The Production of Noun Phrases: A Cross-linguistic Comparison of French and German

Two experiments investigated the grammatical encoding processes during the production of noun phrases consisting of an article, an adjective, and a noun. Experiment 1 shows that for noun phrases in German, with the adjective in prenominal position, the lemmas of the noun and the adjective, and the noun's grammatical gender are selected before utterance onset. Experiment 2 shows that for noun phrases in French, with the adjective in postnominal position, only the noun lemma and its grammatical gender are selected. This suggests that grammatical advance planning at the level of grammatical encoding can operate with the smallest full phrase which can be expanded rightwards during articulation. Furthermore, the data show that gender is selected irrespective of whether it surfaces in the eventual phonological form of the noun phrase or not. This result is in line with the assumption that the grammatical encoder operates independently of the phonological encoder

Language Conflict in the Bilingual Brain

The large majority of humankind is more or less fluent in 2 or even more languages. This raises the fundamental question how the language network in the brain is organized such that the correct target language is selected at a particular occasion. Here we present behavioral and functional magnetic resonance imaging data showing that bilingual processing leads to language conflict in the bilingual brain even when the bilinguals’ task only required target language knowledge. This finding demonstrates that the bilingual brain cannot avoid language conflict, because words from the target and nontarget languages become automatically activated during reading. Importantly, stimulus-based language conflict was found in brain regions in the LIPC associated with phonological and semantic processing, whereas response-based language conflict was only found in the pre-supplementary motor area/anterior cingulate cortex when language conflict leads to response conflicts

Syntactic versus lexical therapy for anomia in acquired aphasia: differential effects on narrative and conversation

Background: Previous studies of therapy for acquired anomia have treated nouns in isolation. The effect on nouns in connected speech remains unclear. In a recent study in 2012, we used a novel noun syntax therapy and found an increase in the number of determiner plus noun constructions in narrative after therapy. Aims: Two aims arose from the previous study: to identify the critical ingredient in the noun syntax therapy, specifically whether this is lexical production, or the syntactic context; and to extend the analysis of the effects beyond narrative into conversation. Methods & Procedures: We compared the effects of lexical therapy with those of noun syntax therapy in one individual with aphasia, in a sequential intervention design. We analysed the effects on conversation and on narrative. Outcomes & Results: There was improved picture naming of treated words after both therapies. Lexical therapy had no impact on narrative and conversation, whereas noun syntax therapy led to more noun production, primarily in the context of determiner plus noun combinations. Conclusions & Implications: The results support the claim that greater impact on narrative and conversation can be achieved for some people with aphasia by treating nouns in syntactic contexts

Representation and processing of mass and count nouns: A review

Comprehension and/or production of noun phrases and sentences requires the selection of lexical-syntactic attributes of nouns. These lexical-syntactic attributes include grammatical gender (masculine/feminine/neuter), number (singular/plural) and countability (mass/count). While there has been considerable discussion regarding gender and number, relatively little attention has focused on countability. Therefore, this article reviews empirical evidence for lexical-syntactic specification of nouns for countability. This includes evidence from studies of language production and comprehension with normal speakers and case studies which assess impairments of mass/count nouns in people with acquired brain damage. Current theories of language processing are reviewed and found to be lacking specification regarding countability. Subsequently, the theoretical implications of the empirical studies are discussed in the context of frameworks derived from these accounts of language production (Levelt, 1989; Levelt et al., 1999) and comprehension (Taler and Jarema, 2006). The review concludes that there is empirical support for specification of nouns for countability at a lexical-syntactic level

Selection of gender marked morphemes in speech production

Contains fulltext : 54796.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)N.O. Schiller and A. Caramazza (2003) and A. Costa, D. Kovacic, E. Fedorenko, and A. Caramazza (2003) have argued that the processing of freestanding gender-marked morphemes (e.g., determiners) and bound gender-marked morphemes (e.g., adjective suffixes) during syntactic encoding in speech production follows distinct principles, with only freestanding morphemes being subject to a competitive selection process. In 3 experiments, the authors tested this hypothesis in German, extending a previous study by H. Schriefers, J.D. Jescheniak, and A. Hantsch (2002). The results suggest that freestanding and bound morphemes are basically processed in the same way, although competition appears to be attenuated for bound morphemes relative to free morphemes. The authors discuss theoretical and methodological implications of this pattern

Measuring verbal working memory capacity: A reading span task for laboratory and web-based use

************************************************************************* All materials can be downloaded from https://github.com/janakl4us/workingmemory. ************************************************************************* Typically, working memory (WM) capacity as a source of individual differences is assessed by complex span tasks which combine a processing and a storage task. However, there are no standardized open-source versions, and the tasks that are used are not easily comparable. We introduce a browser-based version of the reading span task, which yielded normally distributed recall performance scores. Next, we provide a within-participant comparison of this task to two other complex span tasks. Finally, we introduce a web-based version of the reading span task. WM scores were comparable to those obtained in the laboratory, but web participants were also faster and made more mistakes in the processing task. We conclude that the task introduced here is an adequate way to measure verbal WM capacity in the laboratory. In addition, it may prove to be a useful, time-efficient online tool, for instance to extract extreme groups from a larger sample

An investigation of the role of working memory capacity and naming speed in phonological advance planning in language production

Producing multi-word utterances is a complex, yet relatively effortless process. Research with the picture-word interference paradigm has shown that speakers can plan all elements of such utterances up to the phonological level before initiating speech, yet magnitude and direction of this phonological priming effect (i.e. facilitative vs. inhibitory) differ between but also within studies. We investigated possible sources for variability in the phonological advance planning scope. In two experiments, participants produced bare nouns (“monkey”) and complex noun phrases (“the small red monkey”) while ignoring distractor words phonologically (un)related to the noun. For low- and high-working memory capacity speakers as well as fast and slow speakers, we found phonological facilitation effects for the bare noun, but no distractor effects for the complex noun phrases. However, looking at individual distractor effects for utterance-final elements revealed a large variability between speakers. We conclude that phonological advance planning cannot be summarised as an overall effect, but should take into account inter- and intraindividual variabilit