The necessity for introducing interactionist and parallelism approaches in different branches of cognitive science emerged as a reaction to classical sequential stage-based models. Functional psychological models that emphasized and explained how different components interact, dynamically producing cognitive and perceptual states, influenced multiple disciplines. Chiefly among them were experimental psycholinguistics and the many applied areas that dealt with humans’ ability to process different types of information in different contexts. Understanding how bilinguals represent and process verbal and visual input, how their neural (...) and psychological states facilitate such interactions, and how linguistic and nonlinguistic processing overlap, has now emerged as an important area of multidisciplinary research. In this article, we will review available evidence from different language-speaking groups of bilinguals in India with a focus on situational context. In the discussion, we will address models of language processing in bilinguals within a cognitive psychological approach with a focus on existent models of inhibitory control. The paper's stated goal will be to show that the parallel architecture framework can serve as a theoretical foundation for examining bilingual language processing and its interface with external factors such as social context. (shrink)

We identify a number of principles with respect to prediction that, we argue, underpin adult language comprehension: (a) comprehension consists in realizing a mapping between the unfolding sentence and the event representation corresponding to the real‐world event being described; (b) the realization of this mapping manifests as the ability to predict both how the language will unfold, and how the real‐world event would unfold if it were being experienced directly; (c) concurrent linguistic and nonlinguistic inputs, and the prior (...) internal states of the system, each drive the predictive process; (d) the representation of prior internal states across a representational substrate common to the linguistic and nonlinguistic domains enables the predictive process to operate over variable time frames and variable levels of representational abstraction. We review empirical data exemplifying the operation of these principles and discuss the relationship between prediction, event structure, thematic role assignment, and incrementality. (shrink)

The study of linguistic pragmatics is always caught in the wonderful tension between seeking broad human pragmatic abilities and showing the subtle ways that communication is dependent on specific people and social situations. These different foci on areas of stability and variability in linguistic and nonlinguistic behavior are often accompanied by very different theoretical accounts of how and why people act, speak, and understand in the ways they do. Within contemporary research in experimental pragmatics, there are always (...) instances of some people behaving in regular patterns and other people failing to adhere to putative pragmatic principles. My aim in this article is to broadly describe a way of thinking about stability and instability in linguistic pragmatics as emerging from people’s self-organizing tendencies. This view claims that both broad regularities and specific variations in human behavior, like all natural systems, can be accounted for by self-organizational processes that operate without explicit internal rules, blueprints, or mental representations. A major implication of this perspective is that pragmatics and society are seen as dynamically interacting constraints operating on multiple time-scales of experience. (shrink)

Reading numbers aloud involves visual processes that analyze the digit string and verbal processes that produce the number words. Cognitive models of number reading assume that information flows from the visual input to the verbal production processes—a feed‐forward processing mode in which the verbal production depends on the visual input but not vice versa. Here, I show that information flows also in the opposite direction, from verbal production to the visual input processes. Participants read aloud briefly presented multi‐digit strings (...) in Hebrew, in which the order of words is congruent with the order of digits (21 = twenty‐and‐one), and in Arabic, in which the ones word precedes the tens word (one‐and‐twenty). The error‐by‐digit‐position curve was affected by language: relative to Hebrew, in Arabic the error rate was slightly lower for the unit digit and slightly higher for the decade digit, indicating that in Arabic the unit digit was processed earlier and the decade digit later, in accord with the Arabic word order. This language‐dependent processing order originated in the visual level and was not a verbal confound, because it persisted even when I controlled for the serial position of the decade/unit word in the verbal number by using numbers with 0 (two hundred three/two hundred thirty). I conclude that the visual analyzer's digit scanning order, decade‐first or unit‐first, is not fixed but affected by the language in which the number is produced—a top‐down, verbal‐to‐visual information flow. (shrink)

Dialog is a joint action at different levels. At the highest level, the goal of interlocutors is to align their mental representations. This emerges from joint activity at lower levels, both concerned with linguistic decisions (e.g., choice of words) and nonlinguistic processes (e.g., alignment of posture or speech rate). Because of the high‐level goal, the interlocutors are particularly concerned with close coupling at these lower levels. As we illustrate with examples, this means that imitation and entrainment are particularly (...) pronounced during interactive communication. We then argue that the mechanisms underlying such processes involve covert imitation of interlocutors’ communicative behavior, leading to emulation of their expected behavior. In other words, communication provides a very good example of predictive emulation, in a way that leads to successful joint activity. (shrink)

This article provides an overview of a probabilistic constraints framework for thinking about language acquisition and processing. The generative approach attempts to characterize knowledge of language (i.e., competence grammar) and then asks how this knowledge is acquired and used. Our approach is performance oriented: the goal is to explain how people comprehend and produce utterances and how children acquire this skill. Use of language involves exploiting multiple probabilistic constraints over various types of linguistic and nonlinguistic information. Acquisition (...) is the process of accumulating this information, which begins in infancy. The constraint satisfaction processes that are central to language use are the same as the bootstrapping processes that provide entry to language for the child. Framing questions about acquisition in terms of models of adult performance unifies the two topics under a set of common principles and has important consequences for arguments concerning language learnability. (shrink)

Humans typically combine linguistic and nonlinguistic information to comprehend emotions. We adopted an emotion identification Stroop task to investigate how different channels interact in emotion communication. In experiment 1, synonyms of “happy” and “sad” were spoken with happy and sad prosody. Participants had more difficulty ignoring prosody than ignoring verbal content. In experiment 2, synonyms of “happy” and “sad” were spoken with happy and sad prosody, while happy or sad faces were displayed. Accuracy was lower when two channels (...) expressed an emotion that was incongruent with the channel participants had to focus on, compared with the cross-channel congruence condition. When participants were required to focus on verbal content, accuracy was significantly lower also when prosody was incongruent with verbal content and face. This suggests that prosody biases emotional verbal content processing, even when conflicting with verbal content and face simultaneously. Implications for multimodal communication and language evolution studies are discussed. (shrink)

