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Prediction is often regarded as a central and domain-general aspect of cognition. This proposal extends to language, where predictive processing might enable the comprehension of rapidly unfolding input by anticipating upcoming words or their semantic features. To make these predictions, the brain needs to form a representation of the predictive patterns in the environment. Predictive processing theories suggest a continuous learning process that is driven by prediction errors, but much is still to be learned about this mechanism in language comprehension. This thesis therefore combined three electroencephalography (EEG) experiments to explore the relationship between prediction and implicit learning at the level of meaning.
Results from Study 1 support the assumption that the brain constantly infers und updates probabilistic representations of the semantic context, potentially across multiple levels of complexity. N400 and P600 brain potentials could be predicted by semantic surprise based on a probabilistic estimate of previous exposure and a more complex probability representation, respectively.
Subsequent work investigated the influence of prediction errors on the update of semantic predictions during sentence comprehension. In line with error-based learning, unexpected sentence continuations in Study 2 ¬– characterized by large N400 amplitudes ¬– were associated with increased implicit memory compared to expected continuations. Further, Study 3 indicates that prediction errors not only strengthen the representation of the unexpected word, but also update specific predictions made from the respective sentence context. The study additionally provides initial evidence that the amount of unpredicted information as reflected in N400 amplitudes drives this update of predictions, irrespective of the strength of the original incorrect prediction.
Together, these results support a central assumption of predictive processing theories: A probabilistic predictive representation at the level of meaning that is updated by prediction errors. They further propose the N400 ERP component as a possible learning signal. The results also emphasize the need for further research regarding the role of the late positive ERP components in error-based learning. The continuous error-based adaptation described in this thesis allows the brain to improve its predictive representation with the aim to make better predictions in the future.
Mental health of Japanese workers: amotivation mediates self-compassion on mental health problems
(2022)
Workplace mental health is a cause for concern in many countries. Globally, 78% of the workforce experienced impairment of their mental health in 2020. In Japan, more than half of employees are mentally distressed.
Previously, research has identified that self-compassion (i.e., being kind and understanding towards oneself) and work motivation were important to their mental health.
However, how these three components relate to each other remains to be elucidated. Accordingly, this study aimed to examine the relationship between mental health problems, self-compassion and work motivation (i.e., intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation and amotivation).
A cross-sectional design was employed, where 165 Japanese workers completed self-report scales regarding those three components. A correlation and path analyses were conducted.
Mental health problems were positively associated with amotivation and negatively associated with age and self-compassion. While intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation did not mediate the impact of self-compassion on mental health problems, amotivation did.
The findings can help managers and organizational psychologists help identify effective approaches to improving work mental health.
This book provides a novel analysis for the syntax of the clausal left periphery, focusing on various finite clause types and especially on embedded clauses. It investigates how the appearance of multiple projections interacts with economy principles and with the need for marking syntactic information overtly. In particular, the proposed account shows that a flexible approach assuming only a minimal number of projections is altogether favourable to cartographic approaches. The main focus of the book is on West Germanic, in particular on English and German, yet other Germanic and non-Germanic languages are also discussed for comparative purposes.
The ‘social brain’, consisting of areas sensitive to social information, supposedly gates the mechanisms involved in human language learning. Early preverbal interactions are guided by ostensive signals, such as gaze patterns, which are coordinated across body, brain, and environment. However, little is known about how the infant brain processes social gaze in naturalistic interactions and how this relates to infant language development. During free-play of 9-month-olds with their mothers, we recorded hemodynamic cortical activity of ´social brain` areas (prefrontal cortex, temporo-parietal junctions) via fNIRS, and micro-coded mother’s and infant’s social gaze. Infants’ speech processing was assessed with a word segmentation task. Using joint recurrence quantification analysis, we examined the connection between infants’ ´social brain` activity and the temporal dynamics of social gaze at intrapersonal (i.e., infant’s coordination, maternal coordination) and interpersonal (i.e., dyadic coupling) levels. Regression modeling revealed that intrapersonal dynamics in maternal social gaze (but not infant’s coordination or dyadic coupling) coordinated significantly with infant’s cortical activity. Moreover, recurrence quantification analysis revealed that intrapersonal maternal social gaze dynamics (in terms of entropy) were the best predictor of infants’ word segmentation. The findings support the importance of social interaction in language development, particularly highlighting maternal social gaze dynamics.
Rhythmicity characterizes both interpersonal synchrony and spoken language. Emotions and language are forms of interpersonal communication, which interact with each other throughout development. We investigated whether and how emotional synchrony between mothers and their 9-month-old infants relates to infants' word segmentation as an early marker of language development. Twenty-six 9-month-old infants and their German-speaking mothers took part in the study. To measure emotional synchrony, we coded positive, neutral and negative emotional expressions of the mothers and their infants during a free play session. We then calculated the degree to which the mothers' and their infants' matching emotional expressions followed a predictable pattern. To measure word segmentation, we familiarized infants with auditory text passages and tested how long they looked at the screen while listening to familiar versus novel words. We found that higher levels of predictability (i.e. low entropy) during mother-infant interaction is associated with infants' word segmentation performance. These findings suggest that individual differences in word segmentation relate to the complexity and predictability of emotional expressions during mother-infant interactions.
Purpose: Coarticulatory effects in speech vary across development, but the sources of this variation remain unclear. This study investigated whether developmental differences in intrasyllabic coarticulation degree could be explained by differences in children's articulatory patterns compared to adults.
Method: To address this question, we first compared the tongue configurations of 3-to 7-year-old German children to those of adults. The observed developmental differences were then examined through simulations with Task Dynamics Application, a Task Dynamics simulation system, to establish which articulatory modifications could best reproduce the empirical results. To generate syllables simulating the lack of tongue gesture differentiation, we tested three simulation scenarios.
Results: We found that younger speakers use less differentiated articulatory patterns to achieve alveolar constrictions than adults. The simulations corresponding to undifferentiated control of tongue tip and tongue body resulted in (a) tongue shapes similar to those observed in natural speech and (b) higher degrees of intrasyllabic coarticulation in children when compared to adults.
Conclusions: Results provide evidence that differences in articulatory patterns contribute to developmental differences in coarticulation degree. This study further shows that empirically informed modeling can advance our understanding of changes in coarticulatory patterns across age.
