Publications

Displaying 1 - 100 of 131
  • Allen, S. E. M. (1998). A discourse-pragmatic explanation for the subject-object asymmetry in early null arguments. In A. Sorace, C. Heycock, & R. Shillcock (Eds.), Proceedings of the GALA '97 Conference on Language Acquisition (pp. 10-15). Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press.

    Abstract

    The present paper assesses discourse-pragmatic factors as a potential explanation for the subject-object assymetry in early child language. It identifies a set of factors which characterize typical situations of informativeness (Greenfield & Smith, 1976), and uses these factors to identify informative arguments in data from four children aged 2;0 through 3;6 learning Inuktitut as a first language. In addition, it assesses the extent of the links between features of informativeness on one hand and lexical vs. null and subject vs. object arguments on the other. Results suggest that a pragmatics account of the subject-object asymmetry can be upheld to a greater extent than previous research indicates, and that several of the factors characterizing informativeness are good indicators of those arguments which tend to be omitted in early child language.
  • Almeida, L., Amdal, I., Beires, N., Boualem, M., Boves, L., Den Os, E., Filoche, P., Gomes, R., Knudsen, J. E., Kvale, K., Rugelbak, J., Tallec, C., & Warakagoda, N. (2002). Implementing and evaluating a multimodal tourist guide. In J. v. Kuppevelt, L. Dybkjær, & N. Bernsen (Eds.), Proceedings of the International CLASS Workshop on Natural, Intelligent and Effective Interaction in Multimodal Dialogue System (pp. 1-7). Copenhagen: Kluwer.
  • Berck, P., Bibiko, H.-J., Kemps-Snijders, M., Russel, A., & Wittenburg, P. (2006). Ontology-based language archive utilization. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2006) (pp. 2295-2298).
  • Bowerman, M., Brown, P., Eisenbeiss, S., Narasimhan, B., & Slobin, D. I. (2002). Putting things in places: Developmental consequences of linguistic typology. In E. V. Clark (Ed.), Proceedings of the 31st Stanford Child Language Research Forum. Space in language location, motion, path, and manner (pp. 1-29). Stanford: Center for the Study of Language & Information.

    Abstract

    This study explores how adults and children describe placement events (e.g., putting a book on a table) in a range of different languages (Finnish, English, German, Russian, Hindi, Tzeltal Maya, Spanish, and Turkish). Results show that the eight languages grammatically encode placement events in two main ways (Talmy, 1985, 1991), but further investigation reveals fine-grained crosslinguistic variation within each of the two groups. Children are sensitive to these finer-grained characteristics of the input language at an early age, but only when such features are perceptually salient. Our study demonstrates that a unitary notion of 'event' does not suffice to characterize complex but systematic patterns of event encoding crosslinguistically, and that children are sensitive to multiple influences, including the distributional properties of the target language, in constructing these patterns in their own speech.
  • Broeder, D., Offenga, F., Wittenburg, P., Van de Kamp, P., Nathan, D., & Strömqvist, S. (2006). Technologies for a federation of language resource archive. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2006) (pp. 2291-2294).
  • Broeder, D., Van Veenendaal, R., Nathan, D., & Strömqvist, S. (2006). A grid of language resource repositories. In Proceedings of the 2nd IEEE International Conference on e-Science and Grid Computing.
  • Broeder, D., Offenga, F., & Willems, D. (2002). Metadata tools supporting controlled vocabulary services. In M. Rodriguez González, & C. Paz SuárezR Araujo (Eds.), Third international conference on language resources and evaluation (pp. 1055-1059). Paris: European Language Resources Association.

    Abstract

    Within the ISLE Metadata Initiative (IMDI) project a user-friendly editor to enter metadata descriptions and a browser operating on the linked metadata descriptions were developed. Both tools support the usage of Controlled Vocabulary (CV) repositories by means of the specification of an URL where the formal CV definition data is available.
  • Broeder, D., Wittenburg, P., Declerck, T., & Romary, L. (2002). LREP: A language repository exchange protocol. In M. Rodriguez González, & C. Paz Suárez Araujo (Eds.), Third international conference on language resources and evaluation (pp. 1302-1305). Paris: European Language Resources Association.

    Abstract

    The recent increase in the number and complexity of the language resources available on the Internet is followed by a similar increase of available tools for linguistic analysis. Ideally the user does not need to be confronted with the question in how to match tools with resources. If resource repositories and tool repositories offer adequate metadata information and a suitable exchange protocol is developed this matching process could be performed (semi-) automatically.
  • Broeder, D., Claus, A., Offenga, F., Skiba, R., Trilsbeek, P., & Wittenburg, P. (2006). LAMUS: The Language Archive Management and Upload System. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2006) (pp. 2291-2294).
  • Broersma, M. (2006). Nonnative listeners rely less on phonetic information for phonetic categorization than native listeners. In Variation, detail and representation: 10th Conference on Laboratory Phonology (pp. 109-110).
  • Broersma, M. (2002). Comprehension of non-native speech: Inaccurate phoneme processing and activation of lexical competitors. In ICSLP-2002 (pp. 261-264). Denver: Center for Spoken Language Research, U. of Colorado Boulder.

    Abstract

    Native speakers of Dutch with English as a second language and native speakers of English participated in an English lexical decision experiment. Phonemes in real words were replaced by others from which they are hard to distinguish for Dutch listeners. Non-native listeners judged the resulting near-words more often as a word than native listeners. This not only happened when the phonemes that were exchanged did not exist as separate phonemes in the native language Dutch, but also when phoneme pairs that do exist in Dutch were used in word-final position, where they are not distinctive in Dutch. In an English bimodal priming experiment with similar groups of participants, word pairs were used which differed in one phoneme. These phonemes were hard to distinguish for the non-native listeners. Whereas in native listening both words inhibited each other, in non-native listening presentation of one word led to unresolved competition between both words. The results suggest that inaccurate phoneme processing by non-native listeners leads to the activation of spurious lexical competitors.
  • Broersma, M. (2006). Accident - execute: Increased activation in nonnative listening. In Proceedings of Interspeech 2006 (pp. 1519-1522).

