Structural priming of adjective-noun structures in hearing and deaf children

We examined priming of adjective-noun structures in Dutch hearing and deaf children. In three experiments, hearing 7- and 8-year-olds, hearing 11- and 12-year-olds, and deaf 11- and 12-year-olds read a prenominal structure (e.g., the blue ball), a relative clause structure (e.g., the ball that is blue), or a main clause (e.g., the ball is blue). After reading each prime structure, children described a target picture in writing. Half of the target pictures contained the same noun as the prime structure and half contained a different noun. Hearing 7- and 8-year-olds and 11- and 12-year-olds, as well as deaf 11- and 12-year-olds, showed priming effects for all three structures in both the same-noun and different-noun conditions. Structural priming was not boosted by lexical repetition in the hearing and deaf 11- and 12-year-olds; a lexical boost effect was observed only in the 7- and 8-year-olds and only in the relative clause structure. The findings suggest that hearing and deaf children possess abstract representations of adjective-noun structures independent of particular lexical items.     

What Does Children's Spatial Language Reveal About Spatial Concepts? Evidence From the Use of Containment Expressions

Children's overextensions of spatial language are often taken to reveal spatial biases. However, it is unclear whether extension patterns should be attributed to children's overly general spatial concepts or to a narrower notion of conceptual similarity allowing metaphor‐like extensions. We describe a previously unnoticed extension of spatial expressions and use a novel method to determine its origins. English‐ and Greek‐speaking 4‐ and 5‐year‐olds used containment expressions (e.g., English into, Greek mesa) for events where an object moved into another object but extended such expressions to events where the object moved behind or under another object. The pattern emerged in adult speakers of both languages and also in speakers of 10 additional languages. We conclude that learners do not have an overly general concept of Containment. Nevertheless, children (and adults) perceive similarities across Containment and other types of spatial scenes, even when these similarities are obscured by the conventional forms of the language.     

Are generalised scalar implicatures generated by default? An on-line investigation into the role of context in generating pragmatic inferences

Recent research in semantics and pragmatics has revived the debate about whether there are two cognitively distinct categories of conversational implicatures: generalised and particularised. Generalised conversational implicatures are so-called because they seem to arise more or less independently of contextual support. Particularised implicatures are more context-bound. The Default view is that generalised implicatures are default inferences and that their computation is relatively autonomous--being computed by some default mechanism and only being open to cancellation at a second stage when contextual assumptions are taken into consideration (i.a.). It is at that second stage where contextual assumptions are considered that particularised implications are computed. By contrast, Context-Driven theorists claim that both generalised and particularised implicatures are generated by the same process and only where there is contextual support (Chierchia, 2004; Horn, 1984; Levinson, 2000 i.a.). In this paper, we present three on-line studies of the prototypical cases of generalised implicatures: the scalar implicatures 'some of the Fs' > 'not all the Fs' and 'X or Y' > 'either X or Y but not both'. These studies were designed to test the context-dependence and autonomy of the implicatures. Our results suggest that these scalar implicatures are dependent on the conversational context and that they show none of the autonomy predicted by the Default view. We conclude with a discussion of the degree to which such implicatures are purely context-driven and whether an interactionist default position may also be plausible.     

Young children's sensitivity to probabilistic phonotactics in the developing lexicon

A series of three experiments examined children's sensitivity to probabilistic phonotactic structure as reflected in the relative frequencies with which speech sounds occur and co-occur in American English. Children, ages 212 and 312 years, participated in a nonword repetition task that examined their sensitivity to the frequency of individual phonetic segments and to the frequency of combinations of segments. After partialling out ease of articulation and lexical variables, both groups of children repeated higher phonotactic frequency nonwords more accurately than they did low phonotactic frequency nonwords, suggesting sensitivity to phoneme frequency. In addition, sensitivity to individual phonetic segments increased with age. Finally, older children, but not younger children, were sensitive to the frequency of larger (diphone) units. These results suggest not only that young children are sensitive to fine-grained acoustic-phonetic information in the developing lexicon but also that sensitivity to all aspects of the sound structure increases over development. Implications for the acoustic nature of both developing and mature lexical representations are discussed.     

Islam hadhari: A Malaysian Islamic multiculturalism or another blank banner?

Islam hadhari (progressive Islam) appeared on the Malaysian political sphere in 2004 and seemed to create an alternative model to Western modernity and multiculturalism. It was proclaimed as progressive and forward-looking, yet steeped deeply in Islam’s nostalgic golden past. It was hailed as a novel form of Malaysian Islamic multiculturalism by some, derided by others as a new version of Islam and ignored by many as a government project. This paper conceptualizes Islam hadhari theoretically and places it within its Malaysian contexts to show what possibilities it engendered and how it can be best appraised today.

Sharʿī norms and German Schools: Court Challenges to Participation in Swimming Lessons,School Trips and Sex Education

ABSTRACT

This article examines the treatment by German courts, from the early 1970s to 2016, of requests made by Muslims to be exempted from school activities for religious reasons. Based on a qualitative reading of 72 court rulings, the article demonstrates a shift in the courts’ decision-making, from initially tolerating Muslim requests for exemption to firmly denying them. Arguments from the court rulings are substantiated by an analysis of the public discourse on Muslims in German schools. The results suggest that the transformation of court attitudes corresponded with the rise of broader concerns about multiculturalism and manifestations of Islam in the public sphere, the liberalization of gender norms, and increasing secularism within German society. The article further demonstrates that, contrary to public perception, requests for exemptions from school activities were not a distinctly Muslim phenomenon. Christian families have challenged school activities in a similar way.     

