Publications

Displaying 1 - 62 of 62
  • Azar, Z. (2020). Effect of language contact on speech and gesture: The case of Turkish-Dutch bilinguals in the Netherlands. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Baranova, J. (2020). Reasons for every-day activities. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Barthel, M. (2020). Speech planning in dialogue: Psycholinguistic studies of the timing of turn taking. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Basnakova, J. (2019). Beyond the language given: The neurobiological infrastructure for pragmatic inferencing. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Behnke, K. (1998). The acquisition of phonetic categories in young infants: A self-organising artificial neural network approach. PhD Thesis, University of Twente, Enschede. doi:10.17617/2.2057688.
  • Bergmann, C. (2014). Computational models of early language acquisition and the role of different voices. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Bosker, H. R. (2014). The processing and evaluation of fluency in native and non-native speech. PhD Thesis, Utrecht University, Utrecht.

    Abstract

    Disfluency is a common characteristic of spontaneously produced speech. Disfluencies (e.g., silent pauses, filled pauses [uh’s and uhm’s], corrections, repetitions, etc.) occur in both native and non-native speech. There appears to be an apparent contradiction between claims from the evaluative and cognitive approach to fluency. On the one hand, the evaluative approach shows that non-native disfluencies have a negative effect on listeners’ subjective fluency impressions. On the other hand, the cognitive approach reports beneficial effects of native disfluencies on cognitive processes involved in speech comprehension, such as prediction and attention.

    This dissertation aims to resolve this apparent contradiction by combining the evaluative and cognitive approach. The reported studies target both the evaluation (Chapters 2 and 3) and the processing of fluency (Chapters 4 and 5) in native and non-native speech. Thus, it provides an integrative account of native and non-native fluency perception, informative to both language testing practice and cognitive psycholinguists. The proposed account of fluency perception testifies to the notion that speech performance matters: communication through spoken language does not only depend on what is said, but also on how it is said and by whom.
  • Brehm, L. (2014). Speed limits and red flags: Why number agreement accidents happen. PhD Thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana-Champaign, Il.
  • Buckler, H. (2014). The acquisition of morphophonological alternations across languages. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Choi, J. (2014). Rediscovering a forgotten language. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Creemers, A. (2020). Morphological processing and the effects of semantic transparency. PhD Thesis, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
  • Drijvers, L. (2019). On the oscillatory dynamics underlying speech-gesture integration in clear and adverse listening conditions. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Fairs, A. (2019). Linguistic dual-tasking: Understanding temporal overlap between production and comprehension. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Favier, S. (2020). Individual differences in syntactic knowledge and processing: Exploring the role of literacy experience. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Fisher, S. E., & Tilot, A. K. (Eds.). (2019). Bridging senses: Novel insights from synaesthesia [Special Issue]. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B: Biological Sciences, 374.
  • Forkel, S. J. (2014). Identification of anatomical predictors of language recovery after stroke with diffusion tensor imaging. PhD Thesis, King's College London, London.

    Abstract

    Background Stroke-induced aphasia is associated with adverse effects on quality of life and the ability to return to work. However, the predictors of recovery are still poorly understood. Anatomical variability of the arcuate fasciculus, connecting Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas, has been reported in the healthy population using diffusion tensor imaging tractography. In about 40% of the population the arcuate fasciculus is bilateral and this pattern is advantageous for certain language related functions, such as auditory verbal learning (Catani et al. 2007). Methods In this prospective longitudinal study, anatomical predictors of post-stroke aphasia recovery were investigated using diffusion tractography and arterial spin labelling. Patients An 18-subject strong aphasia cohort with first-ever unilateral left hemispheric middle cerebral artery infarcts underwent post stroke language (mean 5±5 days) and neuroimaging (mean 10±6 days) assessments and neuropsychological follow-up at six months. Ten of these patients were available for reassessment one year after symptom onset. Aphasia was assessed with the Western Aphasia Battery, which provides a global measure of severity (Aphasia Quotient, AQ). Results Better recover from aphasia was observed in patients with a right arcuate fasciculus [beta=.730, t(2.732), p=.020] (tractography) and increased fractional anisotropy in the right hemisphere (p<0.05) (Tract-based spatial statistics). Further, an increase in left hemisphere perfusion was observed after one year (p<0.01) (perfusion). Lesion analysis identified maximal overlay in the periinsular white matter (WM). Lesion-symptom mapping identified damage to periinsular structure as predictive for overall aphasia severity and damage to frontal lobe white matter as predictive of repetition deficits. Conclusion These findings suggest an important role for the right hemisphere language network in recovery from aphasia after left hemispheric stroke.

    Additional information

    Link to repository
  • Frost, R. (2014). Learning grammatical structures with and without sleep. PhD Thesis, Lancaster University, Lancaster.
  • Ganushchak, L. Y., & Acheson, D. J. (Eds.). (2014). What's to be learned from speaking aloud? - Advances in the neurophysiological measurement of overt language production. [Research topic] [Special Issue]. Frontiers in Language Sciences. Retrieved from http://www.frontiersin.org/Language_Sciences/researchtopics/What_s_to_be_Learned_from_Spea/1671.

