Language-specific Patterns Research Articles

Learning novel words for motion by speakers of structurally different languages

Abstract Speakers of different languages follow a three-way split in how they express motion events in speech—with a greater emphasis on manner in satellite-framed languages (English), path in verb-framed languages (Turkish), and comparable expression of manner and path in equipollently-framed languages (Chinese). According to the thinking-for-speaking account, these language-specific patterns can affect speakers’ representation of motion events but only when verbalizing the event. In this study, we asked whether language might influence learning novel words, particularly when the words were accompanied with gestures. We examined effects of language type (equipollent-framed: Chinese, satellite-framed: English, verb-framed: Turkish) and modality (speech-only, gesture+speech) on learning pseudowords for motion (manner, path). Our results showed that speakers of all three languages learned pseudowords for manner and path but with lower accuracy scores and slower rates of learning by Chinese speakers. Regardless of the language they spoke, participants learned manner words more accurately than path words, but with no added benefits of instruction with gesture+speech over speech-only. Taken together, our study extends the lack of language effect on nonverbal representation of events when not speaking to the domain of novel word learning across structurally different languages.

Disfluencies as a Window into Pragmatic Skills in Russian-Hebrew Bilingual Autistic and Non-Autistic Children

AbstractThere is little research on the production of speech disfluencies such as silent pauses, repetitions, self-corrections, and filled pauses (e.g., eh, em) in monolingual autistic children, and there is no data on this crucial part of speech production in bilingual autistic children. This study aims to address this gap by examining disfluency production in bilingual autistic and non-autistic children across two linguistically distinct languages, HL-Russian (the home language) and SL-Hebrew (the societal language). Fifty-one bilingual Russian-Hebrew-speaking autistic and non-autistic children aged 5–9 (autistic: n = 21; non-autistic: n = 30), matched for age and non-verbal intelligence, participated in picture-based story-generation tasks (LITMUS MAIN, Gagarina et al., ZAS Papers in Linguistics, 63:1–36, 2019). Audio recordings of narrative samples were transcribed, coded, and scored for eleven disfluency types using CLAN tools. The non-autistic group produced higher overall disfluency rate than the autistic group. The autistic group exhibited fewer filled and silent pauses than the non-autistic group in HL-Russian. Furthermore, non-autistic children manifested varied distribution of disfluency types across languages, while autistic children displayed more consistent patterns across languages. In summary, we replicated findings from previous research on monolinguals only partly, as no between-group difference in filled pauses was found in SL-Hebrew. Additionally, bilingual autistic children exhibited language-universal patterns of disfluency production, whereas their non-autistic peers displayed language-specific patterns.

Is vision necessary for the timely acquisition of language-specific patterns in co-speech gesture and their lack in silent gesture?

Blind adults display language-specificity in their packaging and ordering of events in speech. These differences affect the representation of events in co-speech gesture-gesturing with speech-but not in silent gesture-gesturing without speech. Here we examine when in development blind children begin to show adult-like patterns in co-speech and silent gesture. We studied speech and gestures produced by 30 blind and 30 sighted children learning Turkish, equally divided into 3 age groups: 5-6, 7-8, 9-10 years. The children were asked to describe three-dimensional spatial event scenes (e.g., running out of a house) first with speech, and then without speech using only their hands. We focused on physical motion events, which, in blind adults, elicit cross-linguistic differences in speech and co-speech gesture, but cross-linguistic similarities in silent gesture. Our results showed an effect of language on gesture when it was accompanied by speech (co-speech gesture), but not when it was used without speech (silent gesture) across both blind and sighted learners. The language-specific co-speech gesture pattern for both packaging and ordering semantic elements was present at the earliest ages we tested the blind and sighted children. The silent gesture pattern appeared later for blind children than sighted children for both packaging and ordering. Our findings highlight gesture as a robust and integral aspect of the language acquisition process at the early ages and provide insight into when language does and does not have an effect on gesture, even in blind children who lack visual access to gesture. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Gestures, when produced with speech (i.e., co-speech gesture), follow language-specific patterns in event representation in both blind and sighted children. Gestures, when produced without speech (i.e., silent gesture), do not follow the language-specific patterns in event representation in both blind and sighted children. Language-specific patterns in speech and co-speech gestures are observable at the same time in blind and sighted children. The cross-linguistic similarities in silent gestures begin slightly later in blind children than in sighted children.

