Lexical and Symbolic Meaning of Some Colors in Kazakh Language

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Shara Mazhitaeva

2012-10-01

Full Text Available . Colour is objectified in language by means of lexical units’ group - colour names, therefore colour namings attract a constant interest of the scholars who study mechanisms of categorizing the world around by the person, and they are one of the most investigated concepts in different languages. Colour namings are frequently analyzed in the works devoted to studying color as a special lexical category with great attention paid to a problem of conceptualizing colour space by the person. However a colour owing to certain psychological influence on consciousness of the person possesses the wide associative potential defined not only by specific features of perception but also to great extent, by a cultural heritage of all society including mythological and religious representations. The basic research object is both paroemia and phraseological units and lexical-semantic group of color namings of the Kazakh language.

The Effects of Prohibiting Gestures on Children's Lexical Retrieval Ability

Science.gov (United States)

Pine, Karen J.; Bird, Hannah; Kirk, Elizabeth

2007-01-01

Two alternative accounts have been proposed to explain the role of gestures in thinking and speaking. The Information Packaging Hypothesis (Kita, 2000) claims that gestures are important for the conceptual packaging of information before it is coded into a linguistic form for speech. The Lexical Retrieval Hypothesis (Rauscher, Krauss & Chen, 1996)…

Translating English and Mandarin Verbs with Argument Structure (Mis)matches Using LCS Representation

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Olsen, M. B

1998-01-01

...). The author demonstrates how Lexical Conceptual Structure (LCS) templates allow the same semantic structure to apply both to verbs with thematic roles incorporated in the verb itself, and those requiring external thematic complements...

Genre-dependent interaction of coherence and lexical cohesion in written discourse

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Berzlánovich, I.; Redeker, G.

2012-01-01

We investigate the interaction between coherence and lexical cohesion in expository and persuasive texts using seven encyclopedia texts and seven fundraising letters. We describe genre structure in terms of genre-specific moves and coherence structure with Rhetorical Structure Theory. For lexical

Structural Analysis of Lexical Bundles in EFL English Majors’ Theses of an Ordinary Normal University in China

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Xixiang LOU

2012-11-01

Full Text Available A quantitative analysis has been made of 330 Chinese EFL learners’ theses the distribution of the three- to eight-word lexical bundles in them and a comparison has been made of the percentages of the four-word lexical bundles of different structural categories in Chinese EFL learners’ theses and the native English speakers’ spoken or written academic language. It is found that the three-to eight-word lexical bundles in Chinese EFL learners’ theses are on the decrease with the increase of the number of their component words. Chinese students’ English language data share with native English speakers’ spoken academic language data the ‘personal pronoun + lexical verb phrase (+complement clause’ lexical bundles and the ‘(auxiliary + active verb (+’ bundles, and  also share with native English speakers’ academic spoken language data the ‘adverbial clause fragment’ bundles, the ‘noun phrase with other post-modifier fragment’ bundles, the ‘anticipatory it + VP/adjective P (+ complement clause’ bundles, the ‘passive verb + PP fragment’ bundles and the ‘copula be + NP/adjective P’ bundles. A further analysis shows that the EFL learners’ English language in their theses is of more characteristics of written language and fewer characteristics of spoken language.

On the universal structure of human lexical semantics.

Science.gov (United States)

Youn, Hyejin; Sutton, Logan; Smith, Eric; Moore, Cristopher; Wilkins, Jon F; Maddieson, Ian; Croft, William; Bhattacharya, Tanmoy

2016-02-16

How universal is human conceptual structure? The way concepts are organized in the human brain may reflect distinct features of cultural, historical, and environmental background in addition to properties universal to human cognition. Semantics, or meaning expressed through language, provides indirect access to the underlying conceptual structure, but meaning is notoriously difficult to measure, let alone parameterize. Here, we provide an empirical measure of semantic proximity between concepts using cross-linguistic dictionaries to translate words to and from languages carefully selected to be representative of worldwide diversity. These translations reveal cases where a particular language uses a single "polysemous" word to express multiple concepts that another language represents using distinct words. We use the frequency of such polysemies linking two concepts as a measure of their semantic proximity and represent the pattern of these linkages by a weighted network. This network is highly structured: Certain concepts are far more prone to polysemy than others, and naturally interpretable clusters of closely related concepts emerge. Statistical analysis of the polysemies observed in a subset of the basic vocabulary shows that these structural properties are consistent across different language groups, and largely independent of geography, environment, and the presence or absence of a literary tradition. The methods developed here can be applied to any semantic domain to reveal the extent to which its conceptual structure is, similarly, a universal attribute of human cognition and language use.

Morphological Cues for Lexical Semantics

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Light, Marc

1996-01-01

Most natural language processing tasks require lexical semantic information such as verbal argument structure and selectional restrictions, corresponding nominal semantic class, verbal aspectual class...

A conceptual framework of clinical nursing care in intensive care.

Science.gov (United States)

da Silva, Rafael Celestino; Ferreira, Márcia de Assunção; Apostolidis, Thémistoklis; Brandão, Marcos Antônio Gomes

2015-01-01

to propose a conceptual framework for clinical nursing care in intensive care. descriptive and qualitative field research, carried out with 21 nurses from an intensive care unit of a federal public hospital. We conducted semi-structured interviews and thematic and lexical content analysis, supported by Alceste software. the characteristics of clinical intensive care emerge from the specialized knowledge of the interaction, the work context, types of patients and nurses characteristic of the intensive care and care frameworks. the conceptual framework of the clinic's intensive care articulates elements characteristic of the dynamics of this scenario: objective elements regarding technology and attention to equipment and subjective elements related to human interaction, specific of nursing care, countering criticism based on dehumanization.

Lexical studies of indigenous personality factors: premises, products, and prospects.

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Saucier, G; Goldberg, L R; Institute, O R

2001-12-01

The rationale for lexical studies rests on the assumption that the most meaningful personality attributes tend to become encoded in language as single-word descriptors. We articulate some key premises of the lexical approach and then review a number of studies that have been conducted examining the factor structure of personality descriptors extracted from dictionaries. We compare lexical studies in English and 12 other languages, with attention to delineating consistencies between the structures found in diverse languages. Our review suggests that the Anglo-Germanic Big Five is reproduced better in some languages than in others. We propose some organizing rules for lexical factor structures that may be more generalizable than the contemporary Big-Five model. And, we propose several candidate structural models that should be compared with the Big Five in future studies, including structures with one, two, and three very broad factors, an alternative five-factor structure identified in Italian and Hungarian studies, and a seven-factor structure represented in Hebrew and Philippine studies. We recommend that in future studies more attention be paid to middle-level personality constructs and to examining the effects of methodological variations on the resulting factor structures.

Language structures used by kindergartners with cochlear implants: relationship to phonological awareness, lexical knowledge and hearing loss.

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Nittrouer, Susan; Sansom, Emily; Low, Keri; Rice, Caitlin; Caldwell-Tarr, Amanda

2014-01-01

Listeners use their knowledge of how language is structured to aid speech recognition in everyday communication. When it comes to children with congenital hearing loss severe enough to warrant cochlear implants (CIs), the question arises of whether these children can acquire the language knowledge needed to aid speech recognition, in spite of only having spectrally degraded signals available to them. That question was addressed in the present study. Specifically, there were three goals: (1) to compare the language structures used by children with CIs to those of children with normal hearing (NH); (2) to assess the amount of variance in the language measures explained by phonological awareness and lexical knowledge; and (3) to assess the amount of variance in the language measures explained by factors related to the hearing loss itself and subsequent treatment. Language samples were obtained and transcribed for 40 children who had just completed kindergarten: 19 with NH and 21 with CIs. Five measures were derived from Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts: (1) mean length of utterance in morphemes, (2) number of conjunctions, excluding and, (3) number of personal pronouns, (4) number of bound morphemes, and (5) number of different words. Measures were also collected on phonological awareness and lexical knowledge. Statistics examined group differences, as well as the amount of variance in the language measures explained by phonological awareness, lexical knowledge, and factors related to hearing loss and its treatment for children with CIs. Mean scores of children with CIs were roughly one standard deviation below those of children with NH on all language measures, including lexical knowledge, matching outcomes of other studies. Mean scores of children with CIs were closer to two standard deviations below those of children with NH on two out of three measures of phonological awareness (specifically those related to phonemic structure). Lexical knowledge

Knowledge based analysis of radiology reports using conceptual graphs

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Schroeder, M.

1992-07-01

The telegraphic language found in radiological reports can be well understood by a natrual language system using the underlying domain knowledge. We present the METEXA system, which emphasizes the use of radiological domain knowledge to determine the semantics of utterances. Syntactic and semantic analysis, lexical sematics and the structure of the domain model are described in some detail. A resolution-based inference engine answers relevant questions concerning the contents of the reports. As knowledge representation formalism the Conceptual Graph Theory by John Sowa has been chosen. (orig.)

Lexical Complexity Development from Dynamic Systems Theory Perspective: Lexical Density, Diversity, and Sophistication

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Reza Kalantari

2017-10-01

Full Text Available This longitudinal case study explored Iranian EFL learners’ lexical complexity (LC through the lenses of Dynamic Systems Theory (DST. Fifty independent essays written by five intermediate to advanced female EFL learners in a TOEFL iBT preparation course over six months constituted the corpus of this study. Three Coh-Metrix indices (Graesser, McNamara, Louwerse, & Cai, 2004; McNamara & Graesser, 2012, three Lexical Complexity Analyzer indices (Lu, 2010, 2012; Lu & Ai, 2011, and four Vocabprofile indices (Cobb, 2000 were selected to measure different dimensions of LC. Results of repeated measures analysis of variance (RM ANOVA indicated an improvement with regard to only lexical sophistication. Positive and significant relationships were found between time and mean values in Academic Word List and Beyond-2000 as indicators of lexical sophistication. The remaining seven indices of LC, falling short of significance, tended to flatten over the course of this writing program. Correlation analyses among LC indices indicated that lexical density enjoyed positive correlations with lexical sophistication. However, lexical diversity revealed no significant correlations with both lexical density and lexical sophistication. This study suggests that DST perspective specifies a viable foundation for analyzing lexical complexity

Phonological and conceptual activation in speech comprehension

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Norris, D.; Cutler, A.; McQueen, J.M.; Butterfield, S.

2006-01-01

We propose that speech comprehension involves the activation of token representations of the phonological forms of current lexical hypotheses, separately from the ongoing construction of a conceptual interpretation of the current utterance. In a series of cross-modal priming experiments,

Slovene-English Contrastive Phraseology: Lexical Collocations

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Primož Jurko

2010-05-01

Full Text Available Phraseology is seen as one of the key elements and arguably the most productive part of any language. %e paper is focused on collocations and separates them from other phraseological units, such as idioms or compounds. Highlighting the difference between a monolingual and a bilingual (i.e. contrastive approach to collocation, the article presents two distinct classes of collocations: grammatical and lexical. %e latter, treated contrastively, represent the focal point of the paper, since they are an unending source of translation errors to both students of translation and professional translators. %e author introduces a methodology of systematic classification of lexical collocations applied on the Slovene-English language pair and based on structural (lexical congruence and semantic (translational predictability criteria.

Context effects in embodied lexical-semantic processing

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Wessel O Van Dam

2010-10-01

Full Text Available The embodied view of language comprehension proposes that the meaning of words is grounded in perception and action rather than represented in abstract amodal symbols. Support for embodied theories of language processing comes from behavioural studies showing that understanding a sentence about an action can modulate congruent and incongruent physical responses, suggesting motor involvement during comprehension of sentences referring to bodily movement. Additionally, several neuroimaging studies have provided evidence that comprehending single words denoting manipulable objects elicits specific responses in the neural motor system. An interesting question that remains is whether action semantic knowledge is directly activated as motor simulations in the brain, or rather modulated by the semantic context in which action words are encountered. In the current paper we investigated the nature of conceptual representations using a go/no-go lexical decision task. Specifically, target words were either presented in a semantic context that emphasized dominant action features (features related to the functional use of an object or non-dominant action features. The response latencies in a lexical decision task reveal that participants were faster to respond to words denoting objects for which the functional use was congruent with the prepared movement. This facilitation effect, however, was only apparent when the semantic context emphasized corresponding motor properties. These findings suggest that motor involvement during comprehension of sentences is not automatic. Rather, the results suggest that conceptual processing is a context-dependent process that incorporates motor-related knowledge in a flexible manner.

Structural Analysis in a Conceptual Design Framework

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Padula, Sharon L.; Robinson, Jay H.; Eldred, Lloyd B.

2012-01-01

Supersonic aircraft designers must shape the outer mold line of the aircraft to improve multiple objectives, such as mission performance, cruise efficiency, and sonic-boom signatures. Conceptual designers have demonstrated an ability to assess these objectives for a large number of candidate designs. Other critical objectives and constraints, such as weight, fuel volume, aeroelastic effects, and structural soundness, are more difficult to address during the conceptual design process. The present research adds both static structural analysis and sizing to an existing conceptual design framework. The ultimate goal is to include structural analysis in the multidisciplinary optimization of a supersonic aircraft. Progress towards that goal is discussed and demonstrated.

LEXICAL CREATION PROCESSES IN PERUVIAN ARGOT: THE CASE OF VERBAL 'FLOREO'

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Thayssa Taranto Ramírez

2013-12-01

Full Text Available This article aims to conceptualize and define the so-called verbal Floreo, phenomenon of argot (ie, related to the argot, used by jeringa speakers, Peruvian youth argot. It is discussed the validity of the remaining existing nomenclatures, why speakers resort to such process of lexical creation and, based on the corpus, it is demonstrated how the phenomenon works in Spanish.

Lexically Allusive Content of Semantic Frames (Based on the Works of John Fowles

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Aleksandra Aleksandrovna Akatova

2015-11-01

Full Text Available The semantic frame is a cognitive model, some mental structure that unites the world map and the thesaurus of a person, the hierarchy of meanings and values of the linguistic model of the world. Conceptual-cognitive content of a semantic frame includes three constituents: the reader, the author, and culture. The postmodernistic metatext, a vivid example of which is the metatext of John Fowles, is made of lexical-semantic frames, filled with allusions, general cultural precedent phenomena, cross-references, leitmotif lexemes. The frames of "freedom" and "game" exemplify integrated leitmotif of enclosed space, sea, theater, meta-theatre, god, god's imitations, magician (wizard, and fool. The application of a semantic frames method for the analysis of lexical-allusive elements in the works of John Fowles (The Aristos, The Magus, The Ebony Tower, Daniel Martin, French Lieutenant's Woman, A Maggot, Wormholes allowed to identify the net of allusive inclusions and arrange them into lexical-semantic frames, which helped to decode linguocultural metatext of the society and the individual (author. The interpretation of linguistic and cultural items in the text has lead to distinguishing the dominant frame of the metatext, that is "freedom". It is stated that creativity is freedom in action, responsibility is the condition for complete freedom, the path from the Fool to the Magician is the way from blindness of the stereotypes in the society to the intrinsic vision of internal freedom and unifying meaning of existence.

Novel Word Lexicalization and the Prime Lexicality Effect

Science.gov (United States)

Qiao, Xiaomei; Forster, Kenneth I.

2013-01-01

This study investigates how newly learned words are integrated into the first-language lexicon using masked priming. Two lexical decision experiments are reported, with the aim of establishing whether newly learned words behave like real words in a masked form priming experiment. If they do, they should show a prime lexicality effect (PLE), in…

Lexical Access in Persian Normal Speakers: Picture Naming, Verbal Fluency and Spontaneous Speech

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Zahra Sadat Ghoreishi

2014-06-01

Full Text Available Objectives: Lexical access is the process by which the basic conceptual, syntactical and morpho-phonological information of words are activated. Most studies of lexical access have focused on picture naming. There is hardly any previous research on other parameters of lexical access such as verbal fluency and analysis of connected speech in Persian normal participants. This study investigates the lexical access performance in normal speakers in different issues such as age, sex and education. Methods: The performance of 120 adult Persian speakers in three tasks including picture naming, verbal fluency and connected speech, was examined using "Persian Lexical Access Assessment Package”. The performance of participants between two gender groups (male/female, three education groups (below 5 years, above 12 years, between 5 and 12 years and three age groups (18-35 years, 36-55 years, 56-75 years were compared. Results: According to findings, picture naming increased with increasing education and decreased with increasing age. The performance of participants in phonological and semantic verbal fluency showed improvement with age and education. No significant difference was seen between males and females in verbal fluency task. In the analysis of connected speech there were no significant differences between different age and education groups and just mean length of utterance in males was significantly higher than females. Discussion: The findings could be a primitive scale for comparison between normal subjects and patients in lexical access tasks, furthermore it could be a horizon for planning of treatment goals in patients with word finding problem according to age, gender and education.

Lexical polysynthesis : Should we treat lexical bases and their affixes as a continuum ?

OpenAIRE

Tersis , Nicole

2006-01-01

International audience; Polysynthesis in Inuit appears at both lexical and sentence levels. The analysis of a sampling of 3000 lexical entries and 300 affixes collected in Eastern Greenland (Tunumiisut) shows how polysynthesis works in lexical morphology and how phonetic wastage helps to obscure the motivation for some lexical forms and favors the development of homophones. Furthermore, the analysis of the full set of affixes reveals a number of formal and semantic similarities which relate a...

The Role of Temporal Envelope and Fine Structure in Mandarin Lexical Tone Perception in Auditory Neuropathy Spectrum Disorder.

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Shuo Wang

Full Text Available Temporal information in a signal can be partitioned into temporal envelope (E and fine structure (FS. Fine structure is important for lexical tone perception for normal-hearing (NH listeners, and listeners with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL have an impaired ability to use FS in lexical tone perception due to the reduced frequency resolution. The present study was aimed to assess which of the acoustic aspects (E or FS played a more important role in lexical tone perception in subjects with auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder (ANSD and to determine whether it was the deficit in temporal resolution or frequency resolution that might lead to more detrimental effects on FS processing in pitch perception. Fifty-eight native Mandarin Chinese-speaking subjects (27 with ANSD, 16 with SNHL, and 15 with NH were assessed for (1 their ability to recognize lexical tones using acoustic E or FS cues with the "auditory chimera" technique, (2 temporal resolution as measured with temporal gap detection (TGD threshold, and (3 frequency resolution as measured with the Q(10dB values of the psychophysical tuning curves. Overall, 26.5%, 60.2%, and 92.1% of lexical tone responses were consistent with FS cues for tone perception for listeners with ANSD, SNHL, and NH, respectively. The mean TGD threshold was significantly higher for listeners with ANSD (11.9 ms than for SNHL (4.0 ms; p < 0.001 and NH (3.9 ms; p < 0.001 listeners, with no significant difference between SNHL and NH listeners. In contrast, the mean Q(10dB for listeners with SNHL (1.8 ± 0.4 was significantly lower than that for ANSD (3.5 ± 1.0; p < 0.001 and NH (3.4 ± 0.9; p < 0.001 listeners, with no significant difference between ANSD and NH listeners. These results suggest that reduced temporal resolution, as opposed to reduced frequency selectivity, in ANSD subjects leads to greater degradation of FS processing for pitch perception.

Features Of Household Lexics, Their Characteristics And Structural Analysis In The Modern English Language

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Aygun Yusifova

2014-04-01

Full Text Available The present paper aims to analyze the most inherent features and characteristics of household lexis in English. Special emphasis has been placed on their names of the objects used in everyday life, kitchen utensils, animal and birds. Lexical units concerning ceremonies, habits and traditions are also among the scope of the paper. Moreover, the study deals with the structural features of the units under consideration. It is believed that the thematic-semantic characterization of every-day lexis can have both pedagogical and linguistic implications, especially when dealing with comparative structures.

Conceptual knowledge in the interpretation of idioms.

Science.gov (United States)

Nayak, N P; Gibbs, R W

1990-09-01

The authors examined how people determine the contextual appropriateness of idioms. In Experiment 1, idioms referring to the same temporal stage of a conceptual prototype were judged to be more similar in meaning than idioms referring to different temporal stages. In Experiment 2, idioms in a prototypical temporal sequence were more meaningful than idioms in sentences that violated the temporal sequence. In Experiment 3, idioms referring to the same stage of a conceptual prototype were differentiable on the basis of conceptual information. The conceptual coherence between idioms and contexts facilitated the processing speed of idioms in Experiment 4. Experiment 5 showed that speakers can recover the underlying conceptual metaphors that link an idiom to its figurative meaning. Experiment 6 showed that the metaphoric information reflected in the lexical makeup of idioms also determined the metaphoric appropriateness of idioms in certain contexts.

Multi-word Lexical Units in English and Slovak Linguistics Terminology

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Магдалена Била

2016-12-01

Full Text Available The research issue discussed in the paper falls within pragmatics, lexicographic and translation studies. It is part of the research grant project entitled “Virtual interactive English-Slovak bilingual encyclopedic linguistics dictionary”. One of the key tasks is to deal with the linguistics term as a concept. This presupposes understanding not only the surface structure but also the deep structure of the term. In preparing the inventory of the prospective dictionary, conceptualization has to take place and defining and translating of the term has to be done accordingly. The ongoing research has shown that one of the most problematic terms is “multi-word lexical unit” (in Slovak “viacslovné pomenovanie”. The problem lies in the different conceptualization of the terms in the two languages. Straightforwardly, in Slovak, the term implies examples that in English would be mostly considered compounds (Ološtiak, Ivanová 2015; in other words word-formation is the case here. In English, the term is more heterogeneous and encompasses categories like collocation, phrasal verb, idioms, speech formulas (on the term, see Sonomura 1996, situation bound utterances (on the term, see Kecskes 2010, and paremiological expressions (Moon 2015. In these categories, pragmatics rather than word-formation and syntax is the case (Erman and Warren 2000; Gibbs Jr. 2002, Kecskes 2014. The paper offers the analysis of the deep structure of the term in question, explores the role of figurativeness, exemplifies the differences, proposes the translation equivalents, and justifies the different nature of the seemingly corresponding terms, often making an impression of being a calque.

The unique role of lexical accessibility in predicting kindergarten emergent literacy.

Science.gov (United States)

Verhoeven, Ludo; van Leeuwe, Jan; Irausquin, Rosemarie; Segers, Eliane

The goal of this longitudinal study was to examine how lexical quality predicts the emergence of literacy abilities in 169 Dutch kindergarten children before formal reading instruction has started. At the beginning of the school year, a battery of precursor measures associated with lexical quality was related to the emergence of letter knowledge and word decoding. Confirmatory factor analysis evidenced five domains related to lexical quality, i.e., vocabulary, phonological coding, phonological awareness, lexical retrieval and phonological working memory. Structural equation modeling showed that the development of letter knowledge during the year could be predicted from children's phonological awareness and lexical retrieval, and the emergence of word decoding from their phonological awareness and letter knowledge. It is concluded that it is primarily the accessibility of phonological representations in the mental lexicon that predicts the emergence of literacy in kindergarten.

Conceptual structure within and between modalities

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Katia eDilkina

2013-01-01

Full Text Available Current views of semantic memory share the assumption that conceptual representations are based on multi-modal experience, which activates distinct modality-specific brain regions. This proposition is widely accepted, yet little is known about how each modality contributes to conceptual knowledge and how the structure of this contribution varies across these multiple information sources. We used verbal feature lists, features from drawings and verbal co-occurrence statistics from latent semantic analysis to examine the informational structure in four domains of knowledge: perceptual, functional, encyclopedic and verbal. The goals of the analysis were three-fold: (1 to assess the structure within individual modalities; (2 to compare structures between modalities; and (3 to assess the degree to which concepts organize categorically or randomly.Our results indicated significant and unique structure in all four modalities: perceptually, concepts organize based on prominent features such as shape, size, color and parts; functionally, they group based on use and interaction; encyclopedically, they arrange based on commonality in location or behavior; and verbally, they group associatively or relationally. Visual/perceptual knowledge gives rise to the strongest hierarchical organization and is closest to classic taxonomic structure. Information is organized somewhat similarly in the perceptual and encyclopedic domains, which differs significantly from the structure in the functional and verbal domains. Notably, the verbal modality has the most unique organization, which is not at all categorical but also not random. The idiosyncrasy and complexity of conceptual structure across modalities begs the question of how all of these modality-specific experiences are fused together into coherent, multi-faceted yet unified concepts. Accordingly, both methodological and theoretical implications of the present findings are discussed.

LEXICAL ANALYSIS OF THE VERB COOK AND LEARNING VOCABULARY: A CORPUS STUDY

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Priyono Priyono

2011-07-01

Full Text Available English verbs have built-in properties that determine how they behave syntactically and generate appropriate meaning associated. With these inherent properties some verbs can fill in only in certain syntactic structures and some in others. The observation of the verb COOK using English corpus has revealed its lexical properties covering the area of syntax, semantics, and collocation suggesting uniqueness of its behaviours that are distinguishable from other verbs. Having found the lexical properties of COOK, this article concludes that the acquisition of lexicon should include lexical properties that reflect their level of competence. It also argues that the acquisition of lexical properties should be implicit, not through meta-linguistic knowledge. This would render early grammar teaching unnecessary. The acquisition of lexical properties should take place through subconscious process, not explicit grammar instruction. Many of these are grammatical aspects such as word order, sentence construction, grammatical and lexical collocations.

A Lexical Analysis Tool with Ambiguity Support

OpenAIRE

Quesada, Luis; Berzal, Fernando; Cortijo, Francisco J.

2012-01-01

Lexical ambiguities naturally arise in languages. We present Lamb, a lexical analyzer that produces a lexical analysis graph describing all the possible sequences of tokens that can be found within the input string. Parsers can process such lexical analysis graphs and discard any sequence of tokens that does not produce a valid syntactic sentence, therefore performing, together with Lamb, a context-sensitive lexical analysis in lexically-ambiguous language specifications.

Designing a Lexical Database for a Combined Use of Corpus Annotation and Dictionary Editing

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kristoffersen, Jette Hedegaard; Troelsgård, Thomas; Langer, Gabriele

2016-01-01

In a combined corpus-dictionary project, you would need one lexical database that could serve as a shared “backbone” for both corpus annotation and dictionary editing, but it is not that easy to define a database structure that applies satisfactorily to both these purposes. In this paper, we...... will exemplify the problem and present ideas on how to model structures in a lexical database that facilitate corpus annotation as well as dictionary editing. The paper is a joint work between the DGS Corpus Project and the DTS Dictionary Project. The two projects come from opposite sides of the spectrum (one...... adjusting a lexical database grown from dictionary making for corpus annotating, one building a lexical database in parallel with corpus annotation and editing a corpus-based dictionary), and we will consider requirements and feasible structures for a database that can serve both corpus and dictionary....

Using Predictability for Lexical Segmentation.

Science.gov (United States)

Çöltekin, Çağrı

2017-09-01

This study investigates a strategy based on predictability of consecutive sub-lexical units in learning to segment a continuous speech stream into lexical units using computational modeling and simulations. Lexical segmentation is one of the early challenges during language acquisition, and it has been studied extensively through psycholinguistic experiments as well as computational methods. However, despite strong empirical evidence, the explicit use of predictability of basic sub-lexical units in models of segmentation is underexplored. This paper presents an incremental computational model of lexical segmentation for exploring the usefulness of predictability for lexical segmentation. We show that the predictability cue is a strong cue for segmentation. Contrary to earlier reports in the literature, the strategy yields state-of-the-art segmentation performance with an incremental computational model that uses only this particular cue in a cognitively plausible setting. The paper also reports an in-depth analysis of the model, investigating the conditions affecting the usefulness of the strategy. Copyright © 2016 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Role of working memory and lexical knowledge in perceptual restoration of interrupted speech.

Science.gov (United States)

Nagaraj, Naveen K; Magimairaj, Beula M

2017-12-01

The role of working memory (WM) capacity and lexical knowledge in perceptual restoration (PR) of missing speech was investigated using the interrupted speech perception paradigm. Speech identification ability, which indexed PR, was measured using low-context sentences periodically interrupted at 1.5 Hz. PR was measured for silent gated, low-frequency speech noise filled, and low-frequency fine-structure and envelope filled interrupted conditions. WM capacity was measured using verbal and visuospatial span tasks. Lexical knowledge was assessed using both receptive vocabulary and meaning from context tests. Results showed that PR was better for speech noise filled condition than other conditions tested. Both receptive vocabulary and verbal WM capacity explained unique variance in PR for the speech noise filled condition, but were unrelated to performance in the silent gated condition. It was only receptive vocabulary that uniquely predicted PR for fine-structure and envelope filled conditions. These findings suggest that the contribution of lexical knowledge and verbal WM during PR depends crucially on the information content that replaced the silent intervals. When perceptual continuity was partially restored by filler speech noise, both lexical knowledge and verbal WM capacity facilitated PR. Importantly, for fine-structure and envelope filled interrupted conditions, lexical knowledge was crucial for PR.

