Showing papers in "Language, cognition and neuroscience in 2015"
TL;DR: It is argued that the embodied/disembodied cognition debate is either largely resolved in favour of the view that concepts are represented in an amodal format, or at a point where the embodied and disembodied approaches are no longer coherently distinct theories.
Abstract: It is currently debated whether the meanings of words and objects are represented, in whole or in part, in a modality-specific format-the embodied cognition hypothesis. I argue that the embodied/disembodied cognition debate is either largely resolved in favor of the view that concepts are represented in an amodal format, or at a point where the embodied and disembodied approaches are no longer coherently distinct theories. This merits reconsideration of what the available evidence can tell us about the structure of the conceptual system. We know that the conceptual system engages, online, with sensory and motor content. This frames a new question: How is it that the human conceptual system is able to disengage from the sensorimotor system? Answering this question would say something about how the human mind is able to detach from the present and extrapolate from finite experience to hypothetical states of how the world could be. It is the independence of thought from perception and action that makes human cognition special-and that independence is guaranteed by the representational distinction between concepts and sensorimotor representations.
159 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a review reveals the complex interaction among contextual factors that influence the phonological form and phonetic expression of prosody, and points out the need for a model of prosodic that is robust to contextually driven variation affecting the production and perception of the prosodic form.
Abstract: Prosody conveys information about the linguistic context of an utterance at every level of linguistic organisation, from the word up to the discourse context. Acoustic correlates of prosody cue this rich contextual information, but interpreting prosodic cues in terms of the lexical, syntactic and discourse information they encode also requires recognising prosodic variation due to speaker, language variety, speech style and other properties of the situational context. This review reveals the complex interaction among contextual factors that influence the phonological form and phonetic expression of prosody. Empirical challenges in prosodic transcription are discussed along with production evidence that reveals striking variability in the phonological encoding of prosody and in its phonetic expression. The review points to the need for a model of prosody that is robust to contextually driven variation affecting the production and perception of prosodic form.
112 citations
TL;DR: Analysis of the verbal and letter fluency task for bilinguals and monolinguals at four ages found that verbal fluency performance improved from childhood to young adulthood and remained relatively stable in late adulthood, with a robust bilingual advantage on this task emerging in adulthood.
Abstract: The verbal fluency task is a widely used neuropsychological test of word retrieval efficiency Both category fluency (eg, list animals) and letter fluency (eg, list words that begin with F) place demands on semantic memory and executive control functions However, letter fluency places greater demands on executive control than on category fluency, making this task well suited to investigating potential bilingual advantages in word retrieval Here we report analyses on the category and letter fluency for bilinguals and monolinguals at four ages, namely, 7-year-olds, 10-year-olds, young adults and older adults Three main findings emerged: (1) verbal fluency performance improved from childhood to young adulthood and remained relatively stable in late adulthood; (2) beginning at 10-year-olds, the executive control requirements for letter fluency were less effortful for bilinguals than monolinguals, with a robust bilingual advantage on this task emerging in adulthood and (3) an interaction among factors s
91 citations
TL;DR: This programme outlines what an integrated approach to language research that connects experimental, theoretical and neurobiological (NB) domains of inquiry would look like and asks to what extent unification is possible across the domains.
Abstract: We outline what an integrated approach to language research that connects experimental, theoretical and neurobiological (NB) domains of inquiry would look like and ask to what extent unification is possible across the domains. At the centre of the programme is the idea that computational/representational (CR) theories of language must be used to investigate its NB foundations. We consider different ways in which CR and NB might be connected. These are (1) a correlational way, in which NB computation is correlated with the CR theory; (2) an integrated way, in which NB data provide crucial evidence for choosing among CR theories; and (3) an explanatory way, in which properties of NB explain why a CR theory is the way it is. We examine various questions concerning the prospects for explanatory connections in particular, including to what extent it makes sense to say that NB could be specialised for particular computations.
87 citations
TL;DR: The results demonstrate that root and word pattern morphemes function as abstract cognitive entities, operating independently of semantic factors and dissociable from possible phonological confounds, while stem-based approaches consistently fail to accommodate the basic psycholinguistic properties of the Arabic mental lexicon.