Reference management in written narrative production by Spanish-Italian bilingual children

This paper is an investigation of reference production in 84 Italian-Spanish bilingual children aged 8 to 12. The study explores whether such reference production is influenced by either the type of referential expression involved or language dominance by analyzing how these children manage reference. The children’s relative proficiency in the two languages (and thus their language dominance) was assessed through a cloze-test, and their narrative production was evaluated using a retelling task. Results indicated a preference for null pronouns to refer to subjects and full referential expressions for objects, with Italian showing a higher occurrence of full referential expressions. Dominance in either language did not significantly impact reference production. This suggests that bilingual children can distinguish between language-specific patterns, a behavior consistent with adult monolingual groups. These results contribute to our understanding of bilingual reference management and shed light on the role played by language and language dominance.

Narrative Skills in Mandarin–English Dual Language Immersion Learners

Abstract This article investigated the development of narrative production skills among Mandarin-English dual language immersion (DLI) students. A total of 60 children in first (N = 20), third (N = 21), and fifth-sixth (N = 19) grades generated oral narratives from wordless picture books in Mandarin and English. We examined variability in children’s macrostructure and microstructure production by language and grade level. We also examined within-language associations and cross-language transfer in narrative skills. Children in higher grades incorporated more macrostructure and microstructure elements in their narratives than children in lower grades. Within each language, microstructure skills were correlated with macrostructure skills. Evidence for development of shared skills across languages and language-specific patterns of narrative skills were also identified. Results contribute to the growing body of evidence for facilitative transfer in immersion contexts and highlight the importance of measuring outcomes in both the societal and the partner language.

Phonological impairments in Hindi aphasics: Error analyses and cross-linguistic comparisons

ABSTRACT We assessed phonological and apraxic impairments in Hindi persons with aphasia (PwA) and compared them to Italian PwA reported in previous studies. Overall, we found strong similarities. Phonological errors were present across production tasks (repetition, reading and naming), most errors were non-lexical and, among those, a majority involved individual phonemes. There were significant effects of length, but not frequency. Hindi PwA, like the Italian PwA, showed strong effects of syllabic structure, with most errors occurring on consonants and weak syllabic positions, preserving syllable structure and simplifying phonemes or syllabic templates. These similarities were modulated by some language-specific patterns. Vowel insertions were more common in Hindi, possibly due to the presence of a central vowel, and segmental simplifications concentrated on marked aspiration and retroflection features. We hope our study will encourage further research in Hindi and other Indian languages. This will improve clinical diagnosis and our understanding of cross-linguistic differences.

Acoustic and language-specific sources for phonemic abstraction from speech

Spoken language comprehension requires abstraction of linguistic information from speech, but the interaction between auditory and linguistic processing of speech remains poorly understood. Here, we investigate the nature of this abstraction using neural responses recorded intracranially while participants listened to conversational English speech. Capitalizing on multiple, language-specific patterns where phonological and acoustic information diverge, we demonstrate the causal efficacy of the phoneme as a unit of analysis and dissociate the unique contributions of phonemic and spectrographic information to neural responses. Quantitive higher-order response models also reveal that unique contributions of phonological information are carried in the covariance structure of the stimulus-response relationship. This suggests that linguistic abstraction is shaped by neurobiological mechanisms that involve integration across multiple spectro-temporal features and prior phonological information. These results link speech acoustics to phonology and morphosyntax, substantiating predictions about abstractness in linguistic theory and providing evidence for the acoustic features that support that abstraction.

The effect of cue length and position on noticing and learning of determiner agreement pairings: Evidence from a cue-balanced artificial vocabulary learning task.

