Cross-linguistic Differences Research Articles

Exploring the conceptualisation of locative events in French, English, and Dutch: Insights from eye-tracking on two memorisation tasks

Abstract The present study addresses the influence of language on the conceptualisation of locative events (e.g., the bottle on the table) in French, English, and Dutch which differ greatly in their habitual encoding of locative events. Dutch obligatorily expresses the disposition of the Figure (viz. the bottle) via a Cardinal Posture Verb (CPV) like liggen ‘lie’, staan ‘stand’, or zitten ‘sit’. In French, the preferred locative marker is the neutral copula être ‘be’ which leaves dispositional nuances habitually unexpressed. English straddles the middle: while the neutral copula be is usually preferred, the CPVs are sometimes found because of diachronic reasons. Our study assesses the potential repercussions of these cross-linguistic differences on the perception of locative events via a recognition task involving eye-tracking and is run in a non-verbal and a verbal condition. Our findings show that, irrespective of the condition, recognition performance is affected by the linguistic preferences, which confirms the permanent effect of language on thought even beyond verbal contexts. The analysis of eye-movements corroborates this finding: depending on their language, the participants attend to the stimuli differently. In the verbal condition, language is used as a strategic tool to enhance memorisation and the participants’ eye-movements still reflect cross-linguistic differences.

A table named James or a table named Maya?

Abstract In French, the noun apple (la pomme) is grammatically feminine, in German (der Apfel) it is masculine. Does this entail that French speakers perceive apples to be feminine whereas German speakers attribute masculine characteristics to them? Various studies suggest that grammatical gender does indeed influence object perception (Haertlé 2017; Boroditsky & Schmidt 2000), although findings are not always replicated (Bender et al. 2011). The current study investigates this phenomenon for Polish, an understudied language in this domain, and German, a language for which contradictory results have been obtained. We investigated whether Polish (N = 21) and German (N = 27) speakers follow the grammatical gender of an object when providing a first name for it (e.g. James or Maya). Results suggest that while Polish speakers provided names that were in accordance with the object’s grammatical gender, German speakers did not. Cross-linguistic differences between these two languages (regarding noun transparency) may explain these findings.

The social basis of referential communication: Speakers construct physical reference based on listeners' expected visual search.

A foundational assumption of human communication is that speakers should say as much as necessary, but no more. Yet, people routinely produce redundant adjectives and their propensity to do so varies cross-linguistically. Here, we propose a computational theory, whereby speakers create referential expressions designed to facilitate listeners' reference resolution, as they process words in real time. We present a computational model of our account, the Incremental Collaborative Efficiency (ICE) model, which generates referential expressions by considering listeners' real-time incremental processing and reference identification. We apply the ICE framework to physical reference, showing that listeners construct expressions designed to minimize listeners' expected visual search effort during online language processing. Our model captures a number of known effects in the literature, including cross-linguistic differences in speakers' propensity to over-specify. Moreover, the ICE model predicts graded acceptability judgments with quantitative accuracy, systematically outperforming an alternative, brevity-based model. Our findings suggest that physical reference production is best understood as driven by a collaborative goal to help the listener identify the intended referent, rather than by an egocentric effort to minimize utterance length. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Entropy convergence in early bilinguals' syntactic packaging.

A core question in developmental and cognitive research concerns the way linguistic variation affects the acquisition process. Previous research on monolinguals suggests that children, but not adults, tend to regularize inconsistent input, resulting in reduced variation. Some recent claims explain regularization as a general bias linked to cognitive load. However, little is known about bilingual acquisition contexts where children naturally experience both increased variability and cognitive load. This study investigated the impact of between- and within-language variability in syntactic packaging (i.e., how semantic elements are mapped onto syntactic units) on simultaneous bilinguals’ acquisition of motion event encoding. In this domain, French is considered highly variable, in contrast to low variability demonstrated by English. Based on this crosslinguistic contrast, 96 English–French bilingual children (aged 4–11 years) and 96 age-matched monolinguals of each language described 32 animated cartoons showing complex motion events. Children’s variability of selected syntactic patterns was measured using the information-theoretical concept of entropy. Results indicated that bilingual children significantly reduced syntactic variation relative to monolingual peers, but only in French, the more variable language. Moreover, bilingual children converged in entropy levels across the two languages and patterned mid-way between respective monolinguals. These findings suggest that the cognitive load inherent in bilingualism is not sufficient to explain reduced linguistic variation. Instead, the asymmetric drop in entropy highlights the strong impact of crosslinguistic differences and thus underlines the importance of taking language-specific factors into account in theories of cognitive load.

