Publications

Displaying 1001 - 1077 of 1077
  • Verkerk, A. (2014). The correlation between motion event encoding and path verb lexicon size in the Indo-European language family. Folia Linguistica Historica, 35, 307-358. doi:10.1515/flih.2014.009.

    Abstract

    There have been opposing views on the possibility of a relationship between motion event encoding and the size of the path verb lexicon. Özçalışkan (2004) has proposed that verb-framed and satellite-framed languages should approximately have the same number of path verbs, whereas a review of some of the literature suggests that verb-framed languages typically have a bigger path verb lexicon than satelliteframed languages. In this article I demonstrate that evidence for this correlation can be found through phylogenetic comparative analysis of parallel corpus data from twenty Indo-European languages.
  • Verkerk, A. (2014). The evolutionary dynamics of motion event encoding. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Verkerk, A. (2014). Where Alice fell into: Motion events from a parallel corpus. In B. Szmrecsanyi, & B. Wälchli (Eds.), Aggregating dialectology, typology, and register analysis: Linguistic variation in text and speech (pp. 324-354). Berlin: De Gruyter.
  • Vernes, S. C. (2014). Genome wide identification of fruitless targets suggests a role in upregulating genes important for neural circuit formation. Scientific Reports, 4: 4412. doi:10.1038/srep04412.

    Abstract

    The fruitless gene (fru) encodes a set of transcription factors (Fru) that display sexually dimorphic gene expression in the brain of the fruit-fly;Drosophila melanogaster . Behavioural studies have demonstrated that fru isessentialforcourtshipbehaviour inthemale flyandisthoughttoact bydirectingthe development of sex-specific neural circuitry that encodes this innate behavioural response. This study reports the identification of direct regulatory targets of the sexually dimorphic isoforms of the Fru protein using an in vitro model system. Genome wide binding sites were identified for each of the isoforms using Chromatin Immunoprecipitation coupled to deep sequencing (ChIP-Seq). Putative target genes were found to be involved in processes such as neurotransmission, ion-channel signalling and neuron development. All isoforms showed asignificant bias towards genes located on the X-chromosome,which may reflect a specific role for Fru in regulating x-linked genes. Taken together with expression analysis carried out in Fru positive neurons specifically isolated from the male fly brain, it appears that the Fru protein acts as a transcriptional activator. Understanding the regulatory cascades induced by Fru will help to shed light on the molecular mechanisms that are important for specification of neural circuitry underlying complex behaviour
  • Vigliocco, G., Vinson, D. P., Indefrey, P., Levelt, W. J. M., & Hellwig, F. M. (2004). Role of grammatical gender and semantics in German word production. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 30(2), 483-497. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.30.2.483.

    Abstract

    Semantic substitution errors (e.g., saying "arm" when "leg" is intended) are among the most common types of errors occurring during spontaneous speech. It has been shown that grammatical gender of German target nouns is preserved in the errors (E. Marx, 1999). In 3 experiments, the authors explored different accounts of the grammatical gender preservation effect in German. In all experiments, semantic substitution errors were induced using a continuous naming paradigm. In Experiment 1, it was found that gender preservation disappeared when speakers produced bare nouns. Gender preservation was found when speakers produced phrases with determiners marked for gender (Experiment 2) but not when the produced determiners were not marked for gender (Experiment 3). These results are discussed in the context of models of lexical retrieval during production.
  • Voermans, N. C., Petersson, K. M., Daudey, L., Weber, B., Van Spaendonck, K. P., Kremer, H. P. H., & Fernández, G. (2004). Interaction between the Human Hippocampus and the Caudate Nucleus during Route Recognition. Neuron, 43, 427-435. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2004.07.009.

    Abstract

    Navigation through familiar environments can rely upon distinct neural representations that are related to different memory systems with either the hippo-campus or the caudate nucleus at their core. However,it is a fundamental question whether and how these systems interact during route recognition. To address this issue, we combined a functional neuroimaging approach with a naturally occurring, well-controlled humanmodel of caudate nucleus dysfunction (i.e., pre-clinical and early-stage Huntington’s disease). Our results reveal a noncompetitive interaction so that the hippocampus compensates for gradual caudate nucleus dysfunction with a gradual activity increase,maintaining normal behavior. Furthermore, we revealed an interaction between medial temporal and caudate activity in healthy subjects, which was adaptively modified in Huntington patients to allow compensatory hippocampal processing. Thus, the two memory systems contribute in a noncompetitive, co operative manner to route recognition, which enables Polthe hippocampus to compensate seamlessly for the functional degradation of the caudate nucleus
  • Von Stutterheim, C., Carroll, M., & Klein, W. (2003). Two ways of construing complex temporal structures. In F. Lenz (Ed.), Deictic conceptualization of space, time and person (pp. 97-133). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Von Stutterheim, C., & Klein, W. (2004). Die Gesetze des Geistes sind metrisch: Hölderlin und die Sprachproduktion. In H. Schwarz (Ed.), Fenster zur Welt: Deutsch als Fremdsprachenphilologie (pp. 439-460). München: Iudicium.
  • Vonk, W., & Cozijn, R. (2003). On the treatment of saccades and regressions in eye movement measures of reading time. In J. Hyönä, R. Radach, & H. Deubel (Eds.), The mind's eye: Cognitive and applied aspects of eye movement research (pp. 291-312). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
  • De Vos, C. (2014). Absolute spatial deixis and proto-toponyms in Kata Kolok. NUSA: Linguistic studies of languages in and around Indonesia, 56, 3-26.

    Abstract

    This paper presents an overview of spatial deictic structures in Kata Kolok, a sign language which is indigenous to a Balinese village community. Sociolinguistic surveys and lexicographic comparisons have indicated that Kata Kolok is unrelated to the signing varieties in other parts of Bali and should be considered a sign language isolate as such. Kata Kolok emerged five generations ago and has been in intimate contact with spoken Balinese from its incipience. The findings from this paper suggest that this cross-modal contact has led to an absolute construction of the signing space, which is radically different in comparison to spatial deixis in other sign languages. Furthermore, Kata Kolok does not seem to have a class of true toponyms, but rather deploys deictic proto-toponyms. The Kata Kolok system on the whole does not exhibit any related linguistic forms or direct calques from spoken Balinese, and this suggests that the conceptual overlap between these two languages may have been facilitated by shared cultural practices as well as gestural communication rather than direct borrowings. Ultimately, this analysis challenges the very notion of a sign language isolate and suggests that Kata Kolok and other emergent signing varieties should be considered in light of the broader semiotic context in which they have evolved.

    Additional information

    http://hdl.handle.net/11372/VC-1001
  • De Vos, C. (2004). Over de biologische functie van taal: Pinker vs. Chomsky. Honours Review, 2(1), 20-25.

