Publications

Displaying 1 - 52 of 52
  • Baayen, R. H., & Schreuder, R. (2003). Morphological structure in language processing. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Bauer, B. L. M., & Pinault, G.-J. (Eds.). (2003). Language in time and space: A festschrift for Werner Winter on the occasion of his 80th birthday. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (2011). [Politeness: Some universals in language usage, Japanese translation]. Tokyo: Kenkyusha Publishing.

    Abstract

    Japanese translation of Some universals in language usage, 1987, Cambridge University Press
  • Callaghan, T., Moll, H., Rakoczy, H., Warneken, F., Liszkowski, U., Behne, T., & Tomasello, M. (2011). Early social cognition in three cultural contexts. Boston: Wiley-Blackwell.

    Abstract

    The influence of culture on cognitive development is well established for school age and older children. But almost nothing is known about how different parenting and socialization practices in different cultures affect infants' and young children's earliest emerging cognitive and social-cognitive skills. In the current monograph, we report a series of eight studies in which we systematically assessed the social-cognitive skills of 1- to 3-year-old children in three diverse cultural settings. One group of children was from a Western, middle-class cultural setting in rural Canada and the other two groups were from traditional, small-scale cultural settings in rural Peru and India. In a first group of studies, we assessed 1-year-old children's most basic social-cognitive skills for understanding the intentions and attention of others: imitation, helping, gaze following, and communicative pointing. Children's performance in these tasks was mostly similar across cultural settings. In a second group of studies, we assessed 1-year-old children's skills in participating in interactive episodes of collaboration and joint attention. Again in these studies the general finding was one of cross-cultural similarity. In a final pair of studies, we assessed 2- to 3-year-old children's skills within two symbolic systems (pretense and pictorial). Here we found that the Canadian children who had much more experience with such symbols showed skills at an earlier age. Our overall conclusion is that young children in all cultural settings get sufficient amounts of the right kinds of social experience to develop their most basic social-cognitive skills for interacting with others and participating in culture at around the same age. In contrast, children's acquisition of more culturally specific skills for use in practices involving artifacts and symbols is more dependent on specific learning experiences.
  • Coulson, S., & Lai, V. T. (Eds.). (2016). The metaphorical brain [Research topic]. Lausanne: Frontiers Media. doi:10.3389/978-2-88919-772-9.

    Abstract

    This Frontiers Special Issue will synthesize current findings on the cognitive neuroscience of metaphor, provide a forum for voicing novel perspectives, and promote new insights into the metaphorical brain.
  • Dimroth, C., & Starren, M. (Eds.). (2003). Information structure and the dynamics of language acquisition. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Abstract

    The papers in this volume focus on the impact of information structure on language acquisition, thereby taking different linguistic approaches into account. They start from an empirical point of view, and examine data from natural first and second language acquisition, which cover a wide range of varieties, from early learner language to native speaker production and from gesture to Creole prototypes. The central theme is the interplay between principles of information structure and linguistic structure and its impact on the functioning and development of the learner's system. The papers examine language-internal explanatory factors and in particular the communicative and structural forces that push and shape the acquisition process, and its outcome. On the theoretical level, the approach adopted appeals both to formal and communicative constraints on a learner’s language in use. Two empirical domains provide a 'testing ground' for the respective weight of grammatical versus functional determinants in the acquisition process: (1) the expression of finiteness and scope relations at the utterance level and (2) the expression of anaphoric relations at the discourse level.
  • Dunn, M., Levinson, S. C., Lindström, E., Reesink, G., & Terrill, A. (2003). Island Melanesia elicitation materials. Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.885547.

