DOCSLIB.ORG

Curriculum Vitae Alexandra Jesse

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Curriculum Vitae Alexandra Jesse Jesse, Alexandra Curriculum Vitae, p.1 University of Massachusetts Amherst 433 Tobin Hall Curriculum Vitae 135 Hicks Way Amherst MA 01003 U.S.A. Tel: (413)-545-2175 Alexandra Jesse [email protected] http://lips.psych.umass.edu Last Updated: April 2017 Citizenship: German (Permanent Residence: U.S.A.) Education 2005 Ph.D. Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz Dissertation: Towards a Lexical Fuzzy Logical Model of Perception: The Time-Course of Information in Lexical Identification of Face-to-Face Speech Advisor: Dr. Dominic W. Massaro 2000 M.Sc. Psychology University of California, Santa Cruz Thesis: Consistency Effects in the Fragmentation Task Advisor: Dr. Dominic W. Massaro 1998 Undergraduate Psychology, Philipps-University Marburg, Germany Degree Thesis: Reaction Times in Word Recognition Tasks: An Analysis of Distribution ("Vordiplom") Functions under Consideration of the Multiple Read-Out Model (MROM) Advisor: Dr. Arthur M. Jacobs Positions and Employment 2010 – present Assistant Professor, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst Adjunct faculty member in the Department of Linguistics Faculty member in the Neuroscience and Behavior Program Director of the Language, Intersensory Perception, and Speech (LIPS) laboratory 2005 – 2010 Researcher, Language Comprehension Department (Dir. Dr. Anne Cutler), Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Netherlands 2005 (July – September) Post-doctoral Researcher, Dr. Dominic W. Massaro, University of California, Santa Cruz 1999 – 2005 Graduate Student Research Assistant, Dr. Dominic W. Massaro, University of California, Santa Cruz 1999 – 2000 Fulbright Scholar, Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz 1997 – 1999 Graduate Student Research Assistant, Dr. Arthur M. Jacobs, Philipps-University Marburg, Germany Visiting and Consulting Positions 2016 (June – December) Consultant on NIH RO1 Grant "Speech Perception with Combined Electric and Acoustic Stimulation", PI: Dr. Ying-Yee Kong 2016 (June – August) Visiting Scholar, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany, Dr. Katharina v. Kriegstein 2004 (September) Visiting Scholar, MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, UK, Dr. Dennis Norris 2004 (August) Visiting Scholar, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, NL, Dr. Anne Cutler Jesse, Alexandra Curriculum Vitae, p.2 Publications † student author *** Research conducted while at UMass ** Research started elsewhere and completed at UMass * Earlier research published while at UMass Journal Articles (Peer-Reviewed) ***Francisco†, A. A., Groen, M. A., Jesse, A., & McQueen, J. M. (2017). Beyond the usual cognitive suspects: The importance of speechreading and audiovisual temporal sensitivity in reading ability. Learning and Individual Differences, 54, 60-72. Groen and Jesse contributed equally to the MS. ***Francisco†, A. A., Jesse, A., Groen, M. A., & McQueen, J. M. (2017). A general audiovisual temporal processing deficit in adult dyslexic readers. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 60, 144- 158. Jesse and Groen contributed equally to the MS. ***Jesse, A., Poellmann, K., & Kong, Y.-Y. (2017). English listeners use suprasegmental cues to lexical stress early during spoken-word recognition. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 60, 190-198. ***Kong, Y.-Y., & Jesse, A. (2017). Low-frequency fine-structure cues allow for the online use of stress during spoken-word recognition. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 141(1), 373-382. **Jesse, A., & Johnson, E. K. (2016). Audiovisual alignment of co-speech gestures to speech supports word learning in two-year-olds. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 145, 1-10. ***Helfer, K. S., & Jesse, A. (2015). Lexical influences on competing speech perception in younger, middle-aged, and older adults. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 138(1), 363-376. ***Janse, E., & Jesse, A. (2014). Working memory affects older adults’ use of context in spoken-word recognition. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 67, 1842-1862. **Jesse, A., & McQueen, J. M. (2014). Suprasegmental lexical stress in visual speech can guide spoken-word recognition. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 67, 793-808. ***Van der Zande†, P., Jesse, A., & Cutler, A. (2014). Cross-talker generalization in two phoneme-level perceptual adaptation processes. Journal of Phonetics, 43, 38-46. **Van der Zande†, P., Jesse, A., & Cutler, A. (2014). Hearing words helps seeing words: A cross-modal word repetition effect. Speech Communication, 59, 31-43. **Reinisch†, E., Jesse, A., & Nygaard, L. C. (2013). Tone of Voice guides word learning in informative referential context. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 66, 1227-1240. ***Van der Zande†, P., Jesse, A., & Cutler A. (2013). Lexically-guided retuning of visual phonetic categories. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 134, 564-571. **Jesse, A., & Janse, E. (2012). The audiovisual benefit for the recognition of speech presented with single-talker noise in older listeners. Language and Cognitive Processes, 27, 1167-1191. **Jesse, A., & Johnson, E. K. (2012). Prosodic temporal alignment of co-speech gestures to speech facilitates referent resolution. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 38(6), 1567-1587. **Jesse, A., & McQueen, J. M. (2011). Positional effects in the lexical retuning of speech perception. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 18, 943-956. *Reinisch†, E., Jesse, A., & McQueen, J. M. (2011). Speaking rate affects the perception of duration as suprasegmental lexical-stress cue. Language and Speech, 54(2), 147-165. Jesse, Alexandra Curriculum Vitae, p.3 *Reinisch†, E., Jesse, A., & McQueen, J. M. (2011). Speaking rate from proximal and distal contexts is used during word segmentation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 37, 978- 996. Jesse, A., & Massaro, D. W. (2010). Seeing a singer helps comprehension of the song's lyrics. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 17, 323-328. Jesse, A. & Massaro, D. W. (2010). The time-course of audiovisual spoken-word recognition. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, 72, 209-225. Mitterer, H. & Jesse, A. (2010). Correlation versus causation in multisensory perception. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 17, 329-334. Reinisch†, E., Jesse, A., & McQueen, J. M. (2010). Early use of phonetic information in spoken word recognition: Lexical stress drives eye-movements immediately. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 63, 772- 783. Massaro, D.W., & Jesse, A. (2009). Read my lips: Speech distortions in musical lyrics can be overcome (slightly) by facial information. Speech Communication, 51, 604-621. McQueen, J. M., Jesse, A., & Norris, D. (2009). No lexical-prelexical feedback during speech perception. Or: Is it time to stop playing those Christmas tapes? Journal of Memory and Language, 61, 1-18. Jesse, A., Vrignaud, N., Cohen, M. M., & Massaro, D. W. (2000). The processing of information from multiple sources in simultaneous interpreting. Interpreting, 5, 95-115. Books and Book Chapters ***Ouni, S., Berthommier, F., & Jesse, A. (Eds.). (2013). Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Auditory-Visual Speech Processing. Nancy, France: INRIA. Massaro, D. W., & Jesse, A. (2007). Audiovisual speech perception and word recognition. In G. Gaskell (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics (pp. 19-36). Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press. Massaro, D. W., & Jesse, A. (2005). The magic of reading: Too many influences for quick and easy explanations. In T. Trabasso, J. Sabatini, D. W. Massaro, and R. C. Calfee (Eds.), From Orthography to Pedagogy: Essays in Honor of Richard L. Venezky (pp. 37-61). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Dissertation Jesse, A. (2005). Towards a lexical Fuzzy Logical Model of Perception: The time-course of information in lexical identification of face-to-face speech. Doctoral Dissertation, University of California, Santa Cruz, California. Proceedings Papers ***Francisco†, A. A., Jesse, A., Groen, M. A., & McQueen, J. M. (2014). Audiovisual temporal sensitivity in typical and dyslexic adults. Proceedings of the 15th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2014) (pp. 2575-2579). Singapore, Singapore. ***Groen, M. A., & Jesse, A. (2013). Audiovisual speech perception in children and adolescents with developmental dyslexia: No deficit with McGurk stimuli. In S. Ouni, F. Berthommier, and A. Jesse (Eds.). Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Auditory-Visual Speech Processing (pp. 77-80). Nancy, France: Inria. **Jesse, A., & Mitterer, H. (2011). Pointing gestures do not influence the perception of lexical stress. Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2011) (pp. 2245-2248), Florence, Italy. Jesse, A., & Janse, E. (2009). Visual speech information aids elderly adults in stream segregation. Proceedings of the International Conference on Auditory-Visual Speech Processing 2009 (pp. 22-27). Adelaide, Australia: Causal Productions. Jesse, Alexandra Curriculum Vitae, p.4 Jesse, A., & Johnson, E. K. (2008). Audiovisual alignment in child-directed speech facilitates word learning. Proceedings of the International Conference on Auditory-Visual Speech Processing 2008 (pp. 101-106). Adelaide, Australia: Causal Productions. Reinisch†, E., Jesse, A., & McQueen, J. M. (2008). The strength
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Proceedings of the Trieste Symposium on Perception and Cognition November 27-28
    Proceedings of the Trieste Symposium on Perception and Cognition November 27-28 edited by Paolo Bernardis Carlo Fantoni EUT Walter Gerbino Cover image edited by Divulgando from the original Kanizsa’s painting “Tondo” 1972 © copyright Edizioni Università di Trieste, Trieste 2014. Proprietà letteraria riservata. I diritti di traduzione, memorizzazione elettronica, di riproduzione e di adattamento totale e parziale di questa pubblicazione, con qualsiasi mezzo (compresi i microfilm, le fotocopie e altro) sono riservati per tutti i paesi. E-ISBN 978-88-8303-610-1 EUT – Edizioni Università di Trieste Via Weiss, 21 – 34128 Trieste http://eut.units.it https://www.facebook.com/EUTEdizioniUniversitaTrieste Proceedings of the Trieste Symposium on Perception and Cognition November 27-28 edited by Paolo Bernardis Carlo Fantoni Walter Gerbino EUT EDIZIONI UNIVERSITÀ DI TRIESTE edited by Paolo Bernardis Carlo Fantoni EUT Walter Gerbino Index 8 Note on publication policy T04. Marković S. & Bulut t. 41 Size of different body characteristics and PAOLO BERNARDIS, CARLO FANTONI, female physical attractiveness: Gender WALTER GERBINO differences 9 Preface T05. Zdravković S. & HerMenS F. WALTER GERBINO 44 Shadows affect eye movements in the 11 Foreword for a sixty-year-old triangle visual judgment tasks GAETANO KANIZSA T06. BUZÁS P. 13 Virtual lines and phenomenal margins in 47 Of cats and men: Origins of primate the absence of stimulation discontinuities color vision pathways (translated by Walter Gerbino) T07. VERSACE E. & VALLORTIGARA G. BARBARA GILLAM 50 Preliminary study on preferences for 21 The 22nd Kanizsa Lecture hollow vs. filled social partners in Grouping and occlusion in perception domestic chicks and art T08. GIORA E.
    [Show full text]
  • Smutty Alchemy
    University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository Graduate Studies The Vault: Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2021-01-18 Smutty Alchemy Smith, Mallory E. Land Smith, M. E. L. (2021). Smutty Alchemy (Unpublished doctoral thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. http://hdl.handle.net/1880/113019 doctoral thesis University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY Smutty Alchemy by Mallory E. Land Smith A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN ENGLISH CALGARY, ALBERTA JANUARY, 2021 © Mallory E. Land Smith 2021 MELS ii Abstract Sina Queyras, in the essay “Lyric Conceptualism: A Manifesto in Progress,” describes the Lyric Conceptualist as a poet capable of recognizing the effects of disparate movements and employing a variety of lyric, conceptual, and language poetry techniques to continue to innovate in poetry without dismissing the work of other schools of poetic thought. Queyras sees the lyric conceptualist as an artistic curator who collects, modifies, selects, synthesizes, and adapts, to create verse that is both conceptual and accessible, using relevant materials and techniques from the past and present. This dissertation responds to Queyras’s idea with a collection of original poems in the lyric conceptualist mode, supported by a critical exegesis of that work.