A Structural Equation Model of Conceptual Change in Physics

Science.gov (United States)

Taasoobshirazi, Gita; Sinatra, Gale M.

2011-01-01

A model of conceptual change in physics was tested on introductory-level, college physics students. Structural equation modeling was used to test hypothesized relationships among variables linked to conceptual change in physics including an approach goal orientation, need for cognition, motivation, and course grade. Conceptual change in physics…

Lexical Discourse Analysis in Translation

Science.gov (United States)

Al Khotaba, Eissa; Al Tarawneh, Khaled

2015-01-01

Lexical Discourse very often depend on lexis. Lexical Discourse analysis, however, has not yet been given enough consideration of the phenomenon of translation. This paper investigates lexical discourse analysis in translation from one language to another. This qualitative study comprises 15 text translated by M.A. students at the Department of…

Effects of lexical competition on immediate memory span for spoken words.

Science.gov (United States)

Goh, Winston D; Pisoni, David B

2003-08-01

Current theories and models of the structural organization of verbal short-term memory are primarily based on evidence obtained from manipulations of features inherent in the short-term traces of the presented stimuli, such as phonological similarity. In the present study, we investigated whether properties of the stimuli that are not inherent in the short-term traces of spoken words would affect performance in an immediate memory span task. We studied the lexical neighbourhood properties of the stimulus items, which are based on the structure and organization of words in the mental lexicon. The experiments manipulated lexical competition by varying the phonological neighbourhood structure (i.e., neighbourhood density and neighbourhood frequency) of the words on a test list while controlling for word frequency and intra-set phonological similarity (family size). Immediate memory span for spoken words was measured under repeated and nonrepeated sampling procedures. The results demonstrated that lexical competition only emerged when a nonrepeated sampling procedure was used and the participants had to access new words from their lexicons. These findings were not dependent on individual differences in short-term memory capacity. Additional results showed that the lexical competition effects did not interact with proactive interference. Analyses of error patterns indicated that item-type errors, but not positional errors, were influenced by the lexical attributes of the stimulus items. These results complement and extend previous findings that have argued for separate contributions of long-term knowledge and short-term memory rehearsal processes in immediate verbal serial recall tasks.

In defense of abstract conceptual representations.

Science.gov (United States)

Binder, Jeffrey R

2016-08-01

An extensive program of research in the past 2 decades has focused on the role of modal sensory, motor, and affective brain systems in storing and retrieving concept knowledge. This focus has led in some circles to an underestimation of the need for more abstract, supramodal conceptual representations in semantic cognition. Evidence for supramodal processing comes from neuroimaging work documenting a large, well-defined cortical network that responds to meaningful stimuli regardless of modal content. The nodes in this network correspond to high-level "convergence zones" that receive broadly crossmodal input and presumably process crossmodal conjunctions. It is proposed that highly conjunctive representations are needed for several critical functions, including capturing conceptual similarity structure, enabling thematic associative relationships independent of conceptual similarity, and providing efficient "chunking" of concept representations for a range of higher order tasks that require concepts to be configured as situations. These hypothesized functions account for a wide range of neuroimaging results showing modulation of the supramodal convergence zone network by associative strength, lexicality, familiarity, imageability, frequency, and semantic compositionality. The evidence supports a hierarchical model of knowledge representation in which modal systems provide a mechanism for concept acquisition and serve to ground individual concepts in external reality, whereas broadly conjunctive, supramodal representations play an equally important role in concept association and situation knowledge.

Lexical Borrowing in the Speech of First-Generation Hungarian Immigrants in Australia

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Anikó Hatoss

2016-09-01

Full Text Available This article reports findings of a sociolinguistic project which investigated language contact phenomena in the speech of first-generation Hungarian Australians living in Sydney. The research aimed to identify and analyze English lexical items borrowed into the spoken Hungarian of first-generation Hungarian–English bilinguals. This research had a mixed methods approach including a quantitative element (count of lexical manifestations by categories such as part of speech and a qualitative element in which the various lexical manifestations have been subjected to a linguistic analysis. The Hungarian National Corpus was used as a reference guide to determine the status of these phenomena in the lexicon of Standard Hungarian. The data were collected through semi-structured sociolinguistic interviews with 22 Hungarian Australians living in Sydney. The findings demonstrate that (a first-generation Hungarians are highly creative language users and integrate a large number of English lexical items into their speech. Most lexical borrowings belong to the derivational blends with the highest proportion of the nominal group. Lexical borrowings from English are morphologically integrated with Hungarian-derivational suffixes and inflectional case markings. This research provides original empirical data to better understand the various inter-language lexical manifestations in Hungarian–English bilingual contexts. The study adds to the relatively small body of research on Hungarian–English bilingualism in diasporic context and contributes to understanding lexical borrowing from a contact linguistic perspective.

Being Moved: Linguistic Representation and Conceptual Structure

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Milena eKuehnast

2014-11-01

Full Text Available This study explored the organisation of the semantic field and the conceptual structure of moving experiences by investigating German-language expressions referring to the emotional state of being moved. We used present and past participles of eight psychological verbs as primes in a free word-association task, as these grammatical forms place their conceptual focus on the eliciting situation and on the felt emotional state, respectively. By applying a taxonomy of basic knowledge types and computing the Cognitive Salience Index, we identified joy and sadness as key emotional ingredients of being moved, and significant life events and art experiences as main elicitors of this emotional state. Metric multidimensional scaling analyses of the semantic field revealed that the core terms designate a cluster of emotional states characterised by low degrees of arousal and slightly positive valence, the latter due to a nearly balanced representation of positive and negative elements in the conceptual structure of being moved.

The comparative impact of lexical translation and lexical inferencing on EFL learners’ vocabulary retention

OpenAIRE

Nasim Shangarfam; Neda Ghorbani; Ehsan Safarpoor; Mahshid Maha

2013-01-01

The present study is an attempt to investigate the comparative effects of lexical translation and lexical inferencing techniques on Female intermediate EFL learners’ vocabulary retention. For this purpose, 90 female learners attending the Jahad Daneshgahi Center in Qom took a piloted sample KET test, 60 of whom were selected as homogenous learners. They were randomly divided into two experimental groups-one learning new vocabulary items through lexical translation technique and the other with...

The origins of levels-of-processing effects in a conceptual test: evidence for automatic influences of memory from the process-dissociation procedure.

Science.gov (United States)

Bergerbest, Dafna; Goshen-Gottstein, Yonatan

2002-12-01

In three experiments, we explored automatic influences of memory in a conceptual memory task, as affected by a levels-of-processing (LoP) manipulation. We also explored the origins of the LoP effect by examining whether the effect emerged only when participants in the shallow condition truncated the perceptual processing (the lexical-processing hypothesis) or even when the entire word was encoded in this condition (the conceptual-processing hypothesis). Using the process-dissociation procedure and an implicit association-generation task, we found that the deep encoding condition yielded higher estimates of automatic influences than the shallow condition. In support of the conceptual processing hypothesis, the LoP effect was found even when the shallow task did not lead to truncated processing of the lexical units. We suggest that encoding for meaning is a prerequisite for automatic processing on conceptual tests of memory.

USING AUTHENTIC LITERARY WORKS FOR THE FORMATION OF LEXICAL COMPETENCE OF FUTURE GERMAN LANGUAGE TEACHERS

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Антоніна Палецька-Юкало

2014-10-01

Full Text Available The article deals with the advantages of use of authentic literary works as the main sphere of learning and improvement of foreign language vocabulary.The definition of lexical competence has been suggested. The possibilities for perceiving and analysis of such language phenomena as synonyms, antonyms, polisemic words, lexical links, linguistic clichés non-equivalent and emotionally colored vocabulary of authentic literary works as the basis of the formation of German lexical competence of future teachers have been grounded. The process of investigation has revealed that lexical contents of authentic literary works contribute to a comprehensive dictionary and learning connected speech structures, provide frequent repetition of lexical items, and create a sense of language.

Semantic and Conceptual Factors in Spanish-English Bilinguals' Processing of Lexical Categories in Their Two Languages

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Gathercole, Virginia C. Mueller; Stadthagen-González, Hans; Pérez-Tattam, Rocío; Yava?, Feryal

2016-01-01

This study examines possible semantic interaction in fully fluent adult simultaneous and early second language (L2) bilinguals. Monolingual and bilingual speakers of Spanish and English (n = 144) were tested for their understanding of lexical categories that differed in their two languages. Simultaneous bilinguals came from homes in which Spanish…

Being moved: linguistic representation and conceptual structure

OpenAIRE

Kuehnast, Milena; Wagner, Valentin; Wassiliwizky, Eugen; Jacobsen, Thomas; Menninghaus, Winfried

2014-01-01

This study explored the organization of the semantic field and the conceptual structure of moving experiences by investigating German-language expressions referring to the emotional state of being moved. We used present and past participles of eight psychological verbs as primes in a free word-association task, as these grammatical forms place their conceptual focus on the eliciting situation and on the felt emotional state, respectively. By applying a taxonomy of basic knowledge types and co...

Macrostructural Treatment of Multi-word Lexical Items

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Alenka Vrbinc

2011-05-01

Full Text Available The paper discusses the macrostructural treatment of multi-word lexical items in mono- and bilingual dictionaries. First, the classification of multi-word lexical items is presented, and special attention is paid to the discussion of compounds – a specific group of multi-word lexical items that is most commonly afforded headword status but whose inclusion in the headword list may also depend on spelling. Then the inclusion of multi-word lexical items in monolingual dictionaries is dealt with in greater detail, while the results of a short survey on the inclusion of five randomly chosen multi-word lexical items in seven English monolingual dictionaries are presented. The proposals as to how to treat these five multi-word lexical items in bilingual dictionaries are presented in the section about the inclusion of multi-word lexical items in bilingual dictionaries. The conclusion is that it is most important to take the users’ needs into consideration and to make any dictionary as user friendly as possible.

Unfolding Visual Lexical Decision in Time

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Barca, Laura; Pezzulo, Giovanni

2012-01-01

Visual lexical decision is a classical paradigm in psycholinguistics, and numerous studies have assessed the so-called “lexicality effect" (i.e., better performance with lexical than non-lexical stimuli). Far less is known about the dynamics of choice, because many studies measured overall reaction times, which are not informative about underlying processes. To unfold visual lexical decision in (over) time, we measured participants' hand movements toward one of two item alternatives by recording the streaming x,y coordinates of the computer mouse. Participants categorized four kinds of stimuli as “lexical" or “non-lexical:" high and low frequency words, pseudowords, and letter strings. Spatial attraction toward the opposite category was present for low frequency words and pseudowords. Increasing the ambiguity of the stimuli led to greater movement complexity and trajectory attraction to competitors, whereas no such effect was present for high frequency words and letter strings. Results fit well with dynamic models of perceptual decision-making, which describe the process as a competition between alternatives guided by the continuous accumulation of evidence. More broadly, our results point to a key role of statistical decision theory in studying linguistic processing in terms of dynamic and non-modular mechanisms. PMID:22563419

Enabling Rapid and Robust Structural Analysis During Conceptual Design

Science.gov (United States)

Eldred, Lloyd B.; Padula, Sharon L.; Li, Wu

2015-01-01

This paper describes a multi-year effort to add a structural analysis subprocess to a supersonic aircraft conceptual design process. The desired capabilities include parametric geometry, automatic finite element mesh generation, static and aeroelastic analysis, and structural sizing. The paper discusses implementation details of the new subprocess, captures lessons learned, and suggests future improvements. The subprocess quickly compares concepts and robustly handles large changes in wing or fuselage geometry. The subprocess can rank concepts with regard to their structural feasibility and can identify promising regions of the design space. The automated structural analysis subprocess is deemed robust and rapid enough to be included in multidisciplinary conceptual design and optimization studies.

A Python-based Interface for Wide Coverage Lexicalized Tree-adjoining Grammars

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Wang Ziqi

2015-04-01

Full Text Available This paper describes the design and implementation of a Python-based interface for wide coverage Lexicalized Tree-adjoining Grammars. The grammars are part of the XTAG Grammar project at the University of Pennsylvania, which were hand-written and semi-automatically curated to parse real-world corpora. We provide an interface to the wide coverage English and Korean XTAG grammars. Each XTAG grammar is lexicalized, which means at least one word selects a tree fragment (called an elementary tree or etree. Derivations for sentences are built by combining etrees using substitution (replacement of a tree node with an etree at the frontier of another etree and adjunction (replacement of an internal tree node in an etree by another etree. Each etree is associated with a feature structure representing constraints on substitution and adjunction. Feature structures are combined using unification during the combination of etrees. We plan to integrate our toolkit for XTAG grammars into the Python-based Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK: nltk.org. We have provided an API capable of searching the lexicalized etrees for a given word or multiple words, searching for a etree by name or function, display the lexicalized etrees to the user using a graphical view, display the feature structure associated with each tree node in an etree, hide or highlight features based on a regular expression, and browsing the entire tree database for each XTAG grammar.

Linking Neural and Symbolic Representation and Processing of Conceptual Structures

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Frank van der Velde

2017-08-01

Full Text Available We compare and discuss representations in two cognitive architectures aimed at representing and processing complex conceptual (sentence-like structures. First is the Neural Blackboard Architecture (NBA, which aims to account for representation and processing of complex and combinatorial conceptual structures in the brain. Second is IDyOT (Information Dynamics of Thinking, which derives sentence-like structures by learning statistical sequential regularities over a suitable corpus. Although IDyOT is designed at a level more abstract than the neural, so it is a model of cognitive function, rather than neural processing, there are strong similarities between the composite structures developed in IDyOT and the NBA. We hypothesize that these similarities form the basis of a combined architecture in which the individual strengths of each architecture are integrated. We outline and discuss the characteristics of this combined architecture, emphasizing the representation and processing of conceptual structures.

Ambiguity in the Acquisition of Lexical Information

OpenAIRE

Vanderwende, Lucy

1995-01-01

This paper describes an approach to the automatic identification of lexical information in on-line dictionaries. This approach uses bootstrapping techniques, specifically so that ambiguity in the dictionary text can be treated properly. This approach consists of processing an on-line dictionary multiple times, each time refining the lexical information previously acquired and identifying new lexical information. The strength of this approach is that lexical information can be acquired from de...

Syntactic Priming and the Lexical Boost Effect during Sentence Production and Sentence Comprehension: An fMRI Study

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Segaert, Katrien; Kempen, Gerard; Petersson, Karl Magnus; Hagoort, Peter

2013-01-01

Behavioral syntactic priming effects during sentence comprehension are typically observed only if both the syntactic structure and lexical head are repeated. In contrast, during production syntactic priming occurs with structure repetition alone, but the effect is boosted by repetition of the lexical head. We used fMRI to investigate the neuronal…

Assessment of Lexical and Non-Lexical Spelling in Students in Grades 1-7

Science.gov (United States)

Kohnen, Saskia; Colenbrander, Danielle; Krajenbrink, Trudy; Nickels, Lyndsey

2015-01-01

The main aim of this study was to develop standardised tests that assess some of the most important spelling skills for children in primary school: sound-letter mappings (non-lexical spelling) and word spelling accuracy (lexical spelling). We present normative comparison data for children in Grades 1-7 as well as measures of validity and…

SeLeCT: a lexical cohesion based news story segmentation system

OpenAIRE

Stokes, Nicola; Carthy, Joe; Smeaton, Alan F.

2004-01-01

In this paper we compare the performance of three distinct approaches to lexical cohesion based text segmentation. Most work in this area has focused on the discovery of textual units that discuss subtopic structure within documents. In contrast our segmentation task requires the discovery of topical units of text i.e., distinct news stories from broadcast news programmes. Our approach to news story segmentation (the SeLeCT system) is based on an analysis of lexical cohesive strength between ...

Lexically guided perceptual learning in Mandarin Chinese

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Burchfield, L.A.; Luk, S.H.K.; Antoniou, M.; Cutler, A.

2017-01-01

Lexically guided perceptual learni ng refers to the use of lexical knowledge to retune sp eech categories and thereby adapt to a novel talker's pronunciation. This adaptation has been extensively documented, but primarily for segmental-based learning in English and Dutch. In languages with lexical

Insights into failed lexical retrieval from network science.

Science.gov (United States)

Vitevitch, Michael S; Chan, Kit Ying; Goldstein, Rutherford

2014-02-01

Previous network analyses of the phonological lexicon (Vitevitch, 2008) observed a web-like structure that exhibited assortative mixing by degree: words with dense phonological neighborhoods tend to have as neighbors words that also have dense phonological neighborhoods, and words with sparse phonological neighborhoods tend to have as neighbors words that also have sparse phonological neighborhoods. Given the role that assortative mixing by degree plays in network resilience, we examined instances of real and simulated lexical retrieval failures in computer simulations, analysis of a slips-of-the-ear corpus, and three psycholinguistic experiments for evidence of this network characteristic in human behavior. The results of the various analyses support the hypothesis that the structure of words in the mental lexicon influences lexical processing. The implications of network science for current models of spoken word recognition, language processing, and cognitive psychology more generally are discussed. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Lexical need as a two-way reality cognition tool

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Mark Kit

2014-09-01

Full Text Available Lexical need as a two-way reality cognition tool In this paper a concept of lexical need is introduced and its application in research of cognitive aspects of translation is discussed. Further discussion elaborates mechanisms of development of translator’s lexical space in the course of translation. Authors discuss the importance and special nature of low-frequency lexical units and difficulties encountered when studying their usage and suggest that the lexical need concept help these studies. Lexical need analysis can be also used to learn specifics of translator’s lexical space and then to take measures for selection of translators and improvement of their skills.

Predicting Lexical Proficiency in Language Learner Texts Using Computational Indices

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Crossley, Scott A.; Salsbury, Tom; McNamara, Danielle S.; Jarvis, Scott

2011-01-01

The authors present a model of lexical proficiency based on lexical indices related to vocabulary size, depth of lexical knowledge, and accessibility to core lexical items. The lexical indices used in this study come from the computational tool Coh-Metrix and include word length scores, lexical diversity values, word frequency counts, hypernymy…

Lexical Resources and Their Application.

Science.gov (United States)

Gellerstam, Martin

This paper discusses computer-based resources for lexical data and their uses. First, the kinds of lexical data available are described, including those related to form (spelling, pronunciation, inflection, word class), meaning (definition/equivalent, synonyms/antonyms/hyperonyms, thesaurus classification), context (grammatical collocations,…

Linking neural and symbolic representation and processing of conceptual structures

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van der Velde, Frank; Forth, Jamie; Nazareth, Deniece S.; Wiggins, Geraint A.

2017-01-01

We compare and discuss representations in two cognitive architectures aimed at representing and processing complex conceptual (sentence-like) structures. First is the Neural Blackboard Architecture (NBA), which aims to account for representation and processing of complex and combinatorial conceptual

Lexical and articulatory interactions in children's language production.

Science.gov (United States)

Heisler, Lori; Goffman, Lisa; Younger, Barbara

2010-09-01

Traditional models of adult language processing and production include two levels of representation: lexical and sublexical. The current study examines the influence of the inclusion of a lexical representation (i.e. a visual referent and/or object function) on the stability of articulation as well as on phonetic accuracy and variability in typically developing children and children with specific language impairment (SLI). A word learning paradigm was developed so that we could compare children's production with and without lexical representation. The variability and accuracy of productions were examined using speech kinematics as well as traditional phonetic accuracy measures. Results showed that phonetic forms with lexical representation were produced with more articulatory stability than phonetic forms without lexical representation. Using more traditional transcription measures, a paired lexical referent generally did not influence segmental accuracy (percent consonant correct and type token ratio). These results suggest that lexical and articulatory levels of representation are not completely independent. Implications for models of language production are discussed.

Lexical priming in Alzheimer's disease and aphasia.

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Arroyo-Anlló, Eva Maria; Beauchamps, Mireille; Ingrand, Pierre; Neau, Jean Philippe; Gil, Roger

2013-01-01

Lexical priming was examined in patients with Alzheimer's disease and in aphasic patients. Control participants were divided into young and elderly [cf. Arroyo-Anlló et al.: Eur J Cogn Psychol 2004;16:535-553]. For lexical priming, a word-stem completion task was used. Normal elderly participants had lexical priming scores that were significantly lower than those of young individuals. Analysis of covariance with age and educational level as covariates showed that the control participants, aphasic and Alzheimer patients did not differ significantly on the lexical priming task. Our results suggest that performance in the lexical priming task diminishes with physiological aging, but is not significantly affected by mild or moderate Alzheimer's disease or by fluent or non-fluent aphasia. Copyright © 2013 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Conceptual Design Tool for Concrete Shell Structures

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Holst, Malene Kirstine; Kirkegaard, Poul Henning

2011-01-01

This paper focuses on conceptual tools for concrete shell structures when working within the span of performance-based design and computational morphogenesis. The designer, referred to as the Architect-Engineer, works through several iterations parallel with aesthetic, functional and technical re...

A view of the tip of the iceberg: revisiting conceptual continuities and their implications for science learning

Science.gov (United States)

Brown, Bryan A.; Kloser, Matt

2009-12-01

We respond to Hwang and Kim and Yeo's critiques of the conceptual continuity framework in science education. First, we address the criticism that their analysis fails to recognize the situated perspective of learning by denying the dichotomy of the formal and informal knowledge as a starting point in the learning process. Second, we address the critique that students' descriptions fail to meet the "gold standard" of science education—alignment with an authoritative source and generalizability—by highlighting some student-expert congruence that could serve as the foundation for future learning. Third, we address the critique that a conceptual continuity framework could lead to less rigorous science education goals by arguing that the ultimate goals do not change, but rather that if the pathways that lead to the goals' achievement could recognize existing lexical continuities' science teaching may become more efficient. In sum, we argue that a conceptual continuities framework provides an asset, not deficit lexical perspective from which science teacher educators and science educators can begin to address and build complete science understandings.

Lexical effects on speech production and intelligibility in Parkinson's disease

Science.gov (United States)

Chiu, Yi-Fang

Individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) often have speech deficits that lead to reduced speech intelligibility. Previous research provides a rich database regarding the articulatory deficits associated with PD including restricted vowel space (Skodda, Visser, & Schlegel, 2011) and flatter formant transitions (Tjaden & Wilding, 2004; Walsh & Smith, 2012). However, few studies consider the effect of higher level structural variables of word usage frequency and the number of similar sounding words (i.e. neighborhood density) on lower level articulation or on listeners' perception of dysarthric speech. The purpose of the study is to examine the interaction of lexical properties and speech articulation as measured acoustically in speakers with PD and healthy controls (HC) and the effect of lexical properties on the perception of their speech. Individuals diagnosed with PD and age-matched healthy controls read sentences with words that varied in word frequency and neighborhood density. Acoustic analysis was performed to compare second formant transitions in diphthongs, an indicator of the dynamics of tongue movement during speech production, across different lexical characteristics. Young listeners transcribed the spoken sentences and the transcription accuracy was compared across lexical conditions. The acoustic results indicate that both PD and HC speakers adjusted their articulation based on lexical properties but the PD group had significant reductions in second formant transitions compared to HC. Both groups of speakers increased second formant transitions for words with low frequency and low density, but the lexical effect is diphthong dependent. The change in second formant slope was limited in the PD group when the required formant movement for the diphthong is small. The data from listeners' perception of the speech by PD and HC show that listeners identified high frequency words with greater accuracy suggesting the use of lexical knowledge during the

Lexical need as a two-way reality cognition tool

OpenAIRE

Mark Kit; Elena Berg

2014-01-01

Lexical need as a two-way reality cognition tool In this paper a concept of lexical need is introduced and its application in research of cognitive aspects of translation is discussed. Further discussion elaborates mechanisms of development of translator’s lexical space in the course of translation. Authors discuss the importance and special nature of low-frequency lexical units and difficulties encountered when studying their usage and suggest that the lexical need concept help these stu...

Automatically Assessing Lexical Sophistication: Indices, Tools, Findings, and Application

Science.gov (United States)

Kyle, Kristopher; Crossley, Scott A.

2015-01-01

This study explores the construct of lexical sophistication and its applications for measuring second language lexical and speaking proficiency. In doing so, the study introduces the Tool for the Automatic Analysis of LExical Sophistication (TAALES), which calculates text scores for 135 classic and newly developed lexical indices related to word…

Preliminary conceptual design and analysis on KALIMER reactor structures

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kim, Jong Bum

1996-10-01

The objectives of this study are to perform preliminary conceptual design and structural analyses for KALIMER (Korea Advanced Liquid Metal Reactor) reactor structures to assess the design feasibility and to identify detailed analysis requirements. KALIMER thermal hydraulic system analysis results and neutronic analysis results are not available at present, only-limited preliminary structural analyses have been performed with the assumptions on the thermal loads. The responses of reactor vessel and reactor internal structures were based on the temperature difference of core inlet and outlet and on engineering judgments. Thermal stresses from the assumed temperatures were calculated using ANSYS code through parametric finite element heat transfer and elastic stress analyses. While, based on the results of preliminary conceptual design and structural analyses, the ASME Code limits for the reactor structures were satisfied for the pressure boundary, the needs for inelastic analyses were indicated for evaluation of design adequacy of the support barrel and the thermal liner. To reduce thermal striping effects in the bottom are of UIS due to up-flowing sodium form reactor core, installation of Inconel-718 liner to the bottom area was proposed, and to mitigate thermal shock loads, additional stainless steel liner was also suggested. The design feasibilities of these were validated through simplified preliminary analyses. In conceptual design phase, the implementation of these results will be made for the design of the reactor structures and the reactor internal structures in conjunction with the thermal hydraulic, neutronic, and seismic analyses results. 4 tabs., 24 figs., 4 refs. (Author)

The preverbal locative NP in Lexical Functional Grammar

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Data is drawn from some of the findings of the study I conducted on the locative inversion constructions in Botswana in 2003. I explore an information structure analysis of the findings. I also propose an analysis within Lexical Functional Grammar (Henceforth LFG), a non-transformational theory which considers languages ...

Lexical Complexity Development from Dynamic Systems Theory Perspective: Lexical Density, Diversity, and Sophistication

OpenAIRE

Reza Kalantari; Javad Gholami

2017-01-01

This longitudinal case study explored Iranian EFL learners’ lexical complexity (LC) through the lenses of Dynamic Systems Theory (DST). Fifty independent essays written by five intermediate to advanced female EFL learners in a TOEFL iBT preparation course over six months constituted the corpus of this study. Three Coh-Metrix indices (Graesser, McNamara, Louwerse, & Cai, 2004; McNamara & Graesser, 2012), three Lexical Complexity Analyzer indices (Lu, 2010, 2012; Lu & Ai, 2011...

Lexical neighborhood effects in pseudoword spelling.

Science.gov (United States)

Tainturier, Marie-Josèphe; Bosse, Marie-Line; Roberts, Daniel J; Valdois, Sylviane; Rapp, Brenda

2013-01-01

The general aim of this study is to contribute to a better understanding of the cognitive processes that underpin skilled adult spelling. More specifically, it investigates the influence of lexical neighbors on pseudo-word spelling with the goal of providing a more detailed account of the interaction between lexical and sublexical sources of knowledge in spelling. In prior research examining this topic, adult participants typically heard lists composed of both words and pseudo-words and had to make a lexical decision to each stimulus before writing the pseudo-words. However, these priming paradigms are susceptible to strategic influence and may therefore not give a clear picture of the processes normally engaged in spelling unfamiliar words. In our two Experiments involving 71 French-speaking literate adults, only pseudo-words were presented which participants were simply requested to write to dictation using the first spelling that came to mind. Unbeknownst to participants, pseudo-words varied according to whether they did or did not have a phonological word neighbor. Results revealed that low-probability phoneme/grapheme mappings (e.g., /o/ -> aud in French) were used significantly more often in spelling pseudo-words with a close phonological lexical neighbor with that spelling (e.g., /krepo/ derived from "crapaud," /krapo/) than in spelling pseudo-words with no close neighbors (e.g., /frøpo/). In addition, the strength of this lexical influence increased with the lexical frequency of the word neighbors as well as with their degree of phonetic overlap with the pseudo-word targets. These results indicate that information from lexical and sublexical processes is integrated in the course of spelling, and a specific theoretical account as to how such integration may occur is introduced.

