bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Alignment of “Phrase Accent” Lows in Dutch Falling Rising Questions: Theoretical and Methodological Implications
Authors: Lickley Robin J. , Schepman Astrid , Ladd D. Robert
Published: December 2008

In the first part of this study, we measured the alignment (relative to segmental landmarks) of the low F0 turning points between the accentual fall and the final boundary rise in short Dutch falling-rising questions of the form Do you live in [place name]? produced as read speech in a laboratory setting. We found that the alignment of these turning points is affected by the location of a postaccentual secondary stressed syllable if one is present. This is consistent with the findings and analyses of Grice, Ladd, & Arvaniti, 2000 ( Phonology17, 143—185), suggesting that the low turning points are the phonetic reflex of a “phrase accent.” In the second part of this study, we measured the low turning points in falling-rising questions produced in a task-oriented dialog setting and found that their alignment is affected in the same way as in the read speech data. This suggests that read speech experiments are a valid means of investigating the phonetic details of intonation contours.
How do Syllables Contribute to the Perception of Spoken English? Insight from the Migration Paradigm
Authors: Mattys Sven L. , Melhorn James F.
Published: December 2008

The involvement of syllables in the perception of spoken English has traditionally been regarded as minimal because of ambiguous syllable boundaries and overriding rhythmic segmentation cues. The present experiments test the perceptual separability of syllables and vowels in spoken English using the migration paradigm. Experiments 1 and 2 show that syllables migrate considerably more than full and reduced vowels, and this effect is not influenced by the lexicality of the stimuli, their stress pattern, or the syllables' position relative to the edge of the stimuli. Experiment 3 confirms the predominance of syllable migration against a pseudosyllable baseline, and provides some evidence that syllable migration depends on whether syllable boundaries are clear or ambiguous. Consistent with this hypothesis, Experiment 4 demonstrates that CVC syllables migrate more in stimuli with a clear CVC-initial structure than in ambisyllabic stimuli. Together, the data suggest that syllables have a greater contribution to the perception of spoken English than previously assumed.
Judgment of Disfluency in People who Stutter and People who do not Stutter: Results from Magnitude Estimation
Authors: Lickley Robin J. , Hartsuiker Robert J. , Corley Martin , Russell Melanie , Nelson Ruth
Published: December 2008

Two experiments used a magnitude estimation paradigm to test whether perception of disfluency is a function of whether the speaker and the listener stutter or do not stutter. Utterances produced by people who stutter were judged as “less fluent,” and, critically, this held for apparently fluent utterances as well as for utterances identified as containing disfluency. Additionally, people who stutter tended to perceive utterances as less fluent, independent of who produced these utterances. We argue that these findings are consistent with a view that articulatory differences between the speech of people who stutter and people who do not stutter lead to perceptually relevant vocal differences. We suggest that these differences are detected by the speech self-monitoring system (which uses speech perception) resulting in covert repairs. Our account therefore shares characteristics with the Covert Repair (Postma & Kolk, 1993) and Vicious Circle (Vasić & Wijnen, 2005) hypotheses. It differs from the Covert Repair hypothesis in that it no longer assumes an additional deficit at the phonological planning level. It differs from the Vicious Circle hypothesis in that it no longer attributes hypervigilant monitoring to unknown, external factors. Rather, the self-monitor becomes hypervigilant because the speaker is aware that his/her speech is habitually deviant, even when it is not, strictly speaking, disfluent.
Spontaneous Speech Events in Two Speech Databases of Human-Computer and Human-Human Dialogs in Spanish
Authors: Rodríguez Luis J. , Torres M. Inés
Published: December 2008

Previous works in English have revealed that disfluencies follow regular patterns and that incorporating them into the language model of a speech recognizer leads to lower perplexities and sometimes to a better performance. Although work on disfluency modeling has been applied outside the English community (e.g., in Japanese), as far as we know there is no specific work dealing with disfluencies in Spanish. In this paper, we follow a data driven approach in exploring the potential benefit of modeling disfluencies in a speech recognizer in Spanish. Two databases of human-computer and human-human dialogs are considered, which allow the absolute and relative frequencies of disfluencies in the two situations to be compared. The rate of disfluencies in human-human dialogs is found to be very close to that found for similar databases in English. Due to setup factors, the rate of disfluencies found in human-computer dialogs was remarkably higher than that reported for similar databases in English. In any case, from the point of view of speech recognition, the high frequencies of disfluencies and the distinct features of the acoustic events related to them support the need for explicit acoustic models. The regularities observed in the distribution of filled pauses and speech repairs reveal that including them in the language model of the speech recognizer may be also helpful. The extent to which the number of events depends on utterance length and on the speaker is also explored. Statistics are shown that follow previous studies for English, and a sizeable space is devoted to comparing our results with them. Finally, various possible cues for the automatic detection of speech repairs—a key issue from the point of view of speech understanding—are explored: silent pauses, filled pauses, lengthenings, cut off words and discourse markers. As previously observed for English, none of them was found to be reliable by itself. More information, especially at the acoustic-prosodic level, is no doubt needed to reliably detect speech repairs.
Within-Word Prosodic Constraint on Coarticulation in Japanese
Authors: Kondo Yuko
Published: December 2008

