This paper explores the mechanisms of and motivations for two unconventional comparative constructions in Mandarin: [bi Ni hai Ni] and [bi Ni hai Nj]. They are unconventional in that the item expressing the dimension along which the comparison is made is a noun rather than an adjective. It is shown that [bi Ni hai Ni] emerges (i) by analogy with the conventional comparative construction [bi N hai A] and (ii) by inheriting the nominal feature from an existing construction [Adverb N], (...) which is corroborated by a collexeme analysis. At a more schematic level, the extension A > N observed in [bi N hai A] > [bi Ni hai Ni] may have been modeled on the existing development from [Adverb A] to [Adverb N]. Analogical extension and inheritance also underlie the subsequent development from [bi Ni hai Ni] to [bi Ni hai Nj]. This study not only shows how language changes in a constructional network (including node creation and network reconfiguration), but also sheds light on the nature of horizontal links. It also demonstrates how a synchronically perceived relation between constructions may impact a later, similar language change. (shrink)

Language Change in the Wake of Empire: Syriac in Its Greco-Roman Context. By Aaron Michael Butts. Linguistic Studies in Ancient West Semitic, vol. 11. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2016. Pp. xvii + 292. $59.50.

Previous studies provided evidence for a connection between language processing and language change. We add to these studies with an exploration of the influence of lexical-distributional properties of words in orthographic space, semantic space, and the mapping between orthographic and semantic space on the probability of lexical extinction. Through a binomial linear regression analysis, we investigated the probability of lexical extinction by the first decade of the twenty-first century (2000s) for words that existed in the first decade (...) of the nineteenth-century (1800s) in eight data sets for five languages: English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. The binomial linear regression analysis revealed that words that are more similar in form to other words are less likely to disappear from a language. By contrast, words that are more similar in meaning to other words are more likely to become extinct. In addition, a more consistent mapping between form and meaning protects a word from lexical extinction. A nonlinear time-to-event analysis furthermore revealed that the position of a word in orthographic and semantic space continues to influence the probability of it disappearing from a language for at least 200 years. Effects of the lexical-distributional properties of words under investigation here have been reported in the language processing literature as well. The results reported here, therefore, fit well with a usage-based approach to language change, which holds that language change is at least to some extent connected to cognitive mechanisms in the human brain. (shrink)

This paper uses the strengthened liar paradox as a springboard to illuminate two more general topics: i) the negation operator and the speech act of denial among speakers of English and ii) some ways the potential for acceptable language change is constrained by linguistic meaning. The general and special problems interact in reciprocally illuminating ways. The ultimate objective of the paper is, however, less to solve certain problems than to create others, by illustrating how the issues that form (...) the topic of this paper are more intricate than previously realised, and that they are related in delicate and somewhat surprising ways. (shrink)

Bayesian probability is normally defined over a fixed language or eventspace. But in practice language is susceptible to change, and thequestion naturally arises as to how Bayesian degrees of belief shouldchange as language changes. I argue here that this question poses aserious challenge to Bayesianism. The Bayesian may be able to meet thischallenge however, and I outline a practical method for changing degreesof belief over changes in finite propositional languages.

Iconicity, the resemblance between the form of a word and its meaning, has effects on behavior in both communicative symbol development and language learning experiments. These results have invited speculation about iconicity being a key feature of the origins of language, yet the presence of iconicity in natural languages seems limited. In a diachronic study of language change, we investigated the extent to which iconicity is a stable property of vocabulary, alongside previously investigated psycholinguistic predictors of (...) change. Analyzing 784 English words with data on their historical forms, we found that stable words are higher in iconicity, longer in length, and earlier acquired during development, but that the role of frequency and grammatical category may be less important than previously suggested. Iconicity is revealed as a feature of ultra-conserved words and potentially also as a property of vocabulary early in the history of language origins. (shrink)

The settler-colonial and republican principles of early U.S. politics tend to be studied as paradoxical ambitions of American nation-building. This article argues that early republican thought in the United States developed through what I call ‘ideological code-switching’, a vernacular practice that allowed popular actors to strategically vacillate between anti-colonial and neo-colonial discourses as complementary principles of revolutionary change. I illustrate these claims by tracing a genealogy of anti- and neo-colonial thought from the founding of the United States to its (...) transnational emergence in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. I demonstrate that ideological code-switching first appeared as a rhetorical strategy among the Federalist debates, where Publius argued for the feasibility of expansionist republics via a hemispheric account of American exceptionalism. These appeals to hemispheric unity remained salient into the nineteenth century among groups like the ‘Republicans of ‘Nacogdoches’, a militia comprised of Indigenous, Mestizo, and White actors that mobilized an attack on Spain and founded the Republic of Texas in April of 1813. Drawing on archival research, I turn to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands as an example of the way marginalized groups instrumentalized links between anti- and neo-colonial politics to envision their position in the rapidly evolving landscapes of transnational revolution. (shrink)

