TY - THES
A1 - Zona, Carlotta Isabella
T1 - Visuo-linguistic integration for thematic-role assignment across speakers
T1 - Visuell-linguistische Integration für die Zuweisung thematischer Rollen über Sprecher hinweg
N2 - This dissertation examines the integration of incongruent visual-scene and morphological-case information (“cues”) in building thematic-role representations of spoken relative clauses in German.
Addressing the mutual influence of visual and linguistic processing, the Coordinated Interplay Account (CIA) describes a mechanism in two steps supporting visuo-linguistic integration (Knoeferle & Crocker, 2006, Cog Sci). However, the outcomes and dynamics of integrating incongruent thematic-role representations from distinct sources have been investigated scarcely. Further, there is evidence that both second-language (L2) and older speakers may rely on non-syntactic cues relatively more than first-language (L1)/young speakers. Yet, the role of visual information for thematic-role comprehension has not been measured in L2 speakers, and only limitedly across the adult lifespan.
Thematically unambiguous canonically ordered (subject-extracted) and noncanonically ordered (object-extracted) spoken relative clauses in German (see 1a-b) were presented in isolation and alongside visual scenes conveying either the same (congruent) or the opposite (incongruent) thematic relations as the sentence did.
1 a Das ist der Koch, der die Braut verfolgt.
This is the.NOM cook who.NOM the.ACC bride follows
This is the cook who is following the bride.
b Das ist der Koch, den die Braut verfolgt.
This is the.NOM cook whom.ACC the.NOM bride follows
This is the cook whom the bride is following.
The relative contribution of each cue to thematic-role representations was assessed with agent identification. Accuracy and latency data were collected post-sentence from a sample of L1 and L2 speakers (Zona & Felser, 2023), and from a sample of L1 speakers from across the adult lifespan (Zona & Reifegerste, under review). In addition, the moment-by-moment dynamics of thematic-role assignment were investigated with mouse tracking in a young L1 sample (Zona, under review).
The following questions were addressed: (1) How do visual scenes influence thematic-role representations of canonical and noncanonical sentences? (2) How does reliance on visual-scene, case, and word-order cues vary in L1 and L2 speakers? (3) How does reliance on visual-scene, case, and word-order cues change across the lifespan?
The results showed reliable effects of incongruence of visually and linguistically conveyed thematic relations on thematic-role representations. Incongruent (vs. congruent) scenes yielded slower and less accurate responses to agent-identification probes presented post-sentence. The recently inspected agent was considered as the most likely agent ~300ms after trial onset, and the convergence of visual scenes and word order enabled comprehenders to assign thematic roles predictively.
L2 (vs. L1) participants relied more on word order overall. In response to noncanonical clauses presented with incongruent visual scenes, sensitivity to case predicted the size of incongruence effects better than L1-L2 grouping. These results suggest that the individual’s ability to exploit specific cues might predict their weighting.
Sensitivity to case was stable throughout the lifespan, while visual effects increased with increasing age and were modulated by individual interference-inhibition levels. Thus, age-related changes in comprehension may stem from stronger reliance on visually (vs. linguistically) conveyed meaning.
These patterns represent evidence for a recent-role preference – i.e., a tendency to re-assign visually conveyed thematic roles to the same referents in temporally coordinated utterances. The findings (i) extend the generalizability of CIA predictions across stimuli, tasks, populations, and measures of interest, (ii) contribute to specifying the outcomes and mechanisms of detecting and indexing incongruent representations within the CIA, and (iii) speak to current efforts to understand the sources of variability in sentence comprehension.
N2 - Diese Dissertation untersucht die Integration inkongruenter visueller Szenen- und morphologisch-kasusbezogener Informationen ("Hinweise") beim Aufbau thematischer Rollenrepräsentationen gesprochener Relativsätze auf Deutsch.
Das Coordinated Interplay Account (CIA) beschreibt einen Mechanismus in zwei Schritten zur Unterstützung der visuell-linguistischen Integration, der die wechselseitige Beeinflussung visueller und sprachlicher Verarbeitung adressiert (Knoeferle & Crocker, 2006, Cog Sci). Die Ergebnisse und Dynamiken der Integration inkongruenter thematischer Rollenrepräsentationen aus verschiedenen Quellen wurden jedoch kaum untersucht. Außerdem gibt es Hinweise darauf, dass sich sowohl Zweitsprachler (L2) als auch ältere Sprecher möglicherweise relativ stärker auf nicht-syntaktische Hinweise verlassen als Erstsprachler (L1)/jüngere Sprecher. Dennoch wurde die Rolle visueller Informationen für das Verständnis thematischer Rollen bei L2-Sprechern nicht gemessen und nur begrenzt über die gesamte Lebensspanne hinweg.
Thematisch eindeutige, kanonisch geordnete (subjektausgezogene) und nichtkanonisch geordnete (objektausgezogene) gesprochene Relativsätze auf Deutsch (siehe 1a-b) wurden isoliert und zusammen mit visuellen Szenen präsentiert, die entweder dieselben (kongruente) oder entgegengesetzte (inkongruente) thematische Beziehungen wie der Satz vermittelten.
Die relative Beitrag jedes Hinweises zur thematischen Rollenrepräsentation wurde durch die Identifizierung des Agenten bewertet. Genauigkeits- und Latenzdaten wurden nach dem Satz von einer Stichprobe von L1- und L2-Sprechern (Zona & Felser, 2023) sowie von einer Stichprobe von L1-Sprechern über die Lebensspanne hinweg (Zona & Reifegerste, in Überprüfung) gesammelt. Darüber hinaus wurden die momentane Dynamik der Zuweisung thematischer Rollen mit Mausverfolgung in einer jungen L1-Stichprobe untersucht (Zona, in Überprüfung).
Die folgenden Fragen wurden adressiert: (1) Wie beeinflussen visuelle Szenen thematische Rollenrepräsentationen kanonischer und nichtkanonischer Sätze? (2) Wie variiert der Verlass auf visuelle Szenen, Kasus- und Wortstellungs-Hinweise bei L1- und L2-Sprechern? (3) Wie verändert sich der Verlass auf visuelle Szenen, Kasus- und Wortstellungs-Hinweise im Laufe des Lebens?
Die Ergebnisse zeigten zuverlässige Effekte der Inkongruenz visuell und sprachlich vermittelter thematischer Beziehungen auf thematische Rollenrepräsentationen. Inkongruente (vs. kongruente) Szenen führten zu langsameren und weniger genauen Reaktionen auf Agentenidentifikationsproben, die nach dem Satz präsentiert wurden. Der kürzlich inspizierte Agent wurde etwa 300 ms nach Beginn des Versuchs als der wahrscheinlichste Agent betrachtet, und die Übereinstimmung von visuellen Szenen und Wortstellung ermöglichte es den Verstehenden, thematische Rollen vorherzusagen.
L2-Teilnehmer (vs. L1) verließen sich insgesamt stärker auf die Wortstellung. Auf nichtkanonische Klauseln, die mit inkongruenten visuellen Szenen präsentiert wurden, sagte die Sensibilität für den Kasus die Größe der Inkongruenzeffekte besser vorher als die Einteilung in L1-L2. Diese Ergebnisse legen nahe, dass die Fähigkeit des Einzelnen, bestimmte Hinweise auszunutzen, ihr Gewicht vorhersagen könnte.
Die Sensibilität für den Kasus blieb über die Lebensspanne hinweg stabil, während sich visuelle Effekte mit zunehmendem Alter verstärkten und durch individuelle Interferenz-Hemmungslevel moduliert wurden. Somit können altersbedingte Veränderungen im Verständnis von einer stärkeren Abhängigkeit von visuell (vs. sprachlich) vermittelter Bedeutung herrühren.
Diese Muster stellen einen Beleg für eine Präferenz für kürzlich eingeführte Rollen dar - d. h. eine Tendenz, visuell vermittelte thematische Rollen den gleichen Referenten in zeitlich koordinierten Äußerungen neu zuzuweisen. Die Ergebnisse (i) erweitern die Verallgemeinerbarkeit der Vorhersagen des CIAs über Stimuli, Aufgaben, Populationen und Interessenmaße hinweg, (ii) tragen zur Spezifizierung der Ergebnisse und Mechanismen bei der Erkennung und Indizierung inkongruenter Repräsentationen innerhalb des CIAs bei und (iii) sprechen aktuelle Bemühungen an, die Quellen der Variabilität im Satzverständnis zu verstehen.
KW - spoken sentence comprehension
KW - visuo-linguistic integration
KW - thematic-role assignment
KW - Sprachverständnis
KW - Zuweisung thematischer Rollen
KW - visuell-linguistische Integration
Y1 - 2024
U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-631857
ER -
TY - THES
A1 - Zolotarenko, Olha
T1 - Visualization approaches for coherence relations
T1 - Visualisierungsansätze zur Kohärenzrelationen
N2 - Die hier vorliegende Arbeit stellt einen Versuch dar, den Visualisierungsansätzen in dem Feld der annotierten Diskursrelationen nahezukommen und durch Vergleich verschiedener Programmierwerkzeuge eine anforderungsnahe Lösung zu finden. Als Gegenstand der Forschung wurden Kohärenzrelationen ausgewählt, welche eine Reihe an Eigenschaften aufweisen, die für viele Visualisierungsmethoden herausfordernd sein können. Die Arbeit stellt fünf verschiedene Visualisierungsmöglichkeiten sowohl von der Anwendungs- als auch von der Entwicklungsperspektive vor. Die zunächst getesteten einfachen HTML-Ansätze sowie das Softwarepaket displaCy zeigen das unzureichende Niveau für die Visualisierungszwecke dieser Arbeit. Die alternative Implementierung mit D3 würde die Voraussetzungen zwar optimal erfüllen, sprengt aber deutlich den Rahmen des Projektes. Die gewählte Hauptmethode wurde als Single-Web-Anwendung konzipiert und verwendet das Annotationstool brat, welches die meisten definierten Voraussetzungen für die Repräsentation der Kohärenzrelationen erfüllt. Die Anwendung stellt die im Text annotierten Kohärenzrelationen graphisch dar und bietet eine Filterfunktion für verschiedene Relationstypen an.
N2 - This thesis aims to investigate the visualization approaches in the field of annotated discourse relations and to find a solution that meets the requirements best by comparing different programming tools. The subject of this research are coherence relations, which have several properties that can be challenging for many visualization methods. The thesis presents five different visualization options from both the application and the development perspective. The initially tested simple HTML approaches as well as the software package displaCy show the insufficient level for the visualization purposes of this work. The alternative implementation with D3 would optimally meet the requirements but goes beyond the scope of the project. The main method chosen in this thesis was implemented as a single web application and uses the brat annotation tool, which fulfills most of the defined requirements for the representation of the coherence relations. The application graphically displays the coherence relations annotated in the text and offers a filter function for different relation types.
KW - visualization
KW - discourse parsing
KW - computational linguistics
KW - brat
KW - web application
KW - coherence relations
KW - brat
KW - Kohärenzrelationen
KW - Computerlinguistik
KW - Diskursparsing
KW - Visualisierung
KW - Web-Anwendung
Y1 - 2021
U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-516997
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Zimmermann, Malte
A1 - Féry, Caroline
T1 - Introduction
Y1 - 2010
SN - 978-0-19-957095-9
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Zimmermann, Malte
A1 - De Veaugh-Geiss, Joseph P.
A1 - Tönnis, Swantje
A1 - Onea, Edgar
T1 - (Non-)exhaustivity in focus partitioning across languages
JF - Approaches to Hungarian
N2 - We present novel experimental evidence on the availability and the status of exhaustivity inferences with focus partitioning in German, English, and Hungarian. Results suggest that German and English focus-background clefts and Hungarian focus share important properties, (É. Kiss 1998, 1999; Szabolcsi 1994; Percus 1997; Onea & Beaver 2009). Those constructions are anaphoric devices triggering an existence presupposition. EXH-inferences are not obligatory in such constructions in English, German, or Hungarian, against some previous literature (Percus 1997; Büring & Križ 2013; É. Kiss 1998), but in line with pragmatic analyses of EXH-inferences in clefts (Horn 1981, 2016; Pollard & Yasavul 2016). The cross-linguistic differences in the distribution of EXH-inferences are attributed to properties of the Hungarian number marking system.
KW - clefts
KW - definite pseudoclefts
KW - Hungarian focus
KW - exhaustivity
KW - experimental evidence
KW - semantics-pragmatics interface
Y1 - 2020
VL - 16
PB - John Benjamins
CY - Amsterdam
ER -
TY - GEN
A1 - Zimmermann, Malte
A1 - De Veaugh-Geiss, Joseph P.
A1 - Tönnis, Swantje
A1 - Onea, Edgar
T1 - (Non-)exhaustivity in focus partitioning across languages
T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe
N2 - We present novel experimental evidence on the availability and the status of exhaustivity inferences with focus partitioning in German, English, and Hungarian. Results suggest that German and English focus-background clefts and Hungarian focus share important properties, (É. Kiss 1998, 1999; Szabolcsi 1994; Percus 1997; Onea & Beaver 2009). Those constructions are anaphoric devices triggering an existence presupposition. EXH-inferences are not obligatory in such constructions in English, German, or Hungarian, against some previous literature (Percus 1997; Büring & Križ 2013; É. Kiss 1998), but in line with pragmatic analyses of EXH-inferences in clefts (Horn 1981, 2016; Pollard & Yasavul 2016). The cross-linguistic differences in the distribution of EXH-inferences are attributed to properties of the Hungarian number marking system.
T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 724
KW - clefts
KW - definite pseudoclefts
KW - Hungarian focus
KW - exhaustivity
KW - experimental evidence
KW - semantics-pragmatics interface
Y1 - 2020
U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-524677
SN - 1866-8364
VL - 16
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Zimmermann, Malte
T1 - Wird Schon Stimmen!
BT - A Degree Operator Analysis of Schon
JF - Journal of semantics
N2 - The article puts forward a novel analysis of the German modal particle schon as a modal degree operator over propositional content. The proposed analysis offers a uniform perspective on the semantics of modal schon and its aspectual counterpart meaning ‘already’: Both particles are analyzed as denoting a degree operator, expressing a scale-based comparison over relevant alternatives. The alternatives are determined by focus in the case of aspectual schon (Krifka 2000), but are restricted to the polar alternatives p and ¬p in the case of modal schon. Semantically, modal schon introduces a presupposition to the effect that the circumstantial conversational background contains more factual evidence in favor of p than in favor of ¬p, thereby making modal schon the not at-issue counterpart of the overt comparative form eher ‘rather’ (Herburger & Rubinstein 2014). The analysis incorporates basic insights from earlier analyses of modal schon in a novel way, and it also offers new insights as to the underlying workings of modality in natural language as involving propositions rather than possible worlds (Kratzer 1977, 2012).
Y1 - 2018
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffy010
SN - 0167-5133
SN - 1477-4593
VL - 35
IS - 4
SP - 687
EP - 739
PB - Oxford Univ. Press
CY - Oxford
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Zimmermann, Malte
T1 - On the functional architecture of DP and the feature content of pronominal quantifiers in Low German
JF - The journal of comparative Germanic linguistics
N2 - The article investigates the functional architecture of complex pronominal quantifying expressions (PQEs) in Low German, such as jeder-een 'everyone' and keen-een 'no-one', which provide overt evidence for a Num-projection, situated between the NP- and DP-layer. The feature specification of Num as [+lattice] or [-lattice] is responsible for whether the DP denotes into the domain of atomic or mass/plural entities, respectively. In the case of complex PQEs, the syntactic Num-head hosts the overt element een 'a, one', which carries a [-lattice] feature, thus ensuring that the PQE ranges exclusively over the domain of atomic entities, but not mass or plural entities. The Num-head een differs from its simplex counterpart wat 'something', which is analyzed as an NP-proform with an underspecified [lattice]-feature. As a result, wat can range over atomic and mass domains alike. In the final part of the article, it is argued that wat is also underspecified for the operator feature [rel/wh], for which reason it can also function as an interrogative expression (what) and as a relative pronoun (which), respectively, depending on the syntactic context. Throughout the article, the Low German data are compared with relevant data from other German dialects and Germanic and Romance languages, pointing out similarities and differences in the syntactic structure and feature content of PQEs across these languages and dialects.
