Papers reviewed and determined not to be word norm studies. Use the flag icon to report errors or suggest re-inclusion.
16504 papers
In this paper, we present evaluation of URDU.KON-TB in the dependency parsing domain. The URDU.KON-TB treebank is developed on the bases of the phrase structure and hyper dependency structure which are only functional constituent's label. Treebank was annotated with three levels of annotation tagset, the semi-semantic POS (SSP), semi-semantic Syntactic (SSS) and Functional (F) tagset and was checked for the Phrase Structure Parsing domain. To evaluate this treebank in the Dependency Parsing domain we have selected MaltParser. To use data in the parser, we have converted the URDU.KON-TB treebank annotated data according to the CONLL format. The compatibility of data to CoNLL is also measured along with usability of data in the dependency parsing domain. To make the data compatible, few assumptions are taken. The converted data is used to evaluate the system by dividing 80% data as training data and 20% data as testing data. We have performed eight experiments. Four experiments are conducted with six different feature models with converted data. The experiments results show URDU.KON-TB treebank is not suitable for the dependency parsing as dependency relation because Head information was missing in the treebank. We then performed four experiments with an assumption based enhancement by adding Head information. The algorithm used to train and test data is Nivre arc-agear algorithm. The new experiments show this treebank data can be used to develop new dependency treebank for Urdu.
This paper describes the use of GrETEL for linguistic research. GrETEL is a linguistic search tool that enables users to look up constructions in syntactically annotated corpora or <i>treebanks</i>. It provides online access to the data, allowing users to query a treebank using either an example sentence or an XPath expression in order to look for similar constructions. A major asset of GrETEL is that it enables non-technical users to consult treebanks in a user-friendly way, which is also in line with the main CLARIN goal of applying the results of speech and language technology to research in the humanities and the social sciences. Besides a description of the querying procedure in GrETEL, this paper presents a selection of research in Dutch syntax and semantics that has been carried out using GrETEL. Furthermore, an overview is given of further developments.
The paper illustrates an effective and innovative method for detecting erroneously annotated arcs in gold dependency treebanks based on an algorithm originally developed to measure the reliability of automatically produced dependency relations. The method permits to significantly restrict the error search space and, more importantly, to reliably identify patterns of systematic recurrent errors which represent dangerous evidence to a parser which tendentially will replicate them. Achieved results demonstrate effectiveness and reliability of the method.
Public textual cyberbullying has become one of the most prevalent issues associated with\nonline safety of young people, particularly on social networks. To address this issue, we\nargue that the boundaries of what constitutes public textual cyberbullying needs to be first\nidentified and a corresponding linguistically motivated definition needs to be advanced.\nThus, we propose a definition of public textual cyberbullying that contains three necessary\nand sufficient elements: the personal marker, the dysphemistic element and the\ncyberbullying link between the previous two elements. Subsequently, we argue that one of\nthe cornerstones in the overall process of mitigating the effects of cyberbullying is the\ndesign of a cyberbullying lexical database that specifies what linguistic and cyberbullying\nspecific information is relevant to the detection process. In this vein, we propose a novel\ncyberbullying lexical database based on the definition of public textual cyberbullying. The\noverall architecture of our cyberbullying lexical database is determined semantically, and, in\norder to facilitate cyberbullying detection, the lexical entry encapsulates two new semantic\ndimensions that are derived from our definition: cyberbullying function and cyberbullying\nreferential domain. In addition, the lexical entry encapsulates other semantic and syntactic \ninformation, such as sense and syntactic category, information that, not only aids the\nprocess of detection, but also allows us to expand the cyberbullying database using\nWordNet (Miller, 1993).
Similarity calculation between business process models has an important role in managing repository of business process model. One of its uses is to facilitate the searching process of models in the repository. Business process similarity is closely related to semantic string similarity. Semantic string similarity is usually performed by utilizing a lexical database such as WordNet to find the semantic meaning of the word. The activity name of the business process uses terms that specifically related to the business field. However, most of the terms in business domain are not available in WordNet. This case would decrease the semantic analysis quality of business process model. Therefore, this study would try to improve semantic analysis of business process model. We present a new lexical database called B-BabelNet. B-BabelNet is a lexical database built by using the same method in BabelNet. We attempt to map the Wikipedia page to WordNet database but only focus on the word related to the domain of business. Also, to enrich the vocabulary in the business domain, we also use terms in the business-specific online dictionary (businessdictionary.com). We utilize this database to do word sense disambiguation process on business process model activity’s terms. The result from this study shows that the database can increase the accuracy of the word sense disambiguation process especially in particular terms related to the business and industrial domains.