    Abstract

    Researchers have long avoided neurophysiological experiments of overt speech production due to the suspicion that artifacts caused by muscle activity may lead to a bad signal-to-noise ratio in the measurements. However, the need to actually produce speech may influence earlier processing and qualitatively change speech production processes and what we can infer from neurophysiological measures thereof. Recently, however, overt speech has been successfully investigated using EEG, MEG, and fMRI. The aim of this Research Topic is to draw together recent research on the neurophysiological basis of language production, with the aim of developing and extending theoretical accounts of the language production process. In this Research Topic of Frontiers in Language Sciences, we invite both experimental and review papers, as well as those about the latest methods in acquisition and analysis of overt language production data. All aspects of language production are welcome: i.e., from conceptualization to articulation during native as well as multilingual language production. Focus should be placed on using the neurophysiological data to inform questions about the processing stages of language production. In addition, emphasis should be placed on the extent to which the identified components of the electrophysiological signal (e.g., ERP/ERF, neuronal oscillations, etc.), brain areas or networks are related to language comprehension and other cognitive domains. By bringing together electrophysiological and neuroimaging evidence on language production mechanisms, a more complete picture of the locus of language production processes and their temporal and neurophysiological signatures will emerge.
  • Gerakaki, S. (2020). The moment in between: Planning speech while listening. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Goriot, C. (2019). Early-English education works no miracles: Cognitive and linguistic development in mainstream, early-English, and bilingual primary-school pupils in the Netherlands. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Grabe, E. (1998). Comparative intonational phonology: English and German. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen. doi:10.17617/2.2057683.
  • Hömke, P. (2019). The face in face-to-face communication: Signals of understanding and non-understanding. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Hubers, F. (2020). Two of a kind: Idiomatic expressions by native speakers and second language learners. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Iacozza, S. (2020). Exploring social biases in language processing. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Jordanoska, I. (2020). The pragmatics of sentence final and second position particles in Wolof. PhD Thesis, University of Vienna, Vienna.
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1998). Kaleidoskop [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (112).
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1976). Psycholinguistik [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (23/24).
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1984). Textverständlichkeit - Textverstehen [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (55).
  • Kok, P. (2014). On the role of expectation in visual perception: A top-down view of early visual cortex. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Kösem, A. (2014). Cortical oscillations as temporal reference frames for perception. PhD Thesis, Université Pierre et Marie Curie-Paris VI, Paris.
  • Lattenkamp, E. Z. (2020). Vocal learning in the pale spear-nosed bat, Phyllostomus discolor. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Maslowski, M. (2019). Fast speech can sound slow: Effects of contextual speech rate on word recognition. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Mongelli, V. (2020). The role of neural feedback in language unification: How awareness affects combinatorial processing. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Nijveld, A. (2019). The role of exemplars in speech comprehension. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Piai, V. (2014). Choosing our words: Lexical competition and the involvement of attention in spoken word production. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Poort, E. D. (2019). The representation of cognates and interlingual homographs in the bilingual lexicon. PhD Thesis, University College London, London, UK.

    Abstract

    Cognates and interlingual homographs are words that exist in multiple languages. Cognates, like “wolf” in Dutch and English, also carry the same meaning. Interlingual homographs do not: the word “angel” in English refers to a spiritual being, but in Dutch to the sting of a bee. The six experiments included in this thesis examined how these words are represented in the bilingual mental lexicon. Experiment 1 and 2 investigated the issue of task effects on the processing of cognates. Bilinguals often process cognates more quickly than single-language control words (like “carrot”, which exists in English but not Dutch). These experiments showed that the size of this cognate facilitation effect depends on the other types of stimuli included in the task. These task effects were most likely due to response competition, indicating that cognates are subject to processes of facilitation and inhibition both within the lexicon and at the level of decision making. Experiment 3 and 4 examined whether seeing a cognate or interlingual homograph in one’s native language affects subsequent processing in one’s second language. This method was used to determine whether non-identical cognates share a form representation. These experiments were inconclusive: they revealed no effect of cross-lingual long-term priming. Most likely this was because a lexical decision task was used to probe an effect that is largely semantic in nature. Given these caveats to using lexical decision tasks, two final experiments used a semantic relatedness task instead. Both experiments revealed evidence for an interlingual homograph inhibition effect but no cognate facilitation effect. Furthermore, the second experiment found evidence for a small effect of cross-lingual long-term priming. After comparing these findings to the monolingual literature on semantic ambiguity resolution, this thesis concludes that it is necessary to explore the viability of a distributed connectionist account of the bilingual mental lexicon.