Abstract: Does the organization of the mental lexicon reflect the combination of abstract underlying morphemic units or the concatenation of word-level phonological units? We address these fundamental issues in Arabic, a Semitic language where every surface form is potentially analyzable into abstract morphemic units - the word pattern and the root - and where this view contrasts with stem-based approaches, chiefly driven by linguistic considerations, in which neither roots nor word patterns play independent roles in word formation and lexical representation. Five cross-modal priming experiments examine the processing of morphologically complex forms in the three major subdivisions of the Arabic lexicon - deverbal nouns, verbs, and primitive nouns. The results demonstrate that root and word pattern morphemes function as abstract cognitive entities, operating independently of semantic factors and dissociable from possible phonological confounds, while stem-based approaches consistently fail to accommodate the basic psycholinguistic properties of the Arabic mental lexicon.
67 citations
TL;DR: The semantic function of even so was used to reverse real-world knowledge predictions, leading to an attenuated N400 to coherent versus incoherent target words (‘celebrated’) in scenarios with and without even so, and its pragmatic communicative function enhanced predictive processing.
Abstract: In two event-related potential experiments, we asked whether comprehenders used the concessive connective, even so, to predict upcoming events. Participants read coherent and incoherent scenarios, with and without even so, e.g. ‘Elizabeth had a history exam on Monday. She took the test and aced/failed it. (Even so), she went home and celebrated wildly’, as they rated coherence (Experiment 1) or simply answered intermittent comprehension questions (Experiment 2). The semantic function of even so was used to reverse real-world knowledge predictions, leading to an attenuated N400 to coherent versus incoherent target words (‘celebrated’). Moreover, its pragmatic communicative function enhanced predictive processing, leading to more N400 attenuation to coherent targets in scenarios with than without even so. This benefit however, did not come for free: the detection of failed event predictions triggered a later posterior positivity and/or an anterior negativity effect, and costs of maintaining alternative like...
66 citations
TL;DR: This paper showed that the visuospatial features of pitch gestures strengthen the relationship between English speakers' representations of Mandarin lexical tones and word meanings, supporting the predictions of spoken word recognition and embodied cognition.
Abstract: Lexical tones – pitches differentiating between word meanings in tonal languages – are particularly difficult for atonal language speakers to learn. To test the hypotheses of embodied cognition and spoken word recognition, we examined whether – and how – gesture could facilitate English speakers' discrimination between Mandarin words differing in lexical tone. Words were learned with gestures conveying tone pitch contours (pitch gestures), gestures conveying word meanings (semantic gestures) or no gestures. The results demonstrated that pitch gestures enhanced English speakers' discrimination between the meanings of Mandarin words differing in tone, whereas semantic gestures hindered their identification of tones in learned words. These findings indicate that the visuospatial features of pitch gestures strengthen the relationship between English speakers' representations of Mandarin lexical tones and word meanings, supporting the predictions of spoken word recognition and embodied cognition.
63 citations
TL;DR: This paper conducted a production study on Mandarin to investigate whether the presence/absence of corrective focus and the distinction between new/given information are encoded prosodically in tone languages, where acoustic cues such as F0, intensity and duration also distinguish lexical items (eg Mandarin).
Abstract: Prosody conveys discourse-level information, but the extent to which prosodic cues distinguish different kinds of information-structural concepts remains unclear The prosodic encoding of information structure is even more complicated in tone languages, where acoustic cues such as F0, intensity and duration also distinguish lexical items (eg Mandarin) Prior work on Mandarin led to divergent findings regarding whether and what prosodic cues mark the distinctions between information-structural types We conducted a production study on Mandarin to investigate whether (1) the presence/absence of corrective focus and (2) the distinction between new/given information are encoded prosodically Our results show that correctiveness was reflected in all three acoustic parameters: corrective words had longer durations, larger F0 ranges and larger intensity ranges than non-corrective words The new-given distinction was reflected only in lengthening and F0 range expansion, and only in the absence of correction (co
57 citations
TL;DR: This paper investigated how the interaction between syllable frequency and syllable-specific tonal probability guides online lexical access in speakers of mutually unintelligible Chinese dialects with three disparate tonal systems.