Public textual cyberbullying has become one of the most prevalent issues associated with online safety of young people, particularly on social networks. To address this issue, we argue that the boundaries of what constitutes public textual cyberbullying needs to be first identified and a corresponding linguistically motivated definition needs to be advanced. Thus, we propose a definition of public textual cyberbullying that contains three necessary and sufficient elements: the personal marker, the dysphemistic element and the cyberbullying link between the previous two elements. Subsequently, we argue that one of the cornerstones in the overall process of mitigating the effects of cyberbullying is the design of a cyberbullying lexical database that specifies what linguistic and cyberbullying specific information is relevant to the detection process. In this vein, we propose a novel cyberbullying lexical database based on the definition of public textual cyberbullying. The overall architecture of our cyberbullying lexical database is determined semantically, and, in order to facilitate cyberbullying detection, the lexical entry encapsulates two new semantic dimensions that are derived from our definition: cyberbullying function and cyberbullying referential domain. In addition, the lexical entry encapsulates other semantic and syntactic
We describe the process of creating NUDAR, a Universal Dependency treebank for Arabic. We present the conversion from the Penn Arabic Treebank to the Universal Dependency syntactic representation through an intermediate dependency representation. We discuss the challenges faced in the conversion of the trees, the decisions we made to solve them, and the validation of our conversion. We also present initial parsing results on NUDAR.
This paper examines the stimulus-response in Japanese conversation and how it relates to Japanese culture. It focuses on how Japanese linguistic features in the stimulus used in conversation requests correspond to a form of culture known as wakimae. Hence, the understanding of wakimae surrounding the stimulus will bring the proper responses. Taking a qualitative method, this research uses 30 video-taped Japanese talk shows as data. The analysis covers the lexical, morphosyntactic, or prosodic features and the cultural context, norms, or values used in the forms of request as the stimulus. The results reveal two types of stimuli, specifically (i) syntactically finished utterances and (ii) syntactically unfinished utterances. In syntactically finished utterances, there were five types of request patterns for information, namely (i) Q-word type, (ii) declarative form, (iii) polar type with the question particle ka marker, (iv) polar type with final particle ne marker and (v) tag-question type. In syntactically unfinished utterances, there are four types of request patterns for information. They are (i) unfinished utterances marked by the topic particle wa, (ii) unfinished utterances marked by the nominative particle ga, (iii) unfinished utterances marked by the conjunctive form, (iv) unfinished utterances marked by the quotative particle tte. These characteristics of stimulus are not only ruled by the speaker’s intention but also by cultural values. These cultural values become an important consideration for the speaker when choosing utterances, both stimulus and response. Therefore, the notion of wakimae can explain the utterance choice from the perspective of cultural context.
In this work, we present a minimal neural model for constituency parsing based on independent scoring of labels and spans. We show that this model is not only compatible with classical dynamic programming techniques, but also admits a novel greedy top-down inference algorithm based on recursive partitioning of the input. We demonstrate empirically that both prediction schemes are competitive with recent work, and when combined with basic extensions to the scoring model are capable of achieving state-of-the-art single-model performance on the Penn Treebank (91.79 F1) and strong performance on the French Treebank (82.23 F1).
We first present a minimal feature set for transition-based dependency parsing, continuing a recent trend started by Kiperwasser and Goldberg (2016a) and Cross and Huang (2016a) of using bi-directional LSTM features. We plug our minimal feature set into the dynamic-programming framework of Huang and Sagae (2010) and With our minimal features, we also present Opn 3 q global training methods. Finally, using ensembles including our new parsers, we achieve the best unlabeled attachment score reported (to our knowledge) on the Chinese Treebank and the "second-best-in-class" result on the English Penn Treebank.