浅论伊儒会通——以王岱舆、刘智为观察点

从明末至清末,中国伊斯兰教界发起了一场以译撰为特点,以会通儒家与伊斯兰教为内容的自觉文化活动,期间涌现了许多思想家,而王岱舆、刘智是其中的杰出代表。王岱舆首开了会通活动,而刘智则将会通活动推向了最高潮,他们的著作,无论在会通立场、会通方法、乃至理论体系构建方面,都进行了积极探索,为同时代乃至后代学者提供了有益的借鉴,为伊斯兰教中国化做出了巨大贡献。     

Language comprehension vs. language production: age effects on fMRI activation

Normal language acquisition is a process that unfolds with amazing speed primarily in the first years of life. However, the refinement of linguistic proficiency is an ongoing process, extending well into childhood and adolescence. An increase in lateralization and a more focussed productive language network have been suggested to be the neural correlates of this process. However, the processes underlying the refinement of language comprehension are less clear. Using a language comprehension (Beep Stories) and a language production (Vowel Identification) task in fMRI, we studied language representation and lateralization in 36 children, adolescents, and young adults (age 6-24 years). For the language comprehension network, we found a more focal activation with age in the bilateral superior temporal gyri. No significant increase of lateralization with age could be observed, so the neural basis of language comprehension as assessed with the Beep Stories task seems to be established in a bilateral network by late childhood. For the productive network, however, we could confirm an increase with age both in focus and lateralization. Only in the language comprehension task did verbal IQ correlate with lateralization, with higher verbal IQ being associated with more right-hemispheric involvement. In some subjects (24%), language comprehension and language production were lateralized to opposite hemispheres.     

Cue effectiveness in communicatively efficient discourse production

Recent years have seen a surge in accounts motivated by information theory that consider language production to be partially driven by a preference for communicative efficiency. Evidence from discourse production (i.e., production beyond the sentence level) has been argued to suggest that speakers distribute information across discourse so as to hold the conditional per-word entropy associated with each word constant, which would facilitate efficient information transfer (Genzel & Charniak, 2002). This hypothesis implies that the conditional (contextualized) probabilities of linguistic units affect speakers' preferences during production. Here, we extend this work in two ways. First, we explore how preceding cues are integrated into contextualized probabilities, a question which so far has received little to no attention. Specifically, we investigate how a cue's maximal informativity about upcoming words (the cue's effectiveness) decays as a function of the cue's recency. Based on properties of linguistic discourses as well as properties of human memory, we analytically derive a model of cue effectiveness decay and evaluate it against cross-linguistic data from 12 languages. Second, we relate the information theoretic accounts of discourse production to well-established mechanistic (activation-based) accounts: We relate contextualized probability distributions over words to their relative activation in a lexical network given preceding discourse.     

WOMB TRANSPLANTATION AND THE INTERPLAY OF ISLAM AND THE WEST

In Saudi Arabia in 2000 the world's first human uterus transplant was attempted with some success. In 2011 the second successful human uterus transplant took place in Turkey. Doctors in the United Kingdom have recently announced that uterus transplants will be carried out in the UK if doctors can raise enough funds to complete their research. As scientists continue to make progress in this domain this is anticipated to be the next breakthrough in the arena of assisted reproductive technologies. The procedure is designed to restore fertility in women unable to gestate due to an abnormal, damaged, or absent uterus. At present, the only other option for such women to achieve genetic motherhood is via surrogacy, which in Islam is widely regarded as haram or forbidden. This article examines the benefits of this technology so as to facilitate discourse between Islam and the West. It argues for Islamic scholars to consider these advances so as to ensure Muslims living as minorities in Western countries, such as the United Kingdom, are able to utilize such technology (if indeed regarded as permissible) should the government move to enact legislation to permit this procedure.     

Visions & visualizations: negotiating space for European Muslims

Whether one chooses to view it as a negative or a positive development, history refers us to a difficult fact to ignore; the development of European civilization and consequently European identity, is impossible to imagine without Islam and Muslims. How deep the input has been is open to discussion and debate by historians, but it is clear that it was significant and considerable, and as twenty-first century Europe moves towards creating more cohesive societies in the EU, the impact of Muslims on European society, historically and presently, has become a topic of concern. With such a background, and the effect of Islamophobia on Muslim communities, how can Muslim communities negotiate their space in European societies?     

Discrimination and religiosity among Muslim women in the UK before and after the Charlie Hebdo attacks

In January 2015, media outlets reported a series of attacks by Islamic terror groups in France, instigated at the offices of the Charlie Hebdo publication. Previous research has indicated that the consequence of exposure to terrorist attacks can extend beyond the immediate victims, with a potentially international reach. This secondary data analysis compares the perceptions of discrimination, religiosity, and religious engagement of 240 Muslim women in the UK, recruited before and after the Charlie Hebdo attacks. The results indicate greater religious engagement and perceptions of discrimination among those women recruited after the attacks. This suggests that the impact of such events may reach beyond the immediate victims, and societies need to develop and provide support in response to such attacks, regardless of the geographical location of the event.