A Sound Approach to Language Matters: In Honor of Ocke-Schwen Bohn

The contributions in this Festschrift were written by Ocke’s current and former PhD-students, colleagues and research collaborators. The Festschrift is divided into six sections, moving from the smallest building blocks of language, through gradually expanding objects of linguistic inquiry to the highest levels of description - all of which have formed a part of Ocke’s career, in connection with his teaching and/or his academic productions: “Segments”, “Perception of Accent”, “Between Sounds and Graphemes”, “Prosody”, “Morphology and Syntax” and “Second Language Acquisition”. Each one of these illustrates a sound approach to language matters

Semantic radical consistency and character transparency effects in Chinese: an ERP study

BACKGROUND: This event-related potential (ERP) study aims to investigate the representation and temporal dynamics of Chinese orthography-to-semantics mappings by simultaneously manipulating character transparency and semantic radical consistency. Character components, referred to as radicals, make up the building blocks used dur...postprin

The Processing of Emotional Sentences by Young and Older Adults: A Visual World Eye-movement Study

Carminati MN, Knoeferle P. The Processing of Emotional Sentences by Young and Older Adults: A Visual World Eye-movement Study. Presented at the Architectures and Mechanisms of Language and Processing (AMLaP), Riva del Garda, Italy

Prosody and Intonation in Formosan Languages

The Formosan languages are the languages of the Aboriginal peoples of Taiwan. These languages are part of the Austronesian language family, and represent all but one primary branch of this family of 1,200+ languages. The Formosan languages are endangered, some critically so. While these languages have seen attention in the literature for their syntactic and phonological systems, little work has been done on their prosodic structure or intonation. This dissertation analyzes the prosodic structure and intonational phonology of Mantauran Rukai, Budai Rukai, Tsou, Kanakanavu, Hla’alua, Sandimen Paiwan, Piuma Paiwan, Kavalan, Amis, Bunun, Tgdaya Seediq, Truku Seediq, and Pazeh, based on original fieldwork. In addition, archival materials are incorporated into analyses of Tsou, Truku Seediq, Tgdaya Seediq, and Puyuma. This study finds that the Formosan languages show rich tonal phonologies in their intonational systems, and have complex interactions between stress assignment and morphology. Some examples include the following: Mantauran Rukai, previously described as an initial-stress language, actually has a complex stress assignment system with an alternation between first- and third-syllable stress, which as a system is unique in descriptions of stress assignment in the world’s languages. Hla’alua (Saaroa), previously described as having free variation between antepenultimate and penultimate stress, actually has an accent system in which some lexical items are consistently produced without an accented syllable, while others are. Hla’alua also has a rich tonal phonology assigned at two higher levels of the prosodic hierarchy. Kavalan has a unique rule that causes spreading tones to shift to the opposite domain edge when a certain number of tonal elements are aligned to the same boundary. Elements of the intonational phonology in Amis and Kavalan include glottal stops in addition to tonal elements. Bunun has distinct pitch accent melodies for words vs. clitics. In addition to the unique features found in individual Formosan languages, this dissertation’s comparative study finds at least two geographic areas within Taiwan in which features of prosody and intonation cluster. One is southwestern Taiwan, including Tsou, Kanakanavu, Hla’alua, and Rukai, which share features including a lack of glide-vowel contrasts and variability of initial H vs. L elements in certain prosodic domains. The other is eastern Taiwan, including Amis, Kavalan, and Puyuma, which share features including suppression of non-IP-final pitch accents, alternations between ultimate and pre-ultimate F0 peaks across intonational contours, and interactions between glottal stop epenthesis and intonational phonology

Structured Access in Sentence Comprehension

This thesis is concerned with the nature of memory access during the construction of long-distance dependencies in online sentence comprehension. In recent years, an intense focus on the computational challenges posed by long-distance dependencies has proven to be illuminating with respect to the characteristics of the architecture of the human sentence processor, suggesting a tight link between general memory access procedures and sentence processing routines (Lewis & Vasishth 2005; Lewis, Vasishth, & Van Dyke 2006; Wagers, Lau & Phillips 2009). The present thesis builds upon this line of research, and its primary aim is to motivate and defend the hypothesis that the parser accesses linguistic memory in an essentially structured fashion for certain long-distance dependencies. In order to make this case, I focus on the processing of reflexive and agreement dependencies, and ask whether or not non-structural information such as morphological features are used to gate memory access during syntactic comprehension. Evidence from eight experiments in a range of methodologies in English and Chinese is brought to bear on this question, providing arguments from interference effects and time-course effects that primarily syntactic information is used to access linguistic memory in the construction of certain long-distance dependencies. The experimental evidence for structured access is compatible with a variety of architectural assumptions about the parser, and I present one implementation of this idea in a parser based on the ACT-R memory architecture. In the context of such a content-addressable model of memory, the claim of structured access is equivalent to the claim that only syntactic cues are used to query memory. I argue that structured access reflects an optimal parsing strategy in the context of a noisy, interference-prone cognitive architecture: abstract structural cues are favored over lexical feature cues for certain structural dependencies in order to minimize memory interference in online processing