What is the nature of lexical meanings such that they can both compose with others and also appear boundless? We investigate this question by examining the compositional properties of for-time adverbial as in “Ana jumped for an hour.” At issue is the source of the associated iterative reading which lacks overt morphophonological support, yet, the iteration is not disconnected from the lexical meanings in the sentence. This suggests an analysis whereby the iterative reading is the result of the interaction between (...) lexical meanings under a specific compositional configuration. We test the predictions of two competing accounts: Mismatch-and-Repair and Partition-Measure. They differ in their assumptions about lexical meanings: assumptions that have implications for the possible compositional mechanisms that each can invoke. Mismatch-and-Repair assumes that lexical meaning representations are discrete, separate from the conceptual system from which they originally emerged and brought into sentence meaning through syntactic composition. Partition-Measure assumes that lexical meanings are contextually salient conceptual structures substantially indistinguishable from the conceptual system that they inhabit. During comprehension, lexical meanings construe a conceptual representation, in parallel, morphosyntactic and morphophonological composition as determined by the lexical items involved in the sentence. Whereas both hypotheses capture the observed cost in the punctual predicate plus for-time adverbial composition (e.g., jump (vs. swim) for an hour), their predictions differ regarding iteration with durative predicates; for example, swim for a year (vs. for an hour). Mismatch-and-Repair predicts contrasting processing profiles and nonoverlapping activation patterns along punctuality differences. Partition-Measure predicts overlapping processing and cortical distribution profiles, along the presence of iterativity. Results from a self-paced reading and an functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies bear out the predictions of the Partition-Measure account, supporting a view of linguistic meaning composition in line with an architecture of language whereby combinatoriality and generativity are distributed, carried out in parallel across linguistic and nonlinguistic subsystems. (shrink)

This investigation examined whether speakers produce reliable prosodic correlates to meaning across semantic domains and whether listeners use these cues to derive word meaning from novel words. Speakers were asked to produce phrases in infant‐directed speech in which novel words were used to convey one of two meanings from a set of antonym pairs (e.g., big/small). Acoustic analyses revealed that some acoustic features were correlated with overall valence of the meaning. However, each word meaning also displayed a unique acoustic signature, (...) and semantically related meanings elicited similar acoustic profiles. In two perceptual tests, listeners either attempted to identify the novel words with a matching meaning dimension (picture pair) or with mismatched meaning dimensions. Listeners inferred the meaning of the novel words significantly more often when prosody matched the word meaning choices than when prosody mismatched. These findings suggest that speech contains reliable prosodic markers to word meaning and that listeners use these prosodic cues to differentiate meanings. That prosody is semantic suggests a reconceptualization of traditional distinctions between linguistic and nonlinguistic properties of spoken language. (shrink)

According to the popular Grounded Cognition Model (GCM), the sensory and motor features of concepts, including word meanings, are stored directly within neural systems for perception and action. More precisely, the core claim is that these concrete conceptual features reuse some of the same modality-specific representations that serve to categorize experiences involving the relevant kinds of objects and events. Research in semantic typology, however, has shown that word meanings vary significantly across the roughly 6500 languages in the world. I argue (...) that this crosslinguistic semantic diversity has significant yet previously unrecognized theoretical consequences for the GCM. In particular, to accommodate the typological data, the GCM must assume that the concrete features of word meanings are not merely stored within sensory/motor brain systems, but are represented there in ways that are, to a nontrivial degree, language-specific. Moreover, it must assume that these conceptual representations are also activated during the nonlinguistic processing of the relevant kinds of objects and events (e.g., during visual perception and action planning); otherwise, they would not really be grounded, which is to say, embedded inside sensory/motor systems. Crucially, however, such activations would constitute what is traditionally called linguistic relativity—that is, the influence of language-specific semantic structures on other forms of cognition. The overarching aim of this paper is to elaborate this argument more fully and explore its repercussions. To that end, I discuss in greater detail the key aspects of the GCM, the evidence for crosslinguistic semantic diversity, pertinent work on linguistic relativity, the central claim that the GCM entails linguistic relativity, some initial supporting results, and some important limitations and future directions. (shrink)

Adults and children spontaneously produce gestures while they speak, and such gestures appear to support and expand on the information communicated by the verbal channel. Little research, however, has been carried out to examine the role played by gesture in the listener's representation of accumulating information. Do listeners attend to the gestures that accompany narrative speech? In what kinds of relationships between gesture and speech do listeners attend to the gestural channel? If listeners do attend to information received in gesture, (...) how is this information represented— is it 'tagged' as originating in the gestural channel? In this article research is described that addresses these questions. Results show that listeners do attend to information conveyed in gesture, when that information supplements or even contradicts the information conveyed by speech. And information received via gesture is available for retelling in speech. These results are taken to demonstrate that gesture is not taken by the listener to be epiphenomenal to the act of speaking, or a simple manual translation of speech. But they also suggest that the information conveyed in a discourse may be represented in a manner that is neither gesture nor language, although accessible to both channels. (shrink)

Neural correlates exist for a basic component of logical formulae, PREDICATE(x). Vision and audition research in primates and humans shows two independent neural pathways; one locates objects in body-centered space, the other attributes properties, such as colour, to objects. In vision these are the dorsal and ventral pathways. In audition, similarly separable “where” and “what” pathways exist. PREDICATE(x) is a schematic representation of the brain's integration of the two processes of delivery by the senses of the location of an arbitrary (...) referent object, mapped in parietal cortex, and analysis of the properties of the referent by perceptual subsystems. The brain computes actions using a few “deictic” variables pointing to objects. Parallels exist between such nonlinguistic variables and linguistic deictic devices. Indexicality and reference have linguistic and nonlinguistic (e.g., visual) versions, sharing the concept of attention. The individual variables of logical formulae are interpreted as corresponding to these mental variables. In computing action, the deictic variables are linked with “semantic” information about the objects, corresponding to logical predicates. Mental scene descriptions are necessary for practical tasks of primates, and preexist language phylogenetically. The type of scene descriptions used by nonhuman primates would be reused for more complex cognitive, ultimately linguistic, purposes. The provision by the brain's sensory/perceptual systems of about four variables for temporary assignment to objects, and the separate processes of perceptual categorization of the objects so identified, constitute a pre-adaptive platform on which an early system for the linguistic description of scenes developed. Key Words: argument; attention; deictic; dorsal; logic; neural; object; predicate; reference; ventral. (shrink)

