Cross-linguistic Investigations Research Articles

Acoustic Analyses of Tone Productions in Sequencing Contexts Among Cantonese-Speaking Preschool Children With and Without Childhood Apraxia of Speech.

Pitch variations (tone productions) have been reported as a measure to differentiate Cantonese-speaking children with and without childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). This study aims to examine fundamental frequency (F0) changes within syllables and the effects of syllable structure, lexical status, and syllable positions on F0 in Cantonese-speaking preschool children with and without CAS. Six children with CAS, six children with non-CAS speech sound disorder plus language disorder (S&LD), 22 children with speech sound disorder only (SSD), and 63 children with typical speech-language development (TD) performed the tone sequencing task (TST). Growth curve analysis was employed to analyze and compare the F0 values within syllables with three Cantonese tones (high level, high rising, and low falling). The analysis considered the effects of syllable structure (vowel and consonant-vowel), lexical status (word and nonword), and syllable position (initial, medial, and final) on F0, as well as comparisons within and between groups. Within each group, the effects of syllable structure and position on F0 values were found with different patterns. Between-group comparisons showed that the CAS group had reduced F0 contrasts. The CAS group could be differentiated from the control groups based on interactions of F0 with syllable structure and position, but not lexical status. The dissimilarity of F0 values detected between the CAS and SSD/TD groups was more prominent than that observed between the CAS and S&LD groups. This study demonstrated that Cantonese-speaking children with CAS had difficulty in varying F0 within syllables as compared to those without CAS, suggesting pitch variation difficulty and language-specific impairment profiles in CAS. Future investigations of objective measures for identifying Cantonese speakers with CAS and cross-linguistic investigations using growth curve analysis and the TST are suggested.

Language-Specific Constraints on Conversation: Evidence from Danish and Norwegian.

Establishing and maintaining mutual understanding in everyday conversations is crucial. To do so, people employ a variety of conversational devices, such as backchannels, repair, and linguistic entrainment. Here, we explore whether the use of conversational devices might be influenced by cross-linguistic differences in the speakers' native language, comparing two matched languages-Danish and Norwegian-differing primarily in their sound structure, with Danish being more opaque, that is, less acoustically distinguished. Across systematically manipulated conversational contexts, we find that processes supporting mutual understanding in conversations vary with external constraints: across different contexts and, crucially, across languages. In accord with our predictions, linguistic entrainment was overall higher in Danish than in Norwegian, while backchannels and repairs presented a more nuanced pattern. These findings are compatible with the hypothesis that native speakers of Danish may compensate for its opaque sound structure by adopting a top-down strategy of building more conversational redundancy through entrainment, which also might reduce the need for repairs. These results suggest that linguistic differences might be met by systematic changes in language processing and use. This paves the way for further cross-linguistic investigations and critical assessment of the interplay between cultural and linguistic factors on the one hand and conversational dynamics on the other.

I and Thou: Universal human concepts present as words in all human languages

This paper argues that “YOU” and “I” (“I” and “THOU”) are fundamental elements of human thought, present as distinct words (or signs) in all human languages. I first developed this thesis in my 1976 article “In defense of YOU and ME” (and before that, introduced it in my 1972 book Semantic Primitives; cf. also my 2021 article “‘Semantic Primitives’, fifty years later”). Since then, it has been confirmed by wide-ranging cross-linguistic investigations conducted in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) framework. But neither the truth of this thesis nor its importance have become widely recognised in linguistics or anthropology. Influential scholars in both these fields continue to undermine the notion of the fundamental unity of humankind and to put total emphasis, instead, on the diversity of languages and cultures. As cross-linguistic investigations of the last fifty years show, however, despite the phenomenal diversity of human languages a shared “alphabet of human thoughts” was not just a figment of Leibniz’s imagination but a fitting metaphor for something real and immeasurably important. As the present article aims to show, “YOU” and “I” (“I” and “THOU”) are two twin cornerstones of this reality. To quote the entry on “Psychic unity of humankind” in the Encyclopedia of Anthropology, “Ineluctably, the idea [of a deep psychological unity of humankind] has ethical significance. For attempting to inform humans about what they are and what they have in common is not a neutral act” (Prono 2006). As the present article seeks to demonstrate (and as Martin Buber compellingly affirmed a century ago), “I” and “THOU” are an ineluctable part of who we are: how we think, how we speak and how we relate to others.

Are initial-consonant lengthening and final-vowel lengthening both universal word segmentation cues?

