Presentations

Abstract

The central niche for language use is social interaction: this is the context in which language is
learned, most heavily used, and doubtless evolved. Interactive language use has well defined
properties which look strongly universal. Amongst these is turn-taking or the rapid alternation
of speakers. Investigations of turn-taking reveal rather stable temporal parameters, with
alternating short bursts of speech (averaging c. 2 secs), separated by modal gaps of only 200 ms
or less. Given the latencies involved in language production (c. 600 ms for a single word, 1500
ms for a simple clause) this implies an overlap in comprehension and production by the
addressee towards the end of the incoming turn, an implication confirmed by neuroimaging
and other measures. Such multitasking must involve a high cognitive load. Looking at the
development of turn-taking in infancy and childhood, one can see relatively quick responses in
the early months slowing down as ever more complex language has to be crammed into short
turns, with children struggling to meet adult norms even in middle childhood. The intensive
processing required by turn-taking suggests it might be a kind of “fossil” with temporal
properties inherited from our primate ancestors before complex vocal language gradually
developed, filling short turns with increasingly complex structures. A glance across our primate
cousins gives some reasons to think this is a plausible scenario.

Abstract

In psycholinguistic experiments on language processing, researchers have traditionally focused on either comprehension or production. However, real-life, communicative language use happens most often in an interactive setting, involving rapid turn-taking between interlocutors. In such a setting, listening to a turn probably overlaps with preparing an answer to this turn. In the current EEG experiment, participants answered quiz questions, asked by the experimenter. Unknowingly to participants, these questions were pre-recorded, while the experimenter gave live feedback on participants’ answers. Questions appeared in two different conditions. Participants could confidently guess the answer to the question either halfway through the question (e.g., "Which character, also known as James Bond, appears in the famous movies?"), or only when they heard the last word(s) (e.g., "Which character, who appears in the famous movies, is also known as James Bond?"). ERP results showed a small N400 effect, followed by a large positivity at the moment within the question that the answer started to become apparent (the critical point). In the frequency domain, an alpha/mu desynchronization effect was found, starting within 500 milliseconds after the critical point. A follow-up control-experiment in which participants only listened to the questions and tried to remember them, showed a qualitatively similar pattern in the ERPs, but with a larger N400 and a smaller positivity. The alpha/mu desynchronization effect was absent or at least very much redu ced. We tentatively interpret the alpha/mu desynchronization from the main experiment as a signal of response preparation, starting quickly after an appropriate response can be retrieved

Abstract

Combining data from two longitudinal studies of young children, we track the development of turn-timing in spontaneous infant-caregiver interactions. We focus on three aspects of timing: overlap, gap, and delay marking. We find evidence for early development of turn-timing skills, in-line with the Interaction Engine Hypothesis. (see attached .pdf for our 2-page abstract)

Abstract

This presentation will report on the findings of a large-scale comparative project on other-initiated repair in 12 languages, representing major and minor languages of Europe, Southeast Asia, East Asia, Australia, South America, and Papua New Guinea (and including a sign language). This comparative project is based on a multilanguage corpus of video-recorded interaction in informal settings in homes and villages, among family and friends. Building on findings from qualitative work, a research team in the "Interactional Foundations of Language" Project at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen has developed a detailed coding scheme for the systematic comparison of other-initiated repair sequences across languages. These languages belong to different language families, have different typological profiles, and are spoken by members of distinctly different cultures. Despite the diversity of languages and cultures represented, the findings of this study show a striking set of commonalities in the sequential and formal organization of other-initiated repair. This lends some support to an ''interactional infrastructure'' hypothesis, which suggests that interactional structures are more likely to be universal than lexico-grammatical structures. At the same time, however, we also observe differences across the languages in how the common system of possibilities for other-initiated repair is used: for example, while most if not all languages allow speakers to use both an interjection ("Huh?") and a WH-word ("What?") strategy for ''open-class other-initiation of repair'', the relative frequency of these strategies varies, with English showing quite common use of ''What?'' for this function, but with many other languages almost exclusively using a ''Huh?'' strategy. The presentation will summarize and explain findings of the coding study, with reference not only to the different strategies available for other-initiation of repair, but also the kinds of repair operations that can be carried out as a function of the choice of repair initiator. There will also be some discussion of the relevance of these results to our understanding of the cultural status of rights and responsibilities in the domain of social agency.