KW - DP structure
KW - NumP
KW - Low German
KW - Complex quantifiers
KW - Lattice features
KW - Interrogative/relative operator
Y1 - 2011
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10828-011-9046-z
SN - 1383-4924
VL - 14
IS - 3
SP - 203
EP - 240
PB - Springer
CY - New York
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Zimmermann, Malte
T1 - The grammatical expression of focus in West Chadic variation and uniformity in and across languages
JF - Linguistics : an interdisciplinary journal of the language sciences
N2 - The article provides an overview of the grammatical realization of focus in four West Chadic languages (Chadic, Afro-Asiatic). The languages discussed exhibit an intriguing crosslinguistic variation in the realization of focus, both among themselves as well as compared to European intonation languages. They also display language-internal variation in the formal realization of focus. The West Chadic languages differ widely in their ways of expressing focus, which range from syntactic over prosodic to morphological devices. In contrast to European intonation languages, the focus marking systems of the West Chadic languages are inconsistent in that focus is often not grammatically expressed, but these inconsistencies are shown to be systematic. Subject foci (contrastive or not) and contrastive nonsubject foci are always grammatically marked, whereas information focus on nonsubjects need not be marked as such. The absence of formal focus marking supports pragmatic theories of focus in terms of contextual resolution. The special status of focused subjects and contrastive foci is derived from the Contrastive Focus Hypothesis, which requires unexpected foci and unexpected focus contents to be marked as such, together with the assumption that canonical subjects in West Chadic receive a default interpretation as topics. Finally, I discuss certain focus ambiguities which are not attested in intonation languages, nor do they follow on standard accounts of focus marking, but which can be accounted for in terms of constraint interaction in the formal expression of focus.
Y1 - 2011
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1515/LING.2011.032
SN - 0024-3949
VL - 49
IS - 5
SP - 1163
EP - 1213
PB - De Gruyter Mouton
CY - Berlin
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Zimmermann, Malte
T1 - Predicate focus
JF - The Oxford handbook of information structure
Y1 - 2016
SN - 978-0-19-964267-0
SP - 314
EP - 335
PB - Oxford University Press
CY - Oxford
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Zimmermann, Malte
T1 - Im Korpus gibt’s keine Vögel nicht
BT - A corpus study on Negative Concord in Eastern German dialects
JF - Of trees and birds. A Festschrift for Gisbert Fanselow
KW - Festschrift
KW - Informationsstruktur
KW - Linguistik
KW - Morphologie
KW - Syntax
KW - festschrift
KW - information structure
KW - linguistics
KW - morphology
KW - syntax
Y1 - 2019
U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-432541
SN - 978-3-86956-457-9
SP - 287
EP - 306
PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam
CY - Potsdam
ER -
TY - GEN
A1 - Zimmermann, Malte
T1 - The grammatical expression of focus in West Chadic
BT - Variation and uniformity in and across languages
N2 - The article provides an overview of the grammatical realization of focus in four West Chadic languages (Chadic, Afro-Asiatic). The languages discussed exhibit an intriguing crosslinguistic variation in the realization of focus, both among themselves as well as compared to European intonation languages. They also display language-internal variation in the formal realization of focus. The West Chadic languages differ widely in their ways of expressing focus, which range from syntactic over prosodic to morphological devices. In contrast to European intonation languages, the focus marking systems of the West Chadic languages are inconsistent in that focus is often not grammatically expressed, but these inconsistencies are shown to be systematic. Subject foci (contrastive or not) and contrastive nonsubject foci are always grammatically marked, whereas information focus on nonsubjects need not be marked as such. The absence of formal focus marking supports pragmatic theories of focus in terms of contextual resolution. The special status of focused subjects and contrastive foci is derived from the Contrastive Focus Hypothesis, which requires unexpected foci and unexpected focus contents to be marked as such, together with the assumption that canonical subjects in West Chadic receive a default interpretation as topics. Finally, I discuss certain focus ambiguities which are not attested in intonation languages, nor do they follow on standard accounts of focus marking, but which can be accounted for in terms of constraint interaction in the formal expression of focus.
T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 298
Y1 - 2011
U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-93617
SP - 1163
EP - 1213
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Zerbian, Sabine
A1 - Downing, Laura
A1 - Kügler, Frank
T1 - Introduction : tone and intonation from a typological perspective
Y1 - 2009
UR - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00243841
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2007.10.024
SN - 0024-3841
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Zerbian, Sabine
A1 - Barnard, Etienne
T1 - Realisation of two adjacent high tones : Acoustic evidence from Northern Sotho
N2 - We present findings of a multi-speaker production study that was undertaken to investigate the realisation of two adjacent high tones within the verb word in Northern Sotho, a Southern Bantu language. Experimental tokens are selected to ensure that the high tones originate from different combinations of morphosyntactic constituents. It is found that the morphosyntactic constituency determines how the adjacent high tones are realised. When both high tones originate within either the inflectional stem or the macrostem constituents, a single pitch peak is realised. Additionally, when the macrostem contains two high tones, the tone of the object concord is absorbed into the stem. Two adjacent high tones, of which one stems from the inflectional stem and the other from the macrostem, produce two pitch peaks, with the latter of the two delayed in order to satisfy the Obligatory Contour Principle. These generalisations are supported by acoustic data. A set of rules is formulated that describes the surface realisation of adjacent high tones in the verbal domain of Northern Sotho (with the exception of one unresolved issue).
Y1 - 2010
UR - http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t911319881~db=all
U6 - https://doi.org/10.2989/16073614.2010.519099
SN - 1607-3614
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Zerbian, Sabine
T1 - Variation in the grammar of black south African English
JF - Southern African linguistics and applied language studies
Y1 - 2012
U6 - https://doi.org/10.2989/16073614.2012.693721
SN - 1607-3614
VL - 30
IS - 1
SP - 131
EP - 135
PB - NISC
CY - Grahamstown
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Zerbian, Sabine
T1 - Prosodic marking of narrow focus across varieties of South African English
JF - English world-wide : a journal of varieties of English
N2 - This paper reports on an elicited production study which investigates prosodic marking of narrow focus in modified noun phrases in varieties of South African English. The acoustic analysis of fundamental frequency, intensity, and duration in narrow focus is presented and discussed. The results suggest that these three acoustic parameters are manipulated differently in narrow focus in the varieties of English as a Second Language as compared to General South African English. The article compares the results to what is known about prosodic marking of information structure in other varieties of English as a Second Language and underlines the necessity of carefully controlled data in the investigation of phonological and phonetic variation in varieties of English.
KW - South African English
KW - Black South African English
KW - English as a Second Language (ESL)
KW - prosody
KW - focus
KW - fundamental frequency
KW - intensity
KW - duration
KW - contact variety
Y1 - 2013
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1075/eww.34.1.02zer
SN - 0172-8865
VL - 34
IS - 1
SP - 26
EP - 47
PB - Benjamins
CY - Amsterdam
ER -
TY - GEN
A1 - Zarriess, Sina
A1 - Schlangen, David
T1 - Objects of Unknown Categories
T2 - The 57th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics
N2 - Zero-shot learning in Language & Vision is the task of correctly labelling (or naming) objects of novel categories. Another strand of work in L&V aims at pragmatically informative rather than "correct" object descriptions, e.g. in reference games. We combine these lines of research and model zero-shot reference games, where a speaker needs to successfully refer to a novel object in an image. Inspired by models of "rational speech acts", we extend a neural generator to become a pragmatic speaker reasoning about uncertain object categories. As a result of this reasoning, the generator produces fewer nouns and names of distractor categories as compared to a literal speaker. We show that this conversational strategy for dealing with novel objects often improves communicative success, in terms of resolution accuracy of an automatic listener.
Y1 - 2019
SN - 978-1-950737-48-2
SP - 654
EP - 659
PB - Association for Computational Linguistics
CY - Stroudsburg
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Zakariás, Lilla
A1 - Keresztes, Attila
A1 - Marton, Klara
A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell
T1 - Positive effects of a computerised working memory and executive function
JF - Neuropsychological rehabilitation
N2 - Aphasia, the language disorder following brain damage, is frequently accompanied by deficits of working memory (WM) and executive functions (EFs). Recent studies suggest that WM, together with certain EFs, can play a role in sentence comprehension in individuals with aphasia (IWA), and that WM can be enhanced with intensive practice. Our aim was to investigate whether a combined WM and EF training improves the understanding of spoken sentences in IWA. We used a pre-post-test case control design. Three individuals with chronic aphasia practised an adaptive training task (a modified n-back task) three to four times a week for a month. Their performance was assessed before and after the training on outcome measures related to WM and spoken sentence comprehension. One participant showed significant improvement on the training task, another showed a tendency for improvement, and both of them improved significantly in spoken sentence comprehension. The third participant did not improve on the training task, however, she showed improvement on one measure of spoken sentence comprehension. Compared to controls, two individuals improved at least in one condition of the WM outcome measures. Thus, our results suggest that a combined WM and EF training can be beneficial for IWA.
KW - Aphasia rehabilitation
KW - transfer effect
KW - updating training
KW - interference control
KW - sentence comprehension deficit
Y1 - 2016
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/09602011.2016.1159579
SN - 0960-2011
SN - 1464-0694
VL - 28
IS - 3
SP - 369
EP - 386
PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
CY - Abingdon
ER -
TY - THES
A1 - Zakariás, Lilla
T1 - Transfer effects after working memory training in post-stroke aphasia
T1 - Transfereffekte nach Arbeitsgedächtnistraining bei Aphasie nach Schlaganfall
N2 - Background: Individuals with aphasia after stroke (IWA) often present with working memory (WM) deficits. Research investigating the relationship between WM and language abilities has led to the promising hypothesis that treatments of WM could lead to improvements in language, a phenomenon known as transfer. Although recent treatment protocols have been successful in improving WM, the evidence to date is scarce and the extent to which improvements in trained tasks of WM transfer to untrained memory tasks, spoken sentence comprehension, and functional communication is yet poorly understood.
Aims: We aimed at (a) investigating whether WM can be improved through an adaptive n-back training in IWA (Study 1–3); (b) testing whether WM training leads to near transfer to unpracticed WM tasks (Study 1–3), and far transfer to spoken sentence comprehension (Study 1–3), functional communication (Study 2–3), and memory in daily life in IWA (Study 2–3); and (c) evaluating the methodological quality of existing WM treatments in IWA (Study 3). To address these goals, we conducted two empirical studies – a case-controls study with Hungarian speaking IWA (Study 1) and a multiple baseline study with German speaking IWA (Study 2) – and a systematic review (Study 3).
Methods: In Study 1 and 2 participants with chronic, post-stroke aphasia performed an adaptive, computerized n-back training. ‘Adaptivity’ was implemented by adjusting the tasks’ difficulty level according to the participants’ performance, ensuring that they always practiced at an optimal level of difficulty. To assess the specificity of transfer effects and to better understand the underlying mechanisms of transfer on spoken sentence comprehension, we included an outcome measure testing specific syntactic structures that have been proposed to involve WM processes (e.g., non-canonical structures with varying complexity).
Results: We detected a mixed pattern of training and transfer effects across individuals: five participants out of six significantly improved in the n-back training. Our most important finding is that all six participants improved significantly in spoken sentence comprehension (i.e., far transfer effects). In addition, we also found far transfer to functional communication (in two participants out of three in Study 2) and everyday memory functioning (in all three participants in Study 2), and near transfer to unpracticed n-back tasks (in four participants out of six). Pooled data analysis of Study 1 and 2 showed a significant negative relationship between initial spoken sentence comprehension and the amount of improvement in this ability, suggesting that the more severe the participants’ spoken sentence comprehension deficit was at the beginning of training, the more they improved after training. Taken together, we detected both near far and transfer effects in our studies, but the effects varied across participants. The systematic review evaluating the methodological quality of existing WM treatments in stroke IWA (Study 3) showed poor internal and external validity across the included 17 studies. Poor internal validity was mainly due to use of inappropriate design, lack of randomization of study phases, lack of blinding of participants and/or assessors, and insufficient sampling. Low external validity was mainly related to incomplete information on the setting, lack of use of appropriate analysis or justification for the suitability of the analysis procedure used, and lack of replication across participants and/or behaviors. Results in terms of WM, spoken sentence comprehension, and reading are promising, but further studies with more rigorous methodology and stronger experimental control are needed to determine the beneficial effects of WM intervention.
Conclusions: Results of the empirical studies suggest that WM can be improved with a computerized and adaptive WM training, and improvements can lead to transfer effects to spoken sentence comprehension and functional communication in some individuals with chronic post-stroke aphasia. The fact that improvements were not specific to certain syntactic structures (i.e., non-canonical complex sentences) in spoken sentence comprehension suggest that WM is not involved in the online, automatic processing of syntactic information (i.e., parsing and interpretation), but plays a more general role in the later stage of spoken sentence comprehension (i.e., post-interpretive comprehension). The individual differences in treatment outcomes call for future research to clarify how far these results are generalizable to the population level of IWA. Future studies are needed to identify a few mechanisms that may generalize to at least a subpopulation of IWA as well as to investigate baseline non-linguistic cognitive and language abilities that may play a role in transfer effects and the maintenance of such effects. These may require larger yet homogenous samples.
N2 - Patienten mit einer Aphasie nach einem Schlaganfall weisen häufig auch Beeinträchtigungen des Arbeitsgedächtnisses auf. Studien, die das Zusammenspiel von Arbeitsgedächtnis und Sprachfähigkeit untersuchen führten zu der Hypothese, dass ein Training des Arbeitsgedächtnisses auch zu Verbesserungen der Sprache führen könnten (sogenannte Transfer-Effekte). Obwohl jüngste Therapiestudien nachweislich die Leistung des Arbeitsgedächtnisses verbessern konnten, gibt es derzeitig nur wenig Evidenzen, ob und in welchem Ausmaß sich Verbesserungen des Arbeitsgedächtnisses auch auf ungeübte Gedächtnisaufgaben, das auditive Satzverständnis und die Kommunikationsfähigkeit im Alltag auswirken können.
Das vorliegende Dissertationsprojekt untersucht, ob (a) das Arbeitsgedächtnis bei Patienten mit einer Aphasie über ein adaptiertes N-Back-Training verbessert werden kann (Studie 1–3) und (b) das Arbeitsgedächtnistraining zu einem nahen Transfer auf ungeübte Arbeitsgedächtnisaufgaben (Studie 1–3) und zu einem weiten Transfer auf auditive Satzverständnisaufgaben (Studie 1–3), auf die Alltagskommunikation (Studie 2–3) und auf das Alltagsgedächtnis (Studie 2–3) bei Patienten mit einer Aphasie führt. Zudem evaluiert das vorliegende Projekt (c) die methodische Qualität bereits existierender Arbeitsgedächtnistrainings bei Patienten mit einer Aphasie (Studie 3). Zur Beantwortung der vorliegenden Studienfragen wurden zwei empirische Studien (Studie 1 und 2) sowie ein systematisches Review (Studie 3) durchgeführt.
