Language Production Processes Research Articles

EXPRESS: Aging of lexical access in Chinese spoken word production: A picture-word interference study.

It remains unknown how language production processes decline with age. Using a picture-word interference task, the aim of this study was to investigate the influence of aging on lexical access, and the contributions of language-specific and domain-general factors to semantic, phonological, and orthographic effects in Chinese spoken word production. After controlling for years of education, language comprehension, and domain-general cognitive abilities, we found a larger semantic interference effect for older speakers than for younger speakers, while the phonological effect and orthographic effect were comparable for the two age groups, supporting the transmission deficit hypothesis. Furthermore, discourse comprehension and general cognitive abilities were found to contribute to the phonological effect in older adults, but not in younger adults. Our findings indicate that both language-specific factors and domain-general factors contribute to the aging of spoken word production together.

Deliberate synchronization of speech and gesture: effects of neurodiversity and development

Abstract The production of speech and gesture is exquisitely temporally coordinated. In autistic individuals, speech-gesture synchrony during spontaneous discourse is disrupted. To evaluate whether this asynchrony reflects motor coordination versus language production processes, the current study examined deliberately performed hand movements during speech in youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) compared to neurotypical youth. Neurotypical adult performance provided a mature baseline. Participants read aloud rhythmic nursery rhymes, while producing a beat-like hand movement. An automated pixel-change video measure identified kinematic peaks; using smoothed acoustic envelope analyses, we identified peaks in speech. Results indicated few diagnostic group differences in explicit speech-movement coordination, although adolescent performance differed from adults. Adults demonstrated higher tempo and greater rhythmicity in their coordination; this group difference suggests that the method is sufficiently subtle to reveal individual differences and that this form of complex coordination undergoes ongoing maturation beyond adolescence. The sample is small, and thus results are necessarily preliminary. In the context of prior speech-gesture coordination studies, these findings of intact synchrony are consistent with the hypothesis that it is the demands of discourse planning, rather than motor coordination, that have led to prior findings of asynchrony during spontaneous speech; this possibility awaits future research.

Empowering sign language communication: Integrating sentiment and semantics for facial expression synthesis

Translating written sentences from oral languages to a sequence of manual and non-manual gestures plays a crucial role in building a more inclusive society for deaf and hard-of-hearing people. Facial expressions (non-manual), in particular, are responsible for encoding the grammar of the sentence to be spoken, applying punctuation, pronouns, or emphasizing signs. These non-manual gestures are closely related to the semantics of the sentence being spoken and also to the utterance of the speaker’s emotions. However, most Sign Language Production (SLP) approaches are centered on synthesizing manual gestures and do not focus on modeling the speaker’s expression. This paper introduces a new method focused in synthesizing facial expressions for sign language. Our goal is to improve sign language production by integrating sentiment information in facial expression generation. The approach leverages a sentence’s sentiment and semantic features to sample from a meaningful representation space, integrating the bias of the non-manual components into the sign language production process. To evaluate our method, we extend the Fréchet gesture distance (FGD) and propose a new metric called Fréchet Expression Distance (FED) and apply an extensive set of metrics to assess the quality of specific regions of the face. The experimental results showed that our method achieved state of the art, being superior to the competitors on How2Sign and PHOENIX14T datasets. Moreover, our architecture is based on a carefully designed graph pyramid that makes it simpler, easier to train, and capable of leveraging emotions to produce facial expressions. Our code and pretrained models will be available at: https://github.com/verlab/empowering-sign-language.

Engineering conversation: Understanding the control requirements of language production in monologue and dialogue

Both artificial and biological systems are faced with the challenge of noisy and uncertain estimation of the state of the world, in contexts where feedback is often delayed. This challenge also applies to the processes of language production and comprehension, both when they take place in isolation (e.g., in monologue or solo reading) and when they are combined as is the case in dialogue. Crucially, we argue, dialogue brings with it some unique challenges. In this paper, we describe three such challenges within the general framework of control theory, drawing analogies to mechanical and biological systems where possible: (1) the need to distinguish between self- and other-generated utterances; (2) the need to adjust the amount of advance planning (i.e., the degree to which planning precedes articulation) flexibly to achieve timely turn-taking; (3) the need to track changing conversational goals. We show that message-to-sound models of language production (i.e., those that cover the whole process from message generation to articulation) tend to implement fairly simple control architectures. However, we argue that more sophisticated control architectures are necessary to build language production models that can account for both monologue and dialogue.

