Do syllables play a role in German speech perception? Behavioral and electrophysiological data from primed lexical decision.

Copyright © 2015 Bien, Bölte and Zwitserlood. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.We investigated the role of the syllable during speech processing in German, in an auditory-auditory fragment priming study with lexical decision and simultaneous EEG registration. Spoken fragment primes either shared segments (related) with the spoken targets or not (unrelated), and this segmental overlap either corresponded to the first syllable of the target (e.g., /teis/ - /teisti/), or not (e.g., /teis/ - /teistləs/). Similar prime conditions applied for word and pseudoword targets. Lexical decision latencies revealed facilitation due to related fragments that corresponded to the first syllable of the target (/teis/ - /teisti/). Despite segmental overlap, there were no positive effects for related fragments that mismatched the first syllable. No facilitation was observed for pseudowords. The EEG analyses showed a consistent effect of relatedness, independent of syllabic match, from 200 to 500 ms, including the P350 and N400 windows. Moreover, this held for words and pseudowords that differed however in the N400 window. The only specific effect of syllabic match for related prime-target pairs was observed in the time window from 200 to 300 ms. We discuss the nature and potential origin of these effects, and their relevance for speech processing and lexical access

Learning and using Spanish as L7: an autobiographical sketch

Crosslinguistic influence or crosslinguistic transfer has been known as the influence of a person’s knowledge of one language on that person’s knowledge or use of another language. Assuming that word production is governed by activation and inhibition of lemmas and lexemes, to choose the appropriate lexeme, the word with the highest activation level is selected, whereas other words are inhibited. However, assuming a multilingual person knows more than two languages, it is predicted that in certain cases the lexeme for a concept pertaining to the language a speaker does not want to use may be chosen instead of the lexeme for the same concept pertaining to the language the speaker intended to use. It is predicted that this may occur if the lexeme of the unintended language has a higher resting level of activation (e.g. due to its frequent use) than the lexeme of the intended language. It is also predicted that language production of a multilingual person might result in lexical blends; that factors such as high frequency and recency of use and high proficiency etc. could possibly increase crosslinguistic influence; and that speaker’s subjective perceived similarity of languages may or may not lead to positive or negative transfer. A case study designed as an autobiographical sketch was carried out using stimulated recall to test these predictions in a multilingual learning Spanish as L7. The findings of the study indicate that the languages, which the speaker is highly proficient in and which she uses often, seem to influence lexical transfer more and also seem to be used more as source languages. Secondly, perceived subjective but not objective lexical or phonological similarity seems to lead to negative transfer, whereas perceived subjective as well as objective similarity seems to lead to positive transfer. Finally, it appears that a large difference between the resting levels of activation of lexemes for the same concept can sometimes lead to production of unintended lexemes.Kroslingvistički utjecaj ili kroslingvistički transfer utjecaj je poznavanja jednog jezika na poznavanje ili korištenje drugog jezika nekog govornika. Pod pretpostavkom da se riječi proizvode aktivacijom i inhibicijom lema i leksema, kako bi se odabrao točan leksem, riječ s najvišom razinom aktivacije bit će izabrana, dok će ostale riječi biti inhibirane. Međutim, budući da višejezična osoba zna više od dva jezika, predviđa se da u nekim slučajevima leksem za određeni koncept, koji pripada jeziku koji govornik nije namjeravao koristiti, može biti odabran umjesto leksema za isti koncept, koji pripada jeziku koji je govornik namjeravao koristiti. Takva se omaška može dogoditi ako je leksem jezika koji govornik nije namjeravao koristiti, primjerice, zbog učestalog korištenja, na višoj razini aktivacije od leksema jezika koji je govornik namjeravao koristiti. Također se predviđa da bi pri korištenju jezika kod višejezične osobe moglo doći do leksičkih složenica sastavljenih od osnova ili leksema iz više različitih jezika; da bi čimbenici poput učestalosti korištenja i razine znanja jezika mogli povećati kroslingvistički utjecaj; te da subjektivno percipirana sličnost jezika može i ne mora dovesti do pozitivnog ili negativnog transfera. Kako bi se provjerile navedene pretpostavke istraživanje postavljeno u obliku autobiografske skice provedeno je pomoću tehnike stimuliranog prisjećanja kod višejezične osobe koja uči španjolski kao sedmi jezik. Rezultati istraživanja ukazuju na to da jezici koje osoba bolje poznaje i koje često koristi više utječu na leksički transfer i također češće služe kao jezici koji su izvorište transfera. Nadalje, čini se da subjektivno percipirana, ali ne i objektivna, leksička i fonološka sličnost uzrokuje negativan transfer, dok subjektivno percipirana sličnost koja je ujedno i objektivna dovodi do pozitivnog transfera. Konačno, čini se da velika razlika u razinama aktivacije leksema za isti koncept ponekad može dovesti do korištenja leksema koji govornik nije namjeravao koristiti

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition: Factors Influencing Interlanguage Transfer

In the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA), the role of transfer has been theorized and studied to account for the influence of the native language on an interlanguage. However, stemming from behaviorist mentality, the concept of transfer has become widely associated with the direct transfer of habits and fails to take into consideration other cross-linguistic influences (CLI) that shape or are shaped by the interlanguage, such as avoidance, ‘reverse transfer’ from a learner’s second language (L2) to native language (L1), perception of linguistic distance, and interlanguage transfer. Thus, the reductionist analysis of direct L1 to L2 transfer is no longer sufficient to account for the parallel activation of languages in multilinguals

Food for psycholinguistic thought on gender in Dutch and German:A literature review on L1 and L2 production and processing