The present study addresses the question of how within-word prosodic constituent boundaries constrain V-to-V coarticulation in Japanese. The smallest prosodic unit that might affect V-to-V coarticulation is the bimoraic foot. The effect of the foot boundary is observed in the present study: the bimoraic foot constrains the extent of V-to-V coarticulation in both left-to-right and right-to-left directions. For the target vowel /a/, anticipatory V-to-V effects are stronger than carryover effects for both within-foot and across-foot conditions. Also, the foot constraint works more strongly on anticipatory than on carryover effects. Some idiosyncratic variation is observed across speakers; however, even some deviant behavior can partly be explained as the result of the interaction of C-to-V and V-to-V effects and speech rate. Coarticulation is observed to be the product of a complex process of constraint interaction.
Perceptual Tests of Rhythmic Similarity: I. Mora Rhythm
Authors: Murty Lalita , Otake Takashi , Cutler Anne
Published: December 2008

Listeners rely on native-language rhythm in segmenting speech; in different languages, stress-, syllable- or mora-based rhythm is exploited. The rhythmic similarity hypothesis holds that where two languages have similar rhythm, listeners of each language should segment their own and the other language similarly. Such similarity in listening was previously observed only for related languages (English-Dutch; French-Spanish). We now report three experiments in which speakers of Telugu, a Dravidian language unrelated to Japanese but similar to it in crucial aspects of rhythmic structure, heard speech in Japanese and in their own language, and Japanese listeners heard Telugu. For the Telugu listeners, detection of target sequences in Japanese speech was harder when target boundaries mismatched mora boundaries, exactly the pattern that Japanese listeners earlier exhibited with Japanese and other languages. The same results appeared when Japanese listeners heard Telugu speech containing only codas permissible in Japanese. Telugu listeners' results with Telugu speech were mixed, but the overall pattern revealed correspondences between the response patterns of the two listener groups, as predicted by the rhythmic similarity hypothesis. Telugu and Japanese listeners appear to command similar procedures for speech segmentation, further bolstering the proposal that aspects of language phonological structure affect listeners' speech segmentation.
Does Horse Activate Mother? Processing Lexical Tone in Form Priming
Authors: Lee Chao-Yang
Published: December 2008

Lexical tone languages make up the majority of all known languages of the world, but the role of tone in lexical processing remains unclear. In the present study, four form priming experiments examined the role of Mandarin tones in constraining lexical activation and the time course of the activation. When a prime and a target were related directly in form (e.g., lou3 `hug' — lou2 `hall'), competitors that differed from the prime in tone failed to be activated, indicating the use of tonal information to distinguish between segmentally identical words. When a prime and a target were not form-related but were related through a third word that was not actually presented (e.g., lou3 `hug' — jian4zhu0 `building', where lou3 is form-related to lou2 `hall', which was semantically related to jian4zhu0), a mismatch in tone prevented activation of minimal tone pairs at 250ms interstimulus interval (ISI) but did not prevent activation at 50ms ISI. These results indicate that tonal information is used on-line to reduce the number of activated candidates, but does not prevent the minimal tone pairs from being activated in the early phase of lexical activation.
The Relationship between Musical Skills, Music Training, and Intonation Analysis Skills
Authors: Dankovicová Jana , House Jill , Crooks Anna , Jones Katie
Published: December 2008

Few attempts have been made to look systematically at the relationship between musical and intonation analysis skills, a relationship that has been to date suggested only by informal observations. Following Mackenzie Beck (2003), who showed that musical ability was a useful predictor of general phonetic skills, we report on two studies investigating the relationship between musical skills, musical training, and intonation analysis skills in English. The specially designed music tasks targeted pitch direction judgments and tonal memory. The intonation tasks involved locating the nucleus, identifying the nuclear tone in stimuli of different length and complexity, and same / different contour judgments. The subjects were university students with basic training in intonation analysis. Both studies revealed an overall significant relationship between musical training and intonation task scores, and between the music test scores and intonation test scores. A more detailed analysis, focusing on the relationship between the individual music and intonation tests, yielded a more complicated picture. The results are discussed with respect to differences and similarities between music and intonation, and with respect to form and function of intonation. Implications of musical training on development of intonation analysis skills are considered. We argue that it would be beneficial to investigate the differences between musically trained and untrained subjects in their analysis of both musical stimuli and intonational form from a cognitive point of view.
Connecting Intonation Labels to Mathematical Descriptions of Fundamental Frequency
Authors: Grabe Esther , Kochanski Greg , Coleman John
Published: December 2008

The mathematical models of intonation used in speech technology are often inaccessible to linguists. By the same token, phonological descriptions of intonation are rarely used by speech technologists, as they cannot be implemented directly in applications. Consequently, these research communities do not benefit much from each other's insights. In this paper, we explore the interface between the disciplines, in search of bridges between intonational phonology and speech technology.

