TY - JOUR A1 - Yue, Jinxing A1 - Alter, Kai-Uwe A1 - Howard, David A1 - Bastiaanse, Roelien T1 - Early access to lexical-level phonological representations of Mandarin word-forms BT - evidence from auditory N1 habituation JF - Language, cognition and neuroscience N2 - An auditory habituation design was used to investigate whether lexical-level phonological representations in the brain can be rapidly accessed after the onset of a spoken word. We studied the N1 component of the auditory event-related electrical potential, and measured the amplitude decrements of N1 associated with the repetition of a monosyllabic tone word and an acoustically similar pseudo-word in Mandarin Chinese. Effects related to the contrastive onset consonants were controlled for by introducing two control words. We show that repeated pseudo-words consistently elicit greater amplitude decrements in N1 than real words. Furthermore, this lexicality effect is free from sensory fatigue or rapid learning of the pseudo-word. These results suggest that a lexical-level phonological representation of a spoken word can be accessed as early as 110ms after the onset of the word-form. KW - Auditory N1 KW - short-term habituation KW - spoken word KW - Mandarin Chinese KW - language KW - event-related potential KW - lexical access Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2017.1290261 SN - 2327-3798 SN - 2327-3801 VL - 32 IS - 9 SP - 1148 EP - 1163 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wu, Fuyun A1 - Kaiser, Elsi A1 - Vasishth, Shravan T1 - Effects of early cues on the processing of chinese relative clauses BT - evidence for experience-based theories JF - Cognitive science : a multidisciplinary journal of anthropology, artificial intelligence, education, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology ; journal of the Cognitive Science Society N2 - We used Chinese prenominal relative clauses (RCs) to test the predictions of two competing accounts of sentence comprehension difficulty: the experience-based account of Levy () and the Dependency Locality Theory (DLT; Gibson, ). Given that in Chinese RCs, a classifier and/or a passive marker BEI can be added to the sentence-initial position, we manipulated the presence/absence of classifiers and the presence/absence of BEI, such that BEI sentences were passivized subject-extracted RCs, and no-BEI sentences were standard object-extracted RCs. We conducted two self-paced reading experiments, using the same critical stimuli but somewhat different filler items. Reading time patterns from both experiments showed facilitative effects of BEI within and beyond RC regions, and delayed facilitative effects of classifiers, suggesting that cues that occur before a clear signal of an upcoming RC can help Chinese comprehenders to anticipate RC structures. The data patterns are not predicted by the DLT, but they are consistent with the predictions of experience-based theories. KW - Storage cost KW - Experience KW - Relative clause KW - Chinese KW - Classifiers KW - BEI Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12551 SN - 0364-0213 SN - 1551-6709 VL - 42 SP - 1101 EP - 1133 PB - Wiley CY - Hoboken ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wiese, Heike A1 - Oncu, Mehmet Tahir A1 - Bracker, Philip T1 - Verb-third-position in Turkish-German Language Contact BT - Information-structured Linearization of singular and multilingual Speakers JF - Deutsche Sprache : ds ; Zeitschrift für Theorie, Praxis, Dokumentation N2 - In present-day German we find new word order options, particularly well-known from Turkish-German bilingual speakers in the contexts of new urban dialects, which allow violations of the canonical verb-second position in independent declarative clauses. In these cases, two positions are occupied in the forefield in front of the finite verb, usually by an adverbial and a subject, which identify, at the level of information structure, frame-setter and topic, respectively. Our study investigates the influence of verbal versus language -independent information-structural preferences for this linearisation, comparing Turkish-German multilingual speakers who have grown up in Germany with monolingual German and Turkish speakers. For tasks, in which grammatical restrictions were largely minimised, the results indicate a general tendency to place verbs in a position after the frame-setter and the topic; in addition, we found language-specific influences that distinguish Turkish-German and monolingual German speakers from monolingual Turkish ones. We interpret this as evidence for an information-structural motivation for verb-third, and for a clear dominance of German for Turkish-German speakers in Germany. Y1 - 2017 SN - 0340-9341 SN - 1866-5233 VL - 45 IS - 1 SP - 31 EP - 52 PB - Erich Schmidt CY - Berlin ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wiese, Heike A1 - Mayr, Katharina A1 - Krämer, Philipp A1 - Seeger, Patrick A1 - Müller, Hans-Georg A1 - Mezger, Verena T1 - Changing teachers' attitudes towards linguistic diversity BT - effects of an anti-bias programme JF - International