Language change can be conceptualized as a cyclical process of continuous renewal of the involved elements which somehow change their nature, with respect to phonological or lexico-grammatical features. A crucial aspect of such diachronic evolution is that cyclical change takes place systematically and follows regular and unidirectional patterns of development. Once the change is complete, the same developmental path will be undertaken by new linguistic items in the same cyclical fashion. In this paper, we illustrate (...) the concept of cyclical change by discussing two examples of linguistic cycles. A first instance of cyclical development is displayed at the phonological level by the diachronic changes in the obstruent consonant system taking place from Indo-European to German through the First and the Second Sound Shift: the cycle is completed in the Cimbrian dialects. A second instance is provided by the diachronic process known as Jespersen’s cycle ([1917] 1966): sentential negation, initially expressed through a single negative marker, is later reinforced by an additional one; eventually, this second element becomes the only negative marker available in the sentence while the original marker is deleted. The discussion of the negative cycle takes also into consideration the results of an empirical research conducted on two varieties of an Italo-Romance dialect spoken in northern Italy. (shrink)

Within a Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST) framework, this longitudinal qualitative study explored the complex patterns and identified the degree of variability in three learners’ developmental process. Learners’ listening performance was tracked and examined every 6 weeks, followed by retrospective interviews and self-reflections every 7 weeks over the 43-month span. A series of CDST techniques were adopted for data analysis, including using min–max graphs to trace the minimum and maximum scores on the EFL learners’ listening developmental indices over time. Monte-Carlo (...) and Loess smoothing analyses were applied to gauge for degrees of variability. The results suggest that: (1) Min–max graphs and smoothed Loess curves depict flux developmental processes of learners’ L2 listening; (2) learners differed from each other in the degree of inter-individual variability in their listening developmental trajectory; and (3) occurrence of unanticipated patterns confirm that learners demonstrated personalized intra-individual variability within their unique listening developmental process. Results indicate that variability is a pattern characteristic of CDST both between and within individuals, and inform us about how Chinese EFL listeners’ language develops. We conclude by discussing the implications for researchers and practitioners who are concerned with learners’ developmental trajectories and unexpected changing patterns in the process of foreign language learning. (shrink)

This paper shows the relevance of an evolutionary model for the study of language change. We focus on a cognitive and usage-based approach to language change, namely the Theory of Utterance Selection developed by Croft (2000). Croft's evolutionary approach takes its inspiration from neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, particularly the Generalized Theory of Selection developed by Hull (1988), a philosopher of science. Language is viewed as a system of use governed by convention, and language change (...) results from breaking with convention and propagating this innovation through the linguistic community until it becomes a new convention. Crucially, altered replication can be equated with language innovation, and propagation of individual changes is the linguistic counterpart of the differential perpetuation or selection of replicators. We will argue within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics (Geeraerts & Cuyckens, 2007) for a more systematic integration of cognitive and social factors in the explanation of language change. The mechanisms for language innovation are cognitive, as the pnnciples of cognitive efficiency like prototypicality constitute the main motivations for language change and metaphor and metonymy the main cognitive mechanisms of semantic change. The mechanisms for propagation are essentially social, including processes such as accommodation, identity and prestige. All of these mechanisms occur in individual communicative acts and operate like an "invisible hand" (Keller, 1994). We illustrate the sociocognitive evolutionary model of language change with some case studies on semantic change in Portuguese. (shrink)

Juri Lotman’s well-known distinction of primary modeling system versus secondary modeling system is a lasting legacy of his that has been adhered to, modified, and refuted by semioticians of culture and nature. Adherence aside, modifications and refutations have focused on the issue whether or not language is a primary modeling system, and, if not, what alternatives can be made available to replace it. As Sebeok would concur, for both biosemiosis and anthroposemiosis, language can only be a secondary modeling (...) system on top of the biological experience of Umwelt or human sensory system. This paper proposes to explore the possibility of a “preverbal” modeling system suggested by Lotman’s spatial concept of semiosphere, and discuss its implications in cross-cultural dialogue. (shrink)