    Abstract

    Dutch and English listeners’ perception of English words with partially overlapping onsets (e.g., accident- execute) was investigated. Partially overlapping words remained active longer for nonnative listeners, causing an increase of lexical competition in nonnative compared with native listening.
  • Brugman, H., Levinson, S. C., Skiba, R., & Wittenburg, P. (2002). The DOBES archive: It's purpose and implementation. In P. Austin, H. Dry, & P. Wittenburg (Eds.), Proceedings of the international LREC workshop on resources and tools in field linguistics (pp. 11-11). Paris: European Language Resources Association.
  • Brugman, H., Malaisé, V., & Gazendam, L. (2006). A web based general thesaurus browser to support indexing of television and radio programs. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2006) (pp. 1488-1491).
  • Brugman, H., Spenke, H., Kramer, M., & Klassmann, A. (2002). Multimedia annotation with multilingual input methods and search support.
  • Brugman, H., Wittenburg, P., Levinson, S. C., & Kita, S. (2002). Multimodal annotations in gesture and sign language studies. In M. Rodriguez González, & C. Paz Suárez Araujo (Eds.), Third international conference on language resources and evaluation (pp. 176-182). Paris: European Language Resources Association.

    Abstract

    For multimodal annotations an exhaustive encoding system for gestures was developed to facilitate research. The structural requirements of multimodal annotations were analyzed to develop an Abstract Corpus Model which is the basis for a powerful annotation and exploitation tool for multimedia recordings and the definition of the XML-based EUDICO Annotation Format. Finally, a metadata-based data management environment has been setup to facilitate resource discovery and especially corpus management. Bt means of an appropriate digitization policy and their online availability researchers have been able to build up a large corpus covering gesture and sign language data.
  • Cablitz, G. (2002). The acquisition of an absolute system: learning to talk about space in Marquesan (Oceanic, French Polynesia). In E. V. Clark (Ed.), Space in language location, motion, path, and manner (pp. 40-49). Stanford: Center for the Study of Language & Information (Electronic proceedings.
  • Chen, Y., & Braun, B. (2006). Prosodic realization in information structure categories in standard Chinese. In R. Hoffmann, & H. Mixdorff (Eds.), Speech Prosody 2006. Dresden: TUD Press.

    Abstract

    This paper investigates the prosodic realization of information
    structure categories in Standard Chinese. A number of proper
    names with different tonal combinations were elicited as a
    grammatical subject in five pragmatic contexts. Results show
    that both duration and F0 range of the tonal realizations were
    adjusted to signal the information structure categories (i.e.
    theme vs. rheme and background vs. focus). Rhemes
    consistently induced a longer duration and a more expanded F0
    range than themes. Focus, compared to background, generally
    induced lengthening and F0 range expansion (the presence and
    magnitude of which, however, are dependent on the tonal
    structure of the proper names). Within the rheme focus
    condition, corrective rheme focus induced more expanded F0
    range than normal rheme focus.
  • Chen, A. (2006). Variations in the marking of focus in child language. In Variation, detail and representation: 10th Conference on Laboratory Phonology (pp. 113-114).
  • Chen, A. (2006). Interface between information structure and intonation in Dutch wh-questions. In R. Hoffmann, & H. Mixdorff (Eds.), Speech Prosody 2006. Dresden: TUD Press.

    Abstract

    This study set out to investigate how accent placement is pragmatically governed in WH-questions. Central to this issue are questions such as whether the intonation of the WH-word depends on the information structure of the non-WH word part, whether topical constituents can be accented, and whether constituents in the non-WH word part can be non-topical and accented. Previous approaches, based either on carefully composed examples or on read speech, differ in their treatments of these questions and consequently make opposing claims on the intonation of WH-questions. We addressed these questions by examining a corpus of 90 naturally occurring WH-questions, selected from the Spoken Dutch Corpus. Results show that the intonation of the WH-word is related to the information structure of the non-WH word part. Further, topical constituents can get accented and the accents are not necessarily phonetically reduced. Additionally, certain adverbs, which have no topical relation to the presupposition of the WH-questions, also get accented. They appear to function as a device for enhancing speaker engagement.
  • Chen, A., Gussenhoven, C., & Rietveld, T. (2002). Language-specific uses of the effort code. In B. Bel, & I. Marlien (Eds.), Proceedings of the 1st Conference on Speech Prosody (pp. 215-218). Aix=en-Provence: Université de Provence.

    Abstract

    Two groups of listeners with Dutch and British English language backgrounds judged Dutch and British English utterances, respectively, which varied in the intonation contour on the scales EMPHATIC vs. NOT EMPHATIC and SURPRISED vs. NOT SURPRISED, two meanings derived from the Effort Code. The stimuli, which differed in sentence mode but were otherwise lexically equivalent, were varied in peak height, peak alignment, end pitch, and overall register. In both languages, there are positive correlations between peak height and degree of emphasis, between peak height and degree of surprise, between peak alignment and degree of surprise, and between pitch register and degree of surprise. However, in all these cases, Dutch stimuli lead to larger perceived meaning differences than the British English stimuli. This difference in the extent to which increased pitch height triggers increases in perceived emphasis and surprise is argued to be due to the difference in the standard pitch ranges between Dutch and British English. In addition, we found a positive correlation between pitch register and the degree of emphasis in Dutch, but a negative correlation in British English. This is an unexpected difference, which illustrates a case of ambiguity in the meaning of pitch.
  • Crago, M. B., Allen, S. E. M., & Pesco, D. (1998). Issues of Complexity in Inuktitut and English Child Directed Speech. In Proceedings of the twenty-ninth Annual Stanford Child Language Research Forum (pp. 37-46).
  • Crasborn, O., Sloetjes, H., Auer, E., & Wittenburg, P. (2006). Combining video and numeric data in the analysis of sign languages with the ELAN annotation software. In C. Vetoori (Ed.), Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign languages: Lexicographic matters and didactic scenarios (pp. 82-87). Paris: ELRA.

