Is there a natural order for expressing semantic relations?

All languages rely to some extent on word order to signal relational information. Why? We address this question by exploring communicative and cognitive factors that could lead to a reliance on word order. In Study 1, adults were asked to describe scenes to another using their hands and not their mouths. The question was whether this home-made "language" would contain gesture sentences with consistent order. In addition, we asked whether reliance on order would be influenced by three communicative factors (whether the communication partner is permitted to give feedback; whether the information to be communicated is present in the context that recipient and gesturer share; whether the gesturer assumes the role of gesture receiver as well as gesture producer). We found that, not only was consistent ordering of semantic elements robust across the range of communication situations, but the same non-English order appeared in all contexts. Study 2 explored whether this non-English order is found only when a person attempts to share information with another. Adults were asked to reconstruct scenes in a non-communicative context using pictures drawn on transparencies. The adults picked up the pictures for their reconstructions in a consistent order, and that order was the same non-English order found in Study 1. Finding consistent ordering patterns in a non-communicative context suggests that word order is not driven solely by the demands of communicating information to another, but may reflect a more general property of human thought.     

Idiom comprehension deficits in relation to corpus callosum agenesis and hypoplasia in children with spina bifida meningomyelocele

Idioms are phrases with figurative meanings that are not directly derived from the literal meanings of the words in the phrase. Idiom comprehension varies with: literality, whether the idiom is literally plausible; compositionality, whether individual words contribute to a figurative meaning; and contextual bias. We studied idiom comprehension in children with spina bifida meningomyelocele (SBM), a neurodevelopmental disorder associated with problems in discourse comprehension and agenesis and hypoplasia of the corpus callosum. Compared to age peers, children with SBM understood decomposable idioms (which are processed more like literal language) but not non-decomposable idioms (which require contextual analyses for acquisition). The impairment in non-decomposable idioms was related to congenital agenesis of the corpus callosum, which suggests that the consequences of impaired interhemispheric communication, whether congenital or acquired in adulthood, are borne more by configurational than by compositional language.     

Quantity judgments and individuation: evidence that mass nouns count

Three experiments explored the semantics of the mass-count distinction in young children and adults. In Experiments 1 and 2, the quantity judgments of participants provided evidence that some mass nouns refer to individuals, as such. Participants judged one large portion of stuff to be "more" than three tiny portions for substance-mass nouns (e.g. mustard, ketchup), but chose according to number for count nouns (e.g. shoes, candles) and object-mass nouns (e.g. furniture, jewelry). These results suggest that some mass nouns quantify over individuals, and that therefore reference to individuals does not distinguish count nouns from mass nouns. Thus, Experiments 1 and 2 failed to support the hypothesis that there exist one-to-one mappings between mass-count syntax and semantics for either adults or young children. In Experiment 3, it was found that for mass-count flexible terms (e.g. string, stone) participants based quantity judgments on number when the terms were used with count syntax, but on total amount of stuff when used with mass syntax. Apparently, the presence of discrete physical objects in a scene (e.g. stones) is not sufficient to permit quantity judgments based on number. It is proposed that object-mass nouns (e.g. furniture) can be used to refer to individuals due to lexically specified grammatical features that normally occur in count syntax. Also, we suggest that children learning language parse words that refer to individuals as count nouns unless given morpho-syntactic and referential evidence to the contrary, in which case object-mass nouns are acquired.     

The bimodal bilingual brain: effects of sign language experience

Bimodal bilinguals are hearing individuals who know both a signed and a spoken language. Effects of bimodal bilingualism on behavior and brain organization are reviewed, and an fMRI investigation of the recognition of facial expressions by ASL-English bilinguals is reported. The fMRI results reveal separate effects of sign language and spoken language experience on activation patterns within the superior temporal sulcus. In addition, the strong left-lateralized activation for facial expression recognition previously observed for deaf signers was not observed for hearing signers. We conclude that both sign language experience and deafness can affect the neural organization for recognizing facial expressions, and we argue that bimodal bilinguals provide a unique window into the neurocognitive changes that occur with the acquisition of two languages.     

Action and language: Contextual action theory in counselling

Contextual action theory is presented as a conceptual framework useful for grounding the recent work in counselling and career development called Life Design. Based on the premise of the goal-directed nature of human action, this approach has links to language in theories of naive action and attribution, and theory of mind. Contextual action theory has an associated research method that has been used to generate a range of research studies that have described actions and projects in the career development and counselling domains. The link that contextual action theory provides between research and practice allows the identification of five tasks for the counselling practitioner informed by this approach.     