LEXICAL NEIGHBOURHOOD EFFECTS IN PSEUDOWORD SPELLING

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marie-Josephe eTainturier

2013-11-01

Full Text Available The general aim of this study is to contribute to a better understanding of the cognitive processes that underpin skilled adult spelling. More specifically, it investigates the influence of lexical neighbours on pseudo-word spelling with the goal of providing a more detailed account of the interaction between lexical and sublexical sources of knowledge in spelling. In prior research examining this topic, subjects typically heard lists composed of both words and pseudo-words and had to make a lexical decision to each stimulus before writing the pseudo-words. However, these priming paradigms are susceptible to strategic influence and may therefore not give a clear picture of the processes normally engaged in spelling unfamiliar words. In our two Experiments involving 71 French speaking literature adults, only pseudo-words were presented which participants were simply requested to write to dictation using the first spelling that came to mind. Unbeknown to participants, pseudo-words varied according to whether they did or did not have a phonological word neighbour. Results revealed that low-probability phoneme/grapheme mappings (e.g., /o/ -> aud in French were used significantly more often in spelling pseudo-words with a close phonological lexical neighbour with that spelling (e.g., /krepo/ derived from crapaud, /krapo/ than in spelling pseudo-words with no close neighbours (e.g., /frøpo/. In addition, the strength of this lexical influence increased with the lexical frequency of the word neighbours as well as with their degree of phonetic overlap with the pseudo-word targets. These results indicate that the activation from lexical and sublexical processes is integrated in the course of spelling, and a specific theoretical account as to how such integration may occur is introduced.

Lexicalization patterns in Brazilian Portuguese

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Dorival Gonçalves Santos Filho

2016-10-01

Full Text Available Neolatin languages belong to a lexicalization pattern in which the verbal root expresses semantic primitives of MOVE and PATH, leaving MANNER or CAUSE to be expressed by an adverb or the gerund form. In German origin languages, on the contrary, verbs lexicalize the semantic primitives of MOVE, MANNER or CAUSE; as for the PATH, it is expressed by a grammatical element that is associated to the verb. Taking into consideration some of the concepts of event of move, guided by Cognitive Semantics, and an analysis of examples extracted from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings’ books, the present study aims at showing, at least, three lexicalization patterns in which Brazilian Portuguese fits in.

Lexical tone and stuttering in Cantonese.

Science.gov (United States)

Law, Thomas; Packman, Ann; Onslow, Mark; To, Carol K-S; Tong, Michael C-F; Lee, Kathy Y-S

2018-01-01

Cantonese is a tone language, in which the variation of the fundamental frequency contour of a syllable can change meaning. There are six different lexical tones in Cantonese. While research with Western languages has shown an association between stuttering and syllabic stress, nothing is known about whether stuttering in Cantonese speakers is associated with one or more of the six lexical tones. Such an association has been reported in conversational speech in Mandarin, which is also a tone language, but which varies markedly from Cantonese. Twenty-four native Cantonese-speaking adults who stutter participated in this study, ranging in age from 18-33 years. There were 18 men and 6 women. Participants read aloud 13 Cantonese syllables, each of which was produced with six contrastive lexical tones. All 78 syllables were embedded in the same carrier sentence, to reduce the influence of suprasegmental or linguistic stress, and were presented in random order. No significant differences were found for stuttering moments across the six lexical tones. It is suggested that this is because lexical tones, at least in Cantonese, do not place the task demands on the speech motor system that typify varying syllabic stress in Western languages: variations not only in fundamental frequency, but also in duration and intensity. The findings of this study suggest that treatments for adults who stutter in Western languages, such as speech restructuring, can be used with Cantonese speakers without undue attention to lexical tone.

Using lexical analysis to identify emotional distress in psychometric schizotypy.

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Abplanalp, Samuel J; Buck, Benjamin; Gonzenbach, Virgilio; Janela, Carlos; Lysaker, Paul H; Minor, Kyle S

2017-09-01

Through the use of lexical analysis software, researchers have demonstrated a greater frequency of negative affect word use in those with schizophrenia and schizotypy compared to the general population. In addition, those with schizotypy endorse greater emotional distress than healthy controls. In this study, our aim was to expand on previous findings in schizotypy to determine whether negative affect word use could be linked to emotional distress. Schizotypy (n=33) and non-schizotypy groups (n=33) completed an open-ended, semi-structured interview and negative affect word use was analyzed using a validated lexical analysis instrument. Emotional distress was assessed using subjective questionnaires of depression and psychological quality of life (QOL). When groups were compared, those with schizotypy used significantly more negative affect words; endorsed greater depression; and reported lower QOL. Within schizotypy, a trend level association between depression and negative affect word use was observed; QOL and negative affect word use showed a significant inverse association. Our findings offer preliminary evidence of the potential effectiveness of lexical analysis as an objective, behavior-based method for identifying emotional distress throughout the schizophrenia-spectrum. Utilizing lexical analysis in schizotypy offers promise for providing researchers with an assessment capable of objectively detecting emotional distress. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Malay Lexicon Project: a database of lexical statistics for 9,592 words.

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Yap, Melvin J; Liow, Susan J Rickard; Jalil, Sajlia Binte; Faizal, Siti Syuhada Binte

2010-11-01

Malay, a language spoken by 250 million people, has a shallow alphabetic orthography, simple syllable structures, and transparent affixation--characteristics that contrast sharply with those of English. In the present article, we first compare the letter-phoneme and letter-syllable ratios for a sample of alphabetic orthographies to highlight the importance of separating language-specific from language-universal reading processes. Then, in order to develop a better understanding of word recognition in orthographies with more consistent mappings to phonology than English, we compiled a database of lexical variables (letter length, syllable length, phoneme length, morpheme length, word frequency, orthographic and phonological neighborhood sizes, and orthographic and phonological Levenshtein distances) for 9,592 Malay words. Separate hierarchical regression analyses for Malay and English revealed how the consistency of orthography-phonology mappings selectively modulates the effects of different lexical variables on lexical decision and speeded pronunciation performance. The database of lexical and behavioral measures for Malay is available at http://brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.

Lexical Complexity of Decision-Making Writing Tasks: Form-focused Guided Strategic Planning

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Fatemeh Mahdavirad

2016-06-01

Full Text Available The present study is an attempt to investigate the effect of form-focused guided strategic planning on lexical complexity of learners’ performance in writing tasks. The twenty intermediate level participants of the study performed an unplanned and then a planned decision-making task. In the planned task condition, the participants were provided with form-focused guided strategic planning which contained detailed instructions about how to plan, by being instructed to focus on form. The guidance included an explanation of the necessary structural and lexical patterns employed to express the learners’ views while developing a comparison-and-contrast paragraph in each task. The results of the statistical analysis indicated that the participants produced a written product with a greater lexical complexity in their performance of the task in the form-focused strategic planning condition. The findings emphasize the importance of guided strategic planning as a task condition in syllabus design for task-based language teaching and the necessity of incorporating this task feature for accomplishing lexical complexity in decision-making writing tasks.

Review of "Conceptual Structures: Information Processing in Mind and Machine."

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Smoliar, Stephen W.

This review of the book, "Conceptual Structures: Information Processing in Mind and Machine," by John F. Sowa, argues that anyone who plans to get involved with issues of knowledge representation should have at least a passing acquaintance with Sowa's conceptual graphs for a database interface. (Used to model the underlying semantics of…

Phi-square Lexical Competition Database (Phi-Lex): an online tool for quantifying auditory and visual lexical competition.

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Strand, Julia F

2014-03-01

A widely agreed-upon feature of spoken word recognition is that multiple lexical candidates in memory are simultaneously activated in parallel when a listener hears a word, and that those candidates compete for recognition (Luce, Goldinger, Auer, & Vitevitch, Perception 62:615-625, 2000; Luce & Pisoni, Ear and Hearing 19:1-36, 1998; McClelland & Elman, Cognitive Psychology 18:1-86, 1986). Because the presence of those competitors influences word recognition, much research has sought to quantify the processes of lexical competition. Metrics that quantify lexical competition continuously are more effective predictors of auditory and visual (lipread) spoken word recognition than are the categorical metrics traditionally used (Feld & Sommers, Speech Communication 53:220-228, 2011; Strand & Sommers, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 130:1663-1672, 2011). A limitation of the continuous metrics is that they are somewhat computationally cumbersome and require access to existing speech databases. This article describes the Phi-square Lexical Competition Database (Phi-Lex): an online, searchable database that provides access to multiple metrics of auditory and visual (lipread) lexical competition for English words, available at www.juliastrand.com/phi-lex .

LEXICAL AND SYNTACTIC PECULIARITIES OF AN ENGLISH NEWSPAPER ARTICLE

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SHISHKOVA DINA DMITRIEVNA

2015-01-01

Full Text Available The article considers pecularities of English journalese. The results of research on lexics, syntax, structure of newspaper articles and headlines are provided. The author uses ussues of “The Guardian” from 01.12.12 till 01.04.13 as research data.

LEXICAL AND SYNTACTIC PECULIARITIES OF AN ENGLISH NEWSPAPER ARTICLE

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Shishkova, Dina Dmitrievna

2015-09-01

Full Text Available The article considers pecularities of English journalese. The results of research on lexics, syntax, structure of newspaper articles and headlines are provided. The author uses ussues of “The Guardian” from 01.12.12 till 01.04.13 as research data.

Differential lexical correlates of social cognition and metacognition in schizophrenia; a study of spontaneously-generated life narratives.

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Buck, Benjamin; Minor, Kyle S; Lysaker, Paul H

2015-04-01

Social cognition and metacognition have been identified as important cognitive domains in schizophrenia, which are separable from general neurocognition and predictive of functional and treatment outcomes. However, one challenge to improved models of schizophrenia has been the conceptual overlap between the two. One tool used in previous research to develop cognitive models of psychopathology is language analysis. In this article we aimed to clarify distinctions between social cognition and metacognition in schizophrenia using computerized language software. Fifty-eight (n=58) individuals with schizophrenia completed the Metacognitive Assessment Scale Abbreviated and measures of social cognition using the Hinting, Eyes, BLERT and Picture Arrangement test. A lexical analysis of participants' speech using Language Inquiry and Word Count software was conducted to examine relative frequencies of word types. Lexical characteristics were examined for their relationships to social cognition and metacognition. We found that lexical characteristics indicative of cognitive complexity were significantly related to level of metacognitive capacity while social cognition was related to second-person pronoun use, articles, and prepositions, and pronoun use overall. The relationships between lexical variables and metacognition persisted after controlling for demographics, verbal intelligence, and overall word count, but the same was not true for social cognition. Our findings provided support for the view that metacognition requires more synthetic and complex verbal and linguistic operations, while social cognition is associated with the representation and clear identification of others. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Lexical and articulatory interactions in children’s language production

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Heisler, Lori; Goffman, Lisa; Younger, Barbara

2009-01-01

Traditional models of adult language processing and production include two levels of representation: lexical and sublexical. The current study examines the influence of the inclusion of a lexical representation (i.e., a visual referent and/or object function) on the stability of articulation as well as on phonetic accuracy and variability in typically developing children and children with specific language impairment (SLI). A word learning paradigm was developed so that we could compare children’s production with and without lexical representation. The variability and accuracy of productions were examined using speech kinematics as well as traditional phonetic accuracy measures. Results showed that phonetic forms with lexical representation were produced with more articulatory stability than phonetic forms without lexical representation. Using more traditional transcription measures, a paired lexical referent generally did not influence segmental accuracy (percent consonant correct and type token ratio). These results suggest that lexical and articulatory levels of representation are not completely independent. Implications for models of language production are discussed. PMID:20712738

The effects of bilateral presentations on lateralized lexical decision.

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Fernandino, Leonardo; Iacoboni, Marco; Zaidel, Eran

2007-06-01

We investigated how lateralized lexical decision is affected by the presence of distractors in the visual hemifield contralateral to the target. The study had three goals: first, to determine how the presence of a distractor (either a word or a pseudoword) affects visual field differences in the processing of the target; second, to identify the stage of the process in which the distractor is affecting the decision about the target; and third, to determine whether the interaction between the lexicality of the target and the lexicality of the distractor ("lexical redundancy effect") is due to facilitation or inhibition of lexical processing. Unilateral and bilateral trials were presented in separate blocks. Target stimuli were always underlined. Regarding our first goal, we found that bilateral presentations (a) increased the effect of visual hemifield of presentation (right visual field advantage) for words by slowing down the processing of word targets presented to the left visual field, and (b) produced an interaction between visual hemifield of presentation (VF) and target lexicality (TLex), which implies the use of different strategies by the two hemispheres in lexical processing. For our second goal of determining the processing stage that is affected by the distractor, we introduced a third condition in which targets were always accompanied by "perceptual" distractors consisting of sequences of the letter "x" (e.g., xxxx). Performance on these trials indicated that most of the interaction occurs during lexical access (after basic perceptual analysis but before response programming). Finally, a comparison between performance patterns on the trials containing perceptual and lexical distractors indicated that the lexical redundancy effect is mainly due to inhibition of word processing by pseudoword distractors.

Analysis of the Organization of Lexical Memory

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Miller, George

1997-01-01

The practical outcome of the project, Analysis of the Organization of Lexical Memory, is an electronic lexical database called WordNet that can be incorporated into computer systems for processing English text...

Testing the lexical hypothesis: are socially important traits more densely reflected in the English lexicon?

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Wood, Dustin

2015-02-01

Using a set of 498 English words identified by Saucier (1997) as common person-descriptor adjectives or trait terms, I tested 3 instantiations of the lexical hypothesis, which posit that more socially important person descriptors show greater density in the lexicon. Specifically, I explored whether trait terms that have greater relational impact (i.e., more greatly influence how others respond to a person) have more synonyms, are more frequently used, and are more strongly correlated with other trait terms. I found little evidence to suggest that trait terms rated as having greater relational impact were more frequently used or had more synonyms. However, these terms correlated more strongly with other trait terms in the set. Conversely, a trait term's loadings on structural factors (e.g., the Big Five, HEXACO) were extremely good predictors of the term's relational impact. The findings suggest that the lexical hypothesis may not be strongly supported in some ways it is commonly understood but is supported in the manner most important to investigations of trait structure. Specifically, trait terms with greater relational impact tend to more strongly correlate with other terms in lexical sets and thus have a greater role in driving the location of factors in analyses of trait structure. Implications for understanding the meaning of lexical factors such as the Big Five are discussed. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved.

Lexical Density Of English Reading Texts For Senior High School

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Nesia, Bersyebah Herljimsi; Ginting, Siti Aisah

2014-01-01

This study deals with the lexical density especially the lexical items of English reading texts in the textbook for senior high school. The objectives of the study are to find out the lexical density especially the lexical items which formed in the reading texts of Look Ahead textbook and the type of genre which has the highest lexical density of the reading texts. This study was conducted by descriptive method with qualitative approach. The data of this research were the English reading text...

The Universality of Semantic Prototypes in Spanish Lexical Availability

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Marjana Šifrar Kalan

2016-12-01

Full Text Available The article presents the words with highest index of availability on the basis of semantic fluency tests. The conceptual stability of highly available words in various semantic categories enables them to be classified as semantic prototypes according to the theory of prototype. The aim of this article is to compare the semantic prototypes in nine semantic categories from different lexical availability studies: those carried out in Spanish as a mother tongue and Spanish as a foreign language (with Slovene, Finnish, Turkish, Chinese students and students of various other mother tongues who studied Spanish in Madrid and Salamanca. The informants who come from different countries and cultures and speak different first languages demonstrate that human beings share the same or similar categorization and universality of semantic prototypes.

Teaching the foundations of quantum mechanics in secondary school: a proposed conceptual structure

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Maria de los Angeles Fanaro

2009-03-01

Full Text Available This paper is part of a doctoral thesis that investigates Basic Quantum Mechanics (QM teaching in high school. A Conceptual Structure of Reference (CSR based on the Path Integral Method of Feynman (1965 was rebuilt and a Proposed Conceptual Structure for Teaching (PCST (Otero, 2006, 2007 the basics of Quantum Mechanics at secondary school was designed, analysed and carried out. This PCST does not follow the historical route and it is complementary to the canonical formalism. The concepts: probability distribution, quantum system, x(t alternative, amplitude of probability, sum of probability amplitude, action, Planck's constant, and classic-quantum transition were rebuilt with the students. Mathematical formalism was avoided by using simulation software assistance. The Proposed Conceptual Structure for Teaching (PCST is described and some results from the test carried out by the class group are discussed. This information allows the analysis of the Conceptual Structure Effectively Reconstructed (CSER to be initiated with the students.

Lexical gaps and morphological decomposition: Evidence from German.

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Schuster, Swetlana; Lahiri, Aditi

2018-04-26

On the evidence of four lexical-decision tasks in German, we examine speakers' sensitivity to internal morphological composition and abstract morphological rules during the processing of derived words, real and novel. In a lexical-decision task with delayed priming, speakers were presented with two-step derived nouns such as Heilung "healing" derived from the adjective heil "intact" via the verb heilen "to heal." These were compared with two sets of derived novel words, one with and the other without an intermediate verb; for example, *Spitzung "sharpening" from spitz "sharp" via spitzen "sharpen" (Experiment 1) and *Hübschung "beautifying" from hübsch "pretty" via *hübschen "beautify" (Experiment 2). The question was whether there would be a difference between the two types of novel words. Both sets were morphologically viable in terms of combinatory possibilities. Results indicated that extant and novel complex words activated their respective base forms; that is, Heilung, *Spitzung, *Hübschung all primed heil, spitz, hübsch. Both sets of novel words were then combined in a third (delayed priming) experiment, where again they primed their bases, but were nevertheless significantly different from each other. Items with real words in the intermediate position (*Spitzung) showed stronger priming effects. Controls that were only related in form or semantics did not prime; neither did structurally unviable pseudowords show priming. A final experiment (Experiment 4), comparing the two types of novel words (*Spitzung vs. *Hübschung) in a simple lexical-decision task, also revealed significant differences across these sets, suggesting that the lexical status of the intermediate derivation affects the processing of novel forms. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Syntax-driven semantic frame composition in Lexicalized Tree Adjoining Grammars

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Laura Kallmeyer

2014-01-01

Full Text Available The grammar framework presented in this paper combines Lexicalized Tree Adjoining Grammar (LTAG with a (decompositional frame semantics. We introduce elementary constructions as pairs of elementary LTAG trees and decompositional frames. The linking between syntax and semantics can largely be captured by such constructions since in LTAG, elementary trees represent full argument projections. Substitution and adjunction in the syntax then trigger the unification of the associated semantic frames, which are formally defined as base-labelled feature structures. Moreover, the system of elementary constructions is specified in a metagrammar by means of tree and frame descriptions. This metagrammatical factorization gives rise to a fine-grained decomposition of the semantic contributions of syntactic building blocks, and it allows us to separate lexical from constructional contributions and to carve out generalizations across constructions. In the second half of the paper, we apply the framework to the analysis of directed motion expressions and of the dative alternation in English, two well-known examples of the interaction between lexical and constructional meaning.

Riding the lexical speedway: a critical review on the time course of lexical selection in speech production.

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Strijkers, Kristof; Costa, Albert

2011-01-01

Speech requires time. How much time often depends on the amount of labor the brain has to perform in order to retrieve the linguistic information related to the ideas we want to express. Although most psycholinguistic research in the field of language production has focused on the net result of time required to utter words in various experimental conditions, over the last years more and more researchers pursued the objective to flesh out the time course of particular stages implicated in language production. Here we critically review these studies, with particular interest for the time course of lexical selection. First, we evaluate the data underlying the estimates of an influential temporal meta-analysis on language production (Indefrey and Levelt, 2004). We conclude that those data alone are not sufficient to provide a reliable time frame of lexical selection. Next, we discuss recent neurophysiological evidence which we argue to offer more explicit insights into the time course of lexical selection. Based on this evidence we suggest that, despite the absence of a clear time frame of how long lexical selection takes, there is sufficient direct evidence to conclude that the brain initiates lexical access within 200 ms after stimulus presentation, hereby confirming Indefrey and Levelt's estimate. In a final section, we briefly review the proposed mechanisms which could lead to this rapid onset of lexical access, namely automatic spreading activation versus specific concept selection, and discuss novel data which support the notion of spreading activation, but indicate that the speed with which this principle takes effect is driven by a top-down signal in function of the intention to engage in a speech act.

Riding the Lexical Speedway: A Critical Review on the Time Course of Lexical Selection in Speech Production

Science.gov (United States)

Strijkers, Kristof; Costa, Albert

2011-01-01

Speech requires time. How much time often depends on the amount of labor the brain has to perform in order to retrieve the linguistic information related to the ideas we want to express. Although most psycholinguistic research in the field of language production has focused on the net result of time required to utter words in various experimental conditions, over the last years more and more researchers pursued the objective to flesh out the time course of particular stages implicated in language production. Here we critically review these studies, with particular interest for the time course of lexical selection. First, we evaluate the data underlying the estimates of an influential temporal meta-analysis on language production (Indefrey and Levelt, 2004). We conclude that those data alone are not sufficient to provide a reliable time frame of lexical selection. Next, we discuss recent neurophysiological evidence which we argue to offer more explicit insights into the time course of lexical selection. Based on this evidence we suggest that, despite the absence of a clear time frame of how long lexical selection takes, there is sufficient direct evidence to conclude that the brain initiates lexical access within 200 ms after stimulus presentation, hereby confirming Indefrey and Levelt’s estimate. In a final section, we briefly review the proposed mechanisms which could lead to this rapid onset of lexical access, namely automatic spreading activation versus specific concept selection, and discuss novel data which support the notion of spreading activation, but indicate that the speed with which this principle takes effect is driven by a top-down signal in function of the intention to engage in a speech act. PMID:22144973

Neural signatures of lexical tone reading.

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Kwok, Veronica P Y; Wang, Tianfu; Chen, Siping; Yakpo, Kofi; Zhu, Linlin; Fox, Peter T; Tan, Li Hai

2015-01-01

Research on how lexical tone is neuroanatomically represented in the human brain is central to our understanding of cortical regions subserving language. Past studies have exclusively focused on tone perception of the spoken language, and little is known as to the lexical tone processing in reading visual words and its associated brain mechanisms. In this study, we performed two experiments to identify neural substrates in Chinese tone reading. First, we used a tone judgment paradigm to investigate tone processing of visually presented Chinese characters. We found that, relative to baseline, tone perception of printed Chinese characters were mediated by strong brain activation in bilateral frontal regions, left inferior parietal lobule, left posterior middle/medial temporal gyrus, left inferior temporal region, bilateral visual systems, and cerebellum. Surprisingly, no activation was found in superior temporal regions, brain sites well known for speech tone processing. In activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis to combine results of relevant published studies, we attempted to elucidate whether the left temporal cortex activities identified in Experiment one is consistent with those found in previous studies of auditory lexical tone perception. ALE results showed that only the left superior temporal gyrus and putamen were critical in auditory lexical tone processing. These findings suggest that activation in the superior temporal cortex associated with lexical tone perception is modality-dependent. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Semantic Analysis of Verbal Collocations with Lexical Functions

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Gelbukh, Alexander

2013-01-01

This book is written for both linguists and computer scientists working in the field of artificial intelligence as well as to anyone interested in intelligent text processing. Lexical function is a concept that formalizes semantic and syntactic relations between lexical units. Collocational relation is a type of institutionalized lexical relations which holds between the base and its partner in a collocation. Knowledge of collocation is important for natural language processing because collocation comprises the restrictions on how words can be used together. The book shows how collocations can be annotated with lexical functions in a computer readable dictionary - allowing their precise semantic analysis in texts and their effective use in natural language applications including parsers, high quality machine translation, periphrasis system and computer-aided learning of lexica. The books shows how to extract collocations from corpora and annotate them with lexical functions automatically. To train algorithms,...

Conceptual Formulation of Neologisms in Various Dictionaries and Primary School Macedonian Language Course Textbooks

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Januševa, Violeta; Jurukovska, Jana

2015-01-01

The paper analyses the conceptual formulation of neologisms in various dictionaries of Macedonian language, other Slavic and non-Slavic languages, as well as in primary school Macedonian language textbooks, by putting special emphasis on the role of, both, time criterion, i.e. the period of time in which a lexical unit is present in the active…

Auditory-Phonetic Projection and Lexical Structure in the Recognition of Sine-Wave Words

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Remez, Robert E.; Dubowski, Kathryn R.; Broder, Robin S.; Davids, Morgana L.; Grossman, Yael S.; Moskalenko, Marina; Pardo, Jennifer S.; Hasbun, Sara Maria

2011-01-01

Speech remains intelligible despite the elimination of canonical acoustic correlates of phonemes from the spectrum. A portion of this perceptual flexibility can be attributed to modulation sensitivity in the auditory-to-phonetic projection, although signal-independent properties of lexical neighborhoods also affect intelligibility in utterances…

FUNCTIONAL INTERACTION OF LEXICAL AND GRAMMATICAL FACTORS IN THE ENGLISH VERB SYSTEM

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Nina Sergeevna Kotova

2017-03-01

Full Text Available Purpose. The purpose of the research conducted is revealing the peculiarities of lexical paradigmatics influence upon the usage of aspect and temporal verb forms and the opposite impact as well, i.e. the influence of aspect and temporal verb forms upon the lexical meaning of this verb groups under specific conditions of functioning. The lexical paradigmatics is considered as the system of mutually contrasted semantic features of particular verb groups. In this case, we analyze the paradigmatics in the middle language hierarchy for each language level separately. Methodology. The research is conducted synchronically on the material of the contemporary English verb system. Interaction of lexical and grammatical factors in the English verb system is examined in a functional aspect. Such consideration gives a possibility to differentiate the intrasystem phenomena and phenomena of pragmatic character and expose the system-structural mutual relations of lexical and grammatical factors. The research material is the verb as massive word group. From the point of view of interaction of lexical and grammatical factors in the functional and semantic field representing aspectuality, we get interested in the meaning which realizes in the opposition ofatelicity – telicity(telicity correlates the action with the limit, and atelicity demotes the action irrespectively to its limit. The technique applied to the analysis of lexical and grammatical factors in the English verb system is complex combining descriptive and comparative and functional methods. Results. Interrelations and interdependency of lexical and grammatical paradigmatics create particular sustainability in using the lexical unit of this paradigm with aspect and temporal verb forms. In this case, the tendencies of the language sign developing and changing are expressed in the process of the mutual substitution and interpenetration of grammatical forms primarily under the influence of paradigmatic

Lexical richness and collocational competence in second-language writing

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Vedder, I.; Benigno, V.

2016-01-01

In this article we report on an experiment set up to investigate lexical richness and collocational competence in the written production of 39 low-intermediate and intermediate learners of Italian L2. Lexical richness was assessed by means of a lexical profiling method inspired by Laufer and Nation

Bilingual Lexical Interactions in an Unsupervised Neural Network Model

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Zhao, Xiaowei; Li, Ping

2010-01-01

In this paper we present an unsupervised neural network model of bilingual lexical development and interaction. We focus on how the representational structures of the bilingual lexicons can emerge, develop, and interact with each other as a function of the learning history. The results show that: (1) distinct representations for the two lexicons…

Investigating the Usefulness of Lexical Phrases in Contemporary Coursebooks

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Koprowski, Mark

2005-01-01

Over the past decade, lexical theory, corpus statistics, and psycholinguistic research have pointed to the pedagogical value of lexical phrases. In response, commercial publishers have been quick to import these insights into their materials in a bid to accommodate consumers and to profit from the "lexical chunk" phenomenon. Contemporary British…

Disfluency effects on lexical selection.

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Medimorec, Srdan; Young, Torin P; Risko, Evan F

2017-01-01

Recent research has suggested that introducing a disfluency in the context of written composition (i.e., typing with one hand) can increase lexical sophistication. In the current study, we provide a strong test between two accounts of this phenomenon, one that attributes it to the delay caused by the disfluency and one that attributes it to the disruption of typical finger-to-letter mappings caused by the disfluency. To test between these accounts, we slowed down participants' typewriting by introducing a small delay between keystrokes while individuals wrote essays. Critically, this manipulation did not disrupt typical finger-to-letter mappings. Consistent with the delay-based account, our results demonstrate that the essays written in this less fluent condition were more lexically diverse and used less frequent words. Implications for the temporal dynamics of lexical selection in complex cognitive tasks are discussed. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The ACTIVE conceptual framework as a structural equation model

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Gross, Alden L.; Payne, Brennan R.; Casanova, Ramon; Davoudzadeh, Pega; Dzierzewski, Joseph M.; Farias, Sarah; Giovannetti, Tania; Ip, Edward H.; Marsiske, Michael; Rebok, George W.; Schaie, K. Warner; Thomas, Kelsey; Willis, Sherry; Jones, Richard N.

