@article{HeyerClahsen2014, author = {Heyer, Vera and Clahsen, Harald}, title = {Late bilinguals see a scan in scanner AND in scandal: dissecting formal overlap from morphological priming in the processing of derived words}, series = {Bilingualism : language and cognition.}, volume = {18}, journal = {Bilingualism : language and cognition.}, number = {3}, publisher = {Cambridge Univ. Press}, address = {New York}, issn = {1366-7289}, doi = {10.1017/S1366728914000662}, pages = {543 -- 550}, year = {2014}, abstract = {Masked priming research with late (non-native) bilinguals has reported facilitation effects following morphologically derived prime words (scanner - scan). However, unlike for native speakers, there are suggestions that purely orthographic prime-target overlap (scandal - scan) also produces priming in non-native visual word recognition. Our study directly compares orthographically related and derived prime-target pairs. While native readers showed morphological but not formal overlap priming, the two prime types yielded the same magnitudes of facilitation for non-natives. We argue that early word recognition processes in a non-native language are more influenced by surface-form properties than in one's native language.}, language = {en} } @article{SpalekGotznerWartenburger2014, author = {Spalek, Katharina and Gotzner, Nicole and Wartenburger, Isabell}, title = {Not only the apples}, series = {Journal of memory and language : JML}, volume = {70}, journal = {Journal of memory and language : JML}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {San Diego}, issn = {0749-596X}, doi = {10.1016/j.jml.2013.09.001}, pages = {68 -- 84}, year = {2014}, abstract = {Focus sensitive particles highlight the relevance of contextual alternatives for the interpretation of a sentence. Two experiments tested whether this leads to better encoding and therefore, ultimately, better recall of focus alternatives. Participants were presented with auditory stimuli that introduced a set of elements ("context sentence") and continued in three different versions: the critical sentences either contained the exclusive particle nur ("only"), the inclusive particle sogar ("even"), or no particle (control condition). After being exposed to blocks of ten trials, participants were asked to recall the elements in the context sentence. The results show that both particles enhanced memory performance for the alternatives to the focused element, relative to the control condition. The results support the assumption that information-structural alternatives are better encoded in memory in the presence of a focus sensitive particle.}, language = {en} } @article{PassowWesterhausenHugdahletal.2014, author = {Passow, Susanne and Westerhausen, Rene and Hugdahl, Kenneth and Wartenburger, Isabell and Heekeren, Hauke R. and Lindenberger, Ulman and Li, Shu-Chen}, title = {Electrophysiological correlates of adult age differences in attentional control of auditory processing}, series = {Cerebral cortex}, volume = {24}, journal = {Cerebral cortex}, number = {1}, publisher = {Oxford Univ. Press}, address = {Cary}, issn = {1047-3211}, doi = {10.1093/cercor/bhs306}, pages = {249 -- 260}, year = {2014}, abstract = {In addition to sensory decline, age-related losses in auditory perception also reflect impairments in attentional modulation of perceptual saliency. Using an attention and intensity-modulated dichotic listening paradigm, we investigated electrophysiological correlates of processing conflicts between attentional focus and perceptual saliency in 25 younger and 26 older adults. Participants were instructed to attend to the right or left ear, and perceptual saliency was manipulated by varying the intensities of both ears. Attentional control demand was higher in conditions when attentional focus and perceptual saliency favored opposing ears than in conditions without such conflicts. Relative to younger adults, older adults modulated their attention less flexibly and were more influenced by perceptual saliency. Our results show, for the first time, that in younger adults a late negativity in the event-related potential (ERP) at fronto-central and parietal electrodes was sensitive to perceptual-attentional conflicts during auditory processing (N450 modulation effect). Crucially, the magnitude of the N450 modulation effect correlated positively with task performance. In line with lower attentional flexibility, the ERP waveforms of older adults showed absence of the late negativity and the modulation effect. This suggests that aging compromises the activation of the frontoparietal attentional network when processing the competing and conflicting auditory information.