Publications

Abstract

Language evolution can be viewed from two viewpoints: the development of a communicative system and the biological adaptations necessary for producing and perceiving said system. The communicative-system vantage point has enjoyed a wealth of mathematical models based on simple distributional properties of language, often formulated as empirical laws. However, be- yond vague psychological notions of “least effort”, no principled explanation has been proposed for the existence and success of such laws. Meanwhile, psychological and neurobiological mod- els have focused largely on the computational constraints presented by incremental, real-time processing. In the following, we show that information-theoretic entropy underpins successful models of both types and provides a more principled motivation for Zipf’s Law

Abstract

Experiments in Artificial Language Learn-
ing have revealed much about the cogni-
tive mechanisms underlying sequence and
language learning in human adults, in in-
fants and in non-human animals. This pa-
per focuses on their ability to generalize
to novel grammatical instances (i.e., in-
stances consistent with a familiarization
pattern). Notably, the propensity to gen-
eralize appears to be negatively correlated
with the amount of exposure to the artifi-
cial language, a fact that has been claimed
to be contrary to the predictions of statis-
tical models (Pe
̃
na et al. (2002); Endress
and Bonatti (2007)). In this paper, we pro-
pose to model generalization as a three-
step process, and we demonstrate that the
use of statistical models for the first two
steps, contrary to widespread intuitions in
the ALL-field, can explain the observed
decrease of the propensity to generalize
with exposure time.

Abstract

In an influential paper, Marcus et al. [1999] claimed that connectionist models
cannot account for human success at learning tasks that involved generalization
of abstract knowledge such as grammatical rules. This claim triggered a heated
debate, centered mostly around variants of the Simple Recurrent Network model
[Elman, 1990]. In our work, we revisit this unresolved debate and analyze the
underlying issues from a different perspective. We argue that, in order to simulate
human-like learning of grammatical rules, a neural network model should not be
used as a
tabula rasa
, but rather, the initial wiring of the neural connections and
the experience acquired prior to the actual task should be incorporated into the
model. We present two methods that aim to provide such initial state: a manipu-
lation of the initial connections of the network in a cognitively plausible manner
(concretely, by implementing a “delay-line” memory), and a pre-training algorithm
that incrementally challenges the network with novel stimuli. We implement such
techniques in an Echo State Network [Jaeger, 2001], and we show that only when
combining both techniques the ESN is able to learn truly general identity rules.

Abstract

Proficient readers typically fixate near the center of a word, with a slight bias towards word onset. We explore a novel account of this phenomenon based on combining information-theory with visual perceptual constraints in a connectionist model of visual word recognition. This account posits that the amount of information-content available for word identification varies across fixation locations and across languages, thereby explaining the overall fixation location bias in different languages, making the novel prediction that certain words are more readily identified when fixating at an atypical fixation location, and predicting specific cross-linguistic differences. We tested these predictions across several simulations in English and Hebrew, and in a pilot behavioral experiment. Results confirmed that the bias to fixate closer to word onset aligns with maximizing information in the visual signal, that some words are more readily identified at atypical fixation locations, and that these effects vary to some degree across languages.

Abstract

Speakers use differential referring expressions in pragmatically appropriate ways to produce coherent narratives. Languages, however, differ in a) whether REs as arguments can be dropped and b) whether personal pronouns encode gender. We examine two languages that differ from each other in these two aspects and ask whether the co-reference context and the gender encoding options affect the use of REs differentially. We elicited narratives from Dutch and Turkish speakers about two types of three-person events, one including people of the same and the other of mixed-gender. Speakers re-introduced referents into the discourse with fuller forms (NPs) and maintained them with reduced forms (overt or null pronoun). Turkish speakers used pronouns mainly to mark emphasis and only Dutch speakers used pronouns differentially across the two types of videos. We argue that linguistic possibilities available in languages tune speakers into taking different principles into account to produce pragmatically coherent narratives

Abstract

Data augmentation techniques have been widely used in visual recognition tasks as it is easy to generate new
data by simple and straight forward image transformations. However, when it comes to text data augmen-
tations, it is difficult to find appropriate transformation techniques which also preserve the contextual and
grammatical structure of language texts. In this paper, we explore various text data augmentation techniques
in text space and word embedding space. We study the effect of various augmented datasets on the efficiency
of different deep learning models for relation classification in text.

Abstract

In conversation, listeners frequently encounter speakers with foreign accents. Previous research on foreign-accented speech has primarily examined the short-term effects of exposure and the relative ease that listeners have with adapting to an accent. The present study examines the stability of this adaptation, with seven full days between testing sessions. On both days, subjects performed a cross-modal priming task in which they heard several minutes of an unfamiliar accent of their native language: a form of Hebrewaccented Dutch in which long /i:/ was shortened to /I/. During this task on Day 1, recognition of accented forms was not facilitated, compared to that of canonical forms. A week later, when tested on new words, facilitatory priming occurred, comparable to that seen for canonically produced items tested in both sessions. These results suggest that accented forms can be learned from brief exposure and the stable effects of this can be seen a week later.