2018-01-01

Background/Study Context Conceptual frameworks are analytic models at a high level of abstraction. Their operationalization can inform randomized trial design and sample size considerations. Methods The Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly (ACTIVE) conceptual framework was empirically tested using structural equation modeling (N=2,802). ACTIVE was guided by a conceptual framework for cognitive training in which proximal cognitive abilities (memory, inductive reasoning, speed of processing) mediate treatment-related improvement in primary outcomes (everyday problem-solving, difficulty with activities of daily living, everyday speed, driving difficulty), which in turn lead to improved secondary outcomes (health-related quality of life, health service utilization, mobility). Measurement models for each proximal, primary, and secondary outcome were developed and tested using baseline data. Each construct was then combined in one model to evaluate fit (RMSEA, CFI, normalized residuals of each indicator). To expand the conceptual model and potentially inform future trials, evidence of modification of structural model parameters was evaluated by age, years of education, sex, race, and self-rated health status. Results Preconceived measurement models for memory, reasoning, speed of processing, everyday problem-solving, instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) difficulty, everyday speed, driving difficulty, and health-related quality of life each fit well to the data (all RMSEA .95). Fit of the full model was excellent (RMSEA = .038; CFI = .924). In contrast with previous findings from ACTIVE regarding who benefits from training, interaction testing revealed associations between proximal abilities and primary outcomes are stronger on average by nonwhite race, worse health, older age, and less education (p conceptual model. Findings suggest that the types of people who show intervention effects on cognitive performance potentially may be

The ACTIVE conceptual framework as a structural equation model.

Science.gov (United States)

Gross, Alden L; Payne, Brennan R; Casanova, Ramon; Davoudzadeh, Pega; Dzierzewski, Joseph M; Farias, Sarah; Giovannetti, Tania; Ip, Edward H; Marsiske, Michael; Rebok, George W; Schaie, K Warner; Thomas, Kelsey; Willis, Sherry; Jones, Richard N

2018-01-01

Background/Study Context: Conceptual frameworks are analytic models at a high level of abstraction. Their operationalization can inform randomized trial design and sample size considerations. The Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly (ACTIVE) conceptual framework was empirically tested using structural equation modeling (N=2,802). ACTIVE was guided by a conceptual framework for cognitive training in which proximal cognitive abilities (memory, inductive reasoning, speed of processing) mediate treatment-related improvement in primary outcomes (everyday problem-solving, difficulty with activities of daily living, everyday speed, driving difficulty), which in turn lead to improved secondary outcomes (health-related quality of life, health service utilization, mobility). Measurement models for each proximal, primary, and secondary outcome were developed and tested using baseline data. Each construct was then combined in one model to evaluate fit (RMSEA, CFI, normalized residuals of each indicator). To expand the conceptual model and potentially inform future trials, evidence of modification of structural model parameters was evaluated by age, years of education, sex, race, and self-rated health status. Preconceived measurement models for memory, reasoning, speed of processing, everyday problem-solving, instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) difficulty, everyday speed, driving difficulty, and health-related quality of life each fit well to the data (all RMSEA .95). Fit of the full model was excellent (RMSEA = .038; CFI = .924). In contrast with previous findings from ACTIVE regarding who benefits from training, interaction testing revealed associations between proximal abilities and primary outcomes are stronger on average by nonwhite race, worse health, older age, and less education (p conceptual model. Findings suggest that the types of people who show intervention effects on cognitive performance potentially may be different from

Diversity and Density: Lexically Determined Evaluative and Informational Consequences of Linguistic Complexity

Science.gov (United States)

Bradac, James J.; And Others

1977-01-01

Defines lexical diversity as manifest vocabulary range and lexical density as the ratio of lexical to gramatical items in a unit of discourse. Examines the effects of lexical diversity and density on listeners' evaluative judgments. (MH)

A conceptual modeling framework for discrete event simulation using hierarchical control structures

Science.gov (United States)

Furian, N.; O’Sullivan, M.; Walker, C.; Vössner, S.; Neubacher, D.

2015-01-01

Conceptual Modeling (CM) is a fundamental step in a simulation project. Nevertheless, it is only recently that structured approaches towards the definition and formulation of conceptual models have gained importance in the Discrete Event Simulation (DES) community. As a consequence, frameworks and guidelines for applying CM to DES have emerged and discussion of CM for DES is increasing. However, both the organization of model-components and the identification of behavior and system control from standard CM approaches have shortcomings that limit CM’s applicability to DES. Therefore, we discuss the different aspects of previous CM frameworks and identify their limitations. Further, we present the Hierarchical Control Conceptual Modeling framework that pays more attention to the identification of a models’ system behavior, control policies and dispatching routines and their structured representation within a conceptual model. The framework guides the user step-by-step through the modeling process and is illustrated by a worked example. PMID:26778940

A conceptual modeling framework for discrete event simulation using hierarchical control structures.

Science.gov (United States)

Furian, N; O'Sullivan, M; Walker, C; Vössner, S; Neubacher, D

2015-08-01

Conceptual Modeling (CM) is a fundamental step in a simulation project. Nevertheless, it is only recently that structured approaches towards the definition and formulation of conceptual models have gained importance in the Discrete Event Simulation (DES) community. As a consequence, frameworks and guidelines for applying CM to DES have emerged and discussion of CM for DES is increasing. However, both the organization of model-components and the identification of behavior and system control from standard CM approaches have shortcomings that limit CM's applicability to DES. Therefore, we discuss the different aspects of previous CM frameworks and identify their limitations. Further, we present the Hierarchical Control Conceptual Modeling framework that pays more attention to the identification of a models' system behavior, control policies and dispatching routines and their structured representation within a conceptual model. The framework guides the user step-by-step through the modeling process and is illustrated by a worked example.

Innovative and Lexicalized Metaphors in Slovene

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kaja Dolar

2015-11-01

Full Text Available The metaphor is a multidisciplinary problem which has been addressed in linguistics as well as in philosophy, psychology, anthropology, etc. In linguistics, the problem of metaphor was dealt with in rhetorics, it occupied a special place in structural linguistics, and it was studied in diverse pragmatic, cognitive and textual analysis. In the present paper, metaphors in Slovene are analyzed from the linguistic point of view: grammatical and syntactic structure (monolexical/polylexical, in praesentia/in absentia, etc., semantic field and semantic transfer and degree of conventionality (ranging from innovative to lexicalized metaphors. The cases are taken from the unconventional linguistic corpus, Razvezani jezik, an online dictionary based on collaborative authorship. Authors can freely add new words (formal neologisms or new meanings of existing ones (semantic neologisms which makes it especially interesting for linguistic innovation research. The results show that zoomorphic metaphors are most common and that there is a significant number of reification metaphors (replacing a living being with an object. Phytomorphic metaphors (related to plants are also present, whereas anthropomorphic ones are scarce. These types of metaphors most often refer to character, personality or human behavior, but also to parts of human body, human actions, etc. The corpus is rich in both, lexicalized, conventional as well as in innovative, so called live metaphors, and it seems that Razvezani jezik, an online database for Slovene, is particularly suitable to register these diverse possibilities and usages.

Sensorimotor Behaviour Reflects Lexical and Grammatical Aspect in Czech: An Eye Tracking Study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Michal Kořenář

2016-11-01

Full Text Available Thinking and speaking about events is a process tightly connected with time perception. We can express when an event has occurred with respect to other events, whether it was a durative or a one-time event, whether it was an ongoing or already finished event, etc. Every human language has its own way and extent to which this complex temporal structure of experienced events is expressed. Upon hearing a story we construct a mental representation of the communicated event (e.g. Givón 1992. Some studies show that this construction already evolves during online processing, thanks to instantly accessible language processing cues (Altman and Kamide 1999, Ferretti, McRae and Hatherell 2001, McRae, Ferretti and Amyote 1997. These cues are employed to capture the intricate temporal structure of the story, for instance. They arise from the interplay of the three basic linguistic components (structure, meaning and function and as such are consistent with a constructional view of language (e.g. Fillmore 1988. Even subtle changes of any of the linguistic cues may lead to a different mental representation. Examples of the sources of grammatical markers and lexical categories from which the linguistic cues arise are grammatical and lexical aspect. In the linguistic field, a lot of attention has been paid to analyses of how those sources of temporal cues function within a language system. However, there is a lack of empirical data on how grammatical and lexical aspect interact, and what the effects of such an interaction are. The present study aims to investigate the link between the complex system of temporal cues and sensorimotor representation in Czech speakers, with specific focus on grammatical verb aspect and so-called event telicity, i.e. lexical aspect, all of which will be further described below.

Modeling the lexical morphology of Western handwritten signatures.

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Moises Diaz-Cabrera

Full Text Available A handwritten signature is the final response to a complex cognitive and neuromuscular process which is the result of the learning process. Because of the many factors involved in signing, it is possible to study the signature from many points of view: graphologists, forensic experts, neurologists and computer vision experts have all examined them. Researchers study written signatures for psychiatric, penal, health and automatic verification purposes. As a potentially useful, multi-purpose study, this paper is focused on the lexical morphology of handwritten signatures. This we understand to mean the identification, analysis, and description of the signature structures of a given signer. In this work we analyze different public datasets involving 1533 signers from different Western geographical areas. Some relevant characteristics of signature lexical morphology have been selected, examined in terms of their probability distribution functions and modeled through a General Extreme Value distribution. This study suggests some useful models for multi-disciplinary sciences which depend on handwriting signatures.

Automatic detection of lexical change: an auditory event-related potential study.

Science.gov (United States)

Muller-Gass, Alexandra; Roye, Anja; Kirmse, Ursula; Saupe, Katja; Jacobsen, Thomas; Schröger, Erich

2007-10-29

We investigated the detection of rare task-irrelevant changes in the lexical status of speech stimuli. Participants performed a nonlinguistic task on word and pseudoword stimuli that occurred, in separate conditions, rarely or frequently. Task performance for pseudowords was deteriorated relative to words, suggesting unintentional lexical analysis. Furthermore, rare word and pseudoword changes had a similar effect on the event-related potentials, starting as early as 165 ms. This is the first demonstration of the automatic detection of change in lexical status that is not based on a co-occurring acoustic change. We propose that, following lexical analysis of the incoming stimuli, a mental representation of the lexical regularity is formed and used as a template against which lexical change can be detected.

Impact of Text-Mining and Imitating Strategies on Lexical Richness, Lexical Diversity and General Success in Second Language Writing

Science.gov (United States)

Çepni, Sevcan Bayraktar; Demirel, Elif Tokdemir

2016-01-01

This study aimed to find out the impact of "text mining and imitating" strategies on lexical richness, lexical diversity and general success of students in their compositions in second language writing. The participants were 98 students studying their first year in Karadeniz Technical University in English Language and Literature…

Word Recognition during Reading: The Interaction between Lexical Repetition and Frequency

Science.gov (United States)

Lowder, Matthew W.; Choi, Wonil; Gordon, Peter C.

2013-01-01

Memory studies utilizing long-term repetition priming have generally demonstrated that priming is greater for low-frequency words than for high-frequency words and that this effect persists if words intervene between the prime and the target. In contrast, word-recognition studies utilizing masked short-term repetition priming typically show that the magnitude of repetition priming does not differ as a function of word frequency and does not persist across intervening words. We conducted an eye-tracking while reading experiment to determine which of these patterns more closely resembles the relationship between frequency and repetition during the natural reading of a text. Frequency was manipulated using proper names that were high-frequency (e.g., Stephen) or low-frequency (e.g., Dominic). The critical name was later repeated in the sentence, or a new name was introduced. First-pass reading times and skipping rates on the critical name revealed robust repetition-by-frequency interactions such that the magnitude of the repetition-priming effect was greater for low-frequency names than for high-frequency names. In contrast, measures of later processing showed effects of repetition that did not depend on lexical frequency. These results are interpreted within a framework that conceptualizes eye-movement control as being influenced in different ways by lexical- and discourse-level factors. PMID:23283808

Lexical and metaphonological abilities in preschoolers with phonological disorders.

Science.gov (United States)

Costa, Ranilde Cristiane Cavalcante; Avila, Clara Regina Brandão de

2010-01-01

lexical and metaphonological abilities of phonologically disordered preschoolers. to investigate the influence of Phonological Disorder on the lexical and metaphonological abilities of a group of preschoolers and the correlation between them. participants were 56 preschoolers - 32 boys and 24 girls - with ages between 4 years and 6 months and 6 years and 11 months, divided into two different groups: the Research Group, composed of 28 preschoolers with Phonological Disorder, and the Control Group, composed of 28 preschoolers with normal speech and no oral speech-related complaints, paired to the research group by gender and age. All of the participants were initially assessed by the ABFW Test - Phonology. After that, they were assessed on their lexical and metaphonological abilities by the ABFW Test - Vocabulary and phonological awareness test: sequential assessment instrument, CONFIAS - identification tasks and, rhyme and alliteration production, respectively. regarding lexical ability, the preschoolers from both groups presented similar behavior. The disordered preschoolers presented the worst performance on the overall analysis of the metaphonological ability. Age had an influence on the performance of lexical ability for both groups and the metaphonological abilities only for the Control Group. Correlations were identified, mostly positive, good to moderate between lexical and metaphonological abilities. the influence of Phonological Disorder may only be observed on the metaphonological performance. Phonological Disorder did not interfere with the development of the lexical ability of this group of preschoolers. Positive correlations were identified between both abilities in the studied age group.

What Is Lexical Proficiency? Some Answers from Computational Models of Speech Data

Science.gov (United States)

Crossley, Scott A.; Salsbury, Tom; McNamara, Danielle S.; Jarvis, Scott

2011-01-01

Lexical proficiency, as a cognitive construct, is poorly understood. However, lexical proficiency is an important element of language proficiency and fluency, especially for second language (L2) learners. Lexical proficiency is also an important attribute of L2 academic achievement. Generally speaking, lexical proficiency comprises breadth of…

Lexical restructuring in the absence of literacy.

Science.gov (United States)

Venturaa, Paulo; Kolinsky, Régine; Fernandesa, Sandra; Queridoa, Luís; Morais, José

2007-11-01

Vocabulary growth was suggested to prompt the implementation of increasingly finer-grained lexical representations of spoken words in children (e.g., [Metsala, J. L., & Walley, A. C. (1998). Spoken vocabulary growth and the segmental restructuring of lexical representations: precursors to phonemic awareness and early reading ability. In J. L. Metsala & L. C. Ehri (Eds.), Word recognition in beginning literacy (pp. 89-120). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.]). Although literacy was not explicitly mentioned in this lexical restructuring hypothesis, the process of learning to read and spell might also have a significant impact on the specification of lexical representations (e.g., [Carroll, J. M., & Snowling, M. J. (2001). The effects of global similarity between stimuli on children's judgments of rime and alliteration. Applied Psycholinguistics, 22, 327-342.]; [Goswami, U. (2000). Phonological representations, reading development and dyslexia: Towards a cross-linguistic theoretical framework. Dyslexia, 6, 133-151.]). This is what we checked in the present study. We manipulated word frequency and neighborhood density in a gating task (Experiment 1) and a word-identification-in-noise task (Experiment 2) presented to Portuguese literate and illiterate adults. Ex-illiterates were also tested in Experiment 2 in order to disentangle the effects of vocabulary size and literacy. There was an interaction between word frequency and neighborhood density, which was similar in the three groups. These did not differ even for the words that are supposed to undergo lexical restructuring the latest (low frequency words from sparse neighborhoods). Thus, segmental lexical representations seem to develop independently of literacy. While segmental restructuring is not affected by literacy, it constrains the development of phoneme awareness as shown by the fact that, in Experiment 3, neighborhood density modulated the phoneme deletion performance of both illiterates and ex-illiterates.

Lexical variations in the Bible translations

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Barashkova Daria Sergeyevna

2018-04-01

Full Text Available The paper contains the comparative analysis of the Ostromir Gospels (1056-1057 and the Synodal translation of the Bible in order to identify lexical variations (alternatives. A source of the analysis are identic contexts from the Bible. Besides the author examines the materials of the others Old Slavonic written manuscripts. As a result of the comparative analysis some lexical options reflecting both synonymic and hyper-hyponymic relations and derivational variability were revealed.

Eloquent silences: A musical and lexical analysis of conversation between oncologists and their patients.

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Bartels, Josef; Rodenbach, Rachel; Ciesinski, Katherine; Gramling, Robert; Fiscella, Kevin; Epstein, Ronald

2016-10-01

Silences in doctor-patient communication can be "connectional" and communicative, in contrast to silences that indicate awkwardness or distraction. Musical and lexical analyses can identify and characterize connectional silences in consultations between oncologists and patients. Two medical students and a professor of voice screened all 1211 silences over 2s in length from 124 oncology office visits. We developed a "strength of connection" taxonomy and examined ten connectional silences for lexical and musical features including pitch, volume, and speaker turn-taking rhythm. We identified connectional silences with good reliability. Typical dialog rhythms surrounding connectional silences are characterized by relatively equal turn lengths and frequent short vocalizations. We found no pattern of volume and pitch variability around these silences. Connectional silences occurred in a wide variety of lexical contexts. Particular patterns of dialog rhythm mark connectional silences. Exploring structures of connectional silence extends our understanding of the audio-linguistic conditions that mark patient-clinician connection. Communicating with an awareness of pitch, rhythm, and silence - in addition to lexical content - can facilitate shared understanding and emotional connection. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Dual-Coding Theory and Connectionist Lexical Selection

OpenAIRE

Wang, Ye-Yi

1994-01-01

We introduce the bilingual dual-coding theory as a model for bilingual mental representation. Based on this model, lexical selection neural networks are implemented for a connectionist transfer project in machine translation. This lexical selection approach has two advantages. First, it is learnable. Little human effort on knowledge engineering is required. Secondly, it is psycholinguistically well-founded.

[An effect of semantic satiation in conceptual processing].

Science.gov (United States)

Takashi, Shimokido

2007-12-01

This study examined whether semantic satiation effects for a picture exemplar differ from a word exemplar. If massive repetition of the category name leads to an inhibition of conceptual processing, then semantic satiation effects would be found in both the word and picture exemplar conditions. However, if the repetition leads to an inhibition of lexical processing, then effects would be found for the word exemplar but not the picture exemplar. To examine these hypotheses, 48 college students were asked to judge whether a target pair of exemplars belonged to the same named category. The results showed that semantic satiation effects were found equally in both exemplar conditions. Moreover, the picture-superiority effect was intact regardless of the prime repetitions. The possibility was discussed that word and picture exemplars are integrated into an abstract and amodal conceptual unit; hence category judgment was affected by the satiation effect.

Lexical Sentiment Analysis in Slovenian Texts

OpenAIRE

VOLČANŠEK, MATEJA

2015-01-01

The goal of this thesis is to create a sentiment dictionary for the Slovenian language which can be used in lexical methods for automatic sentiment analysis. We start from a sentiment dictionary for the English language, translate it semi-automatically to Slovenian and curate its content. We test the performance of using the translated dictionary for automated lexical sentiment analysis on a corpus of 5000 manually annotated Slovenian news articles gathered from the main Slovenian news por...

Contrast of Lexical Motivation Between English And Chinese

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

周倩

2015-01-01

This thesis aims to make a contrast between English and Chinese in their lexical motivation in order to seek the source of form and meaning to further promote the study,explanation and application of lexical meaning.The contrast of lexical motivation is mainly discussed from three aspects:phonological motivation,morphological motivation and semantic motivation.Through the combination of diachronic study with synchronic study,the conclusion is drawn:the English lexicon is basically arbitrary while the Chinese one is highly motivated,namely,Chinese motivation is much more obvious than that of English for Chinese is an ideographic language and English is a phonemic language.

Contrast of Lexical Motivation Between English And Chinese

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

周倩

2015-01-01

[ABSTRACT]This thesis aims to make a contrast between English and Chinese in their lexical motivation in order to seek the source of form and meaning to further promote the study,explanation and application of lexical meaning.The contrast of lexical motivation is mainly discussed from three aspects:phonological motivation,morphological motivation and semantic motivation.Through the combinationof diachronic study with synchronic study,the conclusion is drawn:the English lexicon is basically arbitrary while the Chinese one is highly motivated,namely,Chinese motivation is much more obvious than that of English for Chinese is an ideographic language and English is a phonemic language.

Conceptual design of CFETR divertor remote handling compatible structure

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Dai, Huaichu; Yao, Damao; Cao, Lei; Zhou, Zibo; Li, Lei

2016-01-01

Highlights: • Conceptual design for the CFETR divertor have been proposed, especially the divertor remote handling compatible structure. • The degrees of freedom of the divertor are analyzed in order to validate the design the divertor supports structure. • Besides the ITER-like scheme, a new scheme for the divertor remote handling compatible supports is proposed, that is the rack and pinion mechanism. • The installation/removel process is verified through simulation in Delmia in order to check design quality for remote handling requirements. - Abstract: Divertor is one of key components of tokamak fusion reactor. The CFETR is China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor. Its divertor will expose to tritium environment and neutron radiation. Materials of the divertor will be radioactived, and cannot be handled by personnel directly. To develop structure which compatible with robots handle for installation, maintenance and removing is required. This paper introduces a conceptual design of CFETR divertor module which compatible with remote handling end-effectors. The divertor module is confined by inner and outer support. The inner support is only confined divertor module radial, toroidal and vertical moving freedom degrees, but not confined rotating freedom degrees. The outer support is the structure that can confine rotating freedom degrees and should also be compatible with remote handling end-effectors.

Conceptual design of CFETR divertor remote handling compatible structure

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Dai, Huaichu, E-mail: yaodm@ipp.ac.cn [Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei 230031 (China); University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei (China); Yao, Damao; Cao, Lei; Zhou, Zibo; Li, Lei [Institute of Plasma Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei 230031 (China)

2016-11-15

Highlights: • Conceptual design for the CFETR divertor have been proposed, especially the divertor remote handling compatible structure. • The degrees of freedom of the divertor are analyzed in order to validate the design the divertor supports structure. • Besides the ITER-like scheme, a new scheme for the divertor remote handling compatible supports is proposed, that is the rack and pinion mechanism. • The installation/removel process is verified through simulation in Delmia in order to check design quality for remote handling requirements. - Abstract: Divertor is one of key components of tokamak fusion reactor. The CFETR is China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor. Its divertor will expose to tritium environment and neutron radiation. Materials of the divertor will be radioactived, and cannot be handled by personnel directly. To develop structure which compatible with robots handle for installation, maintenance and removing is required. This paper introduces a conceptual design of CFETR divertor module which compatible with remote handling end-effectors. The divertor module is confined by inner and outer support. The inner support is only confined divertor module radial, toroidal and vertical moving freedom degrees, but not confined rotating freedom degrees. The outer support is the structure that can confine rotating freedom degrees and should also be compatible with remote handling end-effectors.

Lexical influence on stress processing in a fixed-stress language.

Science.gov (United States)

Garami, Linda; Ragó, Anett; Honbolygó, Ferenc; Csépe, Valéria

2017-07-01

In the present study, we investigate how lexicality affects the processing of suprasegmental features at the word level. In contrast to earlier studies which analyzed the role of either segmental or suprasegmental feature in language processing our aim was to investigate the effect of the lexical status on the processing of violated stress pattern defined by linguistic rules. We have conducted a passive oddball ERP experiment, presenting a frequent CVCV word with legal (familiar) and illegal (unfamiliar) stress patterns. Former results obtained with pseudo-words in a similar paradigm enabled to assess the influence of lexical information on stress processing. The presence of lexically relevant information resulted in different ERP patterns compared to those obtained with pseudo-words. We obtained two consecutive MMN responses to the illegally stressed words while violating the illegal stress pattern with a legal one the deviant stimulus elicited two consecutive MMN responses as well. In the latter condition lexicality clearly enhanced the comparison of prosodic information between standard and deviant stimuli, as these components very completely missing when presenting pseudo-words. We interpret the results that lexicality acts as a filter since in the absence of lexical familiarity unfamiliar stress patterns are discriminated better. Our results highlight that even when stress is fully predictable, it is taken into account during pre-attentive processing of linguistic input. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Lexical analysis in schizophrenia: how emotion and social word use informs our understanding of clinical presentation.

Science.gov (United States)

Minor, Kyle S; Bonfils, Kelsey A; Luther, Lauren; Firmin, Ruth L; Kukla, Marina; MacLain, Victoria R; Buck, Benjamin; Lysaker, Paul H; Salyers, Michelle P

2015-05-01

The words people use convey important information about internal states, feelings, and views of the world around them. Lexical analysis is a fast, reliable method of assessing word use that has shown promise for linking speech content, particularly in emotion and social categories, with psychopathological symptoms. However, few studies have utilized lexical analysis instruments to assess speech in schizophrenia. In this exploratory study, we investigated whether positive emotion, negative emotion, and social word use was associated with schizophrenia symptoms, metacognition, and general functioning in a schizophrenia cohort. Forty-six participants generated speech during a semi-structured interview, and word use categories were assessed using a validated lexical analysis measure. Trained research staff completed symptom, metacognition, and functioning ratings using semi-structured interviews. Word use categories significantly predicted all variables of interest, accounting for 28% of the variance in symptoms and 16% of the variance in metacognition and general functioning. Anger words, a subcategory of negative emotion, significantly predicted greater symptoms and lower functioning. Social words significantly predicted greater metacognition. These findings indicate that lexical analysis instruments have the potential to play a vital role in psychosocial assessments of schizophrenia. Future research should replicate these findings and examine the relationship between word use and additional clinical variables across the schizophrenia-spectrum. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Basic lexical and grammatical transformations in translation of German print advertising

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Артур Нарманович Мамедов

2014-12-01

Full Text Available The article presents basic lexical and grammatical transformations, which contribute to preserving the semantic and syntactic structure of a German advertising text and reproducing the image of the advertised product. This shows that the translation has the same communicative effect as that achieved by the source text.

COLLOCATION PHRASES IN RELATION TO OTHER LEXICAL PHRASES IN CROATIAN

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Goranka Blagus Bartolec

2012-01-01

Full Text Available The paper analyzes the semantic and lexicological aspects of collocation phrases in Croatian with tendency to separate them from other lexical phrases in Croatian (terms, idioms, names. The collocation phrase is defined as a special lexical phrase on a syntagmatic level, based on the semantic correlation of the two individual lexical components in which their meanings are specified.

Lexical competition in nonnative speech comprehension.

Science.gov (United States)

FitzPatrick, Ian; Indefrey, Peter

2010-06-01

Electrophysiological studies consistently find N400 effects of semantic incongruity in nonnative (L2) language comprehension. These N400 effects are often delayed compared with native (L1) comprehension, suggesting that semantic integration in one's second language occurs later than in one's first language. In this study, we investigated whether such a delay could be attributed to (1) intralingual lexical competition and/or (2) interlingual lexical competition. We recorded EEG from Dutch-English bilinguals who listened to English (L2) sentences in which the sentence-final word was (a) semantically fitting and (b) semantically incongruent or semantically incongruent but initially congruent due to sharing initial phonemes with (c) the most probable sentence completion within the L2 or (d) the L1 translation equivalent of the most probable sentence completion. We found an N400 effect in each of the semantically incongruent conditions. This N400 effect was significantly delayed to L2 words but not to L1 translation equivalents that were initially congruent with the sentence context. Taken together, these findings firstly demonstrate that semantic integration in nonnative listening can start based on word initial phonemes (i.e., before a single lexical candidate could have been selected based on the input) and secondly suggest that spuriously elicited L1 lexical candidates are not available for semantic integration in L2 speech comprehension.

Understanding Early Elementary Children's Conceptual Knowledge of Plant Structure and Function through Drawings

Science.gov (United States)

Anderson, Janice L.; Ellis, Jane P.; Jones, Alan M.

2014-01-01

This study examined children's drawings to explain children's conceptual understanding of plant structure and function. The study explored whether the children's drawings accurately reflect their conceptual understanding about plants in a manner that can be interpreted by others. Drawing, survey, interview, and observational data were collected…

Semantic Factors Predict the Rate of Lexical Replacement of Content Words

OpenAIRE

Vejdemo, Susanne; H?rberg, Thomas

2016-01-01

The rate of lexical replacement estimates the diachronic stability of word forms on the basis of how frequently a proto-language word is replaced or retained in its daughter languages. Lexical replacement rate has been shown to be highly related to word class and word frequency. In this paper, we argue that content words and function words behave differently with respect to lexical replacement rate, and we show that semantic factors predict the lexical replacement rate of content words. For t...

Evidence accumulation as a model for lexical selection.

