Microstates in language-related brain potential maps show noun-verb differences

Brain processing of grammatical word class was studied analyzing event-related potential (ERP) brain fields. Normal subjects observed a randomized sequence of single German nouns and verbs on a computer screen, while 20-channel ERP field map series were recorded separately for both word classes. Spatial microstate analysis was applied, based on the observation that series of ERP maps consist of epochs of quasi-stable map landscapes and based on the rationale that different map landscapes must have been generated by different neural generators and thus suggest different brain functions. Space-oriented segmentation of the mean map series identified nine successive, different functional microstates, i.e., steps of brain information processing characterized by quasi-stable map landscapes. In the microstate from 116 to 172 msec, noun-related maps differed significantly from verb-related maps along the left–right axis. The results indicate that different neural populations represent different grammatical word classes in language processing, in agreement with clinical observations. This word class differentiation as revealed by the spatial–temporal organization of neural activity occurred at a time after word input compatible with speed of reading.

Myth creation in textbook writing : the case of randomised controlled trials in medical research

Textbooks, across all disciplines, are prone to contain errors; grammatical, editorial, factual, or judgemental. The following is an account of one of the possible effects of such errors; how an error becomes entrenched and even exaggerated as later textbooks fail to correct the original error. The example considered here concerns the origins of one of the most basic and important tools of to­ day's medical research, the randomised controlled trial. It is the result of a systematic study of 26 British, French and German history of medicine textbooks since 1996.

Falkland Island English

This chapter examines some of the grammatical variability and non-standardness found in the English of the Falkland Islands. The Falklands are an archipelago of over 700 islands located in the western South Atlantic Ocean, 480km off the east coast of Argentina. Although the population is small – around 3000 - the islands cover an area of over 12000km2 – slightly larger than Jamaica and half the size of Wales, making them, after Greenland, the most sparsely populated political entity in the world. In political terms, the Falklands are an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom. In contrast to the rural isolated image that the Falklands perhaps conjure up, the community is, in demographic terms, an urban and diverse one. Over 85% of the population living in the capital Stanley. The 2006 census (Government of the Falkland Islands 2007: 6) shows that 55% of the population were not born on the Islands, with the largest migrant groups coming from the UK, St Helena (another British Overseas Territory, located in the eastern South Atlantic), Chile and Australia. It also highlighted the fact that people born in 62 different countries were resident on the islands at the time (Pascoe and Pepper 2008: 38). By way of a comparison, only Monaco and Andorra, in Europe, have a higher proportion of their populations made up of migrants. In addition to the local Falkland population, there is a large military presence on the islands at the Royal Airforce Base at Mount Pleasant, 50km south-west of Stanley. The Head of State is the monarch of the UK, who is represented on the islands by a governor. The democratically elected 11-member Legislative Assembly is responsible for day-to-day government of the islands. The Falklands are perhaps most famous because of their 74 day occupation by Argentina in 1982. It is not appropriate here to go into detail about the dispute between the UK and Argentina about the sovereignty of the Islands. What is undisputed is that there has been a continuous Anglophone speech community on the islands since the early 1830s, making it one of the most recently developed ‘Inner Circle’ (Kachru 1985) Englishes in the world. This chapter examines the grammatical characteristics of Falkland Island English, drawn from a transcribed corpus of over 500,000 words of informal conversational speech, collected by Andrea Sudbury both in Stanley and in ‘Camp’ (the local name for the rest of the islands) (see Sudbury 2000, 2001 for more details about the methods used in the survey).

PolySynthesis 6.0 -- bicentennial edition

Even 197 years after its introduction, the notion of polysynthesis remains one of the most intriguing and controversial tools in the (morphological) typologist's toolbox. Several --occasionally contradictory--definitions have been proposed, employed for various purposes, and debated to this very day, but neither practitioners nor theoreticians have reached a comfortable level of consensus regarding its most effective and efficient form yet. The present talk maps the evolution of the notion, discusses its usefulness, and contends that the tool can be made better by updating it minimally with respect to its form and substantially with respect to its conceptual foundations. The former aspect of the update consists of making the notion more precise via explicit qualification; the latter bears relation to our arguably problematic understanding of the pairs lexical vs. grammatical and word vs. clause.