Abstract

The event-related potential (ERP) component named phonological mismatch negativity (PMN) arises when listeners hear an unexpected word form in a spoken sentence [1]. The PMN is thought to reflect the mismatch between expected and perceived auditory speech input. In this paper, we use the PMN to test a central premise in the predictive coding framework [2], namely that the mismatch between prior expectations and sensory input is an important mechanism of perception. We test this with natural speech materials containing approximately 50,000 word tokens. The corresponding EEG-signal was recorded while participants (n = 48) listened to these materials. Following [3], we quantify the mismatch with two word probability distributions (WPD): a WPD based on preceding context, and a WPD that is additionally updated based on the incoming audio of the current word. We use the between-WPD cross entropy for each word in the utterances and show that a higher cross entropy correlates with a more negative PMN. Our results show that listeners anticipate auditory input while processing each word in naturalistic speech. Moreover, complementing previous research, we show that predictive language processing occurs across the whole probability spectrum.

Abstract

The mismatch between top-down predicted and bottom-up perceptual input is an important mechanism of perception according to the predictive coding framework (Friston, [1]). In this paper we develop and validate a new information-theoretic measure that quantifies the mismatch between expected and observed auditory input during speech processing. We argue that such a mismatch measure is useful for the study of speech processing. To compute the mismatch measure, we use naturalistic speech materials containing approximately 50,000 word tokens. For each word token we first estimate the prior word probability distribution with the aid of statistical language modelling, and next use automatic speech recognition to update this word probability distribution based on the unfolding speech signal. We validate the mismatch measure with multiple analyses, and show that the auditory-based update improves the probability of the correct word and lowers the uncertainty of the word probability distribution. Based on these results, we argue that it is possible to explicitly estimate the mismatch between predicted and perceived speech input with the cross entropy between word expectations computed before and after an auditory update.

Abstract

How does a naive language learner deal with speaker variation irrelevant to distinguishing word meanings? Experimental data is contradictory, and incompatible models have been proposed. Here, we examine basic assumptions regarding the acoustic signal the learner deals with: Is speaker variability a hurdle in discriminating sounds or can it easily be ignored? To this end, we summarize existing infant data. We then present machine-based discriminability scores of sound pairs obtained without any language knowledge. Our results show that speaker variability decreases sound contrast discriminability, and that some contrasts are affected more than others. However, chance performance is rare; most contrasts remain discriminable in the face of speaker variation. We take our results to mean that speaker variation is not a uniform hurdle to discriminating sound contrasts, and careful examination is necessary when planning and interpreting studies testing whether and to what extent infants (and adults) are sensitive to speaker differences.

Abstract

In the present paper we investigate the effect of categorising raw behavioural data or computational model responses. In addition, the effect of averaging over stimuli from potentially different populations is assessed. To this end, we replicate studies on word learning and generalisation abilities using the ACORNS models. Our results show that discrete categories may obscure interesting phenomena in the continuous responses. For example, the finding that learning in the model saturates very early at a uniform high recognition accuracy only holds for categorical representations. Additionally, a large difference in the accuracy for individual words is obscured by averaging over all stimuli. Because different words behaved differently for different speakers, we could not identify a phonetic basis for the differences. Implications and new predictions for infant behaviour are discussed.

Abstract

In the present paper we investigate the effect of categorising raw behavioural data or computational model responses. In addition, the effect of averaging over stimuli from potentially different populations is assessed. To this end, we replicate studies on word learning and generalisation abilities using the ACORNS models. Our results show that discrete
categories may obscure interesting phenomena in the continuous
responses. For example, the finding that learning in the model saturates very early at a uniform high recognition accuracy only holds for categorical representations. Additionally, a large difference in the accuracy for individual words is obscured
by averaging over all stimuli. Because different words behaved
differently for different speakers, we could not identify a phonetic
basis for the differences. Implications and new predictions for
infant behaviour are discussed.

Abstract

In Yukatek Maya, event types are lexicalized in verb roots and stems that fall into a number of different form classes on the basis of (a) patterns of aspect-mood marking and (b) priviledges of undergoing valence-changing operations. Of particular interest are the intransitive classes in the light of Perlmutter’s (1978) Unaccusativity hypothesis. In the spirit of Levin & Rappaport Hovav (1995) [L&RH], Van Valin (1990), Zaenen (1993), and others, this paper investigates whether (and to what extent) the association between formal predicate classes and event types is determined by argument structure features such as ‘agentivity’ and ‘control’ or features of lexical aspect such as ‘telicity’ and ‘durativity’. It is shown that mismatches between agentivity/control and telicity/durativity are even more extensive in Yukatek than they are in English (Abusch 1985; L&RH, Van Valin & LaPolla 1997), providing new evidence against Dowty’s (1979) reconstruction of Vendler’s (1967) ‘time schemata of verbs’ in terms of argument structure configurations. Moreover, contrary to what has been claimed in earlier studies of Yukatek (Krämer & Wunderlich 1999, Lucy 1994), neither agentivity/control nor telicity/durativity turn out to be good predictors of verb class membership. Instead, the patterns of aspect-mood marking prove to be sensitive only to the presence or absense of state change, in a way that supports the unified analysis of all verbs of gradual change proposed by Kennedy & Levin (2001). The presence or absence of ‘internal causation’ (L&RH) may motivate the semantic interpretation of transitivization operations. An explicit semantics for the valence-changing operations is proposed, based on Parsons’s (1990) Neo-Davidsonian approach.