In a corpus of speech data from seven dialects of English, we hand-labeled over 700 sentences and identified seven nuclear accent types. Then we fitted a third-order polynomial to the fundamental frequency (F0) contour in the region around the accent mark. The polynomial captures the local shape (time-dependence) of F0 in a few numbers, in our case, four coefficients. The coefficients were subjected to statistical analysis. Nineteen of the 21 pairs of accent types differed significantly in one or more coefficients. Our approach bridges the gap between intonational phonology and speech technology. It provides quantitative, empirically testable models of intonation labels that can be implemented in applications.
Tongue Kinematics during Utterances Elicited with the SLIP Technique
Authors: Pouplier Marianne
Published: December 2008

In the past years, there have been an increasing number of instrumental investigations as to the nature of speech production errors, prompted by the concern that decades of transcription-based speech error data may be tainted by perceptual biases. While all of these instrumental studies suggest that errors are not, as previously thought, necessarily a matter of all-or-none, it is unclear what implications these studies have for phonological encoding as a cognitive process. Due to their repetition-based design, the ill-formed errors obtained in these studies may be articulation errors rather than cognitive planning errors. The present study reports for the first time tongue movement data collected during an error elicitation study based on the SLIP technique, which has traditionally been hypothesized to elicit errors at the phonological planning level. Results indicate that tongue kinematics during errors in the present task are comparable to those found in errorful utterances in repetition tasks. The findings are interpreted within a dynamic model of speech production as errors in phasing between the interacting consonant gestures.
The Effect of Pitch Peak Alignment on Sentence Type Identification in Russian
Authors: Makarova Veronika
Published: December 2008

This paper reports the results of an experimental phonetic study examining pitch peak alignment in production and perception of three-syllable one-word sentences with phonetic rising-falling pitch movement by speakers of Russian. The first part of the study (Experiment 1) utilizes 22 one-word three-syllable utterances read by five female speakers of Russian as a declarative, an exclamation, and an interrogative. Significant differences in the alignment of pitch peak across declaratives and exclamations on the one hand and interrogatives on the other hand are observed. The second experiment tests whether these pitch peak alignment differences are employed in speech perception. Experiment 2 is performed with a series of resynthesized three-syllable stimuli which differ by 14 locations of the pitch peak, two segmental bases used for resynthesis (declarative and interrogative) and two heights of the pitch peak (270 and 320 Hz). The results of the experiment demonstrate that a shift in pitch peak alignment strongly affects listeners' perception of sentence type. The effects of pitch height and segmental base are also significant. Implications for Russian intonation system are discussed.
Scope-marking Strategies in the Acquisition of Long Distance wh-Questions in French and Dutch
Authors: Jakubowicz Celia , Strik Nelleke
Published: December 2008

This paper reports the results of an elicited production task of Long Distance (LD) wh-questions conducted with typically developing French- and Dutch-speaking children aged four and six, and adult control groups for each language. It is shown that besides input-convergent wh-questions, in both languages children use nontarget strategies to express scope. While in both French and Dutch children produce Partial Movement and wh-copying questions, only French children use Partial Movement without an overt scope-marker in the left periphery of the matrix clause. We argue that our results are consistent with the Derivational Complexity hypothesis put forward by Jakubowicz (2004, 2005). Moreover our results confirm that parametric choices regarding the position of both the wh-word and the verb in the sentence are already set at the ages considered here.
The Interpretation of Disjunction in Universal Grammar
Authors: Crain Stephen
Published: December 2008

Child and adult speakers of English have different ideas of what `or' means in ordinary statements of the form `A or B'. Even more far-reaching differences between children and adults are found in other languages. This tells us that young children do not learn what `or' means by watching how adults use `or'. An alternative is to suppose that children draw upon a priori knowledge of the meaning of `or'. This conclusion is reinforced by the observation that all languages adopt the same meaning of `or' in certain structures. For example, statements of the form `not S[A or B]' have the same meanings in all languages, and disjunctive statements receive a uniform interpretation in sentences that contain certain focus expressions, such as English `only'. These observations are relevant for the long-standing “nature versus nurture” controversy. A linguistic property that (a) emerges in child language without decisive evidence from experience, and (b) is common to all human languages, is a likely candidate for innate specification. Experience matters, of course. As child speakers grow up, they eventually learn to use `or' in the same way as adults do. But, based on findings from child language and cross-linguistic research, it looks like certain aspects of language, including the interpretation of disjunction, are part of the human genome.
Vowel Aperture and Syllable Segmentation in French
Authors: Goslin Jeremy , Frauenfelder Ulrich H.
Published: December 2008