This study investigates the effects of visual mnemonics and the methods of presenting learning materials on learning visually similar characters for Chinese-as-second-language (CSL) learners. In supporting CSL learners to build robust orthographic representations in Chinese, addressing the challenges of visual similarity of characters (e.g., 理 and 埋) is an important issue. Based on prior research on perceptual learning, we tested three strategies that differ in the extent to which they promote interrelated attention to the form and meaning of characters: (...) (1) Stroke Sequence, aform-emphasisstrategy, (2) Key-images, aform+meaningstrategy utilizing visual code, (3) Pithy Formulas with Key-images, aform+meaningstrategy combining visual and verbal codes. A pretest–posttest equivalent-group design was adopted. The independent variables were the learning strategy, the method of presenting character pairs (visually similar vs. dissimilar), and testing time. The dependent variables were learners’ proportions of accurate responses to reading and writing Chinese characters through a posttest (immediately performed after learning) and a delayed posttest (1 week after learning); a learner experience survey was also administered to investigate learners’ opinions on each strategy. Sixty-six non-beginning learners of Chinese participated; they were randomly assigned to one of the two groups in which participants learned ten charactersviathe three strategies, respectively, differing between whether the characters were presented in similar pairs or dissimilar pairs. Data were analyzedviathree-way ANCOVAs. The Pithy Formulas with Key-images and the Key-images generally yielded higher writing accuracy than Stroke Sequence immediately after learning. Notably, the advantage of the Pithy Formulas with Key-images (verbal and visual) over the Key-images (visual) on writing was specific to the participants that learned with visually similar pairs rather than those that learned with dissimilar pairs. All strategies were effective for reading, yet learners’ experience ratings favored the twoform+meaningstrategies over the strategy that focused primarily onform.Suggestions for future research and pedagogical implications on learning visually similar characters were offered. (shrink)

Theories of language production have long been expressed as connectionist models. We outline the issues and challenges that must be addressed by connectionist models of lexical access and grammatical encoding, and review three recent models. The models illustrate the value of an interactive activation approach to lexical access in production, the need for sequential output in both phonological and grammatical encoding, and the potential for accounting for structural effects on errors and structural priming from learning.

The changes known as the loss of inflexions in English (11th- 15th centuries, included) were prompted with the introduction of a new mode of thinking. The mode of thinking, for the Anglo-Saxons, was a dynamic way of conceiving of things. Things were considered events happening. With the contacts of Anglo-Saxons with, first, the Romano-British; second, the introduction of Christianity; and finally with the Norman invasion, their dynamic way of thinking was confronted with the static conception of things coming from the (...) Mediterranean. The history of English from the 11th to the 15th century meant the introduction, confrontation and adoption of a new mental conception of things, the static way of conceiving of things, both modes of thinking defining the language today. (shrink)

Over half a century ago, George Zipf observed that more frequent words tend to be older. Corpus studies since then have confirmed this pattern, with more frequent words being replaced and regularized less often than less frequent words. Two main hypotheses have been proposed to explain this: that frequent words change less because selection against innovation is stronger at higher frequencies, or that they change less because stochastic drift is stronger at lower frequencies. Here, we report the first (...) experimental test of these hypotheses. Participants were tasked with learning a miniature language consisting of two nouns and two plural markers. Nouns occurred at different frequencies and were subjected to treatments that varied drift and selection. Using a model that accounts for participant heterogeneity, we measured the rate of noun regularization, the strength of selection, and the strength of drift in participant responses. Results suggest that drift alone is sufficient to generate the elevated rate of regularization we observed in low‐frequency nouns, adding to a growing body of evidence that drift may be a major driver of language change. (shrink)

A discussion of the relation of dialectical transitions in Hegel's speculative logic to changes in categories and grammar in the empirical historical languages.