The role of crosslinguistic morphological congruency and L2 proficiency in the L3 acquisition of English plural marking

ABSTRACT Plural marking differs across languages. Some must mark plurality using an overt morpheme (e.g. English, Russian), while others mark it optionally (e.g. Korean) or lack an explicit plural morpheme (e.g. Chinese). This crosslinguistic difference in plural marking has received much attention in research exploring language transfer in the context of L2 acquisition, but little in the context of L3 acquisition. This study tests the effects of L1 and L2 knowledge on L3 acquisition with two groups of multilingual children (n = 68; 11–13 years old) with different L1s (Chinese or Russian) but the same L2 (Korean) and L3 (English). We also investigated whether L2 proficiency modulates influence of the previously learned language in L3 acquisition. The participants completed a timed acceptability judgment designed to investigate their knowledge of English plural marking. Results showed that the L1-Russian children were better able to distinguish between felicitous and infelicitous plural marking than the L1-Chinese children. In addition, the L1-Chinese children showed poorer performance as their L2 proficiency increased. The study discusses these results in light of theoretical approaches to L3 acquisition.

The formal heterogeneity of allocutivity

Despite recent growth in formal work on allocutive marking, little work to date has considered the nature of cross-linguistic differences in the syntax of allocutive varieties, and what relationships, if any, exist among them. This paper summarizes recent formal results describing four kinds of variation across allocutive languages: (i) variable root-sensitivity; (ii) variation in allocutive morpheme placement; (iii) differences in allocutive morpheme type; and (iv) variation in interactions with clause typing and complementizers. We propose that the sole formal property unifying allocutive varieties is exponence of addressee features licensed by a silent Addressee DP. We further propose that variation in the properties of allocutive morphemes considered here reflect four principal loci of variation: (i) the position in which the silent Addressee DP may participate in allocutivity; (ii) the variable presence of a projection introducing an allocutive pronoun; (iii) the variable non-silence of a bound allocutive pronoun and/or the head introducing the Addressee DP; and (iv) agreement with other C-field heads. The analysis suggests that allocutivity involves greater formal heterogeneity than has been described previously in the literature. Principal aspects of cross-linguistic variation nevertheless can be modeled in terms of a limited set of formal options elsewhere motivated.

Complexity vs. salience of alternatives in implicature: A cross-linguistic investigation

Scalar implicature depends on the activation of alternatives. For instance, in English, finger implicates 'not thumb', suggesting that thumb is an activated alternative. Is this because it is more specific (Quantity) and equally short (Manner)? Indeed, toe doesn't imply 'not big toe', perhaps because big toe is longer. As L. Horn points out, this Quantity/Manner explanation predicts that if English had the simplex Latin word pollex meaning 'thumb or big toe', then the asymmetry would disappear. But would it suffice for that word to exist in the language, or would the word also have to be sufficiently salient? We explore this question in four languages that are sometimes said to lack a single-word alternative for thumb: Spanish (which does have pulgar 'thumb or big toe' (< pollex), though it is a non-colloquial form), Russian, Persian, and Arabic. To gauge the salience of various ways of describing digits, we use a fill-in-the-blank production task. We then measure the availability of implicatures using a forced choice comprehension task. We find cross-linguistic differences in implicature, and moreover that implicature calculation tracks production probabilities more closely than structural complexity of the alternatives. A comparison between two Rational Speech Act models—one in which the speaker replicates our production data and a standard one in which the speaker chooses based on a standard cost/accuracy trade-off—shows that comprehension is more closely tied to production probability than to the complexity of alternatives. 

Effects of English Proficiency on Caucasian Face Gender Perception by Chinese-English Bilinguals: Evidence from ERP

Chinese and English differ in the encoding of biological gender in the spoken forms of 3rd person singular pronouns. Linguistic relativity theories predict that structural differences across languages are accompanied with differences in non-linguistic cognition. However, the pronoun difference between the two languages seems so trivial that its influence on gender perception is unbelievable except with empirical support. The present study conducted an ERP experiment with native speakers of Chinese learning English as a foreign language and differing in English proficiency. The odd-ball paradigm was used to examine whether L2 proficiency would influence how these Chinese-English bilinguals perform on Caucasian face gender perception. The experiment yielded null effect of L2 proficiency on the vMMN that was elicited for the gender category, as well as the control age category. The results suggest that the difference in the pronoun encoding of biological gender between Chinese and English may not influence gender perception in the nonlinguistic context, although it is not surprising considering the triviality of such cross-linguistic difference and the widespread gender binary opposition in daily life.