    [Show full text]
  • The Syntax, Semantics and Processing of Agreement and Binding Grammatical Illusions
    The Syntax, Semantics and Processing of Agreement and Binding Grammatical Illusions by Hezao Ke A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Linguistics) in The University of Michigan 2019 Doctoral Committee: Professor Samuel David Epstein, Co-Chair Professor Acrisio Pires, Co-Chair Associate Professor Jonathan Brennan Professor Richard Lewis “Always rejoice, unceasingly pray, in everything give thanks.” -1 Thessalonians 5: 16-18 Hezao Ke [email protected] ORCID iD: 0000-0003-0873-0684 © Hezao Ke 2019 This thesis is dedicated to my wife and my children. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am now with the complete dissertation in hand, which is the result of six years of work at the University of Michigan. It is time to express my gratitude to the people who have made this dissertation possible. I should first thank my committee members: Samuel Epstein, Acrisio Pires, Richard Lewis and Jonnathan Brennan. I feel especially indebted to the co-chairs of my committee, and my advisors, Sam and Acrisio. Sam is not only a mentor who is always supportive, but also a friend who never gets tired of offering his warm en- couragement and unreserved trust. Tim Chou in fact said what I want to say, “Sam is the kind of advisor and friend that everybody wants.” Sam generously provided his insightful comments on every paper I wrote. His contribution to the dissertation is central and enormous. Many of the ideas were inspired by the meetings with him (and Rick) such that it is impossible to single out his every contribution in the dissertation.
    [Show full text]
  • Accepted Manuscript. Article in Press
    Accepted manuscript. Article in press. What Lenneberg Got Right: A Homological Program for the Study of Language Evolution Sergio Balari & Guillermo Lorenzo By 1967, it was clear to Eric Lenneberg that reconstructing the phylogenetic history of language should require the adoption of a non-functional (or Owenian) homology concept for grounding relevant comparisons. Fifty years later, most biolinguistic approaches have betrayed this project, for they routinely derive their conclusions regarding the unique/shared status of language on merely folk grounds—as dramatically illustrated in Hauser, Chomsky & Fitch vs. Pinker & Jackendoff’s debate, or based on functional considerations—as in Chomsky’s recent conceptualization of language as a unique tool for thought. Here we claim that Lenneberg’s project needs to be resumed and we articulate some suggestions about how to conduct it, taking advantage of recent findings and new conceptual insights con- cerning two crucial levels of analysis actually pinpointed by him—namely, anatomical/molecular structure and physiological function. Keywords: homology thinking; character concept; evolutionary novelties; computational mind Homologies cannot be established by relying on similarity that rests on superficial inspection [. ]; on logical rather than biological aspects [. ]; and on anthropocentric imputation of motives. —Eric Lenneberg (1969: 641) 1. Introduction It takes an easy exercise of folk comparative biology to persuade a freshman of the uniqueness of language when compared to the closest nonhuman behaviors that could possibly come to mind—say, the songs of oscine birds, the alarm calls of vervet monkeys,In etc. As far as one can press say, none of these otherwise sophisticated capabilities appears to provide the means for establishing complex sound-meaning pairings—alternatively, gesture-meaning pairings, ranging across any imaginable experiential domain, and with an open-ended capacity for composing new complex expressions from a finite array of preexistent basic units.
    [Show full text]
  • The Processing of Linguistic Prominence
    LAS0010.1177/0023830919880217Language and SpeechKember et al. 880217research-article2019 Language Grice Special Issue and Speech Language and Speech 1 –24 The Processing of Linguistic © The Author(s) 2019 Article reuse guidelines: Prominence sagepub.com/journals-permissions https://doi.org/10.1177/0023830919880217DOI: 10.1177/0023830919880217 journals.sagepub.com/home/las Heather Kember The MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, Western Sydney University, Australia; ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, Australia Jiyoun Choi ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, Australia; Sookmyung Women’s University, Seoul, Korea Jenny Yu Anne Cutler The MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, Western Sydney University, Australia; ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, Australia Abstract Prominence, the expression of informational weight within utterances, can be signaled by prosodic highlighting (head-prominence, as in English) or by position (as in Korean edge-prominence). Prominence confers processing advantages, even if conveyed only by discourse manipulations. Here we compared processing of prominence in English and Korean, using a task that indexes processing success, namely recognition memory. In each language, participants’ memory was tested for target words heard in sentences in which they were prominent due to prosody, position, both or neither. Prominence produced recall advantage, but the relative effects differed across language. For Korean listeners the positional advantage was greater, but for English listeners prosodic and syntactic prominence had equivalent and additive effects. In a further experiment semantic and phonological foils tested depth of processing of the recall targets. Both foil types were correctly rejected, suggesting that semantic processing had not reached the level at which word form was no longer available.