    Abstract

    Hoe is de complexe taal van de mens ontstaan? Geleidelijk door natuurlijke selectie, omdat groeiende grammaticale vermogens voor de mens een evolutionair voordeel opleverden? Of plotseling, als onbedoeld bijproduct of neveneffect van een genetische mutatie, zonder dat er sprake is van een adaptief proces? In dit artikel zet ik de argumenten van Pinker en Bloom voor de eerste stelling tegenover argumenten van Chomsky en Gould voor de tweede stelling. Vervolgens laat ik zien dat deze twee extreme standpunten ruimte bieden voor andere opties, die nader onderzoek waard zijn. Zo kan genetisch onderzoek in de komende decennia informatie opleveren, die nuancering van beide standpunten noodzakelijk maakt.
  • De Vries, B., Eising, E., Broos, L. A. M., Koelewijn, S. C., Todorov, B., Frants, R. R., Boer, J. M., Ferraro, M. D., Thoen, P. A. C., & Van Den Maagdenberg, A. (2014). RNA expression profiling in brains of familial hemiplegic migraine type 1 knock-in mice. Cephalalgia, 34(3), 174-182. doi:10.1177/0333102413502736.

    Abstract

    Background Various CACNA1A missense mutations cause familial hemiplegic migraine type 1 (FHM1), a rare monogenic subtype of migraine with aura. FHM1 mutation R192Q is associated with pure hemiplegic migraine, whereas the S218L mutation causes hemiplegic migraine, cerebellar ataxia, seizures, and mild head trauma-induced brain edema. Transgenic knock-in (KI) migraine mouse models were generated that carried either the FHM1 R192Q or the S218L mutation and were shown to exhibit increased CaV2.1 channel activity. Here we investigated their cerebellar and caudal cortical transcriptome. Methods Caudal cortical and cerebellar RNA expression profiles from mutant and wild-type mice were studied using microarrays. Respective brain regions were selected based on their relevance to migraine aura and ataxia. Relevant expression changes were further investigated at RNA and protein level by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) and/or immunohistochemistry, respectively. Results Expression differences in the cerebellum were most pronounced in S218L mice. Particularly, tyrosine hydroxylase, a marker of delayed cerebellar maturation, appeared strongly upregulated in S218L cerebella. In contrast, only minimal expression differences were observed in the caudal cortex of either mutant mice strain. Conclusion Despite pronounced consequences of migraine gene mutations at the neurobiological level, changes in cortical RNA expression in FHM1 migraine mice compared to wild-type are modest. In contrast, pronounced RNA expression changes are seen in the cerebellum of S218L mice and may explain their cerebellar ataxia phenotype
  • Wagner, A., & Braun, A. (2003). Is voice quality language-dependent? Acoustic analyses based on speakers of three different languages. In Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2003) (pp. 651-654). Adelaide: Causal Productions.
  • Waller, D., & Haun, D. B. M. (2003). Scaling techniques for modeling directional knowledge. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 35(2), 285-293.

    Abstract

    A common way for researchers to model or graphically portray spatial knowledge of a large environment is by applying multidimensional scaling (MDS) to a set of pairwise distance estimations. We introduce two MDS-like techniques that incorporate people’s knowledge of directions instead of (or in addition to) their knowledge of distances. Maps of a familiar environment derived from these procedures were more accurate and were rated by participants as being more accurate than those derived from nonmetric MDS. By incorporating people’s relatively accurate knowledge of directions, these methods offer spatial cognition researchers and behavioral geographers a sharper analytical tool than MDS for studying cognitive maps.
  • Waller, D., Loomis, J. M., & Haun, D. B. M. (2004). Body-based senses enhance knowledge of directions in large-scale environments. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 11(1), 157-163.

    Abstract

    Previous research has shown that inertial cues resulting from passive transport through a large environment do not necessarily facilitate acquiring knowledge about its layout. Here we examine whether the additional body-based cues that result from active movement facilitate the acquisition of spatial knowledge. Three groups of participants learned locations along an 840-m route. One group walked the route during learning, allowing access to body-based cues (i.e., vestibular, proprioceptive, and efferent information). Another group learned by sitting in the laboratory, watching videos made from the first group. A third group watched a specially made video that minimized potentially confusing head-on-trunk rotations of the viewpoint. All groups were tested on their knowledge of directions in the environment as well as on its configural properties. Having access to body-based information reduced pointing error by a small but significant amount. Regardless of the sensory information available during learning, participants exhibited strikingly common biases.
  • Walsh Dickey, L. (1999). Syllable count and Tzeltal segmental allomorphy. In J. Rennison, & K. Kühnhammer (Eds.), Phonologica 1996. Proceedings of the 8th International Phonology Meeting (pp. 323-334). Holland Academic Graphics.

    Abstract

    Tzeltal, a Mayan language spoken in southern Mexico, exhibits allo-morphy of an unusual type. The vowel quality of the perfective suffix is determined by the number of syllables in the stem to which it is attaching. This paper presents previously unpublished data of this allomorphy and demonstrates that a syllable-count analysis of the phenomenon is the proper one. This finding is put in a more general context of segment-prosody interaction in allomorphy.
  • Ward, M. E., McMahon, G., St Pourcain, B., Evans, D. M., Rietveld, C. A., Benjamin, D. J., Koellinger, P. D., Cesarini, D., Smith, G. D., Timpson, N. J., & Consortium}, {. S. G. A. (2014). Genetic variation associated with differential educational attainment in adults has anticipated associations with school performance in children. PLoS ONE, 9(7): e100248. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0100248.

    Abstract

    Genome-wide association study results have yielded evidence for the association of common genetic variants with crude measures of completed educational attainment in adults. Whilst informative, these results do not inform as to the mechanism of these effects or their presence at earlier ages and where educational performance is more routinely and more precisely assessed. Single nucleotide polymorphisms exhibiting genome-wide significant associations with adult educational attainment were combined to derive an unweighted allele score in 5,979 and 6,145 young participants from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children with key stage 3 national curriculum test results (SATS results) available at age 13 to 14 years in English and mathematics respectively. Standardised (z-scored) results for English and mathematics showed an expected relationship with sex, with girls exhibiting an advantage over boys in English (0.433 SD (95%CI 0.395, 0.470), p<10-10) with more similar results (though in the opposite direction) in mathematics (0.042 SD (95%CI 0.004, 0.080), p = 0.030). Each additional adult educational attainment increasing allele was associated with 0.041 SD (95%CI 0.020, 0.063), p = 1.79×10-04 and 0.028 SD (95%CI 0.007, 0.050), p = 0.01 increases in standardised SATS score for English and mathematics respectively. Educational attainment is a complex multifactorial behavioural trait which has not had heritable contributions to it fully characterised. We were able to apply the results from a large study of adult educational attainment to a study of child exam performance marking events in the process of learning rather than realised adult end product. Our results support evidence for common, small genetic contributions to educational attainment, but also emphasise the likely lifecourse nature of this genetic effect. Results here also, by an alternative route, suggest that existing methods for child examination are able to recognise early life variation likely to be related to ultimate educational attainment.
  • Warner, N. (2003). Rapid perceptibility as a factor underlying universals of vowel inventories. In A. Carnie, H. Harley, & M. Willie (Eds.), Formal approaches to function in grammar, in honor of Eloise Jelinek (pp. 245-261). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Warner, N., Jongman, A., Sereno, J., & Kemps, R. J. J. K. (2004). Incomplete neutralization and other sub-phonemic durational differences in production and perception: Evidence from Dutch. Journal of Phonetics, 32(2), 251-276. doi:10.1016/S0095-4470(03)00032-9.