The importance of cues in language learning has long been established and it is clear that cues are an essential part of both first language (L1) and second/additional language (L2/A) acquisition. The effects of cue reliability and frequency, along with the competition between cues have been shown to significantly impact learners' pace of acquisition of these language-specific patterns. However, natural languages do not allow for a clear picture of how the forms of cues themselves affect their perception, uptake, and generalizability. In this study, we developed an artificial vocabulary consisting of determiners and nouns. Within these nouns, completely reliable cues were developed and equally distributed as long and short cues over three possible positions: beginning, middle, or end. Through a word-pair learning study, we show that length and position of cues variably affects agreement accuracy, and that noticing of cues during training is less important for known words, and more important for novel ones when deciding on inter-word gender-like agreement.

Description of Locomotion Events: Language-Specific Patterns in Child-Directed Speech

Description of Locomotion Events: Language-Specific Patterns in Child-Directed Speech

Basic Emotion Prototypes in English and in Polish

Abstract This paper explores the conceptualization differences between the prototypical categories of six basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise) in English and Polish lexicalizations of these concepts in noun, verb, and adjective forms. Measures of valence, arousal, and dominance were collected and analyzed across the six semantic categories, between parts of speech and depending on the gender of the study participants for both languages. The results indicate that the basic emotion prototypes in both languages have common characteristics hinging broadly on valence but have unique language-specific patterns of valence, arousal, and dominance across individual emotion categories. Conceptualizations of emotions were found to be different between men and women and across languages, while language-specific patterns were found in part-of-speech effects. These results have serious implications for future study designs and research methodology at the intersection of cognition, emotion, and language and in cross-linguistic contexts.

Oral Diadochokinetic Performance on Perceptual and Acoustic Measures for Typically Developing Cantonese-Speaking Preschool Children.

This study investigated native Cantonese-speaking preschool children's diadochokinetic performance, including rate, accuracy, and regularity. The second aim of this study was to examine whether language-specific patterns exist by comparing diadochokinetic rates with the average DKK rate for native English speakers. Sixty-four typically developing preschool children who were native Cantonese speakers participated. The diadochokinetic task administered to the children involved repetitions of monosyllabic, disyllabic, and trisyllabic words and nonsense words. The maximum performance of the children was compared by diadochokinetic rate (number of syllables per second), accuracy (percentage of matched production), and regularity (pairwise variability indexes, known as PVIs). Monosyllabic units were produced faster, more accurately, and more regularly than multisyllabic units. Word repetition showed higher accuracy and generally lower regularity than nonsense words but similar rates. Older children were faster and more regular (higher raw PVI of initial consonants) than younger children, but younger children performed as accurately as them. When compared with data from English speakers, the diadochokinetic rates of Cantonese children were generally lower. Developmental progression was evident in terms of rate and regularity. The distinctive accuracy and regularity patterns between word and nonsense word repetition suggest a clinical value for both stimulus types. Language typology plays a role in diadochokinetic rate, supporting the use of language-specific reference data in practice. The typical diadochokinetic profile obtained in this study could serve as a clinical reference for speech motor assessments.

Does Electrophysiological Maturation Shape Language Acquisition?

Infants master temporal patterns of their native language at a developmental trajectory from slow to fast: Shortly after birth, they recognize the slow acoustic modulations specific to their native language before tuning into faster language-specific patterns between 6 and 12 months of age. We propose here that this trajectory is constrained by neuronal maturation—in particular, the gradual emergence of high-frequency neural oscillations in the infant electroencephalogram. Infants’ initial focus on slow prosodic modulations is consistent with the prenatal availability of slow electrophysiological activity (i.e., theta- and delta-band oscillations). Our proposal is consistent with the temporal patterns of infant-directed speech, which initially amplifies slow modulations, approaching the faster modulation range of adult-directed speech only as infants’ language has advanced sufficiently. Moreover, our proposal agrees with evidence from premature infants showing maturational age is a stronger predictor of language development than ex utero exposure to speech, indicating that premature infants cannot exploit their earlier availability of speech because of electrophysiological constraints. In sum, we provide a new perspective on language acquisition emphasizing neuronal development as a critical driving force of infants’ language development.

Characteristics of Early Expressive Vocabulary in Mandarin-Speaking Children With Cochlear Implants.