    [Show full text]
  • Vito Pirrelli, Ingo Plag, Wolfgang U. Dressler (Eds.) Word Knowledge and Word Usage Trends in Linguistics Studies and Monographs
    Vito Pirrelli, Ingo Plag, Wolfgang U. Dressler (Eds.) Word Knowledge and Word Usage Trends in Linguistics Studies and Monographs Editors Chiara Gianollo Daniël Van Olmen Editorial Board Walter Bisang Tine Breban Volker Gast Hans Henrich Hock Karen Lahousse Natalia Levshina Caterina Mauri Heiko Narrog Salvador Pons Niina Ning Zhang Amir Zeldes Editor responsible for this volume Daniël Van Olmen Volume 337 Word Knowledge and Word Usage A Cross-Disciplinary Guide to the Mental Lexicon Edtited by Vito Pirrelli, Ingo Plag, Wolfgang U. Dressler ISBN 978-3-11-051748-4 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-044057-7 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-043244-2 ISBN 1861-4302 DOI https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110440577 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Library of Congress Control Number: 2019956255 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2020 Vito Pirrelli, Ingo Plag, Wolfgang U. Dressler, published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston. The book is published open access at www.degruyter.com. Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com This book is dedicated to the memory of Lavinia Merlini Barbaresi, a pioneering contributor to the field of morphopragmatics and a unique friend, who relent- lessly worked on this volume during the hardest stages of her illness. Contents Vito Pirrelli, Ingo Plag and Wolfgang U.
    [Show full text]
  • Anne Cutler: Curriculum Vitae
    ANNE CUTLER: CURRICULUM VITAE Born Melbourne, Australia. Australian citizen. Home address: 60/1 Tewkesbury Ave., Darlinghurst, NSW 2010, Australia. Tel.: +61(2)8386 2725 Work address: The MARCS Institute, University of Western Sydney, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith South DC, NSW 2751, Australia. Tel.: +61(2)9772 6684; Fax: +61(2)9772 6040; Email: [email protected]. Current Positions Distinguished Professor, The MARCS Institute, University of Western Sydney, Australia. (full time research-only position since 2013; part time 2006-2013; adjunct 2004-2006). Program Leader (Processing), ARC Centre of Excellence in the Dynamics of Language. .. Emeritus Director, Max-Planck-Institut fur Psycholinguistik, Nijmegen, The Netherlands (Director 1993-2013; Managing director 2001-2003, 2009-2010). Prior Tenured Positions 1982-93 Research Scientist, Medical Research Council Applied Psychology Unit, Cambridge, U.K. 1995-2013 Professor of Comparative Psycholinguistics, Faculty of Social Sciences, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Other Professional Experience 1966-67 Research assistant, Psychology Dept., University of Melbourne, Australia. 1967-69 Graduate exchange student, Free University of Berlin and University of Bonn, Germany. 1968-69 Research assistant, Linguistics Dept., University of Bonn, Germany. 1969-71 Teaching Fellow/Senior Teaching Fellow, German Dept., Monash University, Australia. 1972-75 Research assistant/Teaching assistant, Psychology Dept., University of Texas, Austin, Te xas, USA. 1975-76 Postdoctoral Fellow, Psychology Dept., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. 1976-82 Research Fellow, Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, University of Sussex, U.K. .. Part 1982, part 1983 Visiting Scholar, Max-Planck-Institut fur Psycholinguistik, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Summer 1993 Faculty Member, Linguistic Society of America Linguistic Institute, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA.