    Abstract

    Words which are expected to contain the same surface string of segments may, under identical prosodic circumstances, sometimes be realized with slight differences in duration. Some researchers have attributed such effects to differences in the words’ underlying forms (incomplete neutralization), while others have suggested orthographic influence and extremely careful speech as the cause. In this paper, we demonstrate such sub-phonemic durational differences in Dutch, a language which some past research has found not to have such effects. Past literature has also shown that listeners can often make use of incomplete neutralization to distinguish apparent homophones. We extend perceptual investigations of this topic, and show that listeners can perceive even durational differences which are not consistently observed in production. We further show that a difference which is primarily orthographic rather than underlying can also create such durational differences. We conclude that a wide variety of factors, in addition to underlying form, can induce speakers to produce slight durational differences which listeners can also use in perception.
  • Warner, N., McQueen, J. M., & Cutler, A. (2014). Tracking perception of the sounds of English. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 135, 2295-3006. doi:10.1121/1.4870486.

    Abstract

    Twenty American English listeners identified gated fragments of all 2288 possible English within-word and cross-word diphones, providing a total of 538 560 phoneme categorizations. The results show orderly uptake of acoustic information in the signal and provide a view of where information about segments occurs in time. Information locus depends on each speech sound’s identity and phonological features. Affricates and diphthongs have highly localized information so that listeners’ perceptual accuracy rises during a confined time range. Stops and sonorants have more distributed and gradually appearing information. The identity and phonological features (e.g., vowel vs consonant) of the neighboring segment also influences when acoustic information about a segment is available. Stressed vowels are perceived significantly more accurately than unstressed vowels, but this effect is greater for lax vowels than for tense vowels or diphthongs. The dataset charts the availability of perceptual cues to segment identity across time for the full phoneme repertoire of English in all attested phonetic contexts.
  • Wassenaar, M., Brown, C. M., & Hagoort, P. (2004). ERP-effects of subject-verb agreement violations in patients with Broca's aphasia. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 16(4), 553-576. doi:10.1162/089892904323057290.

    Abstract

    This article presents electrophysiological data on on-line syntactic processing during auditory sentence comprehension in patients with Broca's aphasia. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from the scalp while subjects listened to sentences that were either syntactically correct or contained violations of subject-verb agreement. Three groups of subjects were tested: Broca patients (n = 10), nonaphasic patients with a right-hemisphere (RH) lesion (n = 5), and healthy agedmatched controls (n = 12). The healthy, control subjects showed a P600/SPS effect as response to the agreement violations. The nonaphasic patients with an RH lesion showed essentially the same pattern. The overall group of Broca patients did not show this sensitivity. However, the sensitivity was modulated by the severity of the syntactic comprehension impairment. The largest deviation from the standard P600/SPS effect was found in the patients with the relatively more severe syntactic comprehension impairment. In addition, ERPs to tones in a classical tone oddball paradigm were also recorded. Similar to the normal control subjects and RH patients, the group of Broca patients showed a P300 effect in the tone oddball condition. This indicates that aphasia in itself does not lead to a general reduction in all cognitive ERP effects. It was concluded that deviations from the standard P600/SPS effect in the Broca patients reflected difficulties with on-line maintaining of number information across clausal boundaries for establishing subject-verb agreement.
  • Weber, A., & Smits, R. (2003). Consonant and vowel confusion patterns by American English listeners. In M. J. Solé, D. Recasens, & J. Romero (Eds.), Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences.

    Abstract

    This study investigated the perception of American English phonemes by native listeners. Listeners identified either the consonant or the vowel in all possible English CV and VC syllables. The syllables were embedded in multispeaker babble at three signal-to-noise ratios (0 dB, 8 dB, and 16 dB). Effects of syllable position, signal-to-noise ratio, and articulatory features on vowel and consonant identification are discussed. The results constitute the largest source of data that is currently available on phoneme confusion patterns of American English phonemes by native listeners.
  • Weber, A., & Smits, R. (2003). Consonant and vowel confusion patterns by American English listeners. In Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2003) (pp. 1437-1440). Adelaide: Causal Productions.

    Abstract

    This study investigated the perception of American English phonemes by native listeners. Listeners identified either the consonant or the vowel in all possible English CV and VC syllables. The syllables were embedded in multispeaker babble at three signalto-noise ratios (0 dB, 8 dB, and 16 dB). Effects of syllable position, signal-to-noise ratio, and articulatory features on vowel and consonant identification are discussed. The results constitute the largest source of data that is currently available on phoneme confusion patterns of American English phonemes by native listeners.
  • Weber, A., & Cutler, A. (2004). Lexical competition in non-native spoken-word recognition. Journal of Memory and Language, 50(1), 1-25. doi:10.1016/S0749-596X(03)00105-0.

    Abstract

    Four eye-tracking experiments examined lexical competition in non-native spoken-word recognition. Dutch listeners hearing English fixated longer on distractor pictures with names containing vowels that Dutch listeners are likely to confuse with vowels in a target picture name (pencil, given target panda) than on less confusable distractors (beetle, given target bottle). English listeners showed no such viewing time difference. The confusability was asymmetric: given pencil as target, panda did not distract more than distinct competitors. Distractors with Dutch names phonologically related to English target names (deksel, ‘lid,’ given target desk) also received longer fixations than distractors with phonologically unrelated names. Again, English listeners showed no differential effect. With the materials translated into Dutch, Dutch listeners showed no activation of the English words (desk, given target deksel). The results motivate two conclusions: native phonemic categories capture second-language input even when stored representations maintain a second-language distinction; and lexical competition is greater for non-native than for native listeners.
  • Weber, A., & Cutler, A. (2003). Perceptual similarity co-existing with lexical dissimilarity [Abstract]. Abstracts of the 146th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 114(4 Pt. 2), 2422. doi:10.1121/1.1601094.