Abstract

During conversation, spoken utterances occur in rich acoustic contexts, including speech produced by our interlocutor(s) and speech we produced ourselves. Prosodic characteristics of the acoustic context have been known to influence speech perception in a contrastive fashion: for instance, a vowel presented in a fast context is perceived to have a longer duration than the same vowel in a slow context. Given the ubiquity of the sound of our own voice, it may be that our own speech rate - a common source of acoustic context - also influences our perception of the speech of others. Two experiments were designed to test this hypothesis. Experiment 1 replicated earlier contextual rate effects by showing that hearing pre-recorded fast or slow context sentences alters the perception of ambiguous Dutch target words. Experiment 2 then extended this finding by showing that talking at a fast or slow rate prior to the presentation of the target words also altered the perception of those words. These results suggest that between-talker variation in speech rate production may induce between-talker variation in speech perception, thus potentially explaining why interlocutors tend to converge on speech rate in dialogue settings.

Abstract

Space and time appear to be related asymmetrically in the child’s mind: temporal representations depend on spatial representations more than vice versa, as predicted by space-time metaphors in language. In a study supporting this conclusion, spatial information interfered with children’s temporal judgments more than vice versa (Casasanto, Fotakopoulou, & Boroditsky, 2010, Cognitive Science). In this earlier study, however, spatial information was available to participants for more time than temporal information was (as is often the case when people observe natural events), suggesting a skeptical explanation for the observed effect. Here we conducted a stronger test of the hypothesized space-time asymmetry, controlling spatial and temporal aspects of the stimuli even more stringently than they are generally ’controlled’ in the natural world. Results replicated Casasanto and colleagues’, validating their finding of a robust representational asymmetry between space and time, and extending it to children (4-10 y.o.) who speak Dutch and Brazilian Portuguese.

Abstract

Paper presented at The 161th Meeting Acoustical Society of America, Seattle, Washington, 23-27 May 2011. Reduction in casual speech can create ambiguity, e.g., “he was” can sound like “he’s.” Before quotative “like” “so she’s/she was like…”, it was found that there is little accurate acoustic information about the distinction in the signal. This work examines what types of information acoustics of the target itself, speech rate, coarticulation, and syntax/semantics listeners use to recognize such reduced function words. We compare perception studies presenting the targets auditorily with varying amounts of context, presenting the context without the targets, and a visual study presenting context in written form. Given primarily discourse information visual or auditory context only, subjects are strongly biased toward past, reflecting the use of quotative “like” for reporting past speech. However, if the target itself is presented, the direction of bias reverses, indicating that listeners favor acoustic information within the target which is reduced, sounding like the shorter, present form over almost any other source of information. Furthermore, when the target is presented auditorily with surrounding context, the bias shifts slightly toward the direction shown in the orthographic or auditory-no-target experiments. Thus, listeners prioritize acoustic information within the target when present, even if that information is misleading, but they also take discourse information into account.

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.

Abstract

Listeners’ interactions often take place in auditorily challenging conditions. We examined how noise affects phonological competition during spoken word recognition. In a visual-world experiment, which allows us to examine the timecourse of recognition, English participants listened to target words in quiet and in noise while they saw four pictures on the screen: a target (e.g. candle), an onset overlap competitor (e.g. candy), an offset overlap competitor (e.g. sandal), and a distractor. The results showed that, while all competitors were relatively quickly suppressed in quiet listening conditions, listeners experienced persistent competition in noise from the offset competitor but not from the onset competitor. This suggests that listeners’ phonological competitor activation persists for longer in noise than in quiet and that listeners are able to deactivate some unwanted competition when listening to speech in noise. The well-attested competition pattern in quiet was not replicated. Possible methodological explanations for this result are discussed.