    Abstract

    The Island Melanesia project was initiated to collect data on the little-known Papuan languages of Island Melanesia, and to explore the origins of and relationships between these languages. The project materials from the 2003 field season focus on language related to cultural domains (e.g., material culture) and on targeted grammatical description. Five tasks are included: Proto-Oceanic lexicon, Grammatical questionnaire and lexicon, Kinship questionnaire, Domains of likely pre-Austronesian terminology, and Botanical collection questionnaire.
  • Enfield, N. J. (Ed.). (2011). Dynamics of human diversity: The case of mainland Southeast Asia. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
  • Enfield, N. J. (2003). Linguistic epidemiology: Semantics and grammar of language contact in mainland Southeast Asia. London: Routledge Curzon.
  • Enfield, N. J. (Ed.). (2003). Field research manual 2003, part I: Multimodal interaction, space, event representation. Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
  • Ernestus, M., & Warner, N. (Eds.). (2011). Speech reduction [Special Issue]. Journal of Phonetics, 39(SI).
  • Evans, N., Gaby, A., Levinson, S. C., & Majid, A. (Eds.). (2011). Reciprocals and semantic typology. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    Reciprocals are an increasingly hot topic in linguistic research. This reflects the intersection of several factors: the semantic and syntactic complexity of reciprocal constructions, their centrality to some key points of linguistic theorizing (such as Binding Conditions on anaphors within Government and Binding Theory), and the centrality of reciprocity to theories of social structure, human evolution and social cognition. No existing work, however, tackles the question of exactly what reciprocal constructions mean cross-linguistically. Is there a single, Platonic ‘reciprocal’ meaning found in all languages, or is there a cluster of related concepts which are nonetheless impossible to characterize in any single way? That is the central goal of this volume, and it develops and explains new techniques for tackling this question. At the same time, it confronts a more general problem facing semantic typology: how to investigate a category cross-linguistically without pre-loading the definition of the phenomenon on the basis of what is found in more familiar languages.
  • Fernandez-Vest, M. M. J., & Van Valin Jr., R. D. (Eds.). (2016). Information structure and spoken language in a cross-linguistics perspective. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Giering, E., Sheer, R., Tinbergen, M., & Verbunt, A. (2011). Research Report 2009 | 2010. Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
  • Hartsuiker, R. J., Huettig, F., & Olivers, C. N. (Eds.). (2011). Visual search and visual world: Interactions among visual attention, language, and working memory [Special Issue]. Acta Psychologica, 137(2). doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2011.01.005.
  • Heeschen, C., Perdue, C., & Vonk, W. (1988). Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics: Annual Report Nr.9 1988. Nijmegen: MPI for Psycholinguistics.
  • Holler, J., Kendrick, K. H., Casillas, M., & Levinson, S. C. (Eds.). (2016). Turn-Taking in Human Communicative Interaction. Lausanne: Frontiers Media. doi:10.3389/978-2-88919-825-2.

    Abstract

    The core use of language is in face-to-face conversation. This is characterized by rapid turn-taking. This turn-taking poses a number central puzzles for the psychology of language.

    Consider, for example, that in large corpora the gap between turns is on the order of 100 to 300 ms, but the latencies involved in language production require minimally between 600ms (for a single word) or 1500 ms (for as simple sentence). This implies that participants in conversation are predicting the ends of the incoming turn and preparing in advance. But how is this done? What aspects of this prediction are done when? What happens when the prediction is wrong? What stops participants coming in too early? If the system is running on prediction, why is there consistently a mode of 100 to 300 ms in response time?

    The timing puzzle raises further puzzles: it seems that comprehension must run parallel with the preparation for production, but it has been presumed that there are strict cognitive limitations on more than one central process running at a time. How is this bottleneck overcome? Far from being 'easy' as some psychologists have suggested, conversation may be one of the most demanding cognitive tasks in our everyday lives. Further questions naturally arise: how do children learn to master this demanding task, and what is the developmental trajectory in this domain?

    Research shows that aspects of turn-taking such as its timing are remarkably stable across languages and cultures, but the word order of languages varies enormously. How then does prediction of the incoming turn work when the verb (often the informational nugget in a clause) is at the end? Conversely, how can production work fast enough in languages that have the verb at the beginning, thereby requiring early planning of the whole clause? What happens when one changes modality, as in sign languages -- with the loss of channel constraints is turn-taking much freer? And what about face-to-face communication amongst hearing individuals -- do gestures, gaze, and other body behaviors facilitate turn-taking? One can also ask the phylogenetic question: how did such a system evolve? There seem to be parallels (analogies) in duetting bird species, and in a variety of monkey species, but there is little evidence of anything like this among the great apes.