    Abstract

    This paper describes hardware and software that can be used for the phonetic study of sign languages. The field of sign language phonetics is characterised, and the hardware that is currently in use is described. The paper focuses on the software that was developed to enable the recording of finger and hand movement data, and the additions to the ELAN annotation software that facilitate the further visualisation and analysis of the data.
  • Cutler, A., Kim, J., & Otake, T. (2006). On the limits of L1 influence on non-L1 listening: Evidence from Japanese perception of Korean. In P. Warren, & C. I. Watson (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Australian International Conference on Speech Science & Technology (pp. 106-111).

    Abstract

    Language-specific procedures which are efficient for listening to the L1 may be applied to non-native spoken input, often to the detriment of successful listening. However, such misapplications of L1-based listening do not always happen. We propose, based on the results from two experiments in which Japanese listeners detected target sequences in spoken Korean, that an L1 procedure is only triggered if requisite L1 features are present in the input.
  • Cutler, A., McQueen, J. M., Jansonius, M., & Bayerl, S. (2002). The lexical statistics of competitor activation in spoken-word recognition. In C. Bow (Ed.), Proceedings of the 9th Australian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 40-45). Canberra: Australian Speech Science and Technology Association (ASSTA).

    Abstract

    The Possible Word Constraint is a proposed mechanism whereby listeners avoid recognising words spuriously embedded in other words. It applies to words leaving a vowelless residue between their edge and the nearest known word or syllable boundary. The present study tests the usefulness of this constraint via lexical statistics of both English and Dutch. The analyses demonstrate that the constraint removes a clear majority of embedded words in speech, and thus can contribute significantly to the efficiency of human speech recognition
  • Cutler, A., & Otake, T. (1998). Assimilation of place in Japanese and Dutch. In R. Mannell, & J. Robert-Ribes (Eds.), Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Spoken Language Processing: vol. 5 (pp. 1751-1754). Sydney: ICLSP.

    Abstract

    Assimilation of place of articulation across a nasal and a following stop consonant is obligatory in Japanese, but not in Dutch. In four experiments the processing of assimilated forms by speakers of Japanese and Dutch was compared, using a task in which listeners blended pseudo-word pairs such as ranga-serupa. An assimilated blend of this pair would be rampa, an unassimilated blend rangpa. Japanese listeners produced significantly more assimilated than unassimilated forms, both with pseudo-Japanese and pseudo-Dutch materials, while Dutch listeners produced significantly more unassimilated than assimilated forms in each materials set. This suggests that Japanese listeners, whose native-language phonology involves obligatory assimilation constraints, represent the assimilated nasals in nasal-stop sequences as unmarked for place of articulation, while Dutch listeners, who are accustomed to hearing unassimilated forms, represent the same nasal segments as marked for place of articulation.
  • Cutler, A., & Fear, B. D. (1991). Categoricality in acceptability judgements for strong versus weak vowels. In J. Llisterri (Ed.), Proceedings of the ESCA Workshop on Phonetics and Phonology of Speaking Styles (pp. 18.1-18.5). Barcelona, Catalonia: Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona.

    Abstract

    A distinction between strong and weak vowels can be drawn on the basis of vowel quality, of stress, or of both factors. An experiment was conducted in which sets of contextually matched word-intial vowels ranging from clearly strong to clearly weak were cross-spliced, and the naturalness of the resulting words was rated by listeners. The ratings showed that in general cross-spliced words were only significantly less acceptable than unspliced words when schwa was not involved; this supports a categorical distinction based on vowel quality.
  • Cutler, A. (1987). Components of prosodic effects in speech recognition. In Proceedings of the Eleventh International Congress of Phonetic Sciences: Vol. 1 (pp. 84-87). Tallinn: Academy of Sciences of the Estonian SSR, Institute of Language and Literature.

    Abstract

    Previous research has shown that listeners use the prosodic structure of utterances in a predictive fashion in sentence comprehension, to direct attention to accented words. Acoustically identical words spliced into sentence contexts arc responded to differently if the prosodic structure of the context is \ aricd: when the preceding prosody indicates that the word will he accented, responses are faster than when the preceding prosodv is inconsistent with accent occurring on that word. In the present series of experiments speech hybridisation techniques were first used to interchange the timing patterns within pairs of prosodic variants of utterances, independently of the pitch and intensity contours. The time-adjusted utterances could then serve as a basis lor the orthogonal manipulation of the three prosodic dimensions of pilch, intensity and rhythm. The overall pattern of results showed that when listeners use prosody to predict accent location, they do not simply rely on a single prosodic dimension, hut exploit the interaction between pitch, intensity and rhythm.
  • Cutler, A., & Pasveer, D. (2006). Explaining cross-linguistic differences in effects of lexical stress on spoken-word recognition. In R. Hoffmann, & H. Mixdorff (Eds.), Speech Prosody 2006. Dresden: TUD press.

    Abstract

    Experiments have revealed differences across languages in listeners’ use of stress information in recognising spoken words. Previous comparisons of the vocabulary of Spanish and English had suggested that the explanation of this asymmetry might lie in the extent to which considering stress in spokenword recognition allows rejection of unwanted competition from words embedded in other words. This hypothesis was tested on the vocabularies of Dutch and German, for which word recognition results resemble those from Spanish more than those from English. The vocabulary statistics likewise revealed that in each language, the reduction of embeddings resulting from taking stress into account is more similar to the reduction achieved in Spanish than in English.
  • Cutler, A., Eisner, F., McQueen, J. M., & Norris, D. (2006). Coping with speaker-related variation via abstract phonemic categories. In Variation, detail and representation: 10th Conference on Laboratory Phonology (pp. 31-32).
  • Cutler, A. (1998). How listeners find the right words. In Proceedings of the Sixteenth International Congress on Acoustics: Vol. 2 (pp. 1377-1380). Melville, NY: Acoustical Society of America.

