Given-New Ordering Effects on the Production of Scrambled Sentences in Japanese

Across many languages, speakers tend to produce sentences so that given (previously referred to) arguments are mentioned before new arguments; this is termed given-new ordering. We explored the nature of such given-new effects in Japanese using a procedure following Bock and Irwin (1980). Speakers encoded and then recalled canonical (e.g., okusan-ga otetsudaisan-ni purezento-o okutta, the housewife gave the housekeeper a present) or scrambled (okusan-ga purezento-o otetsudaisan-ni okutta) dative targets when prompted by a statement-question sequence. The prompting statement established one nonsubject argument of the dative target as given, leaving the other nonsubject argument as new. Previous mention was either with lexically identical content (e.g., otetsudaisan or purezento) or with lexically distinct but nearly synonymous content (meidosan, housemaid or okurimono, gift). Results showed that speakers produced canonical or scrambled word orders so that given arguments were mentioned before new, but especially when the previous mention of the given argument occurred with lexically identical content (replicating Bock and Irwin's English effect). These results show that the production of Japanese scrambled and canonical word orders is sensitive to given versus new status (as in English), implying that given-new ordering arises at the stage of sentence production where scrambling effects are realized.     

Acquiring English at different ages: The English displacement effect and other findings

An analysis of the language backgrounds of 237 persons in a psychology department subject pool is presented. Specific findings indicate that (a) only about two-thirds of the subjects were native speakers of English, (b) native English speakers can be divided into several different groups on the basis of bilingual background and age of acquisition of their second language, (c) the number of native English speakers who would be considered ideal for psycholinguistic experiments in English (e.g., monolinguals and bilinguals who acquired a second language in or after adolescence) is only about a third of the sample, (d) nonnative English speakers appear to have their native, non-English-language abilities reduced as a function of their acquisition of English; that is, English appears to displace other languages that a person knows (the English displacement effect), and (e) age of English acquisition is shown to be an important factor, by correlating negatively with rated English abilities and reported Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores, and positively with rated ability in a non-English language.Portions of this research were first presented at the 59th annual meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association in Buffalo, New York, April 1988. I gratefully thank Doris Aaronson for the numerous comments she made on earlier versions of this paper.     

The costs of selecting power bases or messages associated with the opposite sex

A study was conducted to examine the interpersonal costs of using power bases associated with the opposite sex. The study also tested two hypotheses regarding influence differences associated with two statistical interactions: (1) the sex of the source by the sex-type of the message, and (2) the sex of the subject by the sex-type of the message. Subjects (N=387) viewed a videotype containing one of six speakers (three males, three females) delivering one of two speeches (about gun control or child care centers) and using one of two power bases (helplessness or expertise). The results indicated that speakers using power bases associated with the opposite sex were liked less and regarded as less competent and qualified than their counterparts. The results also indicated that female speakers aroused more belief in the child care message and male speakers aroused more belief in the gun control message than did the other speaker-message combinations. No significant effects were associated with the interaction between subjects' sex and message. Among other findings, female subjects generally rated the messages and the speakers more positively than did male subjects.     

Segmentation by lexical subtraction in Hungarian speakers of second-language English

Using cross-modal form priming, we compared the use of stress and lexicality in the segmentation of spoken English by native English speakers (L1) and by native Hungarian speakers of second-language English (L2). For both language groups, lexicality was found to be an effective segmentation cue. That is, spoken disyllabic word fragments were stronger primes in a subsequent visual word recognition task when preceded by meaningful words than when preceded by nonwords: For example, the first two syllables of corridor were a more effective prime for visually presented corridor when heard in the phrase anythingcorri than in imoshingcorri. The stress pattern of the prime (strong–weak vs. weak–strong) did not affect the degree of priming. For L1 speakers, this supports previous findings about the preferential use of high-level segmentation strategies in clear speech. For L2 speakers, the lexical strategy was employed regardless of L2 proficiency level and instead of exploiting the consistent stress pattern of their native language. This is clear evidence for the primacy and robustness of segmentation by lexical subtraction even in individuals whose lexical knowledge is limited.     