    Abstract

    The extreme case of perceptual similarity is indiscriminability, as when two second‐language phonemes map to a single native category. An example is the English had‐head vowel contrast for Dutch listeners; Dutch has just one such central vowel, transcribed [E]. We examine whether the failure to discriminate in phonetic categorization implies indiscriminability in other—e.g., lexical—processing. Eyetracking experiments show that Dutch‐native listeners instructed in English to ‘‘click on the panda’’ look (significantly more than native listeners) at a pictured pencil, suggesting that pan‐ activates their lexical representation of pencil. The reverse, however, is not the case: ‘‘click on the pencil’’ does not induce looks to a panda, suggesting that pen‐ does not activate panda in the lexicon. Thus prelexically undiscriminated second‐language distinctions can nevertheless be maintained in stored lexical representations. The problem of mapping a resulting unitary input to two distinct categories in lexical representations is solved by allowing input to activate only one second‐language category. For Dutch listeners to English, this is English [E], as a result of which no vowels in the signal ever map to words containing [ae]. We suggest that the choice of category is here motivated by a more abstract, phonemic, metric of similarity.
  • Weber, A., & Paris, G. (2004). The origin of the linguistic gender effect in spoken-word recognition: Evidence from non-native listening. In K. Forbus, D. Gentner, & T. Tegier (Eds.), Proceedings of the 26th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

    Abstract

    Two eye-tracking experiments examined linguistic gender effects in non-native spoken-word recognition. French participants, who knew German well, followed spoken instructions in German to click on pictures on a computer screen (e.g., Wo befindet sich die Perle, “where is the pearl”) while their eye movements were monitored. The name of the target picture was preceded by a gender-marked article in the instructions. When a target and a competitor picture (with phonologically similar names) were of the same gender in both German and French, French participants fixated competitor pictures more than unrelated pictures. However, when target and competitor were of the same gender in German but of different gender in French, early fixations to the competitor picture were reduced. Competitor activation in the non-native language was seemingly constrained by native gender information. German listeners showed no such viewing time difference. The results speak against a form-based account of the linguistic gender effect. They rather support the notion that the effect originates from the grammatical level of language processing.
  • Weber, A., & Mueller, K. (2004). Word order variation in German main clauses: A corpus analysis. In Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Computational Linguistics.

    Abstract

    In this paper, we present empirical data from a corpus study on the linear order of subjects and objects in German main clauses. The aim was to establish the validity of three well-known ordering constraints: given complements tend to occur before new complements, definite before indefinite, and pronoun before full noun phrase complements. Frequencies of occurrences were derived for subject-first and object-first sentences from the German Negra corpus. While all three constraints held on subject-first sentences, results for object-first sentences varied. Our findings suggest an influence of grammatical functions on the ordering of verb complements.
  • Weber, A., Di Betta, A. M., & McQueen, J. M. (2014). Treack or trit: Adaptation to genuine and arbitrary foreign accents by monolingual and bilingual listeners. Journal of phonetics, 46, 34-51. doi:10.1016/j.wocn.2014.05.002.

    Abstract

    Two cross-modal priming experiments examined two questions about word recognition in foreign-accented speech: Does accent adaptation occur only for genuine accents markers, and does adaptation depend on language experience? We compared recognition of words spoken with canonical, genuinely-accented and arbitrarily-accented vowels. In Experiment 1, an Italian speaker pronounced vowels in English prime words canonically, or by lengthening /ɪ/ as in a genuine Italian accent (*/tri:k/ for trick), or by arbitrarily shortening /i:/ (*/trɪt/ for treat). Lexical-decision times to subsequent visual target words showed different priming effects in three listener groups. Monolingual native English listeners recognized variants with lengthened but not shortened vowels. Bilingual nonnative Italian-English listeners, who could not reliably distinguish vowel length, recognized both variants. Bilingual nonnative Dutch-English listeners also recognized both variants. In Experiment 2, bilingual Dutch-English listeners recognized Dutch words with genuinely- and arbitrarily-accented vowels (spoken by a native Italian with lengthened and shortened vowels respectively), but recognized words with canonical vowels more easily than words with accented vowels. These results suggest that adaptation to genuine accent markers arises for monolingual and bilingual listeners alike and can occur in native and nonnative languages, but that bilinguals can adapt to arbitrary accent markers better than monolinguals.
  • Wegman, J., Fonteijn, H. M., van Ekert, J., Tyborowska, A., Jansen, C., & Janzen, G. (2014). Gray and white matter correlates of navigational ability in humans. Human Brain Mapping, 35(6), 2561-2572. doi:10.1002/hbm.22349.

    Abstract

    Humans differ widely in their navigational abilities. Studies have shown that self-reports on navigational abilities are good predictors of performance on navigation tasks in real and virtual environments. The caudate nucleus and medial temporal lobe regions have been suggested to subserve different navigational strategies. The ability to use different strategies might underlie navigational ability differences. This study examines the anatomical correlates of self-reported navigational ability in both gray and white matter. Local gray matter volume was compared between a group (N = 134) of good and bad navigators using voxel-based morphometry (VBM), as well as regional volumes. To compare between good and bad navigators, we also measured white matter anatomy using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and looked at fractional anisotropy (FA) values. We observed a trend toward higher local GM volume in right anterior parahippocampal/rhinal cortex for good versus bad navigators. Good male navigators showed significantly higher local GM volume in right hippocampus than bad male navigators. Conversely, bad navigators showed increased FA values in the internal capsule, the white matter bundle closest to the caudate nucleus and a trend toward higher local GM volume in the caudate nucleus. Furthermore, caudate nucleus regional volume correlated negatively with navigational ability. These convergent findings across imaging modalities are in line with findings showing that the caudate nucleus and the medial temporal lobes are involved in different wayfinding strategies. Our study is the first to show a link between self-reported large-scale navigational abilities and different measures of brain anatomy.
  • Weissenborn, J., & Stralka, R. (1984). Das Verstehen von Mißverständnissen. Eine ontogenetische Studie. In Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik (pp. 113-134). Stuttgart: Metzler.
  • Weissenborn, J. (1984). La genèse de la référence spatiale en langue maternelle et en langue seconde: similarités et différences. In G. Extra, & M. Mittner (Eds.), Studies in second language acquisition by adult immigrants (pp. 262-286). Tilburg: Tilburg University.
  • Wender, K. F., Haun, D. B. M., Rasch, B. H., & Blümke, M. (2003). Context effects in memory for routes. In C. Freksa, W. Brauer, C. Habel, & K. F. Wender (Eds.), Spatial cognition III: Routes and navigation, human memory and learning, spatial representation and spatial learning (pp. 209-231). Berlin: Springer.
  • Wheeldon, L. (2003). Inhibitory from priming of spoken word production. Language and Cognitive Processes, 18(1), 81-109. doi:10.1080/01690960143000470.