The theories of Pulgram (1970) suggest that if the vowel of a French syllable is open then it will induce syllable segmentation responses that result in the syllable being closed, and vice versa. After the empirical verification that our target French-speaking population was capable of distinguishing between mid-vowel aperture, we examined the relationship between vowel and syllable aperture in two segmentation experiments. Initial findings from a metalinguistic repetition task supported the hypothesis, revealing significant segmentation differences due to vowel aperture across a range of bi-syllabic stimuli. These findings were also supported in an additional online experiment, in which a fragment detection task revealed a syllabic cross-over interaction due to vowel aperture. Evidence from these experiments suggest that multiple, independent cues are used in French syllable segmentation, including vowel aperture.
Horizontal Flow of Semantic and Phonological Information in Chinese Spoken Sentence Production
Authors: Yang Jin-Chen , Yang Yu-Fang
Published: December 2008

A variant of the picture—word interference paradigm was used in three experiments to investigate the horizontal information flow of semantic and phonological information between nouns in spoken Mandarin Chinese sentences. Experiment 1 demonstrated that there is a semantic interference effect when the word in the second phrase (N3) and the first noun in the initial phrase (N1) are semantically related, while there is no effect when N3 and the second noun in the initial phrase (N2) are semantically related. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that there is a phonological facilitation effect only when the two phonologically related words are both in the initial phrase, and there is no effect when they are in different phrases. Reinforcing the findings of an earlier study of horizontal information flow by Smith and Wheeldon (2004), our results indicate that there is a temporal overlap in the access of the nouns in spoken Mandarin Chinese sentences and a flow of semantic and phonological information between these nouns. Moreover, our results are incompatible with a wholly parallel view of horizontal information flow and instead provide support for a view which is partly serial and partly parallel in nature.
Deviance Residual Moran's I Test and Its Application to Spatial Clusters of Small Manufacturing Firms in Japan
Authors: Banasick Shawn , Ge Lin  , Hanham Robert
Published: December 2008

It is proposed that when data exhibit local clusters, a logit local association model coupled with deviance residual Moran's I can be an alternative to the global Poisson autoregressive model because the former can explicitly reveal local clusters and remove residual clustering. Because small firms in Japan traditionally exhibit local clusters, they are a good illustration. In this article, the authors introduce the deviance residual Moran's I to capture local cluster tendencies in a set of logit models and then evaluate their performance by simulation and case study. Results show that IDR can effectively serve as a global measure of a clustering tendency for logit models and can complement other autoregressive logistic regressions for local cluster modeling when a significant IDR is contributed by local clusters. In addition, ecological covariates identified in the previous literature were sufficient to account for the spatial clustering of small firms in 1990 but not in 2000.
A Concept of Autonomy for Critical Communication Studies
Authors: Kim John W.
Published: December 2008

The concept of autonomy has had an integral and enduring role in political economic reflection on the relationship between culture and the economy. A prevailing version of the concept, developed in postmodernist scholarship, has suggested the erosion, if not complete demise, of autonomy. The article contends that autonomy, as an aesthetic concept in these debates, has mainly overlooked its function in critical thinking about capitalism's expansion to the sphere of culture. By building on recent research on the Frankfurt School, in particular, the work of Theodor Adorno, it is possible to reassert the importance of a version of the concept of autonomy in the critical analysis of culture today.
Population and deforestation: why rural migration matters
Authors: Carr David
Published: December 2008

This paper reviews the state of knowledge in, and develops a conceptual model for, researching frontier migration in the developing world with a focus on Latin America. Since only a small fraction moves to forest frontiers, identifying people and place characteristics associated with frontier migration could usefully inform policies aimed at forest conservation and rural development. Yet population scholars train their efforts on urban and international migration while land use/cover change researchers pay scant attention to these migration flows which directly antecede the most salient footprint of human occupation on the earth's surface: the conversion of forest to agricultural land.
Biomechanical Evaluation of Anterior Cruciate Ligament Femoral Fixation Techniques
Authors: Kleweno Conor P. , Jacir Alberto M. , Gardner Thomas R. , Ahmad Christopher S. , Levine William N.
Published: December 2008

Background

A number of different femoral anterior cruciate ligament fixation techniques are currently in use. Slippage of the graft caused by excessive early loading or aggressive rehabilitation may negate benefits of surgery and result in a knee with undesirable laxity.