English Vowel Spaces Produced by Japanese Speakers: The Smaller Point Vowels’ and the Greater Schwas’

This study investigated how Japanese-speaking learners of English pronounce the three point vowels /i/, /u/, and /a/ appearing in the first and second monosyllabic words of English noun phrases, and the schwa /ə/ appearing in English disyllabic words. First and second formant (F1 and F2) values were measured for four Japanese speakers and two American English speakers. The hypothesis that the area encompassed by the point vowels in the F1-F2 vowel space tends to be smaller for the Japanese speakers than for the English speakers was verified. The hypothesis that the area formed by the three schwas in chicken{{chick\underline{e}n}}, spoonful{{spoonf{\underline{u}}l}}, and Tarzan{{Tarz\underline{a}n}} is greater for the Japanese speakers than for the English speakers and its related hypothesis were largely upheld. Implications for further research are briefly discussed.     

Use of vocalic cues to consonant voicing and native language background: The influence of experimental design

For native speakers of English and several other languages, preceding vocalic duration andFi offset frequency are two of the cues that convey the stop consonant voicing distinction in wordfinal position. For speakers learning English as a second language, there are indications that use of vocalic duration, but notFl offset frequency, may be hindered by a lack of experience with phonemic (i.e., lexical) vowel length (the “phonemic vowel length account”: Crowther & Mann, 1992). In this study, native speakers of Arabic, a language that includes a phonemic vowel length distinction, were tested for their use of vocalic duration andF1 offset in production and perception of the English consonant-vowel-consonant forms pod and pot. The phonemic vowel length hypothesis predicts that Arabic speakers should use vocalic duration extensively in production and perception. On the contrary, experiment l repealed that, consistent with Flege and Port’s (1981) findings, they produced only slightly (but significantly) longer vocalic segments in their pod tokens. It further indicated that their productions showed a significant variation inFl offset as a function of final stop voicing. Perceptual sensitivity to vocalic duration andFl offset as voicing cues was tested in two experiments. In experiment 2, we employed a factorial combination of these two cues and a finely spaced vocalic duration continuum. Arabic speakers did not appear to be very sensitive to vocalic duration, but they were abort as sensitive as native English speakers toF1 offset frequency. In Experiment 3, we employed a one-dimensional continuum of more widely spaced stimuli that varied only vocalic duration. Arabic speakers showed native-English-like sensitivity to vocalic duration- Anexplanation based on tie perceptual anchor theory of context coding (Braida et al., 1984; Macmillan, 1987; Macmillan, Braida, & Goldberg, 1987) and phoneme perception theory (Schouten & Van Hessen, 2992) is offered to reconcile the apparently contradictory perceptual findings. The explanation does not attribute native-English-like voicing perception to the Ambit subjects. The findings in this study call fox a modification of the phonemic vowel length hypothesis.     

For a New Look at ‘Lexical Errors’: Evidence from Semantic Approximations with Verbs in Aphasia

The ability to understand the similarity between two phenomena is fundamental for humans. Designated by the term analogy in psychology, this ability plays a role in the categorization of phenomena in the world and in the organisation of the linguistic system. The use of analogy in language often results in non-standard utterances, particularly in speakers with aphasia. These non-standard utterances are almost always studied in a nominal context and considered as errors. We propose a study of the verbal lexicon and present findings that measure, by an action-video naming task, the importance of verb-based non-standard utterances made by 17 speakers with aphasia (“la dame déshabille l’orange”/the lady undresses the orange, “elle casse la tomate”/she breaks the tomato). The first results we have obtained allow us to consider these type of utterances from a new perspective: we propose to eliminate the label of “error”, suggesting that they may be viewed as semantic approximations based upon a relationship of inter-domain synonymy and are ingrained in the heart of the lexical system.     