    Abstract

    Languages contain tens of thousands of words, but these are constructed from a tiny handful of phonetic elements. Consequently, words resemble one another, or can be embedded within one another, a coup stick snot with standing. me process of spoken-word recognition by human listeners involves activation of multiple word candidates consistent with the input, and direct competition between activated candidate words. Further, human listeners are sensitive, at an early, prelexical, stage of speeeh processing, to constraints on what could potentially be a word of the language.
  • Cutler, A., Treiman, R., & Van Ooijen, B. (1998). Orthografik inkoncistensy ephekts in foneme detektion? In R. Mannell, & J. Robert-Ribes (Eds.), Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Spoken Language Processing: Vol. 6 (pp. 2783-2786). Sydney: ICSLP.

    Abstract

    The phoneme detection task is widely used in spoken word recognition research. Alphabetically literate participants, however, are more used to explicit representations of letters than of phonemes. The present study explored whether phoneme detection is sensitive to how target phonemes are, or may be, orthographically realised. Listeners detected the target sounds [b,m,t,f,s,k] in word-initial position in sequences of isolated English words. Response times were faster to the targets [b,m,t], which have consistent word-initial spelling, than to the targets [f,s,k], which are inconsistently spelled, but only when listeners’ attention was drawn to spelling by the presence in the experiment of many irregularly spelled fillers. Within the inconsistent targets [f,s,k], there was no significant difference between responses to targets in words with majority and minority spellings. We conclude that performance in the phoneme detection task is not necessarily sensitive to orthographic effects, but that salient orthographic manipulation can induce such sensitivity.
  • Cutler, A. (1991). Prosody in situations of communication: Salience and segmentation. In Proceedings of the Twelfth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences: Vol. 1 (pp. 264-270). Aix-en-Provence: Université de Provence, Service des publications.

    Abstract

    Speakers and listeners have a shared goal: to communicate. The processes of speech perception and of speech production interact in many ways under the constraints of this communicative goal; such interaction is as characteristic of prosodic processing as of the processing of other aspects of linguistic structure. Two of the major uses of prosodic information in situations of communication are to encode salience and segmentation, and these themes unite the contributions to the symposium introduced by the present review.
  • Cutler, A., & Butterfield, S. (1986). The perceptual integrity of initial consonant clusters. In R. Lawrence (Ed.), Speech and Hearing: Proceedings of the Institute of Acoustics (pp. 31-36). Edinburgh: Institute of Acoustics.
  • Cutler, A., & Carter, D. (1987). The prosodic structure of initial syllables in English. In J. Laver, & M. Jack (Eds.), Proceedings of the European Conference on Speech Technology: Vol. 1 (pp. 207-210). Edinburgh: IEE.
  • Cutler, A. (1998). The recognition of spoken words with variable representations. In D. Duez (Ed.), Proceedings of the ESCA Workshop on Sound Patterns of Spontaneous Speech (pp. 83-92). Aix-en-Provence: Université de Aix-en-Provence.
  • Dediu, D. (2006). Mostly out of Africa, but what did the others have to say? In A. Cangelosi, A. D. Smith, & K. Smith (Eds.), The evolution of language: proceedings of the 6th International Conference (EVOLANG6) (pp. 59-66). World Scientific.

    Abstract

    The Recent Out-of-Africa human evolutionary model seems to be generally accepted. This impression is very prevalent outside palaeoanthropological circles (including studies of language evolution), but proves to be unwarranted. This paper offers a short review of the main challenges facing ROA and concludes that alternative models based on the concept of metapopulation must be also considered. The implications of such a model for language evolution and diversity are briefly reviewed.
  • Dimitriadis, A., Kemps-Snijders, M., Wittenburg, P., Everaert, M., & Levinson, S. C. (2006). Towards a linguist's workbench supporting eScience methods. In Proceedings of the 2nd IEEE International Conference on e-Science and Grid Computing.
  • Dimroth, C., & Lasser, I. (Eds.). (2002). Finite options: How L1 and L2 learners cope with the acquisition of finiteness [Special Issue]. Linguistics, 40(4).
  • Doherty, M., & Klein, W. (Eds.). (1991). Übersetzung [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (84).
  • Drozd, K. F. (1998). No as a determiner in child English: A summary of categorical evidence. In A. Sorace, C. Heycock, & R. Shillcock (Eds.), Proceedings of the Gala '97 Conference on Language Acquisition (pp. 34-39). Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press,.

    Abstract

    This paper summarizes the results of a descriptive syntactic category analysis of child English no which reveals that young children use and represent no as a determiner and negatives like no pen as NPs, contra standard analyses.
  • Enfield, N. J. (2006). Social consequences of common ground. In N. J. Enfield, & S. C. Levinson (Eds.), Roots of human sociality: Culture, cognition and interaction (pp. 399-430). Oxford: Berg.
  • Enfield, N. J. (2002). Parallel innovation and 'coincidence' in linguistic areas: On a bi-clausal extent/result constructions of mainland Southeast Asia. In P. Chew (Ed.), Proceedings of the 28th meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. Special session on Tibeto-Burman and Southeast Asian linguistics (pp. 121-128). Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society.
  • Enfield, N. J., & Levinson, S. C. (2006). Introduction: Human sociality as a new interdisciplinary field. In N. J. Enfield, & S. C. Levinson (Eds.), Roots of human sociality: Culture, cognition and interaction (pp. 1-35). Oxford: Berg.
  • Floyd, S. (2006). The cash value of style in the Andean market. In E.-X. Lee, K. M. Markman, V. Newdick, & T. Sakuma (Eds.), SALSA 13: Texas Linguistic Forum vol. 49. Austin, TX: Texas Linguistics Forum.