More than 30 years have passed since Mehler et al. (1988) proposed that newborns can discriminate between languages that belong to different rhythm classes: stress-, syllable- or mora-timed. Thereupon they developed the hypothesis that infants are sensitive to differences in vowel and consonant interval durations as acoustic correlates of rhythm classes. It remains unknown exactly which durational computations infants use when perceiving speech for the purposes of distinguishing languages. Here, a meta-analysis of studies on infants' language discrimination skills over the first year of life was conducted, aiming to quantify how language discrimination skills change with age and are modulated by rhythm classes or durational metrics. A systematic literature search identified 42 studies that tested infants' (birth to 12 months) discrimination or preference of two language varieties, by presenting infants with auditory or audio-visual continuous speech. Quantitative data synthesis was conducted using multivariate random effects meta-analytic models with the factors rhythm class difference, age, stimulus manipulation, method, and metrics operationalising proportions of and variability in vowel and consonant interval durations, to explore which factors best account for language discrimination or preference. Results revealed that smaller differences in vowel interval variability (oV) and larger differences in successive consonantal interval variability (rPVI-C) were associated with more successful language discrimination, and better accounted for discrimination results than the factor rhythm class. There were no effects of age for discrimination but results on preference studies were affected by age: the older infants get, the more they prefer non-native languages that are rhythmically similar to their native language, but not non-native languages that are rhythmically distinct. These findings can inform theories on language discrimination that have previously focussed on rhythm class, by providing a novel way to operationalise rhythm in language in the extent to which it accounts for infants' language discrimination abilities.
Formal constraints on crossing dependencies have played a large role in research on the formal complexity of natural language grammars and parsing. Here we ask whether the apparent evidence for constraints on crossing dependencies in treebanks might arise because of independent constraints on trees, such as low arity and dependency length minimization. We address this question using two sets of experiments. In Experiment 1, we compare the distribution of formal properties of crossing dependencies, such as gap degree, between real trees and baseline trees matched for rate of crossing dependencies and various other properties. In Experiment 2, we model whether two dependencies cross, given certain psycholinguistic properties of the dependencies. We find surprisingly weak evidence for constraints originating from the mild context-sensitivity literature (gap degree and well-nestedness) beyond what can be explained by constraints on rate of crossing dependencies, topological properties of the trees, and dependency length. However, measures that have emerged from the parsing literature (e.g., edge degree, end-point crossings, and heads' depth difference) differ strongly between real and random trees. Modeling results show that cognitive metrics relating to information locality and working-memory limitations affect whether two dependencies cross or not, but they do not fully explain the distribution of crossing dependencies in natural languages. Together these results suggest that crossing constraints are better characterized by processing pressures than by mildly context-sensitive constraints.
Развитие науки, общества и медицины ведет за собой неуклонный рост средней продолжительности жизни. В результате наука сталкивается с новыми задачами, в число которых входит предотвращение деменции и поддержание эффективной работоспособности мозга при старении человека. Одним из защитных факторов, предотвращающих ослабление когнитивных функций и поддерживающих нейропластичность мозга, является билингвизм.
Однако дебаты насчет нейропротекторных свойств двуязычия до сих пор являются актуальными. В данной статье рассмотрен феномен нейрокогнитивного резерва (НКР) и определена взаимосвязь между билингвизмом и такими составляющими НКР, как мозговой резерв, нейрональный резерв и нейрональная компенсация.
Кроме этого, в статье приведен обзор исследований, посвященных изучению нейронных и когнитивных механизмов влияния билингвизма на здоровое функционирование мозга при старении. В заключении мы вкратце остановились на том, каким образом двуязычие может защищать мозг от старения благодаря взаимодействию между мозговыми и когнитивными составляющими НКР.
The acquisition of clitics still remains a highly controversial issue in Greek acquisition literature despite the bulk of studies performed.
Object clitics have been shown to be early acquired by monolingual children in terms of production rates, whereas only highly proficient bilingual children achieve target-like performance.
Crucially, errors in gender marking are persistent for monolingual and bilingual children even when adult-like production rates are achieved.
This study aims to readdress the acquisition of clitics in an innovative way, by entering the variable of gender in an experimental design targeting to assess production and processing by bilingual and monolingual children.
Moreover, we examined the role of language proficiency (in terms of general verbal intelligence and syntactic production abilities). The groups had comparable performance in both tasks (in terms of correct responses and error distribution in production and reaction times in comprehension).
However, verbal intelligence had an effect on the performance of the monolingual but not of the bilingual group in the production task, and bilingual children were overall slower in the comprehension task. Syntactic production abilities did not have any effect. We argue that gender marking affects clitic processing, and we discuss the implications of our findings for bilingual acquisition.
Turkish 3rd person plural subjects are frequently used with verbs that are unmarked for number, with plural suffix omission influenced by semantic and word-order related constraints.
Previous findings from judgment tasks indicate that monolingual and heritage Turkish speakers differ in the way they are affected by these constraints.
This study builds and expands upon previous research by investigating the role of word order in more detail, and by examining whether the constraint weightings obtained from Uygun and Felser's (2021) acceptability judgment data are able to predict speakers' verb form choices in a timed sentence completion task.
Besides confirming that word-order related constraints are information-structural in nature, our results show that heritage speakers over-produce plural-marked verbs in comparison to monolingual speakers, indicating between-group differences in constraint ranking.
We interpret this as reflecting a tendency among Turkish heritage speakers to regularize the agreement system, which is not necessarily observed in metalinguistic judgment tasks.
A special class of English words with tense vowel/diphthong nuclei and liquid codas receive variable syllable count judgments (one and over-one syllables).
Tilsen and Cohn (2016) showed that differences in judgments correlate with differences in production, supporting their hypothesis that meta-phonological judgments and speech motor control share a common representation.
In the present study, we further propose that syllable count judgments are related to subsegmental representation in the rime, and are independent of acoustic duration.
We test the hypothesis by comparing English and German, chosen for their similar word structures and vowel length contrast, and their crucial difference in the gestural specification of coda liquids.
In English, coda liquids have an earlier vocalic gesture relative to the consonantal one, while in German, both gestures are simultaneous.