Hypothesis

Anterior cruciate ligament femoral graft slippage varies by fixation technique and amount of cyclic loading.

Study Design

Controlled laboratory study.

Methods

Graft slippage in 5 different soft tissue anterior cruciate ligament femoral fixation techniques (Bio-TransFix cross-pin technique, Stratis ST cross-pin technique, Bilok ST transverse femoral screw, Delta tapered bio-interference screw, and single-loop TensionLok) was compared by cyclic loading of double-bundle grafts in porcine femurs. Graft slippage was measured using a differential variable reluctance transducer.

Results

The Bio-TransFix had significantly less (P =. 002) total graft slippage (1.14 ± 0.43 mm) compared to the Delta (3.74 ± 3.25 mm), Bilok ST (3.92 ± 2.28 mm), and TensionLok (5.09 ± 1.12 mm) but not the Stratis ST (1.92 ± 1.55 mm). All techniques showed the greatest amount of dynamic excursion (P <. 001), slippage (P <. 001), and percentage of total slippage (mean 68%, P <. 001) during the first 100 cycles of loading. The TensionLok had the greatest amount of dynamic excursion during the first 100 cycles (4.15 ± 1.00 mm) followed by the Bilok ST (3.37 ± 2.07 mm), Delta (1.76 ± 0.93 mm), and Stratis ST (1.75 ± 0.96 mm); the Bio-TransFix demonstrated the least (1.26 ± 0.48 mm). There was no statistical difference in failure load between repair techniques (P =. 103).

Conclusion

Graft slippage was statistically different between anterior cruciate ligament femoral fixation techniques for static and dynamic loading. All techniques exhibited the greatest amount of slippage during the first 100 cycles of loading. The differential variable reluctance transducer permitted evaluation of dynamic graft-construct-bone displacement during experimental loading, simulating the loading experienced during early rehabilitation.

Clinical Relevance

The optimal method of graft fixation for anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction remains unknown. In the current study, cross-pin constructs appeared to be superior to certain other available fixation systems.
Cuba and the “Battle of Ideas”: A Jump Ahead
Authors: Mendes Áquilas , Marques Rosa Maria
Published: December 2008

This article describes the social and economic policies in the 2000s, the strategies chosen by the government to confront the economic crisis and the social programs which became part of the “Battle of Ideas.” It is argued that the economic and social aspects were pursued in an integrated fashion in Cuba without the traditional submission of the latter to the former, as it has been done in other Latin American countries.
Chemical Resistance Studies of Silk/Sisal Fiber-Reinforced Unsaturated Polyester-Based Hybrid Composites
Authors: Raghu K. , Noorunnisa Khanam P. , Venkata Naidu S.
Published: December 2008

The natural fiber environmental friendly composites of untreated and alkali treated silk-sisal unsaturated polyester-based hybrid composites were prepared by using hand lay-up technique. The fiber length was taken as 2 cm and the sisal fibers were treated with 2% NaOH. The chemical resistance of the treated and untreated silk/sisal hybrid composites to various acids, alkalis, and solvents was studied. The chemical resistance tests of these hybrid composites were performed in order to find out whether these composites can be used for manufacturing products that are resistant to chemicals.
Navigating Institutional Pressure in State-Socialist and Democratic Regimes The Case of Movement Brontosaurus
Authors: Carmin JoAnn , Jehlička Petr
Published: December 2008

Using the case of Movement Brontosaurus, a Czech organization founded in state socialist times, this article investigates how civic associations and nongovernmental organizations seeking to promote alternatives to the status quo respond to institutional pressures in different political and social contexts. The case shows that under state socialism, Brontosaurus appeared to conform to state mandates and societal expectations. However, its formal structure was decoupled from many activities to obscure its oppositional intent. After the transition to democracy, the organization was only able to maintain its place in society after it aligned its structure and practices with each other and openly expressed its alternative agenda. The findings demonstrate how social change and alternative lifestyle organizations vary their responses to institutional pressure in ways that enable them to realize their values and pursue their missions while accounting for the political and social contexts in which they are embedded.
Not Getting Their Money’s Worth
Authors: Woldoff Rachael A. , Ovadia Seth
Published: December 2008

Previous research has established that racial/ethnic residential inequalities in the United States are due to a combination of resource disadvantage and discrimination. This article builds upon past work by using a new dependent variable (census tract median housing value), examining the effects of wealth, and including interactions between race/ethnicity and resources. The authors find that the Black—White gap in neighborhood quality is explained by the combination of Blacks’ relative disadvantage in resources and the smaller benefits they gain from having those resources. In contrast, Latinos who are not recent immigrants are similar to Whites in both neighborhood quality and their ability to translate resources into residential quality.
Testing Multilevel Mediation Using Hierarchical Linear Models
Authors: Zhang Zhen , Zyphur Michael J. , Preacher Kristopher J.
Published: December 2008