    Abstract

    This paper examines code and style shifting during sales transactions based on two market case studies from highland Ecuador. Bringing together ideas of linguistic economy with work on stylistic variation and ethnohistorical research on Andean markets, I study bartering, market calls and sales pitches to show how sellers create stylistic performances distinguished by contrasts of code, register and poetic features. The interaction of the symbolic value of language with the economic values of the market presents a place to examine the relationship between discourse and the material world.
  • Friederici, A., & Levelt, W. J. M. (1987). Spatial description in microgravity: Aspects of cognitive adaptation. In P. R. Sahm, R. Jansen, & M. Keller (Eds.), Proceedings of the Norderney Symposium on Scientific Results of the German Spacelab Mission D1 (pp. 518-524). Köln, Germany: Wissenschaftliche Projektführung DI c/o DFVLR.
  • Furman, R., Ozyurek, A., & Allen, S. E. M. (2006). Learning to express causal events across languages: What do speech and gesture patterns reveal? In D. Bamman, T. Magnitskaia, & C. Zaller (Eds.), Proceedings of the 30th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 190-201). Somerville, Mass: Cascadilla Press.
  • Gazendam, L., Malaisé, V., Schreiber, G., & Brugman, H. (2006). Deriving semantic annotations of an audiovisual program from contextual texts. In First International Workshop on Semantic Web Annotations for Multimedia (SWAMM 2006).

    Abstract

    The aim of this paper is to explore whether indexing terms for an audiovisual program can be derived from contextual texts automatically. For this we apply natural-language processing techniques to contextual texts of two Dutch TV-programs. We use a Dutch domain thesaurus to derive possible metadata. This possible metadata is ranked by an algorithm which uses the relations of the thesaurus. We evaluate the results by comparing them to human made descriptions.
  • Goudbeek, M., & Swingley, D. (2006). Saliency effects in distributional learning. In Proceedings of the 11th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 478-482). Auckland: Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association.

    Abstract

    Acquiring the sounds of a language involves learning to recognize distributional patterns present in the input. We show that among adult learners, this distributional learning of auditory categories (which are conceived of here as probability density functions in a multidimensional space) is constrained by the salience of the dimensions that form the axes of this perceptual space. Only with a particular ratio of variation in the perceptual dimensions was category learning driven by the distributional properties of the input.
  • Guirardello-Damian, R., & Skiba, R. (2002). Trumai Corpus: An example of presenting multi-media data in the IMDI-browser. In P. Austin, H. Dry, & P. Wittenburg (Eds.), Proceedings of the international LREC workshop on resources and tools in field linguistics (pp. 16-1-16-8). Paris: European Language Resources Association.

    Abstract

    Trumai, a genetically isolated language spoken in Brazil (Xingu reserve), is an example of an endangered language. Although the Trumai population consists of more than 100 individuals, only 51 people speak the language. The oral traditions are progressively dying. Given the current scenario, the documentation of this language and its cultural aspects is of great importance. In the framework of the DoBeS program (Documentation of Endangered Languages), the project "Documentation of Trumai" has selected and organized a collection of Trumai texts, with a multi-media representation of the corpus. Several kinds of information and data types are being included in the archive of the language: texts with audio and video recordings; written texts from educational materials; drawings; photos; songs; annotations in different formats; lexicon; field notes; results from scientific studies of the language (sound system, sketch grammar, comparative studies with other Xinguan languages), etc. All materials are integrated into the IMDI-Browser, a specialized tool for presenting and searching for linguistic data. This paper explores the processing phases and the results of the Trumai project taking into consideration the issue of how to combine the needs and wishes of field linguistics (content and research aspects) and the needs of archiving (structure and workflow aspects) in a well-organized corpus.
  • Gullberg, M., & Indefrey, P. (Eds.). (2006). The cognitive neuroscience of second language acquisition [Special Issue]. Language Learning, 56(suppl. 1).
  • Gullberg, M. (Ed.). (2006). Gestures and second language acquisition [Special Issue]. International Review of Applied Linguistics, 44(2).
  • Gulrajani, G., & Harrison, D. (2002). SHAWEL: Sharable and interactive web-lexicons. In P. Austin, H. Dry, & P. Wittenburg (Eds.), Proceedings of the international LREC workshop on resources and tools in field linguistics (pp. 9-1-9-4). Paris: European Language Resources Association.

    Abstract

    A prototypical lexicon tool was implemented which was intended to allow researchers to collaboratively create lexicons of endangered languages. Increasingly often researchers documenting or analyzing a language work at different locations. Lexicons that evolve through continuous interaction between the collaborators can only be efficiently produced when it can be accessed and manipulated via the Internet. The SHAWEL tool was developed to address these needs; it makes use of a thin Java client and a central database solution.
  • Harbusch, K., & Kempen, G. (2006). ELLEIPO: A module that computes coordinative ellipsis for language generators that don't. In Proceedings of the 11th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL-2006) (pp. 115-118).

    Abstract

    Many current sentence generators lack the ability to compute elliptical versions of coordinated clauses in accordance with the rules for Gapping, Forward and Backward Conjunction Reduction, and SGF (Subject Gap in clauses with Finite/ Fronted verb). We describe a module (implemented in JAVA, with German and Dutch as target languages) that takes non-elliptical coordinated clauses as input and returns all reduced versions licensed by coordinative ellipsis. It is loosely based on a new psycholinguistic theory of coordinative ellipsis proposed by Kempen. In this theory, coordinative ellipsis is not supposed to result from the application of declarative grammar rules for clause formation but from a procedural component that interacts with the sentence generator and may block the overt expression of certain constituents.
  • Harbusch, K., Kempen, G., Van Breugel, C., & Koch, U. (2006). A generation-oriented workbench for performance grammar: Capturing linear order variability in German and Dutch. In Proceedings of the 4th International Natural Language Generation Conference (pp. 9-11).