Abstract: An eye-tracking study investigated how the interaction between syllable frequency and syllable-specific tonal probability guides online lexical access in speakers of mutually unintelligible Chinese dialects with three disparate tonal systems. Mono-dialectal Mandarin speakers, bi-dialectal Shanghai–Mandarin speakers and bi-dialectal Cantonese–Mandarin speakers searched for target Mandarin syllable–tone combinations while their eye movements and mouse clicks were recorded. The results showed dialectal differences in online eye fixation patterns but not in offline mouse responses. For all groups, mouse clicks were fastest for infrequent syllables with most probable tones and slowest for infrequent syllables with least probable tones. In online eye movement responses, only mono-dialectal Mandarin speakers showed an interaction between syllable frequency and tonal probability. Mono-dialectal Mandarin speakers’ fixations were fastest for infrequent syllables with probable tones and slowest for infrequent syllab...
56 citations
TL;DR: This paper found that the scope of planning during sentence formulation is known to be flexible, as it can be influenced by speakers' communicative goals and language production pressures (among other factors).
Abstract: The scope of planning during sentence formulation is known to be flexible, as it can be influenced by speakers' communicative goals and language production pressures (among other factors). Two eye-tracked picture description experiments tested whether the time course of formulation is also modulated by grammatical structure and thus whether differences in linear word order across languages affect the breadth and order of conceptual and linguistic encoding operations. Native speakers of Tzeltal [a primarily verb–object–subject (VOS) language] and Dutch [a subject–verb–object (SVO) language] described pictures of transitive events. Analyses compared speakers' choice of sentence structure across events with more accessible and less accessible characters as well as the time course of formulation for sentences with different word orders. Character accessibility influenced subject selection in both languages in subject-initial and subject-final sentences, ruling against a radically incremental formulation proce...
48 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a small but growing body of psycholinguistic research focused on typologically diverse languages is presented, which represents an important development for the field, where theorising is becoming more important.
Abstract: Recent years have seen a small but growing body of psycholinguistic research focused on typologically diverse languages. This represents an important development for the field, where theorising is ...
TL;DR: This work investigates how listeners compensate for preceding sentence rate and subsequent vowel length when categorising words varying in voice-onset time (VOT), and finds that the effect of VOT preceded that of VL, suggesting that each cue is used as it becomes available.
Abstract: Many sources of context information in speech (such as speaking rate) occur either before or after the phonetic cues they influence, yet there is little work examining the time-course of these effects Here, we investigate how listeners compensate for preceding sentence rate and subsequent vowel length (a secondary cue that has been used as a proxy for speaking rate) when categorizing words varying in voice-onset time (VOT) Participants selected visual objects in a display while their eye-movements were recorded, allowing us to examine when each source of information had an effect on lexical processing We found that the effect of VOT preceded that of vowel length, suggesting that each cue is used as it becomes available In a second experiment, we found that, in contrast, the effect of preceding sentence rate occurred simultaneously with VOT, suggesting that listeners interpret VOT relative to preceding rate
TL;DR: Switch costs in both directions were not modulated by the presence of a verb cognate, and this effect was not affected by syntactic structure or L2 proficiency, which is informative for the field of bilingual processing and the lexical trigger hypothesis.
Abstract: In bilingual processing, cognates are associated with facilitatory processing, while switching between languages is associated with a processing cost. This study investigates whether co-activation of cognates affects the magnitude of switch costs in sentence context. A shadowing task was conducted to examine whether verb cognates reduce switch costs in sentences that switched between participants' L1 and L2. In addition, we considered whether these effects were influenced by L2 proficiency, switching direction and cross-linguistic overlap in syntactic structure. Bilinguals were presented with L1 and L2 sentences that contained a language switch preceded by a cognate. Shadowing latencies showed that switching to L2 was more costly than switching to L1. Switch costs in both directions were not modulated by the presence of a verb cognate, and this effect was not affected by syntactic structure or L2 proficiency. The results are informative for the field of bilingual processing and the lexical trigger hypothesis.