Cet article présente les solutions utilisées pour le Corpus électronique des textes polonais des 17e et 18e siècles afin d’adapter son jeu de balises grammaticales à l’évolution du système morphologique qui a eu lieu au cours de la période. Les 17e et 18e siècles ont été marqués en effet par la formation d’une nouvelle catégorie grammaticale, appelée « masculine-personality » (Pl. *męskoosobowość*). Cette époque marque une transition de l’état ancien à l’état moderne et se caractérise par une variation significative des (...) terminaisons des formes plurielles N, A et V des noms masculins animés à cette époque. Par conséquent, le jeu de balises utilisé pour annoter le corpus, qui a été créé à l’origine pour le polonais moderne, a dû être légèrement modifié à cet égard. La deuxième partie de l’article décrit les recherches menées à l’aide de ce système d’annotation, qui ont montré que la différenciation des terminaisons flexionnelles des noms masculins personnels et impersonnels en polonais était déjà avancée au 17e siècle et presque achevée à la fin du 18e siècle. (shrink)

The ability to combine words into novel sentences has been used to argue that humans have symbolic language production abilities. Critiques of connectionist models of language often center on the inability of these models to generalize symbolically (Fodor & Pylyshyn, 1988; Marcus, 1998). To address these issues, a connectionist model of sentence production was developed. The model had variables (role‐concept bindings) that were inspired by spatial representations (Landau & Jackendoff, 1993). In order to take advantage of these variables, (...) a novel dual‐pathway architecture with event semantics is proposed and shown to be better at symbolic generalization than several variants. This architecture has one pathway for mapping message content to words and a separate pathway that enforces sequencing constraints. Analysis of the model's hidden units demonstrated that the model learned different types of information in each pathway, and that the model's compositional behavior arose from the combination of these two pathways. The model's ability to balance symbolic and statistical behavior in syntax acquisition and to model aphasic double dissociations provided independent support for the dual‐pathway architecture. (shrink)

Language learning requires linguistic input, but several studies have found that knowledge of second language rules does not seem to improve with more language exposure. One reason for this is that previous studies did not factor out variation due to the different rules tested. To examine this issue, we reanalyzed grammaticality judgment scores in Flege, Yeni-Komshian, and Liu's study of L2 learners using rule-related predictors and found that, in addition to the overall drop in performance due to (...) a sensitive period, L2 knowledge increased with years of input. Knowledge of different grammar rules was negatively associated with input frequency of those rules. To better understand these effects, we modeled the results using a connectionist model that was trained using Korean as a first language and then English as an L2. To explain the sensitive period in L2 learning, the model's learning rate was reduced in an age-related manner. By assigning different learning rates for syntax and lexical learning, we were able to model the difference between early and late L2 learners in input sensitivity. The model's learning mechanism allowed transfer between the L1 and L2, and this helped to explain the differences between different rules in the grammaticality judgment task. This work demonstrates that an L1 model of learning and processing can be adapted to provide an explicit account of how the input and the sensitive period interact in L2 learning. (shrink)

Both language and genes evolve by transmission over generations with opportunity for differential replication of forms. The understanding that gene frequencies change at random by genetic drift, even in the absence of natural selection, was a seminal advance in evolutionary biology. Stochastic drift must also occur in language as a result of randomness in how linguistic forms are copied between speakers. Here we quantify the strength of selection relative to stochastic drift in language evolution. We use (...) time series derived from large corpora of annotated texts dating from the 12th to 21st centuries to analyse three well-known grammatical changes in English: the regularization of past-tense verbs, the introduction of the periphrastic ’do’, and variation in verbal negation. We reject stochastic drift in favour of selection in some cases but not in others. In particular, we infer selection towards the irregular forms of some past-tense verbs, which is likely driven by changing frequencies of rhyming patterns over time. We show that stochastic drift is stronger for rare words, which may explain why rare forms are more prone to replacement than common ones. This work provides a method for testing selective theories of language change against a null model and reveals an underappreciated role for stochasticity in language evolution. (shrink)

This paper will introduce “lexical silencing” as a new linguistic phenomenon, i.e., positive statements about something are made more difficult to express when the only (or the predominant) word for it in a language is a negative word. A good example is the term “political correctness,” which carries negative connotations in English but has no easy alternative to replace it. Suppose a supporter attempts to explicitly endorse it by saying something like “Political correctness should be a fundamental value of (...) the society.” Positive statements like this sound somewhat weird and even self-defeating to the hearers, and are therefore difficult to be expressed in the public discourse. Moreover, I will identify at least two linguistic mechanisms of lexical silencing: First, slurs can make it difficult to say something positive about a group because slurs provide the illocutionary force of derogation, which conflicts with forces like praising. Second, what I call “loaded words” (e.g., “political correctness”) are not explicitly derogatory like slurs, but they can achieve similar effects by producing perlocutionary effects on the psycho-linguistic process of hearers. This paper will also discuss the various sources of lexical silencing and possible strategies for mitigating them. (shrink)

