How to measure frequency? Different ways of counting ergatives in Chintang (Tibeto-Burman, Nepal) and their implications

The frequency of linguistic phenomena is standardly measured relative to some structurally defined unit (e.g. per 1,000 words or per clause). Drawing on a case study on the acquisition of ergativity by children in Chintang, an endangered Tibeto-Burman language of Nepal, we propose that from a psycholinguistic point of view, it is sometimes necessary to measure frequencies relative to the length of the time windows within which speakers and hearers use the language, rather than relative to structurally defined units. This approach requires that corpus design control for recording length and that transcripts be systematically linked to timestamps in the audiovisual signal.National Foreign Language Resource Cente

How Do Children Combine Pointing and Language in the Earliest Stages of Development? A Case Study of Russian and Chintang

Learning to establish joint reference is an important milestone of communicative and linguistic development. Pointing is one of the first entry points into this process, since gestures often precede verbal communication. During early development, as well as later language use, pointing and linguistic utterances interact in many ways, complementing each other. However, little is known about the development of this relationship during development. In this paper, we focus on the development of the co-occurrence of finger pointing and accompanying utterances in two different cultures: Russia and Chintang (Sino-Tibetan, Eastern Nepal). We show that despite the differences in environment, the development of finger pointing and accompanying language use show substantial similarities. Early on, a larger proportion of points is not accompanied by language. As the children's linguistic abilities develop, children first use language to specify what is being pointed at, and later elaborate on some aspect of the referent

Turn-Taking Predicts Vocabulary Acquisition at 18 Months: A Study of Daylong Recordings

Every child learns their first words at a different pace. Research on first language acquisition has studied the individual variation of children’s linguistic development for decades, trying to determine the contributing factors for this variation [28, 29, 23]. Ever since the seminal study by Hart and Risley [18], the amount of caregiver input has been in the focus of attention as a main variable relevant for early vocabulary acquisition. Hart and Risley attributed individual differences in young children’s language acquisition to the amount of parental talk they heard. They observed that socioeconomic status (SES) correlated with the quantity (eg word count) and the quality (eg utterance complexity and lexical diversity) of speech addressed to children. At the time, the general consensus seemed to be that caregivers should provide as much verbal input to infants as possible to give them a head-start in language learning

Processing causatives in first language acquisition: A computational approach

One of the most challenging tasks for infant language learners is to extractmeaning from the speech stream they hear. Linguistic contexts often stand as themain cues for children to infer the semantics of words. For instance, uponhearing the sentence “you broke the window”, to understand the meaning of“broke”, children have to first recognize the two participants “you” and “thewindow” in the utterance, and later establish the causal relation between them.The semantics embedded in linguistic contexts, often referred to as distributionalsemantics, plays an important role in children’s semantic learning (Erickson &Thiessen, 2015; Theakston, Lieven, Pine, & Rowland, 2001; Tomasello, 2003).However, many studies have looked at only specific contextual patterns orselected semantic features to examine semantics in first language acquisition,therefore lacking comprehensiveness in their approach. In this study, weexamined semantics with a computational approach that comprehensivelyaccesses linguistic contexts to generate semantic representations. Using lexicalcausatives as a test case, we processed causative semantics in both Englishchild­directed speech (CDS) and child speech (CS), thereby investigating thesemantic development in parent­child interaction

Germination, emergence and pyrrolizidine-contents of common groundsel (Senecio vulgaris)

