Dark Side of the Trickster: Collaboration or Collusion?

Educatio

Teasing apart Syntactic Category vs. Argument Structure Information in Deverbal Word Formation: a comparative psycholinguistic study.

Deverbal word formation is subject to two distinct types of constraints, those concerning the syntactic category of the base (categorial constraints) and those relating to the thematic properties of the verb (thematic constraints). For instance, -able suffixation involves a transitive verb with argument structure >, as in to train > trainable. Violation of these constraints results in the creation of pseudo-words with categorial (e.g. riverable) or thematic violations (e.g. arrivable). The study discusses psycholinguistic experiments involving these types of deverbal pseudo-words, in Greek and English, two languages with morphologically distinct properties. Greek has a rich derivational system with a variety of deverbal formations, which follow strong constraints, in the sense that most suffixes that participate in deverbal word formation lack the polysemy that allows them to attach to other-than-verbal bases. English, on the other hand, demonstrates an equally rich derivational system, but it differs in two crucial ways: (a) there is significant affix homophony (e.g. -er is a nominalizer if attached to verbal stems, or forms the comparative if attached to adjectives), (b) it is extremely permissive in allowing zero-derived verbs (to fax). In an off-line and two on-line lexical decision tasks we investigated whether categorial and thematic constraints are treated in the same way by speakers of both languages. Results showed that speakers of both languages differentiated between pseudo-words that violate these two types of constraints both when it comes to acceptance rates and processing time. Taking together results from both languages, we make claims about the structured mental representation of deverbal derivatives and the fact that their various properties can be accessed via distinct operations and at distinct points of time. Implications for the psycholinguistic theory of lexical access and the morphological theory of word formation are also discussed

Does linear position matter for morphological processing? Evidence from a Tagalog masked priming experiment

This study investigated morphological decomposition of Tagalog infixed, prefixed, and suffixed words using the masked priming paradigm. We directly compared morphological priming of infixed, ni- prefixed and -in suffixed words to examine whether infixes are processed similarly to other affixes during early and automatic decomposition. We found significant priming effects for infixed, prefixed, and suffixed words, but no semantic or orthographic similarity priming. Magnitudes of priming effects for infixed and prefixed words were not significantly different, suggesting that decomposition of infixed words was not more costly for Tagalog speakers, contrary to phonological readjustment-based accounts of infixation. This is the first psycholinguistic experiment showing that infixed words are decomposed into morphological units during visual word recognition. We provide evidence that the imperfect edge-alignment of the stem within infixed words does not hamper the early morphological decomposition mechanisms, suggesting that edge-alignment might not be critical to trigger activation of morphological units

Early Form Based Morphological Decomposition in Tagalog: MEG Evidence from Reduplication, Infixation and Circumfixation

Neuro-and psycholinguistic experimentation supports the early decomposition of morphologically complex words within the ventral processing stream, which MEG has localized to the M170 response in the (left) visual word form area ( VWFA). Decomposition into an exhaustive parse of visual morpheme forms extends beyond words like farmer to those imitating complexity (e.g., brother; Lewis et al., 2011), and to “unique” stems occurring in only one word but following the syntax and semantics of their affix (e.g., vulnerable; Gwilliams & Marantz, 2018). Evidence comes primarily from suffixation; other morphological processes have been under-investigated. This study explores circumfixation, infixation, and reduplication in Tagalog. In addition to investigating whether these are parsed like suffixation, we address an outstanding question concerning semantically empty morphemes. Some words in Tagalog resemble English winter as decomposition is not supported (wint-er); these apparently reduplicated pseudoreduplicates lack the syntactic and semantic features of reduplicated forms. However, unlike winter, these words exhibit phonological behavior predicted only if they involve a reduplicating morpheme. If these are decomposed, this provides evidence that words are analyzed as complex, like English vulnerable, when the grammar demands it. In a lexical decision task with MEG, we find that VWFA activity correlates with stem:word transition probability for circumfixed, infixed, and reduplicated words. Furthermore, a Bayesian analysis suggests that pseudoreduplicates with reduplicate-like phonology are also decomposed; other pseudoreduplicates are not. These findings are consistent with an interpretation that decomposition is modulated by phonology in addition to syntax and semantics

Trauma-Informed Supports for Rebuilding School Communities

This manuscript describes four principles of trauma-informed supports that can guide school leaders in rebuilding school communities that have been fractured by the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the work of Hobfoll et al. (2007), these principles are: a) promoting a sense of safety, b) addressing safety within behavior support practices, c) building relationships, and d) promoting self-efficacy and instilling hope. As schools slowly reopen, there is a risk that the re-opening will signify that the crisis has ended and schools can return to their previous policies and systems of support. However, the lingering and long-term effects of the isolation and stress experienced by students during the COVID-19 pandemic may go unrecognized. The schoolwide policies and practices described here are based upon evidence-informed principles which can help school communities serve as supportive, welcoming environments for children and families

Transforming Personalized Speech: Bridging the Worlds of Home, School, and Clinic for the Preschooler with Language Delays

