Mullite Whiskers and Mullite-whisker Felt

The Naval Surface Warfare Center has developed processes for the preparation of mullite (3(Al2O3)(dot)2(SiO2)) whiskers and mullite-whisker felt. Three patents on the technology were issued in 1990. The processes are based on chemical reactions between AlF3, Al2O3, and SiO2. The felt is formed in-situ during the processing of shaped powdered precursors. It consists of randomly oriented whiskers which are mutually intergrown forming a rigid structure. The microstructure and properties of the felt and size of the whiskers can be modified by varying the amount of Al2O3 in the starting mixture. Loose mullite whiskers can be used as a reinforcement for polymer-, metal-, and ceramic-matrix composites. The felt can be used as preforms for fabricating composite materials as well as for thermal insulation and high temperature, chemically stable filters for liquids (melts) and gases

Relating Language to Other Cognitive Systems: An Abridged Account

An important research direction in cognitive science consists of cross-comparing the forms of organization exhibited by different cognitive systems, with the long-range aim of ascertaining the overall character of human cognitive organization.  Relatively distinct major cognitive systems of this sort would seem to include: (different modalities of) perception, motor control, affect, reasoning, language, and cultural structure.  The general finding is that some properties of organization are shown by only one system, some by several, and some by all.  This arrangement is called the "overlapping systems model of cognitive organization".  This paper demonstrates the model by comparing properties of organization across language and vision. Language is first shown to represent certain features of cognitive organization not well realized in vision, such as the representation of "reality status", with such member notions as factual, conditional, potential, and counterfactual.  In turn, vision is shown to represent certain features of organization not well realized in language, such as symmetry, rotation, dilation, and pattern of distribution.  Finally, both language and vision are shown to represent certain features of organization in common, such as the schematization of spatial relations between objects

Children's verbalizations of motion events in German

Recent studies in language acquisition have paid much attention to linguistic diversity and have begun to show that language properties may have an impact on how children construct and organize their representations. With respect to motion events, Talmy (2000) has proposed a typological distinction between satellite-framed (S) languages that encode PATH in satellites, leaving the verb root free for the expression of MANNER, and verb-framed (V) languages that encode PATH in the verb, requiring MANNER to be expressed in the periphery of the sentence. This distinction has lead to the hypothesis (Slobin 1996) that MANNER should be more salient for children learning S-languages, who should have no difficulty combining it with PATH, as compared to those learning V-languages. This hypothesis was tested in a corpus elicited from German children and adults who had to verbalize short animated cartoons showing motion events, and the results are compared with previous analyses of French and English corpora elicited in an identical situation (Hickmann et al. 2009). As predicted, and as previously found for English, German children from three years on systematically express both MANNER (in the verb root) and PATH (in particles), in sharp contrast to French children, who rarely package MANNER and PATH together. These results suggest that, when they are engaged in communication, children construct spatial representations in accordance with the particular properties of their mother tongue. Future research is necessary to determine the extent to which cross-linguistic differences in production may reflect deeper differences in the allocation of attention and in conceptual organization

Children's verbalizations of motion events in German

Recent studies in language acquisition have paid much attention to linguistic diversity and have begun to show that language properties may have an impact on how children construct and organize their representations. With respect to motion events, Talmy (2000) has proposed a typological distinction between satellite-framed (S) languages that encode PATH in satellites, leaving the verb root free for the expression of MANNER, and verb-framed (V) languages that encode PATH in the verb, requiring MANNER to be expressed in the periphery of the sentence. This distinction has lead to the hypothesis (Slobin 1996) that MANNER should be more salient for children learning S-languages, who should have no difficulty combining it with PATH, as compared to those learning V-languages. This hypothesis was tested in a corpus elicited from German children and adults who had to verbalize short animated cartoons showing motion events, and the results are compared with previous analyses of French and English corpora elicited in an identical situation (Hickmann et al. 2009). As predicted, and as previously found for English, German children from three years on systematically express both MANNER (in the verb root) and PATH (in particles), in sharp contrast to French children, who rarely package MANNER and PATH together. These results suggest that, when they are engaged in communication, children construct spatial representations in accordance with the particular properties of their mother tongue. Future research is necessary to determine the extent to which cross-linguistic differences in production may reflect deeper differences in the allocation of attention and in conceptual organization

How input processing factors into lexical semantics: Motion events with double particles in L3 German

Motion events are almost absent in the course syllabus of L2 German as a formally addressed structure in the classroom. Learners have merely receptive contact with this type of structure in reading texts or in aural activities. The occurrence of motion events with the so-called “double particles” is even less frequent. These are composed of the deictic morphemes hin- and her- denoting the speaker’s perspective and Path morphemes (-ein-, -aus-, -auf-, etc.). The main goal of the present study is to test a group of Portuguese L3 learners of German regarding their knowledge of double particles, and to apply VanPatten’s Processing Instruction (PI) model (VanPatten 2004; VanPatten and Williams 2015), which rests on an input-based focus-on-form approach for teaching grammar. The theoretical framework is based on Talmy’s typology of motion events (Talmy 2000a, 2000b). The empirical component of this study was divided into three parts: first, I tested the participants by means of a pretest; then, I conducted a pedagogical intervention based on the PI model; finally, a posttest determined the successful effects of PI in the participants’ knowledge of the target forms, both in interpretative and productive contexts.I would like to thank Cristina Flores for her diligent coordination during the realization ofthis study and for her insightful and constructive comments on earlier versions of this pap