TL;DR: The results suggest that the ability to learn the meanings of new words from a context depends on the L2 lexical semantic knowledge of the reader.
Abstract: New word learning occurs incidentally through exposure to language. Hypothesising that effectiveness of contextual word learning in a second language (L2) depends on the quality of existing lexical semantic knowledge, we tested more and less proficient adult bilinguals in an incidental word learning task. One day after being exposed to rare words in an L2 (English) reading task, the bilinguals read sentences with the newly learned words in the sentence-final position, followed by related or unrelated meaning probes. Both proficiency groups showed some learning through faster responses on related trials and a frontal N400 effect observed during probe word reading. However, word learning was more robust for the higher proficiency group, who showed a larger semantic relatedness effect in unfamiliar contexts and a canonical N400 (central–parietal). The results suggest that the ability to learn the meanings of new words from a context depends on the L2 lexical semantic knowledge of the reader.
TL;DR: This paper investigated the reading of Vietnamese bi-syllabic compound words and reported an inhibitory, anti-frequency effect of Vietnamese compounds' constituents, which was predicted by a computational model of lexical processing grounded in naive discrimination learning.
Abstract: Although Vietnamese has a long history of linguistic research, as yet no psycholinguistic studies addressing lexical processing in this language have been carried out. This paper is the first to investigate lexical processing in Vietnamese, and this addresses the reading of Vietnamese bi-syllabic compound words. A large single-subject experiment with 20,000 words was complemented by a smaller multiple-subject experiment with 550 words. We report the novel finding of an inhibitory, anti-frequency effect of Vietnamese compounds’ constituents. We show that this anti-frequency effect is predicted by a computational model of lexical processing grounded in naive discrimination learning. We also show that predictors derived from this model provide a much better fit to the observed reaction times than traditional lexical-distributional predictors. Effects of the density of the compound graph, previously observed for English, were replicated for Vietnamese. Furthermore, tone diacritics were found to be important p...
TL;DR: These findings contradict the hypothesis that gesture affects thought by promoting the coordination of task-relevant hand movements with task- relevant speech, and lend support to the hypotheses that gesture grounds thought in action via its representational properties.
Abstract: The coordination of speech with gesture elicits changes in speakers’ problem-solving behaviour beyond the changes elicited by the coordination of speech with action. Participants solved the Tower of Hanoi puzzle (TOH1); explained their solution using speech coordinated with either Gestures (Gesture + Talk) or Actions (Action + Talk), or demonstrated their solution using Actions alone (Action); then solved the puzzle again (TOH2). For some participants (Switch group), disc weights during TOH2 were reversed (smallest = heaviest). Only in the Gesture + Talk Switch group did performance worsen from TOH1 to TOH2 – for all other groups, performance improved. In the Gesture + Talk Switch group, more one-handed gestures about the smallest disc during the explanation hurt subsequent performance compared to all other groups. These findings contradict the hypothesis that gesture affects thought by promoting the coordination of task-relevant hand movements with task-relevant speech, and lend support to the hypothesis that gesture grounds thought in action via its representational properties.
TL;DR: This work elicited pronoun biases for 502 verbs from seven Levin verb classes in two discourse contexts (implicit causality and implicit consequentiality), showing that in both contexts, verb class reliably predicts pronoun bias.
Abstract: Interpretation of a pronoun in one clause can be systematically affected by the verb in the previous clause. Compare Archibald angered Bartholomew because he … (he = Archibald) with Archibald criticised Bartholomew because he … (he = Bartholomew). While it is clear that meaning plays a critical role, it is unclear whether that meaning is directly encoded in the verb or, alternatively, inferred from world knowledge. We report evidence favouring the former account. We elicited pronoun biases for 502 verbs from seven Levin verb classes in two discourse contexts (implicit causality and implicit consequentiality), showing that in both contexts, verb class reliably predicts pronoun bias. These results confirm and extend recent findings about implicit causality and represent the first such study for implicit consequentiality. We discuss these findings in the context of recent work in semantics, and also develop a new, probabilistic generative account of pronoun interpretation.