We stipulated that sesquisyllabic (over-one) judgments are related to the count of sequentially-timed vocalic gestures in the rime. The difference in the coda liquid composition between the two languages predicts that sesquisyllables should not emerge in German.
Our predictions were confirmed by the results of parallel production (acoustic) and syllable count judgment experiments in English and German.
We propose a model accounting for these results, and we discuss its typological implications and its limitations.
Production and comprehension of prosodic boundary marking in persons with unilateral brain lesions
(2022)
Purpose: Persons with unilateral brain damage in the right hemisphere (RH) or left hemisphere (LH) show limitations in processing linguistic prosody, with yet inconclusive results on their ability to process prosodically marked structural boundaries for syntactic ambiguity resolution. We aimed at systematically investigating production and comprehension of three prosodic cues (f(0) range, final lengthening, and pause) at structural boundaries in coordinate sequences in participants with right hemisphere brain damage (RHDP) and participants with left hemisphere brain damage (LHDP). Method: Twenty RHDP and 15 LHDP participated in our study.
Comprehension experiment: Participants and a control group listened to coordinate name sequences with internal grouping by a prosodically marked structural boundary (grouped condition, e.g., "(Gabi und Leni) # und Nina") or without internal grouping (ungrouped condition, e.g., "Gabi und Leni und Nina") and had to identify the target condition. The strength and combinations of prosodic cues in the stimuli were manipulated.
Production experiment: Participants were asked to produce coordinate sequences in the two conditions (grouped, ungrouped) in two different tasks: a Reading Aloud and a Repetition experiment. Accuracy of participants' productions was subsequently assessed in a rating study and productions were analyzed with respect to use of prosodic cues.
Results: In the Comprehension experiment, RHDP and LHDP had overall lower identification accuracies than unimpaired control participants and LHDP were found to have particular problems with boundary identification when the pause cue was reduced. In production, LHDP and RHDP employed all three prosodic cues for boundary marking, but struggled to clearly mark prosodic boundaries in 28% of all productions. Both groups showed better performance in reading aloud than in repetition. LHDP relied more on using f(0) range and pause duration to prosodically mark structural boundaries, whereas RHDP employed final lengthening more vigorously than LHDP in reading aloud.
Conclusions: We conclude that processing of linguistic prosody is affected in RHDP and LHDP, but not completely impaired. Therefore, prosody can serve as a relevant communicative resource. However, it should also be considered as a target area for assessment and treatment in both groups.
Our original target article highlighted some significant shortcomings in the current state of child language research: a large skew in our evidential base towards English and a handful of other Indo-European languages that partly has its origins in a lack of researcher diversity.
In this article, we respond to the 21 commentaries on our original article.
The commentaries highlighted both the importance of attention to typological features of languages and the environments and contexts in which languages are acquired, with many commentators providing concrete suggestions on how we address the data skew.
In this response, we synthesise the main themes of the commentaries and make suggestions for how the field can move towards both improving data coverage and opening up to traditionally under-represented researchers.
There is consensus that word retrieval starts with activation of semantic representations.
However, in adults without language impairment, relatively little attention has been paid to the effects of the semantic attributes of to-be-retrieved words.
This paper, therefore, addresses the question of which item-inherent semantic factors influence word retrieval.
Specifically, it reviews the literature on a selection of these factors: imageability, concreteness, number of semantic features, typicality, intercorrelational density, featural distinctiveness, concept distinctiveness, animacy, semantic neighbourhood density, semantic similarity, operativity, valence, and arousal.
It highlights several methodological challenges in this field, and has a focus on the insights from studies with people with aphasia where the effects of these variables are more prevalent.
The paper concludes that further research simultaneously examining the effects of different semantic factors that are likely to affect lexical co-activation, and the interaction of these variables, would be fruitful, as would suitably scaled computational modelling of these effects in unimpaired language processing and in language impairment.
Such research would enable the refinement of theories of semantic processing and word production, and potentially have implications for diagnosis and treatment of semantic and lexical impairments.
Adverbial connectives like therefore, which link a preceding 'external' to an 'internal' argument, can be regarded as anaphoric: The external argument is selected by an interpretation process akin to that of an event anaphor, and intervening material can appear between both arguments.
We report on a crowdsourcing experiment on the German connectives trotzdem and dennoch that studies factors that lead readers to assume such long-distance arguments: semantic plausibility of intervening material, 'subjective' versus 'objective' content, and the presence of an anaphoric morpheme in the connective.
We find that the type and content of the intervening material play an important role in argument choice.
Proceedings of TripleA 10
(2024)
The TripleA workshop series was founded in 2014 by linguists from Potsdam and Tübingen with the aim of providing a platform for researchers that conduct theoretically-informed linguistic fieldwork on meaning. Its focus is particularly on languages that are under-represented in the current research landscape, including but not limited to languages of Africa, Asia, and Australia, hence TripleA.
For its 10th anniversary, TripleA returned to the University of Potsdam on the 7-9th of June 2023.
The programme included 21 talks dealing with no less than 22 different languages, including three invited talks given by Sihwei Chen (Academia Sinica), Jérémy Pasquereau (Laboratoire de Linguistique de Nantes, CNRS) and Agata Renans (Ruhr-Universität Bochum). Nine of these (invited or peer-reviewed) talks are featured in this volume.
We investigate the variation in oral and written language in terms of anaphoric distance (i.e., the textual distance between anaphors and their antecedents), expanding corpus-based research with experimental evidence.
Contrastive corpus studies demonstrate that oral genres include longer average anaphoric distance than written genres, if the distance is measured in terms of clauses (Fox, 1987; Aktas & Stede, 2020).
We designed an experiment in order to examine the contrasts in oral and written mediums, using the same genre.
We aim to gain more insight about the impact of the medium, in a situation where both mediums convey a similar level of spontaneity, informality and interactivity. We designed a story continuation study, where the participants are recruited via crowdsourcing.
To our knowledge, this is the first study of its kind, where anaphoric distance is manipulated systematically in a language production experiment in order to examine medium distinctions.
We observed that participants use more pronouns in oral medium than in written medium if the anaphoric distance is long.