    Abstract

    Three experiments were designed to examine the effect on picture naming of the prior production of a word related in phonological form. In Experiment 1, the latency to produce Dutch words in response to pictures (e.g., hoed , hat) was longer following the production of a form-related word (e.g., hond , dog) in response to a definition on a preceding trial, than when the preceding definition elicited an unrelated word (e.g., kerk , church). Experiment 2 demonstrated that the inhibitory effect disappears when one unrelated word is produced intervening prime and target productions (e.g., hond-kerk-hoed ). The size of the inhibitory effect was not significantly affected by the frequency of the prime words or the target picture names. In Experiment 3, facilitation was observed for word pairs that shared offset segments (e.g., kurk-jurk , cork-dress), whereas inhibition was observed for shared onset segments (e.g., bloed-bloem , blood-flower). However, no priming was observed for prime and target words with shared phonemes but no mismatching segments (e.g., oom-boom , uncle-tree; hex-hexs , fence-witch). These findings are consistent with a process of phoneme competition during phonological encoding.
  • Whitmarsh, S., Barendregt, H., Schoffelen, J.-M., & Jensen, O. (2014). Metacognitive awareness of covert somatosensory attention corresponds to contralateral alpha power. NeuroImage, 85(2), 803-809. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.07.031.

    Abstract

    Studies on metacognition have shown that participants can report on their performance on a wide range of perceptual, memory and behavioral tasks. We know little, however, about the ability to report on one's attentional focus. The degree and direction of somatosensory attention can, however, be readily discerned through suppression of alpha band frequencies in EEG/MEG produced by the somatosensory cortex. Such top-down attentional modulations of cortical excitability have been shown to result in better discrimination performance and decreased response times. In this study we asked whether the degree of attentional focus is also accessible for subjective report, and whether such evaluations correspond to the amount of somatosensory alpha activity. In response to auditory cues participants maintained somatosensory attention to either their left or right hand for intervals varying randomly between 5 and 32seconds, while their brain activity was recorded with MEG. Trials were terminated by a probe sound, to which they reported their level of attention on the cued hand right before probe-onset. Using a beamformer approach, we quantified the alpha activity in left and right somatosensory regions, one second before the probe. Alpha activity from contra- and ipsilateral somatosensory cortices for high versus low attention trials were compared. As predicted, the contralateral somatosensory alpha depression correlated with higher reported attentional focus. Finally, alpha activity two to three seconds before the probe-onset was correlated with attentional focus. We conclude that somatosensory attention is indeed accessible to metacognitive awareness.
  • Widlok, T. (2004). Ethnography in language Documentation. Language Archive Newsletter, 1(3), 4-6.
  • Widlok, T., & Burenhult, N. (2014). Sehen, riechen, orientieren. Spektrum der Wissenschaft, June 2014, 76-81.
  • Wilkins, D. (1999). A questionnaire on motion lexicalisation and motion description. In D. Wilkins (Ed.), Manual for the 1999 Field Season (pp. 96-115). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.3002706.

    Abstract

    How do languages express ideas of movement, and how do they package features that can be part of motion, such as path and cause? This questionnaire is used to gain a picture of the lexical resources a language draws on for motion expressions. It targets issues of semantic conflation (i.e., what other semantic information besides motion may be encoded in a verb root) and patterns of semantic distribution (i.e., what types of information are encoded in the morphemes that come together to build a description of a motion event). It was originally designed for Australian languages, but has since been used around the world.
  • Wilkins, D. (1999). Eliciting contrastive use of demonstratives for objects within close personal space (all objects well within arm’s reach). In D. Wilkins (Ed.), Manual for the 1999 Field Season (pp. 25-28). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.2573796.

    Abstract

    Contrastive reference, where a speaker presents or identifies one item in explicit contrast to another (I like this book but that one is boring), has special communicative and information structure properties. This can be reflected in rules of demonstrative use. For example, in some languages, terms equivalent to this and that can be used for contrastive reference in almost any spatial context. But other two-term languages stick more closely to “distance rules” for demonstratives, allowing a this-like term in close space only. This task elicits data concerning one context of contrastive reference, focusing on whether (and how) non-proximal demonstratives can be used to distinguish objects within a proximal area. The task runs like a memory game, with the consultant being asked to identify the locations of two or three hidden items arranged within arm’s reach.
  • Wilkins, D. (1999). The 1999 demonstrative questionnaire: “This” and “that” in comparative perspective. In D. Wilkins (Ed.), Manual for the 1999 Field Season (pp. 1-24). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.2573775.

    Abstract

    Demonstrative terms (e.g., this and that) are key to understanding how a language constructs and interprets spatial relationships. They are tricky to pin down, typically having functions that do not match “idealized” uses, and that can become invisible in narrow elicitation settings. This questionnaire is designed to identify the range(s) of use of certain spatial demonstrative terms, and help assess the roles played by gesture, access, attention, and addressee knowledge in demonstrative use. The stimuli consist of 25 diagrammed “elicitation settings” to be created by the researcher.
  • Willems, R. M., Van der Haegen, L., Fisher, S. E., & Francks, C. (2014). On the other hand: Including left-handers in cognitive neuroscience and neurogenetics. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 15, 193-201. doi:10.1038/nrn3679.

    Abstract

    Left-handers are often excluded from study cohorts in neuroscience and neurogenetics in order to reduce variance in the data. However, recent investigations have shown that the inclusion or targeted recruitment of left-handers can be informative in studies on a range of topics, such as cerebral lateralization and the genetic underpinning of asymmetrical brain development. Left-handed individuals represent a substantial portion of the human population and therefore left-handedness falls within the normal range of human diversity; thus, it is important to account for this variation in our understanding of brain functioning. We call for neuroscientists and neurogeneticists to recognize the potential of studying this often-discarded group of research subjects.
  • Willems, R. M., & Francks, C. (2014). Your left-handed brain. Frontiers for Young Minds, 2: 13. doi:10.3389/frym.2014.00013.

    Abstract

    While most people prefer to use their right hand to brush their teeth, throw a ball, or hold a tennis racket, left-handers prefer to use their left hand. This is the case for around 10 per cent of all people. There was a time (not so long ago) when left-handers were stigmatized in Western (and other) communities: it was considered a bad sign if you were left-handed, and left-handed children were often forced to write with their right hand. This is nonsensical: there is nothing wrong with being left-handed, and trying to write with the non-preferred hand is frustrating for almost everybody. As a matter of fact, science can learn from left-handers, and in this paper, we discuss how this may be the case. We review why some people are left-handed and others are not, how left-handers' brains differ from right-handers’, and why scientists study left-handedness in the first place
  • Wilson, J. J., & Little, H. (2014). Emerging languages in Esoteric and Exoteric Niches: evidence from Rural Sign Languages. In Ways to Potolanguage 3 book of abstracts (pp. 54-55).
  • Windhouwer, M., Petro, J., & Shayan, S. (2014). RELISH LMF: Unlocking the full power of the lexical markup framework. In N. Calzolari, K. Choukri, T. Declerck, H. Loftsson, B. Maegaard, J. Mariani, A. Moreno, J. Odijk, & S. Piperidis (Eds.), Proceedings of LREC 2014: 9th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (pp. 1032-1037).
  • Wittek, A. (1999). Zustandsveränderungsverben im Deutschen - wie lernt das Kind die komplexe Semantik? In J. Meibauer, & M. Rothweiler (Eds.), Das Lexikon im Spracherwerb (pp. 278-296). Tübingen: Francke.