Science.gov (United States)

Anders, R; Riès, S; van Maanen, L; Alario, F X

2015-11-01

We propose and demonstrate evidence accumulation as a plausible theoretical and/or empirical model for the lexical selection process of lexical retrieval. A number of current psycholinguistic theories consider lexical selection as a process related to selecting a lexical target from a number of alternatives, which each have varying activations (or signal supports), that are largely resultant of an initial stimulus recognition. We thoroughly present a case for how such a process may be theoretically explained by the evidence accumulation paradigm, and we demonstrate how this paradigm can be directly related or combined with conventional psycholinguistic theory and their simulatory instantiations (generally, neural network models). Then with a demonstrative application on a large new real data set, we establish how the empirical evidence accumulation approach is able to provide parameter results that are informative to leading psycholinguistic theory, and that motivate future theoretical development. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Role of L1 Conceptual and Linguistic Knowledge and Frequency in the Acquisition of L2 Metaphorical Expressions

Science.gov (United States)

Türker, Ebru

2016-01-01

This study investigates how figurative language is processed by learners of a second language (L2). With an experiment testing L2 comprehension of figurative expressions in three categories, each combining shared and unshared first language (L1) and L2 lexical representations and conceptual representations in a different way, the study…

Competitive dynamics of lexical innovations in multi-layer networks

Science.gov (United States)

Javarone, Marco Alberto

2014-04-01

We study the introduction of lexical innovations into a community of language users. Lexical innovations, i.e. new term added to people's vocabulary, plays an important role in the process of language evolution. Nowadays, information is spread through a variety of networks, including, among others, online and offline social networks and the World Wide Web. The entire system, comprising networks of different nature, can be represented as a multi-layer network. In this context, lexical innovations diffusion occurs in a peculiar fashion. In particular, a lexical innovation can undergo three different processes: its original meaning is accepted; its meaning can be changed or misunderstood (e.g. when not properly explained), hence more than one meaning can emerge in the population. Lastly, in the case of a loan word, it can be translated into the population language (i.e. defining a new lexical innovation or using a synonym) or into a dialect spoken by part of the population. Therefore, lexical innovations cannot be considered simply as information. We develop a model for analyzing this scenario using a multi-layer network comprising a social network and a media network. The latter represents the set of all information systems of a society, e.g. television, the World Wide Web and radio. Furthermore, we identify temporal directed edges between the nodes of these two networks. In particular, at each time-step, nodes of the media network can be connected to randomly chosen nodes of the social network and vice versa. In doing so, information spreads through the whole system and people can share a lexical innovation with their neighbors or, in the event they work as reporters, by using media nodes. Lastly, we use the concept of "linguistic sign" to model lexical innovations, showing its fundamental role in the study of these dynamics. Many numerical simulations have been performed to analyze the proposed model and its outcomes.

The structure of conceptual models with application to the Aespoe HRL project

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Olsson, Olle; Baeckblom, G.; Wikberg, P.; Gustafson, G.; Stanfors, R.

1994-05-01

In performance assessment a sequence of models is used to describe the function of the geological barrier. This report proposes a general structure and terminology for description of these models. A model description consists of the following components: A conceptual model which defines the geometric framework in which the problem is solved, the dimensions of the modelled volume, descriptions of the processes included in the model, and the boundary conditions; Data which are introduced into the conceptual model, and a mathematical or numerical tool used to produce output data. Contradictory to common practice in geohydrologic modelling it is proposed that the term conceptual model is restricted to define in what way the model is constructed, and that this is separated from any specific application of the conceptual model. Hence, the conceptual model should not include any specific data. 5 refs, 2 figs, 4 tabs

Early lexical and phonological acquisition and its relationships.

Science.gov (United States)

Wiethan, Fernanda Marafiga; Nóro, Letícia Arruda; Mota, Helena Bolli

2014-01-01

Verifying likely relationships between lexical and phonological development of children aged between 1 year to 1 year, 11 months and 29 days, who were enrolled in public kindergarten schools of Santa Maria (RS). The sample consisted of 18 children of both genders, with typical language development and aged between 1 year to 1 year, 11 months and 29 days, separated in three age subgroups. Visual recordings of spontaneous speech of each child were collected and then lexical analysis regarding the types of the said lexical items and phonological assessment were performed. The number of sounds acquired and partially acquired were counted together, and the 19 sounds and two all phones of Brazilian Portuguese were considered. To the statistical analysis, the tests of Kruskal-Wallis and Wilcoxon were used, with significance level of prelace_LT0.05. When compared the means relating to the acquired sounds and mean of the acquired and partially acquired sounds percentages, there was difference between the first and the second age subgroup, and between the first and the third subgroup. In the comparison of the said lexical items means among the age subgroups, there was difference between the first and the second subgroup, and between the first and the third subgroup again. In the comparison between the said lexical items and acquired and partially acquired sounds in each age subgroup, there was difference only in the age subgroup of 1 year and 8 months to 1 year, 11 months and 29 days, in which the sounds highlighted. The phonological and lexical domains develop as a growing process and influence each other. The Phonology has a little advantage.

Structural analysis of TFTR toroidal field coil conceptual design

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Smith, R.A.

1975-10-01

The conceptual design evaluation of the V-shaped toroidal field coils on the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor has been performed by detailed structural analysis with the finite element method. The innovation provided by this design and verified in this work is the capability to support toroidal field loads while simultaneously performing the function of twist restraint against the device axial torques resulting from the vertical field loads. The evaluations made for the conceptual design provide predictions for coil deflections and stresses. The results are available for the separate effects from toroidal fields, poloidal fields, and the thermal expansion of the coils as well as for the superposition of the primary loads and the primary plus thermal loads

A Lesk-inspired Unsupervised Algorithm for Lexical Choice from WordNet Synsets

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Basile, Valerio; Basili, Roberto; Lenci, Allesandro; Magnini, Bernardo

2014-01-01

The generation of text from abstract meaning representations involves, among other tasks, the production of lexical items for the concepts to realize. Using WordNet as a foundational ontology, we exploit its internal network structure to predict the best lemmas for a given synset without the need

Lexical Modernization in Nepali: A Study of Borrowing.

Science.gov (United States)

Acharya, Jayaraj

1990-01-01

Focuses on the controversy among Nepali language specialists over the sources of lexical borrowing in Nepali. Lexical items currently are borrowed from both English and Sanskrit, and also Hindi/Urdu, Persian and Arabic. After reviewing Nepali history and language, the question of borrowing from different sources within different domains of…

Topology Optimization for Conceptual Design of Reinforced Concrete Structures

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Amir, Oded; Bogomolny, Michael

2011-01-01

Design of reinforced concrete structures is governed by the nonlinear behavior of concrete and by its dierent strengths in tension and compression. The purpose of this article is to present a computational procedure for optimal conceptual design of reinforced concrete structures, based on topology...... must be consid- ered. Optimized distribution of material is achieved by introducing interpolation rules for both elastic and plastic material properties. Several numerical examples illustrate the capability and potential of the proposed procedure....

On the flexibility of grammatical advance planning during sentence production: Effects of cognitive load on multiple lexical access.

Science.gov (United States)

Wagner, Valentin; Jescheniak, Jörg D; Schriefers, Herbert

2010-03-01

Three picture-word interference experiments addressed the question of whether the scope of grammatical advance planning in sentence production corresponds to some fixed unit or rather is flexible. Subjects produced sentences of different formats under varying amounts of cognitive load. When speakers described 2-object displays with simple sentences of the form "the frog is next to the mug," the 2 nouns were found to be lexically-semantically activated to similar degrees at speech onset, as indexed by similarly sized interference effects from semantic distractors related to either the first or the second noun. When speakers used more complex sentences (including prenominal color adjectives; e.g., "the blue frog is next to the blue mug") much larger interference effects were observed for the first than the second noun, suggesting that the second noun was lexically-semantically activated before speech onset on only a subset of trials. With increased cognitive load, introduced by an additional conceptual decision task and variable utterance formats, the interference effect for the first noun was increased and the interference effect for second noun disappeared, suggesting that the scope of advance planning had been narrowed. By contrast, if cognitive load was induced by a secondary working memory task to be performed during speech planning, the interference effect for both nouns was increased, suggesting that the scope of advance planning had not been affected. In all, the data suggest that the scope of advance planning during grammatical encoding in sentence production is flexible, rather than structurally fixed.

Policy for the treatment of insulting and sensitive lexical items in the ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Keywords: policy, treatment, insulting lexical items, sensitive lexical items, dictionary, woordeboek van die afrikaanse taal, simplexes, compounds, expressions, general usage criterion, labelling, synonyms, metalanguage, collocations, editorial usage examples, citations, advisors, racist lexical items, neutral lemmas, ...

Speakers' assumptions about the lexical flexibility of idioms.

Science.gov (United States)

Gibbs, R W; Nayak, N P; Bolton, J L; Keppel, M E

1989-01-01

In three experiments, we examined why some idioms can be lexically altered and still retain their figurative meanings (e.g., John buttoned his lips about Mary can be changed into John fastened his lips about Mary and still mean "John didn't say anything about Mary"), whereas other idioms cannot be lexically altered without losing their figurative meanings (e.g., John kicked the bucket, meaning "John died," loses its idiomatic meaning when changed into John kicked the pail). Our hypothesis was that the lexical flexibility of idioms is determined by speakers' assumptions about the ways in which parts of idioms contribute to their figurative interpretations as a whole. The results of the three experiments indicated that idioms whose individual semantic components contribute to their overall figurative meanings (e.g., go out on a limb) were judged as less disrupted by changes in their lexical items (e.g., go out on a branch) than were nondecomposable idioms (e.g., kick the bucket) when their individual words were altered (e.g., punt the pail). These findings lend support to the idea that both the syntactic productivity and the lexical makeup of idioms are matters of degree, depending on the idioms' compositional properties. This conclusion suggests that idioms do not form a unique class of linguistic items, but share many of the properties of more literal language.

On the functional vs. lexical nature of restructuring heads: evidence for a fine-grained classification of restructuring modals

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Irene Balza

2012-05-01

Full Text Available This paper examines in detail the thematic and syntactic properties of a set of (non-restructuring structures in Germanic, Romance and Basque. Based on the comparison of these structures, I propose a fine-grained classification of (non-restructuring constructions that include Functional Restructuring, Semi-Lexical Restructuring, Lexical Restructuring and Non-Restructuring constructions. The four types involve complements of different underlying structures (VPs, vPs or even as large as NegP/TPs. The results of the analysis argue against Cinque’s (2005 hypothesis that all restructuring verbs are exclusively functional, and contradicts Wurmbrand’s (1999 claim that, within the mixed class of restructuring verbs, modals must be raising verbs.

Lexical semantic access and letter access are involved in different aspects of reading

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Poulsen, Mads

). In this subset sample, both letter access and lexical access accounted for unique variance in reading fluency. The pattern of effects for lexical access did not change by controlling for serial rapid naming (RAN). Conclusions: The results suggest that letter access and lexical access are important for different......Purpose: This study investigated the effects of lexical access speed and letter access speed on reading fluency and reading comprehension. We hypothesized that 1) letter access speed would correlate with reading fluency but not comprehension, while 2) lexical access speed would influence reading...... comprehension. For readers who are struggling with recoding, most of the reading effort is probably tied up with recoding, leaving little to be explained by lexical access. Therefore we expected that 3) lexical access speed would primarily predict reading fluency for readers who were no longer struggling...

Selected Lexical Patterns in Saudi Arabian Sign Language

Science.gov (United States)

Young, Lesa; Palmer, Jeffrey Levi; Reynolds, Wanette

2012-01-01

This combined paper will focus on the description of two selected lexical patterns in Saudi Arabian Sign Language (SASL): metaphor and metonymy in emotion-related signs (Young) and lexicalization patterns of objects and their derivational roots (Palmer and Reynolds). The over-arcing methodology used by both studies is detailed in Stephen and…

Structural analysis at aircraft conceptual design stage

Science.gov (United States)

Mansouri, Reza

. Considering the strength and limitations of both methodologies, the question to be answered in this thesis is: How valuable and compatible are the classical analytical methods in today's conceptual design environment? And can these methods complement each other? To answer these questions, this thesis investigates the pros and cons of classical analytical structural analysis methods during the conceptual design stage through the following objectives: Illustrate structural design methodology of these methods within the framework of Aerospace Vehicle Design (AVD) lab's design lifecycle. Demonstrate the effectiveness of moment distribution method through four case studies. This will be done by considering and evaluating the strength and limitation of these methods. In order to objectively quantify the limitation and capabilities of the analytical method at the conceptual design stage, each case study becomes more complex than the one before.

Lexical-semantic knowledge about food in patients with different types of dementia

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Raffaella Ida Rumiati

2014-04-01

Full Text Available While many theories agree that the conceptual knowledge is organized in categories, there is less agreement on the underlying organizational principle (e.g. Warrington & Shallice, 1984, Caramazza & Shelton, 1998; Capitani et al., 2003. Previous neuropsychological studies on semantic categories failed to clearly characterize the status of food as a category as they did not carefully distinguish between natural food and transformed food. Exploring how natural food and transformed food items are processed in patients suffering from primary dementia can allow us to test the theories of how semantic knowledge is organized in the brain. Thirty patients and 15 healthy controls matched for age and education took part in the study . Thirteen patients received a presumptive diagnosis of fronto-temporal dementia (FTD, 3 patients of Semantic Dementia (SD, and 14 of Alzheimer Dementia (AD. All participants performed 3 tasks tapping lexical-semantic knowledge about food and non-food items: confrontation naming (Task 1, categorization (Task 2, and word-to-picture matching (Task 3. Moreover, half food items were natural (e.g., apple and half transformed (e.g. grana cheese, while non-food items were half non edible natural items (e.g., plant and half kitchen implements. The results showed that, overall, patients performed poorer than controls on Tasks 1 and 3, with FTD-SD patients being more impaired than AD patients. When we compared performance on food versus non-food items, we observed that patients performed better on naming food than non-food items (Task 1. Specifically, FTD-SD patients displayed a significant difference between food and non-food items, while AD patients showed no difference. On Task 3 the same pattern was obtained. In addition, we observed that, across tasks, transformed food was processed better than natural food. These findings suggest that lexical-semantic processes are more prone to degradation in patients FTD-SD than in AD patients

Personification in discourse: linguistic forms, conceptual structures and communicative functions.

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Dorst, A.G.

2011-01-01

Drawing on examples from a corpus of 14 excerpts from novels, this article aims to present a systematic investigation of the different linguistic forms, conceptual structures and communicative functions of personification in discourse. The Metaphor Identification Procedure (Pragglejaz Group, 2007)

Portuguese Lexical Clusters and CVC Sequences in Speech Perception and Production.

Science.gov (United States)

Cunha, Conceição

2015-01-01

This paper investigates similarities between lexical consonant clusters and CVC sequences differing in the presence or absence of a lexical vowel in speech perception and production in two Portuguese varieties. The frequent high vowel deletion in the European variety (EP) and the realization of intervening vocalic elements between lexical clusters in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) may minimize the contrast between lexical clusters and CVC sequences in the two Portuguese varieties. In order to test this hypothesis we present a perception experiment with 72 participants and a physiological analysis of 3-dimensional movement data from 5 EP and 4 BP speakers. The perceptual results confirmed a gradual confusion of lexical clusters and CVC sequences in EP, which corresponded roughly to the gradient consonantal overlap found in production. © 2015 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Lexical Analysis of the Verb "COOK" and Learning Vocabulary: A Corpus Study

Science.gov (United States)

Priyono

2011-01-01

English verbs have built-in properties that determine how they behave syntactically and generate appropriate meaning associated. With these inherent properties some verbs can fill in only in certain syntactic structures and some in others. The observation of the verb "COOK" using English corpus has revealed its lexical properties…

Peculiarities of Creating Foreign Students’ Lexical Competence

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Aigul Eskermesovna Sadenova

2016-11-01

Full Text Available Teaching of vocabulary includes several aspects of teaching content: linguistic, methodological and psychological. Teaching of vocabulary is a process which is inextricably entwined with understanding relations between new words and phonetic and grammar aspects of the language. On the one hand, simultaneous learning of two languages complicates the tasks set to the students, but, on the other hand, it simplifies the process. The complexity is in the scope of vocabulary to be remembered, as well as in the differences between grammar structures used in Russian and Kazakh. The simplification is in the fact that students are fully aware that lexical competence is formed gradually, and that every language has its lexical base required at the initial stage, and that such base is to be developed for mastering a specific language. Before identifying the methods of vocabulary semantization in the course of teaching a language to foreign students, students shall be offered active vocabulary, used to express their ideas orally and in written form, and passive vocabulary, used to perceive oral and written information. It is not possible to teach semantics only. It is necessary to create paradigmatic, syntactic and associative relations. The formation of lexical skills is connected with the solidity of vocabulary retention. In order to ensure reinforcement of the vocabulary learnt, the students shall be offered exercises contributing to the development of their skills of using vocabulary in listening, speaking, reading and writing. All above mentioned types of vocabulary semantization constitute a unified whole. Different ways of semantization are set forth for methodological purposes, to facilitate the achievement of the desired result. Translation and non-translation techniques for vocabulary presentation, as well as some tips and exercises, are given. The use of basic vocabulary at elementary and advanced levels is suggested. Certain methods for the

Differential lexical predictors of reading comprehension in fourth graders

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Swart, N.M.; Muijselaar, M.M.L.; Steenbeek-Planting, E.G.; Droop, M.; de Jong, P.F.; Verhoeven, L.

The mental lexicon plays a central role in reading comprehension (Perfetti & Stafura, 2014). It encompasses the number of lexical entries in spoken and written language (vocabulary breadth), the semantic quality of these entries (vocabulary depth), and the connection strength between lexical

Lexical Borrowings in the ESL Classrooms in Malaysia

Science.gov (United States)

Thirusanku, Jantmary; Yunus, Melor Md

2013-01-01

This paper attempts to show the use of lexical borrowings in ten teaching materials used by the English as Second Language (ESL) teachers in the ESL classrooms in the National Secondary Schools in the Klang district in Selangor, Malaysia. It also discusses the general and pedagogical implications involved in using lexical borrowings. This paper…

Clarifying the Conceptualization, Dimensionality, and Structure of Emotion: Response to Barrett and Colleagues.

Science.gov (United States)

Cowen, Alan S; Keltner, Dacher

2018-04-01

We present a mathematically based framework distinguishing the dimensionality, structure, and conceptualization of emotion-related responses. Our recent findings indicate that reported emotional experience is high-dimensional, involves gradients between categories traditionally thought of as discrete (e.g., 'fear', 'disgust'), and cannot be reduced to widely used domain-general scales (valence, arousal, etc.). In light of our conceptual framework and findings, we address potential methodological and conceptual confusions in Barrett and colleagues' commentary on our work. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

CLEX: A cross-linguistic lexical norms database

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jørgensen, Rune Nørgaard; Dale, Philip; Bleses, Dorthe

2009-01-01

Parent report has proven a valid and cost-effective means of evaluating early child language. Norming datasets for these instruments, which provide the basis for standardized comparisons of individual children to a population, can also be used to derive norms for the acquisition of individual words...... in production and comprehension and also early gestures and symbolic actions. These lexical norms have a wide range of uses in basic research, assessment and intervention. In addition, crosslinguistic comparisons of lexical development are greatly facilitated by the availability of norms from diverse languages....... This report describes the development of CLEX, a new web-based cross-linguistic database for lexical data from adaptations of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories. CLEX provides tools for a range of analyses within and across languages. It is designed to incorporate additional language...

Development of knowledge models by linguistic analysis of lexical relationships in technical documents

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Seguela, Patrick

2001-01-01

This research thesis addresses the problem of knowledge acquisition and structuring from technical texts, and the use of this knowledge in the development of models. The author presents the Cameleon method which aims at extracting binary lexical relationships from technical texts by identifying linguistic markers. The relevance of this method is assessed in the case of four different corpuses: a written technical corpus, an oral technical corpus, a corpus of texts of instructions, and a corpus of academic texts. The author reports the development of a model of representation of knowledge of a specific field by using lexical relationships. The method is then applied to develop a model used in document search within a knowledge management system [fr

The role of organizational structure in readiness for change: A conceptual integration.

Science.gov (United States)

Benzer, Justin K; Charns, Martin P; Hamdan, Sami; Afable, Melissa

2017-02-01

The purpose of this review is to extend extant conceptualizations of readiness for change as an individual-level phenomenon. This review-of-reviews focuses on existing conceptual frameworks from the dissemination, implementation, quality improvement, and organizational transformation literatures in order to integrate theoretical rationales for how organization structure, a key dimension of the organizational context, may impact readiness for change. We propose that the organization structure dimensions of differentiation and integration impact readiness for change at the individual level of analysis by influencing four key concepts of relevance, legitimacy, perceived need for change, and resource allocation. We identify future research directions that focus on these four key concepts.

Probabilistic lexical generalization for French dependency parsing

OpenAIRE

Henestroza Anguiano , Enrique; Candito , Marie

2012-01-01

International audience; This paper investigates the impact on French dependency parsing of lexical generalization methods beyond lemmatization and morphological analysis. A distributional thesaurus is created from a large text corpus and used for distributional clustering and WordNet automatic sense ranking. The standard approach for lexical generalization in parsing is to map a word to a single generalized class, either replacing the word with the class or adding a new feature for the class....

CONCEPTS AND CONCEPTUAL CATEGORIES USED IN CHILDREN’S SHORT STORIES - ÇOCUKLAR İÇİN HAZIRLANAN ÖYKÜ KİTAPLARINDAKİ KAVRAMLAR VE KAVRAM ALANLARI

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

N. Tayyibe EKEN

2015-04-01

Full Text Available Words and concepts are inseperable components of language education. Examining words and concepts gives information about language development and education. Lexical development in mother tongue occurs by means of spoken and written texts children are exposed to. Types of these texts can be diversified. This study is aimed to categorize concepts in children’s stories and to reach principle findings about lexical hierarchy and education. It’s mainly based on indirect observation, content analysis, category analysis and frequency analysis so as to determine conceptual and sub-conceptual categories in children’s stories. Data of the study consist of 20 stories for 5;0+ year-old-children. Lexical data were analysed/categorised according to Clark (2003. Major findings of the study: There are nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, set phrases, exclamations, echo-words and specific names in the stories. Specific names, idioms and proverbs are out of the limitations. In this way, there are 4606 words in database, 1629 of which are nouns, the most used category. There are totally 1306 verbs. So the category of verbs is the second most used category. Studies determining the concepts and vocabulary in written texts for children is important in terms of children's literature and corpus studies. It’s expected to contribute to literature.

Population Size Predicts Lexical Diversity, but so Does the Mean Sea Level --Why It Is Important to Correctly Account for the Structure of Temporal Data.

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Koplenig, Alexander; Müller-Spitzer, Carolin

2016-01-01

In order to demonstrate why it is important to correctly account for the (serial dependent) structure of temporal data, we document an apparently spectacular relationship between population size and lexical diversity: for five out of seven investigated languages, there is a strong relationship between population size and lexical diversity of the primary language in this country. We show that this relationship is the result of a misspecified model that does not consider the temporal aspect of the data by presenting a similar but nonsensical relationship between the global annual mean sea level and lexical diversity. Given the fact that in the recent past, several studies were published that present surprising links between different economic, cultural, political and (socio-)demographical variables on the one hand and cultural or linguistic characteristics on the other hand, but seem to suffer from exactly this problem, we explain the cause of the misspecification and show that it has profound consequences. We demonstrate how simple transformation of the time series can often solve problems of this type and argue that the evaluation of the plausibility of a relationship is important in this context. We hope that our paper will help both researchers and reviewers to understand why it is important to use special models for the analysis of data with a natural temporal ordering.

The Microstructural Treatment of Sub lexical Lemmas in Afrikaans ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

include synonyms and semantic oppositions. Since all Afrikaans descriptive dictionaries supply these lexical relations for lexical lemmas, there is no reason why they should be omitted in the articles of sublexicallemmas. Naturally the synonym or antonym for sublexical lemmas need not be sublexical as well,.

Increasing Statistical Literacy by Exploiting Lexical Ambiguity of Technical Terms

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Jennifer Kaplan

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Instructional inattention to language poses a barrier for students in entry-level science courses, in part because students may perceive a subject as difficult solely based on the lack of understanding of the vocabulary. In addition, the technical use of terms that have different everyday meanings may cause students to misinterpret statements made by instructors, leading to an incomplete or incorrect understanding of the domain. Terms that have different technical and everyday meanings are said to have lexical ambiguity and statistics, as a discipline, has many lexically ambiguous terms. This paper presents a cyclic process for designing activities to address lexical ambiguity in statistics. In addition, it describes three short activities aimed to have high impact on student learning associated with two different lexically ambiguous words or word pairs in statistics. Preliminary student-level data are used to assess the efficacy of the activities, and future directions for development of activities and research about lexical ambiguity in statistics in particular and STEM in general are discussed.

Congenital amusics use a secondary pitch mechanism to identify lexical tones.

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Bones, Oliver; Wong, Patrick C M

2017-09-01

Amusia is a pitch perception disorder associated with deficits in processing and production of both musical and lexical tones, which previous reports have suggested may be constrained to fine-grained pitch judgements. In the present study speakers of tone-languages, in which lexical tones are used to convey meaning, identified words present in chimera stimuli containing conflicting pitch-cues in the temporal fine-structure and temporal envelope, and which therefore conveyed two distinct utterances. Amusics were found to be more likely than controls to judge the word according to the envelope pitch-cues. This demonstrates that amusia is not associated with fine-grained pitch judgements alone, and is consistent with there being two distinct pitch mechanisms and with amusics having an atypical reliance on a secondary mechanism based upon envelope cues. Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

The role of visual representations during the lexical access of spoken words.

Science.gov (United States)

Lewis, Gwyneth; Poeppel, David

2014-07-01

Do visual representations contribute to spoken word recognition? We examine, using MEG, the effects of sublexical and lexical variables at superior temporal (ST) areas and the posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG) compared with that of word imageability at visual cortices. Embodied accounts predict early modulation of visual areas by imageability--concurrently with or prior to modulation of pMTG by lexical variables. Participants responded to speech stimuli varying continuously in imageability during lexical decision with simultaneous MEG recording. We employed the linguistic variables in a new type of correlational time course analysis to assess trial-by-trial activation in occipital, ST, and pMTG regions of interest (ROIs). The linguistic variables modulated the ROIs during different time windows. Critically, visual regions reflected an imageability effect prior to effects of lexicality on pMTG. This surprising effect supports a view on which sensory aspects of a lexical item are not a consequence of lexical activation. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Translating the foundational model of anatomy into french using knowledge-based and lexical methods

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Merabti Tayeb

2011-10-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background The Foundational Model of Anatomy (FMA is the reference ontology regarding human anatomy. FMA vocabulary was integrated into the Health Multi Terminological Portal (HMTP developed by CISMeF based on the CISMeF Information System which also includes 26 other terminologies and controlled vocabularies, mainly in French. However, FMA is primarily in English. In this context, the translation of FMA English terms into French could also be useful for searching and indexing French anatomy resources. Various studies have investigated automatic methods to assist the translation of medical terminologies or create multilingual medical vocabularies. The goal of this study was to facilitate the translation of FMA vocabulary into French. Methods We compare two types of approaches to translate the FMA terms into French. The first one is UMLS-based on the conceptual information of the UMLS metathesaurus. The second method is lexically-based on several Natural Language Processing (NLP tools. Results The UMLS-based approach produced a translation of 3,661 FMA terms into French whereas the lexical approach produced a translation of 3,129 FMA terms into French. A qualitative evaluation was made on 100 FMA terms translated by each method. For the UMLS-based approach, among the 100 translations, 52% were manually rated as "very good" and only 7% translations as "bad". For the lexical approach, among the 100 translations, 47% were rated as "very good" and 20% translations as "bad". Conclusions Overall, a low rate of translations were demonstrated by the two methods. The two approaches permitted us to semi-automatically translate 3,776 FMA terms from English into French, this was to added to the existing 10,844 French FMA terms in the HMTP (4,436 FMA French terms and 6,408 FMA terms manually translated.

Are there mental lexicons? The role of semantics in lexical decision.

Science.gov (United States)

Dilkina, Katia; McClelland, James L; Plaut, David C

2010-12-13

What is the underlying representation of lexical knowledge? How do we know whether a given string of letters is a word, whereas another string of letters is not? There are two competing models of lexical processing in the literature. The first proposes that we rely on mental lexicons. The second claims there are no mental lexicons; we identify certain items as words based on semantic knowledge. Thus, the former approach - the multiple-systems view - posits that lexical and semantic processing are subserved by separate systems, whereas the latter approach - the single-system view - holds that the two are interdependent. Semantic dementia patients, who have a cross-modal semantic impairment, show an accompanying and related lexical deficit. These findings support the single-system approach. However, a report of an SD patient whose impairment on lexical decision was not related to his semantic deficits in item-specific ways has presented a challenge to this view. If the two types of processing rely on a common system, then shouldn't damage impair the same items on all tasks? We present a single-system model of lexical and semantic processing, where there are no lexicons, and performance on lexical decision involves the activation of semantic representations. We show how, when these representations are damaged, accuracy on semantic and lexical tasks falls off together, but not necessarily on the same set of items. These findings are congruent with the patient data. We provide an explicit explanation of this pattern of results in our model, by defining and measuring the effects of two orthogonal factors - spelling consistency and concept consistency. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A cross-language study of perception of lexical stress in English.