Linkage in narratives: A comparison between monolingual speakers of French and Italian, and early and late French-Italian bilinguals

In the course of language acquisition learners have to deal with the task of producing narrative texts that are coherent across a range of conceptual domains (space, time, entities) -- both within as well as across utterances. The organization of information is analyzed in this study, on the basis of retellings of a silent film, in terms of devices used in the coordination and subordination of events within the narrative sequence. The focus on subordination reflects a core grammatical difference between Italian and French, as Italian is a null-subject language while French is not. The implications of this contrast for information structure include differences in topic management within the sequence of events. The present study investigates in how far Italian-French bilingual speakers acquire the patterns of monolingual speakers of Italian. It compares how early and late bilinguals of these two languages proceed when linking information in narratives in Italian.

Biactantial agreement in the Gongduk transitive verb in the broader Tibeto-Burman context

The Gongduk language is spoken in an enclave in south central Bhutan comprising several villages and hamlets in the mountains west of the Kurichu. The language occupies a distinct phylogenetic position within the Tibeto-Burman language family. The intransitive verb agrees for person and number with the subject, and the transitive shows biactantial agreement for person and number with both agent and patient. A morphological analysis has identified the individual agreement morphemes, their precise grammatical meaning and their patterns of allomorphy. The cognacy of the greater part of the desinences of the Gongduk verb with morphemes identifiable in the biactantial agreement systems of other Tibeto-Burman languages supports the view that at least a portion of such conjugational morphology must be reconstructed to the common ancestral language.

The effect of figures in CCS communication

Illustrations are an essential part of most CCS communication materials. This article looks at the role of illustrations in communication and education in general, and in CCS communication in particular. First, literature on multimedia learning is reviewed and general guidelines for designing graphical displays deduced. This is followed by a discussion of relevant mental models and their possible implementa- tion in pictorial form. The authors then report on an interview study in which illustrations with various implementations of CCS mental models are compared. No major differences were found regarding under- standing of CCS between the different illustrations. Graphical displays alone are not powerful enough to implicitly correct typical misconceptions about CCS. Such misconceptions should be stated explicitly, along with their correction.

"It won't happen to me!": self-disclosure in online social networks

Despite the considerable amount of self-disclosure in Online Social Networks (OSN), the motivation behind this phenomenon is still little understood. Building on the Privacy Calculus theory, this study fills this gap by taking a closer look at the factors behind individual self-disclosure decisions. In a Structural Equation Model with 237 subjects we find Perceived Enjoyment and Privacy Concerns to be significant determinants of information revelation. We confirm that the privacy concerns of OSN users are primarily determined by the perceived likelihood of a privacy violation and much less by the expected damage. These insights provide a solid basis for OSN providers and policy-makers in their effort to ensure healthy disclosure levels that are based on objective rationale rather than subjective misconceptions.

Личните и географските имена в българския и сръбския превод на Стишния пролог (по материал от месец март)

The paper presents a comparative study of the personal and geographic names in the two complete Slavic translations of the Byzantine Versified Synaxarion, namely the Bulgarian and Serbian Prolog Stišnoj, which appeared around the first half of the 14 th century. On the basis of the March texts in seven South Slavic manuscripts, the differences in the rendering of the personal names are analysed on the level of phonetics, orthography, morphology and word formation. The data allow the following conclusions: 1) The differences in the forms of these names in the Bulgarian and Serbian Prolog Stišnoj give further arguments supporting their independent origin; 2) Several specific tendencies are noted which more or less differentiate them. The Bulgarian translation reproduces more accurately the graphics of the original names, allows dativus possessivus, often replaces the Greek anthroponyms and toponyms with adjectives, presents many local names in the plural, and sometimes retains Greek nominative endings in masculine personal names. The Serbian translation, on the other hand, follows more often the Byzantine pronunciation of the names, complies more strictly with their grammatical characteristics (case, number), separates more often the ending -ς from the stem, and incorporates the accusative ending -ν into the stem of certain anthroponyms several times. 3) The tendency towards Slavicisation of the personal names is nearly the same in both translations and cannot be viewed as peculiar of either of them.