Abstract

Speech input causes listeners to activate multiple
candidate words which then compete with one
another. These include onset competitors, that share a
beginning (bumper, butter), but also, counterintuitively,
rhyme competitors, sharing an ending
(bumper, jumper). In L1, competition is typically
stronger for onset than for rhyme. In L2, onset
competition has been attested but rhyme competition
has heretofore remained largely unexamined. We
assessed L1 (Dutch) and L2 (English) word
recognition by the same late-bilingual individuals. In
each language, eye gaze was recorded as listeners
heard sentences and viewed sets of drawings: three
unrelated, one depicting an onset or rhyme competitor
of a word in the input. Activation patterns revealed
substantial onset competition but no significant
rhyme competition in either L1 or L2. Rhyme
competition may thus be a “luxury” feature of
maximally efficient listening, to be abandoned when
resources are scarcer, as in listening by late
bilinguals, in either language.

Abstract

If concepts, categories, and word meanings are stable, how can people use them so flexibly? Here we explore a possible answer: maybe this stability is an illusion. Perhaps all concepts, categories, and word meanings (CC&Ms) are constructed ad hoc, each time we use them. On this proposal, all words are infinitely polysemous, all communication is ’good enough’, and no idea is ever the same twice. The details of people’s ad hoc CC&Ms are determined by the way retrieval cues interact with the physical, social, and linguistic context. We argue that even the most stable-seeming CC&Ms are instantiated via the same processes as those that are more obviously ad hoc, and vary (a) from one microsecond to the next within a given instantiation, (b) from one instantiation to the next within an individual, and (c) from person to person and group to group as a function of people’s experiential history. 826

Abstract

Can simple motor actions help people expand their vocabulary? Here we show that word learning depends on where students place their flash cards after studying them. In Experiment 1, participants learned the definitions of ”alien words” with positive or negative emotional valence. After studying each card, they placed it in one of two boxes (top or bottom), according to its valence. Participants who were instructed to place positive cards in the top box, consistent with Good is Up metaphors, scored about 10.

Abstract

When we think of children acquiring language, we often think of their acquisition of linguistic structure as separate from their acquisition of knowledge about the world. But it is clear that in the process of learning about language, children consult what they know about the world; and that in learning about the world, children use linguistic cues to discover how items are related to one another. This interaction between the acquisition of linguistic structure and the acquisition of category structure is especially clear in word learning.

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.

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.

Abstract

Pitch accents are analysed differently in an onramp analysis (i.e. ToBI) and an off-ramp analysis (e.g. Transcription of Dutch intonation - ToDI), two competing approaches in the Autosegmental Metrical tradition. A case in point is pre-final high rise. A pre-final rise is analysed as H* in ToBI but is phonologically ambiguous between H* or H*L (a (rise-)fall) in ToDI. This is because in ToDI, the L tone of a pre-final H*L can be realised in the following unaccented words and both H* and H*L can show up as a high rise in the accented word. To find out whether there is a two-way phonological contrast in pre-final high rises in Dutch, we examined the distribution of phonologically ambiguous high rises (H*(L)) and their phonetic realisation in different information structural conditions (topic vs. focus), compared to phonologically unambiguous H* and H*L. Results showed that there is indeed a H*L vs. H* contrast in prefinal high rises in Dutch and that H*L is realised as H*(L) when sonorant material is limited in the accented word. These findings provide new evidence for an off-ramp analysis of Dutch intonation and have far-reaching implications for analysis of intonation across languages.

Abstract

We investigated how listeners of two unrelated languages, Dutch and Korean, process phonotactically legitimate and illegitimate sounds spoken in Dutch and American English. To Dutch listeners, unreleased word-final stops are phonotactically illegal because word-final stops in Dutch are generally released in isolation, but to Korean listeners, released final stops are illegal because word-final stops are never released in Korean. Two phoneme monitoring experiments showed a phonotactic effect: Dutch listeners detected released stops more rapidly than unreleased stops whereas the reverse was true for Korean listeners. Korean listeners with English stimuli detected released stops more accurately than unreleased stops, however, suggesting that acoustic-phonetic cues associated with released stops improve detection accuracy. We propose that in non-native speech perception, phonotactic legitimacy in the native language speeds up phoneme recognition, the richness of acousticphonetic cues improves listening accuracy, and familiarity with the non-native language modulates the relative influence of these two factors.

Abstract

The aim of this study was to determine if Dutch speakers reliably signal phrase-internal lexical boundaries, and if so, how. Six speakers recorded 4 pairs of phonemically identical strong-weak-strong (SWS) strings with matching syllable boundaries but mismatching intended word boundaries (e.g. reis # pastei versus reispas # tij, or more broadly C1V2(C)#C2V2(C)C3V3(C) vs. C1V2(C)C2V2(C)#C3V3(C)). An Analysis of Variance revealed 3 acoustic parameters that were significantly greater in S#WS items (C2 DURATION, RIME1 DURATION, C3 BURST AMPLITUDE) and 5 parameters that were significantly greater in the SW#S items (C2 VOT, C3 DURATION, RIME2 DURATION, RIME3 DURATION, and V2 AMPLITUDE). Additionally, center of gravity measurements suggested that the [s] to [t] coarticulation was greater in reis # pa[st]ei versus reispa[s] # [t]ij. Finally, a Logistic Regression Analysis revealed that the 3 parameters (RIME1 DURATION, RIME2 DURATION, and C3 DURATION) contributed most reliably to a S#WS versus SW#S classification.