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Yu, Vickie Y; Andruski, Jean E

2010-08-01

This study investigates the question of whether language background affects the perception of lexical stress in English. Thirty native English speakers and 30 native Chinese learners of English participated in a stressed-syllable identification task and a discrimination task involving three types of stimuli (real words/pseudowords/hums). The results show that both language groups were able to identify and discriminate stress patterns. Lexical and segmental information affected the English and Chinese speakers in varying degrees. English and Chinese speakers showed different response patterns to trochaic vs. iambic stress across the three types of stimuli. An acoustic analysis revealed that two language groups used different acoustic cues to process lexical stress. The findings suggest that the different degrees of lexical and segmental effects can be explained by language background, which in turn supports the hypothesis that language background affects the perception of lexical stress in English.

The Contribution of Lexical Diversity to College-Level Writing

Science.gov (United States)

González, Melanie C.

2017-01-01

This article reports on a study that investigated the extent to which lexical frequency and lexical diversity contribute to writing proficiency scores on monolingual English-speaking writers' and advanced multilingual writers' academic compositions. The data consist of essays composed by 104 multilingual English learners enrolled in advanced…

Lexical Bundles and the Construction of an Academic Voice in Business Writing

Science.gov (United States)

Mhedhbi, Malek

2014-01-01

Most previous studies on disciplinary academic writing focused on the structures in research articles or linguistic realizations of each move (Lau, 2004; Hyland, 2000). Few have been conducted to address the interpersonal aspect of disciplinary discourse texts. The purpose of this study was to measure the effect of lexical bundles' (LBs) awareness…

Automatic processing of unattended lexical information in visual oddball presentation: neurophysiological evidence

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yury eShtyrov

2013-08-01

Full Text Available Previous electrophysiological studies of automatic language processing revealed early (100-200 ms reflections of access to lexical characteristics of speech signal using the so-called mismatch negativity (MMN, a negative ERP deflection elicited by infrequent irregularities in unattended repetitive auditory stimulation. In those studies, lexical processing of spoken stimuli became manifest as an enhanced ERP in response to unattended real words as opposed to phonologically matched but meaningless pseudoword stimuli. This lexical ERP enhancement was explained by automatic activation of word memory traces realised as distributed strongly intra-connected neuronal circuits, whose robustness guarantees memory trace activation even in the absence of attention on spoken input. Such an account would predict the automatic activation of these memory traces upon any presentation of linguistic information, irrespective of the presentation modality. As previous lexical MMN studies exclusively used auditory stimulation, we here adapted the lexical MMN paradigm to investigate early automatic lexical effects in the visual modality. In a visual oddball sequence, matched short word and pseudoword stimuli were presented tachistoscopically in perifoveal area outside the visual focus of attention, as the subjects’ attention was concentrated on a concurrent non-linguistic visual dual task in the centre of the screen. Using EEG, we found a visual analogue of the lexical ERP enhancement effect, with unattended written words producing larger brain response amplitudes than matched pseudowords, starting at ~100 ms. Furthermore, we also found significant visual MMN, reported here for the first time for unattended lexical stimuli presented perifoveally. The data suggest early automatic lexical processing of visually presented language outside the focus of attention.

The prosody of Swedish underived nouns: No lexical tones required

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Bruce Morén-Duolljá

2013-02-01

Full Text Available This paper provides a detailed representational analysis of the morpho-prosodic system of underived nouns in a dialect of Swedish.  It shows that the morphology, stress and tonal patterns are not as complex as they first appear once the data are looked at in sufficient detail.  Further, it shows that the renowned Swedish "lexical pitch accent" is not the result of lexical tones/tonemes.  Rather, Swedish is like all other languages and uses tones to mark the edges of prosodic constituents on the surface. "Accent 2" occurs when tones mark the edge of a structural uneven trochee (i.e. recursive foot and "accent 1" occurs elsewhere. This analysis is counter all other treatments of North Germanic tones and denies the almost unquestioned assumption that there is an underlying tone specification on roots and/or affixes in many North Germanic varieties. At the same time, it unifies the intuitions behind the three previous approaches found in the literature.

Artificial neural networks aided conceptual stage design of water harvesting structures

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Vinay Chandwani

2016-09-01

Full Text Available The paper presents artificial neural networks (ANNs based methodology for ascertaining the structural parameters of water harvesting structures (WHS at the conceptual stage of design. The ANN is trained using exemplar patterns generated using an in-house MSExcel based design program, to draw a functional relationship between the five inputs design parameters namely, peak flood discharge, safe bearing capacity of strata, length of structure, height of structure and silt factor and four outputs namely, top width, bottom width, foundation depth and flood lift representing the structural parameters of WHS. The results of the study show that, the structural parameters of the WHS predicted using ANN model are in close agreement with the actual field parameters. The versatility of ANN to map complex or complex unknown relationships has been proven in the study. A parametric sensitivity study is also performed to assess the most significant design parameter. The study holistically presents a neural network based decision support tool that can be used to accurately estimate the major design parameters of the WHS at the conceptual stage of design in quick time, aiding the engineer-in-charge to conveniently forecast the budget requirements and minimize the labor involved during the subsequent phases of analysis and design.

The Effects of Lexical Pitch Accent on Infant Word Recognition in Japanese

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Mitsuhiko Ota

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Learners of lexical tone languages (e.g., Mandarin develop sensitivity to tonal contrasts and recognize pitch-matched, but not pitch-mismatched, familiar words by 11 months. Learners of non-tone languages (e.g., English also show a tendency to treat pitch patterns as lexically contrastive up to about 18 months. In this study, we examined if this early-developing capacity to lexically encode pitch variations enables infants to acquire a pitch accent system, in which pitch-based lexical contrasts are obscured by the interaction of lexical and non-lexical (i.e., intonational features. Eighteen 17-month-olds learning Tokyo Japanese were tested on their recognition of familiar words with the expected pitch or the lexically opposite pitch pattern. In early trials, infants were faster in shifting their eyegaze from the distractor object to the target object than in shifting from the target to distractor in the pitch-matched condition. In later trials, however, infants showed faster distractor-to-target than target-to-distractor shifts in both the pitch-matched and pitch-mismatched conditions. We interpret these results to mean that, in a pitch-accent system, the ability to use pitch variations to recognize words is still in a nascent state at 17 months.

On stylistic automatization of lexical units in various types of contexts

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В В Зуева

2009-12-01

Full Text Available Stylistic automatization of lexical units in various types of contexts is investigated in this article. Following the works of Boguslav Havranek and other linguists of the Prague Linguistic School automatization is treated as a contextual narrowing of the meaning of a lexical unit to the level of its complete predictability in situational contexts and the lack of stylistic contradiction with other lexical units in speech.

Pathways from Toddler Information Processing to Adolescent Lexical Proficiency

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Rose, Susan A.; Feldman, Judith F.; Jankowski, Jeffery J.

2015-01-01

This study examined the relation of 3-year core information-processing abilities to lexical growth and development. The core abilities covered four domains--memory, representational competence (cross-modal transfer), processing speed, and attention. Lexical proficiency was assessed at 3 and 13 years with the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT)…

Conceptual structures: Information processing in mind and machine

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Sowa, J.F.

1983-01-01

The broad coverage in this book combines material from philosophy, linguistics, psychology, and artificial intelligence. As a unifying force, the book focuses on conceptual graphs - networks of concepts and conceptual relations developed over the past twenty years. Important topics include: philosophical issues of knowledge and meaning; cognitive psychology in relation to linguistics and artificial intelligence; conceptual graphs as a knowledge representation language; applications for formal logic, plausible reasoning, heuristics, and computation; natural language parsing, generation, and pragmatics; knowledge-based systems, conceptual analysis, and database design and query; limits of conceptualization and unsolved problems. To accommodate readers from various disciplines, this book is designed to be read at different levels. Contents: Philosophical basis; Psychological evidence; Conceptual graphs; Reasoning and computation; Language; Knowledge engineering; Epilog; Limits of conceptualization; Appendices; Index.

Tracking lexical consolidation with ERPs: Lexical and semantic-priming effects on N400 and LPC responses to newly-learned words.

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Bakker, Iske; Takashima, Atsuko; van Hell, Janet G; Janzen, Gabriele; McQueen, James M

2015-12-01

Novel words can be recalled immediately and after little exposure, but require a post-learning consolidation period to show word-like behaviour such as lexical competition. This pattern is thought to reflect a qualitative shift from episodic to lexical representations. However, several studies have reported immediate effects of meaningful novel words on semantic processing, suggesting that integration of novel word meanings may not require consolidation. The current study synthesises and extends these findings by showing a dissociation between lexical and semantic effects on the electrophysiological (N400, LPC) response to novel words. The difference in N400 amplitude between novel and existing words (a lexical effect) decreased significantly after a 24-h consolidation period, providing novel support for the hypothesis that offline consolidation aids lexicalisation. In contrast, novel words preceded by semantically related primes elicited a more positive LPC response (a semantic-priming effect) both before and after consolidation, indicating that certain semantic effects can be observed even when words have not been fully lexicalised. We propose that novel meanings immediately start to contribute to semantic processing, but that the underlying neural processes may shift from strategic to more automatic with consolidation. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Modulation of working memory updating: Does long-term memory lexical association matter?

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Artuso, Caterina; Palladino, Paola

2016-02-01

The aim of the present study was to investigate how working memory updating for verbal material is modulated by enduring properties of long-term memory. Two coexisting perspectives that account for the relation between long-term representation and short-term performance were addressed. First, evidence suggests that performance is more closely linked to lexical properties, that is, co-occurrences within the language. Conversely, other evidence suggests that performance is linked more to long-term representations which do not entail lexical/linguistic representations. Our aim was to investigate how these two kinds of long-term memory associations (i.e., lexical or nonlexical) modulate ongoing working memory activity. Therefore, we manipulated (between participants) the strength of the association in letters based on either frequency of co-occurrences (lexical) or contiguity along the sequence of the alphabet (nonlexical). Results showed a cost in working memory updating for strongly lexically associated stimuli only. Our findings advance knowledge of how lexical long-term memory associations between consonants affect working memory updating and, in turn, contribute to the study of factors which impact the updating process across memory systems.

Evaluating Lexical Cohesion in Nigerian Newspaper Genres: Focus on the Editorials

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Zubairu Malah

2016-11-01

Full Text Available Applied linguists paying scholarly attention to newspaper genres have often argued that findings emerging from such studies would be of pedagogical significance because most of the newspaper genres share certain conventional features with school genres. Similarly, this study explored lexical cohesion in newspaper editorials, and it is understood that the findings could help learners in handling persuasive writings. The study sought to identify the dominant sources of lexical cohesion in the editorials, and also to examine how lexical cohesion is utilized to achieve coherence in the editorials. Drawing on Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL, the study applied Eggins’ (2004 model of lexical cohesion and analyzed 30 editorial texts of 20, 354 words drawn from three major Nigerian newspapers: The Guardian, The Nation, and Vanguard. The analysis revealed 2, 685 ties across 849 sentences. The data demonstrated that the major types of lexical cohesion in the editorials include: repetition (49.5%, expectancy relations (15. 8%, class/sub-class (11%, and synonymy (10.8%. It was further revealed that lexical cohesion devices, which formed into chains (586 and isolated ties (837, were utilized in building coherence in the editorial texts. It was finally shown how findings of the study could be beneficial in ESP, EAP, and EGP learning, especially in persuasive writings.

Towards methodical modelling: Differences between the structure and output dynamics of multiple conceptual models

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Knoben, Wouter; Woods, Ross; Freer, Jim

2016-04-01

Conceptual hydrologic models consist of a certain arrangement of spatial and temporal dynamics consisting of stores, fluxes and transformation functions, depending on the modeller's choices and intended use. They have the advantages of being computationally efficient, being relatively easy model structures to reconfigure and having relatively low input data demands. This makes them well-suited for large-scale and large-sample hydrology, where appropriately representing the dominant hydrologic functions of a catchment is a main concern. Given these requirements, the number of parameters in the model cannot be too high, to avoid equifinality and identifiability issues. This limits the number and level of complexity of dominant hydrologic processes the model can represent. Specific purposes and places thus require a specific model and this has led to an abundance of conceptual hydrologic models. No structured overview of these models exists and there is no clear method to select appropriate model structures for different catchments. This study is a first step towards creating an overview of the elements that make up conceptual models, which may later assist a modeller in finding an appropriate model structure for a given catchment. To this end, this study brings together over 30 past and present conceptual models. The reviewed model structures are simply different configurations of three basic model elements (stores, fluxes and transformation functions), depending on the hydrologic processes the models are intended to represent. Differences also exist in the inner workings of the stores, fluxes and transformations, i.e. the mathematical formulations that describe each model element's intended behaviour. We investigate the hypothesis that different model structures can produce similar behavioural simulations. This can clarify the overview of model elements by grouping elements which are similar, which can improve model structure selection.

Conceptual design and structural analysis of the CFETR cryostat

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Wang, Zhen, E-mail: wangzhen@ipp.ac.cn; Yang, Qingxi; Xu, Hao

2015-04-15

Highlights: • The CFETR cryostat is a large vacuum container surrounding the tokamak basic machine. • Two conceptual design schemes of CFETR cryostat were proposed. • A series of structural analyses were performed for cryostat cylinder. • The design of base section is feasible for cryostat. - Abstract: CFETR (China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor) is a new tokamak device, one important component of which is cryostat and it is now under designing by China national integration design group. The CFETR cryostat is a large single-wall vacuum-tight container surrounding the tokamak basic machine, which consists of top dome-shape lid, two cylindrical sections with circumferential stiffening ribs and bottom flat head. It shall provide a vacuum environment (10{sup −4} Pa) for the operation of the superconducting coils and all the loads that derive from cryostat itself and inner components should be transferred to the floor of tokamak pit. In this paper, two schemes of cryostat were proposed and then the structural analyses including seismic response analysis, elastic stress analysis and buckling analysis were performed to validate the conceptual design of CFETR cryostat. Based on the analysis results, it can be inferred that the cryostat II has a higher stiffness and stability. The structure of cryostat I needs to be improved against buckling and it is more difficult to manufacture for cryostat II due to its complex curved surface compared with cryostat I. Finally, the structural analysis for base section was performed and the design of main support was proved to be feasible. The design of CFETR cryostat has not been finalized and structural optimization still need to be proceeded based on the analysis results.

Conceptual design and structural analysis of the CFETR cryostat

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wang, Zhen; Yang, Qingxi; Xu, Hao

2015-01-01

Highlights: • The CFETR cryostat is a large vacuum container surrounding the tokamak basic machine. • Two conceptual design schemes of CFETR cryostat were proposed. • A series of structural analyses were performed for cryostat cylinder. • The design of base section is feasible for cryostat. - Abstract: CFETR (China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor) is a new tokamak device, one important component of which is cryostat and it is now under designing by China national integration design group. The CFETR cryostat is a large single-wall vacuum-tight container surrounding the tokamak basic machine, which consists of top dome-shape lid, two cylindrical sections with circumferential stiffening ribs and bottom flat head. It shall provide a vacuum environment (10 −4 Pa) for the operation of the superconducting coils and all the loads that derive from cryostat itself and inner components should be transferred to the floor of tokamak pit. In this paper, two schemes of cryostat were proposed and then the structural analyses including seismic response analysis, elastic stress analysis and buckling analysis were performed to validate the conceptual design of CFETR cryostat. Based on the analysis results, it can be inferred that the cryostat II has a higher stiffness and stability. The structure of cryostat I needs to be improved against buckling and it is more difficult to manufacture for cryostat II due to its complex curved surface compared with cryostat I. Finally, the structural analysis for base section was performed and the design of main support was proved to be feasible. The design of CFETR cryostat has not been finalized and structural optimization still need to be proceeded based on the analysis results

Some lexical aspects of Cape Muslim Afrikaans | Davids | Lexikos

African Journals Online (AJOL)

It looks at the role of the literary tradition of Arabic-Afrikaans and the Islamic religious education system at the Cape in this regard. Of particular interest are the changes which occur in the orthoepic nature and syntactical function of inherited and borrowed lexical units, by the affixing of lexical or grammatical morphemes, ...

Acquisition of locative utterances in Norwegian: structure-building via lexical learning.

Science.gov (United States)

Mitrofanova, Natalia; Westergaard, Marit

2018-03-15

This paper focuses on the acquisition of locative prepositional phrases in L1 Norwegian. We report on two production experiments with children acquiring Norwegian as their first language and compare the results to similar experiments conducted with Russian children. The results of the experiments show that Norwegian children at age 2 regularly produce locative utterances lacking overt prepositions, with the rate of preposition omission decreasing significantly by age 3. Furthermore, our results suggest that phonologically strong and semantically unambiguous locative items appear earlier in Norwegian children's utterances than their phonologically weak and semantically ambiguous counterparts. This conclusion is confirmed by a corpus study. We argue that our results are best captured by the Underspecified P Hypothesis (UPH; Mitrofanova, 2017), which assumes that, at early stages of grammatical development, the underlying structure of locative utterances is underspecified, with more complex functional representations emerging gradually based on the input. This approach predicts that the rate of acquisition in the domain of locative PPs should be influenced by the lexical properties of individual language-specific grammatical elements (such as frequency, morphological complexity, phonological salience, or semantic ambiguity). Our data from child Norwegian show that this prediction is borne out. Specifically, the results of our study suggest that phonologically more salient and semantically unambiguous items are mastered earlier than their ambiguous and phonologically less salient counterparts, despite the higher frequency of the latter in the input (Clahsen et al., 1996).

Examining Pre-Service Mathematics Teachers' Conceptual Structures about "Geometry"

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Erdogan, Ahmet

2017-01-01

The aim of this study is to examine pre-service mathematics teachers' conceptual structures about "geometry". Qualitative research methodology has been adopted in the study. The data of the study is obtained from mathematics teacher candidates who have been students at the faculties of education of an Anatolian university in the academic…

A diffusion decision model analysis of evidence variability in the lexical decision task.

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Tillman, Gabriel; Osth, Adam F; van Ravenzwaaij, Don; Heathcote, Andrew

2017-12-01

The lexical-decision task is among the most commonly used paradigms in psycholinguistics. In both the signal-detection theory and Diffusion Decision Model (DDM; Ratcliff, Gomez, & McKoon, Psychological Review, 111, 159-182, 2004) frameworks, lexical-decisions are based on a continuous source of word-likeness evidence for both words and non-words. The Retrieving Effectively from Memory model of Lexical-Decision (REM-LD; Wagenmakers et al., Cognitive Psychology, 48(3), 332-367, 2004) provides a comprehensive explanation of lexical-decision data and makes the prediction that word-likeness evidence is more variable for words than non-words and that higher frequency words are more variable than lower frequency words. To test these predictions, we analyzed five lexical-decision data sets with the DDM. For all data sets, drift-rate variability changed across word frequency and non-word conditions. For the most part, REM-LD's predictions about the ordering of evidence variability across stimuli in the lexical-decision task were confirmed.

Lexical Variation and Change in British Sign Language

Science.gov (United States)

Stamp, Rose; Schembri, Adam; Fenlon, Jordan; Rentelis, Ramas; Woll, Bencie; Cormier, Kearsy

2014-01-01

This paper presents results from a corpus-based study investigating lexical variation in BSL. An earlier study investigating variation in BSL numeral signs found that younger signers were using a decreasing variety of regionally distinct variants, suggesting that levelling may be taking place. Here, we report findings from a larger investigation looking at regional lexical variants for colours, countries, numbers and UK placenames elicited as part of the BSL Corpus Project. Age, school location and language background were significant predictors of lexical variation, with younger signers using a more levelled variety. This change appears to be happening faster in particular sub-groups of the deaf community (e.g., signers from hearing families). Also, we find that for the names of some UK cities, signers from outside the region use a different sign than those who live in the region. PMID:24759673

Categorical Perception of Lexical Tones in Mandarin-speaking Congenital Amusics

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Wan Ting Huang

2015-06-01

Full Text Available Previous research suggests that within Mandarin-speaking congenital amusics, only a subgroup has behavioral lexical tone perception impairments (tone agnosia, whereas the rest of amusics do not. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the categorical nature of lexical tone perception in Mandarin-speaking amusics with and without behavioral lexical tone deficits. Three groups of listeners (controls, pure amusics and amusics with tone agnosia participated in tone identification and discrimination tasks. Indexes of the categorical perception of a physical continuum of fundamental frequencies ranging from a rising to level tone were measured. Specifically, the stimulus durations were manipulated at 100 and 200 ms. For both stimulus durations, all groups exhibited similar categorical boundaries. The pure amusics showed sharp identification slopes and significantly peaked discrimination functions similar to those of normal controls. However, such essential characteristics for the categorical perception of lexical tones were not observed in amusics with tone agnosia. An enlarged step-size from 20 Hz to 35 Hz was not able to produce any discrimination peaks in tone agnosics either. The current study revealed that only amusics with tone agnosia showed a lack of categorical tone perception, while the pure amusics demonstrated typical categorical perception of lexical tones, indicating that the deficit of pitch processing in music does not necessarily result in the deficit in the categorical perception of lexical tones. The different performance between congenital amusics with and without tone agnosia provides a new perspective on the proposition of the relationship between music and speech perception.

Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages.

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Violaine Michel Lange

Full Text Available Grammatical words represent the part of grammar that can be most directly contrasted with the lexicon. Aphasiological studies, linguistic theories and psycholinguistic studies suggest that their processing is operated at different stages in speech production. Models of sentence production propose that at the formulation stage, lexical words are processed at the functional level while grammatical words are processed at a later positional level. In this study we consider proposals made by linguistic theories and psycholinguistic models to derive two predictions for the processing of grammatical words compared to lexical words. First, based on the assumption that grammatical words are less crucial for communication and therefore paid less attention to, it is predicted that they show shorter articulation times and/or higher error rates than lexical words. Second, based on the assumption that grammatical words differ from lexical words in being dependent on a lexical host, it is hypothesized that the retrieval of a grammatical word has to be put on hold until its lexical host is available, and it is predicted that this is reflected in longer reaction times (RTs for grammatical compared to lexical words. We investigated these predictions by comparing fully homonymous sentences with only a difference in verb status (grammatical vs. lexical elicited by a specific context. We measured RTs, duration and accuracy rate. No difference in duration was observed. Longer RTs and a lower accuracy rate for grammatical words were reported, successfully reflecting grammatical word properties as defined by linguistic theories and psycholinguistic models. Importantly, this study provides insight into the span of encoding and grammatical encoding processes in speech production.

Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages

Science.gov (United States)

Messerschmidt, Maria; Harder, Peter; Siebner, Hartwig Roman; Boye, Kasper

2017-01-01

Grammatical words represent the part of grammar that can be most directly contrasted with the lexicon. Aphasiological studies, linguistic theories and psycholinguistic studies suggest that their processing is operated at different stages in speech production. Models of sentence production propose that at the formulation stage, lexical words are processed at the functional level while grammatical words are processed at a later positional level. In this study we consider proposals made by linguistic theories and psycholinguistic models to derive two predictions for the processing of grammatical words compared to lexical words. First, based on the assumption that grammatical words are less crucial for communication and therefore paid less attention to, it is predicted that they show shorter articulation times and/or higher error rates than lexical words. Second, based on the assumption that grammatical words differ from lexical words in being dependent on a lexical host, it is hypothesized that the retrieval of a grammatical word has to be put on hold until its lexical host is available, and it is predicted that this is reflected in longer reaction times (RTs) for grammatical compared to lexical words. We investigated these predictions by comparing fully homonymous sentences with only a difference in verb status (grammatical vs. lexical) elicited by a specific context. We measured RTs, duration and accuracy rate. No difference in duration was observed. Longer RTs and a lower accuracy rate for grammatical words were reported, successfully reflecting grammatical word properties as defined by linguistic theories and psycholinguistic models. Importantly, this study provides insight into the span of encoding and grammatical encoding processes in speech production. PMID:29091940

Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages.

Science.gov (United States)

Michel Lange, Violaine; Messerschmidt, Maria; Harder, Peter; Siebner, Hartwig Roman; Boye, Kasper

2017-01-01

Grammatical words represent the part of grammar that can be most directly contrasted with the lexicon. Aphasiological studies, linguistic theories and psycholinguistic studies suggest that their processing is operated at different stages in speech production. Models of sentence production propose that at the formulation stage, lexical words are processed at the functional level while grammatical words are processed at a later positional level. In this study we consider proposals made by linguistic theories and psycholinguistic models to derive two predictions for the processing of grammatical words compared to lexical words. First, based on the assumption that grammatical words are less crucial for communication and therefore paid less attention to, it is predicted that they show shorter articulation times and/or higher error rates than lexical words. Second, based on the assumption that grammatical words differ from lexical words in being dependent on a lexical host, it is hypothesized that the retrieval of a grammatical word has to be put on hold until its lexical host is available, and it is predicted that this is reflected in longer reaction times (RTs) for grammatical compared to lexical words. We investigated these predictions by comparing fully homonymous sentences with only a difference in verb status (grammatical vs. lexical) elicited by a specific context. We measured RTs, duration and accuracy rate. No difference in duration was observed. Longer RTs and a lower accuracy rate for grammatical words were reported, successfully reflecting grammatical word properties as defined by linguistic theories and psycholinguistic models. Importantly, this study provides insight into the span of encoding and grammatical encoding processes in speech production.

Lexical and constructional organization of argument structure: a contrastive analysis

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Pedersen, Johan

2009-01-01

Abstract. In this chapter I outline some principles for a contrastive analysis of basic clausal expressions in English and Spanish. They are formulated within a general framework of Cognitive Linguistics. The proposed principles for cross-linguistic variation are a challenge to the principles...... of parametric variation in syntax as envisioned in Chomsky (1981) and defended by Snyder (2001). From a theory-internal point of view, they lead to a reinterpretation of Talmy's descriptive typology of macro-events (Talmy 1991, 2000). Particularly, they solve a serious flaw in Talmy's typology due to his......) lexical constructions (e.g. Croft 2001; Fillmore 1988; Goldberg 1995, 2006). In addition, clausal expressions are, according to some CXG-frameworks (e.g. Croft 2001), supposed to be built on language-specific construction types. I hypothesize that languages may differ according to the level...

Exploiting Lexical Regularities in Designing Natural Language Systems.

Science.gov (United States)

1988-04-01

ELEMENT. PROJECT. TASKN Artificial Inteligence Laboratory A1A4WR NTumet 0) 545 Technology Square Cambridge, MA 02139 Ln *t- CONTROLLING OFFICE NAME AND...RO-RI95 922 EXPLOITING LEXICAL REGULARITIES IN DESIGNING NATURAL 1/1 LANGUAGE SYSTENS(U) MASSACHUSETTS INST OF TECH CAMBRIDGE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE...oes.ary and ftdou.Ip hr Nl wow" L,2This paper presents the lexical component of the START Question Answering system developed at the MIT Artificial

On the Relation between the General Affective Meaning and the Basic Sublexical, Lexical, and Inter-lexical Features of Poetic Texts-A Case Study Using 57 Poems of H. M. Enzensberger.

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Ullrich, Susann; Aryani, Arash; Kraxenberger, Maria; Jacobs, Arthur M; Conrad, Markus

2016-01-01

The literary genre of poetry is inherently related to the expression and elicitation of emotion via both content and form. To explore the nature of this affective impact at an extremely basic textual level, we collected ratings on eight different general affective meaning scales-valence, arousal, friendliness, sadness, spitefulness, poeticity, onomatopoeia, and liking-for 57 German poems (" die verteidigung der wölfe ") which the contemporary author H. M. Enzensberger had labeled as either "friendly," "sad," or "spiteful." Following Jakobson's (1960) view on the vivid interplay of hierarchical text levels, we used multiple regression analyses to explore the specific influences of affective features from three different text levels (sublexical, lexical, and inter-lexical) on the perceived general affective meaning of the poems using three types of predictors: (1) Lexical predictor variables capturing the mean valence and arousal potential of words; (2) Inter-lexical predictors quantifying peaks, ranges, and dynamic changes within the lexical affective content; (3) Sublexical measures of basic affective tone according to sound-meaning correspondences at the sublexical level (see Aryani et al., 2016). We find the lexical predictors to account for a major amount of up to 50% of the variance in affective ratings. Moreover, inter-lexical and sublexical predictors account for a large portion of additional variance in the perceived general affective meaning . Together, the affective properties of all used textual features account for 43-70% of the variance in the affective ratings and still for 23-48% of the variance in the more abstract aesthetic ratings. In sum, our approach represents a novel method that successfully relates a prominent part of variance in perceived general affective meaning in this corpus of German poems to quantitative estimates of affective properties of textual components at the sublexical, lexical, and inter-lexical level.