    Abstract

    We describe a generation-oriented workbench for the Performance Grammar (PG) formalism, highlighting the treatment of certain word order and movement constraints in Dutch and German. PG enables a simple and uniform treatment of a heterogeneous collection of linear order phenomena in the domain of verb constructions (variably known as Cross-serial Dependencies, Verb Raising, Clause Union, Extraposition, Third Construction, Particle Hopping, etc.). The central data structures enabling this feature are clausal “topologies”: one-dimensional arrays associated with clauses, whose cells (“slots”) provide landing sites for the constituents of the clause. Movement operations are enabled by unification of lateral slots of topologies at adjacent levels of the clause hierarchy. The PGW generator assists the grammar developer in testing whether the implemented syntactic knowledge allows all and only the well-formed permutations of constituents.
  • Harbusch, K., & Kempen, G. (2002). A quantitative model of word order and movement in English, Dutch and German complement constructions. In Proceedings of the 19th international conference on Computational linguistics. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann.

    Abstract

    We present a quantitative model of word order and movement constraints that enables a simple and uniform treatment of a seemingly heterogeneous collection of linear order phenomena in English, Dutch and German complement constructions (Wh-extraction, clause union, extraposition, verb clustering, particle movement, etc.). Underlying the scheme are central assumptions of the psycholinguistically motivated Performance Grammar (PG). Here we describe this formalism in declarative terms based on typed feature unification. PG allows a homogenous treatment of both the within- and between-language variations of the ordering phenomena under discussion, which reduce to different settings of a small number of quantitative parameters.
  • Herbst, L. E. (2006). The influence of language dominance on bilingual VOT: A case study. In Proceedings of the 4th University of Cambridge Postgraduate Conference on Language Research (CamLing 2006) (pp. 91-98). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Abstract

    Longitudinally collected VOT data from an early English-Italian bilingual who became increasingly English-dominant was analyzed. Stops in English were always produced with significantly longer VOT than in Italian. However, the speaker did not show any significant change in the VOT production in either language over time, despite the clear dominance of English in his every day language use later in his life. The results indicate that – unlike L2 learners – early bilinguals may remain unaffected by language use with respect to phonetic realization.
  • Holler, J., & Stevens, R. (2006). How speakers represent size information in referential communication for knowing and unknowing recipients. In D. Schlangen, & R. Fernandez (Eds.), Brandial '06 Proceedings of the 10th Workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue, Potsdam, Germany, September 11-13.
  • Janse, E. (2002). Time-compressing natural and synthetic speech. In Proceedings of 7th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (pp. 1645-1648).
  • Kearns, R. K., Norris, D., & Cutler, A. (2002). Syllable processing in English. In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing [ICSLP 2002] (pp. 1657-1660).

    Abstract

    We describe a reaction time study in which listeners detected word or nonword syllable targets (e.g. zoo, trel) in sequences consisting of the target plus a consonant or syllable residue (trelsh, trelshek). The pattern of responses differed from an earlier word-spotting study with the same material, in which words were always harder to find if only a consonant residue remained. The earlier results should thus not be viewed in terms of syllabic parsing, but in terms of a universal role for syllables in speech perception; words which are accidentally present in spoken input (e.g. sell in self) can be rejected when they leave a residue of the input which could not itself be a word.
  • Kempen, G., & Van Breugel, C. (2002). A workbench for visual-interactive grammar instruction at the secondary education level. In Proceedings of the 10th International CALL Conference (pp. 157-158). Antwerp: University of Antwerp.
  • Kempen, G., & Harbusch, K. (1998). A 'tree adjoining' grammar without adjoining: The case of scrambling in German. In Fourth International Workshop on Tree Adjoining Grammars and Related Frameworks (TAG+4).
  • Kempen, G., & Harbusch, K. (2002). Rethinking the architecture of human syntactic processing: The relationship between grammatical encoding and decoding. In Proceedings of the 35th Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea. University of Potsdam.
  • Kemps-Snijders, M., Ducret, J., Romary, L., & Wittenburg, P. (2006). An API for accessing the data category registry. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2006) (pp. 2299-2302).
  • Kemps-Snijders, M., Nederhof, M.-J., & Wittenburg, P. (2006). LEXUS, a web-based tool for manipulating lexical resources. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2006) (pp. 1862-1865).
  • Kita, S., van Gijn, I., & van der Hulst, H. (1998). Movement phases in signs and co-speech gestures, and their transcription by human coders. In Gesture and Sign-Language in Human-Computer Interaction (Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence - LNCS Subseries, Vol. 1371) (pp. 23-35). Berlin, Germany: Springer-Verlag.

    Abstract

    The previous literature has suggested that the hand movement in co-speech gestures and signs consists of a series of phases with qualitatively different dynamic characteristics. In this paper, we propose a syntagmatic rule system for movement phases that applies to both co-speech gestures and signs. Descriptive criteria for the rule system were developed for the analysis video-recorded continuous production of signs and gesture. It involves segmenting a stream of body movement into phases and identifying different phase types. Two human coders used the criteria to analyze signs and cospeech gestures that are produced in natural discourse. It was found that the criteria yielded good inter-coder reliability. These criteria can be used for the technology of automatic recognition of signs and co-speech gestures in order to segment continuous production and identify the potentially meaningbearing phase.
  • Klassmann, A., Offenga, F., Broeder, D., Skiba, R., & Wittenburg, P. (2006). Comparison of resource discovery methods. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2006) (pp. 113-116).
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (2002). Sprache des Rechts II [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 128.
  • Klein, W., & Jungbluth, K. (Eds.). (2002). Deixis [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 125.
  • 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.). (1987). Sprache und Ritual [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (65).
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1986). Sprachverfall [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (62).
  • Kuijpers, C., Van Donselaar, W., & Cutler, A. (2002). Perceptual effects of assimilation-induced violation of final devoicing in Dutch. In J. H. L. Hansen, & B. Pellum (Eds.), The 7th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (pp. 1661-1664). Denver: ICSA.