Abstract

We report an investigation of the perception of American English phonemes by Dutch listeners proficient in English. Listeners identified either the consonant or the vowel in most possible English CV and VC syllables. The syllables were embedded in multispeaker babble at three signal-to-noise ratios (16 dB, 8 dB, and 0 dB). Effects of signal-to-noise ratio on vowel and consonant identification are discussed as a function of syllable position and of relationship to the native phoneme inventory. Comparison of the results with previously reported data from native listeners reveals that noise affected the responding of native and non-native listeners similarly.

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.

Abstract

Although people are poor at naming odors, naming a smell helps to remember that odor. Previous studies show wine experts have better memory for smells, and they also name smells differently than novices. Is wine experts’ odor memory is verbally mediated? And is the odor memory advantage that experts have over novices restricted to odors in their domain of expertise, or does it generalize? Twenty-four wine experts and 24 novices smelled wines, wine-related odors and common odors, and remembered these. Half the participants also named the smells. Wine experts had better memory for wines, but not for the other odors, indicating their memory advantage is restricted to wine. Wine experts named odors better than novices, but there was no relationship between experts’ ability to name odors and their memory for odors. This suggests experts’ odor memory advantage is not linguistically mediated, but may be the result of differential perceptual learning

Abstract

Language-specific differences in the size and distribution of the phonemic repertoire can have implications for the task facing listeners in recognising spoken words. A language with more phonemes will allow shorter words and reduced embedding of short words within longer ones, decreasing the potential for spurious lexical competitors to be activated by speech signals. We demonstrate that this is the case via comparative analyses of the vocabularies of English and Spanish. A language which uses suprasegmental as well as segmental contrasts, however, can substantially reduce the extent of spurious embedding.

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.

Abstract

Part of the remarkable efficiency of listening is
accommodation to unfamiliar talkers’ specific
pronunciations by retuning of phonemic intercategory
boundaries. Such retuning occurs in second
(L2) as well as first language (L1); however, recent
research with emigrés revealed successful adaptation
in the environmental L2 but, unprecedentedly, not in
L1 despite continuing L1 use. A possible explanation
involving relative exposure to novel talkers is here
tested in heritage language users with Mandarin as
family L1 and English as environmental language. In
English, exposure to an ambiguous sound in
disambiguating word contexts prompted the expected
adjustment of phonemic boundaries in subsequent
categorisation. However, no adjustment occurred in
Mandarin, again despite regular use. Participants
reported highly asymmetric interlocutor counts in the
two languages. We conclude that successful retuning
ability requires regular exposure to novel talkers in
the language in question, a criterion not met for the
emigrés’ or for these heritage users’ L1.

Abstract

To examine the relative roles of language-specific and language-universal mechanisms in the production of prosodic focus, we compared production of five different types of focus by native speakers of English and Mandarin. Two comparable dialogues were constructed for each language, with the same words appearing in focused and unfocused position; 24 speakers recorded each dialogue in each language. Duration, F0 (mean, maximum, range), and rms-intensity (mean, maximum) of all critical word tokens were measured. Across the different types of focus, cross-language differences were observed in the degree to which English versus Mandarin speakers use the different prosodic parameters to mark focus, suggesting that while prosody may be universally available for expressing focus, the means of its employment may be considerably language-specific

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.

Abstract

Listeners performed speeded two-alternative choice between two unfamiliar and relatively similar voices or between two phonetically close segments, in VC syllables. For each decision type (segment, voice), the non-target dimension (voice, segment) either was constant, or varied across four alternatives. Responses were always slower when a non-target dimension varied than when it did not, but the effect of phonetic variation on voice identity decision was stronger than that of voice variation on phonetic identity decision. Cues to voice and segment identity in speech are processed inter-dependently, but hard categorization decisions about voices draw on, and are hence sensitive to, segmental information.

Abstract

English and French listeners performed two tasks - click location and speeded click detection - with both English and French sentences, closely matched for syntactic and phonological structure. Clicks were located more accurately in open- than in closed-class words in both English and French; they were detected more rapidly in open- than in closed-class words in English, but not in French. The two listener groups produced the same pattern of responses, suggesting that higher-level linguistic processing was not involved in these tasks.

Abstract

The performance of automatic speech recognition systems is usually assessed in terms of error rate. Human speech recognition produces few errors, but relative difficulty of processing can be assessed via response time techniques. We report the construction of a measure analogous to response time in a machine recognition system. This measure may be compared directly with human response times. We conducted a trial comparison of this type at the phoneme level, including both tense and lax vowels and a variety of consonant classes. The results suggested similarities between human and machine processing in the case of consonants, but differences in the case of vowels.