In Studie 1 und 2 durchliefen Studienteilnehmer mit einer chronischen Aphasie nach einem Schlaganfall ein adaptiertes N-Back-Training. Es zeigte sich ein sehr gemischtes Trainingsmuster und Transfereffekte bei den Studienteilnehmern: Fünf von sechs Probanden verbesserten sich signifikant beim N-Back-Training. Alle sechs Probanden zeigten zudem signifikante weite Transfereffekte auf das auditive Satzverständnis. Darüber hinaus konnte ein weiter Transfereffekt auf die Kommunikationsfähigkeit und das Gedächtnis im Alltag sowie ein naher Transfer auf ungeübte N-Back-Aufgaben nachgewiesen werden. Allerdings schwankte das Transferverhalten innerhalb der Probanden stark. Das systematische Review (Studie 3) zeigte eine schwache interne und externe Validität über die 17 eingeschlossenen Studien. Obwohl die Ergebnisse bezüglich des Arbeitsgedächtnisses, des auditiven Satzverständnisses und des Lesens trotz der methodischen Einschränkungen der untersuchten Studien vielversprechend sind, sollten Schlussfolgerungen über die positiven Transfereffekte von Arbeitsgedächtnistrainings dennoch mit Vorsicht betrachtet werden.
Die Ergebnisse der empirischen Studien zeigten, dass sich mit Hilfe eines computergestützten und adaptiven Trainings das Arbeitsgedächtnis verbessert und zudem ein Transfer auf das auditive Satzverständnis und die Kommunikationsfähigkeit im Alltag bei einigen Patienten mit einer chronischen Aphasie nach einem Schlaganfall erzielt werden konnte. Es sind jedoch weitere Studien notwendig, um den Einfluss individueller Unterschiede auf die individuellen Transfermaße aufzudecken und eine Generalisierbarkeit der Ergebnisse auf Untergruppen aphasischer Teilnehmer zu beleuchten. Darüber hinaus werden zukünftige Studien benötigt, die die Rolle der Baseline nicht-linguistischer kognitiver Fähigkeiten und der Sprachproduktion sowie die Aufrechterhaltung von Transfereffekte weiter untersuchen.
KW - aphasia
KW - working memory
KW - treatment
KW - Aphasie
KW - Arbeitsgedächtnis
KW - Therapie
Y1 - 2018
U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-423600
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Zakarias, Lilla
A1 - Salis, Christos
A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell
T1 - Transfer effects on spoken sentence comprehension and functional communication after working memory training in stroke aphasia
JF - Journal of neurolinguistics : an international journal for the study of brain function in language behavior and experience
N2 - Recent treatment protocols have been successful in improving working memory (WM) in individuals with aphasia. However, the evidence to date is small and the extent to which improvements in trained tasks of WM transfer to untrained memory tasks, spoken sentence comprehension, and functional communication is yet poorly understood. To address these issues, we conducted a multiple baseline study with three German-speaking individuals with chronic post stroke aphasia. Participants practised two computerised WM tasks (n-back with pictures and aback with spoken words) four times a week for a month, targeting two WM processes: updating WM representations and resolving interference. All participants showed improvement on at least one measure of spoken sentence comprehension and everyday memory activities. Two of them showed improvement also on measures of WM and functional communication. Our results suggest that WM can be improved through computerised training in chronic aphasia and this can transfer to spoken sentence comprehension and functional communication in some individuals.
KW - Aphasia
KW - Working memory
KW - n-back training
KW - Transfer
KW - Sentence comprehension
KW - Verbal communication
Y1 - 2018
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneuroling.2017.12.002
SN - 0911-6044
VL - 48
SP - 47
EP - 63
PB - Elsevier
CY - Oxford
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Zakarias, Lilla
A1 - Kelly, Helen
A1 - Sails, Christos
A1 - Code, Chris
T1 - The methodological quality of short-term/working memory treatments in poststroke aphasia
BT - a systematic review
JF - Journal of speech, language, and hearing research
N2 - Purpose: The aims of this systematic review are to provide a critical overview of short-term memory (STM) and working memory (WM) treatments in stroke aphasia and to systematically evaluate the internal and external validity of STM/WM treatments. Method: A systematic search was conducted in February 2014 and then updated in December 2016 using 13 electronic databases. We provided descriptive characteristics of the included studies and assessed their methodological quality using the Risk of Bias in N-of-1 Trials quantitative scale (Tate et al., 2015), which was completed by 2 independent raters. Results: The systematic search and inclusion/exclusion procedure yielded 17 single-case or case-series studies with 37 participants for inclusion. Nine studies targeted auditory STM consisting of repetition and/or recognition tasks, whereas 8 targeted attention and WM, such as attention process training including n-back tasks with shapes and clock faces as well as mental math tasks. In terms of their methodological quality, quality scores on the Risk of Bias in N-of-1 Trials scale ranged from 4 to 17 (M = 9.5) on a 0-30 scale, indicating a high risk of bias in the reviewed studies. Effects of treatment were most frequently assessed on STM, WM, and spoken language comprehension. Transfer effects on communication and memory in activities of daily living were tested in only 5 studies. Conclusions: Methodological limitations of the reviewed studies make it difficult, at present, to draw firm conclusions about the effects of STM/WM treatments in poststroke aphasia. Further studies with more rigorous methodology and stronger experimental control are needed to determine the beneficial effects of this type of intervention. To understand the underlying mechanisms of STM/WM treatment effects and how they relate to language functioning, a careful choice of outcome measures and specific hypotheses about potential improvements on these measures are required. Future studies need to include outcome measures of memory functioning in everyday life and psychosocial functioning more generally to demonstrate the ecological validity of STM and WM treatments.
Y1 - 2019
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1044/2018_JSLHR-L-18-0057
SN - 1092-4388
SN - 1558-9102
VL - 62
IS - 6
SP - 1979
EP - 2001
PB - American Speech-Language-Hearing Assoc.
CY - Rockville
ER -
TY - THES
A1 - Zaccarella, Emiliano
T1 - Breaking down complexity
BT - the neural basis of the syntactic merge mechanism in the human brain
T2 - MPI series human cognitive and brain sciences ; 175
N2 - The unbounded expressive capacity of human language cannot boil down to an infinite list of sentences stored in a finite brain. Our linguistic knowledge is rather grounded around a rule-based universal syntactic computation—called Merge—which takes categorized units in input (e.g. this and ship), and generates structures by binding words recursively into more complex hierarchies of any length (e.g. this ship; this ship sinks…). Here we present data from different fMRI datasets probing the cortical implementation of this fundamental process. We first pushed complexity down to a three-word level, to explore how Merge creates minimally hierarchical phrases and sentences. We then moved to the most fundamental two-word level, to directly assess the universal invariant nature of Merge, when no additive mechanisms are involved. Our most general finding is that Merge as the basic syntactic operation is primarily performed by confined area, namely BA 44 in the IFG. Activity reduces to its most ventral-anterior portion at the most fundamental level, following fine-grained sub-anatomical parcellation proposed for the region. The deep frontal operculum/anterior-dorsal insula (FOP/adINS), a phylogenetically older and less specialized region, rather appears to support word-accumulation processing in which the categorical information of the word is first accessed based on its lexical status, and then maintained on hold before further processing takes place. The present data confirm the general notion of BA 44 being activated as a function of complex structural hierarchy, but they go beyond this view by proposing that structural sensitivity in BA 44 is already appreciated at the lowest levels of complexity during which minimal phrase-structures are build up, and syntactic Merge is assessed. Further, they call for a redefinition of BA 44 from multimodal area to a macro-region with internal localizable functional profiles
Y1 - 2015
SN - 978-3-941504-60-8
PB - Max-Planck-Institute
CY - Leipzig
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Yue, Jinxing
A1 - Bastiaanse, Roelien
A1 - Alter, Kai
T1 - Cortical plasticity induced by rapid Hebbian learning of novel tonal word-forms: Evidence from mismatch negativity
JF - Brain & language : a journal of the neurobiology of language
N2 - Although several experiments reported rapid cortical plasticity induced by passive exposure to novel segmental patterns, few studies have devoted attention to the neural dynamics during the rapid learning of novel tonal word-forms in tonal languages, such as Chinese. In the current study, native speakers of Mandarin Chinese were exposed to acoustically matched real and novel segment-tone patterns. By recording their Mismatch Negativity (MMN) responses (an ERP indicator of long-term memory traces for spoken words), we found enhanced MMNs to the novel word-forms over the left-hemispheric region in the late exposure phase relative to the early exposure phase. In contrast, no significant changes were identified in MMN responses to the real word during familiarisation. Our results suggest a rapid Hebbian learning mechanism in the human neocortex which develops long-term memory traces for a novel segment-tone pattern by establishing new associations between the segmental and tonal representations. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
KW - Language
KW - Rapid learning
KW - Hebbian learning
KW - Event-related potential
KW - Novel word
KW - Mismatch Negativity (MMN)
KW - Oddball paradigm
KW - Lexical tone
KW - Mandarin Chinese
Y1 - 2014
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2014.09.007
SN - 0093-934X
SN - 1090-2155
VL - 139
SP - 10
EP - 22
PB - Elsevier
CY - San Diego
ER -
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 - Yadav, Himanshu
A1 - Husain, Samar
A1 - Futrell, Richard
T1 - Do dependency lengths explain constraints on crossing dependencies?
JF - Linguistics vanguard : multimodal online journal
N2 - In syntactic dependency trees, when arcs are drawn from syntactic heads to dependents, they rarely cross. Constraints on these crossing dependencies are critical for determining the syntactic properties of human language, because they define the position of natural language in formal language hierarchies. We study whether the apparent constraints on crossing syntactic dependencies in natural language might be explained by constraints on dependency lengths (the linear distance between heads and dependents). We compare real dependency trees from treebanks of 52 languages against baselines of random trees which are matched with the real trees in terms of their dependency lengths. We find that these baseline trees have many more crossing dependencies than real trees, indicating that a constraint on dependency lengths alone cannot explain the empirical rarity of crossing dependencies. However, we find evidence that a combined constraint on dependency length and the rate of crossing dependencies might be able to explain two of the most-studied formal restrictions on dependency trees: gap degree and well-nestedness.
KW - crossing dependencies
KW - dependency length
KW - dependency treebanks
KW - efficiency
KW - language processing
KW - syntax
Y1 - 2021
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2019-0070
SN - 2199-174X
VL - 7
PB - De Gruyter Mouton
CY - Berlin ; New York, NY
ER -
TY - THES
A1 - Yadav, Himanshu
T1 - A computational evaluation of feature distortion and cue weighting in sentence comprehension
T1 - Eine komputationale Evaluation von Feature-Verfälschung und Cue-Gewichtung in der Satzverarbeitung
N2 - Successful sentence comprehension requires the comprehender to correctly figure out who did what to whom. For example, in the sentence John kicked the ball, the comprehender has to figure out who did the action of kicking and what was being kicked. This process of identifying and connecting the syntactically-related words in a sentence is called dependency completion. What are the cognitive constraints that determine dependency completion? A widely-accepted theory is cue-based retrieval. The theory maintains that dependency completion is driven by a content-addressable search for the co-dependents in memory. The cue-based retrieval explains a wide range of empirical data from several constructions including subject-verb agreement, subject-verb non-agreement, plausibility mismatch configurations, and negative polarity items.
However, there are two major empirical challenges to the theory: (i) Grammatical sentences’ data from subject-verb number agreement dependencies, where the theory predicts a slowdown at the verb in sentences like the key to the cabinet was rusty compared to the key to the cabinets was rusty, but the data are inconsistent with this prediction; and, (ii) Data from antecedent-reflexive dependencies, where a facilitation in reading times is predicted at the reflexive in the bodybuilder who worked with the trainers injured themselves vs. the bodybuilder who worked with the trainer injured themselves, but the data do not show a facilitatory effect.
The work presented in this dissertation is dedicated to building a more general theory of dependency completion that can account for the above two datasets without losing the original empirical coverage of the cue-based retrieval assumption. In two journal articles, I present computational modeling work that addresses the above two empirical challenges.
To explain the grammatical sentences’ data from subject-verb number agreement dependencies, I propose a new model that assumes that the cue-based retrieval operates on a probabilistically distorted representation of nouns in memory (Article I). This hybrid distortion-plus-retrieval model was compared against the existing candidate models using data from 17 studies on subject-verb number agreement in 4 languages. I find that the hybrid model outperforms the existing models of number agreement processing suggesting that the cue-based retrieval theory must incorporate a feature distortion assumption.
To account for the absence of facilitatory effect in antecedent-reflexive dependen� cies, I propose an individual difference model, which was built within the cue-based retrieval framework (Article II). The model assumes that individuals may differ in how strongly they weigh a syntactic cue over a number cue. The model was fitted to data from two studies on antecedent-reflexive dependencies, and the participant-level cue-weighting was estimated. We find that one-fourth of the participants, in both studies, weigh the syntactic cue higher than the number cue in processing reflexive dependencies and the remaining participants weigh the two cues equally. The result indicates that the absence of predicted facilitatory effect at the level of grouped data is driven by some, not all, participants who weigh syntactic cues higher than the number cue. More generally, the result demonstrates that the assumption of differential cue weighting is important for a theory of dependency completion processes. This differential cue weighting idea was independently supported by a modeling study on subject-verb non-agreement dependencies (Article III).
Overall, the cue-based retrieval, which is a general theory of dependency completion, needs to incorporate two new assumptions: (i) the nouns stored in memory can undergo probabilistic feature distortion, and (ii) the linguistic cues used for retrieval can be weighted differentially. This is the cumulative result of the modeling work presented in this dissertation.
The dissertation makes an important theoretical contribution: Sentence comprehension in humans is driven by a mechanism that assumes cue-based retrieval, probabilistic feature distortion, and differential cue weighting. This insight is theoretically important because there is some independent support for these three assumptions in sentence processing and the broader memory literature. The modeling work presented here is also methodologically important because for the first time, it demonstrates (i) how the complex models of sentence processing can be evaluated using data from multiple studies simultaneously, without oversimplifying the models, and (ii) how the inferences drawn from the individual-level behavior can be used in theory development.
N2 - Bei der Satzverarbeitung muss der Leser richtig herausfinden, wer wem was angetan hat. Zum Beispiel muss der Leser in dem Satz „John hat den Ball getreten“ herausfinden, wer tat die Aktion des Tretens und was getreten wurde. Dieser Prozess des Identifizierens und Verbindens der syntaktisch verwandte Wörter in einem Satz nennt man Dependency-Completion. Was sind die kognitiven Mechanismen, die Dependency-Completion bestimmen?
Eine weithin akzeptierte Theorie ist der Cue-based retrieval. Die Theorie besagt, dass die Dependency-Completion durch eine inhaltsadressierbare Suche nach der vorangetrieben wird Co-Abhängige im Gedächtnis. Der Cue-basierte Abruf erklärt ein breites Spektrum an empirischen Daten mehrere Konstruktionen, darunter Subjekt-Verb-Übereinstimmung, Subjekt-Verb-Nichtübereinstimmung, Plausibilität Mismatch-Konfigurationen und Elemente mit negativer Polarität.
Es gibt jedoch zwei große empirische Herausforderungen für die Theorie: (i) Grammatische Sätze Daten aus Subjekt-Verb-Nummer-Dependency, bei denen die Theorie eine Verlangsamung vorhersagt das Verb in Sätzen wie „the key to the cabinet was rusty“ im Vergleich zu „the key to the cabinets was rusty“, aber die Daten stimmen nicht mit dieser Vorhersage überein; und (ii) Daten von Antezedenz-Reflexiv Strukturen, wo eine Leseerleichterung beim reflexiven „the bodybuilder who worked with the trainers injured themselves“ vs. „the bodybuilder who worked with the trainers injured themselves", aber die Daten zeigen keine vermittelnde Wirkung.