Humans can attribute beliefs to others. However, it is unknown to what extent this ability results from an innate biological endowment or from experience accrued through child development, particularly exposure to language describing others' mental states. We test the viability of the language exposure hypothesis by assessing whether models exposed to large quantities of human language display sensitivity to the implied knowledge states of characters in written passages. In pre‐registered analyses, we present a linguistic version of the (...) False Belief Task to both human participants and a large language model, GPT‐3. Both are sensitive to others' beliefs, but while the language model significantly exceeds chance behavior, it does not perform as well as the humans nor does it explain the full extent of their behavior—despite being exposed to more language than a human would in a lifetime. This suggests that while statistical learning from language exposure may in part explain how humans develop the ability to reason about the mental states of others, other mechanisms are also responsible. (shrink)

Relating visual images to textual messages may have great potential in facilitating students’ reading comprehension. The inevitable and important presence of visuals in textbooks obliges language teachers to exploit all semiotic resources to deepen students’ understanding. However, analysis of how images interact with text in textbooks has been rare, and among the efforts it has generally been found that visuals and text often fail to achieve coherence. This study investigates whether and how text and image complement each other ideationally (...) by six sense relations and interpersonally by the Mood system in ninth-grade English as a Foreign Language textbooks to reach intersemiotic complementarity. The results revealed that ideational rather than interpersonal IC is more frequent, where many more Participants than Processes in the texts find their visual complements. Ideational IC is particularly high in Information Reports while Recounts generally mark higher percentages of interpersonal IC. To accomplish ideational IC, repetition is most frequent, followed by hyponymy and collocation. Distinct IC patterns also characterize the different editions of textbooks investigated, which may suggest their different potentials in catering to students of varying proficiencies. (shrink)

Both children and adults predict the content of upcoming language, suggesting that prediction is useful for learning as well as processing. We present an alternative model which can explain prediction behaviour as a by-product of language learning. We suggest that a consideration of language acquisition places important constraints on Pickering & Garrod's (P&G's) theory.

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 4, April 2022.

***Translated a Korean-language book to English with Dr. Chang-Seong Hong*** Venerable Hyun-Eung's Enlightenment and History is the first book of Buddhist philosophy of history published in South Korea; possibly the first of its kind in the world. In this book of telling points and clear visions, Hyun-Eung discusses East Asian Buddhist traditions in light of Western-philosophical perspectives and presents his views on the theory and praxis in contemporary Buddhism in a way that Western readers can easily understand. East Asian (...) Buddhist philosophy has had little introduction to English-speaking societies compared with the philosophies of other traditions in Buddhism. This book provides penetrating insight into such major issues of East Asian Mahayana Buddhism as enlightenment, compassion, emptiness, and sudden enlightenment in the Zen traditions. Hyun-Eung s approach is creative, clear, logical, and methodologically modernized. Hyun-Eung s Buddhist philosophy of history is not a mere product of armchair philosophy. He wrote most essays in this book during the 1980 s while South Korea was undergoing serious political turmoil as it tried to overthrow a government backed by military generals. This book presents a philosophy that evolved from his contemplations on the real issues of South Korean society. Defining the ideal form of life as the life of bodhisattva in Mahayana Buddhism, Hyun-Eung summarizes the theme of this book as follows: My book Enlightenment and History is a collection of essays that interpret Buddhist doctrines under a new light. In particular, this book interprets bodhisattva as the combination of bodhi (enlightenment) and sattva (life, history), and defines the life of bodhisattva as enlightenment s becoming history and history s becoming enlightenment. This is the representative of all the new interpretations in this book. Also, I classify the issue of fact judgments on how to understand facts and phenomena as the area of bodhi (enlightenment) and the issue of value judgments on how to live life as the area of sattva (history), and thereby I make their logical differences clear. However, at the same time, I claim that harmonizing these two areas into one area of life is the model of a nice and practical life, which is the bodhisattva that Mahayana Buddhism praises. From Introduction. (shrink)

The Western world has a profound historical engagement with medicinal resources originating from China. Following the Opium War, missionaries were granted access to China and established residence there. Motivated by clinical necessities and the inquisitiveness of the Western scientific community, these missionaries meticulously documented the medicinal resources available in China, endeavoring to incorporate this knowledge into Western pharmacology. Among the various reports produced in multiple languages, the contributions in English have emerged as particularly influential. This article seeks to analyze the (...) information-gathering processes within the missionary network and among other naturalists, commencing with Robert Morrison, the inaugural compiler of the English-Chinese dictionary, and extending to Stephen A. Hunter, who collaborated with Chinese officials to develop a complete translation for pharmaceutical nomenclature. (shrink)