(Anti-)cliticization in Mapudungun

This article describes the formal behavior of some elements found in Mapudungun (isolate, South America): a question particle, a postposition, and several 3rd-person markers. Framed in terms of current theories of phonological and grammatical words, the paper argues that a useful characterization of the Mapudungun elements under scrutiny should acknowledge (a) that clitics are interestingly heterogeneous regarding how different bound elements stand in paradigmatic opposition to each other, and (b) that some of these elements can be meaningfully be called anti-clitics (i.e., they are p-words that are part of larger g-words).

Gender-Fair language and professional self-reference: The case of female psychologists in Polish

The struggle to achieve gender equality is accompanied by efforts to introduce gender-fair language. In languages with grammatical gender this implies the use of gender-appropriate forms (feminine for women and masculine for males). In the present research, results of a mixed method approach—a corpus analysis, a survey, and an experiment—provide consistent evidence that in Polish, feminine forms are still infrequent in women’s self-reference and that women psychologists continue to use masculine titles. Moreover, a qualitative inquiry examines the reasons why women prefer masculine over feminine job titles. Integrating findings from the two-stage design, we are able to identify the obstacles to promoting social change with the help of language and to understand the reasons behind them.

Universal ontology: attentive tracking of objects and substances across languages and over development

Previous research has demonstrated that adults are successful at visually tracking rigidly moving items, but experience great difficulties when tracking substance-like ‘‘pouring’’ items. Using a comparative approach, we investigated whether the presence/absence of the grammatical count–mass distinction influences adults and children’s ability to attentively track objects versus substances. More specifically, we aimed to explore whether the higher success at tracking rigid over substance-like items appears universally or whether speakers of classifier languages (like Japanese, not marking the object–substance distinction) are advantaged at tracking substances as compared to speakers of non-classifier languages (like Swiss German, marking the object–substance distinction). Our results supported the idea that language has no effect on low-level cognitive processes such as the attentive visual processing of objects and substances. We concluded arguing that the tendency to prioritize objects is universal and independent of specific characteristics of the language spoken.

Clitics, affixes, and wordhood in Garifuna (Arawak): A multidimensional continuum of morphosyntactic boundness

Recent research on wordhood and morphosyntactic boundness suggests that the domains word and clitic do not lend themselves to cross-linguistic categorization but must be defined language specifically. In most languages, it is necessary to define word on two separate levels, the phonological word (p-word) and the grammatical word (g-word), and to describe mismatches between the two. This paper defines those domains for Garifuna, an Arawak language spoken in Honduras, Central America. Garifuna has auxiliary and classifier constructions which make up two p-words, and only one g-word. P-words made up of more than one g-word involve second position enclitics, word scope clitics, and proclitic connectives and prepositions. Garifuna clitics are typically unstressed, able to attach to hosts of any word class and able to string together into clusters. Enclitics are used to express tense-aspect, modality, and adverbial meanings, among others. In other languages, clitic clusters tend to display a fixed order; Garifuna clitic order seems quite free, although certain orders are preferred. Also, contrary to cross-linguistic tendencies, proclitic connectives can act as hosts for enclitic clusters, contradicting the commonly used definition of clitics as phonologically weak elements that need to attach to a host to form a p-word; such clitic-only p-words are problematic for traditional definitions of clitics.

