Presentations

Abstract

In conversation, negative responses to invitations,
requests, offers and the like more often occur with
a delay – conversation analysts talk of them as
dispreferred. Here we examine the contrastive
cognitive load ‘yes’ and ‘no’ responses make,
either when given relatively fast (300 ms) or
delayed (1000 ms). Participants heard minidialogues,
with turns extracted from a spoken
corpus, while having their EEG recorded. We find
that a fast ‘no’ evokes an N400-effect relative to a
fast ‘yes’, however this contrast is not present for
delayed responses. This shows that an immediate
response is expected to be positive – but this
expectation disappears as the response time
lengthens because now in ordinary conversation
the probability of a ‘no’ has increased.
Additionally, however, 'No' responses elicit a late
frontal positivity both when they are fast and when
they are delayed. Thus, regardless of the latency of
response, a ‘no’ response is associated with a late
positivity, since a negative response is always
dispreferred and may require an account. Together
these results show that negative responses to social
actions exact a higher cognitive load, but especially
when least expected, as an immediate response.

Abstract

Recent work in the L&C department in MPI Nijmegen has explored the processing implications of the core ecological niche for language learning and use, namely interactive conversation. It turns out that the rapidity of turn-exchange puts extreme requirements on predictive comprehension and speedy production, reflected e.g. in the trouble kids have to approach adult norms. This strong functional pressure must have implications for language typology. But what exactly? This paper explores what we have recently found out about differing processing in different word orders, and the ways in which the tough processing requirements of conversation can be buffered.

Abstract

Within the confines of this mini-plenary I’ll try to sketch how turn-taking may have played a crucial role
in molding the origins and shape of language. First, I’ll run through some of our recent findings that
reveal the intensive cognitive processing that underlies turn-taking – measuring response-timing, gaze,
the acoustics, breathing, and EEG. These findings suggest that the turn-taking system stretches cognitive
processing to the limit. Asking why the system is the way it is, I’ll advance the argument that language as
we now know it may have emerged from the growth of a rich information-encoding system in the context
of an antecedent turn-taking system, so that increasingly complex messages became squeezed into short
turns, with the consequence of extreme compression, inference enrichment of the Gricean kind, tendency
for fixed word orders, etc. Some support for this account can also be found in ontogenetic and
phylogenetic studies of turn-taking.

Abstract

The diversity of languages contrasts with the universality of much of the communicational infrastructure that makes language possible. An important component of this infrastructure is the turn-taking system of conversation, the Stephen Levinsoncore ecological niche for language use. This system puts intense pressure on language processing: cross-linguistically, we mostly respond within 200 milliseconds, even though language encoding takes at least three times as long. It can be shown using many different measures (e.g. response times, breathing, EEG) that we beat the clock by predicting what the other is going to say and starting production as soon as we can. This raises interesting questions about why this system is the way it is, what functional pressures it puts on language structure and language diversity, and how it originated, which I will briefly address. I will argue that the current system can best be understood within an evolutionary context in which the turn-taking system was antecedent to the complexities of modern language so that increasingly complex messages became squeezed into short turns, with the consequence of extreme compression, inference enrichment of the Gricean kind, a tendency for fixed word orders, amongst other things. Some support for this account can be found in ontogenetic and phylogenetic studies of turn-taking which I will briefly review.