Memory, language, and subjectivity: cure in analysis as a work of remembering, narrative production and elaboration of a subjective position

This article aims to analyze some of the ways in which, in Freudian-based psychoanalysis, the processes of subjectivation are irremediably related to an articulation between memory and language. To this end, we chose the idea of "healing" in psychoanalysis as a guiding thread for our analyses, as we believe we can find, in the symptom's healing process, the emergence of the articulation between memory, language, and subjectivity production processes in a very elucidative manner. To operationalize this work, we conducted systematic theoretical reviews and sought to weave relations between concepts coined at different moments of Freud's theoretical production, aiming to outline his conception of memory and how it relates to subjectivity and language. Our analytical journey shows that, although Freud did not explicitly formulate a theory on how language fundamentally operates in the constitution of subjectivity, all the elements for such a reading are present in his work. From Freud onwards, healing in analysis will be a process of producing singular modalities of subjectivity. This is because the entire process of healing in psychoanalysis requires a subjective rectification of the individual in relation to their symptom, and this rectification is only possible insofar as there is a fundamental relationship between memory and language.

Exploration on the Influence of Bilingualism on Language Production

The ability to speak two languages has a significant impact on language production, cognitive function, linguistic aptitude and neurological processes. This study explores the acquisition of bilingualism, its influence on cognition and language development as well as neurobiological implications in comparison with monolingual speech. Bilingual individuals demonstrate improved executive functioning abilities such as flexibility while exhibiting deferred decline through regularly switching between both languages spoken. Linguistic proficiency is affected by ecological factors like age at which learning began or attitudes towards multilingual states that affect usage frequency across differing environments. Although word retrieval can become an impediment for those who are bilingual; however advantages lie in increased vocabulary range alongside metalinguistic awareness gained from diverse communication scenarios. The structure of brain regions linked to processing multilinguality also correlate intrinsically during decision making. The future research direction benefits studying cross-cultural creative expression impacting effective simultaneous use .Enhancing appreciation amongst speakers via comprehension urges us further into grasping influences behind producing multicultural forms essential within our modern day society.

Analysis of Anti-Upset Utterances by Netizens on Social Media: A Case Study of Comments in the Video Column of the Song “Lara” by Dialog Senja on Youtube (A Psycholinguistics Study)

A person's psychological condition affects the process of language production as a means of communication in expressing themselves. This qualitative descriptive research aims to describe netizens’s anti-upset speech due to heartbreak, love triangles, and love does not reach the comments of the Dialog Senja song entitled "Lara". The research data is an anti-upset speech contained in the comments written on the you tube channel of the band Dialog Senja on the song entitled "Lara", obtained by listening techniques. The research data were analyzed in an analytical descriptive manner according to the problems studied using a psycholinguistics approach. The results showed that anti-upset speech used by netizens to express anti-upset feelings was in the form of words, clauses, and sentences. Words used to express anti-upset feelings, for example, jangan, and ayo. Frasa is used to express anti-upset feelings, such as moving on. Clauses used to express anti-upset feelings, for example, Emang gue pikirin. As for the sentence used to express anti-upset feelings, for example, Dia memang bukan jodoh saya.

Predictive language processing: integrating comprehension and production, and what atypical populations can tell us.

Predictive processing, a crucial aspect of human cognition, is also relevant for language comprehension. In everyday situations, we exploit various sources of information to anticipate and therefore facilitate processing of upcoming linguistic input. In the literature, there are a variety of models that aim at accounting for such ability. One group of models propose a strict relationship between prediction and language production mechanisms. In this review, we first introduce very briefly the concept of predictive processing during language comprehension. Secondly, we focus on models that attribute a prominent role to language production and sensorimotor processing in language prediction ("prediction-by-production" models). Contextually, we provide a summary of studies that investigated the role of speech production and auditory perception on language comprehension/prediction tasks in healthy, typical participants. Then, we provide an overview of the limited existing literature on specific atypical/clinical populations that may represent suitable testing ground for such models-i.e., populations with impaired speech production and auditory perception mechanisms. Ultimately, we suggest a more widely and in-depth testing of prediction-by-production accounts, and the involvement of atypical populations both for model testing and as targets for possible novel speech/language treatment approaches.