This result is in line with the implications of the earlier corpus-based research. In addition, our results indicate that anaphoric distance has a larger effect in referential choice for the written medium.
Introduction Early linguistic background, and in particular, access to language, lays the foundation of future reading skills in deaf and hard-of-hearing signers. The current study aims to estimate the impact of two factors – early access to sign and/or spoken language – on reading fluency in deaf and hard-of-hearing adult Russian Sign Language speakers.
Methods In the eye-tracking experiment, 26 deaf and 14 hard-of-hearing native Russian Sign Language speakers read 144 sentences from the Russian Sentence Corpus. Analysis of global eye-movement trajectories (scanpaths) was used to identify clusters of typical reading trajectories. The role of early access to sign and spoken language as well as vocabulary size as predictors of the more fluent reading pattern was tested.
Results Hard-of-hearing signers with early access to sign language read more fluently than those who were exposed to sign language later in life or deaf signers without access to speech sounds. No association between early access to spoken language and reading fluency was found.
Discussion Our results suggest a unique advantage for the hard-of-hearing individuals from having early access to both sign and spoken language and support the existing claims that early exposure to sign language is beneficial not only for deaf but also for hard-of-hearing children.
Introduction LingoTalk is a German speech-language app designed to enhance lexical retrieval in individuals with aphasia. It incorporates automatic speech recognition (ASR) to provide therapist-independent feedback. The execution and effectiveness of a self-administered intervention with LingoTalk was explored in a case series study.
Methods Three individuals with chronic aphasia participated in a highly individualized, supervised self-administered intervention lasting 3 weeks. The LingoTalk app closely monitored the frequency, intensity and progress of the intervention. Treatment efficacy was assessed using a multiple baseline design, examining both item-specific treatment effects and generalization to untreated items, an untreated task, and spontaneous speech.
Results All participants successfully completed the intervention with LingoTalk, although one participant was not able to use the ASR feature. None of the participants fully adhered to the treatment protocol. All participants demonstrated significant and sustained improvement in the naming of practiced items, although there was limited evidence of generalization. Additionally, there was a slight reduction in word-finding difficulties during spontaneous speech.
Discussion This small-scale study indicates that self-administered intervention with LingoTalk can improve oral naming of treated items. Thus, it has the potential to complement face-to-face speech-language therapy, such as within in a “flipped speech room” approach. The choice of feedback mode is discussed. Transparent progress monitoring of the intervention appears to positively influence patients' motivation.
Linguistic structure modulates attention in reading: evidence from negative concord in Italian
(2023)
We report the reading performance of an Italian speaker with egocentric Neglect Dyslexia on sentences with Negative Concord structures, which contain a linguistic cue to the presence of a preceding negative marker and compare it to sentences with no such cue. As predicted, the frequency of reading the whole sentence, including the initial negative marker non, was higher in Negative Concord structures than in sentences which also started with non, but crucially, lacked the medially positioned linguistic cue to the presence of non.
These data support the claim that the presence of linguistic cues to sentence structure modulates attention during reading in Neglect Dyslexia.
This thesis explores word order variability in verb-final languages. Verb-final languages have a reputation for a high amount of word order variability. However, that reputation amounts to an urban myth due to a lack of systematic investigation. This thesis provides such a systematic investigation by presenting original data from several verb-final languages with a focus on four Uralic ones: Estonian, Udmurt, Meadow Mari, and South Sámi. As with every urban myth, there is a kernel of truth in that many unrelated verb-final languages share a particular kind of word order variability, A-scrambling, in which the fronted elements do not receive a special information-structural role, such as topic or contrastive focus. That word order variability goes hand in hand with placing focussed phrases further to the right in the position directly in front of the verb. Variations on this pattern are exemplified by Uyghur, Standard Dargwa, Eastern Armenian, and three of the Uralic languages, Estonian, Udmurt, and Meadow Mari. So far for the kernel of truth, but the fourth Uralic language, South Sámi, is comparably rigid and does not feature this particular kind of word order variability. Further such comparably rigid, non-scrambling verb-final languages are Dutch, Afrikaans, Amharic, and Korean. In contrast to scrambling languages, non-scrambling languages feature obligatory subject movement, causing word order rigidity next to other typical EPP effects.
The EPP is a defining feature of South Sámi clause structure in general. South Sámi exhibits a one-of-a-kind alternation between SOV and SAuxOV order that is captured by the assumption of the EPP and obligatory movement of auxiliaries but not lexical verbs. Other languages that allow for SAuxOV order either lack an alternation because the auxiliary is obligatorily present (Macro-Sudan SAuxOVX languages), or feature an alternation between SVO and SAuxOV (Kru languages; V2 with underlying OV as a fringe case). In the SVO–SAuxOV languages, both auxiliaries and lexical verbs move. Hence, South Sámi shows that the textbook difference between the VO languages English and French, whether verb movement is restricted to auxiliaries, also extends to OV languages. SAuxOV languages are an outlier among OV languages in general but are united by the presence of the EPP.
Word order variability is not restricted to the preverbal field in verb-final languages, as most of them feature postverbal elements (PVE). PVE challenge the notion of verb-finality in a language. Strictly verb-final languages without any clause-internal PVE are rare. This thesis charts the first structural and descriptive typology of PVE. Verb-final languages vary in the categories they allow as PVE. Allowing for non-oblique PVE is a pivotal threshold: when non-oblique PVE are allowed, PVE can be used for information-structural effects. Many areally and genetically unrelated languages only allow for given PVE but differ in whether the PVE are contrastive. In those languages, verb-finality is not at stake since verb-medial orders are marked. In contrast, the Uralic languages Estonian and Udmurt allow for any PVE, including information focus. Verb-medial orders can be used in the same contexts as verb-final orders without semantic and pragmatic differences. As such, verb placement is subject to actual free variation. The underlying verb-finality of Estonian and Udmurt can only be inferred from a range of diagnostics indicating optional verb movement in both languages. In general, it is not possible to account for PVE with a uniform analysis: rightwards merge, leftward verb movement, and rightwards phrasal movement are required to capture the cross- and intralinguistic variation.