The article explores the name and content of the cognitive concept SCARCITY in the English economic discourse. \nThe content of the concept is based on the following set of semantic features of its terminized name – the lexeme “scarcity” (n.): “want of provisions for the support of life”, “lack”, “hunger”, “high cost”, “need”, “rarity”, “insufficiency of supply” and is motivated by the basic feature “an inadequate amount” with a negatively evaluated property “less than the norm”. The name of the concept is viewed as the centre of its conceptual network. Its semantic properties are profiled in the domains ECONOMY and MATHEMATICS which determine the terminized nature of the concept and motivate its corresponding cognitive features and its conceptual relations with other concepts in the discourse according to the propositional schema of causation “CR-SCARCITY has FT-negative effects». \nThis concept performs a discourse forming function in the segment ECONOMY of the English language picture of the world as one of the key factor of the economic development of the society. \nFurther perspectives in the study of SCARCITY should be development and construction of its lexical-semantic field as well as conceptual network, building up metaphorical models, synchronic and diachronic analysis of its metaphoric potential.
The neural networks associated with socio-affective (empathy, compassion) and socio-cognitive processes (mentalizing/Theory of Mind) have been well-characterized over the last years. The goal of the present talk is twofold: (1) To explore the separability of these functions during online social understanding on a subjective, behavioral and on a neural level and (2) to investigate the embedding of the related neural substrates in large-scale task-free neural networks. To this end, we acquired resting state as well as behavioral and neuroimaging data (fMRI) during a social video task in a large sample of participants (N = 178). The videos were short autobiographical narrations of emotionally negative and neutral events that allowed for asking Theory of Mind questions about the thoughts of the narrators and factual reasoning questions about the content of the stories, thereby allowing for independent assessment of socio-affective and socio-cognitive processing. Linking the phenomenological with the neural level, participants reported increased negative affect after emotional stories, which covaried with activity strength in the meta-analytically defined “empathy network”, but not with activity in the “Theory of Mind network”. Vice versa, performance in answering the Theory of Mind questions correlated with “Theory of Mind network”, but not “empathy network” activity. Interestingly, neither behavioral markers of social affect and mentalizing (i.e. emotional valence ratings and Theory of Mind performance) nor activity in the two respective neural networks correlated with each other. Furthermore, resting state functional connectivity to task activation based seed regions for empathy and Theory of Mind yielded distinct networks that strongly overlapped with the respective task activations and correspond to the well-described default mode network (Theory of Mind seeds) and the salience or central executive network (empathy). The data strongly argue for dissociable and independent socio-affective and -cognitive functions that are embedded in large-scale task-unrelated neural circuits.
In order to demonstrate why it is important to correctly account for the (serial dependent) structure of temporal data, we document an apparently spectacular relationship between population size and lexical diversity: for five out of seven investigated languages, there is a strong relationship between population size and lexical diversity of the primary language in this country. We show that this relationship is the result of a misspecified model that does not consider the temporal aspect of the data by presenting a similar but nonsensical relationship between the global annual mean sea level and lexical diversity. Given the fact that in the recent past, several studies were published that present surprising links between different economic, cultural, political and (socio-)demographical variables on the one hand and cultural or linguistic characteristics on the other hand, but seem to suffer from exactly this problem, we explain the cause of the misspecification and show that it has p)
The scope of lexical planning, which means how far ahead speakers plan lexically before they start producing an utterance, is an important issue for research into speech production, but remains highly controversial. The present research investigated this issue using the semantic blocking effect, which refers to the widely observed effects that participants take longer to say aloud the names of items in pictures when the pictures in a block of trials in an experiment depict items that belong to the same semantic category than different categories. As this effect is often interpreted as a reflection of difficulty in lexical selection, the current study took the semantic blocking effect and its associated pattern of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) as a proxy to test whether lexical planning during sentence production extends beyond the first noun when a subject noun-phrase includes two nouns, such as “The chair and the boat are both red” and “The chair above the boat is red”. The r)
The rate of lexical replacement estimates the diachronic stability of word forms on the basis of how frequently a proto-language word is replaced or retained in its daughter languages. Lexical replacement rate has been shown to be highly related to word class and word frequency. In this paper, we argue that content words and function words behave differently with respect to lexical replacement rate, and we show that semantic factors predict the lexical replacement rate of content words. For the 167 content items in the Swadesh list, data was gathered on the features of lexical replacement rate, word class, frequency, age of acquisition, synonyms, arousal, imageability and average mutual information, either from published databases or gathered from corpora and lexica. A linear regression model shows that, in addition to frequency, synonyms, senses and imageability are significantly related to the lexical replacement rate of content words–in particular the number of synonyms that a word)