Die in dieser Dissertation vorgestellte Arbeit widmet sich dem Aufbau einer allgemeineren Theorie von Dependency-Completion, die die beiden oben genannten Datensätze berücksichtigen kann, ohne das Original zu verlieren empirische Abdeckung der Cue-based Retrieval-Annahme. In zwei Zeitschriftenartikeln stelle ich Arbeiten zur Computermodellierung vor, die sich mit den beiden oben genannten empirischen Herausforderungen befassen. Um die Daten der grammatikalischen Sätze aus den Abhängigkeiten der Subjekt-Verb-Nummer-Übereinstimmung zu erklären, schlage ich ein neues Modell vor, das davon ausgeht, dass der Cue-basierte Abruf probabilistisch funktioniert verzerrte Darstellung von Substantiven im Gedächtnis (Artikel I). Dieses hybride Distortion-plus-Retrieval-Modell wurde anhand von Daten aus 17 Studien zu Subjekt-Verb mit den bestehenden Kandidatenmodellen verglichen Nummernvereinbarung in 4 Sprachen. Ich finde, dass das Hybridmodell die bestehenden Modelle übertrifft der Nummernvereinbarungsverarbeitung, was darauf hindeutet, dass die Cue-based Retrieval-Theorie Folgendes umfassen muss: a Annahme von Feature-Verfälschung. Um das Fehlen eines unterstützenden Effekts in antezedens-reflexiven Abhängigkeiten zu berücksichtigen, schlage ich ein individuelles Differenzmodell vor, das innerhalb des Cue-based Retrieval-Frameworks erstellt wurde (Artikel II). Das Modell geht davon aus, dass Individuen sich darin unterscheiden können, wie stark sie eine Syntax gewichten Cue über einem Nummern-Cue. Das Modell wurde an Daten aus zwei Studien zum Antezedenz-Reflexiv angepasst Abhängigkeiten, und die Cue-Gewichtung auf Teilnehmerebene wurde geschätzt. Wir finden, dass ein Viertel von Die Teilnehmer in beiden Studien gewichten bei der Verarbeitung den syntaktischen Cue höher als den numerischen Cue reflexive Abhängigkeiten und die verbleibenden Teilnehmer gewichten die beiden Cue gleichermaßen. Das Ergebnis weist darauf hin, dass das Fehlen des prognostizierten Erleichterungseffekts auf der Ebene der gruppierten Daten von einigen, nicht alle Teilnehmer, die syntaktische Cue höher gewichten als Zahlenhinweise. Allgemeiner gesagt, die Das Ergebnis zeigt, dass die Annahme einer differentiellen Hinweisgewichtung wichtig für eine Theorie von ist Dependency-Completion. Diese Idee der differentiellen Cue-Gewichtung wurde unabhängig unterstützt durch eine Modellierungsstudie zu Subjekt-Verb-Nichteinigungsabhängigkeiten (Artikel III).
Insgesamt benötigt der Cue-basierte Abruf, der eine allgemeine Theorie der Abhängigkeitsvervollständigung ist um zwei neue Annahmen aufzunehmen: (i) die im Gedächtnis gespeicherten Substantive können einer Wahrscheinlichkeitsanalyse unterzogen werden Feature-Verfälschung, und (ii) die für den Abruf verwendeten sprachlichen Cue können unterschiedlich gewichtet werden. Das ist das kumulative Ergebnis der in dieser Dissertation vorgestellten Modellierungsarbeit.Die Dissertation leistet einen wichtigen theoretischen Beitrag: Satzverständnis in Der Mensch wird von einem Mechanismus getrieben, der einen hinweisbasierten Abruf, eine probabilistische Merkmalsverzerrung und eine differentielle Hinweisgewichtung annimmt. Diese Einsicht ist theoretisch wichtig, weil es einige gibt unabhängige Unterstützung für diese drei Annahmen in der Satzverarbeitung und im weiteren Gedächtnis Literatur. Die hier vorgestellten Modellierungsarbeiten sind auch methodisch wichtig, weil für die Zum ersten Mal wird gezeigt, (i) wie die komplexen Modelle der Satzverarbeitung evaluiert werden können Daten aus mehreren Studien gleichzeitig zu verwenden, ohne die Modelle zu stark zu vereinfachen, und (ii) wie die Schlussfolgerungen aus dem Verhalten auf individueller Ebene können in der Theorieentwicklung verwendet werden.
KW - sentence comprehension
KW - individual differences
KW - cue-based retrieval
KW - memory distortion
KW - Approximate Bayesian Computation
KW - cue reliability
KW - ungefähre Bayessche Komputation
KW - Cue-Gewichtung
KW - Cue-basierter Retrieval
KW - individuelle Unterschiede
KW - Darstellung Verfälschung
KW - Satzverarbeitung
Y1 - 2023
U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-585055
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Wulff, Peter
A1 - Buschhüter, David
A1 - Westphal, Andrea
A1 - Nowak, Anna
A1 - Becker, Lisa
A1 - Robalino, Hugo
A1 - Stede, Manfred
A1 - Borowski, Andreas
T1 - Computer-based classification of preservice physics teachers’ written reflections
JF - Journal of science education and technology
N2 - Reflecting in written form on one's teaching enactments has been considered a facilitator for teachers' professional growth in university-based preservice teacher education. Writing a structured reflection can be facilitated through external feedback. However, researchers noted that feedback in preservice teacher education often relies on holistic, rather than more content-based, analytic feedback because educators oftentimes lack resources (e.g., time) to provide more analytic feedback. To overcome this impediment to feedback for written reflection, advances in computer technology can be of use. Hence, this study sought to utilize techniques of natural language processing and machine learning to train a computer-based classifier that classifies preservice physics teachers' written reflections on their teaching enactments in a German university teacher education program. To do so, a reflection model was adapted to physics education. It was then tested to what extent the computer-based classifier could accurately classify the elements of the reflection model in segments of preservice physics teachers' written reflections. Multinomial logistic regression using word count as a predictor was found to yield acceptable average human-computer agreement (F1-score on held-out test dataset of 0.56) so that it might fuel further development towards an automated feedback tool that supplements existing holistic feedback for written reflections with data-based, analytic feedback.
KW - reflection
KW - teacher professional development
KW - hatural language
KW - processing
KW - machine learning
Y1 - 2020
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10956-020-09865-1
SN - 1059-0145
SN - 1573-1839
VL - 30
IS - 1
SP - 1
EP - 15
PB - Springer
CY - Dordrecht
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Wulff, Dirk U.
A1 - De Deyne, Simon
A1 - Jones, Michael N.
A1 - Mata, Rui
A1 - Austerweil, Joseph L.
A1 - Baayen, R. Harald
A1 - Balota, David A.
A1 - Baronchelli, Andrea
A1 - Brysbaert, Marc
A1 - Cai, Qing
A1 - Dennis, Simon
A1 - Hills, Thomas T.
A1 - Kenett, Yoed N.
A1 - Keuleers, Emmanuel
A1 - Marelli, Marco
A1 - Pakhomov, Serguei
A1 - Ramscar, Michael
A1 - Schooler, Lael J.
A1 - Shing, Yee Lee
A1 - da Souza, Alessandra S.
A1 - Siew, Cynthia S. Q.
A1 - Storms, Gert
A1 - Veríssimo, Joao Marques
T1 - New Perspectives on the Aging Lexicon
JF - Trends in cognitive science
N2 - The field of cognitive aging has seen considerable advances in describing the linguistic and semantic changes that happen during the adult life span to uncover the structure of the mental lexicon (i.e., the mental repository of lexical and conceptual representations). Nevertheless, there is still debate concerning the sources of these changes, including the role of environmental exposure and several cognitive mechanisms associated with learning, representation, and retrieval of information. We review the current status of research in this field and outline a framework that promises to assess the contribution of both ecological and psychological aspects to the aging lexicon.
Y1 - 2019
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2019.05.003
SN - 1364-6613
SN - 1879-307X
VL - 23
IS - 8
SP - 686
EP - 698
PB - Elsevier
CY - London
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 - Wittenberg, Eva
A1 - Paczynski, Martin
A1 - Wiese, Heike
A1 - Jackendoff, Ray
A1 - Kuperberg, Gina
T1 - The difference between "giving a rose" and "giving a kiss": Sustained neural activity to the light verb construction
JF - Journal of memory and language
N2 - We used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the neurocognitive mechanisms associated with processing light verb constructions such as "give a kiss". These constructions consist of a semantically underspecified light verb ("give") and an event nominal that contributes most of the meaning and also activates an argument structure of its own ("kiss"). This creates a mismatch between the syntactic constituents and the semantic roles of a sentence. Native speakers read German verb-final sentences that contained light verb constructions (e.g., "Julius gave Anne a kiss"), non-light constructions (e.g., "Julius gave Anne a rose"), and semantically anomalous constructions (e.g., 'Julius gave Anne a conversation"). ERPs were measured at the critical verb, which appeared after all its arguments. Compared to non-light constructions, the light verb constructions evoked a widely distributed, frontally focused, sustained negative-going effect between 500 and 900 ms after verb onset. We interpret this effect as reflecting working memory costs associated with complex semantic processes that establish a shared argument structure in the light verb constructions.
KW - Event-related potential
KW - Sentence processing
KW - Light verb constructions
KW - Argument structure
KW - Syntax-semantics interface
KW - Sustained negativity
Y1 - 2014
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2014.02.002
SN - 0749-596X
SN - 1096-0821
VL - 73
SP - 31
EP - 42
PB - Elsevier
CY - San Diego
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Williams, Daniel Philip
A1 - Escudero, Paola
A1 - Gafos, Adamantios I.
T1 - Spectral change and duration as cues in Australian English listeners' front vowel categorization
JF - The journal of the Acoustical Society of America
N2 - Australian English /iː/, /ɪ/, and /ɪə/ exhibit almost identical average first (F1) and second (F2) formant frequencies and differ in duration and vowel inherent spectral change (VISC). The cues of duration, F1 × F2 trajectory direction (TD) and trajectory length (TL) were assessed in listeners' categorization of /iː/ and /ɪə/ compared to /ɪ/. Duration was important for distinguishing both /iː/ and /ɪə/ from /ɪ/. TD and TL were important for categorizing /iː/ versus /ɪ/, whereas only TL was important for /ɪə/ versus /ɪ/. Finally, listeners' use of duration and VISC was not mutually affected for either vowel compared to /ɪ/.
Y1 - 2018
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1121/1.5055019
SN - 0001-4966
SN - 1520-8524
VL - 144
IS - 3
SP - EL215
EP - EL221
PB - American Institute of Physics
CY - Melville
ER -
TY - GEN
A1 - Williams, Daniel
A1 - Escudero, Paola
A1 - Gafos, Adamantios I.
T1 - Perceptual sensitivity to spectral change in Australian English close front vowels
BT - an electroencephalographic investigation
T2 - 19 th annual conference of the international speech communicaton association (INTERSPEECH 2018), VOLS 1-6: Speech research for emerging marjets in multilingual societies
N2 - Speech scientists have long noted that the qualities of naturally-produced vowels do not remain constant over their durations regardless of being nominally "monophthongs" or "diphthongs". Recent acoustic corpora show that there are consistent patterns of first (F1) and second (F2) formant frequency change across different vowel categories. The three Australian English (AusE) close front vowels /i:, 1, i/ provide a striking example: while their midpoint or mean F1 and F2 frequencies are virtually identical, their spectral change patterns distinctly differ. The results indicate that, despite the distinct patterns of spectral change of AusE /i:, i, la/ in production, its perceptual relevance is not uniform, but rather vowel-category dependent.
KW - vowels
KW - pre-attentive discrimination
KW - speech perception
KW - speech acoustics
KW - English dialects
Y1 - 2018
SN - 978-1-5108-7221-9
U6 - https://doi.org/10.21437/Interspeech.2018-2505
SN - 2308-457X
SP - 1442
EP - 1446
PB - ISCA-International Speech Communication Association
CY - Baixas
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 - Wiese, Heike
A1 - Alexiadou, Artemis
A1 - Allen, Shanley
A1 - Bunk, Oliver
A1 - Gagarina, Natalia
A1 - Iefremenko, Kateryna
A1 - Martynova, Maria
A1 - Pashkova, Tatiana
A1 - Rizou, Vicky
A1 - Schroeder, Christoph
A1 - Shadrova, Anna
A1 - Szucsich, Luka
A1 - Tracy, Rosemarie
A1 - Tsehaye, Wintai
A1 - Zerbian, Sabine
A1 - Zuban, Yulia
T1 - Heritage speakers as part of the native language continuum
JF - Frontiers in psychology
N2 - We argue for a perspective on bilingual heritage speakers as native speakers of both their languages and present results from a large-scale, cross-linguistic study that took such a perspective and approached bilinguals and monolinguals on equal grounds.
We targeted comparable language use in bilingual and monolingual speakers, crucially covering broader repertoires than just formal language. A main database was the open-access RUEG corpus, which covers comparable informal vs. formal and spoken vs. written productions by adolescent and adult bilinguals with heritage-Greek, -Russian, and -Turkish in Germany and the United States and with heritage-German in the United States, and matching data from monolinguals in Germany, the United States, Greece, Russia, and Turkey. Our main results lie in three areas.
(1) We found non-canonical patterns not only in bilingual, but also in monolingual speakers, including patterns that have so far been considered absent from native grammars, in domains of morphology, syntax, intonation, and pragmatics.
(2) We found a degree of lexical and morphosyntactic inter-speaker variability in monolinguals that was sometimes higher than that of bilinguals, further challenging the model of the streamlined native speaker.
(3) In majority language use, non-canonical patterns were dominant in spoken and/or informal registers, and this was true for monolinguals and bilinguals. In some cases, bilingual speakers were leading quantitatively. In heritage settings where the language was not part of formal schooling, we found tendencies of register leveling, presumably due to the fact that speakers had limited access to formal registers of the heritage language.
Our findings thus indicate possible quantitative differences and different register distributions rather than distinct grammatical patterns in bilingual and monolingual speakers. This supports the integration of heritage speakers into the native-speaker continuum. Approaching heritage speakers from this perspective helps us to better understand the empirical data and can shed light on language variation and change in native grammars.
Furthermore, our findings for monolinguals lead us to reconsider the state-of-the art on majority languages, given recurring evidence for non-canonical patterns that deviate from what has been assumed in the literature so far, and might have been attributed to bilingualism had we not included informal and spoken registers in monolinguals and bilinguals alike.
KW - heritage speakers
KW - registers
KW - participles
KW - word order
KW - bare NPs
KW - boundary tone
KW - referent introduction
KW - relative clause formation
Y1 - 2022
U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.717973
SN - 1664-1078
VL - 12
PB - Frontiers Media
CY - Lausanne
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Wiese, Heike
T1 - So as a focus marker in German
JF - Linguistics : an interdisciplinary journal of the language sciences
N2 - This paper discusses a hitherto undescribed usage of the particle so as a dedicated focus marker in contemporary German. I discuss grammatical and pragmatic characteristics of this focus marker, supporting my account with natural linguistic data and with controlled experimental evidence showing that so has a significant influence on speakers' understanding of what the focus expression in a sentence is. Against this background, I sketch a possible pragmaticalization path from referential usages of so via hedging to a semantically bleached focus marker, which, unlike particles such as auch 'also'/'too' or nur 'only', does not contribute any additional meaning.