}, language = {en} } @article{Kupetz2014, author = {Kupetz, Maxi}, title = {Empathy displays as interactional achievements-Multimodal and sequential aspects}, series = {Journal of pragmatics : an interdisciplinary journal of language studies}, volume = {61}, journal = {Journal of pragmatics : an interdisciplinary journal of language studies}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {0378-2166}, doi = {10.1016/j.pragma.2013.11.006}, pages = {4 -- 34}, year = {2014}, language = {en} } @article{KlassertGagarinaKauschke2014, author = {Klassert, Annegret and Gagarina, Natalʹja Vladimirovna and Kauschke, Christina}, title = {Object and action naming in Russian- and German- speaking monolingual and bilingual children*}, series = {Bilingualism : language and cognition.}, volume = {17}, journal = {Bilingualism : language and cognition.}, number = {1}, publisher = {Cambridge Univ. Press}, address = {New York}, issn = {1366-7289}, doi = {10.1017/S1366728913000096}, pages = {73 -- 88}, year = {2014}, abstract = {The present study investigates the influence of word category on naming performance in two populations: bilingual and monolingual children. The question is whether and, if so, to what extent monolingual and bilingual children differ with respect to noun and verb naming and whether a noun bias exists in the lexical abilities of bilingual children. Picture naming of objects and actions by Russian-German bilingual children (aged 4-7 years) was compared to age-matched monolingual children. The results clearly demonstrate a naming deficit of bilingual children in comparison to monolingual children that increases with age. Noun learning is more fragile in bilingual contexts than is verb learning. In bilingual language acquisition, nouns do not predominate over verbs as much as is seen in monolingual German and Russian children. The results are discussed with respect to semantic-conceptual aspects and language-specific features of nouns and verbs, and the impact of input on the acquisition of these word categories.}, language = {en} } @article{GroenewoldBastiaanseNickelsetal.2014, author = {Groenewold, Rimke and Bastiaanse, Roelien and Nickels, Lyndsey and Wieling, Martijn and Huiskes, Mike}, title = {The effects of direct and indirect speech on discourse comprehension in Dutch listeners with and without aphasia}, series = {Aphasiology : an international, interdisciplinary journal}, volume = {28}, journal = {Aphasiology : an international, interdisciplinary journal}, number = {7}, publisher = {Routledge, Taylor \& Francis Group}, address = {Abingdon}, issn = {0268-7038}, doi = {10.1080/02687038.2014.902916}, pages = {862 -- 884}, year = {2014}, abstract = {Background: Research on language comprehension in aphasia has primarily focused on comprehension of isolated words and sentences. Even though previous studies have provided insights into comprehension abilities of individuals with aphasia at the word and grammatical level, our understanding of the nature and extent of their language comprehension (dis)abilities is not yet complete. In contrast to the highly restricted semantic and syntactic interpretation of sentences, discourse comprehension requires additional pragmatic and non-linguistic skills.Aims: The purpose of this study was to assess language comprehension in individuals with and without aphasia at the discourse level. In particular, it addressed the question of whether the use of direct speech, compared to indirect speech, affects comprehension of narrative discourse in Dutch aphasic and non-brain-damaged (NBD) listeners.Methods \& Procedures: The Direct Speech Comprehension (DISCO) test was developed to examine the effects of manipulating direct vs. indirect speech on discourse comprehension. Twenty-three individuals with aphasia and 20 NBD participants were presented with spoken narratives that contained either direct or indirect speech reports. The narratives were presented audio-visually on an iPad, and comprehension was assessed with yes/no questions.Outcomes \& Results: The performance of the participants with aphasia was significantly poorer than that of the NBD participants. Moreover, a main effect for condition type was found, indicating that narratives with direct speech reports were better understood than narratives with indirect speech reports by listeners with and without aphasia. There was no interaction between group and condition type indicating that this main effect held for both the aphasic and the NBD listeners. However, for the participants with aphasia, there was an interaction between condition and Token Test error score indicating that the positive effect of direct speech constructions diminishes for individuals with poorer comprehension.Conclusions: Direct speech constructions facilitate language comprehension in listeners with and without aphasia. One explanation for this finding is the occurrence of additional layers of communication, such as intonation and facial expression, often accompanying direct speech constructions. An alternative account is the degree of grammatical complexity: In Dutch, the syntactic construction of indirect speech requires embedding, whereas in direct speech the introductory sentence and the quote are both main clauses. The finding that the beneficial effect of direct speech on language comprehension diminishes for individuals with severe aphasia may indicate that the DISCO is too difficult for them to reveal an effect of a subtle manipulation such as that of condition type.