The heritability of vocal tract structures estimated from structural MRI in a large cohort of Dutch twins

While language is expressed in multiple modalities, including sign, writing, or whistles, speech is arguably the most common. The human vocal tract is capable of producing the bewildering diversity of the 7000 or so currently spoken languages, but relatively little is known about its genetic bases, especially in what concerns normal variation. Here, we capitalize on five cohorts totaling 632 Dutch twins with structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data. Two raters placed clearly defined (semi)landmarks on each MRI scan, from which we derived 146 measures capturing the dimensions and shape of various vocal tract structures, but also aspects of the head and face. We used Genetic Covariance Structure Modeling to estimate the additive genetic, common environmental or non-additive genetic, and unique environmental components, while controlling for various confounds and for any systematic differences between the two raters. We found high heritability, h2, for aspects of the skull and face, the mandible, the anteroposterior (horizontal) dimension of the vocal tract, and the position of the hyoid bone. These findings extend the existing literature, and open new perspectives for understanding the complex interplay between genetics, environment, and culture that shape our vocal tracts, and which may help explain cross-linguistic differences in phonetics and phonology.

Exploring the Positional Effects in Sound Symbolism: The Case of Hardness Judgments by English and Japanese Speakers

Sound symbolism refers to the systematic and iconic relationships between sounds and meanings. While the research on this topic is growing rapidly, one issue that is understudied in the literature is whether segments in psycholinguistically salient positions (e.g., word-initial position) exhibit stronger sound–symbolic effects. We report two experiments that, together, show Japanese speakers are more sensitive to the sound–symbolic values of segments in initial syllables, whereas English speakers, rather surprisingly, are more sensitive to the sound–symbolic values of segments in final syllables. This cross-linguistic difference is intriguing, and we believe it opens up opportunities for future experimentation.

English and Mandarin native speakers’ cue-weighting of lexical stress: Results from MMN and LDN

Past research on how listeners weight stress cues such as pitch, duration and intensity has reported two inconsistent patternss: listeners’ weighting conforms to 1) their native language experience (e.g., language rhythmicity, lexical tone), and 2) a general “iambic-trochaic law” (ITL), favouring innate sound groupings in cue perception. This study aims to tease apart the above effects by investigating the weighting of pitch, duration and intensity cues in stress-timed (Australian English) and non-stress-timed and tonal (Taiwan Mandarin) language speaking adults using a mismatch negativity (MMN) multi-feature paradigm. Results show effects that can be explained by language-specific rhythmic influence, but only partially by the ITL. Moreover, these findings revealed cross-linguistic differences indexed by both MMN and late discriminative negativity (LDN) responses at cue and syllable position levels, and thus call for more sophisticated perspectives for existing cue-weighting models.

The Potential of Immersive Virtual Reality for the Study of Event Perception

In everyday life, we actively engage in different activities from a first-person perspective. However, experimental psychological research in the field of event perception is often limited to relatively passive, third-person computer-based paradigms. In the present study, we tested the feasibility of using immersive virtual reality in combination with eye tracking with participants in active motion. Behavioral research has shown that speakers of aspectual and non-aspectual languages attend to goals (endpoints) in motion events differently, with speakers of non-aspectual languages showing relatively more attention to goals (endpoint bias). In the current study, native speakers of German (non-aspectual) and English (aspectual) walked on a treadmill across 3-D terrains in VR, while their eye gaze was continuously tracked. Participants encountered landmark objects on the side of the road, and potential endpoint objects at the end of it. Using growth curve analysis to analyze fixation patterns over time, we found no differences in eye gaze behavior between German and English speakers. This absence of cross-linguistic differences was also observed in behavioral tasks with the same participants. Methodologically, based on the quality of the data, we conclude that our dynamic eye-tracking setup can be reliably used to study what people look at while moving through rich and dynamic environments that resemble the real world.