Knowing that a language is verb-final does not allow one to draw conclusions about word order variability in that language. There are patterns of homogeneity, such as the word order variability driven by directly preverbal focus and the givenness of postverbal elements, but those are not brought about by verb-finality alone. Preverbal word order variability is restricted by the more abstract property of obligatory subject movement, whereas the determinant of postverbal word order variability has to be determined in the future.
Background
Dysphagia is a major clinical concern in multiple system atrophy (MSA). A detailed evaluation of its major endoscopic features compared with Parkinson's disease (PD) is lacking.
Objective
This study systematically assessed dysphagia in MSA compared with PD and correlated subjective dysphagia to objective endoscopic findings.
Methods
Fifty-seven patients with MSA (median, 64 [interquartile range (IQR): 59-71] years; 35 women) underwent flexible endoscopic evaluation of swallowing using a specific MSA-flexible endoscopic evaluation of swallowing task protocol. Findings were compared with an age-matched cohort of 57 patients with PD (median, 67 [interquartile range: 60-73] years; 28 women). In a subcohort, subjective dysphagia was assessed using the Swallowing Disturbance Questionnaire and correlated to endoscopy findings.
Results
Patients with MSA predominantly showed symptoms suggestive of oral-phase disturbance (premature spillage, 75.4%, piecemeal deglutition, 75.4%). Pharyngeal-phase symptoms occurred less often (pharyngeal residues, 50.9%; penetration/aspiration, 28.1%). In contrast, pharyngeal symptoms were the most common finding in PD (pharyngeal residues, 47.4%). Oral symptoms occurred less frequently in PD (premature spillage, 15.8%, P < 0.001; piecemeal deglutition, 1.8%, P < 0.01). Patients with MSA had a greater risk for oral-phase disturbances with increased disease severity (P < 0.05; odds ratio, 3.15). Patients with MSA showed a significantly higher intraindividual interswallow variability compared with PD. When correlating Swallowing Disturbance Questionnaire scores with endoscopy results, its cutoff, validated for PD, was not sensitive enough to identify patients with MSA with dysphagia. We developed a subscore for identifying dysphagia in MSA and calculated a new cutoff (sensitivity 85%, specificity 100%).
Conclusions
In contrast with patients with PD, patients with dysphagic MSA more frequently present with oral-phase symptoms and a significantly higher intraindividual interswallow variability. A novel Swallowing Disturbance Questionnaire MSA subscore may be a valuable tool to identify patients with MSA with early oropharyngeal dysphagia.
The Final-over-Final Condition has emerged as a robust and explanatory generalization for a wide range of phenomena (Biberauer, Holmberg, and Roberts 2014, Sheehan et al. 2017).
In this article, we argue that it also holds in another domain, nominalization.
In languages that show overt nominalization of VPs, one word order is routinely unattested, namely, a head-initial VP with a suffixal nominalizer.
This typological gap can be accounted for by the Final-over-Final Condition, if we allow it to hold within mixed extended projections.
This view also makes correct predictions about agentive nominalizations and nominalized serial verb constructions.
This study provides a synthesis of corpus-based and experimental investigations of word-order preferences in German infinitival complementation. We carried out a systematic analysis of present-day German corpora to establish frequency distributions of different word-order options: extraposition, intraposition, and 'third construction'. We then examined, firstly, whether and to what extent corpus frequencies and processing economy constraints can predict the acceptability of these three word-order variants, and whether subject raising and subject control verbs form clearly distinguishable subclasses of infinitive-embedding verbs in terms of their word-order behaviour. Secondly, our study looks into the issue of coherence by comparing acceptability ratings for monoclausal coherent and biclausal incoherent construals of intraposed infinitives, and by examining whether a biclausal incoherent analysis gives rise to local and/or global processing difficulty. Taken together, our results revealed that (i) whilst the extraposition pattern consistently wins out over all other word-order variants for control verbs, neither frequency nor processing-based approaches to word-order variation can account for the acceptability of low-frequency variants, (ii) there is considerable verb-specific variation regarding word-order preferences both between and within the two sets of raising and control verbs under investigation, and (iii) although monoclausal coherent intraposition is rated above biclausal incoherent intraposition, the latter is not any more difficult to process than the former. Our findings indicate that frequency of occurrence and processing-related constraints interact with idiosyncratic lexical properties of individual verbs in determining German speakers' structural preferences.
The ZuCo benchmark on cross-subject reading task classification with EEG and eye-tracking data
(2023)
We present a new machine learning benchmark for reading task classification with the goal of advancing EEG and eye-tracking research at the intersection between computational language processing and cognitive neuroscience. The benchmark task consists of a cross-subject classification to distinguish between two reading paradigms: normal reading and task-specific reading. The data for the benchmark is based on the Zurich Cognitive Language Processing Corpus (ZuCo 2.0), which provides simultaneous eye-tracking and EEG signals from natural reading of English sentences. The training dataset is publicly available, and we present a newly recorded hidden testset. We provide multiple solid baseline methods for this task and discuss future improvements. We release our code and provide an easy-to-use interface to evaluate new approaches with an accompanying public leaderboard: .
Previous research has found that comprehenders sometimes predict information that is grammatically unlicensed by sentence constraints. An open question is why such grammatically unlicensed predictions occur. We examined the possibility that unlicensed predictions arise in situations of information conflict, for instance when comprehenders try to predict upcoming words while simultaneously building dependencies with previously encountered elements in memory.
German possessive pronouns are a good testing ground for this hypothesis because they encode two grammatically distinct agreement dependencies: a retrospective one between the possessive and its previously mentioned referent, and a prospective one between the possessive and its following nominal head. In two visual world eye-tracking experiments, we estimated the onset of predictive effects in participants' fixations.
The results showed that the retrospective dependency affected resolution of the prospective dependency by shifting the onset of predictive effects.
We attribute this effect to an interaction between predictive and memory retrieval processes.
Studies on French adults using a written lexical decision task with masked priming, in which targets were more primed by consonant- (jalu-JOLI) than vowel-related (vobi-JOLI) primes, support the proposal that consonants have more weight than vowels in lexical processing.
This study examines the phonological and/or lexical nature of this consonant bias
(C-bias), using a sandwich priming task in which a brief presentation of the target
(pre-prime) precedes the prime-target sequence, a manipulation blocking lexical neighbourhood effects.