Simon Fraser University Speech Error Database (SFUSED) Cantonese: Methods, design, and usage

The Simon Fraser University Speech Error Database (SFUSED) is a multi-purpose database of speech errors based in audio recordings. The motivation for SFUSED Cantonese, a component of this database, is to create a linguistically rich data set for exploring language production processes in Cantonese, an under-studied language. We describe in detail the methods used to collect, analyze, and explore the database, including details of team workflows, time budgets, data quality, and explicit linguistic and processing assumptions. In addition to showing how to use the database, this account supports future research with a template for investigating additional under-studied languages, and it gives fresh perspective on the benefits and drawbacks of collecting speech error data from spontaneous speech. All of the data and supporting materials are available as open access data sets.

A comparative study on the effects of peer influence on willingness to communicate in speaking activities in online and face-to-face EFL lessons

The purpose of the study is to investigate whether English as a foreign language (EFL) learners are more willing to communicate and study with the same partners or different partners in speaking activities in pairs or small groups and to determine whether there are similarities or differences in learners’ views regarding the same and different partners according to different learning environments (face-to-face and online). A qualitative research design was adopted in the study. The participants were EFL learners at the School of Foreign Languages (SFL) of a state university in Izmir, Turkey. The participants were divided into two groups. The first group (FF) included 20 students who took face-to-face education and the second group (OL) consisted of 20 students who took online education. The qualitative data were collected from both groups by means of a structured written interview form. The results revealed two main themes (1-Feelings, 2- English language production process) and ten sub-themes (1a- positive feelings, 1b- negative feelings, 1c- both positive and negative feelings, 2a- developing intimacy, 2b- collaboration and ease of communication, 2c- insufficiency of English language production, 2d-increase of knowledge, 2e-use of speaking skills, 2f- insufficiency of socialization and interaction, 2g- challenges of online education). The study compares both groups with respect to the above themes and subthemes and discusses implications for the teaching of English.

Exploring the Influence of the Environment on Students’ Second Language Acquisition: A Comprehensive Psycholinguistic Study

Al-Maliki 2 Sukodono Islamic Boarding School employs a distinctive approach by implementing a bilingual education system using both English and Arabic languages. However, in this regard, there are several obstacles, namely lack of students’ enthusiasm, inconsistency, lack of interest and family support, as well as limited facilities. Therefore, to address these issues, a concept is introduced that every student who wishes to become a member of that community is required to use the same language, either English or Indonesian. Furthermore, the reserach aims to demonstrate various types of motivation that can be employed by educators, institutions, and parents. Al-Maliki 2 Sukodono Islamic Boarding School implements bilingual education, incorporating both English and Arabic for communication. However, throughout this process, several barriers hinder the students, such as a lack of interest in foreign languages and inadequate support from families with no foreign language background. This research explores the process of acquiring English as a second language for students and emphasizes the significance of the environment in second language learning. Data can be collected through speaking or writing tasks, where participants are asked to generate specific language. This aids in understanding the language production process, planning, and decision-making involved in selecting words and sentence structures. The findings of this research are expected to assist schools and non-formal institutions as organizers in identifying motivational approaches that can be applied to students in English language learning. Ultimately, this can lead to improved quantity and quality of students’ English language proficiency, fulfilling Indonesia’s workforce demands.

Noun Sequence Statistics Affect Serial Recall and Order Recognition Memory.

Most theories of verbal working memory recognize that language comprehension and production processes play a role in word memory for familiar sequences, but not for novel lists of nouns. Some language emergent theories propose that language processes can support verbal working memory even for novel sequences. Through corpus analyses, we identify sequences of two nouns that resemble patterns in natural language, even though the sequences are novel. We present 2 experiments demonstrating better recall in college students for these novel sequences over the same words in reverse order. In a third experiment, we demonstrate better recognition of the order of these sequences over a longer time scale. These results suggest verbal working memory and recognition of order over a delay are influenced by language knowledge processes, even for novel memoranda that approximate noun lists typically employed in memory experiments.

Beyond speaking: neurocognitive perspectives on language production in social interaction.