Testing multilevel mediation using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) has gained tremendous popularity in recent years. However, potential confounding in multilevel mediation effect estimates can arise in these models when within-group effects differ from between-group effects. This study summarizes three types of HLM-based multilevel mediation models, and then explains that in two types of these models confounding can be produced and erroneous conclusions may be derived when using popularly recommended procedures. A Monte Carlo simulation study illustrates that these procedures can underestimate or overestimate true mediation effects. Recommendations are provided for appropriately testing multilevel mediation and for differentiating within-group versus between-group effects in multilevel settings.
“…because dem Computer brauchst' es ja nicht zeigen.”*: because + German main clause word order
Authors: Eppler Eva
Published: December 2008

This paper aims to explain firstly, different frequency distributions of the causal subordinators because and weil in monolingual and bilingual data sets and secondly, verb second, that is, German main clause word order, in clauses introduced by these two conjunctions. Quantitative and quantitative methods will be used. The quantitative study of the mixed German/English data reveals almost twice as many because than weil in a corpus that otherwise has more German clause linkers than English ones. The qualitative analysis exposes verb second rather than verb final word order in predominantly German clauses introduced by because and weil. I will show first, that we understand enough about the interdependence between frequency distributions of word order patterns in monolingual speech and properties of the monolingual grammars to handle frequency in bilingual data. We can utilize frequency figures from monolingual and mixed corpora and combine them with syntactic and pragmatic knowledge to explain the interdependence between grammatical patters and frequency distributions in bilingual data. Secondly, I will demonstrate that it is the availability of context in language corpora that makes it feasible to examine the hypothesis that foreign conjunctions do not trigger verb-final word order in German clauses because they are used in functions that require main clause order.
First language attrition: The methodology revised
Authors: Schmid Monika S.
Published: December 2008

This article presents a criticism of the methodology most frequently used by language attrition studies. In particular, the preoccupation of such research with “errors” in the data from attriters is questioned. It is proposed that approaches which focus on overt deviance cannot come to a full understanding of the attritional process, and that a full investigation of lexical, morphological and syntactic complexity and richness of the data produced by attriters is necessary in order to achieve a truly balanced view. The limitations to the insights gained on the basis of an error-based approach to language attrition, and the potential of an analysis that takes into account all aspects of proficiency, are illustrated on the basis of an investigation of autobiographical narratives from German Jews.
Language attrition and theories of forgetting: A cross-disciplinary review
Authors: Ecke Peter
Published: December 2008

My purpose in this paper is to examine the psychological nature of forgetting (parts of) a language by individuals involved in language change across the lifespan. The objectives of the article are (1) to summarize psychological theories and hypotheses about forgetting and memory failure, and (2) to evaluate their relevance for the explanation of individual language attrition. By reviewing linguistically and psycholinguistically oriented language attrition studies that appear to implicate mechanisms of forgetting, I seek to contribute to the interdisciplinary study and discussion of language attrition phenomena.
Parsing a first language like a second: The erosion of L1 parsing strategies in Spanish-English Bilinguals
Authors: Dussias Paola E.
Published: December 2008

Past research suggests that parsing processes in a bilingual's first language (L1) can undergo changes as a function of exposure to a second language (L2). Evidence for this claim comes from studies that have examined how Spanish-English bilinguals resolve temporarily ambiguous sentences containing a complex noun phrase followed by a relative clause, as is the case in “Peter fell in love with the daughter of the psychologist who studied in California.” Previous studies indicate that whereas monolingual Spanish speakers attach the relative clause to the first noun in the complex noun phrase (non-local attachment), monolingual English speakers interpret the relative clause locally (i.e., attach the relative clause to the noun immediately preceding it). With respect to bilinguals, recent research with Spanish-English bilinguals and professional translators (e.g., Dussias 2001, 2003; Parede, 2004) have shown that bilinguals attach the relative clause to the second noun in the complex noun phrase, when reading in Spanish, their first language. The differences observed between monolingual and bilingual speakers have been attributed to experience in a second language immersion environment. For example, Dussias (2003) argues that extensive exposure to a preponderance of English constructions resolved in favor of local attachment can render this interpretation more available, resulting in the low attachment preference observed in Spanish-English bilinguals. Of interest in the present paper is to assess whether speakers with fewer years of immersion experience in the L2 environment than those reported in previous studies employ the correct strategy in each of their languages. To this end, eye-movement data was collected while proficient L1 Spanish/L2 English speakers read ambiguous sentences of the type described above, in their first language, and their performance was compared to a monolingual Spanish group. Analyses revealed that the L1 Spanish speakers of English favored local over non-local attachment when reading in their first languages. The results are most congruent with exposure-based or parallel interactive models of sentence parsing as postulated by Brysbaert & Mitchell (1996), Mitchell & Cuetos (1991) and Mitchell, Cuetos, Corley & Brysbaert (1995), given the assumption within these models that frequency-based exposure affects parsing decisions.
Finding residual lexical knowledge: The “Savings” approach to testing vocabulary
Authors: Bot Kees de , Martens Vanessa , Stoessel Saskia
Published: December 2008