    [Show full text]
  • Mid-Level Generalizations of Generative Linguistics
    Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 2020; 39(3): 357–374 Evelina Leivada* Mid-level generalizations of generative linguistics: Experimental robustness, cognitive underpinnings and the interdisciplinarity paradox https://doi.org/10.1515/zfs-2020-2021 Abstract: This work examines the nature of the so-called “mid-level generaliza- tions of generative linguistics” (MLGs). In 2015, Generative Syntax in the 21st Cen- tury: The Road Ahead was organized. One of the consensus points that emerged related to the need for establishing a canon, the absence of which was argued to be a major challenge for the feld, raising issues of interdisciplinarity and inter- action. Addressing this challenge, one of the outcomes of this conference was a list of MLGs. These refer to results that are well established and uncontroversially accepted. The aim of the present work is to embed some MLGs into a broader per- spective. I take the Cinque hierarchies for adverbs and adjectives and the Final- over-Final Constraint as case studies in order to determine their experimental ro- bustness. It is showed that at least some MLGs face problems of inadequacy when tapped into through rigorous testing, because they rule out data that are actually attested. I then discuss the nature of some MLGs and show that in their watered- down versions, they do hold and can be derived from general cognitive/computa- tional biases. This voids the need to cast them as language-specifc principles, in line with the Chomskyan urge to approach Universal Grammar from below. Keywords: Universal Grammar, adjectives, adverbs, Final-over-Final Constraint, linguistic theory 1 Introduction It has been argued that linguistics today is characterized by a certain degree of fragmentation and lack of terminological clarity.
    [Show full text]
  • In Defense of a Pluralistic View
    ARTICLES Biolinguistics 14.SI: 59–101, 2020 www.biolinguistics.eu Language in Language Evolution Research: In Defense of a Pluralistic View Sławomir Wacewicz1,*, Przemysław Żywiczyński1, Stefan Hartmann2, Michael Pleyer3, & Antonio Benítez-Burraco4 1 Center for Language Evolution Studies, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń, Poland 2 Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Düsseldorf, Germany 3 Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany 4 Faculty of Philology, University of Seville, Spain * Corresponding author: [email protected] SW: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1488-6220 PŻ: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0267-3845 SH: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1186-7182 MP: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6685-391X ABB: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4574-5666 Many controversies in language evolution research derive from the fact that language is itself a natural language word, which makes the underlying con- cept fuzzy and cumbersome, and a common perception is that progress in language evolution research is hindered because researchers do not ‘talk about the same thing’. In this article, we claim that agreement on a single, top-down definition of language is not a sine qua non for good and productive research in the field of language evolution. First, we use the example of the notion FLN (‘faculty of language in the narrow sense’) to demonstrate how the specific wording of an important top-down definition of (the faculty of) language can—surprisingly—be inconsequential to actual research practice. We then review four approaches to language evolution that we estimate to be particularly influential in the last decade. We show how their breadth pre- cludes a single common conceptualization of language but instead leads to a family resemblance pattern, which underwrites fruitful communication be- tween these approaches, leading to cross-fertilisation and synergies.
    [Show full text]
  • Feamle Fellows 2015
    Female Fellows of the Royal Society Fellowship Professor Jan M Anderson FRS [1996] Dame Julia Higgins DBE FREng FRS [1995] Professor Judith Armitage FRS [2013] Professor Brigid Hogan FRS [2001] Professor Frances Ashcroft FMedSci FRS [1999] Professor Christine Holt FMedSci FRS [2009] Professor Gillian Bates FMedSci FRS [2007] Professor Judith Howard CBE FRS [2002] Professor Jean Beggs CBE FRS [1998] Professor Patricia Jacobs OBE FMedSci FRS [1993] Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell DBE FRS [2003] Professor Lisa Jardine CBE FRS [2015]* Dame Valerie Beral DBE FMedSci FRS [2006] Dame Carole Jordan DBE FRS [1990] Dr Mariann Bienz FMedSci FRS [2003] Professor Victoria Kaspi FRS [2010] Professor Dorothy Bishop FBA FMedSci FRS [2014] Dr Olga Kennard OBE FRS [1987] Professor Elizabeth Blackburn AC FRS [1992] Professor Frances Kirwan DBE FRS [2001] Professor Andrea Brand FMedSci FRS [2010] Professor Jane Langdale FRS [2015] Professor Eleanor Burbidge FRS [1964] Professor Ottoline Leyser CBE FRS [2007] Professor Eleanor Campbell FRS [2010] Professor Ruth Lynden-Bell FRS [2006] Professor Doreen Cantrell CBE FMedSci FRS [2011] Professor Georgina Mace CBE FRS [2002] Professor Deborah Charlesworth FRS [2005] Professor Trudy Mackay FRS [2006] Professor Jennifer Clack FRS [2009] Professor Enid MacRobbie FRS [1991] Professor Jane Clarke FMedSci FRS [2015] Dr Philippa Marrack FMedSci FRS [1997] Professor Nicola Clayton FRS [2010] Professor Dusa McDuff FRS [1994] Professor Suzanne Cory AC FRS [1992] Professor Angela McLean FRS [2009] Professor Anne Cutler FRS [2015]