The aim of this study is to evaluate whether Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants (CIs) demonstrated early lexical composition similar to their hearing peers who were at the same vocabulary level and the extent to which children with CIs were sensitive to linguistic and conceptual properties when developing early lexicon. Participants were 77 Mandarin-speaking children with CIs who received CIs before 30 months of age. Their expressive vocabulary was documented using the Infant Checklist of the Early Vocabulary Inventory for Mandarin Chinese 9 or 12 months after CI activation. Percent social words, common nouns, predicates (verbs, adjectives), and closed-class words in total vocabulary were computed for children at different vocabulary levels. Common nouns and verbs were further coded for their word class (noun, verb), word frequency, word length, and imageability to predict how likely a given noun or verb would be produced by children with CIs. Like children with typical hearing, social words were the most dominant category when vocabulary size in children with CIs was smaller than 20 words; common nouns became the most dominant category when the vocabulary size reached 21 words. The difference in percent common nouns and percent predicates (i.e., noun bias) was similar in children with CIs and their hearing peers. In addition, verbs, common words, monosyllabic words, and more imageable words were more likely to be produced by children with CIs than their counterparts. Mandarin children with CIs showed language-specific patterns in early lexical composition like their hearing peers. They were able to use multiple linguistic and conceptual cues when approaching early expressive vocabulary despite perceptual and processing constraints. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.21357723.

Spoken Language Identification System Using Convolutional Recurrent Neural Network

Following recent advancements in deep learning and artificial intelligence, spoken language identification applications are playing an increasingly significant role in our day-to-day lives, especially in the domain of multi-lingual speech recognition. In this article, we propose a spoken language identification system that depends on the sequence of feature vectors. The proposed system uses a hybrid Convolutional Recurrent Neural Network (CRNN), which combines a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) with a Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) network, for spoken language identification on seven languages, including Arabic, chosen from subsets of the Mozilla Common Voice (MCV) corpus. The proposed system exploits the advantages of both CNN and RNN architectures to construct the CRNN architecture. At the feature extraction stage, it compares the Gammatone Cepstral Coefficient (GTCC) feature and Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficient (MFCC) feature, as well as a combination of both. Finally, the speech signals were represented as frames and used as the input for the CRNN architecture. After conducting experiments, the results of the proposed system indicate higher performance with combined GTCC and MFCC features compared to GTCC or MFCC features used individually. The average accuracy of the proposed system was 92.81% in the best experiment for spoken language identification. Furthermore, the system can learn language-specific patterns in various filter size representations of speech files.

Contemporary Terminological Problems in a Cross-linguistic Perspective

The paper focuses on terminological problems in contemporary cross-linguistic communication that are generated primarily by two main tendencies in global scientific communication — the digitalization in information processing and the English language globalization. Both are closely connected with a new approach in linguistics — discourse clustering and its role in promoting foreign language and translation instruction. The paper provides a corpus-based account of Russian–English translation problems concerning clear-cut distinctions between Russian versus English academic style’s language-specific patterns in terminology discursive clustering, as well as their didactic and methodological importance for foreign language acquisition, Russian-English and English-Russian translation. The main idea is that the most important contemporary terminological problem in a cross-linguistic perspective is the lack of active authentic and language-specific terminology patterns in Russian–English scientific translations.

Pauses in Native and Foreign-Accented Spontaneous Speech: Acoustic Analysis of Native Chinese, Chinese Learners of Russian, and Native Russian Speech

The present study aimed to explore pause types and their fillers in Russian and Chinese native speech compared to the speech of Chinese bilinguals speaking Russian with a focus on universal and language-specific patterns. An acoustic study of 8 subjects has been performed: 4 Russian males speaking Russian, and 4 Chinese males speaking both Chinese and Russian. Acoustic measurements were performed using PRAAT and included pause count, pause duration, pitch direction, vocalic fillers formant values, and their duration. Descriptive statistics were used to determine count, mean, minimal, and maximal values. The results demonstrate that first, silent and filled pauses were used by all subjects with the preference for the silent pause strategy. For all Chinese subjects, the pause rate was considerably higher in native speech than in non-native Russian speech. Second, the universal pause fillers were [a]-like, [am]-like, and [m]-like ones. Simple fillers like [ɤ], [o] were language-specific for Chinese subjects. Another language-specific feature was the wide use of vowel groups by Chinese subjects. Finally, vowel + nasal (velar and forelingual) sequences like [ɤŋ] were language-specific for Chinese subjects.