Recent theories of cognition have argued that embodied experience is important for conceptual processing. Embodiment can be contrasted with linguistic factors such as the typical order in which words appear in language. Here, we report four experiments that investigated the conditions under which embodiment and linguistic factors determine performance. Participants made speeded judgments about whether pairs of words or pictures were semantically related or had an iconic relationship. The embodiment factor was operationalized as the degree to which (...) stimulus pairs were presented in the spatial configurations in which they usually occur (i.e., an iconic configuration, e.g., attic presented above basement). The linguistic factor was operationalized as the frequency of the stimulus pairs in language. The embodiment factor predicted error rates and response time better for pictures, whereas the linguistic factor predicted error rates and response time better for words. These findings were modified by task, with the embodiment factor being strongest in iconicity judgments for pictures and the linguistic factor being strongest in semantic judgments for words. Both factors predicted error rates and response time for both semantic and iconicity judgments. These findings support the view that conceptual processing is both linguistic and embodied, with a bias for the embodiment or the linguistic factor depending on the nature of the task and the stimuli. (shrink)

Modulation of visual attention in the Visual World Paradigm relies on parallel processing of linguistic and visual information. Previous studies have argued that the human linguistic capacity includes an aspect of anticipation of upcoming material. Such anticipation can be triggered by both lexical and grammatical/morphosyntactic cues. In this study, we investigated the relationship between comprehension and prediction by testing how subtle changes in visual representations can affect the processing of grammatical case cues in Russian by Russian-German (...) bilingual children (n = 49, age 8−13). The linguistic manipulation followed previous designs, contrasting SVO and OVS sentences, where the first NP (NP1) was marked with nominative or accusative case, respectively. Three types of visual displays were compared: (i) individual referents (potential agent/theme); (ii) pairs of referents (NP1 + potential agent/theme); and (iii) events (representing interactions between the referents). Participants were significantly more sensitive to the case manipulation when presented with events compared to the other two types of visual display. This suggests that they were able to quickly integrate the thematic role information signaled by grammatical case in the event representations. However, they were less likely to use the case information to anticipate upcoming arguments when the target pictures represented individual referents or pairs of noninteracting referents. We hypothesize that the process of argument anticipation is mediated by the activation of syntactic templates (SVO or OSV, depending on the case marking on NP1). The relatively weak anticipation effect observed may be attributed to the absence, or weak representation, of the noncanonical OVS template in the bilingual children's long-term memory. (shrink)

We report the results of one visual‐world eye‐tracking experiment and two referent selection tasks in which we investigated the effects of information structure in the form of prosody and word order manipulation on the processing of subject pronouns er and der in German. Factors such as subjecthood, focus, and topicality, as well as order of mention have been linked to an increased probability of certain referents being selected as the pronoun's antecedent and described as increasing this referent's prominence, salience, (...) or accessibility. The goal of this study was to find out whether pronoun processing is primarily guided by linguistic factors (e.g., grammatical role) or nonlinguistic factors (e.g., first‐mention), and whether pronoun interpretation can be described in terms of referents' “prominence” / “accessibility” / “salience.” The results showed an overall subject preference for er, whereas der was affected by the object role and focus marking. While focus increases the attentional load and enhances memory representation for the focused referent making the focused referent more available, ultimately it did not affect the final interpretation of er, suggesting that “prominence” or the related concepts do not explain referent selection preferences. Overall, the results suggest a primacy of linguistic factors in determining pronoun resolution. (shrink)

What is the relationship between language and event cognition? Past work has suggested that linguistic/aspectual distinctions encoding the internal temporal profile of events map onto nonlinguistic event representations. Here, we use a novel visual detection task to directly test the hypothesis that processing telic versus atelic sentences (e.g., “Ebony folded a napkin in 10 seconds” vs. “Ebony did some folding for 10 seconds”) can influence whether the very same visual event is processed as containing distinct temporal stages (...) including a well‐defined endpoint or lacking such structure, respectively. In two experiments, we show that processing (a)telicity in language shifts how people later construe the temporal structure of identical visual stimuli. We conclude that event construals are malleable representations that can align with the linguistic framing of events. (shrink)

_Linguistics and Aphasia_ is a major study of recent developments in applying psycholinguistics and pragmatics to the study of acquired language disorders and their remediation. Psycholinguistic analyses of aphasia interpret disorders in terms of damaged modules and processes within what was once a normal language system. These analyses have progressed to the point that they now routinely provide a model-based rationalefor planning patient therapy. Through a series of case studies, the authors show how the psycholinguistic analysis of aphasia can be (...) assessed for its effectiveness in clinical practice. Pragmatic approaches to the study of aphasia are of more recent origin. Ruth Lesser and Lesley Milroy evaluate their considerable significance to the study of aphasia and their relevance to practical issues of diagnosis and treatment. Controversial analysis, in particular, offers a fruitful and productive framework within which to assess the functional adequacy of the language used by aphasic speakers in everyday contexts. (shrink)

Temporal concepts are fundamental constructs of human cognition, but the trajectory of how these concepts emerge and develop is not clear. Evidence of children’s temporal concept development comes from cognitive developmental and psycholinguistic studies. This paper reviews the linguistic factors (i.e., temporal language production and comprehension) and cognitive processes (i.e., temporal judgment and temporal reasoning) involved in children’s temporal conceptualization. The relationship between children’s ability to express time in language and the ability to reason about time, and the challenges (...) and difficulties raised by the interaction between cognitive and linguistic components are discussed. Finally, we propose ways to reconcile controversies from different research perspectives and present several avenues for future research to better understand the development of temporal concepts. (shrink)

The first of its kind to thoroughly cover language technology at all levels and with all modern technologies this book takes an empirical approach to the ...