Y1 - 2011
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1515/LING.2011.028
SN - 0024-3949
VL - 49
IS - 5
SP - 991
EP - 1039
PB - De Gruyter Mouton
CY - Berlin
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Wierzba, Marta
A1 - Fanselow, Gisbert
T1 - Factors influencing the acceptability of object fronting in German
JF - The journal of comparative Germanic linguistics
N2 - In this paper, we address some controversially debated empirical questions concerning object fronting in German by a series of acceptability rating studies. We investigated three kinds of factors: (i) properties of the subject (given/new, pronoun/full DP), (ii) emphasis, (iii) register. The first factor is predicted to play a crucial role by models in which object fronting possibilities are limited by prosodic properties. Two experiments provide converging evidence for a systematic effect of this factor: we find that the relative acceptability of object fronting across subjects that require an accent (new DPs) is lower than across deaccentable subjects (pronouns and given DPs). Other models predict object fronting across full phrases (but not across pronouns) to be limited to an emphatic interpretation. This prediction is also borne out, suggesting that both types of models capture an empirically valid generalization and can be seen as complementing each other rather than competing with each other. Finally, we find support for the view that informal register facilitates object fronting. In sum, our experiments contribute to clarifying the empirical basis concerning a phenomenon influenced by a range of interacting factors. This, in turn, informs theoretical approaches to the prefield position and helps to identify factors that need to be carefully controlled in this field of research.
KW - German
KW - Object fronting
KW - Prefield
KW - Givenness
KW - Emphasis
KW - Register
KW - Experiments
KW - Acceptability
Y1 - 2020
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10828-020-09113-1
SN - 1383-4924
SN - 1572-8552
VL - 23
IS - 1
SP - 77
EP - 124
PB - Springer
CY - New York
ER -
TY - THES
A1 - Wierzba, Marta
T1 - Revisiting prosodic reconstruction
T1 - Prosodische Rekonstruktion neu betrachtet
BT - an interface-based approach to partial focus and topic fronting in German
BT - eine schnittstellenbasierte Analyse partieller Fokus- und Topikvoranstellung im Deutschen
N2 - In this thesis, I develop a theoretical implementation of prosodic reconstruction and apply it to the empirical domain of German sentences in which part of a focus or contrastive topic is fronted.
Prosodic reconstruction refers to the idea that sentences involving syntactic movement show prosodic parallels with corresponding simpler structures without movement. I propose to model this recurrent observation by ordering syntax-prosody mapping before copy deletion.
In order to account for the partial fronting data, the idea is extended to the mapping between prosody and information structure. This assumption helps to explain why object-initial sentences containing a broad focus or broad contrastive topic show similar prosodic and interpretative restrictions as sentences with canonical word order.
The empirical adequacy of the model is tested against a set of gradient acceptability judgments.
N2 - In dieser Dissertation wird ein theoretisches Modell prosodischer Rekonstruktion entwickelt und auf den empirischen Bereich deutscher Sätze mit teilweiser Voranstellung eines Fokus oder eines kontrastiven Topiks angewendet.
Mit prosodischer Rekonstruktion ist die Idee gemeint, dass Sätze, die syntaktische Bewegung enthalten, prosodische Parallelen mit einfacheren Konstruktionen ohne Bewegung aufweisen. Es wird vorgeschlagen, diese Beobachtung dadurch zu modellieren, dass die Abbildungsoperation zwischen Syntax und Prosodie der Löschung von Kopien vorangeht. Auf diese Weise ist die Ausgangsposition bewegter Konstituenten noch zugänglich, wenn die prosodische Struktur bestimmt wird, und kann somit die Akzentverteilung beeinflussen.
Um die Daten zu partieller Voranstellung mitzuerfassen, wird das Modell auf die Abbildung zwischen Prosodie und Informationsstruktur ausgeweitet. Diese Annahme trägt dazu bei zu erklären, wieso objektinitiale Sätze, die einen weiten Fokus oder ein weites kontrastives Topik enthalten, ähnliche prosodische und interpretative Beschränkungen aufweisen wie Sätze mit kanonischer Wortfolge.
Die empirische Adäquatheit des Modells wird anhand eines neuen Datensatzes gradienter Akzeptabilitätsurteile getestet.
KW - prosody
KW - syntax
KW - interface
KW - focus
KW - contrastive topic
KW - Prosodie
KW - Syntax
KW - Schnittstelle
KW - Fokus
KW - kontrastives Topik
Y1 - 2017
U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-403152
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Weskott, Thomas
A1 - Fanselow, Gisbert
T1 - On the informativity of different measures of linguistic acceptability
JF - Language : journal of the Linguistic Society of America
N2 - This article deals with the claim that the MAGNITUDE ESTIMATION (ME) method of gathering acceptability judgments produces data that are more informative for linguists than binary or n-point scale judgments. We performed three acceptability-rating experiments that directly compared ME data to binary and seven-point scale data. The results clearly falsify the hypothesis that data gathered by the ME method carry a larger amount of information about the acceptability of a given linguistic phenomenon. The three measures are largely equivalent with respect to informativity. Moreover, ME judgments are shown to be more liable to producing spurious variance under certain circumstances.*
KW - acceptability judgments
KW - empirical syntax
KW - magnitude estimation
KW - informativity
Y1 - 2011
SN - 0097-8507
VL - 87
IS - 2
SP - 249
EP - 273
PB - Linguistic Society of America
CY - Washington
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Weskott, Thomas
T1 - Stopn bashing givenness! a note on Elke Kasimir's "Question-answer test and givenness"
Y1 - 2005
SN - 3-937786-01-5
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Wellmann, Caroline
A1 - Holzgrefe-Lang, Julia
A1 - Truckenbrodt, Hubert
A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell
A1 - Höhle, Barbara
T1 - How each prosodic boundary cue matters evidence from German infants
JF - Frontiers in psychology
N2 - Previous studies have revealed that infants aged 6-10 months are able to use the acoustic correlates of major prosodic boundaries, that is, pitch change, preboundary lengthening, and pause, for the segmentation of the continuous speech signal. Moreover, investigations with American-English- and Dutch-learning infants suggest that processing prosodic boundary markings involves a weighting of these cues. This weighting seems to develop with increasing exposure to the native language and to underlie crosslinguistic variation. In the following, we report the results of four experiments using the headturn preference procedure to explore the perception of prosodic boundary cues in German infants. We presented 8-month-old infants with a sequence of names in two different prosodic groupings, with or without boundary markers. Infants discriminated both sequences when the boundary was marked by all three cues (Experiment 1) and when it was marked by a pitch change and preboundary lengthening in combination (Experiment 2). The presence of a pitch change (Experiment 3) or preboundary lengthening (Experiment 4) as single cues did not lead to a successful discrimination. Our results indicate that pause is not a necessary cue for German infants. Pitch change and preboundary lengthening in combination, but not as single cues, are sufficient. Hence, by 8 months infants only rely on a convergence of boundary markers. Comparisons with adults' performance on the same stimulus materials suggest that the pattern observed with the 8-month-olds is already consistent with that of adults. We discuss our findings with respect to crosslinguistic variation and the development of a language-specific prosodic cue weighting.
KW - infants
KW - language acquisition
KW - speech perception
KW - prosodic bootstrapping
KW - prosodic boundary cues
KW - cue weighting
KW - intonation phrase boundary
KW - headturn preference procedure
Y1 - 2012
U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00580
SN - 1664-1078
VL - 3
PB - Frontiers Research Foundation
CY - Lausanne
ER -
TY - THES
A1 - Wellmann, Caroline
T1 - Early sensitivity to prosodic phrase boundary cues: Behavioral evidence from German-learning infants
T1 - Frühkindliche Wahrnehmung prosodischer Grenzmarkierungen: Behaviorale Untersuchungen mit Deutsch lernenden Säuglingen
N2 - This dissertation seeks to shed light on the relation of phrasal prosody and developmental speech perception in German-learning infants. Three independent empirical studies explore the role of acoustic correlates of major prosodic boundaries, specifically pitch change, final lengthening, and pause, in infant boundary perception. Moreover, it was examined whether the sensitivity to prosodic phrase boundary markings changes during the first year of life as a result of perceptual attunement to the ambient language (Aslin & Pisoni, 1980).
Using the headturn preference procedure six- and eight-month-old monolingual German-learning infants were tested on their discrimination of two different prosodic groupings of the same list of coordinated names either with or without an internal IPB after the second name, that is, [Moni und Lilli] [und Manu] or [Moni und Lilli und Manu]. The boundary marking was systematically varied with respect to single prosodic cues or specific cue combinations.
Results revealed that six- and eight-month-old German-learning infants successfully detect the internal prosodic boundary when it is signaled by all the three main boundary cues pitch change, final lengthening, and pause. For eight-, but not for six-month-olds, the combination of pitch change and final lengthening, without the occurrence of a pause, is sufficient. This mirrors an adult-like perception by eight-months (Holzgrefe-Lang et al., 2016). Six-month-olds detect a prosodic phrase boundary signaled by final lengthening and pause. The findings suggest a developmental change in German prosodic boundary cue perception from a strong reliance on the pause cue at six months to a differentiated sensitivity to the more subtle cues pitch change and final lengthening at eight months. Neither for six- nor for eight-month-olds the occurrence of pitch change or final lengthening as single cues is sufficient, similar to what has been observed for adult speakers of German (Holzgrefe-Lang et al., 2016).
The present dissertation provides new scientific knowledge on infants’ sensitivity to individual prosodic phrase boundary cues in the first year of life. Methodologically, the studies are pathbreaking since they used exactly the same stimulus materials – phonologically thoroughly controlled lists of names – that have also been used with adults (Holzgrefe-Lang et al., 2016) and with infants in a neurophysiological paradigm (Holzgrefe-Lang, Wellmann, Höhle, & Wartenburger, 2018), allowing for comparisons across age (six/ eight months and adults) and method (behavioral vs. neurophysiological methods). Moreover, materials are suited to be transferred to other languages allowing for a crosslinguistic comparison. Taken together with a study with similar French materials (van Ommen et al., 2020) the observed change in sensitivity in German-learning infants can be interpreted as a language-specific one, from an initial language-general processing mechanism that primarily focuses on the presence of pauses to a language-specific processing that takes into account prosodic properties available in the ambient language. The developmental pattern is discussed as an interplay of acoustic salience, prosodic typology (prosodic regularity) and cue reliability.
N2 - Die Dissertation befasst sich mit der Bedeutung individueller prosodischer Hinweise für die Wahrnehmung einer prosodischen Phrasengrenze bei deutschsprachig aufwachsenden Säuglingen.
In drei Studien wurde mit behavioralen Untersuchungen der Frage nachgegangen, welche Bedeutung die akustischen Merkmale Tonhöhenveränderung, finale Dehnung und das Auftreten von Pausen für die Erkennung einer prosodischen Grenze haben. Zudem wurde hinterfragt, ob sich die Sensitivität für diese prosodischen Grenzmarkierungen im ersten Lebensjahr verändert und einer perzeptuellen Reorganisation, also einer Anpassung an die Muttersprache (Attunement Theorie, Aslin & Pisoni, 1980), unterliegt.
Mithilfe der Headturn Preference Procedure wurde getestet, ob 6 und 8 Monate alte Deutsch lernende Säuglinge zwei verschiedene prosodische Gruppierungen einer Aufzählung von Namen diskriminieren können (mit oder ohne eine interne prosodische Grenze, [Moni und Lilli] [und Manu] vs. [Moni und Lilli und Manu]). Die Grenze wurde bezüglich des Auftretens einzelner prosodischer Hinweise oder Kombinationen von Hinweisen systematisch variiert. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass sowohl 6 als auch 8 Monate alte Deutsch lernende Säuglinge die interne prosodische Grenze in der Aufzählung erkennen, wenn sie durch alle drei Hinweise – Tonhöhenveränderung, finale Dehnung und das Auftreten einer Pause – markiert ist. Darüber hinaus zeigte sich, dass für 8, aber nicht für 6, Monate alte Säuglinge die Kombination aus Tonhöhe und finaler Dehnung ohne Pause ausreichend ist. 6 Monate alte Säuglinge erkennen eine Grenze, wenn sie durch eine Pause und finale Dehnung markiert ist. Damit zeigt sich eine Entwicklung der Sensitivität für prosodische Grenzmarkierungen von 6 zu 8 Monaten – weg von der Notwendigkeit der Pause hin zu einer differenzierten Wahrnehmung subtiler Hinweise wie Tonhöhe und finale Dehnung. Weder für 6 noch für 8 Monate alte Säuglinge ist die Markierung durch einen einzelnen Hinweis (Tonhöhe oder finale Dehnung) ausreichend. Dies deckt sich mit dem Verhaltensmuster erwachsener deutschsprachiger Hörer in einer Aufgabe zur prosodischen Strukturierung (Holzgrefe-Lang et al., 2016).
Die vorgelegte Dissertation beleuchtet erstmalig für den frühen Erwerb des Deutschen die Bedeutung einzelner prosodischer Hinweise an Phrasengrenzen. Hierbei ist die Art der verwendeten Stimuli neu: phonologisch sorgfältig kontrollierte Aufzählungen von Namen, in denen einzelne prosodische Hinweise fein akustisch manipuliert werden können. Zudem kann dieses Material ideal in Untersuchungen mit anderen Methoden (z.B. EEG) eingesetzt werden und auf weitere Altersgruppen (Erwachsene) und andere Sprachen transferiert werden. Dies ermöglicht den direkten Vergleich der Ergebnisse zu denen anderer Studien mit ähnlichem Stimulusmaterial (Holzgrefe-Lang et al., 2016, 2018; van Ommen et al., 2020) und erlaubt die Interpretation einer sprachspezifischen Entwicklung. Das beobachtete Entwicklungsmuster wird als Produkt eines Wechselspiels von akustischer Salienz, prosodischer Typologie (prosodische Regularität) und Zuverlässigkeit eines prosodischen Hinweises (cue reliability) diskutiert.
KW - prosody
KW - language acquisition
KW - infants
KW - prosodic boundary cues
KW - prosodic phrase boundary
KW - perceptual attunement
KW - Prosodie
KW - Spracherwerb
KW - Säuglinge
KW - prosodische Grenzmarkierungen
KW - prosodische Phrasengrenze
KW - perzeptuelle Reorganisation
Y1 - 2023
U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-573937
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Weissenborn, Jürgen
A1 - Roeper, Thomas
A1 - DeVilliers, Jill
T1 - WH-acquisition in French and German : connections between case, WH- features and unique triggers
Y1 - 1995
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Weissenborn, Jürgen
A1 - Penner, Zvi
A1 - Schönberger, Manuela
T1 - The acquisition of object placement in early German and Swiss German
Y1 - 1994
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Weissenborn, Jürgen
A1 - Penner, Zvi
T1 - Strong continuity, parameter setting and the trigger hierarchy : on the acquisition of the DP in Bernese Swiss German and High German
Y1 - 1996
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Weissenborn, Jürgen
A1 - Höhle, Barbara
A1 - Kiefer, D.
A1 - Cavar, Damir
T1 - On the Structure of early syntactic knowledge : continuity and Economy
Y1 - 2000
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Weissenborn, Jürgen
A1 - Haverkort, Marco
T1 - Parameters and cliticization in early child german
Y1 - 1995
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Weissenborn, Jürgen
T1 - Children's sensitivity to word-order violations in German : evidence for very early parameter-setting
Y1 - 1998
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Weissenborn, Jürgen
T1 - Constraining the child's grammar : local wellformedness in the development of verb movement in German and French
Y1 - 1994
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Weirich, Melanie
A1 - Lancia, Leonardo
A1 - Brunner, Jana
T1 - Inter-speaker articulatory variability during vowel-consonant-vowel sequences in twins and unrelated speakers
JF - The journal of the Acoustical Society of America
N2 - The purpose of this study is to examine and compare the amount of inter-speaker variability in the articulation of monozygotic twin pairs (MZ), dizygotic twin pairs (DZ), and pairs of unrelated twins with the goal of examining in greater depth the influence of physiology on articulation. Physiological parameters are assumed to be very similar in MZ twin pairs in contrast to DZ twin pairs or unrelated speakers, and it is hypothesized that the speaker specific shape of articulatory looping trajectories of the tongue is at least partly dependent on biomechanical properties and the speaker's individual physiology. By means of electromagnetic articulography (EMA), inter-speaker variability in the looping trajectories of the tongue back during /VCV/ sequences is analyzed. Results reveal similar looping patterns within MZ twin pairs but in DZ pairs differences in the shape of the loop, the direction of the upward and downward movement, and the amount of horizontal sliding movement at the palate are found.