    Abstract

    Angelika Wittek untersuchte Zustandsveränderungsverben bei vier- bis sechsjährigen Kindern. Englischsprechende Kinder verstehen bis zum Alter von 8 Jahren diese Verben als Bewegungsverben und ignorieren, daß sie zusätzlich die Information über einen Endzustand im Sinne der Negation des Ausgangszustands beeinhalten. Wittek zeigte, daß entgegen der Erwartung transparente, morphologisch komplexe Formen (wachmachen), in denen die Partikel den Endzustand explizit macht, nicht besser verstanden werden als Simplizia (wecken). Zudem diskutierte sie, inwieweit die Verwendung des Adverbs wieder in restitutiver Lesart Hinweise auf den Erwerb dieser Verben geben kann.
  • Witteman, M. J., Weber, A., & McQueen, J. M. (2014). Tolerance for inconsistency in foreign-accented speech. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 21, 512-519. doi:10.3758/s13423-013-0519-8.

    Abstract

    Are listeners able to adapt to a foreign-accented speaker who has, as is often the case, an inconsistent accent? Two groups of native Dutch listeners participated in a cross-modal priming experiment, either in a consistent-accent condition (German-accented items only) or in an inconsistent-accent condition (German-accented and nativelike pronunciations intermixed). The experimental words were identical for both groups (words with vowel substitutions characteristic of German-accented speech); additional contextual words differed in accentedness (German-accented or nativelike words). All items were spoken by the same speaker: a German native who could produce the accented forms but could also pass for a Dutch native speaker. Listeners in the consistent-accent group were able to adapt quickly to the speaker (i.e., showed facilitatory priming for words with vocalic substitutions). Listeners in the inconsistent-accent condition showed adaptation to words with vocalic substitutions only in the second half of the experiment. These results indicate that adaptation to foreign-accented speech is rapid. Accent inconsistency slows listeners down initially, but a short period of additional exposure is enough for them to adapt to the speaker. Listeners can therefore tolerate inconsistency in foreign-accented speech.
  • Wittenburg, P., Skiba, R., & Trilsbeek, P. (2004). Technology and Tools for Language Documentation. Language Archive Newsletter, 1(4), 3-4.
  • Wittenburg, P. (2003). The DOBES model of language documentation. Language Documentation and Description, 1, 122-139.
  • Wittenburg, P. (2004). The IMDI metadata concept. In S. F. Ferreira (Ed.), Workingmaterial on Building the LR&E Roadmap: Joint COCOSDA and ICCWLRE Meeting, (LREC2004). Paris: ELRA - European Language Resources Association.
  • Wittenburg, P. (2004). Training Course in Lithuania. Language Archive Newsletter, 1(2), 6-6.
  • Wittenburg, P., Brugman, H., Broeder, D., & Russel, A. (2004). XML-based language archiving. In Workshop Proceedings on XML-based Richly Annotaded Corpora (LREC2004) (pp. 63-69). Paris: ELRA - European Language Resources Association.
  • Wittenburg, P., Trilsbeek, P., & Wittenburg, F. (2014). Corpus archiving and dissemination. In J. Durand, U. Gut, & G. Kristoffersen (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Corpus Phonology (pp. 133-149). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Wittenburg, P., Gulrajani, G., Broeder, D., & Uneson, M. (2004). Cross-disciplinary integration of metadata descriptions. In M. Lino, M. Xavier, F. Ferreira, R. Costa, & R. Silva (Eds.), Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC2004) (pp. 113-116). Paris: ELRA - European Language Resources Association.
  • Wittenburg, P., Dirksmeyer, R., Brugman, H., & Klaas, G. (2004). Digital formats for images, audio and video. Language Archive Newsletter, 1(1), 3-6.
  • Wittenburg, P., Johnson, H., Buchhorn, M., Brugman, H., & Broeder, D. (2004). Architecture for distributed language resource management and archiving. In M. Lino, M. Xavier, F. Ferreira, R. Costa, & R. Silva (Eds.), Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC2004) (pp. 361-364). Paris: ELRA - European Language Resources Association.
  • Wittenburg, P. (2004). International Expert Meeting on Access Management for Distributed Language Archives. Language Archive Newsletter, 1(3), 12-12.
  • Wittenburg, P. (2004). Final review of INTERA. Language Archive Newsletter, 1(4), 11-12.
  • Wittenburg, P. (2004). LinguaPax Forum on Language Diversity, Sustainability, and Peace. Language Archive Newsletter, 1(3), 13-13.
  • Wittenburg, P. (2004). LREC conference 2004. Language Archive Newsletter, 1(3), 12-13.
  • Wittenburg, P. (2004). News from the Archive of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. Language Archive Newsletter, 1(4), 12-12.
  • Wnuk, E., & Burenhult, N. (2014). Contact and isolation in hunter-gatherer language dynamics: Evidence from Maniq phonology (Aslian, Malay Peninsula). Studies in Language, 38(4), 956-981. doi:10.1075/sl.38.4.06wnu.
  • Wnuk, E., & Majid, A. (2014). Revisiting the limits of language: The odor lexicon of Maniq. Cognition, 131, 125-138. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2013.12.008.

    Abstract

    It is widely believed that human languages cannot encode odors. While this is true for English,
    and other related languages, data from some non-Western languages challenge this
    view. Maniq, a language spoken by a small population of nomadic hunter–gatherers in
    southern Thailand, is such a language. It has a lexicon of over a dozen terms dedicated
    to smell. We examined the semantics of these smell terms in 3 experiments (exemplar
    listing, similarity judgment and off-line rating). The exemplar listing task confirmed that
    Maniq smell terms have complex meanings encoding smell qualities. Analyses of the
    similarity data revealed that the odor lexicon is coherently structured by two dimensions.
    The underlying dimensions are pleasantness and dangerousness, as verified by the off-line
    rating study. Ethnographic data illustrate that smell terms have detailed semantics tapping
    into broader cultural constructs. Contrary to the widespread view that languages cannot
    encode odors, the Maniq data show odor can be a coherent semantic domain, thus shedding
    new light on the limits of language.
  • Wright, S. E., Windhouwer, M., Schuurman, I., & Broeder, D. (2014). Segueing from a Data Category Registry to a Data Concept Registry. In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Terminology and Knowledge Engineering (TKE 2014).

    Abstract

    The terminology Community of Practice has long standardized data categories in the framework of ISO TC 37. ISO 12620:2009 specifies the data model and procedures for a Data Category Registry (DCR), which has been implemented by the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics as the ISOcat DCR. The DCR has been used by not only ISO TC 37, but also by the CLARIN research infra-structure. This paper describes how the needs of these communities have started to diverge and the process of segueing from a DCR to a Data Concept Registry in order to meet the needs of both communities.
  • Yang, A., & Chen, A. (2014). Prosodic focus marking in child and adult Mandarin Chinese. In C. Gussenhoven, Y. Chen, & D. Dediu (Eds.), Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Language (pp. 54-58).