First thoughts on surface tonal patterns in Amawaka, a Panoan language of Peru and Brazil

Amawaka ([ɑmɨ̃ˈwɐkɑ]) is a highly endangered and underdocumented tonal language of the Headwaters (Fleck 2011) subgroup of the Panoan family in the Southwest Amazon Basin, spoken by approximately 200 people. Undocumented phonetic and phonological phenomena of Amawaka include its tonal structure, both in terms of surface realizations and the patterns underlying these realizations. Original audiovisual data from the author’s fieldwork in various Amawaka communities at the Peru-Brazil border will illuminate the as-yet obscure tonal systematicity of the language. Unlike other elements, monosyllabic bimoraic phonological nominal words with long vowels display variation in their surface realization. All the words with the open back unrounded /ɑ/, like /ˈkɑ̀:/ (patarashca, a traditional Amazonian dish), /ˈnɑ̀:/ “mestizo” etc. [with the exception of /ˈtɑ:/ “reed”, which surfaces with either a H or L tone] bear a low tone in isolation. This realization contrasts with all the encountered nominal monosyllables with vowels from the close and close-mid front and central spectrum /i, ɘ, ɨ, ɨ̃/, which clearly surface as high tone words in isolation, for example /ˈmɨ̃́:/ (a clay-lick for animals), /ˈwí:/ “Anopheles, spp. mosquito”. Monosyllables with close-mid back rounded /o/ have a less restrictive pitch that varies among speakers from low to high realizations, and sometimes even across the speech tokens from an individual speaker, e.g. /wó:/ or /wō:/ “hair”, /ɧō:/ or /ɧò:/ (a type of tarantula). Phrasal tonal phonology is more complex, when these three kinds of monosyllables appear in larger noun phrases. Some retain the same surface tones as their isolation form, while others seem to vary freely in their surface realization, e.g. /ˈtɘ́:.nɑ̀:/ or /ˈtɘ́:.nɑ́:/ ‘one mestizo’. Yet other monosyllables, e.g. /mɑ̀:/, exhibit a falling tone when preceded by a H syllable, suggesting probably latent tone sandhi phenomena, e.g /ˈtɘ́:.mɑ̂:/ (one clay-lick for parrots). In disyllabic, trisyllabic and quadrisyllabic nouns, tonal and stress patterns generally seem to be more consistent and tend to be retained both in isolation and in larger intonational phrases. Disyllabic nouns, for instance, surface as L-H or L-L when a glottal stop is in coda position. The association of L with a glottal stop is a feature that occurs in other Panoan languages as well, like Capanahua (Loos 1969), and more generally it is an areal feature, found in other parts of Amazonia (Hyman 2010). So, tone has significant interactions with the glottal stop and glottalization, which generally co-occurs with L. The data above suggest that the underlying tonal system of Amawaka is much more complex than the privative one-tone analysis (/H/ vs. Ø, i.e. lack of tone) that was proposed by Russell and Russell (1959). Evidence from field data suggests either an equipollent (Hyman 2010) two-tone opposition between /H/ and /L/, or a hybrid system, with both equipollent and privative features; that is, /H/ vs. /L/ vs. either Ø or /M/. This first systematic description of Amawaka tone, in conjunction with ongoing research, is poised to address broader questions concerning interrelationships between surface/underlying tone and other suprasegmental features, such as nasality, metrical stress, and intonation. References Fleck, David W. 2011. Panoan languages and linguistics. In Javier Ruedas and David W. Fleck (Eds.), Panoan Histories and Interethnic Identities, To appear. Hyman, Larry. 2010. Amazonia and the typology of tone systems. Presented at the conference Amazonicas III: The structure of the Amazonian languages. Bogotá. Loos, Eugene E. 1969. The phonology of Capanahua and its grammatical basis. Norman: SIL and U. Oklahoma. Russell, Robert & Dolores. 1959. Syntactotonemics in Amahuaca (Pano). Série Lingüistica Especial, 128-167. Publicaçoes do Museu Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil.

