InfoSyll: A Syllabary Providing Statistical Information on Phonological and Orthographic Syllables

here is now a growing body of evidence in various languages supporting the claim that syllables are functional units of visual word processing. In the perspective of modeling the processing of polysyllabic words and the activation of syllables, current studies investigate syllabic effects with subtle manipulations. We present here a syllabary of the French language aiming at answering new constraints when designing experiments on the syllable issue. The InfoSyll syllabary provides exhaustive characteristics and statistical information for each phonological syllable (e.g. /fi/) and for its corresponding orthographic syllables (e.g. fi, phi, phy, fee, fix, fis). Variables such as the type and token positional frequencies, the number and frequencies of the correspondences between orthographic and phonological syllables are provided. As discussed, such computations should allow precise controls, manipulations and quantitative descriptions of syllabic variables in the field of psycholinguistic research.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

The consonant/vowel pattern determines the structure of orthographic representations in the left fusiform gyrus

Recent findings demonstrated readers' sensitivity to the distinction between consonant and vowel letters. Especially, the way consonants and vowels are organised within written words determines their perceptual structure. The present work attempted to overcome two limitations of previous studies by examining the neurophysiological correlates of this perceptual structure through magnetoencephalography (MEG). One aim was to establish that the extraction of vowel-centred units takes place during early stages of processing. The second objective was to confirm that the vowel-centred structure pertains to the word recognition system and may constitute one level in a hierarchy of neural detectors coding orthographic strings. Participants performed a cross-case matching task in which they had to judge pairs of stimuli as identical or different. The critical manipulation concerned pairs obtained by transposing two letters, so that the vowel-centred structure was either preserved (FOUVERT-fovuert, two vowel letter clusters) or modified (BOUVRET-bovuret). Mismatches were detected faster when the structure was modified. This effect was associated with a significant difference in evoked neuromagnetic fields extending from 129 to 239 msec after the stimulation. Source localization indicated a significant effect in the visual word form area around 200 msec. The results confirm the hypothesis that the vowel-centred structure is extracted during the early phases of letter string processing and that it is encoded in left fusiform regions devoted to visual word recognition

Effect of consonant/vowel letter organisation on the syllable counting task: evidence from English

Recent studies in alphabetic writing systems have investigated whether the status of letters as consonants or vowels influences the perception and processing of written words. Here, we examined to what extent the organisation of consonants and vowels within words affects performance in a syllable counting task in English. Participants were asked to judge the number of syllables in written words that were matched for the number of spoken syllables but comprised either 1 orthographic vowel cluster less than the number of syllables (hiatus words, e.g. triumph) or as many vowel clusters as syllables (e.g. pudding). In 3 experiments, we found that readers were slower and less accurate on hiatus than control words, even when phonological complexity (Experiment 1), number of reduced vowels (Experiment 2), and number of letters (Experiment 3) were taken into account. Interestingly, for words with or without the same number of vowel clusters and syllables, participants errors were more likely to underestimate the number of syllables than to overestimate it. Results are discussed in a cross-linguistic perspective.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Upping the Ante: The Movement of Natural Persons (Mode 4) and Non-Services Migration in EU and Asian PTAs

A cross-comparative mapping of the provisions on the temporary movement of natural persons (Mode 4, M4) Mode 4 (M4) with the non-services mobility provisions in select Asian (ChAFTA, India-Singapore PTA, EUSFTA, India-ASEAN) and EU PTAs towards non-Asian partners (CARIFORUM EPA, C&P FTA, Georgia DFTA) reveals that PTAs have advanced in GATS-plus and GATS-extra, but just how proximate the links between ‘migration’ and GATS Mode 4 mobility are, differs. In this chapter, we draw on the analytical fame of the migration-mobility nexus (MMN), being developed by nccr-on-the-move research network to better categorize the proximity and permeability between migration and mobility and the directionality of the links between both concepts between migration and mobility. We first observe that the EU and Asian countries make different use of M4 commitments in their PTAs. Common to both world regions is the trend to add the category of graduate trainees (GT) as a horizontal commitment in a M4 opening in a trade agreement, as well as opening that category of cross-border mobility in a bilateral setting. In this first section, we seek to understand why the migration and mobility narratives overlap, compete or conflict in a linear dimension of the MMN, within a PTA and across the PTA and bilateral migration agreements. In a second step, the MMN is conceived ‘as continuum’ on the vertical scale to explain how M4 chapters of PTAs are implemented differently in national immigration and regional integration labor migration norms, e.g. EU labor market directives: The EU makes liberalization advances preferably via horizontal, rather than sectoral commitments, countries or regions that are less multilevel opt for sectoral advances in M4. M4 develops GATS-plus sectorally in Asian PTAs, where e.g. a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) professional sees her immigrant status directly regulated in a side letter attached to the PTA. In sum, the chapter offers some new evidence from the field of international trade, to contribute to further designing the interdisciplinary concept of the MMN. While the focus study builds on the corpus of legal and IR research on GATS M4, this chapter suggests to deepening the theoretical deliverables of the GATS M4 literature by anchoring the evidence from PTAs into the analytical frame of the MMN