In the masked priming technique, physical identity between prime and target enjoys an advantage over nominal identity in nonwords (GEDA-GEDA faster than geda-GEDA). However, nominal identity overrides physical identity in words (e.g., REAL-REAL similar to real-REAL). Here we tested whether the lack of an advantage of the physical identity condition for words was due to top-down feedback from phonological-lexical information. We examined this issue with deaf readers, as their phonological representations are not as fully developed as in hearing readers. Results revealed that physical identity enjoyed a processing advantage over nominal identity not only in nonwords but also in words (GEDA-GEDA faster than geda-GEDA; REAL-REAL faster than real-REAL). This suggests the existence of fundamental differences in the early stages of visual word recognition of hearing and deaf readers, possibly related to the amount of feedback from higher levels of information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR], Copyrig)
This study examines electrocortical activity associated with visual and auditory sensory perception and lexical-semantic processing in nonverbal (NV) or minimally-verbal (MV) children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Currently, there is no agreement on whether these children comprehend incoming linguistic information and whether their perception is comparable to that of typically developing children. Event-related potentials (ERPs) of 10 NV/MV children with ASD and 10 neurotypical children were recorded during a picture-word matching paradigm. Atypical ERP responses were evident at all levels of processing in children with ASD. Basic perceptual processing was delayed in both visual and auditory domains but overall was similar in amplitude to typically-developing children. However, significant differences between groups were found at the lexical-semantic level, suggesting more atypical higher-order processes. The results suggest that although basic perception is relatively preserve)
This study examined the neural substrates underlying the implementation of phonological rule in lexical tone by the Tone 3 sandhi phenomenon in Mandarin Chinese. Tone 3 sandhi is traditionally described as the substitution of Tone 3 with Tone 2 when followed by another Tone 3 (33 →23) during speech production. Tone 3 sandhi enables the examination of tone processing in the phonological level with the least involvement of segments. Using the fMRI technique, we measured brain activations corresponding to the monosyllable and disyllable sequences of the four Chinese lexical tones, while manipulating the requirement on overt oral response. The application of Tone 3 sandhi to disyllable sequence of Tone 3 was confirmed by our behavioral results. Larger brain responses to overtly produced disyllable Tone 3 (33 > 11, 22, and 44) were found in right posterior IFG by both whole-brain and ROI analyses. We suggest that the right IFG was responsible for the processing of Tone 3 sandhi. Intense te)
This fMRI study aimed to identify the neural mechanisms underlying the recognition of Chinese multi-character words by partialling out the confounding effect of reaction time (RT). For this purpose, a special type of nonword—transposable nonword—was created by reversing the character orders of real words. These nonwords were included in a lexical decision task along with regular (non-transposable) nonwords and real words. Through conjunction analysis on the contrasts of transposable nonwords versus regular nonwords and words versus regular nonwords, the confounding effect of RT was eliminated, and the regions involved in word recognition were reliably identified. The word-frequency effect was also examined in emerged regions to further assess their functional roles in word processing. Results showed significant conjunctional effect and positive word-frequency effect in the bilateral inferior parietal lobules and posterior cingulate cortex, whereas only conjunctional effect was found i)
Lexical access in bilinguals has been considered either selective or non-selective and evidence exists in favor of both hypotheses. We conducted a linguistic experiment to assess whether a bilingual’s language mode influences the processing of first language information. We recorded event related potentials during a semantic priming paradigm with a covert manipulation of the second language (L2) using two types of stimulus presentations (short and long). We observed a significant facilitation of word pairs related in L2 in the short version reflected by a decrease in N400 amplitude in response to target words related to the English meaning of an inter-lingual homograph (homograph-unrelated group). This was absent in the long version, as the N400 amplitude for this group was similar to the one for the control-unrelated group. We also interviewed the participants whether they were aware of the importance of L2 in the experiment. We conclude that subjects participating in the long and sh)
Scaling laws characterize diverse complex systems in a broad range of fields, including physics, biology, finance, and social science. The human language is another example of a complex system of words organization. Studies on written texts have shown that scaling laws characterize the occurrence frequency of words, words rank, and the growth of distinct words with increasing text length. However, these studies have mainly concentrated on the western linguistic systems, and the laws that govern the lexical organization, structure and dynamics of the Chinese language remain not well understood. Here we study a database of Chinese and English language books. We report that three distinct scaling laws characterize words organization in the Chinese language. We find that these scaling laws have different exponents and crossover behaviors compared to English texts, indicating different words organization and dynamics of words in the process of text growth. We propose a stochastic feedback )