    Abstract

    This study investigates how Mandarin Chinese speaking children and adults use prosody to mark focus in spontaneous speech. SVO sentences were elicited from 4- and 8-year-olds and adults in a game setting. Sentence-medial verbs were acoustically analysed for both duration and pitch range in different focus conditions. We have found that like the adults, the 8-year-olds used both duration and pitch range to distinguish focus from non-focus. The 4-year-olds used only duration to distinguish focus from non-focus, unlike the adults and 8-year-olds. None of the three groups of speakers distinguished contrastive focus from non-contrastive focus using pitch range or duration. Regarding the distinction between narrow focus from broad focus, the 4- and 8-year-olds used both pitch range and duration for this purpose, while the adults used only duration
  • Yang, A., & Chen, A. (2014). Prosodic focus-marking in Chinese four- and eight-year-olds. In N. Campbell, D. Gibbon, & D. Hirst (Eds.), Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2014 (pp. 713-717).

    Abstract

    This study investigates how Mandarin Chinese speaking children use prosody to distinguish focus from non-focus, and focus types differing in size of constituent and contrastivity. SVO sentences were elicited from four- and eight-year-olds in a game setting. Sentence-medial verbs were acoustically analysed for both duration and pitch range in different focus conditions. The children started to use duration to differentiate focus from non-focus at the age of four. But their use of pitch range varied with age and depended on non-focus conditions (pre- vs. postfocus) and the lexical tones of the verbs. Further, the children in both age groups used pitch range but not duration to differentiate narrow focus from broad focus, and they did not differentiate contrastive narrow focus from non-contrastive narrow focus using duration or pitch range. The results indicated that Chinese children acquire the prosodic means (duration and pitch range) of marking focus in stages, and their acquisition of these two means appear to be early, compared to children speaking an intonation language, for example, Dutch.
  • Yang, Y., Dai, B., Howell, P., Wang, X., Li, K., & Lu, C. (2014). White and Grey Matter Changes in the Language Network during Healthy Aging. PLoS One, 9(9): e108077. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0108077.

    Abstract

    Neural structures change with age but there is no consensus on the exact processes involved. This study tested the hypothesis that white and grey matter in the language network changes during aging according to a “last in, first out” process. The fractional anisotropy (FA) of white matter and cortical thickness of grey matter were measured in 36 participants whose ages ranged from 55 to 79 years. Within the language network, the dorsal pathway connecting the mid-to-posterior superior temporal cortex (STC) and the inferior frontal cortex (IFC) was affected more by aging in both FA and thickness than the other dorsal pathway connecting the STC with the premotor cortex and the ventral pathway connecting the mid-to-anterior STC with the ventral IFC. These results were independently validated in a second group of 20 participants whose ages ranged from 50 to 73 years. The pathway that is most affected during aging matures later than the other two pathways (which are present at birth). The results are interpreted as showing that the neural structures which mature later are affected more than those that mature earlier, supporting the “last in, first out” theory.
  • Zampieri, M., & Gebre, B. G. (2014). VarClass: An open-source language identification tool for language varieties. In N. Calzolari, K. Choukri, T. Declerck, H. Loftsson, B. Maegaard, J. Mariani, A. Moreno, J. Odijk, & S. Piperidis (Eds.), Proceedings of LREC 2014: 9th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (pp. 3305-3308).

    Abstract

    This paper presents VarClass, an open-source tool for language identification available both to be downloaded as well as through a graphical user-friendly interface. The main difference of VarClass in comparison to other state-of-the-art language identification tools is its focus on language varieties. General purpose language identification tools do not take language varieties into account and our work aims to fill this gap. VarClass currently contains language models for over 27 languages in which 10 of them are language varieties. We report an average performance of over 90.5% accuracy in a challenging dataset. More language models will be included in the upcoming months
  • Zavala, R. M. (1999). External possessor in Oluta Popoluca (Mixean): Applicatives and incorporation of relational terms. In D. L. Payne, & I. Barshi (Eds.), External possession (pp. 339-372). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Zeshan, U. (2004). Basic English course taught in Indian Sign Language (Ali Yavar Young National Institute for Hearing Handicapped, Ed.). National Institute for the Hearing Handicapped: Mumbai.
  • Zeshan, U. (2003). Aspects of Türk Işaret Dili (Turkish Sign Language). Sign Language and Linguistics, 6(1), 43-75. doi:10.1075/sll.6.1.04zes.

    Abstract

    This article provides a first overview of some striking grammatical structures in Türk Idotscedilaret Dili (Turkish Sign Language, TID), the sign language used by the Deaf community in Turkey. The data are described with a typological perspective in mind, focusing on aspects of TID grammar that are typologically unusual across sign languages. After giving an overview of the historical, sociolinguistic and educational background of TID and the language community using this sign language, five domains of TID grammar are investigated in detail. These include a movement derivation signalling completive aspect, three types of nonmanual negation — headshake, backward head tilt, and puffed cheeks — and their distribution, cliticization of the negator NOT to a preceding predicate host sign, an honorific whole-entity classifier used to refer to humans, and a question particle, its history and current status in the language. A final evaluation points out the significance of these data for sign language research and looks at perspectives for a deeper understanding of the language and its history.
  • Zeshan, U. (2004). Interrogative constructions in sign languages - Cross-linguistic perspectives. Language, 80(1), 7-39.

    Abstract

    This article reports on results from a broad crosslinguistic study based on data from thirty-five signed languages around the world. The study is the first of its kind, and the typological generalizations presented here cover the domain of interrogative structures as they appear across a wide range of geographically and genetically distinct signed languages. Manual and nonmanual ways of marking basic types of questions in signed languages are investigated. As a result, it becomes clear that the range of crosslinguistic variation is extensive for some subparameters, such as the structure of question-word paradigms, while other parameters, such as the use of nonmanual expressions in questions, show more similarities across signed languages. Finally, it is instructive to compare the findings from signed language typology to relevant data from spoken languages at a more abstract, crossmodality level.
  • Zeshan, U. (2004). Hand, head and face - negative constructions in sign languages. Linguistic Typology, 8(1), 1-58. doi:10.1515/lity.2004.003.

    Abstract

    This article presents a typology of negative constructions across a substantial number of sign languages from around the globe. After situating the topic within the wider context of linguistic typology, the main negation strategies found across sign languages are described. Nonmanual negation includes the use of head movements and facial expressions for negation and is of great importance in sign languages as well as particularly interesting from a typological point of view. As far as manual signs are concerned, independent negative particles represent the dominant strategy, but there are also instances of irregular negation in most sign languages. Irregular negatives may take the form of suppletion, cliticisation, affixing, or internal modification of a sign. The results of the study lead to interesting generalisations about similarities and differences between negatives in signed and spoken languages.
  • Zhou, W., & Broersma, M. (2014). Perception of birth language tone contrasts by adopted Chinese children. In C. Gussenhoven, Y. Chen, & D. Dediu (Eds.), Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Language (pp. 63-66).