Suppose that one adopts a broadly Chomskyan perspective, in which there is a distinction between the language faculty and other cognitive faculties, including what Chomsky has recently called the “Conceptual-Intensional system”. Then there must in principle be at least three stages in this association that need to be understood. First, there is the nonlinguistic stage of conceptualizing a particular event.1 For example, while all of the participants in an event may be affected by the event in some way or (...) another, human cognizers typically focus on one or the other of those changes as being particularly salient or relevant to their interests. This participant is taken to be the “theme” or “patient” of the event, perhaps in some kind of nonlinguistic conceptual representation, such as the one developed by Jackendoff (1983, 1990b). Second, this conceptual/thematic representation is associated with a linguistic representation in which the entity seen as the patient of the event is represented as (say) an NP that is the direct object of the verb that expresses what kind of an event it was. This is the interface between language and the conceptual system. Finally, there is the possibility of adjusting this representation internally to the language system, by way of movements, chain formations, Case assignment processes, or whatever other purely syntactic processes there may be. For example, the NP that represents the theme and starts out as the direct object of the verb may become the subject if there is no other subject in the linguistic representation, either because there was no agent in the conceptual representation (as with an unaccusative verb), or because it was suppressed (as with a passive verb). (shrink)

Matthias Vogel challenges the belief, dominant in contemporary philosophy, that reason is determined solely by our discursive, linguistic abilities as communicative beings. In his view, the medium of language is not the only force of reason. Music, art, and other nonlinguistic forms of communication and understanding are also significant. Introducing an expansive theory of mind that accounts for highly sophisticated, penetrative media, Vogel advances a novel conception of rationality while freeing philosophy from its exclusive attachment to linguistics. Vogel's (...) media of reason treats all kinds of understanding and thought, propositional and nonpropositional, as important to the processes and production of knowledge and thinking. By developing an account of rationality grounded in a new conception of media, he raises the profile of the prelinguistic and nonlinguistic dimensions of rationality and advances the Enlightenment project, buffering it against the postmodern critique that the movement fails to appreciate aesthetic experience. Guided by the work of Jürgen Habermas, Donald Davidson, and a range of media theorists, including Marshall McLuhan, Vogel rebuilds, if he does not remake, the relationship among various forms of media--books, movies, newspapers, the Internet, and television--while offering an original and exciting contribution to media theory. (shrink)

Building on evidence for embodied representations, we investigated whether Spanish spatial terms map onto the NEAR/FAR perceptual division of space. Using a long horizontal display, we measured congruency effects during the processing of spatial terms presented in NEAR or FAR space. Across three experiments, we manipulated the task demands in order to investigate the role of endogenous attention in linguistic and perceptual space mapping. We predicted congruency effects only when spatial properties were relevant for the task but not (...) when attention was allocated to other features. Results showed faster responses for words presented in Near-space in all experiments. Consistent with our hypothesis, congruency effects were observed only when a reaching estimate was requested. Our results add important evidence for the role of top-down processing in congruency effects from embodied representations of spatial terms. (shrink)

The need to study the concept of “politeness” from the point of view of its linguistic and cultural nature is caused by the desire to study the national identity of speech etiquette in different cultural spaces and conditions. The aim of the work was to form an idea about the specifics of the implementation and understanding of the concept of “politeness” in the Uzbek information field. In this study, the following methods were used: contextual, conceptual, communicative, linguocultural, analytical-synthetic, and (...) comparative. This study is focused on the study of key lexical meanings (stylistically neutral and marked, basic and additional) that are within the functional-semantic field of the concept “politeness.” With the help of contextual study of different variants of the use of the lexeme, the meanings were distributed in the conceptual structure (core, near and far periphery). Also, the key etiquette formulas representing the originality and national-specific features of the Uzbek linguocultural tradition were considered. The importance of politeness in the information space of Uzbekistan is assessed, including with the help of both positive and negative associations, that is, from an axiological point of view. Speech etiquette and linguistic formulas were considered from the point of view of the influence of social, cultural, and political values of the Uzbek people. In the process of analyzing the lexical layer, the boundaries of the functional-semantic field of the concept “politeness” were determined: from the principles of communication and a set of rules of etiquette to the strategy of obtaining benefits from communication and insincere attitude. In the future, this work can be used for comparative analysis of the conceptual structure of politeness with models presented in other close and distant languages, comparison of speech etiquette and linguistic formulas in different national cultures. (shrink)

This book discusses developments in the study of implicatures and presuppositions, drawing on recent linguistic and psycholinguistic literature. It provides original discussions of specific formal aspects of the theoretical reconstruction of these phenomena. The authors offer innovative experimental analyses in which crucial processing questions are addressed, and new experimental methodologies are introduced. The result is an advanced debate featuring broad empirical coverage of the issues, as well as an informed discussion of the connections between a Compositional Semantics and (...) a Pragmatic Theory of Implicit Communication, in light of the empirical data coming from Experimental Semantics and Pragmatics. This book will be a worthwhile read for those with interests in both the formal and methodological aspects of these arguments. (shrink)