Big brown dog or brown big dog? An electrophysiological study of semantic constraints on prenominal adjective order

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants read and made acceptability judgments about sentences containing three types of adjective sequences: (1) normal sequences--e.g., Jennifer rode a huge gray elephant; (2) reversed sequences that violate grammatical-semantic constraints on linear order--e.g., *Jennifer rode a gray huge elephant; and (3) contradictory sequences that violate lexical-semantic constraints on compositionality--e.g., *Jennifer rode a small huge elephant. Relative to the control condition, the second adjective elicited a reduced N400 and an enhanced P600 in both the reversal condition and the contradiction condition. We present several alternative accounts of these two effects, but favor an interpretation which treats them as reflecting semantic and syntactic aspects of a temporary reanalysis of the adjective order construction. Furthermore, relative to the control condition, the final noun elicited a robust N400 in the contradiction condition but not in the reversal condition. We suggest that this effect indexes the full registration of the lexical-semantic incompatibility of the two adjectives in the contradiction condition. Finally, we discuss how all of these findings fit into the broader context of recent ERP studies that have reported atypical N400s and robust P600s in response to certain types of semantic anomalies.     

From grammatical number to exact numbers: early meanings of 'one', 'two', and 'three' in English, Russian, and Japanese

This study examined whether singular/plural marking in a language helps children learn the meanings of the words 'one,' 'two,' and 'three.' First, CHILDES data in English, Russian (which marks singular/plural), and Japanese (which does not) were compared for frequency, variability, and contexts of number-word use. Then young children in the USA, Russia, and Japan were tested on Counting and Give-N tasks. More English and Russian learners knew the meaning of each number word than Japanese learners, regardless of whether singular/plural cues appeared in the task itself (e.g., "Give two apples" vs. "Give two"). These results suggest that the learning of "one," "two" and "three" is supported by the conceptual framework of grammatical number, rather than that of integers.     

汉-英和藏-汉-英双语者中、英文语码切换及代价研究

以汉—英和藏—汉—英双语者为被试,采用真假词判断范式,探讨中文和英文语码切换及代价。结果表明:(1)汉—英和藏—汉—英双语者中文语码切换代价不显著,英文语码切换代价显著;(2)汉—英和藏—汉—英双语者中、英文词加工差异显著,但语码切换趋势相同。这表明,加工方式和策略影响语言加工,不影响语码切换;语言熟练程度影响语码切换,两种语言的相对熟练程度决定切换代价的不对称性。     

Cumulative estrogen exposure and prospective memory in older women

This study looked at cumulative lifetime estrogen exposure, as estimated with a mathematical index (Index of Cumulative Estrogen Exposure (ICEE)) that included variables (length of time on estrogen therapy, age at menarche and menopause, postmenopausal body mass index, time since menopause, nulliparity and duration of breastfeeding) known to influence estrogen levels across the life span, and performance on prospective and retrospective memory measures in a group of 50 postmenopausal women (mean age=69.3years) who, if they were current or former users of estrogen therapy, had started therapy within 5years of menopause. The ICEE was found to be a significant predictor of performance on the Prospective Memory task (F(1)=4.21, p=.046, η(p)(2)=.084). No significant relationship was noted between the ICEE and performance on measures of retrospective memory. The results suggest that the level of cumulative lifetime exposure to estrogen a woman has influences her prospective memory performance later in life and that the influence of reproductive and biological markers of endogenous estrogen exposure are relevant factors to consider when studying the effect of estrogen therapy on cognitive functioning in postmenopausal women. In addition, the finding that performance on a measure of prospective memory, but not performance on measures of retrospective memory, was associated with the ICEE adds further support to the theory that the frontal cortex may be especially sensitive to estrogen.     

Producing Pronouns and Definite Noun Phrases: Do Speakers Use the Addressee’s Discourse Model?

We report two experiments that investigated the widely held assumption that speakers use the addressee's discourse model when choosing referring expressions (e.g., Ariel, 1990; Chafe, 1994; Givón, 1983; Prince, 1985), by manipulating whether the addressee could hear the immediately preceding linguistic context. Experiment 1 showed that speakers increased pronoun use (and decreased noun phrase use) when the referent was mentioned in the immediately preceding sentence compared to when it was not, even though the addressee did not hear the preceding sentence, indicating that speakers used their own, privileged discourse model when choosing referring expressions. The same pattern of results was found in Experiment 2. Speakers produced more pronouns when the immediately preceding sentence mentioned the referent than when it mentioned a referential competitor, regardless of whether the sentence was shared with their addressee. Thus, we conclude that choice of referring expression is determined by the referent's accessibility in the speaker's own discourse model rather than the addressee's.