Speech segments are lengthened at the onsets and offsets of linguistic constituents. Final-syllable vowel lengthening is proposed to be a language-universal cue to word segmentation, but cross-linguistic investigations of the perception of initial consonant lengthening are lacking. We compared the use of word-initial consonant lengthening and word-final vowel lengthening by native speakers of English, Hungarian and Italian, using an artificial language learning task and varying vowel and consonant durations between subjects within each language group. Word-final vowel lengthening was only exploited for segmentation by English speakers; we interpret its non-universality as potentially due, at least in part, to language-specific functional loads on vowel duration, used for indicating lexical stress in Italian and vowel identity in Hungarian. By contrast, all three language groups used word-initial consonant lengthening to locate word boundaries, but did not benefit from lengthening of vowels in word-initial syllables. If domain-initial consonant timing effects are universal, it may be because they promote two related but separable processing requirements for the listener: (a) word segmentation, boosted by lengthening across the boundary; (b) lexical access, boosted by articulatory strengthening and lengthening of word onsets.

Recursive lemons: A review of Recursion across domains

Recursive lemons: A review of Recursion across domains Norbert Hornstein Recursion across domains, ed. by Luiz Amaral, Marcus Maia, Andrew Nevins, and Tom Roeper. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Pp. 404. ISBN 9781108418065. $125 (Hb).1 Some introduction I have always admired those who, given a pile of lemons, know how to make lemonade. This collection of essays is a testament to this admirable skill (one, I should add, that I lack). The lemons in this case consist of the many discussions of recursion by critics of contemporary generative grammar. The lemonade on offer is an interesting program for the crosslinguistic investigation of variation in self-embedding. In what follows, I want to survey the lemons and the lemonade. In addition, I want to briefly consider what theoretical implications the lemonade on offer might have for current syntactic theory. Before I begin, let me make a confession. I am not really the perfect reviewer for this (kind of) collection. It is chock full of careful empirical crosslinguistic investigations, many of the target languages being understudied. Unfortunately, empirical investigation is not my long suit, as many who know me will be quick to confirm. Facts usually make me itchy, and the book contains subtle descriptions of and diagnostics for many different kinds of self-embedding. It also illustrates how languages can differ in the kinds of self-embedding they allow and avoid, which forms the core of a very large and potentially interesting project. My allergies will lead me to pass lightly over many of the specific empirical findings in what follows. But my distance should not be taken for disdain. The papers are replete with fascinating details that suggest further interesting questions. My concentration on the further questions should not be understood as an invidious evaluation of the underlying careful description. This review, like Gaul, is divided into three parts. The first reviews the place of recursion within the theory of grammar, in particular Chomsky’s contention that it is the basic property of human language. This claim has generated a very (ahem) lively ‘debate’ between Noam Chomsky and Daniel Everett, the latter denying that recursion is a universal feature of language. I argue that this debate is based on an equivocation and so is largely pointless. In my opinion, the main utility of the ‘debate’ has been to highlight the distinction between two conceptions of universals, Chomsky’s mentalist conception and Joseph Greenberg’s typological one. The second part of §1 highlights the intimate connection between recursion and hierarchy in various generative approaches to [End Page 791] structure building. It is universally agreed among generative grammarians that languages are hierarchically organized in the sense of having depth as well as breadth (i.e. constituents contained within constituents within constituents). Given contemporary Merge-based bare phrase structure theories, the fact that even simple clauses are hierarchically organized leads directly to the conclusion that recursion must be a feature of any viable grammar. Section 2 discusses the project that lies at the heart of the volume. Granted that recursion is part of universal grammar (UG), do languages vary in the kinds that they tolerate? The papers catalogue some of the different kinds of recursion we find within grammars. Some also directly challenge Everett’s claims concerning the lack of recursion in Pirahã. In §3 I wrap up the discussion and consider some implications of this comparative project. I suggest that the project provides a model of how to fruitfully bridge a divide between two kinds of generative research, the mentalist and the typological. That’s the outline. Without further ado, let’s begin. 1. The lemons: recursion: what it is and how it is grammatically coded 1.1. The ‘debate’ Though I have not interviewed the editors, I suspect that the main motivation for the volume is the minimalist claim that recursion is a universal (i.e. UG) property of natural language grammars. This claim has been the center of a well-covered ‘debate’ (especially in the highbrow press, e.g. The New Yorker and Harper’s and The Chronicle of Higher Education) involving Everett and Chomsky regarding the latter...

