prosodic structure. Recognition
    is argued to be a process of perceptual inference that ensures that listening is robust to
    variability in the speech signal. In essence, the listener makes inferences about the seg­
    mental content of each utterance, about its prosodic structure (simultaneously at differ­
    ent levels in the prosodic hierarchy), and about the words it contains, and uses these in­
    ferences to form an utterance interpretation. Four characteristics of the proposed
    prosody-enriched recognition model are discussed: parallel uptake of different informa­
    tion types, high contextual dependency, adaptive processing, and phonological abstrac­
    tion. The next steps that should be taken to develop the model are also discussed.
  • Misersky, J., & Redl, T. (2020). A psycholinguistic view on stereotypical and grammatical gender: The effects and remedies. In C. D. J. Bulten, C. F. Perquin-Deelen, M. H. Sinninghe Damsté, & K. J. Bakker (Eds.), Diversiteit. Een multidisciplinaire terreinverkenning (pp. 237-255). Deventer: Wolters Kluwer.
  • Patterson, R. D., & Cutler, A. (1989). Auditory preprocessing and recognition of speech. In A. Baddeley, & N. Bernsen (Eds.), Research directions in cognitive science: A european perspective: Vol. 1. Cognitive psychology (pp. 23-60). London: Erlbaum.
  • Rowland, C. F. (2020). Introduction. In M. E. Poulsen (Ed.), The Jerome Bruner Library: From New York to Nijmegen. Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
  • Senft, G. (2020). Kampfschild - vayola. In T. Brüderlin, S. Schien, & S. Stoll (Eds.), Ausgepackt! 125Jahre Geschichte[n] im Museum Natur und Mensch (pp. 58-59). Freiburg: Michael Imhof Verlag.
  • Senft, G. (2020). 32 Kampfschild - dance or war shield - vayola. In T. Brüderlin, & S. Stoll (Eds.), Ausgepackt! 125Jahre Geschichte[n] im Museum Natur und Mensch. Texte zur Ausstellung, Städtische Museen Freiburg, vom 20. Juni 2020 bis 10. Januar 2021 (pp. 76-77). Freiburg: Städtische Museen.
  • Senft, G., & Labov, W. (1980). Einige Prinzipien linguistischer Methodologie [transl. from English by Gunter Senft]. In N. Dittmar, & B. O. Rieck (Eds.), William Labov: Sprache im sozialen Kontext (pp. 1-24). Königstein: Athenäum FAT.
  • Senft, G., & Heeschen, V. (1989). Humanethologisches Tonarchiv. In Generalverwaltung der MPG (Ed.), Max-Planck-Gesellschaft Jahrbuch 1989 (pp. 246). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht.
  • Senft, G., & Labov, W. (1980). Hyperkorrektheit der unteren Mittelschicht als Faktor im Sprachwandel; [transl. from English by Gunter Senft]. In N. Dittmar, & B. O. Rieck (Eds.), William Labov: Sprache im sozialen Kontext (pp. 77-94). Königstein: Athneäum FAT.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1989). A problem in English subject complementation. In D. Jaspers, W. Klooster, Y. Putseys, & P. A. M. Seuren (Eds.), Sentential complementation and the lexicon: Studies in honour of Wim de Geest (pp. 355-375). Dordrecht: Foris.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1980). Dreiwertige Logik und die Semantik natürlicher Sprache. In J. Ballweg, & H. Glinz (Eds.), Grammatik und Logik: Jahrbuch 1979 des Instituts für deutsche Sprache (pp. 72-103). Düsseldorf: Pädagogischer Verlag Schwann.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1976). Echo, een studie in negatie. In G. Koefoed, & A. Evers (Eds.), Lijnen van taaltheoretisch onderzoek: Een bundel oorspronkelijke artikelen aangeboden aan prof. dr. H. Schultink (pp. 160-184). Groningen: Tjeenk Willink.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1986). Anaphora resolution. In T. Myers, K. Brown, & B. McGonigle (Eds.), Reasoning and discourse processes (pp. 187-207). London: Academic Press.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1989). Notes on reflexivity. In F. J. Heyvaert, & F. Steurs (Eds.), Worlds behind words: Essays in honour of Prof. Dr. F.G. Droste on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday (pp. 85-95). Leuven: Leuven University Press.
  • Seuren, P. A. M., & Wekker, H. (1986). Semantic transparency as a factor in Creole genesis. In P. Muysken, & N. Smith (Eds.), Substrata versus universals in Creole genesis: Papers from the Amsterdam Creole Workshop, April 1985 (pp. 57-70). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Skiba, R. (1989). Funktionale Beschreibung von Lernervarietäten: Das Berliner Projekt P-MoLL. In N. Reiter (Ed.), Sprechen und Hören: Akte des 23. Linguistischen Kolloquiums, Berlin (pp. 181-191). Tübingen: Niemeyer.
  • Stassen, H., & Levelt, W. J. M. (1976). Systemen, automaten en grammatica's. In J. Michon, E. Eijkman, & L. De Klerk (Eds.), Handboek der psychonomie (pp. 100-127). Deventer: Van Loghum Slaterus.
  • Thomassen, A., & Kempen, G. (1976). Geheugen. In J. A. Michon, E. Eijkman, & L. F. De Klerk (Eds.), Handboek der Psychonomie (pp. 354-387). Deventer: Van Loghum Slaterus.
  • Von Stutterheim, C., & Klein, W. (1989). Referential movement in descriptive and narrative discourse. In R. Dietrich, & C. F. Graumann (Eds.), Language processing in social context (pp. 39-76). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
  • Weissenborn, J. (1986). Learning how to become an interlocutor. The verbal negotiation of common frames of reference and actions in dyads of 7–14 year old children. In J. Cook-Gumperz, W. A. Corsaro, & J. Streeck (Eds.), Children's worlds and children's language (pp. 377-404). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Zinken, J., Rossi, G., & Reddy, V. (2020). Doing more than expected: Thanking recognizes another's agency in providing assistance. In C. Taleghani-Nikazm, E. Betz, & P. Golato (Eds.), Mobilizing others: Grammar and lexis within larger activities (pp. 253-278). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Abstract

    In informal interaction, speakers rarely thank a person who has complied with a request. Examining data from British English, German, Italian, Polish, and Telugu, we ask when speakers do thank after compliance. The results show that thanking treats the other’s assistance as going beyond what could be taken for granted in the circumstances. Coupled with the rareness of thanking after requests, this suggests that cooperation is to a great extent governed by expectations of helpfulness, which can be long-standing, or built over the course of a particular interaction. The higher frequency of thanking in some languages (such as English or Italian) suggests that cultures differ in the importance they place on recognizing the other’s agency in doing as requested.

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