Abstract

Recently, there has been an explosion in the availability of large, good-quality cross-linguistic databases such as WALS (Dryer & Haspelmath, 2013), Glottolog (Hammarstrom et al., 2015) and Phoible (Moran & McCloy, 2014). Databases such as Phoible contain the actual segments used by various languages as they are given in the primary language descriptions. However, this segment-level representation cannot be used directly for analyses that require generalizations over classes of segments that share theoretically interesting features. Here we present a method and the associated R (R Core Team, 2014) code that allows the exible denition of such meaningful classes and that can identify the sets of segments falling into such a class for any language inventory. The method and its results are important for those interested in exploring cross-linguistic patterns of phonetic and phonological diversity and their relationship to extra-linguistic factors and processes such as climate, economics, history or human genetics.

Abstract

The current paper presents results for data on click learning obtained from a larger imaging study (using MRI and 3D intraoral scanning) designed to quantify and characterize intra- and inter-population variation of vocal tract structures and the relation of this to speech production. The aim of the click study was to ascertain whether and to what extent vocal tract morphology influences (1) the ability to learn to produce clicks and (2) the productions of those that successfully learn to produce these sounds. The results indicate that the presence of an alveolar ridge certainly does not prevent an individual from learning to produce click sounds (1). However, the subtle details of how clicks are produced may indeed be driven by palate shape (2).

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.

Abstract

Do interlocutors adjust their conversational strategies to the specific contextual demands of a given situation? Prior studies have yielded conflicting results, making it unclear how strategies vary with demands. We combine insights from qualitative and quantitative approaches in a within-participant experimental design involving two different contexts: spontaneously occurring conversations (SOC) and task-oriented conversations (TOC). We systematically assess backchanneling, other-repair and linguistic alignment. We find that SOC exhibit a higher number of backchannels, a reduced and more generic repair format and higher rates of lexical and syntactic alignment. TOC are characterized by a high number of specific repairs and a lower rate of lexical and syntactic alignment. However, when alignment occurs, more linguistic forms are aligned. The findings show that conversational strategies adapt to specific contextual demands.

Abstract

Abstract mental representation is fundamental for human cognition. Forming such representations in time, especially from dynamic and noisy perceptual input, is a challenge for any processing modality, but perhaps none so acutely as for language processing. We show that LISA (Hummel & Holyaok, 1997) and DORA (Doumas, Hummel, & Sandhofer, 2008), models built to process and to learn structured (i.e., symbolic) rep resentations of conceptual properties and relations from unstructured inputs, show oscillatory activation during processing that is highly similar to the cortical activity elicited by the linguistic stimuli from Ding et al.(2016). We argue, as Ding et al.(2016), that this activation reflects formation of hierarchical linguistic representation, and furthermore, that the kind of computational mechanisms in LISA/DORA (e.g., temporal binding by systematic asynchrony of firing) may underlie formation of abstract linguistic representations in the human brain. It may be this repurposing that allowed for the generation or mergence of hierarchical linguistic structure, and therefore, human language, from extant cognitive and neural systems. We conclude that models of thinking and reasoning and models of language processing must be integrated —not only for increased plausiblity, but in order to advance both fields towards a larger integrative model of human cognition

Abstract

Listeners use their lexical knowledge to interpret ambiguous sounds, and retune their phonetic categories to include this ambiguous sound. Although there is ample evidence for lexically-guided retuning, the adaptation process is not fully understood. Using a lexical decision task with an embedded auditory semantic priming task, the present study investigates whether words containing an ambiguous sound are processed in the same way as “natural” words and whether adaptation to the ambiguous sound tends to equalize the processing of “ambiguous” and natural words. Analyses of the yes/no responses and reaction times to natural and “ambiguous” words showed that words containing an ambiguous sound were accepted as words less often and were processed slower than the same words without ambiguity. The difference in acceptance disappeared after exposure to approximately 15 ambiguous items. Interestingly, lower acceptance rates and slower processing did not have an effect on the processing of semantic information of the following word. However, lower acceptance rates of ambiguous primes predict slower reaction times of these primes, suggesting an important role of stimulus-specific characteristics in triggering lexically-guided perceptual learning.

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that speakers align their speech to each other at multiple linguistic levels. This study investigates whether alignment is mostly the result of priming from the immediately preceding
speech materials, focussing on pitch and articulation rate (AR). Native Dutch speakers completed sentences, first by themselves (pre-test), then in alternation with Confederate 1 (Round 1), with Confederate 2 (Round 2), with Confederate 1 again
(Round 3), and lastly by themselves again (post-test). Results indicate that participants aligned to the confederates and that this alignment lasted during the post-test. The confederates’ directly preceding sentences were not good predictors for the participants’ pitch and AR. Overall, the results indicate that alignment is more of a global effect than a local priming effect.