Results from three experiments (varying pre-prime/prime durations) show consistent
C-priming and no significant V-priming at earlier and later processing stages (50 or 66 ms primes).
Yet, a joint analysis reveals a small V-priming, while confirming a significant consonant advantage.
This demonstrates the contribution of the phonological level to the C-bias.
Second, differences in performance comparing the classic versus sandwich priming task also establish a contribution of lexical neighbourhood inhibition effects to the C-bias.
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.
Classical linguistic theory assumes that formal aspects, like sound, are not internally related to the meaning of words. However, recent research suggests language might code affective meaning such as threat and alert sublexically. Positing affective phonological iconicity as a systematic organization principle of the German lexicon, we calculated sublexical affective values for sub-syllabic phonological word segments from a large-scale affective lexical German database by averaging valence and arousal ratings of all words any phonological segment appears in. We tested word stimuli with either consistent or inconsistent mappings between lexical affective meaning and sublexical affective values (negative-valence/high-arousal vs. neutral-valence/lowarousal) in an EEG visual-lexical-decision task. A mismatch between sublexical and lexical affective values elicited an increased N400 response. These results reveal that systematic affective phonological iconicity - extracted from the lexicon - impacts the extraction of lexical word meaning during reading.
Stimulus data and experimental design for a self-paced reading study on emoji-word substitutions
(2022)
This data paper presents the experimental design and stimuli from an online self-paced reading study on the processing of emojis substituting lexically ambiguous nouns. We recorded reading times for the target ambiguous nouns and for emojis depicting either the intended target referent or a contextually inappropriate homophonous noun. Furthermore, we recorded comprehension accuracy, demographics and a self-assessment of the participants' emoji usage frequency. The data includes all stimuli used, the raw data, the full JavaScript code for the online experiment, as well as Python and R code for the data analysis. We believe that our dataset may give important insights related to the comprehension mechanisms involved in the cognitive processing of emojis. For interpretation and discussion of the experiment, please see the original article entitled "The processing of emoji-word substitutions: A self-paced-reading study".
In this paper, we employ an experimental paradigm using insights from the psychology of reasoning to investigate the question whether certain modals generate and draw attention to alternatives. The article extends and builds on the methodology and findings of Mascarenhas & Picat (2019). Based on experimental results, they argue that the English epistemic modal might raises alternatives. We apply the same methodology to the English modal allowed to to test different hypotheses regarding the involvement of alternatives in deontic modality. We find commonalities and differences between the two modals we tested. We discuss theoretical consequences for existing semantic analyses of these modals, and argue that reasoning tasks can serve as a diagnostic tool to discover which natural language expressions involve alternatives.
In the picture-word interference paradigm, participants name pictures while ignoring a written or spoken distractor word. Naming times to the pictures are slowed down by the presence of the distractor word. The present study investigates in detail the impact of distractor and target word properties on picture naming times, building on the seminal study by Miozzo and Caramazza. We report the results of several Bayesian meta-analyses based on 26 datasets. These analyses provide estimates of effect sizes and their precision for several variables and their interactions. They show the reliability of the distractor frequency effect on picture naming latencies (latencies decrease as the frequency of the distractor increases) and demonstrate for the first time the impact of distractor length, with longer naming latencies for trials with longer distractors. Moreover, distractor frequency interacts with target word frequency to predict picture naming latencies. The methodological and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.
How tone, intonation and emotion shape the development of infants' fundamental frequency perception
(2022)
Fundamental frequency (integral(0)), perceived as pitch, is the first and arguably most salient auditory component humans are exposed to since the beginning of life.
It carries multiple linguistic (e.g., word meaning) and paralinguistic (e.g., speakers' emotion) functions in speech and communication.
The mappings between these functions and integral(0) features vary within a language and differ cross-linguistically. For instance, a rising pitch can be perceived as a question in English but a lexical tone in Mandarin. Such variations mean that infants must learn the specific mappings based on their respective linguistic and social environments.
To date, canonical theoretical frameworks and most empirical studies do not view or consider the multi-functionality of integral(0), but typically focus on individual functions. More importantly, despite the eventual mastery of integral(0) in communication, it is unclear how infants learn to decompose and recognize these overlapping functions carried by integral(0). In this paper, we review the symbioses and synergies of the lexical, intonational, and emotional functions that can be carried by integral(0) and are being acquired throughout infancy.
On the basis of our review, we put forward the Learnability Hypothesis that infants decompose and acquire multiple integral(0) functions through native/environmental experiences. Under this hypothesis, we propose representative cases such as the synergy scenario, where infants use visual cues to disambiguate and decompose the different integral(0) functions. Further, viable ways to test the scenarios derived from this hypothesis are suggested across auditory and visual modalities.
Discovering how infants learn to master the diverse functions carried by integral(0) can increase our understanding of linguistic systems, auditory processing and communication functions.
Inferences about hypotheses are ubiquitous in the cognitive sciences. Bayes factors provide one general way to compare different hypotheses by their compatibility with the observed data. Those quantifications can then also be used to choose between hypotheses. While Bayes factors provide an immediate approach to hypothesis testing, they are highly sensitive to details of the data/model assumptions and it's unclear whether the details of the computational implementation (such as bridge sampling) are unbiased for complex analyses. Hem, we study how Bayes factors misbehave under different conditions. This includes a study of errors in the estimation of Bayes factors; the first-ever use of simulation-based calibration to test the accuracy and bias of Bayes factor estimates using bridge sampling; a study of the stability of Bayes factors against different MCMC draws and sampling variation in the data; and a look at the variability of decisions based on Bayes factors using a utility function. We outline a Bayes factor workflow that researchers can use to study whether Bayes factors are robust for their individual analysis. Reproducible code is available from haps://osf.io/y354c/. <br /> Translational Abstract <br /> In psychology and related areas, scientific hypotheses are commonly tested by asking questions like "is [some] effect present or absent." Such hypothesis testing is most often carried out using frequentist null hypothesis significance testing (NIIST). The NHST procedure is very simple: It usually returns a p-value, which is then used to make binary decisions like "the effect is present/abscnt." For example, it is common to see studies in the media that draw simplistic conclusions like "coffee causes cancer," or "coffee reduces the chances of geuing cancer." However, a powerful and more nuanced alternative approach exists: Bayes factors. Bayes factors have many advantages over NHST. However, for the complex statistical models that arc commonly used for data analysis today, computing Bayes factors is not at all a simple matter. In this article, we discuss the main complexities associated with computing Bayes factors. This is the first article to provide a detailed workflow for understanding and computing Bayes factors in complex statistical models. The article provides a statistically more nuanced way to think about hypothesis testing than the overly simplistic tendency to declare effects as being "present" or "absent".