The aim of this paper is to explore how variation in the expression of gender has been and can be exploited to study gender perception in speakers of Dutch and German. We provide an up-to-date literature review on descriptive and psycholinguistic research on gender for these languages, considering empirical studies on both native (L1) and second language (L2) acquisition. This paper contributes to placing existing literature on gender in Dutch and German in a comparative mode and to offering a concrete rationale (e.g., three lines of enquiry) to move the psycholinguistic study of language, cognition and gender forward.</p

Noun and verb knowledge in monolingual preschool children across 17 languages: Data from cross-linguistic lexical tasks (LITMUS-CLT)

This article investigates the cross-linguistic comparability of the newly developed lexical assessment tool Cross-linguistic Lexical Tasks (LITMUS-CLT). LITMUS-CLT is a part the Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings (LITMUS) battery (Armon-Lotem, de Jong & Meir, 2015). Here we analyse results on receptive and expressive word knowledge tasks for nouns and verbs across 17 languages from eight different language families: Baltic (Lithuanian), Bantu (isiXhosa), Finnic (Finnish), Germanic (Afrikaans, British English, South African English, German, Luxembourgish, Norwegian, Swedish), Romance (Catalan, Italian), Semitic (Hebrew), Slavic (Polish, Serbian, Slovak) and Turkic (Turkish). The participants were 639 monolingual children aged 3;0-6;11 living in 15 different countries. Differences in vocabulary size were small between 16 of the languages; but isiXhosa-speaking children knew significantly fewer words than speakers of the other languages. There was a robust effect of word class: accuracy was higher for nouns than verbs. Furthermore, comprehension was more advanced than production. Results are discussed in the context of cross-linguistic comparisons of lexical development in monolingual and bilingual populations

Affixoidhungrig? Skitbra! Comparing Affixoids in German and Swedish

In this article we offer a comparative survey of word-forming elements in German and Swedish known as “affixoids”. A highly controversial topic in German linguistics, the notion of “affixoid” does remain useful given the position of the elements in question midway along the cline between compounding and derivation – so useful in fact that we feel it ought to be adopted into Swedish linguistics, where it is as yet unknown. After an overview of the main positions and issues in the debate over affixoids in German, we survey the corresponding elements in Swedish, point out some convergent and divergent tendencies in the two languages, and then compare a few selected affixoids in more detail. We end with some wider issues, focusing mainly on the advantages of the crosslinguistic perspective and on the idea that the relationship of affixoids with their respective “parent morphs” can be described in terms of grammaticalization

Voice Onset Time in multilingual speakers: Italian heritage speakers in Germany with L3 English

This study brings together two previously largely independent fields of multilingual language acquisition: heritage language and third language (L3) acquisition. We investigate the production of fortis and lenis stops in semi-naturalistic speech in the three languages of 20 heritage speakers (HSs) of Italian with German as a majority language and English as L3. The study aims to identify the extent to which the HSs produce distinct values across all three languages, or whether crosslinguistic influence (CLI) occurs. To this end, we compare the HSs’ voice onset time (VOT) values with those of L2 English speakers from Italy and Germany. The language triad exhibits overlapping and distinct VOT realizations, making VOT a potentially vulnerable category. Results indicate CLI from German into Italian, although a systemic difference is maintained. When speaking English, th

Compounds and multi-word expressions in Dutch

Part of book or chapter of boo

Typology of Signed Languages: Differentiation through Kinship Terminology

Nearly all such studies have sought to understand the linguistic constraints of spoken languages, while largely neglecting signed languages. Despite the fact that spoken languages can be classified into types, signed languages are generally assumed to be clustered all together in one type which the current study challenges. Exploring the potential for a varied typology among signed languages requires identifying patterns across a sampling of geographically distinct and historically unrelated signed languages to formulate linguistic generalizations. To that end this study adopts Greenbergs 1966 analysis of Universals of Kinship Terminology, it examines the linguistic patterns that emerge from a comparison of kinship terminology in 40 signed languages, specifying what patterns can be seen in visual-gestural languages. Findings of this study revealed that form-function mappings of specific semantic domains are constructed by different strategies including: iconicity motivated by universal human and cultural-specific traits, arbitrary elements, and linguistic economy (semantic derivation). Patterns reveal that kin terms are motivated yet contain degrees of arbitrariness, suggesting a continuum of interaction of arbitrariness and iconicity. While iconicity is undeniably pervasive in signed languages, salient properties manifested in signed kinship terminology are not universal, but instead reflect the cultural and cognitive perception experienced by deaf people within their linguistic communities. As a result iconic properties framed by language-specific and cultural specific mappings lend to variations in signs, describing the trend that signed forms\u27 phonological properties are not simply phonemic representations, but instead are phonological properties that inherently signify semantic properties. In turn, iconicity emerges as an undeniable and powerful tool of schematization used to form signs in a visual-spatial modality. Data showed some kin terms were motivated by patterns of specific semantic-phonological interdependency. These patterns identified occurrences of semantic derivation and semantic extension within language-specific sets of kin terms. Signed kin terms are formed by combinations of initialization, fingerspelling/character writing constructions, and iconic and arbitrary descriptions. However, organization of kin terms by linguistic processes may not parallel what Greenberg found in his study of spoken languages. The nature of modality clearly manifests in different ways of organizing signed languages and spoken languages; illustrated by how markedness manifests differently. The extent of linguistic phenomenon seen in the domain of kinship terminology underscores the importance of exploring semantics through studies of phonology, morphology, and grammar in signed languages. Typological analyses of signed languages contribute significantly to understanding what linguistic traits appear consistently through all languages, both spoken and signed, by revealing more about the effects of the modality-independent and modality-dependent behaviors of languages in defining language universals