Interpretation of Mandarin pronouns and reflexives by L1-Korean and L1-English learners of Mandarin

This study investigates (1) whether second language learners (L2ers) acquire the Mandarin system of pronouns and reflexives despite differences from their first languages (L1s) and (2) whether L1-English and L1-Korean L2ers differ due to L1-transfer. Unlike English, Mandarin and Korean allow long-distance (LD) reflexives. While himself/ herself and the Mandarin equivalent taziji both require local readings, Mandarin ziji ‘self’ allows both local and LD readings. In Korean, caki and casin allow LD readings while caki-casin requires local readings. For pronouns, English him/ her and Mandarin ta both disallow local readings while Korean ku/ kunye allows them. These cross-linguistic differences lead to different transfer-based predictions for L1-Korean and L1-English L2-Mandarin learners. Sixty-two Mandarin native speakers, 42 L1-Korean L2ers, and 32 L1-English L2ers completed a picture-based Truth Value Judgment Task and a Mandarin proficiency test. Results show that proficiency-matched L2ers from both L1s predominantly allowed only local readings of ziji, suggesting that the local reading is the default option, and that Korean speakers do not transfer the properties of Korean simplex reflexives onto ziji, possibly because LD ziji is logophoric, while caki is not. Regarding ta, L1-Korean L2ers under-accepted LD readings and over-accepted local readings, a result that can be attributed to transfer, per Kim’s analysis that Rule I, posited by Grodzinsky and Reinhart, that regulates the distribution of pronouns is weak or absent in Korean.

Cross-linguistic differences in the associations between morphological awareness and reading in Spanish and English in young simultaneous bilinguals

ABSTRACT This study aimed to clarify the relations between morphological awareness and literacy skills in Spanish and English in young simultaneous bilingual learners. Guided by theoretical perspectives on the associations between morphological awareness and word- versus sentence-level literacy skills, and their transfer between bilinguals’ two languages, we asked bilingual children (N = 90; M = 8.07 years old) to complete dual-language literacy assessments. First, we observed cross-linguistic differences in the associations between morphology and reading. In English, morphological awareness was directly related to word reading and reading comprehension, whereas in Spanish, the association with reading comprehension was fully mediated by vocabulary and single word reading. Second, we observed cross-linguistic associations from English word reading to Spanish reading comprehension, and from Spanish reading comprehension to English reading comprehension. Our findings inform bilingual literacy theory by revealing both cross-linguistic differences and bidirectional associations between literacy skills across typologically-distinct orthographies. In particular, children’s word-level skills transferred from the language of schooling (English) into their heritage language (Spanish), and their broader reading comprehension skills transferred from the heritage language to support English. Taken together, these findings support the value of bilingual heritage language maintenance for reading achievement in children’s dominant language of literacy instruction.

Cross-linguistic differences in case marking shape neural power dynamics and gaze behavior during sentence planning

Languages differ in how they mark the dependencies between verbs and arguments, e.g., by case. An eye tracking and EEG picture description study examined the influence of case marking on the time course of sentence planning in Basque and Swiss German. While German assigns an unmarked (nominative) case to subjects, Basque specifically marks agent arguments through ergative case. Fixations to agents and event-related synchronization (ERS) in the theta and alpha frequency bands, as well as desynchronization (ERD) in the alpha and beta bands revealed multiple effects of case marking on the time course of early sentence planning. Speakers decided on case marking under planning early when preparing sentences with ergative-marked agents in Basque, whereas sentences with unmarked agents allowed delaying structural commitment across languages. These findings support hierarchically incremental accounts of sentence planning and highlight how cross-linguistic differences shape the neural dynamics underpinning language use.

Prosodic Skills and Reading Acquisition in Spanish Primary School Children: Analysis Using the PEPS-C Test.

Although previous studies have considered the relationship between prosody skills and the acquisition of reading skills, few have performed comprehensive, simultaneous assessments of different oral language prosody skills and, to our knowledge, none have been carried out in Spanish. Our study analyses the relationship between prosody and reading skills. Sixty-one second-grade Spanish schoolchildren participated in this study. Prosodic skills were assessed using the Spanish version of the Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech-Communication battery, available in different languages. Reading comprehension, word/non-word reading skills, phonological awareness and vocabulary were also evaluated. The results show that prosody was significantly related to word and non-word reading, but phonological awareness was the only significant predictor of these reading outcomes. Prosodic skills contribute to explaining reading comprehension even after controlling for the effect of vocabulary and phonological awareness. The results highlight the role of prosodic skills in reading acquisition in Spanish. Comparison with previous studies in English-language populations demonstrates the existence of cross-linguistic differences.