Cross-linguistic differences in the size of the infant vowel space

This study examined the effects of linguistic environmental input on babbling in cross-linguistic investigations of vowel space. Speech samples were collected from 10- to 18-month-old infants learning Arabic (N = 31). First (F1) and second (F2) formant frequencies were identified in the selected vowels and used to calculate the compact-diffuse (F2 − F1) and grave-acute ([F2 + F1]/2) values for each vowel and the size of the vowel space was calculated for each infant’s vowel space. These vowel space statistics were compared to similar data derived from vowels produced by English-learning infants (N = 20) and French-learning infants (N = 23) as previously described in Rvachew, Mattock, Polka, and Menard (2006). It was found that Arabic infants appeared to achieve a larger vowel space at a younger age compared to the English and French infants, which we attribute to the benefit of a less crowded vowel space in Arabic input compared to English and French input. Expansion of the vowel space toward the diffuse and grave corners was common to all three language groups, but the developmental trajectories for the mean F1 and mean F2 varied with language input. These findings suggest that the development of infant babbling is influenced by a complex interaction of endogenous and exogenous processes, which include the biological development of the vocal tract and language input from the ambient environment.

Placement events in Zhuang

This study explores the linguistic encoding of placement events in Zhuang, a Tai dialect spoken in south China's Guangxi Province. Focusing on the placement verb PUT/PLACE, this paper provides a typological description of caused motion in this semantic domain. The results reveal patterns of syntactic constructions that are consistent with generalisations of placement events in cross-linguistic investigations with respect to semantic specificity of verb types, while also unveiling some language-specific features pertaining to the nature of relationship between Figure and Ground.

Book review: Kate Beeching and Ulrich Detges (eds), Discourse Functions at the Left and Right Periphery: Crosslinguistic Investigations of Language Use and Language Change

Book review: Kate Beeching and Ulrich Detges (eds), <i>Discourse Functions at the Left and Right Periphery: Crosslinguistic Investigations of Language Use and Language Change</i>

Kate Beeching &amp; Ulrich Detges: Functions at the left and right periphery: Crosslinguistic investigations of language use and language change

Article Kate Beeching & Ulrich Detges: Functions at the left and right periphery: Crosslinguistic investigations of language use and language change was published on November 1, 2015 in the journal Folia Linguistica (volume 49, issue 2).

CAN THERE BE COMMON KNOWLEDGE WITHOUT A COMMON LANGUAGE?

This essay argues that, since Kant wrote in German and since German has no word for “right” corresponding in meaning to the English word, it is a case of conceptual anglocentrism to say, as many anglophone philosophers do, that Kant reformulated the foundations of ethics by formulating them in terms of the “right” rather than the “good.” Further, the essay shows how the German word Pflicht, central to Kant's ethics, does not correspond in meaning to the English word duty, whose cultural roots lie in English Puritanism. More generally, the argument is that, ultimately, “common knowledge” is possible only to the extent to which it can be stated in words corresponding to universal human concepts — a set of which has been identified through empirical cross-linguistic investigations — rather than in words whose meanings have been shaped by a particular history and culture. Finally, the essay shows how “NSM” methodology, developed within linguistic semantics, allows us to cast new light on aspects of German culture reflected in keywords such as Ordnung, Gehorsam, Befehl, and Pflicht — terms that appear to be anchored in the legacy of Luther and Kant.

Compounding in Igala: Defining Criteria, Forms and Functions

In spite of the fact that compounding is really pervasive in the world's languages and despite the huge volume of literatures on compounding in languages including African languages, a critical assessment of the extant literature on compounding in African linguistics reveals that providing satisfactory criteria for defining compoundhood still requires both language specific and cross-linguistic investigations for dependable linguistic generalizations. In Igala, in particular, not much attention has been devoted to describing compounding. The present study therefore investigates compounding in Igala, a West Benue-Congo language spoken in north central Nigeria. Defining compoundhood and distinguishing compound words in Igala, the study shows and favours semantic criteria above phonological and syntactic considerations. Compounding generally has been found to be a highly productive word formation process in Iglala in terms of forms and functions.