On the Relation between the General Affective Meaning and the Basic Sublexical, Lexical, and Inter-lexical Features of Poetic Texts—A Case Study Using 57 Poems of H. M. Enzensberger

Science.gov (United States)

Ullrich, Susann; Aryani, Arash; Kraxenberger, Maria; Jacobs, Arthur M.; Conrad, Markus

2017-01-01

The literary genre of poetry is inherently related to the expression and elicitation of emotion via both content and form. To explore the nature of this affective impact at an extremely basic textual level, we collected ratings on eight different general affective meaning scales—valence, arousal, friendliness, sadness, spitefulness, poeticity, onomatopoeia, and liking—for 57 German poems (“die verteidigung der wölfe”) which the contemporary author H. M. Enzensberger had labeled as either “friendly,” “sad,” or “spiteful.” Following Jakobson's (1960) view on the vivid interplay of hierarchical text levels, we used multiple regression analyses to explore the specific influences of affective features from three different text levels (sublexical, lexical, and inter-lexical) on the perceived general affective meaning of the poems using three types of predictors: (1) Lexical predictor variables capturing the mean valence and arousal potential of words; (2) Inter-lexical predictors quantifying peaks, ranges, and dynamic changes within the lexical affective content; (3) Sublexical measures of basic affective tone according to sound-meaning correspondences at the sublexical level (see Aryani et al., 2016). We find the lexical predictors to account for a major amount of up to 50% of the variance in affective ratings. Moreover, inter-lexical and sublexical predictors account for a large portion of additional variance in the perceived general affective meaning. Together, the affective properties of all used textual features account for 43–70% of the variance in the affective ratings and still for 23–48% of the variance in the more abstract aesthetic ratings. In sum, our approach represents a novel method that successfully relates a prominent part of variance in perceived general affective meaning in this corpus of German poems to quantitative estimates of affective properties of textual components at the sublexical, lexical, and inter-lexical level

Lexical and Grammatical Collocations in Writing Production of EFL Learners

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Maryam Bahardoust

2012-05-01

Full Text Available Lewis (1993 recognized significance of word combinations including collocations by presenting lexical approach. Because of the crucial role of collocation in vocabulary acquisition, this research set out to evaluate the rate of collocations in Iranian EFL learners' writing production across L1 and L2. In addition, L1 interference with L2 collocational use in the learner' writing samples was studied. To achieve this goal, 200 Persian EFL learners at BA level were selected. These participants were taking paragraph writing and essay writing courses in two successive semesters. As for the data analysis, mid-term, final exam, and also the assignments of L2 learners were evaluated. Because of the nominal nature of the data, chi-square test was utilized for data analysis. Then, the rate of lexical and grammatical collocations was calculated. Results showed that the lexical collocations outnumbered the grammatical collocations. Different categories of lexical collocations were also compared with regard to their frequencies in EFL writing production. The rate of the verb-noun and adjective-noun collocations appeared to be the highest and noun-verb collocations the lowest. The results also showed that L1 had both positive and negative effect on the occurrence of both grammatical and lexical collocations.

Interaction between lexical and grammatical language systems in the brain

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Ardila, Alfredo

2012-06-01

This review concentrates on two different language dimensions: lexical/semantic and grammatical. This distinction between a lexical/semantic system and a grammatical system is well known in linguistics, but in cognitive neurosciences it has been obscured by the assumption that there are several forms of language disturbances associated with focal brain damage and hence language includes a diversity of functions (phoneme discrimination, lexical memory, grammar, repetition, language initiation ability, etc.), each one associated with the activity of a specific brain area. The clinical observation of patients with cerebral pathology shows that there are indeed only two different forms of language disturbances (disturbances in the lexical/semantic system and disturbances in the grammatical system); these two language dimensions are supported by different brain areas (temporal and frontal) in the left hemisphere. Furthermore, these two aspects of the language are developed at different ages during child's language acquisition, and they probably appeared at different historical moments during human evolution. Mechanisms of learning are different for both language systems: whereas the lexical/semantic knowledge is based in a declarative memory, grammatical knowledge corresponds to a procedural type of memory. Recognizing these two language dimensions can be crucial in understanding language evolution and human cognition.

Lexicalization of idioms in urban fifth graders: a reaction time study.

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Qualls, Constance Dean; Treaster, Beth; Blood, Gordon W; Hammer, Carol Scheffner

2003-01-01

Idioms are an important aspect of language that comprises a sizeable portion of our vocabulary. However, lexical access research has largely been limited to understanding how literal words are accessed and processed in the mental lexicon. Adult data show that idioms are quickly accessed from the lexicon and are likely processed as long words [J. Verbal Learn. Verbal Behav. 18 (1979) 523]. The purpose of this study was to examine lexicalization of idioms in a group of school-aged children. Using a phrase classification design, this research tested the Lexical Representation Hypothesis [J. Verbal Learn. Verbal Behav. 18 (1979) 523] in 19 urban fifth graders (5 boys, 14 girls; M age=10.16 years). On a computer, the students classified 54 phrases, including 24 idioms (high, moderate, and low familiarity [J. Speech Hear. Res. 36 (1993) 728]), 24 grammatical control word strings and 6 unrelated foils as either idioms or nonidioms. The idioms were identified with 62% accuracy. Unexpectedly, the boys tended to show higher rates of accuracy than the girls. Response latencies were shorter on the idioms compared to the controls and high familiarity idioms were processed faster than moderate and low familiarity idioms. These findings provide developmental data for lexicalization of idioms and the relationship between lexicalization and familiarity. At the cocnlusion of this articel, the reader will be able to: (1). discuss the various theories of idiom access and processing, (2). discuss how lexical access relates to idiom knowledge in school-aged children, and (3). consider the association between lexical access and familiarity relative to idiom comprehension in school-aged children.

Identification and Definition of Lexically Ambiguous Words in Statistics by Tutors and Students

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Richardson, Alice M.; Dunn, Peter K.; Hutchins, Rene

2013-01-01

Lexical ambiguity arises when a word from everyday English is used differently in a particular discipline, such as statistics. This paper reports on a project that begins by identifying tutors' perceptions of words that are potentially lexically ambiguous to students, in two different ways. Students' definitions of nine lexically ambiguous words…

Effects of cigarette smoking on lexical decision-making.

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Hale, C R; Gentry, M V; Meliska, C J

1999-02-01

10 habitual smokers, aged 19-25 yr., were randomly assigned to smoke either a very low nicotine "Placebo" cigarette (.05-mg nicotine delivery as estimated by the FTC method) or a Nicotine cigarette (.7-mg estimated nicotine delivery). Each participant was asked to abstain from smoking for 4 to 7 hr. prior to testing. After completing a presmoking test of lexical decision-making, participants smoked either a Nicotine or Placebo cigarette and were then retested for reaction times and accuracy on the lexical decision test. When presented the most difficult lexical decisions, participants responded significantly faster after smoking a Nicotine cigarette than they did before smoking; smoking a Placebo cigarette did not affect reaction times. Response accuracy was unaffected by smoking either kind of cigarette. These results suggest that smoking a nicotine cigarette may improve attention or memory retrieval after several hours of smoking abstinence.

The Emar Lexical Texts

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Gantzert, Merijn

2011-01-01

This four-part work provides a philological analysis and a theoretical interpretation of the cuneiform lexical texts found in the Late Bronze Age city of Emar, in present-day Syria. These word and sign lists, commonly dated to around 1100 BC, were almost all found in the archive of a single school.

Lexical access changes in patients with multiple sclerosis: a two-year follow-up study.

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Sepulcre, Jorge; Peraita, Herminia; Goni, Joaquin; Arrondo, Gonzalo; Martincorena, Inigo; Duque, Beatriz; Velez de Mendizabal, Nieves; Masdeu, Joseph C; Villoslada, Pablo

2011-02-01

The aim of the study was to analyze lexical access strategies in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) and their changes over time. We studied lexical access strategies during semantic and phonemic verbal fluency tests and also confrontation naming in a 2-year prospective cohort of 45 MS patients and 20 healthy controls. At baseline, switching lexical access strategy (both in semantic and in phonemic verbal fluency tests) and confrontation naming were significantly impaired in MS patients compared with controls. After 2 years follow-up, switching score decreased, and cluster size increased over time in semantic verbal fluency tasks, suggesting a failure in the retrieval of lexical information rather than an impairment of the lexical pool. In conclusion, these findings underline the significant presence of lexical access problems in patients with MS and could point out their key role in the alterations of high-level communications abilities in MS.

Measuring Lexical Diversity in Narrative Discourse of People with Aphasia

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Fergadiotis, Gerasimos; Wright, Heather H.; West, Thomas M.

2013-01-01

Purpose: A microlinguistic content analysis for assessing lexical semantics in people with aphasia (PWA) is lexical diversity (LD). Sophisticated techniques have been developed to measure LD. However, validity evidence for these methodologies when applied to the discourse of PWA is lacking. The purpose of this study was to evaluate four measures…

Flexible recruitment of semantic richness: Context modulates body-object interaction effects in lexical-semantic processing

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Cody eTousignant

2012-03-01

Full Text Available Body-object interaction (BOI is a semantic richness variable that measures the perceived ease with which the human body can physically interact with a word’s referent. Lexical and semantic processing is facilitated when words are associated with relatively more bodily experience (high BOI words, e.g., belt. To date, BOI effects have been examined in only one semantic decision context (is it imageable?. It has been argued that semantic processing is dynamic and can be modulated by context. We examined these influences by testing how task knowledge modulated BOI effects. We presented the same stimuli (high- and low-BOI entity words and a set of action words in each of four action/entity semantic categorization tasks (SCTs. Task framing was manipulated: participants were told about one (actions or entities or both (actions and entities categories of words in the decision task. Facilitatory BOI effects were observed when participants knew that ‘entity’ was part of the decision category, regardless of whether the high- and low-BOI entity words appeared on the affirmative or negative side of the decision. That BOI information was only useful when participants had expectations that object words would be presented suggests a strong role for the decision context in lexical-semantic processing, and supports a dynamic view of conceptual knowledge.

Lexical Competition Effects in Aphasia: Deactivation of Lexical Candidates in Spoken Word Processing

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Janse, Esther

2006-01-01

Research has shown that Broca's and Wernicke's aphasic patients show different impairments in auditory lexical processing. The results of an experiment with form-overlapping primes showed an inhibitory effect of form-overlap for control adults and a weak inhibition trend for Broca's aphasic patients, but a facilitatory effect of form-overlap was…

Evidence for a differential interference of noise in sub-lexical and lexical reading routes in healthy participants and dyslexics.

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Pina Rodrigues, Ana; Rebola, José; Jorge, Helena; Ribeiro, Maria José; Pereira, Marcelino; Castelo-Branco, Miguel; van Asselen, Marieke

The ineffective exclusion of surrounding noise has been proposed to underlie the reading deficits in developmental dyslexia. However, previous studies supporting this hypothesis focused on low-level visual tasks, providing only an indirect link of noise interference on reading processes. In this study, we investigated the effect of noise on regular, irregular, and pseudoword reading in 23 dyslexic children and 26 age- and IQ-matched controls, by applying the white noise displays typically used to validate this theory to a lexical decision task. Reading performance and eye movements were measured. Results showed that white noise did not consistently affect dyslexic readers more than typical readers. Noise affected more dyslexic than typical readers in terms of reading accuracy, but it affected more typical than dyslexic readers in terms of response time and eye movements (number of fixations and regressions). Furthermore, in typical readers, noise affected more the speed of reading of pseudowords than real words. These results suggest a particular impact of noise on the sub-lexical reading route where attention has to be deployed to individual letters. The use of a lexical route would reduce the effect of noise. A differential impact of noise between words and pseudowords may therefore not be evident in dyslexic children if they are not yet proficient in using the lexical route. These findings indicate that the type of reading stimuli and consequent reading strategies play an important role in determining the effects of noise interference in reading processing and should be taken into account by further studies.

Lexical bundles in an advanced INTOCSU writing class and engineering texts: A functional analysis

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Alquraishi, Mohammed Abdulrahman

The purpose of this study is to investigate the functions of lexical bundles in two corpora: a corpus of engineering academic texts and a corpus of IEP advanced writing class texts. This study is concerned with the nature of formulaic language in Pathway IEPs and engineering texts, and whether those types of texts show similar or distinctive formulaic functions. Moreover, the study looked into lexical bundles found in an engineering 1.26 million-word corpus and an ESL 65000-word corpus using a concordancing program. The study then analyzed the functions of those lexical bundles and compared them statistically using chi-square tests. Additionally, the results of this investigation showed 236 unique frequent lexical bundles in the engineering corpus and 37 bundles in the pathway corpus. Also, the study identified several differences between the density and functions of lexical bundles in the two corpora. These differences were evident in the distribution of functions of lexical bundles and the minimal overlap of lexical bundles found in the two corpora. The results of this study call for more attention to formulaic language at ESP and EAP programs.

Differential impact of thalamic versus subthalamic deep brain stimulation on lexical processing.

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Krugel, Lea K; Ehlen, Felicitas; Tiedt, Hannes O; Kühn, Andrea A; Klostermann, Fabian

2014-10-01

Roles of subcortical structures in language processing are vague, but, interestingly, basal ganglia and thalamic Deep Brain Stimulation can go along with reduced lexical capacities. To deepen the understanding of this impact, we assessed word processing as a function of thalamic versus subthalamic Deep Brain Stimulation. Ten essential tremor patients treated with thalamic and 14 Parkinson׳s disease patients with subthalamic Deep Brain Stimulation performed an acoustic Lexical Decision Task ON and OFF stimulation. Combined analysis of task performance and event-related potentials allowed the determination of processing speed, priming effects, and N400 as neurophysiological correlate of lexical stimulus processing. 12 age-matched healthy participants acted as control subjects. Thalamic Deep Brain Stimulation prolonged word decisions and reduced N400 potentials. No comparable ON-OFF effects were present in patients with subthalamic Deep Brain Stimulation. In the latter group of patients with Parkinson' disease, N400 amplitudes were, however, abnormally low, whether under active or inactive Deep Brain Stimulation. In conclusion, performance speed and N400 appear to be influenced by state functions, modulated by thalamic, but not subthalamic Deep Brain Stimulation, compatible with concepts of thalamo-cortical engagement in word processing. Clinically, these findings specify cognitive sequels of Deep Brain Stimulation in a target-specific way. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Lexical Orthographic Knowledge Develops from the Beginning of Literacy Acquisition

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Martinet, Catherine; Valdois, Sylviane; Fayol, Michel

2004-01-01

This study reports two experiments assessing the spelling performance of French first graders after 3 months and after 9 months of literacy instruction. The participants were asked to spell high and low frequency irregular words (Experiment 1) and pseudowords, some of which had lexical neighbours (Experiment 2). The lexical database which children…

A Conceptual Space Logic

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nilsson, Jørgen Fischer

1999-01-01

Conceptual spaces have been proposed as topological or geometric means for establishing conceptual structures and models. This paper, after briey reviewing conceptual spaces, focusses on the relationship between conceptual spaces and logical concept languages with operations for combining concepts...... to form concepts. Speci cally is introduced an algebraic concept logic, for which conceptual spaces are installed as semantic domain as replacement for, or enrichment of, the traditional....

Auditing SNOMED CT hierarchical relations based on lexical features of concepts in non-lattice subgraphs.

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Cui, Licong; Bodenreider, Olivier; Shi, Jay; Zhang, Guo-Qiang

2018-02-01

We introduce a structural-lexical approach for auditing SNOMED CT using a combination of non-lattice subgraphs of the underlying hierarchical relations and enriched lexical attributes of fully specified concept names. Our goal is to develop a scalable and effective approach that automatically identifies missing hierarchical IS-A relations. Our approach involves 3 stages. In stage 1, all non-lattice subgraphs of SNOMED CT's IS-A hierarchical relations are extracted. In stage 2, lexical attributes of fully-specified concept names in such non-lattice subgraphs are extracted. For each concept in a non-lattice subgraph, we enrich its set of attributes with attributes from its ancestor concepts within the non-lattice subgraph. In stage 3, subset inclusion relations between the lexical attribute sets of each pair of concepts in each non-lattice subgraph are compared to existing IS-A relations in SNOMED CT. For concept pairs within each non-lattice subgraph, if a subset relation is identified but an IS-A relation is not present in SNOMED CT IS-A transitive closure, then a missing IS-A relation is reported. The September 2017 release of SNOMED CT (US edition) was used in this investigation. A total of 14,380 non-lattice subgraphs were extracted, from which we suggested a total of 41,357 missing IS-A relations. For evaluation purposes, 200 non-lattice subgraphs were randomly selected from 996 smaller subgraphs (of size 4, 5, or 6) within the "Clinical Finding" and "Procedure" sub-hierarchies. Two domain experts confirmed 185 (among 223) suggested missing IS-A relations, a precision of 82.96%. Our results demonstrate that analyzing the lexical features of concepts in non-lattice subgraphs is an effective approach for auditing SNOMED CT. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

A happiness degree predictor using the conceptual data structure for deep learning architectures.

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Pérez-Benito, Francisco Javier; Villacampa-Fernández, Patricia; Conejero, J Alberto; García-Gómez, Juan M; Navarro-Pardo, Esperanza

2017-11-13

Happiness is a universal fundamental human goal. Since the emergence of Positive Psychology, a major focus in psychological research has been to study the role of certain factors in the prediction of happiness. The conventional methodologies are based on linear relationships, such as the commonly used Multivariate Linear Regression (MLR), which may suffer from the lack of representative capacity to the varied psychological features. Using Deep Neural Networks (DNN), we define a Happiness Degree Predictor (H-DP) based on the answers to five psychometric standardized questionnaires. A Data-Structure driven architecture for DNNs (D-SDNN) is proposed for defining a HDP in which the network architecture enables the conceptual interpretation of psychological factors associated to happiness. Four different neural network configurations have been tested, varying the number of neurons and the presence or absence of bias in the hidden layers. Two metrics for evaluating the influence of conceptual dimensions have been defined and computed: one quantifies the influence weight of the conceptual dimension in absolute terms and the other one pinpoints the direction (positive or negative) of the influence. A cross-sectional survey targeting non-institutionalized adult population residing in Spain was completed by 823 cases. The total of 111 elements of the survey are grouped by socio-demographic data and by five psychometric scales (Brief COPE Inventory, EPQR-A, GHQ-28, MOS-SSS and SDHS) measuring several psychological factors acting one as the outcome (SDHS) and the four others as predictors. Our D-SDNN approach provided a better outcome (MSE: 1.46·10 -2 ) than MLR (MSE: 2.30·10 -2 ), hence improving by 37% the predictive accuracy, and allowing to simulate the conceptual structure. We observe a better performance of Deep Neural Networks (DNN) with respect to traditional methodologies. This demonstrates its capability to capture the conceptual structure for predicting happiness

Online Lexical Competition during Spoken Word Recognition and Word Learning in Children and Adults

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Henderson, Lisa; Weighall, Anna; Brown, Helen; Gaskell, Gareth

2013-01-01

Lexical competition that occurs as speech unfolds is a hallmark of adult oral language comprehension crucial to rapid incremental speech processing. This study used pause detection to examine whether lexical competition operates similarly at 7-8 years and tested variables that influence "online" lexical activity in adults. Children…

Predicting the Proficiency Level of Language Learners Using Lexical Indices

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Crossley, Scott A.; Salsbury, Tom; McNamara, Danielle S.

2012-01-01

This study explores how second language (L2) texts written by learners at various proficiency levels can be classified using computational indices that characterize lexical competence. For this study, 100 writing samples taken from 100 L2 learners were analyzed using lexical indices reported by the computational tool Coh-Metrix. The L2 writing…

An explicit statistical model of learning lexical segmentation using multiple cues

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Çöltekin, Ça ̆grı; Nerbonne, John; Lenci, Alessandro; Padró, Muntsa; Poibeau, Thierry; Villavicencio, Aline

2014-01-01

This paper presents an unsupervised and incremental model of learning segmentation that combines multiple cues whose use by children and adults were attested by experimental studies. The cues we exploit in this study are predictability statistics, phonotactics, lexical stress and partial lexical

How logical reasoning mediates the relation between lexical quality and reading comprehension.

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Segers, Eliane; Verhoeven, Ludo

The present study aimed to examine the role of logical reasoning in the relation between lexical quality and reading comprehension in 146 fourth grade Dutch children. We assessed their standardized reading comprehension measure, along with their decoding efficiency and vocabulary as measures of lexical quality, syllogistic reasoning as measure of (verbal) logical reasoning, and nonverbal reasoning as a control measure. Syllogistic reasoning was divided into a measure tapping basic, coherence inferencing skill using logical syllogisms, and a measure tapping elaborative inferencing skill using indeterminate syllogisms. Results showed that both types of syllogisms partly mediated the relation between lexical quality and reading comprehension, but also had a unique additional effect on reading comprehension. The indirect effect of lexical quality on reading comprehension via syllogisms was driven by vocabulary knowledge. It is concluded that measures of syllogistic reasoning account for higher-order thinking processes that are needed to make inferences in reading comprehension. The role of lexical quality appears to be pivotal in explaining the variation in reading comprehension both directly and indirectly via syllogistic reasoning.

Cascading activation from lexical processing to letter-level processing in written word production.

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Buchwald, Adam; Falconer, Carolyn

2014-01-01

Descriptions of language production have identified processes involved in producing language and the presence and type of interaction among those processes. In the case of spoken language production, consensus has emerged that there is interaction among lexical selection processes and phoneme-level processing. This issue has received less attention in written language production. In this paper, we present a novel analysis of the writing-to-dictation performance of an individual with acquired dysgraphia revealing cascading activation from lexical processing to letter-level processing. The individual produced frequent lexical-semantic errors (e.g., chipmunk → SQUIRREL) as well as letter errors (e.g., inhibit → INBHITI) and had a profile consistent with impairment affecting both lexical processing and letter-level processing. The presence of cascading activation is suggested by lower letter accuracy on words that are more weakly activated during lexical selection than on those that are more strongly activated. We operationalize weakly activated lexemes as those lexemes that are produced as lexical-semantic errors (e.g., lethal in deadly → LETAHL) compared to strongly activated lexemes where the intended target word (e.g., lethal) is the lexeme selected for production.

Conceptual Design of a Floating Support Structure and Mooring System for a Vertical Axis Wind Turbine

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Berthelsen, Petter Andreas; Fylling, Ivar; Vita, Luca

2012-01-01

This paper deals with the conceptual design of a floating support structure and mooring system for a 5MW vertical axis offshore wind turbine. The work is carried out as part of the DeepWind project, where the main objective is to investigate the feasibility of a floating vertical axis offshore wind...... turbine. The DeepWind concept consists of a Darrieus rotor mounted on a spar buoy support structure. The conceptual design is carried out in an iterative process, involving the different subcomponents. The present work is part of the first design iteration and the objective is to find a feasible floating...... support structure and mooring system for the DeepWind concept. The conceptual design is formulated as an optimization problem: Starting with an initial configuration, the optimization procedure tries to find a cheaper solution while satisfying a set of design requirements. This approach utilizes available...

Lexical and sublexical units in speech perception.

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Giroux, Ibrahima; Rey, Arnaud

2009-03-01

Saffran, Newport, and Aslin (1996a) found that human infants are sensitive to statistical regularities corresponding to lexical units when hearing an artificial spoken language. Two sorts of segmentation strategies have been proposed to account for this early word-segmentation ability: bracketing strategies, in which infants are assumed to insert boundaries into continuous speech, and clustering strategies, in which infants are assumed to group certain speech sequences together into units (Swingley, 2005). In the present study, we test the predictions of two computational models instantiating each of these strategies i.e., Serial Recurrent Networks: Elman, 1990; and Parser: Perruchet & Vinter, 1998 in an experiment where we compare the lexical and sublexical recognition performance of adults after hearing 2 or 10 min of an artificial spoken language. The results are consistent with Parser's predictions and the clustering approach, showing that performance on words is better than performance on part-words only after 10 min. This result suggests that word segmentation abilities are not merely due to stronger associations between sublexical units but to the emergence of stronger lexical representations during the development of speech perception processes. Copyright © 2009, Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Restrições à ocorrência da CV e do pronome lexical sujeitos no português

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Eliane Mourão

2012-11-01

Full Text Available AbstractAnalysis of the presence of an empty category and a lexical pronoun in the subject position of tensed clauses in Portuguese. Identification of general structural factors which determine a restriction pattern for the occurence of these categories; and identification of structural factors which are specific to particular types of sentences and which determine change in the pattern.

Formalizing the Process of Constructing Chains of Lexical Units

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Grigorij Chetverikov

2015-06-01

Full Text Available Formalizing the Process of Constructing Chains of Lexical Units The paper investigates mathematical aspects of describing the construction of chains of lexical units on the basis of finite-predicate algebra. Analyzing the construction peculiarities is carried out and application of the method of finding the power of linear logical transformation for removing characteristic words of a dictionary entry is given. Analysis and perspectives of the results of the study are provided.

ERP correlates of letter identity and letter position are modulated by lexical frequency

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Vergara-Martínez, Marta; Perea, Manuel; Gómez, Pablo; Swaab, Tamara Y.

2013-01-01

The encoding of letter position is a key aspect in all recently proposed models of visual-word recognition. We analyzed the impact of lexical frequency on letter position assignment by examining the temporal dynamics of lexical activation induced by pseudowords extracted from words of different frequencies. For each word (e.g., BRIDGE), we created two pseudowords: A transposed-letter (TL: BRIGDE) and a replaced-letter pseudoword (RL: BRITGE). ERPs were recorded while participants read words and pseudowords in two tasks: Semantic categorization (Experiment 1) and lexical decision (Experiment 2). For high-frequency stimuli, similar ERPs were obtained for words and TL-pseudowords, but the N400 component to words was reduced relative to RL-pseudowords, indicating less lexical/semantic activation. In contrast, TL- and RL-pseudowords created from low-frequency stimuli elicited similar ERPs. Behavioral responses in the lexical decision task paralleled this asymmetry. The present findings impose constraints on computational and neural models of visual-word recognition. PMID:23454070

Using Student Writing and Lexical Analysis to Reveal Student Thinking about the Role of Stop Codons in the Central Dogma.

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Prevost, Luanna B; Smith, Michelle K; Knight, Jennifer K

2016-01-01

Previous work has shown that students have persistent difficulties in understanding how central dogma processes can be affected by a stop codon mutation. To explore these difficulties, we modified two multiple-choice questions from the Genetics Concept Assessment into three open-ended questions that asked students to write about how a stop codon mutation potentially impacts replication, transcription, and translation. We then used computer-assisted lexical analysis combined with human scoring to categorize student responses. The lexical analysis models showed high agreement with human scoring, demonstrating that this approach can be successfully used to analyze large numbers of student written responses. The results of this analysis show that students' ideas about one process in the central dogma can affect their thinking about subsequent and previous processes, leading to mixed models of conceptual understanding. © 2016 L. B. Prevost et al. CBE—Life Sciences Education © 2016 The American Society for Cell Biology. This article is distributed by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from the author(s). It is available to the public under an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0).

Conceptual design of an L-band recirculating superconducting traveling wave accelerating structure for ILC

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Avrakhov, P.; Kanareykin, A.; Liu, Z.; Kazakov, S.; KEK, Tsukuba; Solyak, N.; Yakovlev, V.; Gai, W.

2007-01-01

With this paper, we propose the conceptual design of a traveling wave accelerating structure for a superconducting accelerator. The overall goal is to study a traveling wave (TW) superconducting (SC) accelerating structure for ILC that allows an increased accelerating gradient and, therefore reduction of the length of the collider. The conceptual studies were performed in order to optimize the acceleration structure design by minimizing the surface fields inside the cavity of the structure, to make the design compatible with existing technology, and to determine the maximum achievable gain in the accelerating gradient. The proposed solution considers RF feedback system redirecting the accelerating wave that passed through the superconducting traveling wave acceleration (STWA) section back to the input of the accelerating structure. The STWA structure has more cells per unit length than a TESLA structure but provides an accelerating gradient higher than a TESLA structure, consequently reducing the cost. In this paper, the STWA cell shape optimization, coupler cell design and feedback waveguide solution are considered. We also discuss the field flatness in the superconducting TW structure, the HOM modes and multipactor performance have been studied as well. The proposed TW structure design gives an overall 46% gain over the SW ILC structure if the 10 m long TW structure is employed

Lexical Characteristics of Expressive Vocabulary in Toddlers with Autism Spectrum Disorder

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Kover, Sara T.; Weismer, Susan Ellis

2014-01-01

Purpose: Vocabulary is a domain of particular challenge for many children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Recent research has drawn attention to ways in which lexical characteristics relate to vocabulary acquisition. The current study tested the hypothesis that lexical characteristics account for variability in vocabulary size of young…

Lexical Development during Middle Infancy: A Mutually Driven Infant-Caregiver Process.

