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Annual Report 1997

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Annual Report 1997 Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik ANNUAL REPORT 1997 Editors: Ken Drozd and Joost van de Weijer With assistance from Evelyn Giering ©1997 Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik Wundtlaan 1, 6525 XD Nijmegen, The Netherlands Telephone: 024 3521911 (International: 0031 24 3521911) Telefax: 0031 24 3521213 e-mail: @mpi.nl www: http://www.mpi.nl ISSN 1380295 X Table of Contents Preface Organization of the Institute and the Cognitive Anthropology Research Group in 1997 Project Descriptions 1. Phonological Structure in Comprehension 3 2. Spoken Word Recognition 19 3. Lexical Access in Speech Production 27 4. Argument Structure 41 5. The Acquisition of Scope Relations 57 6. Space 65 7. Gesture 77 8. Sentence and Discourse Integration 83 9. Neurocognition of Language Processing 91 10. The Structure of Learner Varieties 109 11. Communication under Impairment 115 12. Other Research 121 13. Other Activities 133 Publications 165 Index of Names 183 Preface The year of 1997 saw significant changes to the Institute. In September, we were able to move back into a splendid reconstructed and enlarged building (see end papers) by the architects Prins and Kentie. Scientific work during 1997 was a bit constrained by temporary quarters, and then by the need to set up new labs, and some experimental work had to be deferred. On the whole, though, the transfer was remarkably smooth, thanks to the heroic efforts of, in particular, the then managing Director Pirn Levelt, the Head of our Administration Rolf Koenig (whose achivements were specially recognized by the President of the Society), and the Head of the Technical Group Peter Wittenburg and their staff. At the end of the year, the Cognitive Anthropology Research Group's six and a half year term ran out, and thus this booklet contains the last report from that Group. Work of a very similar nature will however continue in a new Department 'Language and Cognition', beginning in January 1998, which with its program of field research now institutionalizes the long standing interests of the Institute in how the human language capacity copes with the huge variety of natural languages. More in the way of continuity than change, the Neurocognition project received a further 5 year grant to continue the work on the neurocognitive basis of language processing. Wolfgang Klein's Leibniz Prize has allowed the continued expansion of work in language acquisition, especially on the acquisition of scope. Also in the Acquisition Department, Melissa Bowerman's special contributions and international standing were recognized by a professorial level appointment. As in previous years, the printed Report is organized in terms of the major Projects, which in many cases cross-cut Departments (Language Production, Comprehension, Acquisition, Cognitive Anthropology). One new project reports here for the first time, namely Communication under Impairment. And, as in the 1996 Report, to keep this Report within bounds despite increasing activities, each researcher has been given only a few hundred words to report the year's successes. However, further information is now available under the Web Pages of the Institute: http://www.mpi.nl, and the pages of individual researchers. Stephen C. Levinson Organization of the Institute and the Cognitive Anthropology Research Group in 1997 Scientific council: D. Slobin, chair K. Bock J. Miller L. Frazier D. Ploog P.Kay J. Raaijmakers J. Korf J. Schumann E. Lang H. Wässle Directors: A. Cutler W. Klein W. Levelt, managing director S. Levinson External scientific member: M. Bierwisch Scientific research staff: S. Allen M. ter Keurs (NWO) H. Baayen S. Kita J. van Berkum (NWO) C. Kuijpers M. Bowerman J. McQueen C. Brown (NWO) A. Meyer P. Brown A. Özyürek E. Danziger E. Pederson W. van Donselaar K. Remmerswaal (NWO) K. Drozd A. Roelofs G. Flores d'Arcais J.P. de Ruiter H. Fransen (DFG) G. Senft V.van Geenhoven W. Vonk P. Hagoort (NWO) L. Walsh-Dickey C. Heeschen M. Wassenaar (NWO) H. Hendriks D. Wilkins P. Indefrey (NWO) Research Associates: R. van Hout KUB Tilburg P. Jordens VU Amsterdam A. Kelly U. Heidelberg J. Nuyts U. Instellingen Antwerpen Visiting Research Fellows and Guests: M. Alibali Carnegie Mellon U., Pittsburg E. Annamalai Central Insitute of Indian Languages, Mysore, India J. Atlas Pomona College, Claremont K. Bock U. of Illinois, Champaign M. Böttner Stanford U. E. Clark Stanford U. H. Clark Stanford U. C. Connine State U. of New York M. Dickey U. of Massachusetts, Amherst S. Gaskins U. of Pennsylvania B. Geurts U. Osnabrück M. Hickmann Laboratoire de Psychologie Experimentale, Paris J. Higginbotham State U. of New York J. Jaeger State U. of New York E. Keating U. of California 1. Lasser U. Potsdam J. Lucy U. of Pennsylvania A. ter Meulen U. Amsterdam D. Norris MRC Applied Psychology Unit, Cambridge P. O'Seaghdha Lehigh U., Bethlehem Chr. Pallier CNRS & EHESS, Paris C. Perdue U. de Paris VIII P. Praamstra KU Nijmegen