Teachers and speech and language therapists worked with language-delayed and language-disordered preschoolers in a program to remediate communication problems (Haas, 1993). Despite these efforts, the children failed to demonstrate generalization of learned communicative strategies across settings. Only when professionals recognized and accepted the established communicative signs of the child's home were they able to collaborate with the mothers in transforming and creating new communication patterns that met the child's needs in a variety of settings and contexts. /// Dans le cadre d'un programme visant à remédier à des problèmes de communication (Haas, 1993), des enseignants et des orthophonistes ont travaillé avec des enfants d'âge scolaire aux prises avec des troubles du langage et des retards dans le développement du langage. En dépit de ces efforts, les enfants n'ont pas réussi à appliquer, d'une manière générale et dans des contextes différents, les stratégies de communication qu'ils avaient apprises. C'est seulement lorsque les praticiens ont reconnu et accepté les signes de communication établis au sein du foyer de l'enfant qu'ils ont pu collaborer avec les mères pour transformer les modes de communication existants et en créer de nouveaux qui puissent répondre aux besoins de l'enfant dans divers contextes.Educatio

Illusory vowels in Spanish-English sequential bilinguals : Evidence that accurate L2 perception is neither necessary nor sufficient for accurate L2 production

Altres ajuts: British Academy - SG112797Spanish native speakers are known to pronounce onset /sC/ clusters in English with a prothetic vowel, as in esport for sport, due to their native language phonotactic constraints. We assessed whether accurate production of e.g. spi instead of espi, was related to accurate perceptual discrimination of this contrast in L2 speech of Spanish-English sequential bilinguals. A same-different discrimination task in stimulus pairs such as spi-espi assessed speech perception and a phonemic verbal fluency task elicited speech production. Logistic mixed model regressions revealed significant differences in accuracy between the bilinguals and the English monolinguals, although some bilinguals performed within the monolingual range. For the production task, but not for the perception task, bilinguals with more exposure to English and greater grammatical knowledge of English performed significantly more accurately than those with less exposure and lower grammatical knowledge. There was no significant correlation between production accuracy and perception accuracy. Through examining phonotactic constraints, these results expand a growing body of research into single sounds which suggests dissociations between L2 perception and production. In contrast to predictions made by L2 speech models, the findings indicate that accurate L2 perception is neither necessary nor sufficient for accurate L2 production, and instead are interpreted to indicate that the two capacities recruit different executive control mechanisms and are acquired - at least to a certain extent - independently in L2 acquisition

A new look at the ‘Generic Overgeneralisation’ effect

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy on 24/02/2017, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2017.1285993peerreview_statement: The publishing and review policy for this title is described in its Aims & Scope. aims_and_scope_url: http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=aimsScope&journalCode=sinq20peerreview_statement: The publishing and review policy for this title is described in its Aims & Scope. aims_and_scope_url: http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=aimsScope&journalCode=sinq20peerreview_statement: The publishing and review policy for this title is described in its Aims & Scope. aims_and_scope_url: http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=aimsScope&journalCode=sinq20peerreview_statement: The publishing and review policy for this title is described in its Aims & Scope. aims_and_scope_url: http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=aimsScope&journalCode=sinq20While generic generalisations have been studied by linguists and philosophers for decades, they have only recently become the focus of concentrated interest by cognitive and developmental psychologists, who propose the generics-as-default view. In this paper we focus on the ‘Generic Overgeneralisation’ (GOG) effect proposed by Leslie and colleagues and the native speaker judgments that have been used to support it, and by extension, the generics-as-default view. We take a step back to look at the history of the GOG effect in order to contextualise it. We review existing experimental evidence and discuss four non-mutually exclusive explanations for the GOG effect: ignorance, subkind interpretation, atypical behaviour of all and quantifier domain restriction. We conclude that a closer look at the semantics and pragmatics of generics and universal quantifiers may provide a more nuanced explanation for the pattern of judgment data than that proposed by the generics-as-default view

Generalizing About Striking Properties: Do Glippets Love to Play With Fire?

Two experiments investigated whether 4- and 5-year-old children are sensitive to whether the content of a generalization is about a salient or noteworthy property (henceforth "striking") and whether varying the number of exceptions has any effect on children's willingness to extend a property after having heard a generalization. Moreover, they investigated how the content of a generalization interacts with exception tolerance. Adult data were collected for comparison. We used generalizations to describe novel kinds (e.g., "glippets") that had either a neutral (e.g., "play with toys") or a striking property (e.g., "play with fire") and measured how willing participants were to extend the property to a new instance of the novel kind. Experiment 1 demonstrated that both adults and children show sensitivity to strikingness in that striking properties were extended less than neutral ones, although children extended less than adults overall. The responses of both age groups were significantly different from chance. Experiment 2 introduced varying numbers of exceptions to the generalization made (minimal: 1 exception; maximal: 3 exceptions). Both adults and children extended both types of properties even in the face of exceptions, but to a lower degree than in Experiment 1. Striking properties were extended less than neutral ones, as in Experiment 1. We observed that the greater the number of exceptions, the lower the rates of extension we obtained, for both types of properties in adults, but only with striking properties in children. Children seemed to keep track of varying numbers of exceptions for striking properties, but their performance did not differ from chance. The findings underscore that 4- and 5-year-old children are sensitive to strikingness and to exception tolerance for generalizations and are developing toward an adult-like behavior with respect to the interplay between strikingness and exception tolerance when they learn about novel kinds. We discuss the implications of these results with regards to how children make generalizations

Two kinds of pink: development and difference in Germanic colour semantics

Max Planck Gesellschaft