In Third Digital Documentary: A Theory and Practice of Transmedia Arts Activism, Critical Design and Ethics Anita Chang offers a theory and methodology of transmedia arts activism within the technocultural and sociopolitical landscape of expanded documentary production, distribution, reception and participation. Through a detailed analysis of her transmedia project on indigenous and minority language endangerment and revival that consists of the feature-length documentary Tongues of Heaven, and the companion web application Root Tongue: Sharing Stories of Language Identity and (...) Revival, she reveals the layers and depths that comprise a critical arts practice when confronted with complex sociopolitical issues while working with multiple communities across territorial/national boundaries. In the context of the growing field of transmedia documentaries, Chang discusses the potentials and benefits of a critical design practice and production ethics that can transform this field to pilot new collaborations in documentary and digital media platforms towards a third digital documentary. (shrink)

Within the class environment, particularly in the language learning setting, stress is considered to be the most common mental condition educators experience in their work, and due to the effect of stress on teachers, burnout similarly occurs because English as a foreign language teachers periodically experience affective trauma while participating and engaging in their careers. To solve the problem, one must consider teacher self-efficacy, a significant construct that can mitigate the probability of burnout by preventing the occurrence of (...) stress at work that also plays a key role in enhancing positive upshots. To emphasize the impact of teachers’ stress and burnout on the one hand and the mediator role of teachers’ efficacy, on the other hand, this mini-review attempted to study the issue. Finally, some scholastic recommendations are pinpointed. (shrink)

In traditional Chinese literary criticism, textual strategies comparable to intertextuality have governed Chinese critics’ and poets’ reading and writing aboutliterature throughout the dynasties. Drawing on the intertextual theories of Kristeva and Riffaterre, the paper probes into the phenomenon of sign system-mutations in two highly influential ancient texts: the Confucian Classic of Changes of the fifth century B.C.E. and Liu Xie’s The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, an ars poetica in the third century. The transformation of sign systems from (...) nonverbal to verbal, in the case of the Changes, and from literate to literary or “creative” to “theoretical”, in the case of the Dragons, bears witness to the Hjelmslevian reciprocity of object-semiotic and meta-semiotic. (shrink)

The primary aim of this article is to find out what different linguists say about the role of intentions in the study and explanations of language change. I try to investigate if in the explanation of language change, “having an intention” does any explanatory work. If intentions play a role, how do they do it, at which point it is salutary to invoke them, and what do they contribute to the explanation of language change? (...) My main claim is that speakers’ intentions have a role to play only on higher linguistic levels, e.i., in speakers’ communicative strategies. Since this is a celebration for Kathy Wilkes and her contribution to goal-directed behaviour, in the Concluding remarks I go back to her remarks on language and intentions and see how they fi t my discussion in this paper. (shrink)

Traditional theories construe approximate truth or truthlikeness as a measure of closeness to facts, singular facts, and idealization as an act of either assuming zero of otherwise very small differences from facts or imagining ideal conditions under which scientific laws are either approximately true or will be so when the conditions are relaxed. I first explain the serious but not insurmountable difficulties for the theories of approximation, and then argue that more serious and perhaps insurmountable difficulties for the theory of (...) idealization force us to sever its close tie to approximation. This leads to an appreciation of lawlikeness as a measure of closeness to laws, which I argue is the real measure of idealization whose main purpose is to carve nature at its joints. (shrink)

Non-native listeners deal with adverse listening conditions in their daily life much harder than native listeners. However, previous work in our laboratories found that native Chinese listeners with native English exposure may improve the use of temporal fluctuations of noise for English vowel identification. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether Chinese listeners can generalize the use of temporal cues for the English sentence recognition in noise. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers sentence recognition in quiet condition, stationary (...) noise, and temporally-modulated noise were measured for native American English listeners, native Chinese listeners in the United States, and native Chinese listeners in China. Results showed that in general, EN listeners outperformed the two groups of CN listeners in quiet and noise, while CNU listeners had better scores of sentence recognition than CNC listeners. Moreover, the native English exposure helped CNU listeners use high-level linguistic cues more effectively and take more advantage of temporal fluctuations of noise to process English sentence in severely degraded listening conditions [i.e., the signal-to-noise ratio of −12 dB] than CNC listeners. These results suggest a significant effect of language experience on the auditory processing of both speech and noise. (shrink)