In this article we report on a series of experiments that have been carried out to apply the savings paradigm to learning words in a foreign language. In the experiments we compared acquisition success rates of newly acquired (foreign language) words versus words students of a foreign language are likely to have acquired at some point in the past in order to determine the existence and accessibility of residual vocabulary knowledge. The results show that subjects, learners of German in the U.S. and learners of French in the Netherlands, were better at relearning and retaining words they knew at some point but seemed to have forgotten than at learning completely new vocabulary both right after learning and in a delayed post-test.
A typology of surzhyk: Mixed Ukrainian-Russian language
Authors: Bilaniuk Laada
Published: December 2008

A typology is developed that systematizes the various linguistic phenomena in Ukraine that are commonly referred to as surzhyk—a Ukrainian term meaning `impure, mixed language'. The term surzhyk has become frequently used in public discourse and the media since Ukrainian was elevated to the status of official state language and Ukraine declared its independence. A heightened purist ideology has led to broad use of the term, which tends to have pejorative connotations. The typology is based on the historical, social, and ideological factors that have shaped language use. Five major categories of surzhyk are defined: (1) urbanized peasant surzhyk, (2) village dialect-surzhyk, (3) Sovietized-Ukrainian surzhyk, (4) urban bilinguals' surzhyk, and (5) post-independence surzhyk. These five prototypes are further characterized according to the typology of bilingualism proposed by Auer (1999), by considering the degree of pragmatic salience and the grammaticalization of language alternation. This case study presents a paradigm for the analysis of mixed languages.
Aspects of Russian-Estonian codeswitching: Research perspectives
Authors: Verschik Anna
Published: December 2008

The article describes codeswitching (CS) as a new phenomenon in modern Russian-Estonian contacts. The author believes that a microsociolinguistic approach developed by Auer, Tabouret-Keller, Le Page, and others allows a flexible analysis and leaves space for linguistic creativity. CS in the post-Soviet setting has not been investigated, and this particular case could contribute to a general understanding of CS patterns. During the past decade both speech communities have become less focused (more diffused). Therefore, a “monolithic view on language” (Backus) has to be replaced by the image of various multilingual and monolingual lects. The shape and properties of lects depend on whether they are used in monolingual-to-monolingual or in multilingual interaction. These lects are not necessarily fully crystallized and differences may be subtle. A new lect, the so-called “market discourse” is developing for Russian-to-Estonian interaction. It utilizes Estonian nouns, adjectives, numerals and discourse markers, whereas VP, word order and combinational properties remain Russian. It is not yet clear whether and how this lect can be placed in Auer's CS-to-language-mixing-to-fused lect continuum.
Lexical choice as a reflection of conceptual fluency
Authors: Kecskes Istvan , Cuenca Isabel M.
Published: December 2008

This pilot study is based on the assumption that the selection of lexical items reveals the level of conceptual fluency in the target language. This assumption is supported by the model of the Dual Language System of Kecskes and Papp (2000) in which the word is an interface between the conceptual level and lexical level which blends information from both levels. To support the hypothesis the authors collected production data in an immersion school on the outskirts of Barcelona, Spain, where the students' L1 is Catalan, L2 is Spanish, and FL is English. All three languages are used as a medium of instruction. Students were asked to read articles in one language and summarize the content in their other language (Catalan text had to be summarized in English, and English text was summarized in Catalan). Data analysis based on length of summary, presence of key words and use of content word equivalents confirmed that there is a direct link between lexical choice and conceptual fluency in the FL.
Language mixing and learning strategy
Authors: Serratrice Ludovica
Published: December 2008

This paper investigates the relationship between language mixing and learning strategy in one English-Italian bilingual child between 1;10 and 2;2. (Mean Length of Utterance in words 1.1−2.0). The first 200 multiword combinations in each language were searched for occurrences of mixing broadly defined as any utterance or conversation including elements from both languages. An asymmetrical pattern was found where language mixing was low overall and unidirectional, only English words were used in Italian contexts. In order to assess the learning strategy adopted by the child, all of the multiword utterances were further analyzed for level of lexical specificity following the criteria in Lieven, Pine and Baldwin (1997). The results showed a high proportion of frozen utterances and limited creativity in the range of constructed utterances.