Abstract

We investigated the use of Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) as a way of representing repertoires of continuous signals in order to infer their building blocks. We tested the idea on a dataset from an artificial language experiment. The study demonstrates using HMMs for this purpose is viable, but also that there is a lot of room for refinement such as explicit duration modeling, incorporation of autoregressive elements and relaxing the Markovian assumption, in order to accommodate specific details.

Abstract

This paper shows that the dictation task, a well-
known testing instrument in language education, has
untapped potential as a research tool for studying
speech perception. We describe how transcriptions
can be scored on measures of lexical, orthographic,
phonological, and semantic similarity to target
phrases to provide comprehensive information about
accuracy at different processing levels. The former
three measures are automatically extractable,
increasing objectivity, and the middle two are
gradient, providing finer-grained information than
traditionally used. We evaluate the measures in an
English dictation task featuring phonetically reduced
continuous speech. Whereas the lexical and
orthographic measures emphasize listeners’ word
identification difficulties, the phonological measure
demonstrates that listeners can often still recover
phonological features, and the semantic measure
captures their ability to get the gist of the utterances.
Correlational analyses and a discussion of practical
and theoretical considerations show that combining
multiple measures improves the dictation task’s
utility as a research tool.

Abstract

Lexically guided perceptual learning has traditionally been studied with ambiguous consonant sounds to which native listeners are exposed in a purely receptive listening context. To extend previous research, we investigate whether lexically guided learning applies to a vowel shift encountered by non-native listeners in an interactive dialogue. Dutch participants played a two-player game in English in either a control condition, which contained no evidence for a vowel shift, or a lexically constraining condition, in which onscreen lexical information required them to re-interpret their interlocutor’s /ɪ/ pronunciations as representing /ε/. A phonetic categorization pre-test and post-test were used to assess whether the game shifted listeners’ phonemic boundaries such that more of the /ε/-/ɪ/ continuum came to be perceived as /ε/. Both listener groups showed an overall post-test shift toward /ɪ/, suggesting that vowel perception may be sensitive to directional biases related to properties of the speaker’s vowel space. Importantly, listeners in the lexically constraining condition made relatively more post-test /ε/ responses than the control group, thereby exhibiting an effect of lexically guided adaptation. The results thus demonstrate that non-native listeners can adjust their phonemic boundaries on the basis of lexical information to accommodate a vowel shift learned in interactive conversation.

Abstract

The perception of danger in the environment can induce physiological responses (such as a heightened state of arousal) in animals, which may cause measurable changes in the prosodic modulation of the voice (Briefer, 2012). The ability to interpret the prosodic features of animal calls as an indicator of emotional arousal may have provided the first hominins with an adaptive advantage, enabling, for instance, the recognition of a threat in the surroundings. This ability might have paved the ability to process meaningful prosodic modulations in the emerging linguistic utterances.

Abstract

Humans combine multiple sources of information to comprehend meanings. These sources can be characterized as linguistic (i.e., lexical units and/or sentences) or paralinguistic (e.g. body posture, facial expression, voice intonation, pragmatic context). Emotion communication is a special case in which linguistic and paralinguistic dimensions can simultaneously denote the same, or multiple incongruous referential meanings. Think, for instance, about when someone says “I’m sad!”, but does so with happy intonation and a happy facial expression. Here, the communicative channels express very specific (although conflicting) emotional states as denotations. In such cases of intermodal incongruence, are we involuntarily biased to respond to information in one channel over the other? We hypothesize that humans are involuntary biased to respond to prosody over verbal content and facial expression, since the ability to communicate socially relevant information such as basic emotional states through prosodic modulation of the voice might have provided early hominins with an adaptive advantage that preceded the emergence of segmental speech (Darwin 1871; Mithen, 2005). To address this hypothesis, we examined the interaction between multiple communicative channels in recruiting attentional resources, within a Stroop interference task (i.e. a task in which different channels give conflicting information; Stroop, 1935). In experiment 1, we used synonyms of “happy” and “sad” spoken with happy and sad prosody. Participants were asked to identify the emotion expressed by the verbal content while ignoring prosody (Word task) or vice versa (Prosody task). Participants responded faster and more accurately in the Prosody task. Within the Word task, incongruent stimuli were responded to more slowly and less accurately than congruent stimuli. In experiment 2, we adopted synonyms of “happy” and “sad” spoken in happy and sad prosody, while a happy or sad face was displayed. Participants were asked to identify the emotion expressed by the verbal content while ignoring prosody and face (Word task), to identify the emotion expressed by prosody while ignoring verbal content and face (Prosody task), or to identify the emotion expressed by the face while ignoring prosody and verbal content (Face task). Participants responded faster in the Face task and less accurately when the two non-focused channels were expressing an emotion that was incongruent with the focused one, as compared with the condition where all the channels were congruent. In addition, in the Word task, accuracy was lower when prosody was incongruent to verbal content and face, as compared with the condition where all the channels were congruent. Our data suggest that prosody interferes with emotion word processing, eliciting automatic responses even when conflicting with both verbal content and facial expressions at the same time. In contrast, although processed significantly faster than prosody and verbal content, faces alone are not sufficient to interfere in emotion processing within a three-dimensional Stroop task. Our findings align with the hypothesis that the ability to communicate emotions through prosodic modulation of the voice – which seems to be dominant over verbal content - is evolutionary older than the emergence of segmental articulation (Mithen, 2005; Fitch, 2010). This hypothesis fits with quantitative data suggesting that prosody has a vital role in the perception of well-formed words (Johnson & Jusczyk, 2001), in the ability to map sounds to referential meanings (Filippi et al., 2014), and in syntactic disambiguation (Soderstrom et al., 2003). This research could complement studies on iconic communication within visual and auditory domains, providing new insights for models of language evolution. Further work aimed at how emotional cues from different modalities are simultaneously integrated will improve our understanding of how humans interpret multimodal emotional meanings in real life interactions.

