120 research outputs found

    A COGNITIVE APPROACH TO PHONOLOGY: EVIDENCE FROM SIGNED LANGUAGES

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    This dissertation uses corpus data from ASL and Libras (Brazilian Sign Language), to investigate the distribution of a series of static and dynamic handshapes across the two languages. While traditional phonological frameworks argue handshape distribution to be a facet of well-formedness constraints and articulatory ease (Brentari, 1998), the data analyzed here suggests that the majority of handshapes cluster around schematic form-meaning mappings. Furthermore, these schematic mappings are shown to be motivated by both language-internal and language-external construals of formal articulatory properties and embodied experiential gestalts. Usage-based approaches to phonology (Bybee, 2001) and cognitively oriented constructional approaches (Langacker, 1987) have recognized that phonology is not modular. Instead, phonology is expected to interact with all levels of grammar, including semantic association. In this dissertation I begin to develop a cognitive model of phonology which views phonological content as similar in kind to other constructional units of language. I argue that, because formal units of linguistic structure emerge from the extraction of commonalities across usage events, phonological form is not immune from an accumulation of semantic associations. Finally, I demonstrate that appealing to such approaches allows one to account for both idiosyncratic, unconventionalized mappings seen in creative language use, as well as motivation in highly conventionalized form-meaning associations

    Poetic metaphor and everyday metaphor: a corpus-based contrastive study of metaphors of SADNESS in poetry and non-literary discourse

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    Conceptual Metaphor Theory holds that metaphor is a ubiquitous phenomenon that frequently manifests itself in ordinary discourse rather than a rhetorical device characteristic of literary language. This makes the similarities and differences between poetic metaphors and everyday metaphors an interesting issue. Lakoff and Turner (1989) have claimed that poetic metaphors are based on everyday metaphors and what distinguishes the two is that the former combine and elaborate the latter in ways that go beyond the ordinary. A number of studies have lent support to this claim by illustrating how the meaning of a poem depends essentially on conceptual metaphors that pervade non-literary language and how poetic metaphors elaborate everyday metaphors creatively to achieve their “poeticality” (see, for instance, Deane 1995; Freeman 1995, 2002; Yu 2003). However, these studies have not answered the question of whether poems generally exploit the same range of conceptual metaphors to depict a particular target domain topic as the range that is commonly used to conceptualize it. The question is worth investigating not only because it can shed new light …published_or_final_versio

    Development of spatial language and memory: Effects of language modality and late sign language exposure

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    Can structural priming answer the important questions about language? A commentary on Branigan and Pickering "An experimental approach to linguistic representation"

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    While structural priming makes a valuable contribution to psycholinguistics, it does not allow direct observation of representation, nor escape “source ambiguity.” Structural priming taps into implicit memory representations and processes that may differ from what is used online. We question whether implicit memory for language can and should be equated with linguistic representation or with language processing

    Introduction to Psycholiguistics

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    Evolution of symbolic communication : an embodied perspective

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    This thesis investigates the emergence in human evolution of communication through symbols, or conventional, arbitrary signs. Previous work has argued that symbolic speech was preceded by communication through nonarbitrary signs, but how vocal symbolic communication arose out of this has not been extensively studied. Thus far, past research has emphasized the advantages of vocal symbols and pointed to communicative and evolutionary pressures that would have spurred their development. Based on semiotic principles, I examine emergence in terms of two factors underlying symbols: interpretation and conventionalization. I address the question with a consideration of embodied human experience – that is, accounting for the particular features that characterize human communication. This involves simultaneous expression through vocal and gestural modalities, each of which has distinct semiotic properties and serves distinct functions in language today. I examine research on emerging sign systems together with research on properties of human communication to address the question of symbol emergence in terms of the specific context of human evolution. I argue that, instead of in response to pressures for improved communication, symbolic vocalizations could have emerged through blind cultural processes out of the conditions of multimodal nonarbitrary communication in place prior to modern language. Vocalizations would have been interpreted as arbitrary by virtue of their semiotic profile relative to that of gesture, and arbitrary vocalizations could have become conventionalized via the communicative support of nonarbitrary gestures. This scenario avoids appealing to improbable evolutionary and psychological processes and provides a comprehensive and evolutionarily sound explanation for symbol emergence. I present experiments that test hypotheses stemming from this claim. I show that novel arbitrary vocal forms are interpreted and adopted as symbols even when these are uninformative and gesture is the primary mode of communication. I also present computational models that simulate multi-channel, heterosemiotic communication like that of arbitrary speech and nonarbitrary gesture. These demonstrate that information like that provided by gesture can enable the conventionalization of symbols across a population. The results from experiments and simulations together support the claim that symbolic communication could arise naturally from multimodal nonarbitrary communication, offering an explanation for symbol emergence more consistent with evolutionary principles than existing proposals

    The brain plus the cultural transmission mechanism determine the nature of language

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    We agree that language adapts to the brain, but we note that language also has to adapt to brain-external constraints, such as those arising from properties of the cultural transmission medium. The hypothesis that Christiansen & Chater (C&C) raise in the target article not only has profound consequences for our understanding of language, but also for our understanding of the biological evolution of the language faculty
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