Path to Realization: A Typology of Event Conflation

Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General Session and Parasession on The Grammar of Event Structure (1991), pp. 480-51

L1 transfer in the acquisition of manner and path in Spanish by native speakers of English

In this article the authors argue that L1 transfer from English is not only important in the early stages of L2 acquisition of Spanish, but remains influential in later stages if there is not enough positive evidence for the learners to progress in their development (Lefebvre, White, & Jourdan, 2006). The findings are based on analyses of path and manner of movement in stories told by British students of Spanish (N = 68) of three different proficiency levels. Verbs that conflate motion and path, on the one hand, are mastered early, possibly because the existence of Latinate path verbs, such as enter and ascend in English, facilitate their early acquisition by British learners of Spanish. Contrary to the findings of Cadierno (2004) and Cadierno and Ruiz (2006), the encoding of manner, in particular in boundary crossing contexts, seems to pose enormous difficulties, even among students who had been abroad on a placement in a Spanish-speaking country prior to the data collection. An analysis of the frequency of manner verbs in Spanish corpora shows that one of the key reasons why students struggle with manner is that manner verbs are so infrequent in Spanish. The authors claim that scarce positive evidence in the language exposed to and little or no negative evidence are responsible for the long-lasting effect of transfer on the expression of manner

Les relations entre grammaire et cognition

L'un des traits structuraux essentiels du langage est qu'il possède deux sous-systèmes : celui des classes ouvertes (le sous-système lexical), et celui des classes fermées (le sous-système grammatical). Ces deux composantes remplissent des fonctions complémentaires. Dans une phrase, l'ensemble des formes de classe ouverte contribue surtout au contenu du sens total exprimé, tandis que l'ensemble des formes de classe fermée détermine surtout la structure. De plus, on constate que dans toutes les langues, les formes de classe fermée obéissent à une forte contrainte sémantique : elles spécifient seulement certains concepts, certaines catégories de concepts, et en excluent d'autres. Ces spécifications grammaticales, prises globalement, paraissent constituer le système conceptuel fondamental qui structure le langage. L'article cherche à déterminer les concepts et les catégories de concepts que les formes grammaticales spécifient, les propriétés que ces concepts possèdent en commun et qui permettent de les distinguer des spécifications de type lexical, les fonctions assurées dans le langage par cette organisation, et les relations de cette organisation avec les systèmes structurants appartenant à d'autres domaines cognitifs, comme la perception visuelle et le raisonnement. Le plus grand problème qu'aborde cette étude, pour finir, est la nature générale de la structure conceptuelle, dans la cognition humaine.A fundamental design feature of language is that it has two subsystems, the open-class (lexical) and the closed-class (grammatical). These subsystems perform complementary functions. In a sentence, the open-class forms together contribute most of the content of the total meaning expressed, while the closed-class forms together determine the majority of its structure. Further, across the spectrum of languages, all closed-class forms are under great semantic constraint: they specify only certain concepts and categories of concepts, but not others. These grammatical specifications, taken together, appear to constitute the fundamental conceptual structuring system of language. This paper explores the particular concepts and categories of concepts that grammatical formes specify, the properties that these have in common and that distinguish them from lexical specifications, the functions served by this organization in language, and the relation of this organization to the structuring systems of other cognitive domains such as visual perception and reasoning. The greater issue, toward which this study ultimately aims, is the general character of conceptual structure in human cognition

Les relations entre grammaire et cognition

L'un des traits structuraux essentiels du langage est qu'il possède deux sous-systèmes : celui des classes ouvertes (le sous-système lexical), et celui des classes fermées (le sous-système grammatical). Ces deux composantes remplissent des fonctions complémentaires. Dans une phrase, l'ensemble des formes de classe ouverte contribue surtout au contenu du sens total exprimé, tandis que l'ensemble des formes de classe fermée détermine surtout la structure. De plus, on constate que dans toutes les langues, les formes de classe fermée obéissent à une forte contrainte sémantique : elles spécifient seulement certains concepts, certaines catégories de concepts, et en excluent d'autres. Ces spécifications grammaticales, prises globalement, paraissent constituer le système conceptuel fondamental qui structure le langage. L'article cherche à déterminer les concepts et les catégories de concepts que les formes grammaticales spécifient, les propriétés que ces concepts possèdent en commun et qui permettent de les distinguer des spécifications de type lexical, les fonctions assurées dans le langage par cette organisation, et les relations de cette organisation avec les systèmes structurants appartenant à d'autres domaines cognitifs, comme la perception visuelle et le raisonnement. Le plus grand problème qu'aborde cette étude, pour finir, est la nature générale de la structure conceptuelle, dans la cognition humaine.A fundamental design feature of language is that it has two subsystems, the open-class (lexical) and the closed-class (grammatical). These subsystems perform complementary functions. In a sentence, the open-class forms together contribute most of the content of the total meaning expressed, while the closed-class forms together determine the majority of its structure. Further, across the spectrum of languages, all closed-class forms are under great semantic constraint: they specify only certain concepts and categories of concepts, but not others. These grammatical specifications, taken together, appear to constitute the fundamental conceptual structuring system of language. This paper explores the particular concepts and categories of concepts that grammatical formes specify, the properties that these have in common and that distinguish them from lexical specifications, the functions served by this organization in language, and the relation of this organization to the structuring systems of other cognitive domains such as visual perception and reasoning. The greater issue, toward which this study ultimately aims, is the general character of conceptual structure in human cognition

Spatial structuring in spoken and signed language

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