This paper starts from the remarkable habit of yoik singing among the Sámi people and the notion of togetherness in ‘singing together’, being confronted with the role of technology in the contemporary manifestations of ‘singing’. An important link appears to exist between several forms of grooming and the social dimensions of language and singing, as previously shown by Robin Dunbar. These types of interaction surpass the physiological, hormonal and psychological roles of grooming in humans, in non-human primates and in other (...) mammals. For they also determine the constraints of group-forming processes in mammals, and social structures in humans too. The characteristic group size of grooming mammals has been reported to determine the necessity of social stratification. Number constraints therefore form a silver lining throughout this paper. The analogy with artificial language models, and modern language models (MLM) in particular, has been chosen following the suggested applicability of AI for the deciphering of the language of Whales (Cetaceans). The polemic discussion between Noam Chomsky’s so-called classical generative linguistics and propagators of the nonlinguistic MLM approach (referring to Steven T. Piantadosi) is found an instructive heuristic for analyzing the future impact of AI on human culture. It is suggested that AI-generated analogues of ‘singing together’ will profoundly interact (or already do so) with social stratification and with the conservation of human values. (shrink)

An English double-embedded relative clause from which the middle verb is omitted can often be processed more easily than its grammatical counterpart, a phenomenon known as the grammaticality illusion. This effect has been found to be reversed in German, suggesting that the illusion is language specific rather than a consequence of universal working memory constraints. We present results from three self-paced reading experiments which show that Dutch native speakers also do not show the grammaticality illusion in Dutch, whereas both German (...) and Dutch native speakers do show the illusion when reading English sentences. These findings provide evidence against working memory constraints as an explanation for the observed effect in English. We propose an alternative account based on the statistical patterns of the languages involved. In support of this alternative, a single recurrent neural network model that is trained on both Dutch and English sentences is shown to predict the cross-linguistic difference in the grammaticality effect. (shrink)

This paper examines the role that linguistic and cognitive prominence play in the resolution of anaphor–antecedent relationships. In two experiments, we found that pronouns are immediately sensitive to the cognitive prominence of potential antecedents when other antecedent selection cues are uninformative. In experiment 1, results suggest that despite their theoretical dissimilarities, topic and contrastive focus both serve to enhance cognitive prominence. Results from experiment 2 suggest that the contrastive prosody appropriate for focus constructions may also play an important role (...) in enhancing cognitive prominence. Thus different types of linguistic prominence (topic, contrastive focus) appear to have the common effect of increasing the cognitive prominence of the discourse referent. For pronouns with two possible antecedents, the cognitive prominence of an antecedent aids in anaphor resolution, immediately biasing selection towards the more prominent (and ultimately preferred) antecedent. (shrink)

This paper is aimed to analyze some grounds bridging the explanatory gap in philosophy of mind and linguistic sign theory. It's noted that the etymological ties between the notions of “consciousness", “cognition", “sign" are emphasized in the works on cognitive linguistics. This connection rises from the understanding of the symbolic nature of consciousness and the sign of semiosis as the key cognitive process. On the one hand, it is impossible to realize the communication procedures, knowledge, understanding, decisionmaking, orientation and (...) even navigation without the process of signification. On the other hand, the human mind has its unique ability to produce the meaning apart from the “signal markings" available to other living beings. The ontology of this ability should be considered as a part of the complex problem of consciousness which includes the mind-body problem, the free will problem, image memory, narrative worlds, introspection, etc. In this paper, special attention is paid to the ontological and epistemological aspects of linguistic sign within the context of the bio-semiotic approach. The author argues that the linguistic nature of consciousness is inseparably connected with the ontological properties of consciousness. The author makes an attempt to prove the link between the mind-body problem and the problem of the explanatory gap in the ontology of linguistic sign. The analysis is focused on the following question: Is it possible that the rank of random names could cause the behavior of the organism in changing environment? (shrink)

This volume forms part of the series of the Princeton Studies in Humanistic Scholarship in America, under the general editorship of Richard Schlatter. Uitti's exposition of theories of language and literature from ancient Greece to contemporary America is oriented toward the proposal for a coordination of studies of language and literature in a sort of modern trivium of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic. In the first part of the book, the author concentrates on Platonic "symbolic" and Aristotelian "analytic" ideas about language, (...) and then traces these two currents throughout the Middle Ages, paying special attention to Priscian, Anselm, Abelard, Petrus Hispanus, Dante, and the grammatica speculativa. He then brings the survey up to modern times, examining Descartes, the Port-Royal grammar, Du Marsais, Diderot, and Rousseau. Condillac and Coleridge are treated in detail as representing two modern theories of expression/communication, the one analytic and linguistic, the other synthetic and aesthetic. The second part of this work deals with a history of both linguistics and of American literary criticism, stressing I. A. Richards' descriptivism, new critic theories of metaphor and irony, and Wellek and Warren's Theory of Literature. Uitti singles out Roman Jakobson as being most prophetic in outlining future cooperation of linguistics and literary theory, and in this light analyzes various papers in Style and Language, in particular C. F. Voegelin's and Michel Riffaterre's. This survey of the contemporary American scene points to the fact that ours is a sign-oriented culture, and that recent studies in linguistics and in literary criticism of the poetics type have been sharing the same philosophical assumptions. The author thinks that language and literature studies would function best in the future as disciplines united in the broad matrix of cultural process, and using linguistic categories. He thus shares an oft-expressed hope for a cumulative literary "science," in which individual studies are oriented toward the broader construct. This book is addressed to the nonspecialist, but the expert will profit from Uitti's generous style which opens up new vistas on every page.--C. M. R. (shrink)

Linguistic Deception Detection DD is a well-established part of forensic linguistics and an area that continues to attract attention on the part of researchers, self-styled experts, and the public at large. In this article, the various approaches to DD within the general field of linguistics are examined. The basic method is to treat language as a form of behaviour and to equate marked linguistic behaviour with other marked forms of behaviour. Such a comparison has been identified in other (...) fields such as psychology and kinesics as being associated with stress linked to the attempt to deceive, typically in such contexts as examined here. Representative authentic examples of some of the most common linguistic indicators of deception that have been identified are discussed, dividing them into two general categories which we here introduce: language as revealer and language as concealer. We will argue that linguistic analysis for DD should be conducted relative to the subject’s individual linguistic patterns of behaviour, not on absolutes related to broad generalisations about what is supposedly normal or unmarked in the population at large. We will also briefly discuss some structured methods for linguistic analysis for DD and the prospect that technology and artificial intelligence will provide the means to automate and digitalise the linguistic DD process. We maintain that caution is advisable when considering these, as DD will, in all probability, always remain a work in progress, with the need for a flexible human evaluator ready to take into account many different aspects of the individual subject and the case in question. (shrink)

The Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic script contains data that shed light on 3 major issues central to current metaphor studies: (a) Where is metaphor, that is, is metaphor linguistic or conceptual? (b) If metaphor is indeed conceptual, does metaphor understanding entail creation of an ad hoc category in which the vehicle is a particularly good exemplar? (c) Is metaphor processing primarily dependent on the identification and activation of the underlying "deep structure" conceptual metaphor? The script includes an elaborate system (...) of classifiers that constitute an intensely motivated, highly constrained categorization system strictly referring to conceptual, nonlinguistic configurations. The Egyptian system is a prototype-centered classification system, from which metaphor clearly emerges as a form of alternative classification. (shrink)

Matthias Vogel challenges the belief, dominant in contemporary philosophy, that reason is determined solely by our discursive, linguistic abilities as communicative beings. In his view, the medium of language is not the only force of reason. Music, art, and other nonlinguistic forms of communication and understanding are also significant. Introducing an expansive theory of mind that accounts for highly sophisticated, penetrative media, Vogel advances a novel conception of rationality while freeing philosophy from its exclusive attachment to linguistics. Vogel's (...) media of reason treats all kinds of understanding and thought, propositional and nonpropositional, as important to the processes and production of knowledge and thinking. By developing an account of rationality grounded in a new conception of media, he raises the profile of the prelinguistic and nonlinguistic dimensions of rationality and advances the Enlightenment project, buffering it against the postmodern critique that the movement fails to appreciate aesthetic experience. Guided by the work of Jürgen Habermas, Donald Davidson, and a range of media theorists, including Marshall McLuhan, Vogel rebuilds, if he does not remake, the relationship among various forms of media -- books, movies, newspapers, the Internet, and television -- while offering an original and exciting contribution to media theory. (shrink)

The central concern of this article is whether the semantic approach has the resources to appropriately capture the core tenets of structural realism. Chakravartty (2001) has argued that a realist notion of correspondence cannot be accommodated without introducing a linguistic component, which undermines the approach itself. We suggest that this worry can be addressed by an appropriate understanding of the role of language in this context. The real challenge, however, is how to incorporate the core notion of `explanatory approximate (...) truth' in such a way that the emphasis on structure is retained. (shrink)

The ARXMLIV corpus is a remarkable collection of text containing scientific mathematical discourse. With more than half a million documents, it is an ambitious target for large scale linguistic and semantic analysis, requiring a generalized and distributed approach. In this paper we implement an architecture which solves and automates the issues of knowledge representation and knowledge management, providing an abstraction layer for distributed development of semantic analysis tools. Furthermore, we enable document interaction and visualization and present current implementations of (...) semantic tools and follow-up applications using this architecture. We identify five different stages, or purposes, which such architecture needs to address, encapsulating each in an independent module. These stages are determined by the different properties of the document formats used, as well as the state of processing and linguistic enrichment introduced so far. We discuss the need of migration between XML representations and the challenges it would pose on our system, revealing the benefits and trade-off of each format we employ. In the heart of the architecture lies the Semantic Blackboard module. The Semantic Blackboard comprises a system based on a centralized RDF database which can facilitate distributed corpus analysis of arbitrary applications, or analysis modules. This is achieved by providing a document abstraction layer and a mechanism for storing, reusing and communicating results via RDF stand-off annotations deposited in the central database. Achieving a properly encapsulated and automated pipeline from the input corpus document to a semantically enriched output in a state-of-the-art representation is the task of the Preprocessing, Semantic Result and Output Generation modules. Each of them addresses the task of format migration and enhances the document for further semantic enrichment or aggregation. The fifth module, targeting Visualization and Feedback, enables user interaction and display of different stages of processing.. (shrink)

As natural language processing tools powered by big data become increasingly ubiquitous, questions of how to design, develop, and manage these tools and their impacts on diverse populations are pressing. We propose utilizing the concept of linguistic justice—the realization of equitable access to social and political life regardless of language—to provide a framework for examining natural language processing tools that learn from and use human language data. To support linguistic justice, we argue that natural language (...) class='Hi'>processing tools must be examined not only from the perspective of a privileged, majority language user, but also from the perspectives of minoritized language users. Considering such perspectives can help to surface areas in which the data used within natural language processing tools may be working against linguistic justice by failing to provide access to information, services, or opportunities in users’ language of choice, underperforming for certain linguistic groups, or advancing harmful stereotypes that can lead to negative life outcomes for members of marginalized groups. At the same time, this framework can help to illuminate ways that these shortcomings can be addressed and allow us to use inclusive language data and approaches to leverage natural language processing technologies that advance linguistic justice. (shrink)

Despite their opposite emotional effects, humor and horror are highly similar phenomena. They both can be traced back to (the detection, resolution, and emotional elaboration of) incongruities, understood as semantic violations through unexpected combinations of oppositional information. However, theoretical and experimental comparisons between humor and resolvable incongruities that elicit other emotions than exhilaration have been lacking so far. To gain more insights into the linguistic differences between humor and horror and the cognitive real-time processing of both, a main (...) concern of this book is to discuss the transferability of linguistic humor theories to a systematic horror investigation and directly compare self-paced reading times (SPR), facial actions (FACS), and event-related brain potentials (ERP) of normed minimal quadruplets with frightening and humorous incongruities as well as (in)coherent stimuli. The results suggest that humor and horror share cognitive resources to detect and resolve incongruities. To better distinguish humor from neighboring phenomena, this book refines current humor theories by incorporating humor and horror in a cognitive incongruity processing model. (shrink)