Die Aufnahme von Gemeinem Kreuzkraut (Senecio vulgaris) über Lebensmittel kann wegen des Gehalts an Pyrrolizidinalkaloiden (PA) zu gesundheitlichen Schäden führen. Daher werden pflanzenbauliche Ansätze gesucht, um Beimischungen mit S. vulgaris zu vermindern. In Klimaschränken wurde der Einfluss von Temperatur und Lichtverhältnissen sowie einer vorgeschalteten Einwirkung von Frost oder Trockenstress auf das Keimvermögen von S. vulgaris geprüft. Weiterhin wurden im Sommer 2016 vier Sätze von S. vulgaris auf der Versuchsstation Kleinhohenheim, Stuttgart, ausgesät, um den PA-Gehalt in den verschiedenen Pflanzenteilen und zu verschiedenen Jahreszeiten zu analysieren. Bei Licht und ohne Vorbehandlung keimten die Samen bei 5 °C, 10 °C und 20 °C zu 84 bis 87 %, im Dunkeln lagen die Werte etwas darunter. Eine Vorbehandlung mit Frost führte bei anschließender Keimtemperatur von 5 °C zu signifikant mehr ungekeimten, intakten Samen (75 %) gegenüber der Kontrolle (20 %) oder der Variante mit Trockenstress (8 %). Die Blüte von S. vulgaris enthielten bis zu 7600 mg PA/kg in der luftgetrockneten Biomasse und damit signifikant höhere PA-Summengehalte (Σ Retrorsin, Senecionin, Seneciphyllin, Senecivernin sowie deren korrespondierende N-Oxide) als Stängel und Blätter. Mit späterer Saatzeit stieg der Gehalt an PA in Blättern signifikant. PA-Gehalte in Nutzpflanzen durch Kontamination mit S. vulgaris könnten effektiv reduziert werden, wenn keine Blüten in das Erntegut gelangten. Niedrige Temperaturen und Frost scheinen die unerwünschte Samenüberdauerung von S. vulgaris zu fördern. Unter diesem Gesichtspunkt sind Blütenbildung und Aussamen gegen Ende der Vegetationsperiode besonders kritisch. Späte Ernteschnitte von Heil- und Gewürzpflanzen oder Schnittsalaten sind zu vermeiden, um Blüten- und Samenbildung von S. vulgaris kurz vor dem Winter einzuschränken, und um Beimischungen mit saisonal erhöhten PA-Gehalten zu verhindern.The uptake of food contaminated with common groundsel (Senecio vulgaris) is a considerable health risk because of the occurrence of pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PA) in parts of the plant. Agronomical approaches are needed to minimize potential contamination with S. vulgaris. Different temperatures, light conditions and seed pre-treatments were tested during the germination of S. vulgaris to identify the optimum environment for germination. In addition, four sets of S. vulgaris were sown in a field trial at the research station Kleinhoheneim/South West Germany in 2016 to determine the PA pattern and any shift in PA contents in during the year in flowers, leaves and stems. Germination rates were highest (84-87%) when seeds germinated in light without pre-treatment, and a little lower in darkness, at any of the three trial temperatures of 5 °C, 10 °C und 20 °C. Pre-treatment with frost, particularly in combination with cool germination temperatures, lead to significantly higher numbers of intact, ungerminated seeds (75%) compared to the control (20%) or a drought stress pre-treatment (8%). Flowers of S. vulgaris contained up to mg total PA/kg in the air dried plant material (Σ of retrorsine, senecionine, seneciphylline, senecivernine and their corresponding N-oxides) and thus the contents were significantly higher than those in stems or leaves. The PA content in leaves increased significantly during the season. As flowers seem to be the main source of PA, their removal or avoidance in harvested crops is most desired. For avoidance of seed production before winter (with risk of seed persistence due to cold temperatures), herbs and medical plants or lettuce contaminated with S. vulgaris should not be harvested in late summer or autumn. This approach would additionally avoid contamination with S vulgaris with increased PA contents in the harvested product at the end of the season

Development of Verb Morphology: From Item-Specificity to Proficient Use

The initial phase of linguistic production by children is characterized by rote-learned, lexically restricted forms and constructions. Only during later phases of language acquisition do they develop flexibility across a paradigm and mix lexical and grammatical material more freely. In the development of verb morphology, a correlation between the use of tense and aspect has been observed in many languages. It has been suggested that this leads to an intermediary state of paradigm categorization based on temporal categories. So far the flexibility of individual verbs occurring in different tense-aspect combinations has not been examined in detail. Here we evaluate the flexibility of verb use in a large longitudinal corpus of 4 Russian children. We compute the Shannon entropy of verb stems distributed over individual grammatical forms. Results show that children do not pass through a stage of paradigm categorization based on aspecto-temporal categories. After a brief item-specific phase of rote learned forms, they quickly become flexible users of verbs in both aspects