Determining Compoundhood in Ígálà: From Universal to Language Specific Focus

In spite of the fact that compounding is really pervasive in the world’s languages and despite the huge volume of literatures on compounding in languages, a critical assessment of the extant literature on compounding reveals that providing satisfactory criteria for defining and or determining compoundhood still requires both language specific and cross-linguistic investigations for dependable linguistic generalizations. As it were, there are hardly any universally accepted criteria for determining compoundhood, hence the focus of reasearch is how to determine compounding across languages. In Ígálà,1 in particular, not much attention has been devoted to describing compounding. The present study therefore investigates compounding and or compound word formation in Ígálà, a West Benue-Congo language spoken in north central Nigeria. Defining compoundhood and distinguishing compound words in Ígálà, the study shows, favours semantic criteria such as unity of concept, semantic specialization, permanent aspect, and unitary representation of concept above phonological and syntactic considerations. Compounding generally has been found to be a highly productive word formation process in Ígálà in terms of forms and functions. For instance, apart from Noun + Noun nominal compounds, other compound types such as verbal as well as synthetic compounds have been attested in the language. Besides, in addition to the general function of lexical expansion through creation of new lexical categories or lexemes, compounding has been used copiously in naming concepts, particularly foreign institutions, ideas, items, objects and or concepts that were hitherto non-existent in Ígálà.

Cross-linguistic neuroimaging and dyslexia: A critical view

Recent neuro-cognitive theories of dyslexia presume that all dyslexics have the same type of brain abnormality irrespective of the particular writing system their language uses. In this article, we indicate how this presumption is inconsistent with cross-linguistic investigations of reading and dyslexia. There are two main issues. First, the information-processing requirements of reading vary greatly across different orthographies. Second, it is known that even within a single orthography there are different subtypes of dyslexia. Consequentially, it cannot be the case, not even within a single orthography let alone across orthographies, that all dyslexics have the same type of brain abnormality. Neuro-cognitive theorizing about dyslexia cannot afford to ignore these issues.

Dealing with diversity: Towards an explanation of NP-internal word order frequencies

The world's linguistic diversity is large, probably much larger than many linguists would want to admit. Dealing with this diversity is a central objective for worldwide crosslinguistic investigations. This article argues that to deal with diversity it is extremely fruitful to work with probable structures instead of possible structures, with models instead of theories, and with levels of justification instead of right or wrong. This is illustrated with the order of demonstrative, numeral, adjective, and noun within a complex noun phrase. Different NP-internal orders have strongly differing frequencies among the world's languages. Various models to capture these frequencies are proposed and compared to each other, and it will be argued that very simple models are sufficient. For example, a highly adequate model only refers to the fact that noun and adjective tend to occur together, nouns and demonstratives prefer to occur at the phrase boundary, and noun-adjective order is slightly more frequent than adjective-noun order. The same approach will also be used to model sentence word order frequencies, including areal preferences as random effects. Using such probabilistic models allows for a new take on typological explanations. In and of itself, a probabilistic model is no explanation. However, a well-fitting model instantiates a reformulation of the original phenomenon to be explained into smaller, more tractable phenomena.

Overcoming Anglocentrism in Emotion Research

Since English is not a neutral scientific language for the description of emotions (or anything else), then the key question is what (meta)language other than English can be used instead. I draw a distinction between “experiential meaning” which can only be acquired through lived experience, and “compositional meaning” which can be adequately portrayed in the mini-language of universal human concepts (NSM) developed through wide-ranging cross-linguistic investigations. The article rejects both the anglocentrism of emotion studies which take English concepts for granted and the “zoocentrism” which seeks to reduce human emotions to “mammalian responses,” behavioral patterns or neuro-physiological states. It argues that any discourse on emotions not anchored in universal human concepts is inherently ethnocentric (more often than not, anglocentric).

Scrambling effects on the processing of Japanese sentences: An fMRI study

The present study aims to confirm the cortical correlates of scrambling effects, a free word order phenomenon that has been observed in a variety of cross-linguistic investigations but whose mechanism still remains unclarified. Many syntax-oriented hypotheses on scrambling have been provided to develop the structural basis of the free word order permutation in Japanese, leading to the most recent phrasal architecture, in which the object noun phrase of a transitive sentence “moves” to a higher position than the subject to form an asymmetric structure including antecedent–gap relationships. Such a configurational structure formed by scrambling operation predicts that the scrambled sentences have a more complex structure than canonical sentences, and that the former requires a greater burden on cognitive processes in related areas within the brain. Based on this general assumption, we employed an experimental method of whole-sentence presentation of Japanese transitive sentences, for both canonical transitive sentences ( Subject–Object–Verb) and their scrambled counterparts ( Object–Subject–Verb). The result showed more activation at the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and the left dorsal prefrontal cortex (DPFC) during the comprehension of scrambled sentences than that of canonical sentences. This indicates, in accordance with previous findings on scrambling from neurolinguistic perspectives, that the scrambling in Japanese is indeed one of the grammatical operations and that the parsing strategy for the asymmetric antecedent–gap relationship demands an additional cognitive activation in the brain.

Norwegian retroflex stops in a cross linguistic perspective

In this paper, Norwegian retroflex stops are investigated through the combined use of electropalatography (EPG) and electromagnetic articulography (EMA), with extensive and detailed data from four informants. Cross linguistic investigations have shown considerable articulatory variation in retroflex consonants regarding both place of articulation and tongue configuration, making it difficult to establish common articulatory characteristics for these consonants. Through our detailed articulatory investigation, we were able to identify one characteristic only that was always present in retroflex stops in Norwegian, namely an apical articulation. Other characteristics often found in retroflexes, like a posterior place of articulation, a bending up (retroflexion) of the tongue tip, a flat tongue middle, and a forward movement of the tongue tip after the release of the stop (‘flapping out’), were found only in some contexts or in some individuals. Overall, the extensive articulatory variation in retroflexes often found in languages with relatively small inventories of coronal consonants was confirmed in our data.

Nonword Repetition and Sentence Repetition as Clinical Markers of Specific Language Impairment: The Case of Cantonese

Recent research suggests that nonword repetition (NWR) and sentence repetition (SR) tasks can be used to discriminate between children with SLI and their typically developing age-matched (TDAM) and younger (TDY) peers. Fourteen Cantonese-speaking children with SLI and 30 of their TDAM and TDY peers were compared on NWR and SR tasks. NWR of IN nonwords (CV combinations attested in the language) and OUT nonwords (CV combinations unattested in the language) were compared. SR performance was compared using 4 different scoring methods. The SLI group did not score significantly lower than the TDAM group on the test of NWR (overall results were TDAM = SLI > TDY). There were nonsignificant group differences on IN syllables but not on OUT syllables. The results do not suggest a limitation in phonological working memory in Cantonese-speaking children with SLI. The SR task discriminated between children and their TDAM peers but not between children with SLI and their TDY peers matched for mean length of utterance. SR but not NWR discriminates between children with SLI and their TDAM peers. Poorer NWR for English-speaking children with SLI might be attributable to weaker use of the redintegration strategy in word repetition. Further cross-linguistic investigations of processing strategies are required.

“Experience” in John Searle's account of the mind: Brain, mind, and Anglo culture

This paper is part of a larger study that focuses on the word experience and its semantic history (in a broad outline). My main point is that this word plays now, and has played for a long time, an extremely important role in the thought-world associated with the English language, and that the changes in its use, and in its meanings, reflect, and provide evidence for, important cultural developments. The study argues that to understand Anglo culture and to see it in a historical and comparative perspective, we need to understand the meanings and the history of the word experience , and that given the role of English in present-day science, and the importance of experience in present-day English, we need to understand the cultural underpinnings of this key English word. The word experience plays a vital role in the ways of thinking of speakers of English, and provides a prism through which they tend to interpret the world. Its range of use is very wide and includes a number of distinct senses; but there runs through several of these senses (the more recent ones) a common theme, which reflects a characteristically “Anglo” perspective on the world and on human life. This is why the word experience is often untranslatable (without distortion) into other languages, even European languages. What does the key English word experience mean, then, and how exactly does it differ from its closest counterparts in other languages or in earlier varieties of English? To answer such questions, one needs to engage in some rigorous semantic analysis, both synchronic and diachronic. This requires a suitable methodology. Such a methodology is available in “NSM semantics,” whose basic tool is the “natural semantic metalanguage” (NSM), developed over three decades or so on the basis of empirical cross-linguistic investigations.

On the properties of Emai's khi copula construction

This paper examines the equational identity (El) construction in Nigeria's Edoid language Emai. It weighs this construction's grammatical properties against a complex of equational identity patterns developed in the crosslinguistic investigations of Stassen (1997). Although EI properties reveal its functional heritage, they fail to conform fully to Stassen's findings. While EI noun phrases are sensitive to information structure and definiteness values, the construction as a whole fails to exhibit crucial features. It evinces no third person limitation, manifests limited predicational structure, and demonstrates compatibility with a restricted range of temporal categories, although not indicative tense/aspect. It is the last of these that highlights the EI construction's obligatory subjunctive marking and its non-deictic temporal character.