Towards an analysis of tonal patterns in Amawaka, a Panoan language of Peru and Brazil

Amawaka ([ɑmɨ̃ˈwɐkɑ]) is a highly endangered and underdocumented tonal language of the Headwaters (Fleck 2011) subgroup of the Panoan family in the Southwest Amazon Basin, spoken by approximately 200 people. Undocumented phonetic and phonological phenomena of Amawaka include its tonal structure, both in terms of surface realizations and the patterns underlying these realizations. Original audiovisual data from the author’s fieldwork in various Amawaka communities at the Peru-Brazil border will illuminate the as-yet obscure tonal systematicity of the language. Unlike other elements, monosyllabic bimoraic phonological nominal words with long vowels display variation in their surface realization. All the words with the open back unrounded /ɑ/, like /ˈkɑ̀:/ (a traditional Amazonian dish), /ˈnɑ̀:/ “mestizo” etc. [with the exception of /ˈtɑ:/ “reed”, which surfaces with either a H or L tone] bear a low tone in isolation. This realization contrasts with all the encountered nominal monosyllables with vowels from the close and close-mid front and central spectrum /i, ɘ, ɨ, ɨ̃/, which clearly surface as high tone words in isolation, for example /ˈmɨ̃́:/ (a clay-lick for animals), /ˈwí:/ “Anopheles, spp. mosquito”. Monosyllables with close-mid back rounded /o/ have a less restrictive pitch that varies among speakers from low to high realizations, and sometimes even across the speech tokens from an individual speaker, e.g. /wó:/ or /wō:/ “hair”, /ɧō:/ or /ɧò:/ (a type of tarantula). Phrasal tonal phonology is more complex, when these three kinds of monosyllables appear in larger noun phrases. Some retain the same surface tones as their isolation form, while others seem to vary freely in their surface realization, e.g. /ˈtɘ́:.nɑ̀:/ or /ˈtɘ́:.nɑ́:/ ‘one mestizo’. Yet other monosyllables, e.g. /mɑ̀:/, exhibit a falling tone when preceded by a H syllable, suggesting probably latent tone sandhi phenomena, e.g /ˈtɘ́:.mɑ̂:/ (one clay-lick for parrots). In disyllabic, trisyllabic and quadrisyllabic nouns, tonal and stress patterns generally seem to be more consistent and tend to be retained both in isolation and in larger intonational phrases. Disyllabic nouns, for instance, surface as L-H or L-L when a glottal stop is in coda position. The association of L with a glottal stop is a feature that occurs in other Panoan languages as well, like Capanahua (Loos 1969), and more generally it is an areal feature, found in other parts of Amazonia (Hyman 2010). So, tone has significant interactions with the glottal stop and glottalization, which generally co-occurs with L. The data above suggest that the underlying tonal system of Amawaka is much more complex than the privative one-tone analysis (/H/ vs. Ø, i.e. lack of tone) that was proposed by Russell and Russell (1959). Evidence from field data suggests either an equipollent (Hyman 2010) two-tone opposition between /H/ and /L/, or a hybrid system, with both equipollent and privative features; that is, /H/ vs. /L/ vs. either Ø or /M/. This first systematic description of Amawaka tone, in conjunction with ongoing research, is poised to address broader questions concerning interrelationships between surface/underlying tone and other suprasegmental features, such as nasality, metrical stress, and intonation. References Fleck, David W. 2011. Panoan languages and linguistics. In Javier Ruedas and David W. Fleck (Eds.), Panoan Histories and Interethnic Identities, To appear. Hyman, Larry. 2010. Amazonia and the typology of tone systems. Presented at the conference Amazonicas III: The structure of the Amazonian languages. Bogotá. Loos, Eugene E. 1969. The phonology of Capanahua and its grammatical basis. Norman: SIL and U. Oklahoma. Russell, Robert & Dolores. 1959. Syntactotonemics in Amahuaca (Pano). Série Lingüistica Especial, 128-167. Publicaçoes do Museu Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil.