TY - JOUR A1 - Abakarova, Dzhuma A1 - Iskarous, Khalil A1 - Noiray, Aude T1 - Quantifying lingual coarticulation in German using mutual information BT - an ultrasound study JF - The journal of the Acoustical Society of America N2 - In previous research, mutual information (MI) was employed to quantify the physical information shared between consecutive phonological segments, based on electromagnetic articulography data. In this study, MI is extended to quantifying coarticulatory resistance (CR) versus overlap in German using ultrasound imaging. Two measurements are tested as input to MI: (1) the highest point on the tongue body and (2) the first coefficient of the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) of the whole tongue contour. Both measures are used to examine changes in coarticulation between two time points during the syllable span: the consonant midpoint and the vowel onset. Results corroborate previous findings reporting differences in coarticulatory overlap in German and across languages. Further, results suggest that MI used with the highest point on the tongue body captures distinctions related both to place and manner of articulation, while the first DFT coefficient does not provide any additional information regarding global (whole tongue) as opposed to local (individual articulator) aspects of CR. However, both methods capture temporal distinctions in coarticulatory resistance between the two time points. Results are discussed with respect to the potential of MI measure to provide a way of unifying coarticulation quantification methods across data collection techniques. Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1121/1.5047669 SN - 0001-4966 SN - 1520-8524 VL - 144 IS - 2 SP - 897 EP - 907 PB - American Institute of Physics CY - Melville ER - TY - GEN A1 - Abboub, Nawal A1 - Boll-Avetisyan, Natalie A1 - Bhatara, Anjali A1 - Höhle, Barbara A1 - Nazzi, Thierry T1 - An exploration of rhythmic grouping of speech sequences by french- and german-learning infants T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Rhythm in music and speech can be characterized by a constellation of several acoustic cues. Individually, these cues have different effects on rhythmic perception: sequences of sounds alternating in duration are perceived as short-long pairs (weak-strong/iambicpattern), whereas sequences of sounds alternating in intensity or pitch are perceived as loud-soft, or high-low pairs (strong-weak/trochaic pattern). This perceptual bias-called the lambic-Trochaic Law (ITL) has been claimed to be an universal property of the auditory system applying in both the music and the language domains. Recent studies have shown that language experience can modulate the effects of the ITL on rhythmic perception of both speech and non-speech sequences in adults, and of non-speech sequences in 7.5-month-old infants. The goal of the present study was to explore whether language experience also modulates infants' grouping of speech. To do so, we presented sequences of syllables to monolingual French- and German-learning 7.5-month-olds. Using the Headturn Preference Procedure (HPP), we examined whether they were able to perceive a rhythmic structure in sequences of syllables that alternated in duration, pitch, or intensity. Our findings show that both French- and German-learning infants perceived a rhythmic structure when it was cued by duration or pitch but not intensity. Our findings also show differences in how these infants use duration and pitch cues to group syllable sequences, suggesting that pitch cues were the easier ones to use. Moreover, performance did not differ across languages, failing to reveal early language effects on rhythmic perception. These results contribute to our understanding of the origin of rhythmic perception and perceptual mechanisms shared across music and speech, which may bootstrap language acquisition. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 427 KW - language acquisition KW - prosody KW - grouping KW - iambic-trochaic law KW - perceptual biases KW - french-learning infants KW - german-learning infants Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-407201 IS - 427 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Abusch, Dorit T1 - Focus presuppositions N2 - This paper reviews notions related to focus and presupposition and addresses the hypothesis that focus triggers an existential presupposition. Presupposition projection behavior in certain examples appears to favor a presuppositional analysis of focus. It is argued that these examples are open to a different analysis using givenness theory. Overall, the analysis favors a weak semantics for focus not including an existential presupposition. KW - focus KW - presupposition KW - alternative semantics presupposition projection KW - givenness Y1 - 2007 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19663 ER - TY - INPR A1 - Abutalebi, Jubin A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - Bilingualism, cognition, and aging T2 - Bilingualism : language and cognition. N2 - Extract: Topics in psycholinguistics and the neurocognition of language rarely attract the attention of journalists or the general public. One topic that has done so, however, is the potential benefits of bilingualism for general cognitive functioning and development, and as a precaution against cognitive decline in old age. Sensational claims have been made in the public domain, mostly by journalists and politicians. Recently (September 4, 2014) The Guardian reported that “learning a foreign language can increase the size of your brain”, and Michael Gove, the UK's previous Education Secretary, noted in an interview with The Guardian (September 30, 2011) that “learning languages makes you smarter”. The present issue of BLC addresses these topics by providing a state-of-the-art overview of theoretical and experimental research on the role of bilingualism for cognition in children and adults. Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728914000741 SN - 1366-7289 SN - 1469-1841 VL - 18 IS - 1 SP - 1 EP - 2 PB - Cambridge Univ. Press CY - New York ER - TY - GEN A1 - Adak, Hülya T1 - Teaching the Armenian Genocide in Turkey: Curriculum, Methods, and Sources T2 - PMLA : Publications of the Modern Language Association Y1 - 2016 SN - 0030-8129 VL - 131 SP - 1515 EP - 1518 PB - Modern Language Association of America CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Adani, Flavia A1 - Forgiarini, Matteo A1 - Guasti, Maria Teresa A1 - Van der Lely, Heather K. J. T1 - Number dissimilarities facilitate the comprehension of relative clauses in children with (Grammatical) Specific Language Impairment JF - Journal of child language N2 - This study investigates whether number dissimilarities on subject and object DPs facilitate the comprehension of subject-and object-extracted centre-embedded relative clauses in children with Grammatical Specific Language Impairment (G-SLI). We compared the performance of a group of English-speaking children with G-SLI (mean age: 12; 11) with that of two groups of younger typically developing (TD) children, matched on grammar and receptive vocabulary, respectively. All groups were more accurate on subject-extracted relative clauses than object-extracted ones and, crucially, they all showed greater accuracy for sentences with dissimilar number features (i.e., one singular, one plural) on the head noun and the embedded DP. These findings are interpreted in the light of current psycholinguistic models of sentence comprehension in TD children and provide further insight into the linguistic nature of G-SLI. Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000913000184 SN - 0305-0009 SN - 1469-7602 VL - 41 IS - 4 SP - 811 EP - 841 PB - Cambridge Univ. Press CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Adani, Flavia A1 - Stegenwallner-Schutz, Maja Henny Katherine A1 - Niesel, Talea T1 - The Peaceful Co-existence of Input Frequency and Structural Intervention Effects on the Comprehension of Complex Sentences in German-Speaking Children JF - Frontiers in psychology N2 - The predictions of two contrasting approaches to the acquisition of transitive relative clauses were tested within the same groups of German-speaking participants aged from 3 to 5 years old. The input frequency approach predicts that object relative clauses with inanimate heads (e.g., the pullover that the man is scratching) are comprehended earlier and more accurately than those with an animate head (e.g., the man that the boy is scratching). In contrast, the structural intervention approach predicts that object relative clauses with two full NP arguments mismatching in number (e.g., the man that the boys are scratching) are comprehended earlier and more accurately than those with number-matching NPs (e.g., the man that the boy is scratching). These approaches were tested in two steps. First, we ran a corpus analysis to ensure that object relative clauses with number-mismatching NPs are not more frequent than object relative clauses with number-matching NPs in child directed speech. Next, the comprehension of these structures was tested experimentally in 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds respectively by means of a color naming task. By comparing the predictions of the two approaches within the same participant groups, we were able to uncover that the effects predicted by the input frequency and by the structural intervention approaches co-exist and that they both influence the performance of children on transitive relative clauses, but in a manner that is modulated by age. These results reveal a sensitivity to animacy mismatch already being demonstrated by 3-year-olds and show that animacy is initially deployed more reliably than number to interpret relative clauses correctly. In all age groups, the animacy mismatch appears to explain the performance of children, thus, showing that the comprehension of frequent object relative clauses is enhanced compared to the other conditions. Starting with 4-year-olds but especially in 5-year-olds, the number mismatch supported comprehension-a facilitation that is unlikely to be driven by input frequency. Once children fine-tune their sensitivity to verb agreement information around the age of four, they are also able to deploy number marking to overcome the intervention effects. This study highlights the importance of testing experimentally contrasting theoretical approaches in order to characterize the multifaceted, developmental nature of language acquisition. KW - relative clauses KW - sentence comprehension KW - input frequency KW - number KW - animacy KW - language acquisition KW - German Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01590 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 8 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Adani, Flavia A1 - van der Lely, Heather K. J. A1 - Forgiarini, Matteo A1 - Guasti, Maria Teresa T1 - Grammatical feature dissimilarities make relative clauses easier : a comprehension study with Italian children N2 - The Relativized Minimality approach to A'-dependencies (Friedmann et al., 2009) predicts that headed object relative clauses (RCs) and which questions are the most difficult, due to the presence of a lexical restriction on both the subject and the object DP which creates intervention. We investigated comprehension of center-embedded headed object RCs with Italian children, where Number and Gender feature values on subject and object DPs are manipulated. We found that. Number conditions are always more accurate than Gender ones, showing that intervention is sensitive to DP-internal structure. We propose a finer definition of the lexical restriction where external and syntactically active features (such as Number) reduce intervention whereas internal and (possibly) lexicalized features (such as Gender) do so to a lesser extent. Our results are also compatible with a memory interference approach in which the human parser is sensitive to highly specific properties of the linguistic input, such as the cue-based model (Van Dyke, 2007). Y1 - 2010 UR - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00243841 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2010.03.018 SN - 0024-3841 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Adelt, Anne A1 - Hanne, Sandra A1 - Stadie, Nicole T1 - Treatment of sentence comprehension and production in aphasia BT - is there cross-modal generalisation? N2 - Exploring generalisation following treatment of language deficits in aphasia can provide insights into the functional relation of the cognitive processing systems involved. In the present study, we first review treatment outcomes of interventions targeting sentence processing deficits and, second report a treatment study examining the occurrence of practice effects and generalisation in sentence comprehension and production. In order to explore the potential linkage between processing systems involved in comprehending and producing sentences, we investigated whether improvements generalise within (i.e., uni-modal generalisation in comprehension or in production) and/or across modalities (i.e., cross-modal generalisation from comprehension to production or vice versa). Two individuals with aphasia displaying co-occurring deficits in sentence comprehension and production were trained on complex, non-canonical sentences in both modalities. Two evidence-based treatment protocols were applied in a crossover intervention study with sequence of treatment phases being randomly allocated. Both participants benefited significantly from treatment, leading to uni-modal generalisation in both comprehension and production. However, cross-modal generalisation did not occur. The magnitude of uni-modal generalisation in sentence production was related to participants’ sentence comprehension performance prior to treatment. These findings support the assumption of modality-specific sub-systems for sentence comprehension and production, being linked uni-directionally from comprehension to production. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 300 KW - sentence comprehension KW - sentence production KW - cross-modal generalisation KW - aphasia treatment Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-96365 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Albert, Aviad A1 - Nicenboim, Bruno T1 - Modeling sonority in terms of pitch intelligibility with the nucleus attraction principle JF - Cognitive science : a multidisciplinary journal of anthropology, artificial intelligence, education, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology ; journal of the Cognitive Science Society N2 - Sonority is a fundamental notion in phonetics and phonology, central to many descriptions of the syllable and various useful predictions in phonotactics. Although widely accepted, sonority lacks a clear basis in speech articulation or perception, given that traditional formal principles in linguistic theory are often exclusively based on discrete units in symbolic representation and are typically not designed to be compatible with auditory perception, sensorimotor control, or general cognitive capacities. In addition, traditional sonority principles also exhibit systematic gaps in empirical coverage. Against this backdrop, we propose the incorporation of symbol-based and signal-based models to adequately account for sonority in a complementary manner. We claim that sonority is primarily a perceptual phenomenon related to pitch, driving the optimization of syllables as pitch-bearing units in all language systems. We suggest a measurable acoustic correlate for sonority in terms of periodic energy, and we provide a novel principle that can account for syllabic well-formedness, the nucleus attraction principle (NAP). We present perception experiments that test our two NAP-based models against four traditional sonority models, and we use a Bayesian data analysis approach to test and compare them. Our symbolic NAP model outperforms all the other models we test, while our continuous bottom-up NAP model is at second place, along with the best performing traditional models. We interpret the results as providing strong support for our proposals: (i) the designation of periodic energy as the acoustic correlate of sonority; (ii) the incorporation of continuous entities in phonological models of perception; and (iii) the dual-model strategy that separately analyzes symbol-based top-down processes and signal-based bottom-up processes in speech perception. KW - Sonority KW - Pitch intelligibility KW - Periodic energy KW - Bayesian data KW - analysis KW - Speech perception KW - Phonetics and phonology Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.13161 SN - 0364-0213 SN - 1551-6709 VL - 46 IS - 7 PB - Wiley CY - Hoboken ER -