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- Department Linguistik (65) (remove)
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.
The interaction between topicalization and structural constraints : evidence from Yucatec Maya
(2009)
This article deals with the syntactic and pragmatic properties of left dislocated constituents in Yucatec Maya. It has been argued that these constituents are topics, which implies that a particular structural configuration, namely left dislocation displays a 1:1 correspondence to a particular discourse function. We present evidence that the discourse properties of left dislocation are not uniform: only a subset of the left dislocated constituents qualify as topics in the strict sense, while other instances of left dislocation are better explained if we assume a structural constraint that bans the postverbal occurrence of subject constituents in a particular syntactic configuration. Our empirical findings show that though the occurrence of word order possibilities in discourse is not random, it is not necessarily determined by a unique licensing condition.
Georgian is famous for its word order flexibility: all permutations of constituent order are possible and the choice among them is primarily determined by information structure. In this paper, we show that word order is not the only means to encode information structure in this language, but it is used in combination with sentence prosody. After a preliminary description of the use of prosodic phrasing and intonation for this purpose, we address the question of the interrelation between these two strategies. Based on experimental evidence, we investigate the interaction of focus with word order and prosody, and we conclude that some aspects of word order variation are pragmatically vacuous and can be accommodated in any context if they are realized with an appropriate prosodic structure, while other word order phenomena are quite restrictive and cannot be overridden through prosodic manipulations.
Background: Persons with aphasia are particularly vulnerable when taking part in research studies. The process of informed consent (IC) depends on a number of factors, which may be compromised in aphasia. Very little research has been conducted on the process, and the issue is often neglected in published research. Aims: The aim of the research was to identify potential facilitators and barriers to the process of IC, focusing on verbal and nonverbal components of the interaction. Methods Procedures: As part of a larger study, the IC process for three trial participants was examined in detail. Specific portions of the enrolment process dealing with the explanation of the concepts placebo, randomisation, and double blind were analysed. Our methods were qualitative and comprised systematic observation and analysis of video- recorded recruitment as well as feedback sessions with these participants after the study had been completed and their participation in the research was over. Outcomes Results: Results demonstrated that the process of IC was widely discrepant. There were marked differences in the way that the participants reacted to the process and in the behaviours of the clinician during each enrolment, also differences in terms of length of enrolment and the degree of confidence with which the researchers believed consent had been authentic. We also present a review of published research on informed consent in aphasia, with this evidence suggesting that IC is often neglected and at best difficult to obtain. Paradoxically, attempts to facilitate the process seemed to have an inhibitory effect. Conclusions: There are multiple influences on the process of IC in aphasia, which include the potential for therapeutic misconception. The process seems particularly jeopardised in qualitative and clinical research. There are many possible reasons why a person might agree to take part in a trial, but there are numerous pitfalls and barriers to the process. Recommendations for policy and practice are made, and a model proposed for enhancing IC in aphasia.
Extended top-down tree transducers (transducteurs generalises descendants; see [A. Arnold and M. Dauchet, Bi- transductions de forets, in Proceedings of the 3rd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1976, pp. 74-86]) received renewed interest in the field of natural language processing. Here those transducers are extensively and systematically studied. Their main properties are identified and their relation to classical top-down tree transducers is exactly characterized. The obtained properties completely explain the Hasse diagram of the induced classes of tree transformations. In addition, it is shown that most interesting classes of transformations computed by extended top-down tree transducers are not closed under composition.
Semantic vs. word-form specific techniques in anomia treatment : a multiple single-case study
(2009)
This study compared a semantic and a phonological/orthographic approach to the treatment of word-finding difficulties in a case-series of ten individuals with aphasia, using a cross-over design. The study aims to investigate whether one approach is generally more effective than the other or whether the effectiveness of the two treatments relates systematically to the nature of the underlying functional impairment within the frarnework of a modular single- word processing model. In both treatments, the main task was spoken naming of pictured objects with different types of cues. In the semantic approach, different aspects of the target semantic concept were used as a cue in picture naming, while in the word-form method, both phonological and orthographic information were provided as a cue. Treatment effects were assessed in terms of both short- and long-lasting effects on spoken picture naming accuracy in each participant after the end of each treatment phase. Here, both item-specific effects and a possible generalisation to untreated pictures were considered. In addition, the immediate effects of the phonological and the semantic prompts were analysed. With regard to the cue effects on immediate naming, the word-form specific cues proved stronger than the semantic cues. The semantic treatment phase on the other hand, produced more stable effects than the word-form specific phase in some participants. A direct relationship between specific treatment effects and underlying functional deficit pattern was not confirmed for all subjects, i.e. participants with post-semantic anomia benefited from the semantic approach and participants with semantic anomia benefited from the phonological/orthographic approach. In the discussion of the results different explanations are considered, including the importance of preserved functions which aphasic participants bring into the treatment, the possible acquisition of a conscious strategy, and the possible influence of order of treatment. The effects of the two treatments are interpreted with regard to their underlying functional mechanisms in a single-word processing model.
This paper examines the behavior of VP topicalization in two unrelated languages, Hungarian and Spanish. It will show that in spite of the superficial similarity between the elements involved in such topicalization, the two languages employ a fundamentally different strategy in the derivation of these sentences. Hungarian fronts the VP material and spells it out in the form of a resumptive pronoun in the left periphery, in a mechanism similar to that described in Grohmann (2003). Spanish on the other hand generates the resumptive pronominal as an argument internal to the clause. This difference in the two derivations correlates with other differences in VP topicalization in the two languages.
The paper presents an in-depth study of focus marking in Guruntum, a West Chadic language spoken in Bauchi State in Nigeria. Focus in Guruntum is marked morphologically by means of a focus marker a, which typically precedes the focused constituent. Even though the morphological focus-marking system of Guruntum allows for a lot of fine-grained distinctions in information structure (IS), the language is not entirely free of focus ambiguities that are the result of conflicting IS- and syntactic requirements governing the placement of focus markers. We show that morphological focus marking with a applies across different types of focus, such as new-information, contrastive, selective and corrective focus, and that a does not have a second function as a perfective marker, as is assumed in the literature. In contrast, we argue that sentence-final occurrences of a in perfective sentences are markers of sentential focus and have additional functions at the level of discourse structure.
Syntactic theory provides a rich array of representational assumptions about linguistic knowledge and processes. Such detailed and independently motivated constraints on grammatical knowledge ought to play a role in sentence comprehension. However most grammar-based explanations of processing difficulty in the literature have attempted to use grammatical representations and processes per se to explain processing difficulty. They did not take into account that the description of higher cognition in mind and brain encompasses two levels: on the one hand, at the macrolevel, symbolic computation is performed, and on the other hand, at the microlevel, computation is achieved through processes within a dynamical system. One critical question is therefore how linguistic theory and dynamical systems can be unified to provide an explanation for processing effects. Here, we present such a unification for a particular account to syntactic theory: namely a parser for Stabler's Minimalist Grammars, in the framework of Smolensky's Integrated Connectionist/Symbolic architectures. In simulations we demonstrate that the connectionist minimalist parser produces predictions which mirror global empirical findings from psycholinguistic research.