The retrieval of scaled English consonants

Two scales of the perceptual differences among English consonants had been constructed earlier, one from pairs of aural syllables and one from pairs of viewed one-syllable English words. In both instances the pairs of stimuli differed only in the initial consonants. In the present work 276 pairs of syllables were assembled in sets of six. A set was viewed sequentially for 1.5 sec/slide. Then 25 subjects who worked in groups of 4–6 attempted to write one randomly chosen omitted member of each pair on an answer form; another 25 subjects were asked to supply the opposite syllables of each pair. This task was termed primary memory. Fifty additional subjects repeated the tasks but spent 10 sec counting backward by 3s before trying to recall and write the missing syllables, thus setting up a task of secondary memory. Response forms were scored for right, wrong, and omitted responses. All responses were then compared with each of the scales referred to above, and the mean value for each group of 50 subjects (25 who used the anser form in theab order+ 25 who used theba order) was computed. The difference between the scores for the two tasks was statistically significant, as was the difference between the scores yielded by the two scales. The visual scale appeared to fit the data better than the aural scale. The procedures employed and the assumptions that were made yielded results that would not justify an opinion that an error in recall is typically almost right. However, the data did reflect partial forgetting.     

Asymmetrical Priming Effects: An Exploration of Trilingual German–English–French Lexico-Semantic Memory

The growing number of multilingual speakers poses an interesting question as to the way in which three or more languages are represented in the memory of a language user. The Revised Hierarchical Model (Kroll and Stewart in J Mem Lang 33: 149–174, 1994) or the Sense Model (Finkbeiner et al. in J Mem Lang 51(1), 1–22, 2004) skillfully capture the prediction regarding two languages, with the lexical level being separate and the conceptual one being unified or distributed to a varying degree. In this set of experiments, we employed primed animacy decision tasks to address the lexico-semantic representation of trilingual German–English–French speakers. The comparison of reaction times has revealed priming effects from L1 to L2 and from L2 to L1, both with prime duration of 100 and 50 ms; a priming asymmetry effect between the L2 and L3 language directions; and no interaction between L1 and L3. The aggregated findings point to a hybrid representation, with both compound and coordinate representations being possible.     

Equating test scores—A maximum likelihood solution

Certain problems of equating are discussed. The maximum likelihood solution is presented for the following special equating problem: Two tests,U andV, are to be equated, making use of a third anchor test,W. The examinees are divided into two random halves. TestsU andW are administered to one half; testsV andW are administered to the other half. It is assumed that any practice effect or other effect, exerted byU andV onW, is the same forU and forV.     

The impact of L1 structural frequency and cognate status on the timing of L2 production

The present study investigates the impact of first language (L1) structural frequency and L1 lexical accessibility, manipulated via cognate status, on second language (L2) speech production. L1 German–L2 English speakers and L1 English speakers completed a production task containing pre- and post-modified possessive noun phrase (NP) constructions (e.g. The actress’s sofa vs. The sofa of the actress) in which the head nouns were English-German cognates (e.g. sofa) or noncognates. While English prefers pre-modified NPs, German has a strong frequency bias for post-modified NPs. L2 English speakers exhibited higher production accuracy than L1 English speakers on post-modified NP sentences. However, facilitative L1 effects in production latencies were restricted to post-modified NP sentences containing cognates and only developed cumulatively after repeated exposure to post-modified NP sentences. We discuss how cognate status and L1 structural frequency differentially influence the accuracy and timing of choosing between different structural alternatives during L2 production.     

Spelling and dialect: Comparisons between speakers of African American vernacular English and White speakers

One characteristic of African American vernacular English (AAVE) is final obstruent devoicing, where the final consonant of a word likerigid is pronounced more like /t/ than /d/. To determine whether this dialect characteristic influences adults’ spelling, African American and White college students spelled words such asrigid andballot, pronounced by either a speaker of their own dialect or a speaker of the other dialect. African Americans, especially those who often devoiced final /d/, were more likely than Whites to confused andt. Both African American and White spellers made mored/t confusions when the words were spoken by an African American experimenter than by a White experimenter. Thus, the different phonological systems of AAVE and White speakers can cause them to make different types of spelling errors. Discussions of AAVE and literacy have focused on its syntax, but its phonology must also be considered.     