Creativity is a complex, multi-faceted concept encompassing a variety of related aspects, abilities, properties and behaviours. If we wish to study creativity scientifically, then a tractable and well-articulated model of creativity is required. Such a model would be of great value to researchers investigating the nature of creativity and in particular, those concerned with the evaluation of creative practice. This paper describes a unique approach to developing a suitable model of how creative behaviour emerges that is based on the words people use to describe the concept. Using techniques from the field of statistical natural language processing, we identify a collection of fourteen key components of creativity through an analysis of a corpus of academic papers on the topic. Words are identified which appear significantly often in connection with discussions of the concept. Using a measure of lexical similarity to help cluster these words, a number of distinct themes emerge, which c)
Antonym pair members can be differentiated by each word’s markedness–that distinction attributable to the presence or absence of features at morphological or semantic levels. Morphologically marked words incorporate their unmarked counterpart with additional morphs (e.g., “unlucky” vs. “lucky”); properties used to determine semantically marked words (e.g., “short” vs. “long”) are less clearly defined. Despite extensive theoretical scrutiny, the lexical properties of markedness have received scant empirical study. The current paper employs an antonym sequencing approach to measure markedness: establishing markedness probabilities for individual words and evaluating their relationship with other lexical properties (e.g., length, frequency, valence). Regression analyses reveal that markedness probability is, as predicted, related to affixation and also strongly related to valence. Our results support the suggestion that antonym sequence is reflected in discourse, and further analysis dem)
Objective: Word finding depends on the processing of semantic and lexical information, and it involves an intermediate level for mapping semantic-to-lexical information which also subserves lexical-to-semantic mapping during word comprehension. However, the brain regions implementing these components are still controversial and have not been clarified via a comprehensive lesion model encompassing the whole range of language-related cortices. Primary progressive aphasia (PPA), for which anomia is thought to be the most common sign, provides such a model, but the exploration of cortical areas impacting naming in its three main variants and the underlying processing mechanisms is still lacking. Methods: We addressed this double issue, related to language structure and PPA, with thirty patients (11 semantic, 12 logopenic, 7 agrammatic variant) using a picture-naming task and voxel-based morphometry for anatomo-functional correlation. First, we analyzed correlations for each of the three)
Theories of embodied language comprehension have proposed that language processing includes perception simulation and activation of sensorimotor representation. Previous studies have used a numerical priming paradigm to test the priming effect of semantic size, and the negative result showed that the sensorimotor representation has not been activated during the encoding phase. Considering that the size property is unstable, here we changed the target property to examine the priming effect of semantic shape using the same paradigm. The participants would see three different object names successively, and then they were asked to decide whether the shape of the second referent was more similar to the first one or the third one. In the eye-movement experiment, the encoding time showed a distance-priming effect, as the similarity of shapes between the first referent and the second referent increased, the encoding time of the second word gradually decreased. In the event-related potentials )
Thanks to the proliferation of online social networks, it has become conventional for researchers to communicate and collaborate with each other. Meanwhile, one critical challenge arises, that is, how to find the most relevant and potential collaborators for each researcher? In this work, we propose a novel collaborator recommendation model called CCRec, which combines the information on researchers’ publications and collaboration network to generate better recommendation. In order to effectively identify the most potential collaborators for researchers, we adopt a topic clustering model to identify the academic domains, as well as a random walk model to compute researchers’ feature vectors. Using DBLP datasets, we conduct benchmarking experiments to examine the performance of CCRec. The experimental results show that CCRec outperforms other state-of-the-art methods in terms of precision, recall and F1 score. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR], Copyright of PLoS ONE is the property of Public Libr)
We live busy, social lives, and meeting the challenges of our complex environments puts strain on our cognitive systems. However, cognitive resources are limited. It is unclear how cognitive load affects social decision making. Previous findings on the effects of cognitive load on other-regarding preferences have been ambiguous, allowing no coherent opinion whether cognitive load increases, decreases or does not affect prosocial considerations. Here, we suggest that social distance between individuals modulates whether generosity towards a recipient increases or decreases under cognitive load conditions. Participants played a financial social discounting task with several recipients at variable social distance levels. In this task, they could choose between generous alternatives, yielding medium financial rewards for the participant and recipient at variable social distances, or between a selfish alternative, yielding larger rewards for the participant alone. We show that the social d)