The comparison of these findings to those reported for another bilingual child raised in similar input conditions (Vihman, 1999) revealed a discrepancy between the two children, both in the level of mixing, and in the extent to which they relied on input patterns. Implications of these results for the relationship between mixing, learning strategies, and theoretical models of acquisition are discussed.
Language specific bootstraps for UG categories
Authors: van Kampen Jacqueline
Published: December 2008

This paper argues that the universal categories N/V are not applied to content words before the grammatical markings for reference D(eterminers) and predication I(nflection) have been acquired (van Kampen, 1997, contra Pinker, 1984). Child grammar starts as proto-grammar with language-specific operators and category-neutral content words Xo. The first content words are used as proper names with topic-intention and as brand names with characterizing-intention. The language-specificity of early operators may be illustrated by the use of wh-pronouns (what/where?) in English versus the use of illocution particles ( nou/denn?) in Dutch/German child language.

Subsequently, deictic operators for topic are regularized as Do and deictic operators for comment as Io. These functional categories are the bootstraps for category assignment <+V> and <+N>, as a subdivision of the lexicon. The generalized conclusion is that language-specific systems are not acquired due to a common UG entrance. They rather are highly frequent language-specific bootstraps that coax the child into an adult system that eventually fits UG principles.

The operators in proto-grammar are situation-related, whereas the functional categories Io/D o are highly sensitive to syntactic context. This explains why, in a bilingual situation, a language switch in the context-free operators will be relatively easy. A language switch in functional categories, by contrast, will have a reflex on the syntactic context and be less easy.
Long-term effects of CS: Clues to structural borrowing
Authors: Field Fredric
Published: December 2008

Contact phenomena such as codeswitching and linguistic borrowing occur quite normally in situations of intense language contact. Some researchers have proposed relationships between the two suggesting causal links, and that codeswitching, as an assumed mechanism of change (Myers-Scotton, 2002, p. 104; Thomason, 2001, p. 131), in some way causes or instigates the kinds of lexical and structural borrowing that lead to long-term language change. This paper attempts to make clear that, while the two phenomena may have links, they are not causal in nature. Both emanate from similar underlying social conditions that constitute predispositions to particular outcomes. Proximate causes for each must lie elsewhere, in mental responses to the triggering effects of particular environmental stimuli. They represent consequences of the dynamic interaction of underlying social conditions and consequent psychological states (Grosjean, 2001). One conclusion is that contact phenomena are behaviors produced by speakers as they interact with environmental factors such as linguistic input (e.g., mixed input from other speakers). Motivations for long-term change may be as simple as an unconscious desire of one community to copy the speech of another socially and, therefore, linguistically dominant group, the dwindling availability of viable alternatives (via shift), or a combination of the two.
Evidence for insertional codemixing: Mixed compounds and French nominal groups in Brussels Dutch
Authors: Treffers-Daller Jeanine
Published: December 2008

In this paper we analyze mixed compounds, such as legume+winkel `vegetable shop, greengrocery' and winter+paletot `winter coat' which contain a French and a Dutch element, and French nominal groups, such as carte d'identité `identity card', and journal parlé `radio news', which bilingual speakers from Brussels frequently insert into Brussels Dutch utterances. Using Muysken's (2000) typology of bilingual speech, we claim that the mixed compounds and the nominal groups display the characteristics of insertional codemixing. In addition, some evidence for the existence of a continuum between borrowing and codeswitching can be obtained from these examples. As the multimorphemic units that are inserted into Dutch are neither single words, nor full constituents, their status in the lexicon raises interesting issues for researchers interested in the interface between syntax and the lexicon (see also Backus, 2003). We try to argue that nominal groups such as carte d'identité and journal parlé are probably best seen as lexical templates or constructional idioms (Booij, 2002b). The insertion of French constructional idioms in Brussels Dutch represents an innovation in the lexical patterns that are available to speakers of this language, which is highly relevant for theories of language change.
Structural characteristics of proper nouns in Korean-Swedish discourse
Authors: Park Hyeon-Sook
Published: December 2008

This article examines the structural characteristics of proper nouns from other languages, which have been considered to be the most typical borrowings to such an extent that most codeswitching researchers have not made it a subject of discussion at all. The data consist of spontaneous adult, child and family conversations among Koreans residing in Sweden.

Linguistic analysis shows that a number of proper nouns attested in the Korean-Swedish data do not behave as borrowings but as codeswitches. They do not show complete morphosyntactic integration into the language of the sentence, yet even so they sometimes include function morphemes such as definite articles. Occasionally the word order of the proper noun (or noun phrase) corresponds to the original language. Taking all of this into account, we can reasonably conclude that even proper nouns, which are generally assumed to be the most typical borrowings by many codeswitching researchers, undergo the same (or at least related) morphosyntactic processes and that they are not different from codeswitching.