Evidence from adult studies of deaf signers supports the dissociation between neural systems involved in processing visual linguistic and non-linguistic body actions. The question of how and when this specialization arises is poorly understood. Visual attention to these forms is likely to change with age and be affected by prior language experience. The present study used eye-tracking methodology with infants and children as they freely viewed alternating video sequences of lexical American sign language (ASL) signs and non- (...) class='Hi'>linguistic body actions (self-directed grooming action and object-directed pantomime). In Experiment 1, we quantified fixation patterns using an area of interest (AOI) approach and calculated face preference index (FPI) values to assess the developmental differences between 6 and 11-month-old hearing infants. Both groups were from monolingual English-speaking homes with no prior exposure to sign language. Six-month-olds attended the signer’s face for grooming; but for mimes and signs, they were drawn to attend to the “articulatory space” where the hands and arms primarily fall. Eleven-month-olds, on the other hand, showed a similar attention to the face for all body action types. We interpret this to reflect an early visual language sensitivity that diminishes with age, just before the child’s first birthday. In Experiment 2, we contrasted 18 hearing monolingual English-speaking children (mean age of 4.8 years) vs. 13 hearing children of deaf adults (CODAs; mean age of 5.7 years) whose primary language at home was ASL. Native signing children had a significantly greater face attentional bias than non-signing children for ASL signs, but not for grooming and mimes. The differences in the visual attention patterns that are contingent on age (in infants) and language experience (in children) may be related to both linguistic specialization over time and the emerging awareness of communicative gestural acts. (shrink)

A general two-stage theory of human inference is proposed. A distinction is drawn between heuristic processes which select items of task information as ‘relevant’, and analytic processes which operate on the selected items to generate inferences or judgements. These two stages are illustrated in a selective review of work on both deductive and statistical reasoning. Factors identified as contributing to heuristic selection include perceptual salience, linguistic suppositions and semantic associations. Analytic processes are considered to be context dependent: people reason (...) from experience, not from inference rules. The paper includes discussion of the theory in comparison with other contemporary theories of human inference, and in relation to the current debate about human rationality. (shrink)

Viewed in the light of the remarkable performance of ‘Watson’ - IBMs proprietary artificial intelligence computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language - on the US general knowledge quiz show ‘Jeopardy’, we review two experiments on formal systems - one in the domain of quantum physics, the other involving a pictographic languaging game - whereby behaviour seemingly characteristic of domain understanding is generated by the mere mechanical application of simple rules. By re-examining both experiments in the context (...) of Searle’s Chinese Room Argument, we suggest their results merely endorse Searle’s core intuition: that ‘syntactical manipulation of symbols is not sufficient for semantics’. Although, pace Watson, some artificial intelligence practitioners have suggested that more complex, higher-level operations on formal symbols are required to instantiate understanding in computational systems, we show that even high-level calls to Google translate would not enable a computer qua ‘formal symbol processor’ to understand the language it processes. We thus conclude that even the most recent developments in ‘quantum linguistics’ will not enable computational systems to genuinely understand natural language. (shrink)

This study investigated the role of cross-linguistic influence in L2 learners’ integration of a verb and a construction during online English sentence processing. In a self-paced reading task, L1-English speakers and Chinese-L1 learners of English read the English double-object and prepositional dative constructions with verbs whose Chinese translation equivalents are either compatible or incompatible with each dative form. When including only a subset of trials for which participants provided expected translations for the target sentences (i.e., translating the English (...) prepositional dative construction into a Chinese prepositional dative sentence and translating the English double-object construction into a Chinese double-object sentence), the effect of cross-linguistic influence emerged only in a certain type of verbs. When including all trials in the analysis, we found the effect of cross-linguistic influence for all verb types. These results provide some evidence that the cross-linguistic activation of verbs can influence verb-construction integration in L2 processing. The study highlights how bilingual co-activation of verbs extends beyond the lexical and structural levels to influence the integration of multiple sources of information. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Somatic Knowledge and Qualitative Reasoning:From Theory to PracticeRichard Siegesmund"Elliot Eisner is a writer to be reckoned with" is how my undergraduate student, Cheyenne, opened her final essay on The Arts and the Creation of Mind. After a semester of using his text in my art education methods class, reckoned seemed an apt word. The dictionary gives the definitions of reckoned as to settle accounts, make calculation, judge, and take (...) into consideration.1 The ideas in The Arts and the Creation of Mind are challenging on multiple levels, and Eisner does not provide any easy answers. There are no pithy how-to-do-it bullet points in the text. The issues he addresses are complex: nonlinguistic meaning, somatic knowledge, qualitative reasoning, the arts as habits of mind that guide experience and inquiry into the world — just to name a few. Nevertheless, in this text he brings these ideas into a format that is accessible to undergraduates entering the profession of teaching and experienced professionals, who wish to reflect on their own practice.The lucidity of Eisner's text can belie the complexity of the issues he addresses. Regrettably, some students only saw the outer shell of the content: the discussion of conceptual approaches to arts education or the delineation of the developmental stages of children's drawing. Yet for these aspects alone, they considered the text to be valuable; however, I was disappointed that they did not go deeper. Some just could not synthesize the big point: that the arts are not simply about mastery of technical skills, but that technical skills are merely a gateway into non-linguistic thinking. Educational objectives that are limited to content and skills are mundane.However, for more thoughtful and reflective students like Cheyenne, who was in her last semester of course work before student teaching in Guadalajara, the book was an inspiration. It provided a more robust conception of arts education that spoke to her feelings that compelled her to be a teacher. She reflected on what she read in The Arts and the Creation of Mind, and saw how an arts educator was more than an activities manager. She discovered she was embarking on a calling that could change minds — and [End Page 80] by changing minds, transform lives. For a young idealist, Eisner articulated her passion to serve. He said what up until that moment she had only felt. She discovered what she had previously sensed — known in her bones — but had not articulated. Eisner was a voice she wanted to take for her own. He provided a vision of the teacher she hoped to be. Indeed, Elliot Eisner is a writer to be reckoned with.Two ideas that my art students want to discuss when they first encounter The Arts and the Creation of Mind are the concepts of somatic knowing and qualitative reasoning. Somatic knowledge is a felt reaction of rightness within an experience. Qualitative reasoning is the ordering of relationships of qualities. Qualitative reasoning produces somatic knowledge. Using my students' questions and classroom discussions as inspiration, I want to explore these ideas for I believe they represent the essence of what is distinctive about learning in the arts. Furthermore, I share Eisner's belief that they provide the foundation on which to make an enduring case for the importance of the arts in education. These ideas reside at the heart of the process of education, which is, as he states, "learning to create ourselves."2It is immensely satisfying as a teacher to see the ah-ha moments in class discussion when students begin to integrate Eisner's ideas into their own experience. It is an even greater satisfaction to work with teachers who find these ideas illuminating for their educational aims and objectives and to see them played out in real classrooms where students flourish. In this essay, I want to try to build on my own experience with these moments to more deeply explore the significance of Eisner's work.To begin, I will briefly revisit the work of John Dewey. I will then discuss how Eisner's previous thinking sets a foundation for The Arts and the Creation of Mind. Finally, on a... (shrink)