The bank of standardized stimuli (BOSS): comparison between French and English norms

Throughout the last decades, numerous picture data sets have been developed, such as the Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980) set, and have been normalized for variables such as name and familiarity; however, due to cultural and linguistic differences, norms can vary from one country to another. The effect due specifically to culture has already been demonstrated by comparing samples from different countries where the same language is spoken. On the other hand, it is still not clear how differences between languages may affect norms. The present study explores this issue by collecting and comparing norms on names and many other features from French Canadian speakers and English Canadian speakers living in Montreal, who thus live in similar cultural environments. Norms were collected for the photos of objects from the Bank of Standardized Stimuli (BOSS) by asking participants to name the objects, to categorize them, and to rate their familiarity, visual complexity, object agreement, viewpoint agreement, and manipulability. Names and ratings from the French speakers are available in Appendix A, available in the supplemental materials. The results show that most of the norms are comparable across linguistic groups and also that the ratings given are correlated across linguistic groups. The only significant group differences were found in viewpoint agreement and visual complexity. Overall, there was good concordance between the norms collected from French and English native speakers living in the same cultural setting.     

A generalized solution of the orthogonal procrustes problem

A solutionT of the least-squares problemAT=B +E, givenA andB so that trace (EE)= minimum andTT=I is presented. It is compared with a less general solution of the same problem which was given by Green [5]. The present solution, in contrast to Green's, is applicable to matricesA andB which are of less than full column rank. Some technical suggestions for the numerical computation ofT and an illustrative example are given.This paper is based on parts of a thesis submitted to the Graduate College of the University of Illinois in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a Ph.D. degree in Psychology.The work reported here was carried out while the author was employed by the Statistical Service Unit Research, U. of Illinois. It is a pleasure to express my appreciation to Prof. K. W. Dickman, director of this unit, for his continuous support and encouragement in this and other work. I also gratefully acknowledge my debt to Prof. L. Humphreys for suggesting the problem and to Prof. L. R. Tucker, who derived (1.7) and (1.8) in summation notation, suggested an iterative solution (not reported here) and who provided generous help and direction at all stages of the project.     

Adding Involution to Residuated Structures

Two constructions for adding an involution operator to residuated ordered monoids are investigated. One preserves integrality and the mingle axiom x ²x but fails to preserve the contraction property xx ². The other has the opposite preservation properties. Both constructions preserve commutativity as well as existent nonempty meets and joins and self-dual order properties. Used in conjunction with either construction, a result of R.T. Brady can be seen to show that the equational theory of commutative distributive residuated lattices (without involution) is decidable, settling a question implicitly posed by P. Jipsen and C. Tsinakis. The corresponding logical result is the (theorem-) decidability of the negation-free axioms and rules of the logic RW, formulated with fusion and the Ackermann constant t. This completes a result of S. Giambrone whose proof relied on the absence of t.     

The Impact of Foreign Accent on Credibility: An Analysis of Cognitive Statement Ratings in a Swiss Context

The present paper reports on a study investigating whether the presence of a foreign accent negatively affects credibility judgments. Previous research suggests that trivia statements recorded by speakers with a foreign accent are judged as less credible than when recorded by native speakers due to increased cognitive demands (Lev-Ari and Keysar in J Exp Soc Psychol 46(6):1093–1096, 2010. doi: 10.1016/j.jesp.2010.05.025). In the present study, 194 French- and 183 Swiss-German-speaking participants were asked to judge the truthfulness of 48 trivia statements recorded by speakers with French, Swiss-German, Italian and English accents by means of an online survey. Before submitting the survey, raters were asked to attribute given labels—including adjectives referring to credibility—to a language group aiming to elicit raters’ stereotypes in a direct manner. Although the results of this task indicate that the raters do hold different stereotypes concerning credibility of speech communities, foreign accent does not seem to have an impact on credibility ratings in the Swiss context.     