The human faculty to speak has evolved, so has been argued, for communicating with others and for engaging in social interactions. Hence the human cognitive system should be equipped to address the demands that social interaction places on the language production system. These demands include the need to coordinate speaking with listening, the need to integrate own (verbal) actions with the interlocutor's actions, and the need to adapt language flexibly to the interlocutor and the social context. In order to meet these demands, core processes of language production are supported by cognitive processes that enable interpersonal coordination and social cognition. To fully understand the cognitive architecture and its neural implementation enabling humans to speak in social interaction, our understanding of how humans produce language needs to be connected to our understanding of how humans gain insights into other people's mental states and coordinate in social interaction. This article reviews theories and neurocognitive experiments that make this connection and can contribute to advancing our understanding of speaking in social interaction. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Face2face: advancing the science of social interaction'.

Presurgical Language Mapping: What Are We Testing?

Gliomas are brain tumors infiltrating healthy cortical and subcortical areas that may host cognitive functions, such as language. If these areas are damaged during surgery, the patient might develop word retrieval or articulation problems. For this reason, many glioma patients are operated on awake, while their language functions are tested. For this practice, quite simple tests are used, for example, picture naming. This paper describes the process and timeline of picture naming (noun retrieval) and shows the timeline and localization of the distinguished stages. This is relevant information for presurgical language testing with navigated Magnetic Stimulation (nTMS). This novel technique allows us to identify cortical involved in the language production process and, thus, guides the neurosurgeon in how to approach and remove the tumor. We argue that not only nouns, but also verbs should be tested, since sentences are built around verbs, and sentences are what we use in daily life. This approach's relevance is illustrated by two case studies of glioma patients.

Investigating Language and the Interdependency of Paradigmatic & Syntagmatic Relations i.e. Structuralism over Stylistics & Semantics: A Review

Language, erudition, and philosophy are all unified. Language facilitates the complicated process of learning, which consists of discovery, collaboration, and inquiry. However, from an internal perspective language is a set of closely-knitted units which are restricted for their use, meanings and styles. Language, which is made up of related and regulated symbol systems, is also a social and only distinctively human way of representing, examining, and communicating meaning. The study of language is incomplete without structuralism, semantics and stylistics where structuralism is about sentence constructions, semantics is about meanings and stylistics is about styles of language. On the first go, this review paper explores the nature and various surfaces of language to help understanding the process of language production and perception. Secondly, this review study explores the role of syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations in structuralism. It also explains how structuralism is dependent on semantics and stylistics to produce meaningful sentences. This study concludes that language neither can be fully mastered nor explained unless these three areas are not given well-deserved space whereas the meaningfulness of every sentence requires the accurate command on syntagmatic and paradigmatic sentence relations. The theoretical analysis presented in this study also sheds light on the importance of the learning of correct language structures for students to actively participate in a variety of learning activities both inside and beyond the classroom.

한국어 계승어 화자의 발화오류와 사용 특징 연구

This study investigated the types of speech errors by Korean heritage speakers. A total of 238 speech errors were obtained from 14 groups of Korean heritage speakers in their twenties or thirties living in the USA, and we they were classified according to their linguistic components and forms of errors. The rates and types of the errors were compared with those of native speaker groups. The overall results led us to the claim that their errors were made not randomly, but in systematic ways, which reflected their knowledge of Korean. Such comparisons provide some linguistic clues for the process of language production and development. Considering the lack of studies on Korean speech errors made by native Koreans and heritage speakers, this research provides valuable data and analyses for researchers of speech error patterns, speech production modeling, language development, and/or heritage speakers’ linguistic system.

Neural network bases of thematic semantic processing in language production.

Semantic processing is a central component of language and cognition. The anterior temporal lobe is postulated to be a key hub for semantic processing, but the posterior temporoparietal cortex is also involved in thematic associations during language. It is possible that these regions act in concert and depend on an anteroposterior network linking the temporal pole with posterior structures to support thematic semantic processing during language production. We employed connectome-based lesion-symptom mapping to examine the causal relationship between lesioned white matter pathways and thematic processing language deficits among individuals with post-stroke aphasia. Seventy-nine adults with chronic aphasia completed the Philadelphia Naming Test, and semantic errors were coded as either thematic or taxonomic to control for taxonomic errors. Controlling for nonverbal conceptual-semantic knowledge as measured by the Pyramids and Palm Trees Test, lesion size, and the taxonomic error rate, thematic error rate was associated with loss of white matter connections from the temporal pole traversing in peri-Sylvian regions to the posterior cingulate and the insula. These findings support the existence of a distributed network underlying thematic relationship processing in language as opposed to discrete cortical areas.