Effects of Prosody while Disambiguating Ambiguous Japanese Sentences in the Brain of Native Speakers and Learners of Japanese: A Proposition for Pronunciation and Prosody Training

Recently, the significant role that pronunciation and prosody plays in processing spoken language has been widely recognized and a variety of teaching methodologies of pronunciation/prosody has been implemented in teaching foreign languages. Thus, an analysis of how similarly or differently native and L2 learners of a language use pronunciation/prosodic cues needs to be further investigated, and the learnability of pronunciation/prosodic features should be explored. In this study, the role of prosody in Japanese sentence processing will be specifically explored among native speakers and L2 learners of Japanese whose native language is English. In Experiment 1 and 2, the effect of prosody during Japanese sentence processing was explored among native speakers using a psycholinguistic measurement. In Experiment 3, we compared L2 learners processing and judgment of Japanese sentences utilizing the brain-imaging technique Electroencephalography (EEG) together with a psycholinguistic measurement. In Experiment 1 and 2, native speakers of Japanese listened to globally ambiguous sentences that can be interpreted in two ways, and temporarily ambiguous sentences that have two different syntactic structures. They either rated how acceptable each sentence is or answered a comprehension question on each sentence. As for the globally ambiguous sentences, the results revealed that overall one type (`embedded-clause') of interpretation is preferred over the other type (`main-clause') of interpretation at the judgment given time pressure. Prosody guided their interpretations to a certain degree; however, it did not have a deterministic effect, especially for arriving at a `main-clause' interpretation. As for the temporarily ambiguous sentences, significant effects of prosody in parsing temporarily ambiguous sentences were found, with the results suggesting that while parsing affects processing, its role is not deterministic. In Experiment 3, native speakers and intermediate- to advanced-level L2 learners of Japanese listened to two types of temporarily ambiguous sentences read with two types of prosody and rated how acceptable each sentence was. Simultaneously, their brain activity was continuously recorded using EEG. The results revealed important similarities and differences among the native speakers and L2 learners' processing of these sentences. Both groups yielded a brain response that indicates the detection of prosodic break, and prosody was utilized at least to some extent. However, the patterns were different among the two groups, and the precise nature of the effects for the learners suggests that they have difficulties with processing non-default-type of structure (`main-clause' structure), and the congruent prosody for that structure (`main-clause prosody'). These results indicate that L2 learners have access to prosodic cues in sentence comprehension. On the other hand, the measurements of processing presented here suggest that these learners are not yet utilizing prosody in a native-like way, suggesting the utility of creating new ways to introduce prosody and its relation with the structure and meaning of Japanese sentences. It is suggested that teaching how to use prosodic cues in comprehending complex sentences with various types of sentence structures may develop L2 learners' ability to develop their oral communication skills

Infant Vocal Development in a Dynamic Communication System: Vocal Exploration Activities in Various Social Settings

Pre-linguistic vocal productions are the manifestations of a unique capacity ofhuman infants.The uniqueness is characterized by voluntaryvocal play and systematic repetition which serveno fixed functions.Such pre-linguistic infant vocalizations are the product of complex processes of internal vocal exploration activities and external social interactions. However,very few studies have incorporated both aspects to understand the nature of early vocal development. Therefore, the current study aims to investigate the relationship between vocal category development and exploration activities in varying social communication circumstances, using a developmentally appropriate coding scheme for infant vocalization.The vocalizations of 7 infants at three different ages (approximately 4, 7, and 11 months) were used. The three vocal types (i.e., vocant, growl, and squeal), the three engagement types (i.e., symmetrical, asymmetrical, and unengaged), and two proximity types (i.e., immediate and distant) were included. Based on observation and reports from prior research, the current dissertation incorporates fundamental frequency (f0) and duration of utterances as parameters to measure vocal exploration activities in various social settings.The findings in this study provides that infants build their vocal categories, producing the three vocal categories distinctively in the acoustic domains of f0 and duration and showing systematic vocal repetition patterns among the categories. These results provide empirical evidence against Jakobson\u27s view that pre-linguistic vocal sounds are mere byproducts of biological functions, and presumably not affected by socialization.The current results seem to suggest that internally driven vocal activities might tend to be more active when social demands are low, indicating that vocal play is a cognitively intensive process requiring attentional resources.In terms of age effect on vocal exploration activities, at the earliest stage we see high exploration ( and thus repetition), and at the latest stage we see consolidated categories( and thus high discriminability). This result provides a significant new perspective on the sequential logic of the two domains in vocal category development.This research also showed infants\u27 systematic tendency to utilize the vocal categories differentially in various social settings early on, suggesting infants\u27 voluntary control efforts on their pre-linguistic vocal productions to respond to constantly changing social circumstances