Y1 - 2013
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1121/1.4822480
SN - 0001-4966
SN - 1520-8524
VL - 134
IS - 5
SP - 3766
EP - 3780
PB - American Institute of Physics
CY - Melville
ER -
TY - THES
A1 - Weber, Christiane
T1 - Rhythm is gonna get you : electrophysiological markers of rhythmic processing in infants with and without risk for specific language impairment (SLI)
T2 - MPI series in human cognitive and brain sciences
Y1 - 2004
SN - 3-936816-25-5
VL - 52
PB - Max Planck Inst. for Human Cognitive and Brain Schiences
CY - Leipzig
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Wattendorf, Elise
A1 - Festman, Julia
A1 - Westermann, Birgit
A1 - Keil, Ursula
A1 - Zappatore, Daniela
A1 - Franceschini, Rita
A1 - Luedi, Georges
A1 - Radue, Ernst-Wilhelm
A1 - Muente, Thomas F.
A1 - Rager, Guenter
A1 - Nitsch, Cordula
T1 - Early bilingualism influences early and subsequently later acquired languages in cortical regions representing control functions
JF - International journal of bilingualism : cross-disciplinary, cross-linguistic studies of language behavior
N2 - Early acquisition of a second language influences the development of language abilities and cognitive functions. In the present study, we used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to investigate the impact of early bilingualism on the organization of the cortical language network during sentence production. Two groups of adult multilinguals, proficient in three languages, were tested on a narrative task; early multilinguals acquired the second language before the age of three years, late multilinguals after the age of nine. All participants learned a third language after nine years of age. Comparison of the two groups revealed substantial differences in language-related brain activity for early as well as late acquired languages. Most importantly, early multilinguals preferentially activated a fronto-striatal network in the left hemisphere, whereas the left posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG) was activated to a lesser degree than in late multilinguals. The same brain regions were highlighted in previous studies when a non-target language had to be controlled. Hence the engagement of language control in adult early multilinguals appears to be influenced by the specific learning and acquisition conditions during early childhood. Remarkably, our results reveal that the functional control of early and subsequently later acquired languages is similarly affected, suggesting that language experience has a pervasive influence into adulthood. As such, our findings extend the current understanding of control functions in multilinguals.
KW - Multilingual
KW - language acquisition
KW - narration
KW - age of acquisition
KW - functional magnetic resonance imaging
KW - emergentist framework
Y1 - 2014
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/1367006912456590
SN - 1367-0069
SN - 1756-6878
VL - 18
IS - 1
SP - 48
EP - 66
PB - Sage Publ.
CY - London
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell
A1 - Steinbrink, Jens
A1 - Telkemeyer, Silke
A1 - Friedrich, Manuela
A1 - Friederici, Angela D.
A1 - Obrig, Hellmuth
T1 - The processing of prosody : evidence of interhemispheric specialization at the age of four
Y1 - 2007
SN - 1053-8119
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell
A1 - Kühn, Esther
A1 - Sassenberg, Uta
A1 - Foth, Manja
A1 - Franz, Elizabeth A.
A1 - van derMeer, Elke
T1 - On the relationship between fluid intelligence, gesture production, and brain structure
Y1 - 2009
UR - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01602896
SN - 0160-2896
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell
A1 - Kühn, Esther
A1 - Sassenberg, Uta
A1 - Foth, Manja
A1 - Franz, Elisabeth A.
A1 - van der Meer, Elke
T1 - On the relationship between fluid intelligence, gesture production, and brain structure
N2 - Individuals scoring high in fluid intelligence tasks generally perform very efficiently in problem solving tasks and analogical reasoning tasks presumably because they are able to select the task-relevant information very quickly and focus on a limited set of task-relevant cognitive operations. Moreover, individuals with high fluid intelligence produce more representational hand and arm gestures when describing a geometric analogy task than individuals with average fluid intelligence. No study has yet addressed the relationship between intelligence, gesture production, and brain structure, to our knowledge. That was the purpose of our study. To characterize the relation between intelligence, gesture production, and brain structure we assessed the frequency of representational gestures and cortical thickness values in a group of adolescents differing in fluid intelligence. Individuals scoring high in fluid intelligence showed higher accuracy in the geometric analogy task and produced more representational gestures (in particular more movement gestures) when explaining how they solved the task and showed larger cortical thickness values in some regions in the left hemisphere (namely the pars opercularis, superior frontal, and temporal cortex) than individuals with average fluid intelligence. Moreover, the left pars opercularis (a part of Broca's area) and left transverse temporal cortex showed larger cortical thickness values in participants who produced representational and in particular movement gestures compared to those who did not. Our results thus indicate that cortical thickness of those brain regions is related to both high fluid intelligence and the production of gestures. Results are discussed in the gestures-as-simulated-action framework that states that gestures result from simulated perception and simulated action that underlie embodied language and mental imagery.
Y1 - 2010
UR - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01602896
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2009.11.001
SN - 0160-2896
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell
A1 - Heekeren, Hauke R.
A1 - Preusse, Franziska
A1 - Kramer, Jürg
A1 - van der Meer, Elke
T1 - Cerebral correlates of analogical processing and their modulation by training
N2 - There is increasing interest ill understanding the neural systems that mediate analogical thinking, which is essential for learning and fluid intelligence. The aim of the present study was to shed light on the cerebral correlates of geometric analogical processing and on training-induced changes at the behavioral and brain level. In healthy participants a bilateral fronto-parietal network was engaged in processing geometric analogies and showed greater blood oxygenation dependent (BOLD) signals as resource demands increased. This network, as well as fusiform and subcortical brain regions, additionally showed training-induced decreases in the BOLD signal over time. The general finding that brain regions were modulated by the amount of resources demanded by the task, and/or by the reduction of allocated resources due to short term training, reflects increased efficiency - in terms of more focal and more specialized brain activation - to more economically process the geometric analogies. Our data indicate a rapid adaptation of the cognitive system which is efficiently modulated by short term training based on a positive correlation of resource demands and brain activation.
Y1 - 2009
UR - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/10538119
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.06.025
SN - 1053-8119
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell
A1 - Heekeren, Hauke R.
A1 - Burchert, Frank
A1 - Heinemann, Steffi
A1 - De Bleser, Ria
A1 - Villringer, Arno
T1 - Neural correlates of syntactic transformations
N2 - Many agrammatic aphasics have a specific syntactic comprehension deficit involving processing syntactic transformations. It has been proposed that this deficit is due to a dysfunction of Broca's area, an area that is thought to be critical for comprehension of complex transformed sentences. The goal of this study was to investigate the role of Broca's area in processing canonical and non-canonical sentences in healthy subjects. The sentences were presented auditorily and were controlled for task difficulty. Subjects were asked to judge the grammaticality of the sentences while their brain activity was monitored using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging. Processing both kinds of sentences resulted in activation of language-related brain regions. Comparison of non-canonical and canonical sentences showed greater activation in bilateral temporal regions; a greater activation of Broca's area in processing antecedent-gap relations was not found. Moreover, the posterior part of Broca's area was conjointly activated by both sentence conditions. Broca's area is thus involved in general syntactic processing as required by grammaticality judgments and does not seem to have a specific role in processing syntactic transformations. (C) 2004 Wiley-Liss, Inc
Y1 - 2004
UR - http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/38751/home
SN - 1065-9471
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell
A1 - Heekeren, Hauke R.
A1 - Abutalebi, Jubin
A1 - Cappa, Stefano F.
A1 - Villringer, Arno
A1 - Perani, Daniela
T1 - Early setting of grammatical processing in the bilingual brain
Y1 - 2003
UR - http://www.cell.com/neuron/home
SN - 0896-6273
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell
A1 - Burchert, Frank
A1 - Heekeren, Hauke R.
A1 - De Bleser, Ria
A1 - Villringer, Arno
T1 - Grammaticality judgments on sentences with and without movement of phrasal constituents : an event-related fMRI study
Y1 - 2003
UR - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09116044
SN - 0911-6044
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Ward, Nigel G.
A1 - Vega, Alejandro
A1 - Baumann, Timo
T1 - Prosodic and temporal features for language modeling for dialog
JF - Speech communication
N2 - If we can model the cognitive and communicative processes underlying speech, we should be able to better predict what a speaker will do. With this idea as inspiration, we examine a number of prosodic and timing features as potential sources of information on what words the speaker is likely to say next. In spontaneous dialog we find that word probabilities do vary with such features. Using perplexity as the metric, the most informative of these included recent speaking rate, volume, and pitch, and time until end of utterance. Using simple combinations of such features to augment trigram language models gave up to a 8.4% perplexity benefit on the Switchboard corpus, and up to a 1.0% relative reduction in word error rate (0.3% absolute) on the Verbmobil II corpus.
KW - Dialog dynamics
KW - Dialog state
KW - Prosody
KW - Interlocutor behavior
KW - Word probabilities
KW - Prediction
KW - Perplexity
KW - Speech recognition
KW - Switchboard corpus
KW - Verbmobil corpus
Y1 - 2012
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.specom.2011.07.009
SN - 0167-6393
VL - 54
IS - 2
SP - 161
EP - 174
PB - Elsevier
CY - Amsterdam
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Walch, Elisabeth
A1 - Chaudhary, Tanja
A1 - Herold, Birgit
A1 - Obladen, Michael
T1 - Parental bilingualism is associated with slower cognitive development in very low birth weight infants
N2 - Background: Speech development is frequently impaired in very low birth weight (VLBW) infants. Few and controversial data have been published on concepts regarding the influence of bilingual education. Aims: The objectives of the current study were to assess the influence of parental bilingualism on speech development and neurodevelopmental outcome in low risk VLBW infants. Study design: Monocentric prospective controlled cohort study with standardized follow- up. Subjects: We recruited 50 singleton VLBW infants each from monolingual and bilingual families as well as 90 term control infants. The infants were free of disease and congenital malformation. Outcome measures: Griffiths scales of infant development at the corrected ages of 6 and 12 months, Bayley Scales of Infant Development II (BSID II) with 22 months. Results: In general, both bilingual and monolingual VLBW infants achieved age-specific milestones at the corrected age of 6,12 and 22 months. However, bilingual VLBW infants achieved significantly lower scores than their monolingual peers in all cognitive subscales. The influence of maternal education on the neurodevelopmental outcome of the preterm infants was not significant; the subscales' correlation with socioeconomic or biological parameters was poor. However, a clear differentiation between social status and bilingual environment importance for speech development was not possible. Conclusions: In the setting of the present investigation, parental bilingualism is associated with slower neurodevelopment in VLBW infants during the first 2 years of life.
Y1 - 2009
UR - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03783782
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earlhumdev.2009.03.002
SN - 0378-3782
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - von der Malsburg, Titus Raban
A1 - Vasishth, Shravan
T1 - Scanpaths reveal syntactic underspecification and reanalysis strategies
JF - Language and cognitive processes
N2 - What theories best characterise the parsing processes triggered upon encountering ambiguity, and what effects do these processes have on eye movement patterns in reading? The present eye-tracking study, which investigated processing of attachment ambiguities of an adjunct in Spanish, suggests that readers sometimes underspecify attachment to save memory resources, consistent with the good-enough account of parsing. Our results confirm a surprising prediction of the good-enough account: high-capacity readers commit to an attachment decision more often than low-capacity participants, leading to more errors and a greater need to reanalyse in garden-path sentences. These results emerged only when we separated functionally different types of regressive eye movements using a scanpath analysis; conventional eye-tracking measures alone would have led to different conclusions. The scanpath analysis also showed that rereading was the dominant strategy for recovering from garden-pathing. Our results may also have broader implications for models of reading processes: reanalysis effects in eye movements occurred late, which suggests that the coupling of oculo-motor control and the parser may not be as tight as assumed in current computational models of eye movement control in reading.
KW - Reading
KW - Eye movements
KW - Scanpaths
KW - Parsing
KW - Reanalysis
KW - Individual differences
KW - Working memory
KW - Underspecification
Y1 - 2013
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/01690965.2012.728232
SN - 0169-0965
SN - 1464-0732
VL - 28
IS - 10
SP - 1545
EP - 1578
PB - Wiley
CY - Hove
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - von der Malsburg, Titus Raban
A1 - Vasishth, Shravan
T1 - What is the scanpath signature of syntactic reanalysis?
JF - Journal of memory and language
N2 - Which repair strategy does the language system deploy when it gets garden-pathed, and what can regressive eye movements in reading tell us about reanalysis strategies? Several influential eye-tracking studies on syntactic reanalysis (Frazier & Rayner, 1982; Meseguer, Carreiras, & Clifton, 2002; Mitchell, Shen, Green, & Hodgson, 2008) have addressed this question by examining scanpaths, i.e., sequential patterns of eye fixations. However, in the absence of a suitable method for analyzing scanpaths, these studies relied on simplified dependent measures that are arguably ambiguous and hard to interpret. We address the theoretical question of repair strategy by developing a new method that quantifies scanpath similarity. Our method reveals several distinct fixation strategies associated with reanalysis that went undetected in a previously published data set (Meseguer et al., 2002). One prevalent pattern suggests re-parsing of the sentence, a strategy that has been discussed in the literature (Frazier & Rayner, 1982); however, readers differed tremendously in how they orchestrated the various fixation strategies. Our results suggest that the human parsing system non-deterministically adopts different strategies when confronted with the disambiguating material in garden-path sentences.
KW - Reading
KW - Syntactic reanalysis
KW - Eye movements
KW - Parsing
KW - Individual differences
KW - Scanpaths
Y1 - 2011
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2011.02.004
SN - 0749-596X
VL - 65
IS - 2
SP - 109
EP - 127
PB - Elsevier
CY - San Diego
ER -
TY - GEN
A1 - von der Malsburg, Titus Raban
A1 - Poppels, Till
A1 - Levy, Roger P.
T1 - Implicit gender bias in linguistic descriptions for expected events
BT - the cases of the 2016 United States and 2017 United Kingdom elections
T2 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe
N2 - Gender stereotypes influence subjective beliefs about the world, and this is reflected in our use of language. But do gender biases in language transparently reflect subjective beliefs? Or is the process of translating thought to language itself biased? During the 2016 United States (N = 24,863) and 2017 United Kingdom (N = 2,609) electoral campaigns, we compared participants' beliefs about the gender of the next head of government with their use and interpretation of pronouns referring to the next head of government. In the United States, even when the female candidate was expected to win, she pronouns were rarely produced and induced substantial comprehension disruption. In the United Kingdom, where the incumbent female candidate was heavily favored, she pronouns were preferred in production but yielded no comprehension advantage. These and other findings suggest that the language system itself is a source of implicit biases above and beyond previously known biases, such as those measured by the Implicit Association Test.
T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 856
KW - language
KW - psycholinguistics
KW - event expectations
KW - reference
KW - implicit bias
KW - open data
KW - open materials
Y1 - 2020
U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-516154
SN - 1866-8364
IS - 2
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - von der Malsburg, Titus Raban
A1 - Poppels, Till
A1 - Levy, Roger P.