Abstract

Language acquisition involves learning nonadjacent dependencies that can obtain between words in a sentence. Several artificial grammar learning studies have shown that the ability of adults and children to detect dependencies between A and B in frames AXB is influenced by the amount of variation in the X element. This paper presents a model of statistical learning which displays similar behavior on this task and generalizes in a human-like way. The model was also used to predict human behavior for increased distance and more variation in dependencies. We compare our model-based approach with the standard invariance account of the variability effect.

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.

Abstract

Achieving linguistic proficiency requires identifying words from speech, and discovering the constraints that govern the way those words are used. In a recent study of non-adjacent dependency learning, Frost and Monaghan (2016) demonstrated that learners may perform these tasks together, using similar statistical processes - contrary to prior suggestions. However, in their study, non-adjacent dependencies were marked by phonological cues (plosive-continuant-plosive structure), which may have influenced learning. Here, we test the necessity of these cues by comparing learning across three conditions; fixed phonology, which contains these cues, varied phonology, which omits them, and shapes, which uses visual shape sequences to assess the generality of statistical processing for these tasks. Participants segmented the sequences and generalized the structure in both auditory conditions, but learning was best when phonological cues were present. Learning was around chance on both tasks for the visual shapes group, indicating statistical processing may critically differ across domains.

Abstract

Recent studies suggest that high-frequency words may benefit speech segmentation (Bortfeld, Morgan, Golinkoff, & Rathbun, 2005) and grammatical categorisation (Monaghan, Christiansen, & Chater, 2007). To date, these tasks have been examined separately, but not together. We familiarised adults with continuous speech comprising repetitions of target words, and compared learning to a language in which targets appeared alongside high-frequency marker words. Marker words reliably preceded targets, and distinguished them into two otherwise unidentifiable categories. Participants completed a 2AFC segmentation test, and a similarity judgement categorisation test. We tested transfer to a word-picture mapping task, where words from each category were used either consistently or inconsistently to label actions/objects. Participants segmented the speech successfully, but only demonstrated effective categorisation when speech contained high-frequency marker words. The advantage of marker words extended to the early stages of the transfer task. Findings indicate the same high-frequency words may assist speech segmentation and grammatical categorisation.

Abstract

Large-scale graph data in real-world applications is often not static but dynamic,
i. e., new nodes and edges appear over time. Current graph convolution approaches
are promising, especially, when all the graph’s nodes and edges are available dur-
ing training. When unseen nodes and edges are inserted after training, it is not
yet evaluated whether up-training or re-training from scratch is preferable. We
construct an experimental setup, in which we insert previously unseen nodes and
edges after training and conduct a limited amount of inference epochs. In this
setup, we compare adapting pretrained graph neural networks against retraining
from scratch. Our results show that pretrained models yield high accuracy scores
on the unseen nodes and that pretraining is preferable over retraining from scratch.
Our experiments represent a first step to evaluate and develop truly online variants
of graph neural networks.

Abstract

Reading with Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) has shown promise for optimizing screen space and increasing reading speed without compromising comprehension. Given the wide use of small-screen devices, the present study compared RSVP and traditional reading on three types of reading comprehension, reading speed, and subjective measures on a smart watch. Results confirm previous studies that show faster reading speed with RSVP without detracting from comprehension. Subjective data indicate that Traditional is strongly preferred to RSVP as a primary reading method. Given the optimal use of screen space, increased speed and comparable comprehension, future studies should focus on making RSVP a more comfortable format.

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.

Abstract

Not much is known about event apprehension, the earliest stage of information processing in elicited language production studies, using pictorial stimuli. A reason for our lack of knowledge on this process is that apprehension happens very rapidly (<350 ms after stimulus onset, Griffin & Bock 2000), making it difficult to measure the process directly. To broaden our understanding of apprehension, we analyzed landing positions and onset latencies of first fixations on visual stimuli (pictures of real-world events) given short stimulus presentation times, presupposing that the first fixation directly results from information processing during apprehension

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.