Background:
Aphasia therapy software applications (apps) can help achieve recommendations regarding aphasia treatment intensity and duration.
However, we currently know very little about speech and language therapists' (SLTs) preferences with regards to these apps.
This may be problematic, as clinician acceptance of novel treatments and technology are a key factor for successful translation from research evidence to practice.
Aim:
This research aimed to increase our understanding of clinicians' experiences with aphasia therapy apps and their perceived barriers and facilitators to the use of aphasia apps. Furthermore, we wanted to explore the influence of some demographic factors (age, country, and SLT availability in the client's hometown) on SLTs' attitudes towards these apps.
Method & Procedures:
35 Dutch and 29 Australian SLTs completed an online survey. The survey contained 9 closed-ended questions and 3 open-ended questions. Responses to the closed-ended questions were summarised through the use of descriptive statistics. The responses to the open questions were analysed and coded into recurring themes that were derived from the data. Logistic regression analyses were performed to explore the relationship between the demographic variables and the responses to the closed-ended questions.
Outcomes & results:
Participants were overwhelmingly positive about aphasia therapy apps and saw the potential for their clients to use apps independently. As facilitators of app use, participants reported accessibility and inclusion of different language modalities, while high costs, absence of a compatible device, and clients' potential computer illiteracy were listed as barriers. None of the analysed demographic factors consistently influenced differences in participants' attitudes towards aphasia therapy apps.
Conclusions:
The positive, extensive and insightful feedback from speech and language therapists is both useful and encouraging for app developers and aphasia researchers, and should facilitate the development of appropriate, high-quality therapy apps.
Judging the animacy of words
(2017)
The age at which members of a semantic category are learned (age of acquisition), the typicality they demonstrate within their corresponding category, and the semantic domain to which they belong (living, non-living) are known to influence the speed and accuracy of lexical/semantic processing. So far, only a few studies have looked at the origin of age of acquisition and its interdependence with typicality and semantic domain within the same experimental design. Twenty adult participants performed an animacy decision task in which nouns were classified according to their semantic domain as being living or non-living. Response times were influenced by the independent main effects of each parameter: typicality, age of acquisition, semantic domain, and frequency. However, there were no interactions. The results are discussed with respect to recent models concerning the origin of age of acquisition effects.
Alcohol intoxication is known to affect many aspects of human behavior and cognition; one of such affected systems is articulation during speech production. Although much research has revealed that alcohol negatively impacts pronunciation in a first language (L1), there is only initial evidence suggesting a potential beneficial effect of inebriation on articulation in a non-native language (L2). The aim of this study was thus to compare the effect of alcohol consumption on pronunciation in an L1 and an L2. Participants who had ingested different amounts of alcohol provided speech samples in their L1 (Dutch) and L2 (English), and native speakers of each language subsequently rated the pronunciation of these samples on their intelligibility (for the L1) and accent nativelikeness (for the L2). These data were analyzed with generalized additive mixed modeling. Participants' blood alcohol concentration indeed negatively affected pronunciation in L1, but it produced no significant effect on the L2 accent ratings. The expected negative impact of alcohol on L1 articulation can be explained by reduction in fine motor control. We present two hypotheses to account for the absence of any effects of intoxication on L2 pronunciation: (1) there may be a reduction in L1 interference on L2 speech due to decreased motor control or (2) alcohol may produce a differential effect on each of the two linguistic subsystems.
Alcohol intoxication is known to affect many aspects of human behavior and cognition; one of such affected systems is articulation during speech production. Although much research has revealed that alcohol negatively impacts pronunciation in a first language (L1), there is only initial evidence suggesting a potential beneficial effect of inebriation on articulation in a non-native language (L2). The aim of this study was thus to compare the effect of alcohol consumption on pronunciation in an L1 and an L2. Participants who had ingested different amounts of alcohol provided speech samples in their L1 (Dutch) and L2 (English), and native speakers of each language subsequently rated the pronunciation of these samples on their intelligibility (for the L1) and accent nativelikeness (for the L2). These data were analyzed with generalized additive mixed modeling. Participants' blood alcohol concentration indeed negatively affected pronunciation in L1, but it produced no significant effect on the L2 accent ratings. The expected negative impact of alcohol on L1 articulation can be explained by reduction in fine motor control. We present two hypotheses to account for the absence of any effects of intoxication on L2 pronunciation: (1) there may be a reduction in L1 interference on L2 speech due to decreased motor control or (2) alcohol may produce a differential effect on each of the two linguistic subsystems.
Background
Simple water-swallowing screening tools are not predictive of aspiration and dysphagia in patients with Parkinson's Disease (PD). We investigated the diagnostic accuracy of a multi-texture screening tool, the Gugging Swallowing Screen (GUSS) to identify aspiration and dysphagia/penetration in PD patients compared to flexible endoscopic evaluation of swallowing (FEES).
Methods
Swallowing function was evaluated in 51 PD participants in clinical 'on-medication' state with the GUSS and a FEES examination according to standardized protocols. Inter-rater reliability and convergent validity were determined and GUSS- and FEES-based diet recommendations were compared.
Key Results
Inter-rater reliability of GUSS ratings was high (r(s) = 0.8; p < 0.001). Aspiration was identified by the GUSS with a sensitivity of 50%, and specificity of 51.35% (PPV 28%, NPV 73%, LR+ 1.03, LR- 0.97), dysphagia/penetration was identified with 72.97% sensitivity and 35.71% specificity (PPV 75%, NPV 33.33%, LR+ 1.14, LR- 0.76). Agreement between GUSS- and FEES-based diet recommendations was low (r(s) = 0.12, p = 0.42) with consistent NPO (Nil per Os) allocation by GUSS and FEES in only one participant.