Einfluss klimatischer Bedingungen auf die Erträge des Getreidesortenversuches im biologischen Anbau in Luxemburg

Vor der Diskussion einer Dürre im Jahr 2018 wurden die Erträge der Sortenversuche des Wintergetreides (Winterweizen (WW; 2018: 35 Sorten), Winterroggen (WR; 9 Sorten), Wintertriticale (WT; 11 Sorten)) im biologischen Anbau des Institut fir biologësch Landwirtschaft an Agrarkultur (IBLA) hinsichtlich des Einflusses der Temperatur und der Niederschläge im gesamten Anbauzeitraum sowie während der Vegetationsperiode ausgewertet und gegenübergestellt. Lassen sich mittels dieser sehr einfachen, bivariaten Korrelationsanalyse bereits Aussagen treffen

Do typological differences in the expression of causality influence preschool children’s causal event construal?

This study investigated whether cross-linguistic differences in causal expressions influence the mapping of causal language on causal events in three- to four-year-old Swiss-German learners and Turkish learners. In Swiss-German, causality is mainly expressed syntactically with lexical causatives (e.g., ässe ‘to eat’ vs. füettere ‘to feed’). In Turkish, causality is expressed both syntactically and morphologically – with a verbal suffix (e.g., yemek ‘to eat’ vs. yeDIRmek ‘to feed’). Moreover, unlike Swiss-German, Turkish allows argument ellipsis (e.g., ‘The mother feeds [∅]’). Here, we used pseudo-verbs to test whether and how well Swiss-German-learning children inferred a causal meaning from lexical causatives compared to Turkish-learning children tested in three conditions: lexical causatives, morphological causatives, and morphological causatives with object ellipsis. Swiss-German-learning children and Turkish-learning children in all three conditions reliably inferred causal meanings, and did so to a similar extent. The findings suggest that, as young as age 3, children learning two different languages similarly make use of language-specific causality cues (syntactic and morphological alike) to infer causal meanings

Automatic interlinear glossing as two-level sequence classification

We discuss the aspect of synchronisation in the language design and implementation of the asynchronous data flow language S-Net. Synchronisation is a crucial aspect of any coordination approach. S-Net provides a particularly simple construct, the synchrocell. As a primitive S-Net language construct synchrocell implements a one-off synchronisation of two data items of different type on a stream of such data items. We believe this semantics captures the essence of synchronisation, and no simpler design is possible. While the exact built-in behaviour as such is typically not what is required by S-Net application programmers, we show that in conjunction with other language features S-Net synchrocells meet typical demands for synchronisation in streaming networks quite well. Moreover, we argue that their simplistic design, in fact, is a necessary prerequisite to implement an even more interesting scenario: modelling state in streaming networks of stateless components. We finish with the outline of an efficient implementation by the S-Net runtime system

Nutritive und antinutritive Inhaltsstoffe in Körnerleguminosen: Einfluss von Jahr und Standort auf den Futterwert

Die meisten Körnerleguminosen enthalten antinutritive Substanzen, abhängig von den Sorten und den Wachstumsbedingungen. Ziel der Studie war es, verschiedene Körnerleguminosenarten zu vergleichen, um ihren Futterwert unter Berücksichtigung ihrer nutritiven und antinutritiven Inhaltsstoffe zu ermitteln. Die Feldversuche wurden 2012 und 2013 in Karelshaff, Colmar-Berg, in Luxemburg und 2014 und 2015 an der Hessischen Staatsdomäne Frankenhausen in Grebenstein durchgeführt. Erste Ergebnisse für antinutritive Inhaltsstoffe zeigen, dass die Standorte und die jährlichen Schwankungen einen Einfluss auf den Gehalt haben und stark von den in der Literatur angegebenen Werten abweichen können