Zero Anaphora: Transfer of Reference Tracking Strategies from Chinese to English

English contains many nominals that would be absent in Chinese because Chinese makes greater use of zero anaphora, which is an empty grammatical slot in a sentence standing for a previously mentioned referent. Native Chinese and native English speakers were compared in comprehending modified English passages from a standardized reading test with nominals deleted that would be absent in Chinese. In three experiments, Chinese speakers showed superior comprehension as measured by objective multiple-choice questions in this case, but not when no words were deleted or when nominals were deleted that would not be absent in Chinese. These results imply that native Chinese speakers develop reference tracking strategies that they transfer to comprehending English.This research was supported in part by United States Army Research Institute Contracts MDA903-93-K-0010, DASW01-96-K-0010, DASW01-99-K-0002, and DASW01-03-K-0002 to the University of Colorado (Alice Healy, Principal Investigator).We thank Lyle Bourne and Barbara Fox for stimulating discussions about this research. We are also grateful to the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado for their support of this research.Experiments 1 and 2 were reported at the International Conference on Functional Approaches to Grammar, Albuquerque, NM, July 25, 1995, and at the 37th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Chicago, IL, November 3, 1996, and all three experiments were reported at the 2001 American Association for Applied Linguistics conference, St. Louis, MO, February 24, 2001.     

Facial expressions as performances in mime

That facial expressions are universal emotion signals has been supported by observers agreeing on the emotion mimed by actors. We show that actors can mime a diverse range of states: emotions, cognitions, physical states, and actions. English, Hindi, and Malayalam speakers (N?=?1200) viewed 25 video clips and indicated the state conveyed. Within each language, at least 23 of the 25 clips were recognised above chance and base rate. Facial expressions of emotions are not special in their recognisability, and it is miming that may be the universal human ability.     

Alpha factor analysis of infallible variables

The relationship between the factor pattern,F, derived from fallible (containing measurement error) observations on variables and the factor pattern,F*, derived from infallible observations on variables is investigated. A widely believed relationship betweenF andF*, viz.,F*=AF whereA is a diagonal matrix containing the inverses of the square roots of the reliabilities of the variables, is shown to be false for several factor analytic techniques. Under suitable assumptions, it is shown that for Kaiser and Caffrey's alpha factor analysisF* andF are related byF*=AF. Empirical examples for which the corresponding elements ofF* andAF are equal to two decimal places are presented. The implications of the equality ofF* andAF for alpha factor analysis are discussed.I wish to acknowledge the generous assistance of Drs. Chester W. Harris and Henry F. Kaiser in the execution of the research reported in this paper.     

Dimensions of lexical coding in Chinese and English

Phonology and orthography are closely related in some languages, such as English, and they are nearly unrelated in others, such as Chinese. The effects of these differences were assessed in a study of the roles of phonemic, graphemic, and semantic information on lexical coding and memory for Chinese logographs and English words. Some of the stimuli in the two languages were selected such that the natural confounding between phonemic and graphemic information in English was matched in the set of Chinese words used. An initial scaling study indicated that this attempt to equate degree of phonemic-graphemic confounding was successful. A second experiment used a recognition memory task for English and Chinese words with separate subject groups of native speakers of the two languages. Subjects were to select one of a pair of test words that was phonemically, graphemically, or semantically similar to a word on a previously studied list. Differences in the dimensions of lexical coding in memory were demonstrated in significant Stimulus Type by Decision Type interactions in the recognition data. Chinese-speaking subjects responded most rapidly and accurately in the graphemic recognition task, whereas performance was generally equivalent in all three tasks for the English-speaking subjects. Alphabetic and logographic writing systems apparently activate different coding and memory mechanisms such that logographic characters produce significantly more visual information in memory, whereas alphabetic words result in a more integrated code involving visual, phonological, and semantic information.