Viewed in the light of the remarkable performance of ‘Watson’ - IBMs proprietary artificial intelligence computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language - on the US general knowledge quiz show ‘Jeopardy’, we review two experiments on formal systems - one in the domain of quantum physics, the other involving a pictographic languaging game - whereby behaviour seemingly characteristic of domain understanding is generated by the mere mechanical application of simple rules. By re-examining both experiments in the context (...) of Searle’s Chinese Room Argument, we suggest their results merely endorse Searle’s core intuition: that ‘syntactical manipulation of symbols is not sufficient for semantics’. Although, pace Watson, some artificial intelligence practitioners have suggested that more complex, higher-level operations on formal symbols are required to instantiate understanding in computational systems, we show that even high-level calls to Google translate would not enable a computer qua ‘formal symbol processor’ to understand the language it processes. We thus conclude that even the most recent developments in ‘quantum linguistics’ will not enable computational systems to genuinely understand natural language. (shrink)

Ecological developmental biology considers the phenotype as actively produced through an environmentally informed process of individual development, rather than predetermined by the genotype. Accordingly, the genotype is viewed as one among many interactants that contribute formative elements; it is understood to do so no differently from the way other organism-internal and environmental resources do. Although the EcoDevo approach is evidently particularly apt to inform approaches to human development, which mostly takes shape in rich cultural environments, it is remarkable that, at (...) least within some highly influential circles of the linguistic sciences, the study of many distinctive human cognitive traits including language remains strongly anchored to a preformationist stance. This article brings an EcoDevo approach to the biologically focused study of language to argue that an aspect of language design commonly assumed to be “blueprinted,” namely, the lexicon-syntax interface, may instead be explained as a plastic effect of ongoing developmental processes in the mind of the child, in which designated aspects of the environment fulfill a key constructive role. (shrink)

People use language to communicate their perceptions and conceptions of the world, and underlying this communication is the linguistic system that interacts with the human perceptual and conceptual machinery. This is supported by research on sentence comprehension among adults. This chapter examines theories of sentence processing in children and adults. It comments on a study John Trueswell et al. in which they demonstrated that five-year-old children appeared to be unable to use contextual cues to resolve ambiguity in sentences (...) such as “Put the frog on the napkin into the box.” Trueswell et al. explained this finding by arguing that children have limited working memory capacity that prevents them from using information from the context to disambiguate linguistic input. The chapter first discusses real-time sentence processing in adults before presenting a developmental account of sentence comprehension. It then considers the so-called Kindergarten-path Effect along with referential scenes, definite reference, and restrictive modifiers. It also looks at the effects of discourse and pragmatics on parsing by children and concludes with a discussion of the development of attention in children. (shrink)

Similar to visual perception, auditory perception also has a clearly described “pop-out” effect, where an element with some extra feature is easier to detect among elements without an extra feature. This phenomenon is better known as auditory perceptual asymmetry. We investigated such asymmetry between shorter or longer duration, and level or falling of pitch of linguistic stimuli that carry a meaning in one language (Estonian), but not in another (Russian). For the mismatch negativity (MMN) experiment, we created four different (...) types of stimuli by modifying the duration of the first vowel [ɑ] (170, 290 ms) and pitch contour (level vs. falling pitch) of the stimuli words (‘SATA,’ ‘SAKI’). The stimuli were synthesized from Estonian words (‘SATA,’ ‘SAKI’) and follow the Estonian language three-way quantity system, which incorporates tonal features (falling pitch contour) together with temporal patterns. This made the meaning of the word dependent on the combination of both features and allows us to compare the relative contribution of duration and pitch contour in discrimination of language stimuli in the brain via MMN generation. The participants of the experiment were 12 Russian native speakers with little or no experience in Estonian and living in Estonia short-term, and 12 Estonian native speakers (age 18–27 years). We found that participants’ perception of the linguistic stimuli differed not only according to the physical features but also according to their native language, confirming that the meaning of the word interferes with the early automatic processing of phonological features. The GAMM and ANOVA analysis of the reversed design results showed that the deviant with longer duration among shorter standards elicited a MMN response with greater amplitude than the short deviant among long standards, while changes in pitch contour (falling vs. level pitch) produced neither strong MMN nor asymmetry. Thus, we demonstrate the effect of language background on asymmetric perception of linguistic stimuli that aligns with those of previous studies (Jaramillo et al., 2000), and contributes to the growing body of knowledge supporting auditory perceptual asymmetry. (shrink)