    All this constitutes a neglected set of problems at the heart of the psychology of language and of the language sciences. This research topic welcomes contributions from right across the board, for example from psycholinguists, developmental psychologists, students of dialogue and conversation analysis, linguists interested in the use of language, phoneticians, corpus analysts and comparative ethologists or psychologists. We welcome contributions of all sorts, for example original research papers, opinion pieces, and reviews of work in subfields that may not be fully understood in other subfields.
  • Jaspers, D., Klooster, W., Putseys, Y., & Seuren, P. A. M. (Eds.). (1989). Sentential complementation and the lexicon: Studies in honour of Wim de Geest. Dordrecht: Foris.
  • Johnson, E., & Matsuo, A. (2003). Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics: Annual Report 2003. Nijmegen: MPI for Psycholinguistics.
  • Kendrick, K. H., & Majid, A. (Eds.). (2011). Field manual volume 14. Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
  • Kidd, E. (Ed.). (2011). The acquisition of relative clauses: Processing, typology and function. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Kilborn, K., & Weissenborn, J. (1989). Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics: Annual Report Nr.10 1989. Nijmegen: MPI for Psycholinguistics.
  • Kita, S. (Ed.). (2003). Pointing: Where language, culture, and cognition meet. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
  • Klein, W., & Dittmar, N. (1979). Developing grammars. Berlin: Springer.
  • Klein, W., & Franceschini, R. (Eds.). (2003). Einfache Sprache [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 131.
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1989). Kindersprache [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (73).
  • Klein, W. (1989). L'Acquisition de langue étrangère. Paris: Armand Colin.
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1988). Sprache Kranker [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (69).
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1979). Sprache und Kontext [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (33).
  • Klein, W., & Meibauer, J. (Eds.). (2011). Spracherwerb und Kinderliteratur [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 162.
  • Klein, W. (1988). Second language acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Kolipakam, V., & Shanker, K. (2011). Comparing human-wildlife conflict across different landscapes: A framework for examing social, political and economic issues and a preliminary comparison between sites. Trondheim/Bangalore: Norwegian Institute of Nature Research (NINA) & Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES), Indian Institute of Science.
  • Kuiper, K., McCann, H., Quinn, H., Aitchison, T., & Van der Veer, K. (2003). A syntactically annotated idiom dataset (SAID). Philadelphia: Linguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1989). Speaking: From intention to articulation. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
  • Levinson, S. C. (2003). Space in language and cognition: Explorations in cognitive diversity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Levinson, S. C. (1989). Pragmática [Spanish translation]. Barcelona: Teide.
  • Majid, A., & Levinson, S. C. (Eds.). (2011). The senses in language and culture [Special Issue]. The Senses & Society, 6(1).
  • Mark, D. M., Turk, A., Burenhult, N., & Stea, D. (Eds.). (2011). Landscape in language: Transdisciplinary perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Abstract

    Landscape is fundamental to human experience. Yet until recently, the study of landscape has been fragmented among the disciplines. This volume focuses on how landscape is represented in language and thought, and what this reveals about the relationships of people to place and to land. Scientists of various disciplines such as anthropologists, geographers, information scientists, linguists, and philosophers address several questions, including: Are there cross-cultural and cross-linguistic variations in the delimitation, classification, and naming of geographic features? Can alternative world-views and conceptualizations of landscape be used to produce culturally-appropriate Geographic Information Systems (GIS)? Topics included ontology of landscape; landscape terms and concepts; toponyms; spiritual aspects of land and landscape terms; research methods; ethical dimensions of the research; and its potential value to indigenous communities involved in this type of research.
  • Meyer, A. S., & Huettig, F. (Eds.). (2016). Speaking and Listening: Relationships Between Language Production and Comprehension [Special Issue]. Journal of Memory and Language, 89.
  • Nederstigt, U. (2003). Auch and noch in child and adult German. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Ozyurek, A. (2011). Language in our hands: The role of the body in language, cognition and communication [Inaugural lecture]. Nijmegen: Radboud University Nijmegen.

    Abstract

    Even though most studies of language have focused on speech channel and/or viewed language as an
    amodal abstract system, there is growing evidence on the role our bodily actions/ perceptions play in language and communication.
    In this context, Özyürek discusses what our meaningful visible bodily actions reveal about our language capacity. Conducting cross-linguistic, behavioral, and neurobiological research,
    she shows that co-speech gestures reflect the imagistic, iconic aspects of events talked about and at the same time interact with language production and
    comprehension processes. Sign languages can also be characterized having an abstract system of linguistic categories as well as using iconicity in several
    aspects of the language structure and in its processing.
    Studying language multimodally reveals how grounded language is in our visible bodily actions and opens
    up new lines of research to study language in its situated,
    natural face-to-face context.
  • Rai, N. K., Rai, M., Paudyal, N. P., Schikowski, R., Bickel, B., Stoll, S., Gaenszle, M., Banjade, G., Rai, I. P., Bhatta, T. N., Sauppe, S., Rai, R. M., Rai, J. K., Rai, L. K., Rai, D. B., Rai, G., Rai, D., Rai, D. K., Rai, A., Rai, C. K. and 4 moreRai, N. K., Rai, M., Paudyal, N. P., Schikowski, R., Bickel, B., Stoll, S., Gaenszle, M., Banjade, G., Rai, I. P., Bhatta, T. N., Sauppe, S., Rai, R. M., Rai, J. K., Rai, L. K., Rai, D. B., Rai, G., Rai, D., Rai, D. K., Rai, A., Rai, C. K., Rai, S. M., Rai, R. K., Pettigrew, J., & Dirksmeyer, T. (2011). छिन्ताङ शब्दकोश तथा व्याकरण [Chintang Dictionary and Grammar]. Kathmandu, Nepal: Chintang Language Research Program.
  • Roberts, L., Gabriele, P., & Camilla, B. (Eds.). (2011). EUROSLA Yearbook 2011. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Abstract