T1 - Implicit gender bias in linguistic descriptions for expected events
BT - the cases of the 2016 United States and 2017 United Kingdom elections
JF - Psychological Science
N2 - Gender stereotypes influence subjective beliefs about the world, and this is reflected in our use of language. But do gender biases in language transparently reflect subjective beliefs? Or is the process of translating thought to language itself biased? During the 2016 United States (N = 24,863) and 2017 United Kingdom (N = 2,609) electoral campaigns, we compared participants' beliefs about the gender of the next head of government with their use and interpretation of pronouns referring to the next head of government. In the United States, even when the female candidate was expected to win, she pronouns were rarely produced and induced substantial comprehension disruption. In the United Kingdom, where the incumbent female candidate was heavily favored, she pronouns were preferred in production but yielded no comprehension advantage. These and other findings suggest that the language system itself is a source of implicit biases above and beyond previously known biases, such as those measured by the Implicit Association Test.
KW - language
KW - psycholinguistics
KW - event expectations
KW - reference
KW - implicit bias
KW - open data
KW - open materials
Y1 - 2020
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797619890619
SN - 0956-7976
SN - 1467-9280
VL - 31
IS - 2
SP - 115
EP - 128
PB - Sage
CY - London
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - von der Malsburg, Titus Raban
A1 - Kliegl, Reinhold
A1 - Vasishth, Shravan
T1 - Determinants of Scanpath Regularity in Reading
JF - Cognitive science : a multidisciplinary journal of anthropology, artificial intelligence, education, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology ; journal of the Cognitive Science Society
N2 - Scanpaths have played an important role in classic research on reading behavior. Nevertheless, they have largely been neglected in later research perhaps due to a lack of suitable analytical tools. Recently, von der Malsburg and Vasishth (2011) proposed a new measure for quantifying differences between scanpaths and demonstrated that this measure can recover effects that were missed with the traditional eyetracking measures. However, the sentences used in that study were difficult to process and scanpath effects accordingly strong. The purpose of the present study was to test the validity, sensitivity, and scope of applicability of the scanpath measure, using simple sentences that are typically read from left to right. We derived predictions for the regularity of scanpaths from the literature on oculomotor control, sentence processing, and cognitive aging and tested these predictions using the scanpath measure and a large database of eye movements. All predictions were confirmed: Sentences with short words and syntactically more difficult sentences elicited more irregular scanpaths. Also, older readers produced more irregular scanpaths than younger readers. In addition, we found an effect that was not reported earlier: Syntax had a smaller influence on the eye movements of older readers than on those of young readers. We discuss this interaction of syntactic parsing cost with age in terms of shifts in processing strategies and a decline of executive control as readers age. Overall, our results demonstrate the validity and sensitivity of the scanpath measure and thus establish it as a productive and versatile tool for reading research.
KW - Eye movements
KW - Reading
KW - Scanpaths
KW - Language understanding
KW - Oculo-motor control
KW - Individual differences
KW - Aging
KW - Development
Y1 - 2015
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12208
SN - 0364-0213
SN - 1551-6709
VL - 39
IS - 7
SP - 1675
EP - 1703
PB - Wiley-Blackwell
CY - Hoboken
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 - THES
A1 - von der Malsburg, Titus Raban
T1 - Scanpath phenomena in reading : an investigation of scanpath effects in syntactic ambiguity resolution and in general reading
Y1 - 2012
CY - Potsdam
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Vogel, Ralf
T1 - Yet another Theta-System
Y1 - 2002
SN - 0301-4428
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Vitali, P.
A1 - Abutalebi, Jubin
A1 - Tettamanti, M.
A1 - Rowe, J.
A1 - Scifo, P.
A1 - Fazio, F.
A1 - Cappa, Stefano F.
A1 - Perani, Daniela
T1 - Generating animal and tool names : an fMRI study of effective connectivity
N2 - The present fMRI study of semantic fluency for animal and tool names provides further evidence for category- specific brain activations, and reports task-related changes in effective connectivity among defined cerebral regions. Two partially segregated systems of functional integration were highlighted: the tool condition was associated with an enhancement of connectivity within left hemispheric regions, including the inferior prefrontal and premotor cortex, the inferior parietal lobule and the temporo-occipital junction; the animal condition was associated with greater coupling among left visual associative regions. These category-specific functional differences extend the evidence for anatomical specialization to lexical search tasks, and provide for the first time evidence of category-specific patterns of functional integration in word-retrieval. (c) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved
Y1 - 2005
SN - 0093-934X
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Viebahn, Malte Clemens
A1 - McQueen, James Milroy
A1 - Ernestus, Mirjam Theresia Constantia
A1 - Frauenfelder, Ulrich Hans
A1 - Bürki-Foschini, Audrey Damaris
T1 - How much does orthography influence the processing of reduced word forms?
BT - Evidence from novel-word learning about French schwa deletion
JF - The quarterly journal of experimental psychology
N2 - This study examines the influence of orthography on the processing of reduced word forms. For this purpose, we compared the impact of phonological variation with the impact of spelling-sound consistency on the processing of words that may be produced with or without the vowel schwa. Participants learnt novel French words in which the vowel schwa was present or absent in the first syllable. In Experiment 1, the words were consistently produced without schwa or produced in a variable manner (i.e., sometimes produced with and sometimes produced without schwa). In Experiment 2, words were always produced in a consistent manner, but an orthographic exposure phase was included in which words that were produced without schwa were either spelled with or without the letter < e >. Results from naming and eye-tracking tasks suggest that both phonological variation and spelling-sound consistency influence the processing of spoken novel words. However, the influence of phonological variation outweighs the effect of spelling-sound consistency. Our findings therefore suggest that the influence of orthography on the processing of reduced word forms is relatively small.
KW - Novel-word learning
KW - schwa deletion
KW - orthography
KW - spoken-word production
KW - spoken-word recognition
Y1 - 2018
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/1747021817741859
SN - 1747-0218
SN - 1747-0226
VL - 71
IS - 11
SP - 2378
EP - 2394
PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
CY - Abingdon
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Vicente, Luis
A1 - Barros, Matthew
A1 - Messick, Troy
A1 - Saab, Andres
T1 - On a nonargument for cleft sources in sluicing
JF - Linguistic inquiry
N2 - On the basis of certain semantic intuitions, Barros (2012) argues that ellipsis does not require structural isomorphism between elided structure and its antecedent. We tackle this claim. Semantic intuitions cannot be a pointer to the analysis of silent structure. We provide empirical evidence that raises the question of to what extent semantic intuitions about plausible articulable syntax must inform one's analysis of silent structure. We conclude that the answer to this question must be crosslinguistically informed. We conjecture that ellipsis introduces ellipsis-specific interpretive mechanisms, so that intuitions about "how the unelided structure would be interpreted" are not empirically relevant.
KW - sluicing
KW - contextual restriction
KW - ellipsis identity
KW - inheritance of
KW - content
Y1 - 2021
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00390
SN - 0024-3892
SN - 1530-9150
VL - 52
IS - 4
SP - 867
EP - 880
PB - MIT Press
CY - Cambridge
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Vicente, Luis
T1 - On the syntax of adversative coordination
N2 - A series of studies have distinguished two types of but, namely, corrective and counterexpectational. The difference between these two types has been considered largely semantic/pragmatic. This article shows that the semantic difference also translates into a different syntax for each type of but. More precisely, corrective but always requires clause-level coordination, with apparent counterexamples being derived through ellipsis within the second conjunct. On the other hand, counterexpectational but is not restricted in this way, and offers the possibility of coordination of both clausal and subclausal constituents. From this difference, it is possible to derive a number of syntactic asymmetries between corrective and counterexpectational but.
Y1 - 2010
UR - http://www.springerlink.com/content/102968
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-010-9094-0
SN - 0167-806X
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Vicente, Luis
T1 - A note on the movement analysis of gapping
Y1 - 2010
UR - http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/lin/
SN - 0024-3892
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Vicente, Luis
T1 - Sluicing - Cross-linguistic perspectives
JF - Language : journal of the Linguistic Society of America
Y1 - 2013
SN - 0097-8507
SN - 1535-0665
VL - 89
IS - 3
SP - 653
EP - 655
PB - Linguistic Society of America
CY - Washington
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Vicente, Luis
T1 - Phase theory
JF - Journal of linguistics
Y1 - 2011
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226711000193
SN - 0022-2267
VL - 47
IS - 3
SP - 719
EP - 724
PB - Cambridge Univ. Press
CY - New York
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Vicente, Luis
T1 - Free versus bound variables and the taxonomy of gaps
JF - Natural language semantics : an international journal of semantics and its interfaces in grammar
N2 - Potts (Nat Lang Linguist Theory 20:623–689, 2002a) et seq. presents an analysis of gap-containing supplements (primarily, as-parentheticals) where the gap is modelled as a variable over the semantic type of the constituent that the as-clause adjoins to (the anchor). This much allows the meaning of the gap to be resolved purely compositionally, by defining as as a function that allows the anchor to bind the gap variable. This article presents a class of as-clauses where Potts’s analysis seems to break down, in that the gap cannot be modelled as a variable over the semantic type of the anchor. I propose that these cases can be unified with those in Potts’s work, as well as a larger class of ellipsis phenomena, by assuming that, under certain conditions, surface gaps are composite entities, containing a bound variable and a free variable that are resolved independently of each other. The bound variable is bound by the anchor (just as in Potts’s account), and the free variable is resolved by anaphora to a salient discourse object.
KW - As-clauses
KW - Ellipsis sites
KW - Variable resolution
Y1 - 2016
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11050-016-9123-6
SN - 0925-854X
SN - 1572-865X
VL - 24
SP - 203
EP - 245
PB - Springer
CY - Dordrecht
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 - Verissimo, Joao Marques
A1 - Clahsen, Harald
T1 - Variables and similarity in linguistic generalization: Evidence from inflectional classes in Portuguese
JF - Journal of memory and language
N2 - Two opposing viewpoints have been advanced to account for morphological productivity, one according to which some knowledge is couched in the form of operations over variables, and another in which morphological generalization is primarily determined by similarity. We investigated this controversy by examining the generalization of Portuguese verb stems, which fall into one of three conjugation classes. In Study 1, an elicited production task revealed that the generalization of 2nd and 3rd conjugation stems is influenced by the degree of phonological similarity between novel roots and existing verbs, whereas the 1st conjugation generalizes beyond similarity. In Study 2, we directly contrasted two distinct computational implementations of conjugation class assignment in how well they matched the human data: a similarity-driven model that captures phonological similarities, and a dual-mechanism model that implements an explicit distinction between context-free and similarity-based generalizations. The similarity-driven model consistently underestimated 1st conjugation responses and overestimated proportions of 2nd and 3rd conjugation responses, especially for novel verbs that are highly similar to existing verbs of those classes. In contrast, the expected proportions produced by the dual-mechanism model were statistically indistinguishable from human responses. We conclude that both context-free and context-sensitive processes determine the generalization of conjugations in Portuguese, and that similarity-based algorithms of morphological acquisition are insufficient to exhibit default-like generalization. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
KW - Variables
KW - Similarity
KW - Rules
KW - Morphological generalization
KW - Productivity
KW - Computational modeling
Y1 - 2014
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2014.06.001
SN - 0749-596X
SN - 1096-0821
VL - 76
SP - 61
EP - 79
PB - Elsevier
CY - San Diego
ER -
TY - GEN
A1 - Verissimo, Joao Marques
T1 - Extending a Gradient Symbolic approach to the native versus non-native contrast: The case of plurals in compounds
T2 - Bilingualism : language and cognition.
N2 - The Gradient Symbolic Computation (GSC) model presented in the keynote article (Goldrick, Putnam & Schwarz) constitutes a significant theoretical development, not only as a model of bilingual code-mixing, but also as a general framework that brings together symbolic grammars and graded representations. The authors are to be commended for successfully integrating a theory of grammatical knowledge with the voluminous research on lexical co-activation in bilinguals. It is, however, unfortunate that a certain conception of bilingualism was inherited from this latter research tradition, one in which the contrast between native and non-native language takes a back seat.
Y1 - 2016
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728916000134
SN - 1366-7289
SN - 1469-1841
VL - 19
SP - 900
EP - 902
PB - Cambridge Univ. Press
CY - New York
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Vasishth, Shravan
A1 - von der Malsburg, Titus Raban
A1 - Engelmann, Felix
T1 - What eye movements can tell us about sentence comprehension
JF - Wiley interdisciplinary reviews : Cognitive Science
N2 - Eye movement data have proven to be very useful for investigating human sentence processing. Eyetracking research has addressed a wide range of questions, such as recovery mechanisms following garden-pathing, the timing of processes driving comprehension, the role of anticipation and expectation in parsing, the role of semantic, pragmatic, and prosodic information, and so on. However, there are some limitations regarding the inferences that can be made on the basis of eye movements. One relates to the nontrivial interaction between parsing and the eye movement control system which complicates the interpretation of eye movement data. Detailed computational models that integrate parsing with eye movement control theories have the potential to unpack the complexity of eye movement data and can therefore aid in the interpretation of eye movements. Another limitation is the difficulty of capturing spatiotemporal patterns in eye movements using the traditional word-based eyetracking measures. Recent research has demonstrated the relevance of these patterns and has shown how they can be analyzed. In this review, we focus on reading, and present examples demonstrating how eye movement data reveal what events unfold when the parser runs into difficulty, and how the parsing system interacts with eye movement control. WIREs Cogn Sci 2013, 4:125134. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1209 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.
Y1 - 2013
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/wcs.1209
SN - 1939-5078
VL - 4
IS - 2
SP - 125
EP - 134
PB - Wiley
CY - San Fransisco
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Vasishth, Shravan
A1 - Suckow, Katja
A1 - Lewis, Richard L.
A1 - Kern, Sabine
T1 - Short-term forgetting in sentence comprehension : crosslinguistic evidence from verb-final structures
N2 - Seven experiments using self-paced reading and eyetracking suggest that omitting the middle verb in a double centre embedding leads to easier processing in English but leads to greater difficulty in German. One commonly accepted explanation for the English pattern-based on data from offline acceptability ratings and due to Gibson and Thomas (1999)- is that working-memory overload leads the comprehender to forget the prediction of the upcoming verb phrase (VP), which reduces working-memory load. We show that this VP-forgetting hypothesis does an excellent job of explaining the English data, but cannot account for the German results. We argue that the English and German results can be explained by the parser's adaptation to the grammatical properties of the languages; in contrast to English, German subordinate clauses always have the verb in clause-final position, and this property of German may lead the German parser to maintain predictions of upcoming VPs more robustly compared to English. The evidence thus argues against language- independent forgetting effects in online sentence processing; working-memory constraints can be conditioned by countervailing influences deriving from grammatical properties of the language under study.
Y1 - 2010
UR - http://www.informaworld.com/0169-0965
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/01690960903310587
SN - 0169-0965
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Vasishth, Shravan
A1 - Nicenboim, Bruno
A1 - Engelmann, Felix
A1 - Burchert, Frank
T1 - Computational Models of Retrieval Processes in Sentence Processing
JF - Trends in Cognitive Sciences
N2 - Sentence comprehension requires that the comprehender work out who did what to whom. This process has been characterized as retrieval from memory. This review summarizes the quantitative predictions and empirical coverage of the two existing computational models of retrieval and shows how the predictive performance of these two competing models can be tested against a benchmark data-set. We also show how computational modeling can help us better understand sources of variability in both unimpaired and impaired sentence comprehension.
Y1 - 2019
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2019.09.003
SN - 1364-6613
SN - 1879-307X
VL - 23
IS - 11
SP - 968
EP - 982
PB - Elsevier
CY - London
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Vasishth, Shravan
A1 - Nicenboim, Bruno
A1 - Beckman, Mary E.