    Abstract

    Voice assimilation in Dutch is an optional phonological rule which changes the surface forms of words and in doing so may violate the otherwise obligatory phonological rule of syllablefinal devoicing. We report two experiments examining the influence of voice assimilation on phoneme processing, in lexical compound words and in noun-verb phrases. Processing was not impaired in appropriate assimilation contexts across morpheme boundaries, but was impaired when devoicing was violated (a) in an inappropriate non-assimilatory) context, or (b) across a syntactic boundary.
  • Kuntay, A., & Ozyurek, A. (2002). Joint attention and the development of the use of demonstrative pronouns in Turkish. In B. Skarabela, S. Fish, & A. H. Do (Eds.), Proceedings of the 26th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 336-347). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
  • Kuzla, C., Mitterer, H., Ernestus, M., & Cutler, A. (2006). Perceptual compensation for voice assimilation of German fricatives. In P. Warren, & I. Watson (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 394-399).

    Abstract

    In German, word-initial lax fricatives may be produced with substantially reduced glottal vibration after voiceless obstruents. This assimilation occurs more frequently and to a larger extent across prosodic word boundaries than across phrase boundaries. Assimilatory devoicing makes the fricatives more similar to their tense counterparts and could thus hinder word recognition. The present study investigates how listeners cope with assimilatory devoicing. Results of a cross-modal priming experiment indicate that listeners compensate for assimilation in appropriate contexts. Prosodic structure moderates compensation for assimilation: Compensation occurs especially after phrase boundaries, where devoiced fricatives are sufficiently long to be confused with their tense counterparts.
  • Kuzla, C., Ernestus, M., & Mitterer, H. (2006). Prosodic structure affects the production and perception of voice-assimilated German fricatives. In R. Hoffmann, & H. Mixdorff (Eds.), Speech prosody 2006. Dresden: TUD Press.

    Abstract

    Prosodic structure has long been known to constrain phonological processes [1]. More recently, it has also been recognized as a source of fine-grained phonetic variation of speech sounds. In particular, segments in domain-initial position undergo prosodic strengthening [2, 3], which also implies more resistance to coarticulation in higher prosodic domains [5]. The present study investigates the combined effects of prosodic strengthening and assimilatory devoicing on word-initial fricatives in German, the functional implication of both processes for cues to the fortis-lenis contrast, and the influence of prosodic structure on listeners’ compensation for assimilation. Results indicate that 1. Prosodic structure modulates duration and the degree of assimilatory devoicing, 2. Phonological contrasts are maintained by speakers, but differ in phonetic detail across prosodic domains, and 3. Compensation for assimilation in perception is moderated by prosodic structure and lexical constraints.
  • Kuzla, C., Mitterer, H., & Ernestus, M. (2006). Compensation for assimilatory devoicing and prosodic structure in German fricative perception. In Variation, detail and representation: 10th Conference on Laboratory Phonology (pp. 43-44).
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1991). Lexical access in speech production: Stages versus cascading. In H. Peters, W. Hulstijn, & C. Starkweather (Eds.), Speech motor control and stuttering (pp. 3-10). Amsterdam: Excerpta Medica.
  • Levelt, W. J. M., & Schriefers, H. (1987). Stages of lexical access. In G. A. Kempen (Ed.), Natural language generation: new results in artificial intelligence, psychology and linguistics (pp. 395-404). Dordrecht: Nijhoff.
  • Levinson, S. C. (2006). On the human "interaction engine". In N. J. Enfield, & S. C. Levinson (Eds.), Roots of human sociality: Culture, cognition and interaction (pp. 39-69). Oxford: Berg.
  • Levinson, S. C. (1987). Minimization and conversational inference. In M. Bertuccelli Papi, & J. Verschueren (Eds.), The pragmatic perspective: Selected papers from the 1985 International Pragmatics Conference (pp. 61-129). Benjamins.
  • Majid, A., Enfield, N. J., & Van Staden, M. (Eds.). (2006). Parts of the body: Cross-linguistic categorisation [Special Issue]. Language Sciences, 28(2-3).
  • Malaisé, V., Aroyo, L., Brugman, H., Gazendam, L., De Jong, A., Negru, C., & Schreiber, G. (2006). Evaluating a thesaurus browser for an audio-visual archive. In S. Staab, & V. Svatek (Eds.), Managing knowledge in a world of networks (pp. 272-286). Berlin: Springer.
  • Matsuo, A., & Duffield, N. (2002). Assessing the generality of knowledge about English ellipsis in SLA. In J. Costa, & M. J. Freitas (Eds.), Proceedings of the GALA 2001 Conference on Language Acquisition (pp. 49-53). Lisboa: Associacao Portuguesa de Linguistica.
  • Matsuo, A., & Duffield, N. (2002). Finiteness and parallelism: Assessing the generality of knowledge about English ellipsis in SLA. In B. Skarabela, S. Fish, & A.-H.-J. Do (Eds.), Proceedings of the 26th Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 197-207). Somerville, Massachusetts: Cascadilla Press.
  • McQueen, J. M., & Cutler, A. (1998). Spotting (different kinds of) words in (different kinds of) context. In R. Mannell, & J. Robert-Ribes (Eds.), Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Spoken Language Processing: Vol. 6 (pp. 2791-2794). Sydney: ICSLP.

    Abstract

    The results of a word-spotting experiment are presented in which Dutch listeners tried to spot different types of bisyllabic Dutch words embedded in different types of nonsense contexts. Embedded verbs were not reliably harder to spot than embedded nouns; this suggests that nouns and verbs are recognised via the same basic processes. Iambic words were no harder to spot than trochaic words, suggesting that trochaic words are not in principle easier to recognise than iambic words. Words were harder to spot in consonantal contexts (i.e., contexts which themselves could not be words) than in longer contexts which contained at least one vowel (i.e., contexts which, though not words, were possible words of Dutch). A control experiment showed that this difference was not due to acoustic differences between the words in each context. The results support the claim that spoken-word recognition is sensitive to the viability of sound sequences as possible words.
  • Melinger, A., Schulte im Walde, S., & Weber, A. (2006). Characterizing response types and revealing noun ambiguity in German association norms. In Proceedings of the 11th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics. Trento: Association for Computational Linguistics.