    The annual conference of the European Second Language Association provides an opportunity for the presentation of second language research with a genuinely European flavour. The theoretical perspectives adopted are wide-ranging and may fall within traditions overlooked elsewhere. Moreover, the studies presented are largely multi-lingual and cross-cultural, as befits the make-up of modern-day Europe. At the same time, the work demonstrates sophisticated awareness of scholarly insights from around the world. The EUROSLA yearbook presents a selection each year of the very best research from the annual conference. Submissions are reviewed and professionally edited, and only those of the highest quality are selected. Contributions are in English.
  • Schiller, N. O., & Meyer, A. S. (Eds.). (2003). Phonetics and phonology in language comprehension and production. Differences and similarities. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Schmid, M. S., Berends, S. M., Bergmann, C., Brouwer, S., Meulman, N., Seton, B., Sprenger, S., & Stowe, L. A. (2016). Designing research on bilingual development: Behavioral and neurolinguistic experiments. Berlin: Springer.
  • Senft, G. (2011). The Tuma underworld of love: Erotic and other narrative songs of the Trobriand Islanders and their spirits of the dead. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Abstract

    The Trobriand Islanders' eschatological belief system explains what happens when someone dies. Bronislaw Malinowski described essentials of this eschatology in his articles "Baloma: the Spirits of the Dead in the Trobriand Islands" and "Myth in Primitive Psychology" There he also presented the Trobrianders' belief that a "baloma" can be reborn; he claimed that Trobrianders are unaware of the father's role as genitor. This volume presents a critical review of Malinowski's ethnography of Trobriand eschatology - finally settling the "virgin birth" controversy. It also documents the ritualized and highly poetic "wosi milamala" - the harvest festival songs. They are sung in an archaic variety of Kilivila called "biga baloma" - the baloma language. Malinowski briefly refers to these songs but does not mention that they codify many aspects of Trobriand eschatology. The songs are still sung at specific occasions; however, they are now moribund. With these songs Trobriand eschatology will vanish. The e-book is made available under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
  • Seuren, P. A. M., & Kempen, G. (Eds.). (2003). Verb constructions in German and Dutch. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (2016). Excursies in de tijd: Episodes uit de geschiedenis van onze beschaving. Beilen: Pharos uitgevers.
  • Stivers, T., Mondada, L., & Steensig, J. (Eds.). (2011). The morality of knowledge in conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Abstract

    Each time we take a turn in conversation we indicate what we know and what we think others know. However, knowledge is neither static nor absolute. It is shaped by those we interact with and governed by social norms - we monitor one another for whether we are fulfilling our rights and responsibilities with respect to knowledge, and for who has relatively more rights to assert knowledge over some state of affairs. This book brings together an international team of leading linguists, sociologists and anthropologists working across a range of European and Asian languages to document some of the ways in which speakers manage the moral domain of knowledge in conversation. The volume demonstrates that if we are to understand how speakers manage issues of agreement, affiliation and alignment - something clearly at the heart of human sociality - we must understand the social norms surrounding epistemic access, primacy and responsibilities
  • Terrill, A. (2003). A grammar of Lavukaleve. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Van Gijn, R., Haude, K., & Muysken, P. (Eds.). (2011). Subordination in native South American languages. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

    Abstract

    In terms of its linguistic and cultural make-up, the continent of South America provides linguists and anthropologists with a complex puzzle of language diversity. The continent teems with small language families and isolates, and even languages spoken in adjacent areas can be typologically vastly different from each other. This volume intends to provide a taste of the linguistic diversity found in South America within the area of clause subordination. The potential variety in the strategies that languages can use to encode subordinate events is enormous, yet there are clearly dominant patterns to be discerned: switch reference marking, clause chaining, nominalization, and verb serialization. The book also contributes to the continuing debate on the nature of syntactic complexity, as evidenced in subordination.
  • Van Berkum, J. J. A. (2011). Zonder gevoel geen taal [Inaugural lecture].

    Abstract

    Onderzoek naar taal en communicatie heeft zich in het verleden veel te veel gericht op taal als systeem om berichten te coderen, een soort TCP/IP (netwerkprotocol voor communicatie tussen computers). Dat moet maar eens veranderen, stelt prof. dr. Jos van Berkum, hoogleraar Discourse, Cognitie en Communicatie, in zijn oratie die hij op 30 september zal houden aan de Universiteit Utrecht. Hij pleit voor meer onderzoek naar de sterke verwevenheid van taal en gevoel.

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