    Additional information

    full text via UCL
  • Raviv, L. (2020). Language and society: How social pressures shape grammatical structure. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Reifegerste, J. (2014). Morphological processing in younger and older people: Evidence for flexible dual-route access. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Rodd, J. (2020). How speaking fast is like running: Modelling control of speaking rate. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Rojas-Berscia, L. M. (2014). A Heritage Reference Grammar of Selk’nam. Master Thesis, Radboud University, Nijmegen.
  • Rojas-Berscia, L. M. (2019). From Kawapanan to Shawi: Topics in language variation and change. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • De Ruiter, J. P. (1998). Gesture and speech production. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen. doi:10.17617/2.2057686.
  • Sharoh, D. (2020). Advances in layer specific fMRI for the study of language, cognition and directed brain networks. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Simanova, I. (2014). In search of conceptual representations in the brain: Towards mind-reading. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Sollis, E. (2019). A network of interacting proteins disrupted in language-related disorders. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Terporten, R. (2020). The power of context: How linguistic contextual information shapes brain dynamics during sentence processing. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Thorgrimsson, G. (2014). Infants' understanding of communication as participants and observers. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Thorin, J. (2020). Can you hear what you cannot say? The interactions of speech perception and production during non-native phoneme learning. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Tourtouri, E. N. (2020). Rational redundancy in situated communication. PhD Thesis, Saarland University, Saarbrücken.

    Abstract

    Contrary to the Gricean maxims of Quantity (Grice, 1975), it has been repeatedly shown that speakers often include redundant information in their utterances (over- specifications). Previous research on referential communication has long debated whether this redundancy is the result of speaker-internal or addressee-oriented processes, while it is also unclear whether referential redundancy hinders or facilitates comprehension. We present a bounded-rational account of referential redundancy, according to which any word in an utterance, even if it is redundant, can be beneficial to comprehension, to the extent that it facilitates the reduction of listeners’ uncertainty regarding the target referent in a co-present visual scene. Information-theoretic metrics, such as Shannon’s entropy (Shannon, 1948), were employed in order to quantify this uncertainty in bits of information, and gain an estimate of the cognitive effort related to referential processing. Under this account, speakers may, therefore, utilise redundant adjectives in order to reduce the visually-determined entropy (and thereby their listeners’ cognitive effort) more uniformly across their utterances. In a series of experiments, we examined both the comprehension and the production of over-specifications in complex visual contexts. Our findings are in line with the bounded-rational account. Specifically, we present evidence that: (a) in view of complex visual scenes, listeners’ processing and identification of the target referent may be facilitated by the use of redundant adjectives, as well as by a more uniform reduction of uncertainty across the utterance, and (b) that, while both speaker-internal and addressee-oriented processes are at play in the production of over-specifications, listeners’ processing concerns may also influence the encoding of redundant adjectives, at least for some speakers, who encode redundant adjectives more frequently when these adjectives contribute to a more uniform reduction of referential entropy.
  • Trujillo, J. P. (2020). Movement speaks for itself: The kinematic and neural dynamics of communicative action and gesture. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Tsuji, S. (2014). The road to native listening. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Turco, G. (2014). Contrasting opposite polarity in Germanic and Romance languages: Verum focus and affirmative particles in native speakers and advanced L2 learners. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Uhlmann, M. (2020). Neurobiological models of sentence processing. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Van Es, M. W. J. (2020). On the role of oscillatory synchrony in neural processing and behavior. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Van Putten, S. (2014). Information structure in Avatime. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Van Rhijn, J. R. (2019). The role of FoxP2 in striatal circuitry. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Veenstra, A. (2014). Semantic and syntactic constraints on the production of subject-verb agreement. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Verkerk, A. (2014). The evolutionary dynamics of motion event encoding. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • De Vos, J. (2019). Naturalistic word learning in a second language. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Zheng, X. (2020). Control and monitoring in bilingual speech production: Language selection, switching and intrusion. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Zimianiti, E. (2020). Verb production and comprehension in dementia: A verb argument structure approach. Master Thesis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece.

    Abstract

    The purpose of this study is to shed light to the linguistic deficit in populations with dementia, and more specifically with Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer’s Disease; by examining the assignment of thematic roles (θ-roles) in sentences including psychological verbs.
    The interest in types of dementia and its precursor is due to the relevance of the disease in present-day world society (Caloi, 2017). 47 millions of people worldwide were reported by the World Alzheimer Report in 2016 (Prince et al. 2016) as people with a type of dementia. This number surpasses the number of inhabitants in Spain, a whole country, and it is expected, according to the report, to triplicate until 2050 reaching the number of 131 million. The impact of this disease is observed not only at the social level but also in the economic one, because of their need for assistance in their everyday life. What is worrying, is the lack of total treatment once the disease has started. Despite the efforts of medicine, dementia is problematic in terms of its diagnosis, because a variety of cognitive abilities is assessed in combination with medical workup. Language is a crucial component in the procedure of diagnosis as linguistic deficits are among the first symptoms that accompany the onset of the disease. Therefore, further investigation of linguistic impairment is a necessity in order to enhance the diagnostic techniques used nowadays. Furthermore, the lack of efficient drugs for the treatment of the disease has necessitated the development of training programs for maintenance and increase of the cognitive abilities in people with either Mild Cognitive Impairment or a type of dementia …
  • Zormpa, E. (2020). Memory for speaking and listening. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.

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