Journal of Applied Linguistics N2 - We discuss an intervention programme for kindergarten and school teachers' continuing education in Germany that targets biases against language outside a perceived monolingual ‘standard’ and its speakers. The programme combines anti-bias methods relating to linguistic diversity with objectives of raising critical language awareness. Evaluation through teachers' workshops in Berlin and Brandenburg points to positive and enduring attitudinal changes in participants, but not in control groups that did not attend workshops, and effects were independent of personal variables gender and teaching subject and only weakly associated with age. We relate these effects to such programme features as indirect and inclusive methods that foster active engagement, and the combination of ‘safer’ topics targeting attitudes towards linguistic structures with more challenging ones dealing with the discrimination of speakers. N2 - Der Beitrag diskutiert ein Interventionsprogramm fur die Weiterbildung von Lehrer/inne/n und Erzieher/inne/n, das Vorurteile gegenuber sprachlichen Praktiken au ss erhalb eines vermeintlichen monolingualen Standarddeutschen und seinen Sprecher/inne/n fokussiert (). Das Programm verbindet Anti-bias -Methoden zur sprachlichen Vielfalt mit solchen, die auf eine Verstarkung kritischer Sprachbewusstheit abheben. Die Evaluation der Materialien in Lehrerfortbildungen in Berlin und Brandenburg weist auf positive und anhaltende Einstellungsveranderungen bei den Teilnehmer/inne/n, aber nicht bei Mitgliedern einer Kontrollgruppe, die nicht an den Fortbildungen teilnahm; die Effekte waren unabhangig von den personenbezogen Variablen Geschlecht und Lehrfach und nur schwach mit Alter assoziiert. Wir diskutieren diese Effekte im Zusammenhang mit Eigenschaften des Programms wie der Verwendung indirekter und inklusiver Methoden, die eine aktive Auseinandersetzung fordern, und der Verbindung von weniger bedrohlichen Themen, die sich auf Einstellungen gegenuber sprachlichen Strukturen beziehen, mit solchen, die die Diskrimierung von Sprecher/inne/n behandeln und daher eine gro ss ere Herausforderung darstellen KW - anti-bias KW - critical language awareness KW - language and education in multilingual settings KW - language attitudes KW - linguistic discrimination Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/ijal.12121 SN - 0802-6106 SN - 1473-4192 VL - 27 IS - 1 SP - 198 EP - 220 PB - Wiley CY - Hoboken ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Warditz, Vladislava Maria T1 - Brückners Höflichkeitskonzept (1916): Linguistik oder Ideologie? Linguistische Untersuchung des sprachpolitischen Manifests eines Universalgelehrten JF - Zeitschrift für Slawistik N2 - The paper presents the Polish study Ty-wy-pan. Kartka z dziejów próżności ludzkiej (‘You (singular)–you (plural)–Lord. An overview on the history of the people’s vanity’, 1916) by Alexander Brückner from a linguistic-pragmatical as well as ideological point of view. In his pioneer study on politeness, the German-Polish slavist Brückner (1856–1939) critically reflects on the current system of Polish addresses and titles, especially in relating to the soon-to-be refoundation of the Second Polish Republic (1918). The paper analyzes how his linguistic description and his ideas for reformation of the Polish addressative system are pragmatically justified and how they are ideologically motivated. Furthermore, the paper reconstructs the status of Brückner’s concept of politeness in the context of current studies on Polish pragmatics. KW - Alexander Bruckner KW - Polish addressative system KW - politeness KW - pragmatics KW - language ideology KW - language change Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1515/slaw-2017-0014 SN - 0044-3506 VL - 62 SP - 297 EP - 315 PB - De Gruyter CY - Berlin ER - TY - THES A1 - Völsch, Juliane T1 - "Wortabruf im Handumdrehen"? BT - Untersuchung der fazilitierenden Wirkung ikonischer und nicht-ikonischer Gesten auf den Verbabruf bei Probanden mit Aphasie Y1 - 2017 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - von der Malsburg, Titus Raban A1 - Angele, Bernhard T1 - False positives and other statistical errors in standard analyses of eye movements in reading JF - Journal of memory and language N2 - In research on eye movements in reading, it is common to analyze a number of canonical dependent measures to study how the effects of a manipulation unfold over time. Although this gives rise to the well-known multiple comparisons problem, i.e. an inflated probability that the null hypothesis is incorrectly rejected (Type I error), it is accepted standard practice not to apply any correction procedures. Instead, there appears to be a widespread belief that corrections are not necessary because the increase in false positives is too small to matter. To our knowledge, no formal argument has ever been presented to justify this assumption. Here, we report a computational investigation of this issue using Monte Carlo simulations. Our results show that, contrary to conventional wisdom, false positives are increased to unacceptable levels when no corrections are applied. Our simulations also show that counter-measures like the Bonferroni correction keep false positives in check while reducing statistical power only moderately. Hence, there is little reason why such corrections should not be made a standard requirement. Further, we discuss three statistical illusions that can arise when statistical power is low, and we show how power can be improved to prevent these illusions. In sum, our work renders a detailed picture of the various types of statistical errors than can occur in studies of reading behavior and we provide concrete guidance about how these errors can be avoided. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. KW - Statistics KW - False positives KW - Null-hypothesis testing KW - Eye-tracking KW - Reading KW - Sentence processing Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2016.10.003 SN - 0749-596X SN - 1096-0821 VL - 94 SP - 119 EP - 133 PB - Elsevier CY - San Diego ER - TY - GEN A1 - Verissimo, João Marques T1 - Sensitive periods in both L1 and L2 BT - Some conceptual and methodological suggestions T2 - Bilingualism : language and cognition N2 - The keynote article (Mayberry & Kluender, 2017) makes an important contribution to questions concerning the existence and characteristics of sensitive periods in language acquisition. Specifically, by comparing groups of non-native L1 and L2 signers, the authors have been able to ingeniously disentangle the effects of maturation from those of early language exposure. Based on L1 versus L2 contrasts, the paper convincingly argues that L2 learning is a less clear test of sensitive periods. Nevertheless, we believe Mayberry and Kluender underestimate the evidence for maturational factors in L2 learning, especially that coming from recent research. KW - critical period for language KW - sensitive periods KW - language acquisition KW - age of acquisition KW - bilingualism Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728918000275 SN - 1366-7289 SN - 1469-1841 VL - 21 IS - 5 SP - 932 EP - 933 PB - Cambridge Univ. Press CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Szendrői, Kriszta A1 - Schumacher, Rebecca A1 - Fritzsche, Tom A1 - Höhle, Barbara T1 - Acquisition of quantifier raising of a universal across an existential BT - Evidence from German JF - Glossa : a journal of general linguistics N2 - Our paper reports an act out task with German 5- and 6-year olds and adults involving doubly-quantified sentences with a universal object and an existential subject. We found that 5- and 6-year olds allow inverse scope in such sentences, while adults do not. Our findings contribute to a growing body of research (e.g. Gualmini et al. 2008; Musolino 2009, etc.) showing that children are more flexible in their scopal considerations than initially proposed by the Isomorphism proposal (Lidz & Musolino 2002; Musolino & Lidz 2006). This result provides support for a theory of German, a “no quantifier raising”-language, in terms of soft violable constraints, or global economy terms (Bobaljik & Wurmbrand 2012), rather than in terms of hard inviolable constraints or rules (Frey 1993). Finally, the results are compatible with Reinhart’s (2004) hypothesis that children do not perform global interface economy considerations due to the increased processing associated with it. KW - quantifier raising KW - language development KW - inverse scope reading KW - German language KW - interface economy Y1 - 2017 SN - 2397-1835 VL - 2 PB - Open Library of Humanities CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Szendroi, Kriszta A1 - Bernard, Carline A1 - Berger, Frauke A1 - Gervain, Judit A1 - Höhle, Barbara T1 - Acquisition of prosodic focus marking by English, French, and German three-, four-, five- and six-year-olds JF - Journal of child language N2 - Previous research on young children's knowledge of prosodic focus marking has revealed an apparent paradox, with comprehension appearing to lag behind production. Comprehension of prosodic focus is difficult to study experimentally due to its subtle and ambiguous contribution to pragmatic meaning. We designed a novel comprehension task, which revealed that three- to six-year-old children show adult-like comprehension of the prosodic marking of subject and object focus. Our findings thus support the view that production does not precede comprehension in the acquisition of focus. We tested participants speaking English, German, and French. All three languages allow prosodic subject and object focus marking, but use additional syntactic marking to varying degrees (English: dispreferred; German: possible; French preferred). French participants produced fewer subject marked responses than English participants. We found no other cross-linguistic differences. Participants interpreted prosodic focus marking similarly and in an adult-like fashion in all three languages. Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000917000071 SN - 0305-0009 SN - 1469-7602 VL - 45 IS - 1 SP - 219 EP - 241 PB - Cambridge Univ. Press CY - New York ER -