}, language = {en} } @article{LorenzHeideBurchert2014, author = {Lorenz, Antje and Heide, Judith and Burchert, Frank}, title = {Compound naming in aphasia: effects of complexity, part of speech, and semantic transparency}, series = {Language, cognition and neuroscience}, volume = {29}, journal = {Language, cognition and neuroscience}, number = {1}, publisher = {Routledge, Taylor \& Francis Group}, address = {Abingdon}, issn = {2327-3798}, doi = {10.1080/01690965.2013.766357}, pages = {88 -- 106}, year = {2014}, language = {en} } @article{JaenschHeyerGordonetal.2014, author = {Jaensch, Carol and Heyer, Vera and Gordon, Peter and Clahsen, Harald}, title = {What plurals and compounds reveal about constraints in word formation}, series = {Language acquisition : a journal of developmental linguistics}, volume = {21}, journal = {Language acquisition : a journal of developmental linguistics}, number = {4}, publisher = {Routledge, Taylor \& Francis Group}, address = {Abingdon}, issn = {1048-9223}, doi = {10.1080/10489223.2014.892949}, pages = {319 -- 338}, year = {2014}, abstract = {Morphological systems are constrained in how they interact with each other. One case that has been widely studied in the psycholinguistic literature is the avoidance of plurals inside compounds (e.g. *rats eater vs. rat eater) in English and other languages, the so-called plurals-in-compounds effect. Several previous studies have shown that both adult and child speakers are sensitive to this contrast, but the question of whether semantic, morphological, or surface-form constraints are responsible for the plurals-in-compounds effect remains controversial. The present study provides new empirical evidence from adult and child English to resolve this controversy. Graded linguistic judgments were obtained from 96 children (age range: 7;06 to 12;08) and 32 adults. In the task, participants were asked to rate compounds containing different kinds of singular or plural modifiers. The results indicated that both children and adults disliked regular plurals inside compounds, whereas irregular plurals were rated as marginal and singulars as fully acceptable. Furthermore, acceptability ratings were found not to be affected by the phonological surface form of a compound-internal modifier. We conclude that semantic and morphological (rather than surface-form) constraints are responsible for the plurals-in-compounds effect, in both children and adults.}, language = {en} } @article{BacskaiAtkari2014, author = {Bacskai-Atkari, Julia}, title = {Cyclical change in Hungarian comparatives}, series = {Diachronica}, volume = {31}, journal = {Diachronica}, number = {4}, publisher = {Benjamins}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {0176-4225}, doi = {10.1075/dia.31.4.01bac}, pages = {465 -- 505}, year = {2014}, abstract = {This paper examines cyclical changes in comparative subclauses, showing how operators are reanalysed as complementisers via the general mechanism of the relative cycle, and how this is related to whether certain lexical elements have to be deleted at the left periphery. I also show that only operators appearing without a lexical XP can be grammaticalised, which follows from the nature of the formal features associated with the various operator elements. Though the main focus is on Hungarian historical data, the framework can be applied to other languages too, such as German and Italian, since the changes stem from general principles of economy.}, language = {en} } @article{LeminenClahsen2014, author = {Leminen, Alina and Clahsen, Harald}, title = {Brain potentials to inflected adjectives: Beyond storage and decomposition}, series = {Brain research : an international multidisciplinary journal devoted to fundamental research in the brain sciences}, volume = {1543}, journal = {Brain research : an international multidisciplinary journal devoted to fundamental research in the brain sciences}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {0006-8993}, doi = {10.1016/j.brainres.2013.10.038}, pages = {223 -- 234}, year = {2014}, language = {en} }