Él Code-Switches More Than tú y yo: New Data for the Subject Pronoun-Verb Switch Constraint

In early studies, code-switches between a subject pronoun and a finite verb were considered highly dispreferred or even impossible. However, naturalistic data from several language pairs has since highlighted that such switches are possible, although their grammaticality is constrained by the typology of the pronouns involved. In this study, we test the switching constraints postulated for subject pronouns-verbs among P’urhepecha-Spanish bilinguals (n = 12) from Michoacán, western Mexico. Using a two-alternative forced-choice acceptability judgement task (2AFC), we found that, contrary to expectations, switches between a third person singular pronoun and a verb were considered the most acceptable, followed by the coordinated ‘you and I’ second person, then the first person singular. The same order was found for both switch directions, despite third-person pronouns in P’urhepecha having a stronger typological profile. Building on the results of previous studies, we suggest that the lack of preference for a single switch direction is evidence for language-specific code-switching patterns, as well as possible differences in productive vs. receptive language. Additionally, we highlight the probative value of judgement data, particularly those emerging from 2AFC tasks, as a means of expanding our understanding of grammaticality in code-switching.

Comparison of Preschooler Verbal and Graphic Symbol Production Across Different Syntactic Structures.

The present study focuses on the impact of graphic symbols used in Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) on clause construction. It is not yet well-understood to what extent communication produced via graphic symbols differs from verbal production. This study attempts shed light on the impact of the graphic symbol modality on message construction beyond individual differences, language knowledge, and language-specific patterns by providing a direct comparison between children’s verbal and graphic symbol production. Nineteen typically developing Hebrew-speaking children aged 4–5 years were presented with 16 short videos of actions and were asked to express what they saw verbally and by choosing among graphic symbols displayed on an iPad communication board. The 570 clauses produced by the children were coded and analyzed. A significant difference was found in favor of verbal speech across different syntactic structures in terms of utilization of the target lexicon, syntactic complexity, and expected target word order. These results are consistent with the existing literature for English. Implications for AAC practices are discussed, highlighting the notion that using graphic symbols to represent spoken language may not reflect actual linguistic knowledge and that adequate, explicit instruction is necessary for graphic representation of more complex linguistic structures.

Limitations on the role of frequency in L2 acquisition

abstractIn the context of theories of statistical learning, frequency of encounter is viewed as a major driving force in L2 acquisition. The present paper challenges this position with respect to core components at the level of language competence which relate to language-specific patterns in cognitive construal. Empirical evidence from very advanced L2 speakers (L1 French, L2 English and L2 German) shows that forms and constructions which are highly frequent in the target languages in the expression of motion events are not used in a target-like form by L2 speakers. The study shows how the basis for language use which is not target-like lies at the level of event construal: conceptual frames, which are language-specific and are deeply anchored in the course of L1 acquisition, drive allocation of attention and the extraction of forms in L2 acquisition. Findings in the domain of spatial cognition show that motion event frames based on the L1 take precedence over frequency of occurrence of forms in the target language as a factor in L2 use.

How children attend to events before speaking: crosslinguistic evidence from the motion domain

How do children talk about the dynamic world around them? In this eyetracking study, we demonstrate language-specific patterns in the way 3- and 4-year-old speakers of English and Greek inspect motion events prior to speaking and describe such events in their native language. Across age and language groups, children were more likely to mention manners of motion than paths, but English-speaking children were more likely to provide manner information than Greek-speaking children were. Comparison of eyegaze patterns from the linguistic (description) task to eyegaze patterns observed during a nonlinguistic (memory) task with a different group of English- and Greek-speaking 3- and 4-year-olds revealed effects of language background on event inspection. These effects suggest that by the age of 3 years, children exhibit sensitivities to language-specific patterns of motion event encoding that influence the way they gather information from the visual world during the process of language production.