Speed of velum movement during nasal segments and rest intervals: A cineradiographic study of French and English speech

While opening/closing of the velopharyngeal port (VPP) in speech has been much studied, the speed of these movements has been largely overlooked. The present study compares opening/closing velocities of the VPP in French and English, testing relation to distance traveled and speech-related versus physiological movements. Running speech samples from nine Quebecois French speakers and four Canadian English speakers were obtained from the Université Laval X-ray videofluorography database [Munhall et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 98(2), 1222–1224 (1995)]. Using ImageJ software, we tracked VPP opening/closing movements during two types of events: phonologically nasal segments and rest intervals between chunks of speech. We calculated velocity of VPP opening/closing during these events and analyzed the data using linear mixed-effects models to identify differences between the nasals and rest intervals as well as for any cross-linguistic differences. Results indicated that: (1) VPP closure was faster following English nasals than French nasals; (2) VPP opening was faster than closure for rest intervals in French; and (3) VPP opening/closing speeds were faster coming into/out of rest position than into/out of nasals in French. Preliminary cross-language observations support a correspondence between velocity and distance. [Work supported by NIH and NSERC.]

A cross-linguistic comparison of the propositional content of laughter in American English and Central Thai

Abstract Research suggests that laughter can serve several communicative functions beyond indicating mirth, and as such, may hold propositional meaning. The present study analyzes cross-linguistic differences in the propositional content of laughter in American English and Central Thai television shows. A framework for classifying laughter by propositional content was first developed by drawing on existing literature and bottom-up analysis of the laughter found in American English and Thai shows. The framework includes categories of positive valency, negative valency, and humor, along with subcategories of disbelief, support, expressive, and pride. A multi-modal corpus of laughter was then created by compiling all laughter instances in the first 100 min of three American English television shows and three Thai television shows. The meanings of all 848 laughter instances in the corpus were categorized by propositional content of laughter. Results show that humor laughter and negative-support laughter are more frequent in American English, and positive-support laughter and negative-pride laughter are more frequent in Central Thai. These findings provide further evidence that laughter contains propositional content because they indicate that laughter use is subject to cross-linguistic variation that aligns with existing linguistic patterns and cultural values.

Do typological differences in the expression of causality influence preschool children’s causal event construal?

AbstractThis study investigated whether cross-linguistic differences in causal expressions influence the mapping of causal language on causal events in three- to four-year-old Swiss-German learners and Turkish learners. In Swiss-German, causality is mainly expressed syntactically with lexical causatives (e.g.,ässe‘to eat’ vs.füettere‘to feed’). In Turkish, causality is expressed both syntactically and morphologically – with a verbal suffix (e.g.,yemek‘to eat’ vs.yeDIRmek‘to feed’). Moreover, unlike Swiss-German, Turkish allows argument ellipsis (e.g., ‘The mother feeds [∅]’). Here, we used pseudo-verbs to test whether and how well Swiss-German-learning children inferred a causal meaning from lexical causatives compared to Turkish-learning children tested in three conditions: lexical causatives, morphological causatives, and morphological causatives with object ellipsis. Swiss-German-learning children and Turkish-learning children in all three conditions reliably inferred causal meanings, and did so to a similar extent. The findings suggest that, as young as age 3, children learning two different languages similarly make use of language-specific causality cues (syntactic and morphological alike) to infer causal meanings.

Identifying the Correlations Between the Semantics and the Phonology of American Sign Language and British Sign Language: A Vector Space Approach.

Over the history of research on sign languages, much scholarship has highlighted the pervasive presence of signs whose forms relate to their meaning in a non-arbitrary way. The presence of these forms suggests that sign language vocabularies are shaped, at least in part, by a pressure toward maintaining a link between form and meaning in wordforms. We use a vector space approach to test the ways this pressure might shape sign language vocabularies, examining how non-arbitrary forms are distributed within the lexicons of two unrelated sign languages. Vector space models situate the representations of words in a multi-dimensional space where the distance between words indexes their relatedness in meaning. Using phonological information from the vocabularies of American Sign Language (ASL) and British Sign Language (BSL), we tested whether increased similarity between the semantic representations of signs corresponds to increased phonological similarity. The results of the computational analysis showed a significant positive relationship between phonological form and semantic meaning for both sign languages, which was strongest when the sign language lexicons were organized into clusters of semantically related signs. The analysis also revealed variation in the strength of patterns across the form-meaning relationships seen between phonological parameters within each sign language, as well as between the two languages. This shows that while the connection between form and meaning is not entirely language specific, there are cross-linguistic differences in how these mappings are realized for signs in each language, suggesting that arbitrariness as well as cognitive or cultural influences may play a role in how these patterns are realized. The results of this analysis not only contribute to our understanding of the distribution of non-arbitrariness in sign language lexicons, but also demonstrate a new way that computational modeling can be harnessed in lexicon-wide investigations of sign languages.