A1 - Li, Fangfang
A1 - Kong, Eun Jong
T1 - Bayesian data analysis in the phonetic sciences
BT - a tutorial introduction
JF - Journal of phonetics
N2 - This tutorial analyzes voice onset time (VOT) data from Dongbei (Northeastern) Mandarin Chinese and North American English to demonstrate how Bayesian linear mixed models can be fit using the programming language Stan via the R package brms. Through this case study, we demonstrate some of the advantages of the Bayesian framework: researchers can (i) flexibly define the underlying process that they believe to have generated the data; (ii) obtain direct information regarding the uncertainty about the parameter that relates the data to the theoretical question being studied; and (iii) incorporate prior knowledge into the analysis. Getting started with Bayesian modeling can be challenging, especially when one is trying to model one’s own (often unique) data. It is difficult to see how one can apply general principles described in textbooks to one’s own specific research problem. We address this barrier to using Bayesian methods by providing three detailed examples, with source code to allow easy reproducibility. The examples presented are intended to give the reader a flavor of the process of model-fitting; suggestions for further study are also provided. All data and code are available from: https://osf.io/g4zpv.
KW - Bayesian data analysis
KW - Linear mixed models
KW - Voice onset time
KW - Gender effects
KW - Vowel duration
Y1 - 2018
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2018.07.008
SN - 0095-4470
VL - 71
SP - 147
EP - 161
PB - Elsevier
CY - London
ER -
TY - GEN
A1 - Vasishth, Shravan
A1 - Mertzen, Daniela
A1 - Jäger, Lena Ann
A1 - Gelman, Andrew
T1 - Corrigendum to: Shravan Vasishth, Daniela Mertzen, Lena A. Jäger, Andrew Gelman; The statistical significance filter leads to overoptimistic expectations of replicability. - Journal of Memory and Language. - 103 (2018), pg. 151 - 175
T2 - Journal of memory and language
Y1 - 2018
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2018.09.004
SN - 0749-596X
SN - 1096-0821
VL - 104
SP - 128
EP - 128
PB - Elsevier
CY - San Diego
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Vasishth, Shravan
A1 - Mertzen, Daniela
A1 - Jaeger, Lena A.
A1 - Gelman, Andrew
T1 - The statistical significance filter leads to overoptimistic expectations of replicability
JF - Journal of memory and language
N2 - It is well-known in statistics (e.g., Gelman & Carlin, 2014) that treating a result as publishable just because the p-value is less than 0.05 leads to overoptimistic expectations of replicability. These effects get published, leading to an overconfident belief in replicability. We demonstrate the adverse consequences of this statistical significance filter by conducting seven direct replication attempts (268 participants in total) of a recent paper (Levy & Keller, 2013). We show that the published claims are so noisy that even non-significant results are fully compatible with them. We also demonstrate the contrast between such small-sample studies and a larger-sample study; the latter generally yields a less noisy estimate but also a smaller effect magnitude, which looks less compelling but is more realistic. We reiterate several suggestions from the methodology literature for improving current practices.
KW - Type M error
KW - Replicability
KW - Surprisal
KW - Expectation
KW - Locality
KW - Bayesian data analysis
KW - Parameter estimation
Y1 - 2018
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2018.07.004
SN - 0749-596X
SN - 1096-0821
VL - 103
SP - 151
EP - 175
PB - Elsevier
CY - San Diego
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Vasishth, Shravan
A1 - Lewis, Richard L.
T1 - Argument-head distance and processing complexity: Explaining both locality and antilocality effects
JF - Language : journal of the Linguistic Society of America
N2 - Although proximity between arguments and verbs (locality) is a relatively robust determinant of sentence-processing difficulty (Hawkins 1998, 2001, Gibson 2000), increasing argument-verb distance can also facilitate processing (Konieczny 2000). We present two self-paced reading (SPR) experiments involving Hindi that provide further evidence of antilocality, and a third SPR experiment which suggests that similarity-based interference can attenuate this distance-based facilitation. A unified explanation of interference, locality, and antilocality effects is proposed via an independently motivated theory of activation decay and retrieval interference (Anderson et al. 2004).*
Y1 - 2006
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2006.0236
SN - 0097-8507
VL - 82
IS - 4
SP - 767
EP - 794
PB - Linguistic Society of America
CY - Washington
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Vasishth, Shravan
A1 - Gelman, Andrew
T1 - How to embrace variation and accept uncertainty in linguistic and psycholinguistic data analysis
JF - Linguistics : an interdisciplinary journal of the language sciences
N2 - The use of statistical inference in linguistics and related areas like psychology typically involves a binary decision: either reject or accept some null hypothesis using statistical significance testing. When statistical power is low, this frequentist data-analytic approach breaks down: null results are uninformative, and effect size estimates associated with significant results are overestimated. Using an example from psycholinguistics, several alternative approaches are demonstrated for reporting inconsistencies between the data and a theoretical prediction. The key here is to focus on committing to a falsifiable prediction, on quantifying uncertainty statistically, and learning to accept the fact that - in almost all practical data analysis situations - we can only draw uncertain conclusions from data, regardless of whether we manage to obtain statistical significance or not. A focus on uncertainty quantification is likely to lead to fewer excessively bold claims that, on closer investigation, may turn out to be not supported by the data.
KW - experimental linguistics
KW - statistical data analysis
KW - statistical
KW - inference
KW - uncertainty quantification
Y1 - 2021
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2019-0051
SN - 0024-3949
SN - 1613-396X
VL - 59
IS - 5
SP - 1311
EP - 1342
PB - De Gruyter Mouton
CY - Berlin
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Vasishth, Shravan
A1 - Chen, Zhong
A1 - Li, Qiang
A1 - Guo, Gueilan
T1 - Processing chinese relative clauses - evidence for the subject-relative advantage
JF - PLoS one
N2 - A general fact about language is that subject relative clauses are easier to process than object relative clauses. Recently, several self-paced reading studies have presented surprising evidence that object relatives in Chinese are easier to process than subject relatives. We carried out three self-paced reading experiments that attempted to replicate these results. Two of our three studies found a subject-relative preference, and the third study found an object-relative advantage. Using a random effects bayesian meta-analysis of fifteen studies (including our own), we show that the overall current evidence for the subject-relative advantage is quite strong (approximate posterior probability of a subject-relative advantage given the data: 78-80%). We argue that retrieval/integration based accounts would have difficulty explaining all three experimental results. These findings are important because they narrow the theoretical space by limiting the role of an important class of explanation-retrieval/integration cost-at least for relative clause processing in Chinese.
Y1 - 2013
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0077006
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 8
IS - 10
PB - PLoS
CY - San Fransisco
ER -
TY - BOOK
A1 - Vasishth, Shravan
A1 - Broe, Michael
T1 - The foundations of statistics: a simulation-based approach
Y1 - 2011
SN - 978-3-642-16312-8
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16313-5
PB - Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
CY - Berlin, Heidelberg
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Vasishth, Shravan
T1 - Using approximate Bayesian computation for estimating parameters in the cue-based retrieval model of sentence processing
JF - MethodsX
N2 - A commonly used approach to parameter estimation in computational models is the so-called grid search procedure: the entire parameter space is searched in small steps to determine the parameter value that provides the best fit to the observed data. This approach has several disadvantages: first, it can be computationally very expensive; second, one optimal point value of the parameter is reported as the best fit value; we cannot quantify our uncertainty about the parameter estimate. In the main journal article that this methods article accompanies (Jager et al., 2020, Interference patterns in subject-verb agreement and reflexives revisited: A large-sample study, Journal of Memory and Language), we carried out parameter estimation using Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC), which is a Bayesian approach that allows us to quantify our uncertainty about the parameter's values given data. This customization has the further advantage that it allows us to generate both prior and posterior predictive distributions of reading times from the cue-based retrieval model of Lewis and Vasishth, 2005.
Instead of the conventional method of using grid search, we use Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) for parameter estimation in the [4] model.
The ABC method of parameter estimation has the advantage that the uncertainty of the parameter can be quantified.
KW - Bayesian parameter estimation
KW - Prior and posterior predictive
KW - distributions
KW - Psycholinguistics
Y1 - 2020
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mex.2020.100850
SN - 2215-0161
VL - 7
PB - Elsevier
CY - Amsterdam
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - van Ommen, Sandrien
A1 - Boll-Avetisyan, Natalie
A1 - Larraza, Saioa
A1 - Wellmann, Caroline
A1 - Bijeljac-Babic, Ranka
A1 - Höhle, Barbara
A1 - Nazzi, Thierry
T1 - Language-specific prosodic acquisition
BT - a comparison of phrase boundary perception by French- and German-learning infants
JF - Journal of memory and language: JML
N2 - This study compares the development of prosodic processing in French- and German-learning infants. The emergence of language-specific perception of phrase boundaries was directly tested using the same stimuli across these two languages. French-learning (Experiment 1, 2) and German-learning 6- and 8-month-olds (Experiment 3) listened to the same French noun sequences with or without major prosodic boundaries ([Loulou et Manou] [et Nina]; [Loulou et Manou et Nina], respectively). The boundaries were either naturally cued (Experiment 1), or cued exclusively by pitch and duration (Experiment 2, 3). French-learning 6- and 8-month-olds both perceived the natural boundary, but neither perceived the boundary when only two cues were present. In contrast, German-learning infants develop from not perceiving the two-cue boundary at 6 months to perceiving it at 8 months, just like German-learning 8-month-olds listening to German (Wellmann, Holzgrefe, Truckenbrodt, Wartenburger, & Hohle, 2012). In a control experiment (Experiment 4), we found little difference between German and French adult listeners, suggesting that later, French listeners catch up with German listeners. Taken together, these cross-linguistic differences in the perception of identical stimuli provide direct evidence for language-specific development of prosodic boundary perception.
KW - Prosody
KW - Acquisition
KW - Language-specific
KW - Perception
KW - Infant
KW - Prosodic boundaries
Y1 - 2020
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2020.104108
SN - 0749-596X
SN - 1096-0821
VL - 112
PB - Elsevier
CY - Amsterdam
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - van Kampen, Anja
A1 - Parmaksiz, Güliz
A1 - van de Vijver, Ruben
A1 - Höhle, Barbara
T1 - Metrical and statistical cues for word segmentation : the use of vowel harmony and word stress as a cue to word boundaries by 6- and 9-month-old Turkish learners
Y1 - 2008
SN - 978-1-8471-8618-8
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - van der Meer, Elke
A1 - Beyer, Reinhard
A1 - Horn, Judith
A1 - Foth, Manja
A1 - Bornemann, Boris
A1 - Ries, Jan
A1 - Kramer, Jürg
A1 - Warmuth, Elke
A1 - Heekeren, Hauke R.
A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell
T1 - Resource allocation and fluid intelligence ; insights from pupillometry
Y1 - 2010
UR - http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118485671/home?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
SN - 0048-5772
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - van der Kant, Anne
A1 - Biro, Szilvia
A1 - Levelt, Claartje
A1 - Huijbregts, Stephan
T1 - Negative affect is related to reduced differential neural responses to social and non-social stimuli in 5-to-8-month-old infants
BT - a functional near-infrared spectroscopy-study
JF - Developmental cognitive neuroscience : a journal for cognitive, affective and social developmental neuroscience
N2 - Both social perception and temperament in young infants have been related to social functioning later in life. Previous functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) data (Lloyd-Fox et al., 2009) showed larger blood-oxygenation changes for social compared to non-social stimuli in the posterior temporal cortex of five-month-old infants. We sought to replicate and extend these findings by using fNIRS to study the neural basis of social perception in relation to infant temperament (Negative Affect) in 37 five-to-eight-month-old infants. Infants watched short videos displaying either hand and facial movements of female actors (social dynamic condition) or moving toys and machinery (non-social dynamic condition), while fNIRS data were collected over temporal brain regions. Negative Affect was measured using the Infant Behavior Questionnaire. Results showed significantly larger blood-oxygenation changes in the right posterior-temporal region in the social compared to the non-social condition. Furthermore, this differential activation was smaller in infants showing higher Negative Affect. Our results replicate those of Lloyd-Fox et al. and confirmed that five-to-eight-month-old infants show cortical specialization for social perception. Furthermore, the decreased cortical sensitivity to social stimuli in infants showing high Negative Affect may be an early biomarker for later difficulties in social interaction.
KW - Functional near-infrared spectroscopy
KW - fNIRS
KW - Social perception
KW - Infants
KW - Temperament
KW - Negative affect
Y1 - 2018
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2017.12.003
SN - 1878-9293
SN - 1878-9307
VL - 30
SP - 23
EP - 30
PB - Elsevier
CY - Oxford
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - van de Vijver, Ruben
A1 - Sennema, Anke
A1 - Zimmer–Stahl, Anne
T1 - An analysis of pitch and duration in material used to test L2 processing of words
N2 - The material reported on in this paper is part of a set of experiments in which the role of Information Structure on L2 processing of words is tested. Pitch and duration of 4 sets of experimental material in German and English are measured and analyzed in this paper. The well-known finding that accent boosts duration and pitch is confirmed. Syntactic and lexical means of marking focus, however, do not give the duration and the pitch of a word an extra boost.
KW - Duration
KW - Pitch
Y1 - 2006
U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19583
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - van de Vijver, Ruben
A1 - Höhle, Barbara
A1 - Ott, Susan
T1 - On the distribution of dorsals in complex and simple onsets in child German, Dutch and English
Y1 - 2009
SN - 978-3-11-021931-9
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - van de Vijver, Ruben
A1 - Hellmuth, Sam
A1 - Kügler, Frank
A1 - Mayer, Jörg
A1 - Stoel, Ruben
T1 - Phonology and intonation
Y1 - 2007
SN - 978-3-939469-66- 7
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - van de Vijver, Ruben
A1 - Baer-Henney, Dinah
T1 - On the role of phonetic motivation and frequency in the acquisition of alternations
JF - Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik
N2 - On the Role of Phonetic Motivation and Frequency in the Acquisition of Alternations
German nouns may alternate in two ways: a final word-final voiceless obstruent in the singular may correspond to a voiced one in the plural and a back vowel in the singular may correspond to a front one in the plural. We investigate the role of phonetic motivation and frequency in the acquisition of these alternations. The voicing alternation has a phonetic motivation, but the vowel alternation does not. On the basis of two corpus studies, we conclude that both alternations occur with equal frequency in the ambient language. In two production experiments, one with 5-year-olds and one with adults, we asked both populations to form plurals for given singular words and nonces. The children produce more voicing alternations in nonces than adults and fewer vowel alternations than adults. We conclude that children rely more on phonetic motivation than adults.
Y1 - 2013
SN - 0049-8653
VL - 43
IS - 169
SP - 49
EP - 64
PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam
CY - Stuttgart
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - van de Vijver, Ruben
T1 - Pisoni, D., Remez, R. (eds.), The handbook of speech perception; Oxford, Blackwell, 2005
BT - The handbook of speech perception
Y1 - 2009
UR - http://journals.cambridge.org/jid_IPA
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S002510030800371x
SN - 0025-1003
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - van de Koot, Hans
A1 - Silva, Renita
A1 - Felser, Claudia
A1 - Sato, Mikako
T1 - Does Dutch a-scrambling involve movement? Evidence from antecedent priming
JF - The linguistic review
N2 - The present study focuses on A-scrambling in Dutch, a local word-order alternation that typically signals the discourse-anaphoric status of the scrambled constituent. We use cross-modal priming to investigate whether an A-scrambled direct object gives rise to antecedent reactivation effects in the position where a movement theory would postulate a trace. Our results indicate that this is not the case, thereby providing support for a base-generation analysis of A-scrambling in Dutch.
KW - scrambling
KW - movement
KW - cross-modal priming
Y1 - 2015
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1515/tlr-2015-0010
SN - 0167-6318
SN - 1613-3676
VL - 32
IS - 4
SP - 739
EP - 776
PB - De Gruyter Mouton
CY - Berlin
ER -