    Abstract

    The present study investigates how long after adoption adoptees forget the phonology of their birth language. Chinese children who were adopted by Dutch families were tested on the perception of birth language tone contrasts before, during, and after perceptual training. Experiment 1 investigated Cantonese tone 2 (High-Rising) and tone 5 (Low-Rising), and Experiment 2 investigated Mandarin tone 2 (High-Rising) and tone 3 (Low-Dipping). In both experiments, participants were adoptees and non-adopted Dutch controls. Results of both experiments show that the tone contrasts were very difficult to perceive for the adoptees, and that adoptees were not better at perceiving the tone contrasts than their non-adopted Dutch peers, before or after training. This demonstrates that forgetting took place relatively soon after adoption, and that the re-exposure that the adoptees were presented with did not lead to an improvement greater than that of the Dutch control participants. Thus, the findings confirm what has been anecdotally reported by adoptees and their parents, but what had not been empirically tested before, namely that birth language forgetting occurs very soon after adoption
  • De Zubicaray, G. I., Hartsuiker, R. J., & Acheson, D. J. (2014). Mind what you say—general and specific mechanisms for monitoring in speech production. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8: 514. doi:10.3389%2Ffnhum.2014.00514.

    Abstract

    For most people, speech production is relatively effortless and error-free. Yet it has long been recognized that we need some type of control over what we are currently saying and what we plan to say. Precisely how we monitor our internal and external speech has been a topic of research interest for several decades. The predominant approach in psycholinguistics has assumed monitoring of both is accomplished via systems responsible for comprehending others' speech.

    This special topic aimed to broaden the field, firstly by examining proposals that speech production might also engage more general systems, such as those involved in action monitoring. A second aim was to examine proposals for a production-specific, internal monitor. Both aims require that we also specify the nature of the representations subject to monitoring.
  • Zumer, J. M., Scheeringa, R., Schoffelen, J.-M., Norris, D. G., & Jensen, O. (2014). Occipital alpha activity during stimulus processing gates the information flow to object-selective cortex. PLoS Biology, 12(10): e1001965. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001965.

    Abstract

    Given the limited processing capabilities of the sensory system, it is essential that attended information is gated to downstream areas, whereas unattended information is blocked. While it has been proposed that alpha band (8–13 Hz) activity serves to route information to downstream regions by inhibiting neuronal processing in task-irrelevant regions, this hypothesis remains untested. Here we investigate how neuronal oscillations detected by electroencephalography in visual areas during working memory encoding serve to gate information reflected in the simultaneously recorded blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) signals recorded by functional magnetic resonance imaging in downstream ventral regions. We used a paradigm in which 16 participants were presented with faces and landscapes in the right and left hemifields; one hemifield was attended and the other unattended. We observed that decreased alpha power contralateral to the attended object predicted the BOLD signal representing the attended object in ventral object-selective regions. Furthermore, increased alpha power ipsilateral to the attended object predicted a decrease in the BOLD signal representing the unattended object. We also found that the BOLD signal in the dorsal attention network inversely correlated with visual alpha power. This is the first demonstration, to our knowledge, that oscillations in the alpha band are implicated in the gating of information from the visual cortex to the ventral stream, as reflected in the representationally specific BOLD signal. This link of sensory alpha to downstream activity provides a neurophysiological substrate for the mechanism of selective attention during stimulus processing, which not only boosts the attended information but also suppresses distraction. Although previous studies have shown a relation between the BOLD signal from the dorsal attention network and the alpha band at rest, we demonstrate such a relation during a visuospatial task, indicating that the dorsal attention network exercises top-down control of visual alpha activity.
  • Zwitserlood, I. (2003). Classifying hand configurations in Nederlandse Gebarentaal (Sign Language of the Netherlands). PhD Thesis, LOT, Utrecht. Retrieved from http://igitur-archive.library.uu.nl/dissertations/2003-0717-122837/UUindex.html.

    Abstract

    This study investigates the morphological and morphosyntactic characteristics of hand configurations in signs, particularly in Nederlandse Gebarentaal (NGT). The literature on sign languages in general acknowledges that hand configurations can function as morphemes, more specifically as classifiers , in a subset of signs: verbs expressing the motion, location, and existence of referents (VELMs). These verbs are considered the output of productive sign formation processes. In contrast, other signs in which similar hand configurations appear ( iconic or motivated signs) have been considered to be lexicalized signs, not involving productive processes. This research report shows that meaningful hand configurations have (at least) two very different functions in the grammar of NGT (and presumably in other sign languages, too). First, they are agreement markers on VELMs, and hence are functional elements. Second, they are roots in motivated signs, and thus lexical elements. The latter signs are analysed as root compounds and are formed from various roots by productive processes. The similarities in surface form and differences in morphosyntactic characteristics observed in comparison of VELMs and root compounds are attributed to their different structures and to the sign language interface between grammar and phonetic form
  • Zwitserlood, I. (2014). Meaning at the feature level in sign languages. The case of name signs in Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT). In R. Kager (Ed.), Where the Principles Fail. A Festschrift for Wim Zonneveld on the occasion of his 64th birthday (pp. 241-251). Utrecht: Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS.
  • Zwitserlood, I. (2003). Word formation below and above little x: Evidence from Sign Language of the Netherlands. In Proceedings of SCL 19. Nordlyd Tromsø University Working Papers on Language and Linguistics (pp. 488-502).

    Abstract

    Although in many respects sign languages have a similar structure to that of spoken languages, the different modalities in which both types of languages are expressed cause differences in structure as well. One of the most striking differences between spoken and sign languages is the influence of the interface between grammar and PF on the surface form of utterances. Spoken language words and phrases are in general characterized by sequential strings of sounds, morphemes and words, while in sign languages we find that many phonemes, morphemes, and even words are expressed simultaneously. A linguistic model should be able to account for the structures that occur in both spoken and sign languages. In this paper, I will discuss the morphological/ morphosyntactic structure of signs in Nederlandse Gebarentaal (Sign Language of the Netherlands, henceforth NGT), with special focus on the components ‘place of articulation’ and ‘handshape’. I will focus on their multiple functions in the grammar of NGT and argue that the framework of Distributed Morphology (DM), which accounts for word formation in spoken languages, is also suited to account for the formation of structures in sign languages. First I will introduce the phonological and morphological structure of NGT signs. Then, I will briefly outline the major characteristics of the DM framework. Finally, I will account for signs that have the same surface form but have a different morphological structure by means of that framework.

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