Conclusions and Inferences
The multi-texture screening tool GUSS in its current form, although applicable with good inter-rater reliability, does not detect aspiration in PD patients with acceptable accuracy. Modifications of the GUSS parameters "coughing," "voice change" and "delayed swallowing" might enhance validity. The GUSS' diet recommendations overestimate the need for oral intake restriction in PD patients and should be verified by instrumental swallowing examination.
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.
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.
This eye-tracking study establishes basic benchmarks of eye movements during reading in heritage language (HL) by Russian-speaking adults and adolescents of high (n = 21) and low proficiency (n = 27). Heritage speakers (HSs) read sentences in Cyrillic, and their eye movements were compared to those of Russian monolingual skilled adult readers, 8-year-old children and L2 learners. Reading patterns of HSs revealed longer mean fixation durations, lower skipping probabilities, and higher regressive saccade rates than in monolingual adults. High-proficient HSs were more similar to monolingual children, while low-proficient HSs performed on par with L2 learners. Low-proficient HSs differed from high-proficient HSs in exhibiting lower skipping probabilities, higher fixation counts, and larger frequency effects. Taken together, our findings are consistent with the weaker links account of bilingual language processing as well as the divergent attainment theory of HL.
Only the right noise?
(2020)
Seminal work by Werker and colleagues (Stager & Werker [1997]Nature, 388, 381-382) has found that 14-month-old infants do not show evidence for learning minimal pairs in the habituation-switch paradigm. However, when multiple speakers produce the minimal pair in acoustically variable ways, infants' performance improves in comparison to a single speaker condition (Rost & McMurray [2009]Developmental Science, 12, 339-349). The current study further extends these results and assesses how different kinds of input variability affect 14-month-olds' minimal pair learning in the habituation-switch paradigm testing German learning infants. The first two experiments investigated word learning when the labels were spoken by a single speaker versus when the labels were spoken by multiple speakers. In the third experiment we studied whether non-acoustic variability, implemented by visual variability of the objects presented together with the labels, would also affect minimal pair learning. We found enhanced learning in the multiple speakers compared to the single speaker condition, confirming previous findings with English-learning infants. In contrast, visual variability of the presented objects did not support learning. These findings both confirm and better delimit the beneficial role of speech-specific variability in minimal pair learning. Finally, we review different proposals on the mechanisms via which variability confers benefits to learning and outline what may be likely principles that underlie this benefit. We highlight among these the multiplicity of acoustic cues signalling phonemic contrasts and the presence of relations among these cues. It is in these relations where we trace part of the source for the apparent paradoxical benefit of variability in learning.
Only the right noise?
(2020)
Seminal work by Werker and colleagues (Stager & Werker [1997]Nature, 388, 381-382) has found that 14-month-old infants do not show evidence for learning minimal pairs in the habituation-switch paradigm. However, when multiple speakers produce the minimal pair in acoustically variable ways, infants' performance improves in comparison to a single speaker condition (Rost & McMurray [2009]Developmental Science, 12, 339-349). The current study further extends these results and assesses how different kinds of input variability affect 14-month-olds' minimal pair learning in the habituation-switch paradigm testing German learning infants. The first two experiments investigated word learning when the labels were spoken by a single speaker versus when the labels were spoken by multiple speakers. In the third experiment we studied whether non-acoustic variability, implemented by visual variability of the objects presented together with the labels, would also affect minimal pair learning. We found enhanced learning in the multiple speakers compared to the single speaker condition, confirming previous findings with English-learning infants. In contrast, visual variability of the presented objects did not support learning. These findings both confirm and better delimit the beneficial role of speech-specific variability in minimal pair learning. Finally, we review different proposals on the mechanisms via which variability confers benefits to learning and outline what may be likely principles that underlie this benefit. We highlight among these the multiplicity of acoustic cues signalling phonemic contrasts and the presence of relations among these cues. It is in these relations where we trace part of the source for the apparent paradoxical benefit of variability in learning.
Word forms such as walked or walker are decomposed into their morphological constituents (walk + -ed/-er) during language comprehension. Yet, the efficiency of morphological decomposition seems to vary for different languages and morphological types, as well as for first and second language speakers. The current study reports results from a visual masked priming experiment focusing on different types of derived word forms (specifically prefixed vs. suffixed) in first and second language speakers of German. We compared the present findings with results from previous studies on inflection and compounding and proposed an account of morphological decomposition that captures both the variability and the consistency of morphological decomposition for different morphological types and for first and second language speakers. Open Practices This article has been awarded an Open Materials badge. Study materials are publicly accessible via the Open Science Framework at . Learn more about the Open Practices badges from the Center for Open Science.
This study addresses the question of whether and how growing up with more than one language shapes a child's language impairment. Our focus is on Specific Language Impairment (SLI) in bilingual (Turkish-German) children. We specifically investigated a range of phenomena related to the so-called CP (Complementizer Phrase) in German, the hierarchically highest layer of syntactic clause structure, which has been argued to be particularly affected in children with SLI. Spontaneous speech data were examined from bilingual children with SLI in comparison to two comparison groups: (i) typically-developing bilingual children, (ii) monolingual children with SLI. We found that despite persistent difficulty with subject-verb agreement, the two groups of children with SLI did not show any impairment of the CP-domain. We conclude that while subject-verb agreement is a suitable linguistic marker of SLI in German-speaking children, for both monolingual and bilingual ones, 'vulnerability of the CP-domain' is not.
This study addresses the question of whether and how growing up with more than one language shapes a child's language impairment. Our focus is on Specific Language Impairment (SLI) in bilingual (Turkish-German) children. We specifically investigated a range of phenomena related to the so-called CP (Complementizer Phrase) in German, the hierarchically highest layer of syntactic clause structure, which has been argued to be particularly affected in children with SLI. Spontaneous speech data were examined from bilingual children with SLI in comparison to two comparison groups: (i) typically-developing bilingual children, (ii) monolingual children with SLI. We found that despite persistent difficulty with subject-verb agreement, the two groups of children with SLI did not show any impairment of the CP-domain. We conclude that while subject-verb agreement is a suitable linguistic marker of SLI in German-speaking children, for both monolingual and bilingual ones, 'vulnerability of the CP-domain' is not.