Noun compounds, consisting of two nouns (the head and the modifier) that are combined into a single concept, differ in terms of their plausibility: school bus is a more plausible compound than saddle olive. The present study investigates which factors influence the plausibility of attested and novel noun compounds. Distributional Semantic Models (DSMs) are used to obtain formal (vector) representations of word meanings, and compositional methods in DSMs are employed to obtain such representations for noun compounds. From these representations, different plausibility measures are computed. Three of those measures contribute in predicting the plausibility of noun compounds: The relatedness between the meaning of the head noun and the compound (Head Proximity), the relatedness between the meaning of modifier noun and the compound (Modifier Proximity), and the similarity between the head noun and the modifier noun (Constituent Similarity). We find non-linear interactions between Head Prox)
Why do people self-report an aversion to words like “moist”? The present studies represent an initial scientific exploration into the phenomenon of word aversion by investigating its prevalence and cause. Results of five experiments indicate that about 10–20% of the population is averse to the word “moist.” This population often speculates that phonological properties of the word are the cause of their displeasure. However, data from the current studies point to semantic features of the word–namely, associations with disgusting bodily functions–as a more prominent source of peoples’ unpleasant experience. “Moist,” for averse participants, was notable for its valence and personal use, rather than imagery or arousal–a finding that was confirmed by an experiment designed to induce an aversion to the word. Analyses of individual difference measures suggest that word aversion is more prevalent among younger, more educated, and more neurotic people, and is more commonly reported by females )
The main goal of the present study was to explore the involvement of inhibition in resolution of cross-language activation in bilingual comprehension and a possible modulatory effect of L2 proficiency. We used a semantic relatedness judgment task in L2 English that included Polish-English interlingual homographs and English translations of the Polish homographs’ meanings. Based on previous studies using the same paradigm, we expected a strong homograph interference and inhibition of the homographs’ Polish meanings translations. In addition, we predicted that participants with lower L2 proficiency would experience greater interference and stronger inhibitory effects. The reported results confirm a strong homograph interference effect. In addition, our results indicate that the scope of inhibition generalized from the homograph’s irrelevant meaning to a whole semantic category, indicating the flexibility of the inhibitory mechanisms. Contrary to our expectations, L2 proficiency did not )
Reduced neural processing of a tone is observed when it is presented after a sound whose spectral range closely frames the frequency of the tone. This observation might be explained by the mechanism of lateral inhibition (LI) due to inhibitory interneurons in the auditory system. So far, several characteristics of bottom up influences on LI have been identified, while the influence of top-down processes such as directed attention on LI has not been investigated. Hence, the study at hand aims at investigating the modulatory effects of focused attention on LI in the human auditory cortex. In the magnetoencephalograph, we present two types of masking sounds (white noise vs. withe noise passing through a notch filter centered at a specific frequency), followed by a test tone with a frequency corresponding to the center-frequency of the notch filter. Simultaneously, subjects were presented with visual input on a screen. To modulate the focus of attention, subjects were instructed to concen)
A classic debate in cognitive science revolves around understanding how children learn complex linguistic patterns, such as restrictions on verb alternations and contractions, without negative evidence. Recently, probabilistic models of language learning have been applied to this problem, framing it as a statistical inference from a random sample of sentences. These probabilistic models predict that learners should be sensitive to the way in which sentences are sampled. There are two main types of sampling assumptions that can operate in language learning: strong and weak sampling. Strong sampling, as assumed by probabilistic models, assumes the learning input is drawn from a distribution of grammatical samples from the underlying language and aims to learn this distribution. Thus, under strong sampling, the absence of a sentence construction from the input provides evidence that it has low or zero probability of grammaticality. Weak sampling does not make assumptions about the distri)
From the foods we eat and the houses we construct, to our religious practices and political organization, to who we can marry and the types of games we teach our children, the diversity of cultural practices in the world is astounding. Yet, our ability to visualize and understand this diversity is limited by the ways it has been documented and shared: on a culture-by-culture basis, in locally-told stories or difficult-to-access repositories. In this paper we introduce D-PLACE, the Database of Places, Language, Culture, and Environment. This expandable and open-access database (accessible at ) brings together a dispersed corpus of information on the geography, language, culture, and environment of over 1400 human societies. We aim to enable researchers to investigate the extent to which patterns in cultural diversity are shaped by different forces, including shared history, demographics, migration/diffusion, cultural innovations, and environmental and ecological conditions. We detail h)