    [Show full text]
  • 1 the Extent and Degree of Utterance-Final Word Lengthening In
    Manuscript in press at Lingusistic Vanguard, April 2020 The extent and degree of utterance-final word lengthening in spontaneous speech from ten languages Frank Seifart (corresponding author) Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Berlin, Germany Dynamique Du Langage (CNRS & Université de Lyon), Lyon, France University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany [email protected] https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9909-2088 Jan Strunk University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8546-1778 Swintha Danielsen CIHA, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia Iren Hartmann Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany Brigitte Pakendorf Dynamique Du Langage (CNRS & Université de Lyon), Lyon, France Søren Wichmann Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands Kazan Federal University, Kazan, Russia Beijing Language University, Bejing, People’s Republic of China Alena Witzlack-Makarevich Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0138-4635 Nikolaus P. Himmelmann University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4385-8395s Balthasar Bickel University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland Abstract Words in utterance-final positions are often pronounced more slowly than utterance-medial words, as previous studies on individual languages have shown. This paper provides a systematic cross-linguistic comparison of relative durations of final and penultimate words in utterances in terms of the degree to which such words are lengthened. The study uses time- 1 Manuscript in press at Lingusistic Vanguard, April 2020 aligned corpora from ten genealogically, areally, and culturally diverse languages, including eight small, underresourced, and mostly endangered languages, as well as English and Dutch. Clear effects of lengthening words at the end of utterances are found in all ten languages, but the degrees of lengthening vary.
    [Show full text]
  • What Lenneberg Got Right: a Homological Program for the Study of Language Evolution
    What Lenneberg Got Right: A Homological Program for the Study of Language Evolution Sergio Balari & Guillermo Lorenzo By 1967, it was clear to Eric Lenneberg that reconstructing the phylogenetic history of language should require the adoption of a non-functional (or Owenian) homology concept for grounding relevant comparisons. Fifty years later, most biolinguistic approaches have betrayed this project, for they routinely derive their conclusions regarding the unique/shared status of language on merely folk grounds—as dramatically illustrated in Hauser, Chomsky & Fitch vs. Pinker & Jackendoff’s debate, or based on functional considerations—as in Chomsky’s recent conceptualization of language as a unique tool for thought. Here we claim that Lenneberg’s project needs to be resumed and we articulate some suggestions about how to conduct it, taking advantage of recent findings and new conceptual insights con- cerning two crucial levels of analysis actually pinpointed by him—namely, anatomical/molecular structure and physiological function. Keywords: homology thinking; character concept; evolutionary novel- ties; computational mind Homologies cannot be established by relying on similarity that rests on superficial inspection [. ]; on logical rather than biological aspects [. ]; and on anthropocentric imputation of motives. —Eric Lenneberg (1969: 641) 1. Introduction It takes an easy exercise of folk comparative biology to persuade a freshman of the uniqueness of language when compared to the closest nonhuman behaviors that could possibly come to mind—say, the songs of oscine birds, the alarm calls of vervet monkeys, etc. As far as one can say, none of these otherwise sophisticated capabilities appears to provide the means for establishing complex sound-meaning pairings—alternatively, gesture-meaning pairings, ranging across any imaginable experiential domain, and with an open-ended capacity for composing new complex expressions from a finite array of preexistent basic units.
    [Show full text]