Development of linguistic linked open data resources for collaborative data-intensive research in the language sciences

Making diverse data in linguistics and the language sciences open, distributed, and accessible: perspectives from language/language acquistiion researchers and technical LOD (linked open data) researchers. This volume examines the challenges inherent in making diverse data in linguistics and the language sciences open, distributed, integrated, and accessible, thus fostering wide data sharing and collaboration. It is unique in integrating the perspectives of language researchers and technical LOD (linked open data) researchers. Reporting on both active research needs in the field of language acquisition and technical advances in the development of data interoperability, the book demonstrates the advantages of an international infrastructure for scholarship in the field of language sciences. With contributions by researchers who produce complex data content and scholars involved in both the technology and the conceptual foundations of LLOD (linguistics linked open data), the book focuses on the area of language acquisition because it involves complex and diverse data sets, cross-linguistic analyses, and urgent collaborative research. The contributors discuss a variety of research methods, resources, and infrastructures. Contributors Isabelle Barrière, Nan Bernstein Ratner, Steven Bird, Maria Blume, Ted Caldwell, Christian Chiarcos, Cristina Dye, Suzanne Flynn, Claire Foley, Nancy Ide, Carissa Kang, D. Terence Langendoen, Barbara Lust, Brian MacWhinney, Jonathan Masci, Steven Moran, Antonio Pareja-Lora, Jim Reidy, Oya Y. Rieger, Gary F. Simons, Thorsten Trippel, Kara Warburton, Sue Ellen Wright, Claus Zin

On the Acquisition of an Indefinite Determiner: Evidence for Unselective Binding

This paper investigates the contrast between quantificational and referential properties of the English indefinite determiner during the course of first language acquisition. · Various syntactic, semantic and pragmatic knowledge related to indefinites has previously been probed in the acquisition literature. (See Brown 1973, Maratsos 1976, Warden 1976, Emslie and Stevenson 1980, Zehler and Brewer 1982, Pine and Martindale 1986, Valian 1986, Gerken, Landau and Remez 1990, Philip 1995, Bohnacker 1997, and Burns and Soja 1997, among others.) However, to date, the contrast between referential-type and quantificational/variable-type interpretations of indefinites has not been extensively studied in first language acquisition. In this paper, we investigate the acquisition of knowledge of the indefinite determiner in a context that allows both of these alternative interpretations: the context of VP ellipsis

Planning Information Infrastructure through a New Library Research Partnership: Interim Report, July 2005

This document is an interim report on a Small Grant for Exploratory Research (SGER). This interim report was submitted to the National Science Foundation in July 2005.The Cornell Language Acquisition Laboratory and Albert R. Mann Library are in the midst of developing an innovative collaboration between a research laboratory and an academic library to plan for the data preservation and discovery needs of the twenty-first century. Digital technology and internet communication now provide the opportunity to revolutionize the research process, through the ability to store, preserve, share, discover, and reanalyze vast amounts of data. While some disciplines, such as genomics or astronomy, have already developed sophisticated information technology infrastructure for these tasks, others are only beginning such work. In many, if not most research fields, it is especially difficult for those uninitiated to discover where data are located, what they describe, and how they may be used. This project has begun to tackle these issues by taking advantage of the library's existing expertise in preservation, archiving, and metadata creation, building on the existing ontology-software tools the library has developed, and introducing a new conceptual framework that divides the tasks of data sharing into discrete levels that may be managed and presented in defferent ways not only for different audiences but respecting political divisions and control issues that will always be present throughout the laboratories and institutions of academia.This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation, Grant No. 0437603. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation

On the Biological Foundations of Language: Recent Advances in Language Acquisition, Deterioration, and Neuroscience Begin to Converge

In this paper, experimental results on the study of language loss in pro- dromal Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in the elderly are linked to experimen- tal results from the study of language acquisition in the child, via a tran- sitional stage of Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). Recent brain imag- ing results from a pilot study comparing prodromal AD and normal ag- ing are reported. Both, behavioral results and their underlying neural underpinnings, identify the source of language deficits in MCI as break- down in syntax–semantics integration. These results are linked to inde- pendent discoveries regarding the ontogeny of language in the child and their neural foundations. It is suggested that these convergent results ad- vance our understanding of the true nature of maturational processes in language, allowing us to reconsider a “regression hypothesis” (e.g., Ribot 1881), wherein later acquisition predicts earliest dissolution