A neurolinguistic approach to pronominal resumption in Akan focus constructions

The current project explored the phonological and syntactic aspects of Akan pronominal resumption. The grammatical tone features of the resumptive pronoun and the clause determiner were assessed in Akan speakers with agrammatism. We found that the resumptive pronoun worsens wh-question comprehension in agrammatic speakers. However, the production of pronominal resumption was relatively spared. The ERP study investigated Akan native speakers’ sensitivity to the distribution of the resumptive pronoun by creating word-order and animacy violations. Our study represents a novel addition to the sentence processing field, as it looks into the interface between syntax, semantics, and phonology in Akan pronominal resumption

Proceedings of the VIIth GSCP International Conference

The 7th International Conference of the Gruppo di Studi sulla Comunicazione Parlata, dedicated to the memory of Claire Blanche-Benveniste, chose as its main theme Speech and Corpora. The wide international origin of the 235 authors from 21 countries and 95 institutions led to papers on many different languages. The 89 papers of this volume reflect the themes of the conference: spoken corpora compilation and annotation, with the technological connected fields; the relation between prosody and pragmatics; speech pathologies; and different papers on phonetics, speech and linguistic analysis, pragmatics and sociolinguistics. Many papers are also dedicated to speech and second language studies. The online publication with FUP allows direct access to sound and video linked to papers (when downloaded)

Investigation of factors behind foreign accent in the L2 acquisition of Japanese lexical pitch accent by adult English speakers

The productions of adult second language (L2) learners are often detected as having a foreign accent by native speakers of the target language. However, there is no clear answer for what kind of problems contribute to L2 learners’ foreign accent. This thesis aims to investigate potential factors behind foreign accent. We intend to achieve this goal by examining cross-linguistic empirical evidence of the L2 acquisition of Japanese lexical pitch accent by English learners. L2 prosody has been found to significantly influence native speakers’ auditory impression of foreign accent. L2 prosody also allows us to test crosslinguistic differences in the function of the key acoustic correlates of L2 contrasts. In this thesis we examine F0, which signals both lexical pitch accent and phrasal distinctions in Japanese, but which signals only phrasal distinctions, not lexical distinctions, in English. For adult L2 learners to achieve target-like productions, the literature suggests that three abilities are the key factors: 1) learners’ ability to differentiate the acoustic correlate of the target L2 contrasts, 2) ability to articulate the acoustic correlate of the target L2 contrasts and 3) ability to categorize the target L2 contrasts. This thesis evaluates all three of these potential factors. The main contribution of this thesis is to provide a comprehensive view of foreign accent, by investigating possible interactions between the factors and by examining the different abilities of the same learners. Another contribution is to provide empirical evidence for the nature of learners’ problems with foreign accent during L2 acquisition, by testing two groups of English learners of Japanese (experienced and inexperienced) in comparison with Japanese native speakers. The first experiment used intelligibility scores and overall F0 patterns to quantify the degree of foreign accent in the learners’ productions of Japanese lexical pitch accent. The second experiment showed that the learners’ ability to differentiate F0 contours in a nonspeech context was equal to that of the native speakers. The third experiment showed that the learners’ ability to articulate the F0 contours in a non-speech context differed from that of the native speakers. The fourth experiment showed that although learners were able to hear the phonetic differences between the target L2 contrasts, due to poor formation of the target L2 categories and poor lexical assignment ability, the inexperienced learners seem to have greater difficulty than experienced learners both in categorizing boundary items into the target L2 categories and in assigning the L2 categories to lexical items. Overall, the foreign accent of adult L2 learners’ productions is explained through a combination of articulation and categorization factors. Importantly, this cross-sectional study has indicated how learners’ problems with foreign accent change as they gain L2 experience. Whereas experienced learners seem to have problems mainly in the articulation and phonetic realization of the L2 contrasts, the inexperienced learners seem to have mainly problems in phonetic and lexical-phonological representations of the target L2 categories in addition to articulation and phonetic realization. This study offers both theoretical insights for the field of L2 speech acquisition research and also practical insights for the L2 classroom