Perceiving not just values, but relations between values, is critical to human cognition. We tested the predictions of a proposed mechanism for processing categorical spatial relations between two objects—the shift account of relation processing—which states that relations such as ‘above’ or ‘below’ are extracted by shifting visual attention upward or downward in space. If so, then shifts of attention should improve the representation of spatial relations, compared to a control condition of identity memory. Participants viewed a pair of briefly flashed objects and were then tested on either the relative spatial relation or identity of one of those objects. Using eye tracking to reveal participants’ voluntary shifts of attention over time, we found that when initial fixation was on neither object, relational memory showed an absolute advantage for the object following an attention shift, while identity memory showed no advantage for either object. This result is consistent with the shi)
Music, like languages, is one of the key components of our culture, yet musical evolution is still poorly known. Numerous studies using computational methods derived from evolutionary biology have been successfully applied to varied subset of linguistic data. One of the major drawback regarding musical studies is the lack of suitable coded musical data that can be analysed using such evolutionary tools. Here we present for the first time an original set of musical data coded in a way that enables construction of trees classically used in evolutionary approaches. Using phylogenetic methods, we test two competing theories on musical evolution: vertical versus horizontal transmission. We show that, contrary to what is currently believed, vertical transmission plays a key role in shaping musical diversity. The signal of vertical transmission is particularly strong for intrinsic musical characters such as metrics, rhythm, and melody. Our findings reveal some of the evolutionary mechanisms )
Whether using two languages enhances executive functions is a matter of debate. Here, we take a novel perspective to examine the bilingual advantage hypothesis by comparing bi-dialect with mono-dialect speakers’ performance on a non-linguistic task that requires executive control. Two groups of native Chinese speakers, one speaking only the standard Chinese Mandarin and the other also speaking the Southern-Min dialect, which differs from the standard Chinese Mandarin primarily in phonology, performed a classic Flanker task. Behavioural results showed no difference between the two groups, but event-related potentials recorded simultaneously revealed a number of differences, including an earlier P2 effect in the bi-dialect as compared to the mono-dialect group, suggesting that the two groups engage different underlying neural processes. Despite differences in the early ERP component, no between-group differences in the magnitude of the Flanker effects, which is an index of conflict reso)
Compositional “language of thought” models have recently been proposed to account for a wide range of children’s conceptual and linguistic learning. The present work aims to evaluate one of the most basic assumptions of these models: children should have an ability to represent and compose functions. We show that 3.5–4.5 year olds are able to predictively compose two novel functions at significantly above chance levels, even without any explicit training or feedback on the composition itself. We take this as evidence that children at this age possess some capacity for compositionality, consistent with models that make this ability explicit, and providing an empirical challenge to those that do not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR], Copyright of PLoS ONE is the property of Public Library of Science and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles )
The extent of research on children’s speech in general and on disordered speech specifically is very limited. In this article, we describe the process of creating databases of children’s speech and the possibilities for using such databases, which have been created by the LANNA research group in the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at Czech Technical University in Prague. These databases have been principally compiled for medical research but also for use in other areas, such as linguistics. Two databases were recorded: one for healthy children’s speech (recorded in kindergarten and in the first level of elementary school) and the other for pathological speech of children with a Specific Language Impairment (recorded at a surgery of speech and language therapists and at the hospital). Both databases were sub-divided according to specific demands of medical research. Their utilization can be exoteric, specifically for linguistic research and pedagogical use as well as for studies of s)
Research on cross-linguistic comparisons of the neural correlates of reading has consistently found that the left middle frontal gyrus (MFG) is more involved in Chinese than in English. However, there is a lack of consensus on the interpretation of the language difference. Because this region has been found to be involved in writing, we hypothesize that reading Chinese characters involves this writing region to a greater degree because Chinese speakers learn to read by repeatedly writing the characters. To test this hypothesis, we recruited English L1 learners of Chinese, who performed a reading task and a writing task in each language. The English L1 sample had learned some Chinese characters through character-writing and others through phonological learning, allowing a test of writing-on-reading effect. We found that the left MFG was more activated in Chinese than English regardless of task, and more activated in writing than in reading regardless of language. Furthermore, we found )