    Abstract

    This paper presents an analysis of semantic association norms for German nouns. In contrast to prior studies, we not only collected associations elicited by written representations of target objects but also by their pictorial representations. In a first analysis, we identified systematic differences in the type and distribution of associate responses for the two presentation forms. In a second analysis, we applied a soft cluster analysis to the collected target-response pairs. We subsequently used the clustering to predict noun ambiguity and to discriminate senses in our target nouns.
  • Meyer, A. S., & Wheeldon, L. (Eds.). (2006). Language production across the life span [Special Issue]. Language and Cognitive Processes, 21(1-3).
  • Offenga, F., Broeder, D., Wittenburg, P., Ducret, J., & Romary, L. (2006). Metadata profile in the ISO data category registry. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2006) (pp. 1866-1869).
  • Oostdijk, N., Goedertier, W., Van Eynde, F., Boves, L., Martens, J.-P., Moortgat, M., & Baayen, R. H. (2002). Experiences from the Spoken Dutch Corpus Project. In Third international conference on language resources and evaluation (pp. 340-347). Paris: European Language Resources Association.
  • Ozyurek, A. (1998). An analysis of the basic meaning of Turkish demonstratives in face-to-face conversational interaction. In S. Santi, I. Guaitella, C. Cave, & G. Konopczynski (Eds.), Oralite et gestualite: Communication multimodale, interaction: actes du colloque ORAGE 98 (pp. 609-614). Paris: L'Harmattan.
  • Ozyurek, A. (2002). Speech-gesture relationship across languages and in second language learners: Implications for spatial thinking and speaking. In B. Skarabela, S. Fish, & A. H. Do (Eds.), Proceedings of the 26th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 500-509). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
  • Papafragou, A., & Ozturk, O. (2006). The acquisition of epistemic modality. In A. Botinis (Ed.), Proceedings of ITRW on Experimental Linguistics in ExLing-2006 (pp. 201-204). ISCA Archive.

    Abstract

    In this paper we try to contribute to the body of knowledge about the acquisition of English epistemic modal verbs (e.g. Mary may/has to be at school). Semantically, these verbs encode possibility or necessity with respect to available evidence. Pragmatically, the use of epistemic modals often gives rise to scalar conversational inferences (Mary may be at school -> Mary doesn’t have to be at school). The acquisition of epistemic modals is challenging for children on both these levels. In this paper, we present findings from two studies which were conducted with 5-year-old children and adults. Our findings, unlike previous work, show that 5-yr-olds have mastered epistemic modal semantics, including the notions of necessity and possibility. However, they are still in the process of acquiring epistemic modal pragmatics.
  • Pereiro Estevan, Y., Wan, V., Scharenborg, O., & Gallardo Antolín, A. (2006). Segmentación de fonemas no supervisada basada en métodos kernel de máximo margen. In Proceedings of IV Jornadas en Tecnología del Habla.

    Abstract

    En este artículo se desarrolla un método automático de segmentación de fonemas no supervisado. Este método utiliza el algoritmo de agrupación de máximo margen [1] para realizar segmentación de fonemas sobre habla continua sin necesidad de información a priori para el entrenamiento del sistema.
  • Petersson, K. M. (2002). Brain physiology. In R. Behn, & C. Veranda (Eds.), Proceedings of The 4th Southern European School of the European Physical Society - Physics in Medicine (pp. 37-38). Montreux: ESF.
  • Pluymaekers, M., Ernestus, M., Baayen, R. H., & Booij, G. (2006). The role of morphology in fine phonetic detail: The case of Dutch -igheid. In Variation, detail and representation: 10th Conference on Laboratory Phonology (pp. 53-54).
  • Pluymaekers, M., Ernestus, M., & Baayen, R. H. (2006). Effects of word frequency on the acoustic durations of affixes. In Proceedings of Interspeech 2006 (pp. 953-956). Pittsburgh: ICSLP.

    Abstract

    This study investigates whether the acoustic durations of derivational affixes in Dutch are affected by the frequency of the word they occur in. In a word naming experiment, subjects were presented with a large number of words containing one of the affixes ge-, ver-, ont, or -lijk. Their responses were recorded on DAT tapes, and the durations of the affixes were measured using Automatic Speech Recognition technology. To investigate whether frequency also affected durations when speech rate was high, the presentation rate of the stimuli was varied. The results show that a higher frequency of the word as a whole led to shorter acoustic realizations for all affixes. Furthermore, affixes became shorter as the presentation rate of the stimuli increased. There was no interaction between word frequency and presentation rate, suggesting that the frequency effect also applies in situations in which the speed of articulation is very high.
  • Poletiek, F. H., & Chater, N. (2006). Grammar induction profits from representative stimulus sampling. In R. Sun (Ed.), Proceedings of the 28th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2006) (pp. 1968-1973). Austin, TX, USA: Cognitive Science Society.
  • Scharenborg, O., Wan, V., & Moore, R. K. (2006). Capturing fine-phonetic variation in speech through automatic classification of articulatory features. In Speech Recognition and Intrinsic Variation Workshop [SRIV2006] (pp. 77-82). ISCA Archive.

    Abstract

    The ultimate goal of our research is to develop a computational model of human speech recognition that is able to capture the effects of fine-grained acoustic variation on speech recognition behaviour. As part of this work we are investigating automatic feature classifiers that are able to create reliable and accurate transcriptions of the articulatory behaviour encoded in the acoustic speech signal. In the experiments reported here, we compared support vector machines (SVMs) with multilayer perceptrons (MLPs). MLPs have been widely (and rather successfully) used for the task of multi-value articulatory feature classification, while (to the best of our knowledge) SVMs have not. This paper compares the performances of the two classifiers and analyses the results in order to better understand the articulatory representations. It was found that the MLPs outperformed the SVMs, but it is concluded that both classifiers exhibit similar behaviour in terms of patterns of errors.

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