Abstract

To develop into competent communicators infants need to learn to appropriately time their turns in social interaction. Few studies have assessed the actual timing of turn-taking in infant development and debate continues about whether infants actively contribute to the turn-taking. In order to assess whether changes in infants’ vocal turntaking abilities as they get older are really attributable to infants’ improving skills, we analyzed video recordings of 12 mother-infant dyads in free-play interactions longitudinally at 12 and 18 months. Findings indicate that in the first half of the second year of life infants become more skilled in taking turns in vocal exchanges, as evidenced by decreasing onset times of their turns as well as a decrease in the percentage of onsets produced in overlap with their mothers. These changes are not explained by the mothers providing more opportunities to their infants to take their turn. The mean number of utterances produced by the mother did not differ significantly at 12 and 18 months, mothers did not shorten their utterances, nor did they increase the pauses between their consecutive turns. We therefore conclude that infants play an active part in vocal turn-taking exchanges with their mothers and its developmental progress.

Abstract

The theory of evolution is “unreasonably effective” (in Wigner’s terms) in that it seems to apply to both biological evolution and cultural change -- domains that might seem completely unrelated. Nowhere is this parallelism clearer than in the domain of language, where there is both an evolved biological basis for language and processes of cultural evolution that lie behind the diversification of languages. Language is clearly a bio-cultural hybrid -- we are biologically equipped for language in general, but inherit the specific cultural form of the languages in which we are socialized. This symposium explores the genetic foundations of language, the phylogenetic patterns of cultural diversification in language, and the ongoing interplay between biological and cultural evolution. Individual papers will address the relation between linguistic ability, brain, and genes; the biological basis for communicative interaction; the phylogenetic patterns in language diversification both in form and content; the effects of population genetics on language diversification; and the case of village sign languages: the interplay between genetics and language type. The papers suggest that one reason that evolutionary theory applies so well to both biological and cultural phenomena is that the two are intertwined and in ongoing interaction. Organizer: Stephen C. Levinson, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics Co-Organizer: Karen Emmorey, Ph.D., San Diego State University Discussant: Dan Dediu, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics Speakers: Simon E. Fisher, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics Language, Evolution, and the Genomics Revolution Russell Gray, University of Auckland Evolutionary Principles and the Diversification of Linguistic Form Carol Padden, University of California Culture Before Genes: The Case of a Village Sign Language

Abstract

de novo languages – only sign languages: village sign languages & home sign How do you build a language from the ground up? Is there a ‘starting base’? If so, what is it? What elements get innovated in what order, and why? How quickly does system get imposed? For real language isolates like village sign systems, what apogee of structure is got in c. 5-7 generations? Strand (1) from gesture to home sign (seeding of sign, iconicity, single generation…)Strand (2) village sign languages (5+ generations, small demography, 2nd L signers…, effects of local gesture systems)Strand (3) urban community sign languages with recent take-off (large demography, connections to other sign languages, systematic exploitation of the manual medium) Strand (4) genes & language: feedback relations

Abstract

Supplementary material: Stephen C. Levinson's keynote lecture, "Exploring language diversity: Wohin?", as recorded (05-06-2013) and broadcast (25-09-2013) by DRadio Wissen. * To save and/or listen to the mp3 file: please right-click on the link, and select the 'Save Link As...' option. * Source: http://www.dradiowissen.de/ Length: 45 min.

Abstract

The properties that make our species special, namely language, technology and culture, are all ‘bio-cultural hybrids’ interweaving biology (e.g. anatomy of vocal tract and hand, cooperative instincts) and cultural diversity. But at the birth of the cognitive sciences a radical idealization was made, namely the assumption of THE human mind, a singular system shared by all humans. This idealization, useful at the time, now hampers the understanding of our species, whose success is predicated on diverse cultural adaptations. This paper will illustrate how in the language domain, different languages require different algorithms served by different neural networks, yielding differing minds and brains.