Abstract

In spoken interactions, interlocutors carefully plan and time their utterances, minimising gaps and overlaps between consecutive turns.1 Cross-linguistic comparison indicates that spoken languages vary minimally in their turn timing.2 Pre-linguistic vocal turn taking has also been attested in the first six months of life.3 These observations suggest that the turn-taking system provides a universal basis for our linguistic capacities.4 It remains an open question, however, whether precisely-timed turn taking is solely a property of speech. It has previously been argued that, unlike speakers, signers do not attend to the one-at-a-time principle, and instead form a collaborative turn-taking floor with their interlocutors, thus having a higher degree of social tolerance for overlap.5 But recent corpus analyses of Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT) have revealed that, although simultaneous signing is more frequent in NGT than overlapping speech in spoken languages, the additional overlap may come as a consequence of having larger and thus slower articulators.6 The beginnings and ends of signed utterances are bookended by preparatory and retractive movements — phonetically necessary articulations that do not add to the interpretation of the utterance.7 When turn timing is calculated on the basis of stroke-to-stroke turn boundaries, NGT turn timing and turn overlap are consistent with documented averages for spoken turn taking.6 This paper presents new experimental evidence supporting the psychological reality of stroke-to-stroke turn boundaries for signers by using an adapted button-press paradigm, originally developed for measuring spoken turn prediction.8 Our results indicate that signers indeed anticipated turn boundaries at the ends of turn-final strokes. These findings are the first to experimentally support the idea that signers use something like stroke-to-stroke turn boundaries to coordinate conversational turns. They also suggest that linguistic processing, represented by participant age and age of acquisition, plays a role in the ability to use precisely-timed turns in conversation.

Abstract

In spontane gesprekken wisselen gebaarders steeds vlug van beurt. Gebarentaalgebruikers moeten daarom steeds op het juiste moment naar de juiste persoon kijken. Hoe voorspellen gebaarders wanneer de beurt gaat wisselen en wie deze overneemt? Wij hebben de eerste vraag onderzocht door verschillende groepen gebarentaalgebruikers (doven en horenden, jong en oud, verschillende regios) te testen. Omdat er in Nijmegen weinig (dove) gebaarders wonen, hebben we dit gedaan in ons lab op wielen: de Gebarenbus.

Abstract

This paper approaches the issues surrounding the relationship between language and music tangentially, by arguing that the language sciences have largely misconstrued the nature of their object of study – when language is correctly repositioned as a quite elaborate cultural superstructure resting on two biological columns as it were, the relationship to music looks rather different.

Abstract

This paper addresses the phenomenon of single turns, even single turn-constructional units, that perform multiple speech acts or social actions. The paper reviews the main approaches - ''indirect speech acts'' as treated in linguistic pragmatics, and the ''vehicle'' approach as in conversation analysis - and argues that both of these are inadequate. Instead a solution is sought in the hierarchical nature of action planning, and it is shown that this approach sheds considerable light on multi-action turns. The simplest cases involve pre-sequences, but more complex cases involving extended ''projects'' by participants are also reviewed. It seems that there is no principled limit to the number of actions that a single turn-construcional unit can perform - certainly cases of up to four such actions can be found. The implications for speech act theory and conversation analysis are spelled out.

Abstract

Recursion has become a lamp for the linguistic moths – it has become an obsession far from the centre of what linguistics should be focused on. It plays a limited role in the structure of many languages, indefinite recursion is of course never actually displayed, and what is exemplified could therefore always be modeled in practice by finite state devices. There are many more central puzzles to focus on, like the diverse specific structures mapped on strings, rather than the mechanisms that generate unstructured string-sets. Embedded clauses have been the main focus of interest, but it is noteworthy that (a) many languages offer very limited embedding possibilities; (b) some which do have embedding effectively cap embedding at one deep; (c) almost any such embeddings can be paraphrased by parataxis (strings of adjoined clauses as in veni, vidi, vici). Parataxis is why many languages can lack embedded clauses of different kinds without any loss of expressive power: the expressive power is always present in the pragmatics whether or not it is there in the syntax. To make the point that expressive power lies in the pragmatics, I’ll examine centre-embedding in interactive discourse. Centre-embedding has the virtue that it is easily distinguished from parataxis – which is not the case for edge-recursion in many languages. Centre-embedding in clauses is effectively capped at two deep in all spoken languages (very occasionally three deep in written), apparently by memory and parsing limitations. But centre-embedding in interactive discourse can break this barrier, and does so routinely. The explanation for this is actually unclear, but the phenomenon would seem to show the advantages of distributed cognition. Rather than thinking of recursion as the performance-limited “externalization” of an individual competence, the discourse phenomena suggest that interactive language usage, where centre-embedding is hyper-trophied, is the natural home base and the ultimate source of complex recursion in the grammatical system.