Self-Repair in Elicited Narrative Production in Speakers of Russian as the First (L1), Second (L2), and Heritage (HL) Language

The current study investigates self-repairs in the speech of three groups of Russian speakers: monolingual controls (N = 12) residing in the Russian Federation, for whom Russian is their first dominant language (L1); bilingual Russian–Hebrew speaking participants (N = 12), who acquired Russian as their Heritage Language (HL) in contact with the dominant Societal Hebrew in Israel; and bilingual Russian–Chinese speakers (N = 12) residing in the Russian Federation at the time of testing, for whom Russian is their second language (L2). Picture-elicited narratives were coded for instances of self-repairs, split into Conceptualizer Repairs (C-repairs)—which imply pragmatic, semantic, or lexical changes—and Formulator Repairs (F-repairs), correcting different types of errors. In addition, self-repair initiators—such as cut-offs, hesitation pauses, and discourse markers—were annotated before each instance of self-repair. The results indicate that L2 speakers, in general, use self-repairs more frequently than L1 and HL speakers. L1 speakers hardly produced F-repairs, while HL and L2 speakers resorted to both C- and F-repairs. L1 speakers mainly used C-repairs for appropriacy, whereas HL and L2 speakers used C-repairs for rephrasing and lexical item change. As for F-repairs, HL speakers tended to change pronunciation and morphology, while L2 speakers implemented more morphological repairs. Lexical initiators of self-repairs were more common in L1 speech; however, in the L2 group we saw much more frequent cut-offs of repaired speech fragments. As such, varying self-repair strategies were employed by different speaker groups, shedding light on the underlying processes of language production. There was also evidence of cross-linguistic transfer of non-lexical self-repair initiators: HL speakers resorted to prolongations as initiators in HL-Russian (a strategy that is common in their dominant language, Hebrew), whereas L1 speakers used vocalized and silent pauses more frequently.

Inflection across Categories: Tracking Abstract Morphological Processing in Language Production with MEG

Coherent language production requires that speakers adapt words to their grammatical contexts. A fundamental challenge in establishing a functional delineation of this process in the brain is that each linguistic process tends to correlate with numerous others. Our work investigated the neural basis of morphological inflection by measuring magnetoencephalography during the planning of inflected and uninflected utterances that varied across several linguistic dimensions. Results reveal increased activity in the left lateral frontotemporal cortex when inflection is planned, irrespective of phonological specification, syntactic context, or semantic type. Additional findings from univariate and connectivity analyses suggest that the brain distinguishes between different types of inflection. Specifically, planning noun and verb utterances requiring the addition of the suffix -s elicited increased activity in the ventral prefrontal cortex. A broadly distributed effect of syntactic context (verb vs. noun) was also identified. Results from representational similarity analysis indicate that this effect cannot be explained in terms of word meaning. Together, these results 1) offer evidence for a neural representation of abstract inflection that separates from other stimulus properties and 2) challenge theories that emphasize semantic content as a source of verb/noun processing differences.

Dissecting the neurobiology of linguistic disorganisation and impoverishment in schizophrenia

Schizophrenia provides a quintessential disease model of how disturbances in the molecular mechanisms of neurodevelopment lead to disruptions in the emergence of cognition. The central and often persistent feature of this illness is the disorganisation and impoverishment of language and related expressive behaviours. Though clinically more prominent, the periodic perceptual distortions characterised as psychosis are non-specific and often episodic. While several insights into psychosis have been gained based on study of the dopaminergic system, the mechanistic basis of linguistic disorganisation and impoverishment is still elusive. Key findings from cellular to systems-level studies highlight the role of ubiquitous, inhibitory processes in language production. Dysregulation of these processes at critical time periods, in key brain areas, provides a surprisingly parsimonious account of linguistic disorganisation and impoverishment in schizophrenia. This review links the notion of excitatory/inhibitory (E/I) imbalance at cortical microcircuits to the expression of language behaviour characteristic of schizophrenia, through the building blocks of neurochemistry, neurophysiology, and neurocognition.