Recognizing speech in adverse listening conditions is a significant cognitive, perceptual, and linguistic challenge, especially for children. Prior studies have yielded mixed results on the impact of bilingualism on speech perception in noise. Methodological variations across studies make it difficult to converge on a conclusion regarding the effect of bilingualism on speech-in-noise performance. Moreover, there is a dearth of speech-in-noise evidence for bilingual children who learn two languages simultaneously. The aim of the present study was to examine the extent to which various adverse listening conditions modulate differences in speech-in-noise performance between monolingual and simultaneous bilingual children. To that end, sentence recognition was assessed in twenty-four school-aged children (12 monolinguals; 12 simultaneous bilinguals, age of English acquisition ≤ 3 yrs.). We implemented a comprehensive speech-in-noise battery to examine recognition of English sentences acro)
Background: Due to their increased vulnerability, immigrants are considered a priority group for communicable disease prevention and control in Europe. This study aims to compare influenza vaccination coverage (IVC) between regular immigrants and Italian citizens at risk for its complications and evaluate factors affecting differences. Methods: Based on data collected by the National Institute of Statistics during a population-based cross-sectional survey conducted in Italy in 2012–2013, we analysed information on 42,048 adult residents (≥ 18 years) at risk for influenza-related complications and with free access to vaccination (elderly residents ≥ 65 years and residents with specific chronic diseases). We compared IVC between 885 regular immigrants and 41,163 Italian citizens using log-binomial models and stratifying immigrants by area of origin and length of stay in Italy (recent: < 10 years; long-term: ≥ 10 years). Results: IVC among all immigrants was 16.9% compared to 40.2% am)
Language is not only the representation of thinking, but also shapes thinking. Studies on bilinguals suggest that a foreign language plays an important and unconscious role in thinking. In this study, a software—Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count 2007—was used to investigate whether the learning of English as a foreign language (EFL) can foster Chinese high school students’ English analytic thinking (EAT) through the analysis of their English writings with our self-built corpus. It was found that: (1) learning English can foster Chinese learners’ EAT. Chinese EFL learners’ ability of making distinctions, degree of cognitive complexity and degree of thinking activeness have all improved along with the increase of their English proficiency and their age; (2) there exist differences in Chinese EFL learners’ EAT and that of English native speakers, i. e. English native speakers are better in the ability of making distinctions and degree of thinking activeness. These findings suggest that t)
The ancestry of the Colombian population comprises a large number of well differentiated Native communities belonging to diverse linguistic groups. In the late fifteenth century, a process of admixture was initiated with the arrival of the Europeans, and several years later, Africans also became part of the Colombian population. Therefore, the genepool of the current Colombian population results from the admixture of Native Americans, Europeans and Africans. This admixture occurred differently in each region of the country, producing a clearly stratified population. Considering the importance of population substructure in both clinical and forensic genetics, we sought to investigate and compare patterns of genetic ancestry in Colombia by studying samples from Native and non-Native populations living in its 5 continental regions: the Andes, Caribe, Amazonia, Orinoquía, and Pacific regions. For this purpose, 46 AIM-Indels were genotyped in 761 non-related individuals from current popula)
Online Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) are survey-like instruments that help citizens to shape their political preferences and compare them with those of political parties. Especially in multi-party democracies, their increasing popularity indicates that VAAs play an important role in opinion formation for citizens, as well as in the public debate prior to elections. Hence, the objectivity and transparency of VAAs are crucial. In the design of VAAs, many choices have to be made. Extant research in survey methodology shows that the seemingly arbitrary choice to word questions positively (e.g., ‘The city council should allow cars into the city centre’) or negatively (‘The city council should ban cars from the city centre’) systematically affects the answers. This asymmetry in answers is in line with work on negativity bias in other areas of linguistics and psychology. Building on these findings, this study investigated whether question polarity also affects the answers to VAA statemen)
A defining trait of linguistic competence is the ability to combine elements into increasingly complex structures to denote, and to comprehend, a potentially infinite number of meanings. Recent magnetoencephalography (MEG) work has investigated these processes by comparing the response to nouns in combinatorial (blue car) and non-combinatorial (rnsh car) contexts. In the current study we extended this paradigm using electroencephalography (EEG) to dissociate the role of semantic content from phonological well-formedness (yerl car). We used event-related potential (ERP) recordings in order to better relate the observed neurophysiological correlates of basic combinatorial operations to prior ERP work on comprehension. We found that nouns in combinatorial contexts (blue car) elicited a greater centro-parietal negativity between 180-400ms, independent of the phonological well-formedness of the context word. We discuss the potential relationship between this ‘combinatorial’ effect and clas)