J. Santiago U. de Granada H. Saito Nagoya U., Japan D. Slobin U. of California, Berkeley C. Stolz U. Bielefeld Sun Dekun Beijing Language and Culture U. Beijing Ph.D. Students: W. Bergsma B. Schmitt J. Bohnemeyer E. Schulze-Berndt G. Cablitz A. Sleiderink J. Essegbey M. Steinbach E. Grabe S. Stoll U. Heinzel M. Swift D. Janssen A. Weber A. Keusen J. van de Weijer 1. Krämer M. Wissink D. van Kuijk A. Wittek A. van der Lugt R. Zavala N. Schiller Technical Staff: P. Wittenburg, head H. Baumann G. Klaas S. Borgwaldt A. Krott D. van den Born J. Nagengast D. Breeder R. Piepenbrock H. Brugman A. Russel R. de Bruin (NWO) H. van Soest G. Desserjer C. van der Veer R. Dirksmeyer A. Verbunt H. Drexler H. van Viersen I. Doehring J. Weustink C. Hausmann-Jamin Administration and Other Services: R. Koenig, head F. Coenen H. Müller J. Gerrits N. Nielen M. Hilkes v. Zanten P. van Rijswijk P. Janssen B. van Stokkum U. Maier P. Verleg Library: L van Dreumel K. Kastens Secretaries: E. Giering U. de Pagter M. Jonas E. Sjoerdsma D. Oudesluijs R. Zondervan Project Descriptions 1. Phonological Structure in Comprehension The Phonological Structure in Comprehension project Investigates the ways in which the processing of spoken and written language input is constrained by the phonological structure of the input language. Research on this project in 1997 addressed the acquisition of native phonology, the role of phonological structure in the processing of segmental structure, the use of phonological information in segmenting continuous speech into words and in recognizing written and spoken words, and continuation of the group's series of cross-linguistic studies of prosodic structure and its role in processing. 1.1 Development of phonological structure perception The development work on this project in 1997 consisted of three sub-projects which are now almost or fully completed: the student project of Van Wijk (1.1.1), Van de Weijer's Ph.D. project (1.1.2); and Behnke's Ph.D. project (1.1.3) which has now resulted in a dissertation. 1.1.1 Infants' word recognition in fluent speech The final-year student project by Van Wijk (U. Nijmegen), supervised by Kuijpers, investigated early word recognition abilities, and the segmentation of words from a continuous speech context, in 18-month-old Dutch children, using the preferential looking paradigm. In this experimental paradigm, children are presented 4 Chapter 1 with two objects while hearing a target word. Only one of the objects corresponds to the target word; the dependent variable is how long the child looks at the correct object. The target word had a trochaic (e.g., appet) or iambic (e.g., banaan) stress pattern, and was embedded in a short sentence. The weak syllable contained a reduced vowel or a full vowel. The words were either pronounced correctly (baseline Waar is de appel nouT), mispronounced in the stressed syllable (Waaris de ieppel nouT), or mispronounced in the unstressed syllable (Waar is de appiel nou?). Results showed the recognition of words to be impaired, as compared with the correct- pronunciation baseline, when the stressed syllable was mispronounced but not when the unstressed syllable was mispronounced. Vowel quality of the unstressed syllable had no significant effect, nor did position of the stressed syllable. These results suggest that Dutch children pay more attention to stressed syllables in processing fluent speech. 1.1.2 Speech input to a prelinguistic infant Van de Weijer completed compilation of the corpus of linguistic input to a prelinguistic infant (see Annual Report 1995, 1996). The corpus consists of the language that the infant heard during 18 days, selected from the period that the infant was between six and nine months old. The corpus exists as labeled sound files containing utterances spoken to the infant or to other addressees near the infant. Further, that part of the input consisting of language addressed directly to the infant, to other children or to adults has been fully transcribed. Analysis of the transcriptions revealed differences in vocabulary size and mean length of utterance across the three speech types, with infant-directed speech having the smallest vocabulary and the shortest utterances. A phonological analysis suggested that word boundaries may be more clearly present in the infant-directed speech: this speech type namely displayed a restricted set of word Phonological Structure in Comprehension 5 onsets and offsets, and a more evenly distributed stress pattern. Analysis of features of the suprasegmental structure of the input showed that the infant-directed speech was produced at a slower speech rate, with more diversity in pitch, and with relatively simple intonation contours. In all, the linguistic input to this infant consisted only to a relatively small extent of language addressed directly to the infant. However, the infant-directed speech did display a number of characteristics which could well have a facilitative effect on the early vocabulary building which starts late in the first year of life.
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