TL;DR: This article investigated lexical access in Maltese, an understudied Semitic language, and found that the consonantal root and word pattern may each prime lexical accessing in the Maltese language.
Abstract: This study investigated lexical access in Maltese, an understudied Semitic language. We report here on a series of four lexical decision experiments designed to test the hypothesis that the consonantal root and the word pattern may each prime lexical access in Maltese. Priming of morphologically related forms is generally taken as evidence consistent with morphological decomposition in processing. Here, we used two speech priming techniques: auditory priming in which primes and targets were equally audible, and auditory masked priming in which primes are masked from conscious perception by volume-attenuation and compression. Our results show priming of targets by forms sharing a consonantal root, but not by forms sharing a word pattern.
TL;DR: This paper examined effect sizes computed from 126 experiments in 51 published embodied cognition studies to clarify the conditions under which perceptual simulations are most important, and found that effects of language statistics tend to be as large or larger than those of perceptual stimulation.
Abstract: The cognitive science literature increasingly demonstrates that perceptual representations are activated during conceptual processing. Such findings suggest that the debate on whether conceptual processing is predominantly symbolic or perceptual has been resolved. However, studies too frequently provide evidence for perceptual simulations without addressing whether other factors explain dependent variables as well, and if so, to what extent. The current paper examines effect sizes computed from 126 experiments in 51 published embodied cognition studies to clarify the conditions under which perceptual simulations are most important. Results showed that effects of language statistics tend to be as large or larger than those of perceptual stimulation. Moreover, factors that can be associated with immediate processing (button press, word processing) tend to reduce the effect size of perceptual simulation. These findings are considered in respect to the Symbol Interdependency Hypothesis, which argues that lang...
TL;DR: This paper examined the cognitive mechanisms behind duration variation, focusing on the contributions of speaker-internal constraints and audience design, and found that prior articulation of the target led to greater reduction than just thinking about the word.
Abstract: Speakers tend to reduce the duration of words that they have heard or spoken recently. We examine the cognitive mechanisms behind duration variation, focusing on the contributions of speaker-internal constraints and audience design. In three experiments, we asked speakers to give instructions to listeners about how to move objects. In Experiment 1, the instruction was preceded by an auditory prime, which elicited reduced spoken word duration on a target noun in a speaker-privilege condition, and additional reduction on a determiner in a mutual-knowledge condition. In Experiments 2a and 2b, we tested the related hypothesis that the speaker's experience articulating the target leads to fluent processing above and beyond fluency in other processing, such as lexical selection. While prior articulation of the target led to greater reduction than just thinking about the word (Experiment 2a), saying the prime led to equal reduction as hearing the prime (Experiment 2b). The pattern of results leads to the conclus...
TL;DR: In sentences like If Sally ate some of the cookies, then the rest are on the counter, it is found that the rest triggers a late, sustained positivity relative to Sally ateSome of the Cookies, and the rest is on thecounter, which is consistent with behavioural results and linguistic theory suggesting that the former sentence does not trigger a scalar implicature.
Abstract: Language comprehension involves not only constructing the literal meaning of a sentence but also going beyond the literal meaning to infer what was meant but not said. One widely studied test case is scalar implicature: The inference that, e.g., Sally ate some of the cookies implies she did not eat all of them. Research is mixed on whether this is due to a rote, grammaticalised procedure or instead a complex, contextualised inference. We find that in sentences like If Sally ate some of the cookies, then the rest are on the counter, that the rest triggers a late, sustained positivity relative to Sally ate some of the cookies, and the rest are on the counter. This is consistent with behavioural results and linguistic theory suggesting that the former sentence does not trigger a scalar implicature. This motivates a view on which scalar implicature is contextualised but dependent on grammatical structure.
TL;DR: In this paper, two picture-word interference experiments provide new evidence on the nature of phonological processing in speech production and visual word processing, showing both category and context-specific representations are activated in sandhi word production.
Abstract: Two picture–word interference experiments provide new evidence on the nature of phonological processing in speech production and visual word processing. In both experiments, responses were significantly faster either when distractor and target matched in tone category, but had different overt realisations (toneme condition) or when target and distractor matched in overt realisation, but mismatched in tone category (contour condition). Tone 3 sandhi is an allophone of Beijing Mandarin Tone 3 (T3). Its contour is similar to another tone, Tone 2. In Experiment 1, sandhi picture naming was faster with contour (Tone 2) and toneme (low Tone 3) distractors, compared to control distractors. This indicates both category and context-specific representations are activated in sandhi word production. In Experiment 2, both contour (Tone 2) and toneme (low Tone 3) picture naming was facilitated by visually presented sandhi distractors, compared to controls, evidence that category and context-specific instantiated repres...
TL;DR: It is concluded that Broca’s area is not selectively processing syntactic movement, but that subregions are selectively responsive to sentence structure.
Abstract: The role of Broca’s area in sentence processing is hotly debated. Hypotheses include that Broca’s area supports sentence comprehension via syntax-specific processes, hierarchical structure building, or working memory. Here we adopt a within-subject functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) approach using sentence-level contrasts and non-sentential comparison tasks to address these hypotheses. Standard syntactic movement distance effects were replicated, but no difference was found between movement and non-movement sentences in Broca's area in the group or consistently in the individual subject analyses. Group and individual results both identify Broca's area subregions that are selective for sentence structure. Group, but not individual subject results, suggest shared resources for sentence processing and articulation in Broca's area. We conclude that Broca’s area is not selectively processing syntactic movement, but that subregions are selectively responsive to sentence structure. Our findings reinfor...
TL;DR: It is argued that discourse effects on acoustic reduction may be at least partially mediated by processing facilitation, and research needs to simultaneously consider both competence (message) and performance (processing) constraints on prosody.
Abstract: Words vary in acoustic prominence; for example repeated words tend to be reduced, while focused elements tend to be acoustically prominent. We discuss two approaches to this phenomenon. On the message-based view, acoustic choices signal the speaker's meaning or pragmatics, or are guided by syntactic structure. On the facilitation-based view, reduced forms reflect facilitation of production processing mechanisms. We argue that message-based constraints correlate systematically with production facilitation. Moreover, we argue that discourse effects on acoustic reduction may be at least partially mediated by processing facilitation. Thus, research needs to simultaneously consider both competence (message) and performance (processing) constraints on prosody, specifically in terms of the psychological mechanisms underlying acoustic reduction. To facilitate this goal, we present preliminary processing models of message-based and facilitation-based approaches, and outline directions for future research.
TL;DR: This article examined word order preferences as a function of phrasal length in Basque and found a general long-before-short preference, and a tendency to place the verb in a sentence-medial position when one constituent is long.
Abstract: This study examined word order preferences as a function of phrasal length in Basque. Basque is an OV language with flexible sentence word order and rich verb agreement. Contrary to the universal short-before-long preference predicted by availability models, Hawkins has argued that short-before-long orders are preferred in VO languages such as English, whereas long-before-short orders are preferred in OV languages such as Japanese. However, it is unclear how length affects word order preferences when an OV language has rich verb agreement and allows post-verbal arguments. We found a general long-before-short preference, and a tendency to place the verb in a sentence-medial position when one constituent is long. We argue that since agreement morphology signals the thematic role and case of surrounding phrases, it contributes to speeding up sentence processing. We conclude that morphologically rich languages employ both general adjacency mechanisms and language-specific resources to enhance language efficiency.
TL;DR: The results are interpreted as indicating priming of shared features and lexical-level selection mechanisms contribute to the cumulative interference effect, while adding noise to a booster mechanism could account for the pattern of responses observed in the LIFG.
Abstract: The speed at which target pictures are named increases monotonically as a function of prior retrieval of other exemplars of the same semantic category and is unaffected by the number of intervening items. This cumulative semantic interference effect is generally attributed to three mechanisms: shared feature activation, priming and lexical-level selection. However, at least two additional mechanisms have been proposed: (1) a 'booster' to amplify lexical-level activation and (2) retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF). In a perfusion functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) experiment, we tested hypotheses concerning the involvement of all five mechanisms. Our results demonstrate that the cumulative interference effect is associated with perfusion signal changes in the left perirhinal and middle temporal cortices that increase monotonically according to the ordinal position of exemplars being named. The left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) also showed significant perfusion signal changes across ordinal presentations; however, these responses did not conform to a monotonically increasing function. None of the cerebral regions linked with RIF in prior neuroimaging and modelling studies showed significant effects. This might be due to methodological differences between the RIF paradigm and continuous naming as the latter does not involve practicing particular information. We interpret the results as indicating priming of shared features and lexical-level selection mechanisms contribute to the cumulative interference effect, while adding noise to a booster mechanism could account for the pattern of responses observed in the LIFG.
TL;DR: A representational framework for the lexical syntax of number in spoken word production that can account for much of the data regarding number in noun and noun phrase production is proposed.
Abstract: Number is an important aspect of lexical syntax. While there has been substantial research devoted to number agreement at the level of the sentence, relatively less attention has been paid to the representation of number at the level of individual lexical items. In this paper, we propose a representational framework for the lexical syntax of number in spoken word production that we believe can account for much of the data regarding number in noun and noun phrase production. This framework considers the representation of regular and irregular nouns, and more unusual cases such as pluralia tantum (e.g. scissors), zero plurals (e.g. sheep) and mass nouns (e.g. garlic). We not only address bare noun production but also the production of determiner + noun phrases. While focusing on examples from English, we extend the framework to include languages with grammatical gender such as German.
TL;DR: The middle portion of the lateral prefrontal cortex (Brodmann area 46) showed an increased response to some in contexts with fewer cues to the inference, suggesting that this condition elicited greater effort.
Abstract: The present study investigated the neural correlates of the realisation of scalar inferences, i.e., the interpretation of some as meaning some but not all. We used magnetoencephalography, which has high temporal resolution, to measure neural activity while participants heard stories that included the scalar inference trigger some in contexts that either provide strong cues for a scalar inference or provide weaker cues. The middle portion of the lateral prefrontal cortex (Brodmann area 46) showed an increased response to some in contexts with fewer cues to the inference, suggesting that this condition elicited greater effort. While the results are not predicted by traditional all-or-nothing accounts of scalar inferencing that assume the process is always automatic or always effortful, they are consistent with more recent gradient accounts which predict that the speed and effort of scalar inferences is strongly modulated by numerous contextual factors.
TL;DR: The authors used functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify the neural regions that support comprehension of fingerspelled words, printed words, and American Sign Language (ASL) signs in deaf ASL-English bilinguals.
Abstract: We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify the neural regions that support comprehension of fingerspelled words, printed words, and American Sign Language (ASL) signs in deaf ASL–English bilinguals. Participants made semantic judgements (concrete–abstract?) to each lexical type, and hearing non-signers served as controls. All three lexical types engaged a left frontotemporal circuit associated with lexical semantic processing. Both printed and fingerspelled words activated the visual word form area for deaf signers only. Fingerspelled words were more left lateralised than signs, paralleling the difference between reading and listening for spoken language. Greater activation in left supramarginal gyrus was observed for signs compared to fingerspelled words, supporting its role in processing sign-specific phonology. Fingerspelling ability was negatively correlated with activation in left occipital cortex, while ASL ability was negatively correlated with activation in right angular gyrus. Over...
TL;DR: This paper found that speakers modify their speech for distracted listeners, and in an instruction-giving task they specifically use more acoustically prominent (longer) pronunciations for distr...
Abstract: How do speakers accommodate distracted listeners? Specifically, how does prosody change when speakers know that their addressees are multitasking? Speakers might use more acoustically prominent words for distracted addressees, to ensure that important information is communicated. Alternatively, speakers might disengage from the task and use less prominent pronunciations with distracted addressees. A further question is whether prosodic prominence changes globally or if there are effects specific to the most relevant information. We studied these effects in two instruction-giving experiments. Speakers instructed listeners to move objects to locations on a board. In the distraction condition, addressees were also completing a demanding secondary computer task; in the attentive condition they paid full attention. Results demonstrated that speakers modify their speech for distracted listeners, and in an instruction-giving task they specifically use more acoustically prominent (longer) pronunciations for distr...