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Dunham, Philip; Dunham, Frances

1992-01-01

Mothers' utterances were measured during interactions with their 13-month-old infants and correlated with measures of infants' productive lexical development at 13 and 24 months. Correlations between maternal measures and infants' lexical development were lower for employed mothers than for mothers who were full-time caregivers. (BC)

The Interaction of Lexical Characteristics and Speech Production in Parkinson's Disease

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Chiu, Yi-Fang; Forrest, Karen

2017-01-01

Purpose: This study sought to investigate the interaction of speech movement execution with higher order lexical parameters. The authors examined how lexical characteristics affect speech output in individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) and healthy control (HC) speakers. Method: Twenty speakers with PD and 12 healthy speakers read sentences…

A word association response approach toward lexical relationships within the mental lexicon of second language learners: pedagogic ideas from testing McCarthy's theories on Japanese students.

Science.gov (United States)

Murphy, Robert S; Post, Michael D

2009-06-01

Through use of word association as detailed in McCarthy (1990) this paper will explore pedagogic implications derived from the following three points in relation to the lexical development of Japanese learners of English: 1) the ability of word association tests to examine the mental links between words in learners' developing mental lexicon, 2) the importance of phonological similarities for lower level students and 3) the correlation between the results from a word association test with the characteristic types of word association patterns discussed in McCarthy (1990). It will be argued that while lexical development within the mental lexicon is difficult to delineate due to overlap of organizational categories, the patterns of syntactic, semantic and conceptual relations between learned words is apparent within the retrieval process for word association and that additionally, context may play a vital role in how words are construed along the links within the mental lexicon. Pedagogic ideas and future research ideas are detailed.

Conceptual Design of Deployment Structure of Morphing Nose Cone

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Junlan Li

2013-01-01

Full Text Available For a reusable space vehicle or a missile, the shape of the nose cone has a significant effect on the drag of the vehicle. In this paper, the concept of morphing nose cone is proposed to reduce the drag when the reentry vehicle flies back into the atmosphere. The conceptual design of the structure of morphing nose cone is conducted. Mechanical design and optimization approach are developed by employing genetic algorithm to find the optimal geometric parameters of the morphing structure. An example is analyzed by using the proposed method. The results show that optimal solution supplies the minimum position error. The concept of morphing nose cone will provide a novel way for the drag reduction of reentry vehicle. The proposed method could be practically used for the design and optimization of the deployable structure of morphing nose cone.

Acoustic-Phonetic Versus Lexical Processing in Nonnative Listeners Differing in Their Dominant Language.

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Shi, Lu-Feng; Koenig, Laura L

2016-09-01

Nonnative listeners have difficulty recognizing English words due to underdeveloped acoustic-phonetic and/or lexical skills. The present study used Boothroyd and Nittrouer's (1988)j factor to tease apart these two components of word recognition. Participants included 15 native English and 29 native Russian listeners. Fourteen and 15 of the Russian listeners reported English (ED) and Russian (RD) to be their dominant language, respectively. Listeners were presented 119 consonant-vowel-consonant real and nonsense words in speech-spectrum noise at +6 dB SNR. Responses were scored for word and phoneme recognition, the logarithmic quotient of which yielded j. Word and phoneme recognition was comparable between native and ED listeners but poorer in RD listeners. Analysis of j indicated less effective use of lexical information in RD than in native and ED listeners. Lexical processing was strongly correlated with the length of residence in the United States. Language background is important for nonnative word recognition. Lexical skills can be regarded as nativelike in ED nonnative listeners. Compromised word recognition in ED listeners is unlikely a result of poor lexical processing. Performance should be interpreted with caution for listeners dominant in their first language, whose word recognition is affected by both lexical and acoustic-phonetic factors.

Neural correlates reveal sub-lexical orthography and phonology during reading aloud: A review

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Kalinka eTimmer

2014-08-01

Full Text Available The sub-lexical conversion of graphemes-to-phonemes (GPC during reading has been investigated extensively with behavioral measures, as well as event-related potentials (ERPs. Most research utilizes silent reading (e.g., lexical decision task for which phonological activation is not a necessity. However, recent research employed reading aloud to capture sub-lexical GPC. The masked priming paradigm avoids strategic processing and is therefore well suitable for capturing sub-lexical processing instead of lexical effects. By employing ERPs, the on-line time course of sub-lexical GPC can be observed before the overt response. ERPs have revealed that besides phonological activation, as revealed by behavioral studies, there is also early orthographic activation. This review describes studies in one’s native language, in one’s second language, and in a cross-language situation. We discuss the implications the ERP results have on different (computational models. First, the ERP results show that computational models should assume an early locus of the grapheme-to-phoneme-conversion (GPC. Second, cross-language studies reveal that the phonological representations from both languages of a bilingual become activated automatically and the phonology belonging to the context is selected rapidly. Therefore, it is important to extend the scope of computational models of reading (aloud to multiple lexicons.

Lexical Planning in Sentence Production Is Highly Incremental: Evidence from ERPs.

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Zhao, Li-Ming; Yang, Yu-Fang

2016-01-01

The scope of lexical planning, which means how far ahead speakers plan lexically before they start producing an utterance, is an important issue for research into speech production, but remains highly controversial. The present research investigated this issue using the semantic blocking effect, which refers to the widely observed effects that participants take longer to say aloud the names of items in pictures when the pictures in a block of trials in an experiment depict items that belong to the same semantic category than different categories. As this effect is often interpreted as a reflection of difficulty in lexical selection, the current study took the semantic blocking effect and its associated pattern of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) as a proxy to test whether lexical planning during sentence production extends beyond the first noun when a subject noun-phrase includes two nouns, such as "The chair and the boat are both red" and "The chair above the boat is red". The results showed a semantic blocking effect both in onset latencies and in ERPs during the utterance of the first noun of these complex noun-phrases but not for the second noun. The indication, therefore, is that the lexical planning scope does not encompass this second noun-phrase. Indeed, the present findings are in line with accounts that propose radically incremental lexical planning, in which speakers plan ahead only one word at a time. This study also provides a highly novel example of using ERPs to examine the production of long utterances, and it is hoped the present demonstration of the effectiveness of this approach inspires further application of ERP techniques in this area of research.

NeoCASS: An integrated tool for structural sizing, aeroelastic analysis and MDO at conceptual design level

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Cavagna, Luca; Ricci, Sergio; Travaglini, Lorenzo

2011-11-01

This paper presents a design framework called NeoCASS (Next generation Conceptual Aero-Structural Sizing Suite), developed at the Department of Aerospace Engineering of Politecnico di Milano in the frame of SimSAC (Simulating Aircraft Stability And Control Characteristics for Use in Conceptual Design) project, funded by EU in the context of 6th Framework Program. It enables the creation of efficient low-order, medium fidelity models particularly suitable for structural sizing, aeroelastic analysis and optimization at the conceptual design level. The whole methodology is based on the integration of geometry construction, aerodynamic and structural analysis codes that combine depictive, computational, analytical, and semi-empirical methods, validated in an aircraft design environment. The work here presented aims at including the airframe and its effect from the very beginning of the conceptual design. This aspect is usually not considered in this early phase. In most cases, very simplified formulas and datasheets are adopted, which implies a low level of detail and a poor accuracy. Through NeoCASS, a preliminar distribution of stiffness and inertias can be determined, given the initial layout. The adoption of empirical formulas is reduced to the minimum in favor of simple numerical methods. This allows to consider the aeroelastic behavior and performances, as well, improving the accuracy of the design tools during the iterative steps and lowering the development costs and reducing the time to market. The result achieved is a design tool based on computational methods for the aero-structural analysis and Multi-Disciplinary Optimization (MDO) of aircraft layouts at the conceptual design stage. A complete case study regarding the TransoniCRuiser aircraft, including validation of the results obtained using industrial standard tools like MSC/NASTRAN and a CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) code, is reported. As it will be shown, it is possible to improve the degree of

Structure of conceptual models in the senior operating staff of nuclear power plants

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Oboznov A. A.

2017-09-01

Full Text Available Background. The relationships between conceptual model structures and an operator’s professional efficiency are of direct practical importance, particularly in the case of large-scale industrial complexes combining several human-machine systems. A typical example is the power unit of a nuclear power plant (NPP. Objective and methods. The purpose of this study was to explore the conceptual models of senior reactor operators (SROs of NPPs. The study involved 64 men working as SRO at five NPPs in Russia. The methods included: structured interviews, expert estimations, multidimensional scaling (ALSCAL, the K-means clustering algorithm, and frequency analysis. The procedure was as follows: 32 key characteristics of the power unit were defined, including shift operators’ jobs and duties, technical subsystems, types of equipment, and the crucial power unit parameters. The participants were offered a 32×32 matrix for pair-wise estimation of the strength of the links between these key characteristics on a seven-point scale (496 links in total. Results. A general scheme of key characteristics in the conceptual models was defined. is scheme was displayed in the operators regardless of their employment history. Within the scheme, however, two types of conceptual models were identified, which could be distinguished by the relative number of strong links between the key characteristics. With respect to intersystem links including key characteristics of the reactor and turbine NPP departments, this number was significantly higher in models of Type 1 than in those of Type 2. A positive correlation between the number of these links and the professional efficiency indicators was also established. Operators with Type 1 models were able to more predictably represent the power unit operation. Conclusion. The main role in creating predictable and efficient conceptual models was played by strong intersystem links in mental representations of workflow.

Lexical Organization in Second Language Acquisition: Does the Critical Period Matter?

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Cardimona, Kimberly; Smith, Pamela; Roberts, Lauren Sones

2016-01-01

This study examined lexical organization in English language learners (ELLs) who acquired their second language (L2) either during or after the period of maximal sensitivity related to the critical period hypothesis. Twenty-three native-Spanish-speaking ELLs completed psycholinguistic tasks to examine age effects in bilingual lexical organization.…

Lexical Errors and Accuracy in Foreign Language Writing. Second Language Acquisition

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del Pilar Agustin Llach, Maria

2011-01-01

Lexical errors are a determinant in gaining insight into vocabulary acquisition, vocabulary use and writing quality assessment. Lexical errors are very frequent in the written production of young EFL learners, but they decrease as learners gain proficiency. Misspellings are the most common category, but formal errors give way to semantic-based…

Nouns, verbs, objects, actions, and abstractions: local fMRI activity indexes semantics, not lexical categories.

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Moseley, Rachel L; Pulvermüller, Friedemann

2014-05-01

Noun/verb dissociations in the literature defy interpretation due to the confound between lexical category and semantic meaning; nouns and verbs typically describe concrete objects and actions. Abstract words, pertaining to neither, are a critical test case: dissociations along lexical-grammatical lines would support models purporting lexical category as the principle governing brain organisation, whilst semantic models predict dissociation between concrete words but not abstract items. During fMRI scanning, participants read orthogonalised word categories of nouns and verbs, with or without concrete, sensorimotor meaning. Analysis of inferior frontal/insula, precentral and central areas revealed an interaction between lexical class and semantic factors with clear category differences between concrete nouns and verbs but not abstract ones. Though the brain stores the combinatorial and lexical-grammatical properties of words, our data show that topographical differences in brain activation, especially in the motor system and inferior frontal cortex, are driven by semantics and not by lexical class. Copyright © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Contrasting lexical similarity and formal definitions in SNOMED CT: consistency and implications.

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Agrawal, Ankur; Elhanan, Gai

2014-02-01

To quantify the presence of and evaluate an approach for detection of inconsistencies in the formal definitions of SNOMED CT (SCT) concepts utilizing a lexical method. Utilizing SCT's Procedure hierarchy, we algorithmically formulated similarity sets: groups of concepts with similar lexical structure of their fully specified name. We formulated five random samples, each with 50 similarity sets, based on the same parameter: number of parents, attributes, groups, all the former as well as a randomly selected control sample. All samples' sets were reviewed for types of formal definition inconsistencies: hierarchical, attribute assignment, attribute target values, groups, and definitional. For the Procedure hierarchy, 2111 similarity sets were formulated, covering 18.1% of eligible concepts. The evaluation revealed that 38 (Control) to 70% (Different relationships) of similarity sets within the samples exhibited significant inconsistencies. The rate of inconsistencies for the sample with different relationships was highly significant compared to Control, as well as the number of attribute assignment and hierarchical inconsistencies within their respective samples. While, at this time of the HITECH initiative, the formal definitions of SCT are only a minor consideration, in the grand scheme of sophisticated, meaningful use of captured clinical data, they are essential. However, significant portion of the concepts in the most semantically complex hierarchy of SCT, the Procedure hierarchy, are modeled inconsistently in a manner that affects their computability. Lexical methods can efficiently identify such inconsistencies and possibly allow for their algorithmic resolution. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Structure of Complex Verb Forms in Meiteilon

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Lourembam Surjit Singh

2016-12-01

Full Text Available This piece of work proposes to descriptively investigate the structures of complex verbs in Meiteilon. The categorization of such verbs is based on the nature of semantic and syntactic functions of a lexeme or verbal lexeme. A lexeme or verbal lexeme in Meiteilon may have multifunctional properties in the nature of occurrence. Such lexical items can be co-occurred together in a phrase as single functional word. Specifically, in the co-occurrences of two lexical items, the first component of lexical items has different semantic and syntactic functions in comparison to semantic and syntactic functions of the second component of lexical items. Such co-occurrences of two lexical items are the forms of complex verb that are covered with the term complex predicate in this work. The investigation in constructing complex predicate is thoroughly presenting in this work. Keywords: Structures, complex verb, conjunct verb, compound verb, complex predicate

"Thinking about not-thinking": neural correlates of conceptual processing during Zen meditation.

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Giuseppe Pagnoni

2008-09-01

Full Text Available Recent neuroimaging studies have identified a set of brain regions that are metabolically active during wakeful rest and consistently deactivate in a variety the performance of demanding tasks. This "default network" has been functionally linked to the stream of thoughts occurring automatically in the absence of goal-directed activity and which constitutes an aspect of mental behavior specifically addressed by many meditative practices. Zen meditation, in particular, is traditionally associated with a mental state of full awareness but reduced conceptual content, to be attained via a disciplined regulation of attention and bodily posture. Using fMRI and a simplified meditative condition interspersed with a lexical decision task, we investigated the neural correlates of conceptual processing during meditation in regular Zen practitioners and matched control subjects. While behavioral performance did not differ between groups, Zen practitioners displayed a reduced duration of the neural response linked to conceptual processing in regions of the default network, suggesting that meditative training may foster the ability to control the automatic cascade of semantic associations triggered by a stimulus and, by extension, to voluntarily regulate the flow of spontaneous mentation.

Action Priority: Early Neurophysiological Interaction of Conceptual and Motor Representations

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Koester, Dirk; Schack, Thomas

2016-01-01

Handling our everyday life, we often react manually to verbal requests or instruction, but the functional interrelations of motor control and language are not fully understood yet, especially their neurophysiological basis. Here, we investigated whether specific motor representations for grip types interact neurophysiologically with conceptual information, that is, when reading nouns. Participants performed lexical decisions and, for words, executed a grasp-and-lift task on objects of different sizes involving precision or power grips while the electroencephalogram was recorded. Nouns could denote objects that require either a precision or a power grip and could, thus, be (in)congruent with the performed grasp. In a control block, participants pointed at the objects instead of grasping them. The main result revealed an event-related potential (ERP) interaction of grip type and conceptual information which was not present for pointing. Incongruent compared to congruent conditions elicited an increased positivity (100–200 ms after noun onset). Grip type effects were obtained in response-locked analyses of the grasping ERPs (100–300 ms at left anterior electrodes). These findings attest that grip type and conceptual information are functionally related when planning a grasping action but such an interaction could not be detected for pointing. Generally, the results suggest that control of behaviour can be modulated by task demands; conceptual noun information (i.e., associated action knowledge) may gain processing priority if the task requires a complex motor response. PMID:27973539

Both lexical and non-lexical characters are processed during saccadic eye movements.

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Hao Zhang

Full Text Available On average our eyes make 3-5 saccadic movements per second when we read, although their neural mechanism is still unclear. It is generally thought that saccades help redirect the retinal fovea to specific characters and words but that actual discrimination of information only occurs during periods of fixation. Indeed, it has been proposed that there is active and selective suppression of information processing during saccades to avoid experience of blurring due to the high-speed movement. Here, using a paradigm where a string of either lexical (Chinese or non-lexical (alphabetic characters are triggered by saccadic eye movements, we show that subjects can discriminate both while making saccadic eye movement. Moreover, discrimination accuracy is significantly better for characters scanned during the saccadic movement to a fixation point than those not scanned beyond it. Our results showed that character information can be processed during the saccade, therefore saccades during reading not only function to redirect the fovea to fixate the next character or word but allow pre-processing of information from the ones adjacent to the fixation locations to help target the next most salient one. In this way saccades can not only promote continuity in reading words but also actively facilitate reading comprehension.

Exploiting Lexical Ambiguity to Help Students Understand the Meaning of "Random"

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Kaplan, Jennifer J.; Rogness, Neal T.; Fisher, Diane G.

2014-01-01

Words that are part of colloquial English but used differently in a technical domain may possess lexical ambiguity. The use of such words by instructors may inhibit student learning if incorrect connections are made by students between the technical and colloquial meanings. One fundamental word in statistics that has lexical ambiguity for students…

Acoustic and Perceptual Effects of Dysarthria in Greek with a Focus on Lexical Stress

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Papakyritsis, Ioannis

The field of motor speech disorders in Greek is substantially underresearched. Additionally, acoustic studies on lexical stress in dysarthria are generally very rare (Kim et al. 2010). This dissertation examined the acoustic and perceptual effects of Greek dysarthria focusing on lexical stress. Additional possibly deviant speech characteristics were acoustically analyzed. Data from three dysarthric participants and matched controls was analyzed using a case study design. The analysis of lexical stress was based on data drawn from a single word repetition task that included pairs of disyllabic words differentiated by stress location. This data was acoustically analyzed in terms of the use of the acoustic cues for Greek stress. The ability of the dysarthric participants to signal stress in single words was further assessed in a stress identification task carried out by 14 naive Greek listeners. Overall, the acoustic and perceptual data indicated that, although all three dysarthric speakers presented with some difficulty in the patterning of stressed and unstressed syllables, each had different underlying problems that gave rise to quite distinct patterns of deviant speech characteristics. The atypical use of lexical stress cues in Anna's data obscured the prominence relations of stressed and unstressed syllables to the extent that the position of lexical stress was usually not perceptually transparent. Chris and Maria on the other hand, did not have marked difficulties signaling lexical stress location, although listeners were not 100% successful in the stress identification task. For the most part, Chris' atypical phonation patterns and Maria's very slow rate of speech did not interfere with lexical stress signaling. The acoustic analysis of the lexical stress cues was generally in agreement with the participants' performance in the stress identification task. Interestingly, in all three dysarthric participants, but more so in Anna, targets stressed on the 1st

Subgroup differences in the lexical tone mismatch negativity (MMN) among Mandarin speakers with congenital amusia.

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Nan, Yun; Huang, Wan-ting; Wang, Wen-jing; Liu, Chang; Dong, Qi

2016-01-01

The association/dissociation of pitch processing between music and language is a long lasting debate. We examined this music-language relationship by investigating to what extent pitch deficits in these two domains were dissociable. We focused on a special neurodevelopmental pitch disorder - congenital amusia, which primarily affects musical pitch processing. Recent research has also revealed lexical tone deficits in speech among amusics. Approximately one-third of Mandarin amusics exhibits behavioural difficulties in lexical tone perception, which is known as tone agnosia. Using mismatch negativities (MMNs), our current work probed lexical tone encoding at the pre-attentive level among the Mandarin amusics with (tone agnosics) and without (pure amusics) behavioural lexical tone deficits compared with age- and IQ-matched controls. Relative to the controls and the pure amusics, the tone agnosics exhibited reduced MMNs specifically in response to lexical tone changes. Their tone-consonant MMNs were intact and similar to those of the other two groups. Moreover, the tone MMN reduction over the left hemisphere was tightly linked to behavioural insensitivity to lexical tone changes. The current study thus provides the first psychophysiological evidence of subgroup differences in lexical tone processing among Mandarin amusics and links amusics' behavioural tone deficits to impaired pre-attentive tone processing. Despite the overall music pitch deficits, the subgroup differences in lexical tone processing in Mandarin-speaking amusics suggest dissociation of pitch deficits between music and speech. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Interacting Conceptual Spaces

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Bolt, Josef; Coecke, Bob; Genovese, Fabrizio; Lewis, Martha; Marsden, Daniel; Piedeleu, Robin

2016-01-01

We propose applying the categorical compositional scheme of [6] to conceptual space models of cognition. In order to do this we introduce the category of convex relations as a new setting for categorical compositional semantics, emphasizing the convex structure important to conceptual space applications. We show how conceptual spaces for composite types such as adjectives and verbs can be constructed. We illustrate this new model on detailed examples.

The (in)dependence of articulation and lexical planning during isolated word production.

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Buz, Esteban; Jaeger, T Florian

The number of phonological neighbors to a word (PND) can affect its lexical planning and pronunciation. Similar parallel effects on planning and articulation have been observed for other lexical variables, such as a word's contextual predictability. Such parallelism is frequently taken to indicate that effects on articulation are mediated by effects on the time course of lexical planning. We test this mediation assumption for PND and find it unsupported. In a picture naming experiment, we measure speech onset latencies (planning), word durations, and vowel dispersion (articulation). We find that PND predicts both latencies and durations. Further, latencies predict durations. However, the effects of PND and latency on duration are independent: parallel effects do not imply mediation. We discuss the consequences for accounts of lexical planning, articulation, and the link between them. In particular, our results suggest that ease of planning does not explain effects of PND on articulation.

Lexical Access in L2 Speech Production: a controlled serial search task

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Gicele Vergine Vieira

2017-09-01

Full Text Available When it comes to lexical access in L2 speech production, working memory (WM seems to play a central role as for less automatized procedures require more WM capacity to be executed (Prebianca, 2007. With that in mind, this paper aims at claiming that bilingual lexical access qualifies as a controlled serial strategic search task susceptible to individual differences in WM capacity. Evidence in support of such claim is provided by the results of AUTHOR's (2010 study conducted so as to investigate the relationship between L2 lexical access, WMC and L2 proficiency. AUTHOR's (2010 findings indicate that bilingual lexical access entails underlying processes such as cue generation, set delimitation, serial search and monitoring, which to be carried out, require the allocation of attention. Attention is limited and, as a result, only higher spans were able to perform these underlying processes automatically.

Lexical Bundle Analysis in Mathematics Classroom Discourse: The Significance of Stance

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Herbel-Eisenmann, Beth; Wagner, David; Cortes, Viviana

2010-01-01

In this article, we introduce the lexical bundle, defined by corpus linguists as a group of three or more words that frequently recur together, in a single group, in a particular register (Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, & Finegan, 2006; Cortes, "English for Specific Purposes" 23:397-423, 2004). Attention to lexical bundles helps to explore…

Evaluating lexical characteristics of verbal fluency output in schizophrenia.

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Juhasz, Barbara J; Chambers, Destinee; Shesler, Leah W; Haber, Alix; Kurtz, Matthew M

2012-12-30

Standardized lexical analysis of verbal output has not been applied to verbal fluency tasks in schizophrenia. Performance of individuals with schizophrenia on both a letter (n=139) and semantic (n=137) fluency task was investigated. The lexical characteristics (word frequency, age-of-acquisition, word length, and semantic typicality) of words produced were evaluated and compared to those produced by a healthy control group matched on age, gender, and Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Third Edition (WAIS-III) vocabulary scores (n=20). Overall, individuals with schizophrenia produced fewer words than healthy controls, replicating past research (see Bokat and Goldberg, 2003). Words produced in the semantic fluency task by individuals with schizophrenia were, on average, earlier acquired and more typical of the category. In contrast, no differences in lexical characteristics emerged in the letter fluency task. The results are informative regarding how individuals with schizophrenia access their mental lexicons during the verbal fluency task. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Lexical Frames and Reported Speech

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Williams, Howard

2004-01-01

This paper addresses a problem of lexical choice that arises for ESL/EFL learners in the writing of research papers, critiques, interview reports, or any other sort of discourse that requires source attribution. The problem falls naturally into two parts. One part concerns the general lack of linguistic resources typically available (for various…

Newborn infants' sensitivity to perceptual cues to lexical and grammatical words.

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Shi, R; Werker, J F; Morgan, J L

1999-09-30

In our study newborn infants were presented with lists of lexical and grammatical words prepared from natural maternal speech. The results show that newborns are able to categorically discriminate these sets of words based on a constellation of perceptual cues that distinguish them. This general ability to detect and categorically discriminate sets of words on the basis of multiple acoustic and phonological cues may provide a perceptual base that can help older infants bootstrap into the acquisition of grammatical categories and syntactic structure.

The Metamorphosis of the Statistical Segmentation Output: Lexicalization during Artificial Language Learning

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Fernandes, Tania; Kolinsky, Regine; Ventura, Paulo

2009-01-01

This study combined artificial language learning (ALL) with conventional experimental techniques to test whether statistical speech segmentation outputs are integrated into adult listeners' mental lexicon. Lexicalization was assessed through inhibitory effects of novel neighbors (created by the parsing process) on auditory lexical decisions to…

Word Sense Disambiguation Based on Large Scale Polish CLARIN Heterogeneous Lexical Resources

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Paweł Kędzia

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Word Sense Disambiguation Based on Large Scale Polish CLARIN Heterogeneous Lexical Resources Lexical resources can be applied in many different Natural Language Engineering tasks, but the most fundamental task is the recognition of word senses used in text contexts. The problem is difficult, not yet fully solved and different lexical resources provided varied support for it. Polish CLARIN lexical semantic resources are based on the plWordNet — a very large wordnet for Polish — as a central structure which is a basis for linking together several resources of different types. In this paper, several Word Sense Disambiguation (henceforth WSD methods developed for Polish that utilise plWordNet are discussed. Textual sense descriptions in the traditional lexicon can be compared with text contexts using Lesk’s algorithm in order to find best matching senses. In the case of a wordnet, lexico-semantic relations provide the main description of word senses. Thus, first, we adapted and applied to Polish a WSD method based on the Page Rank. According to it, text words are mapped on their senses in the plWordNet graph and Page Rank algorithm is run to find senses with the highest scores. The method presents results lower but comparable to those reported for English. The error analysis showed that the main problems are: fine grained sense distinctions in plWordNet and limited number of connections between words of different parts of speech. In the second approach plWordNet expanded with the mapping onto the SUMO ontology concepts was used. Two scenarios for WSD were investigated: two step disambiguation and disambiguation based on combined networks of plWordNet and SUMO. In the former scenario, words are first assigned SUMO concepts and next plWordNet senses are disambiguated. In latter, plWordNet and SUMO are combined in one large network used next for the disambiguation of senses. The additional knowledge sources used in WSD improved the performance

ERP characterization of sustained attention effects in visual lexical categorization.

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Clara D Martin

Full Text Available As our understanding of the basic processes underlying reading is growing, the key role played by attention in this process becomes evident. Two research topics are of particular interest in this domain: (1 it is still undetermined whether sustained attention affects lexical decision tasks; (2 the influence of attention on early visual processing (i.e., before orthographic or lexico-semantic processing stages remains largely under-specified. Here we investigated early perceptual modulations by sustained attention using an ERP paradigm adapted from Thierry et al. [1]. Participants had to decide whether visual stimuli presented in pairs pertained to a pre-specified category (lexical categorization focus on word or pseudoword pairs. Depending on the lexical category of the first item of a pair, participants either needed to fully process the second item (hold condition or could release their attention and make a decision without full processing of the second item (release condition. The P1 peak was unaffected by sustained attention. The N1 was delayed and reduced after the second item of a pair when participants released their attention. Release of sustained attention also reduced a P3 wave elicited by the first item of a pair and abolished the P3 wave elicited by the second. Our results are consistent with differential effects of sustained attention on early processing stages and working memory. Sustained attention modulated early processing stages during a lexical decision task without inhibiting the process of stimulus integration. On the contrary, working memory involvement/updating was highly dependent upon the allocation of sustained attention. Moreover, the influence of sustained attention on both early and late cognitive processes was independent of lexical categorization focus.

Balancing Generalization and Lexical Conservatism: An Artificial Language Study with Child Learners

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Wonnacott, Elizabeth

2011-01-01

Successful language acquisition involves generalization, but learners must balance this against the acquisition of lexical constraints. Such learning has been considered problematic for theories of acquisition: if learners generalize abstract patterns to new words, how do they learn lexically-based exceptions? One approach claims that learners use…

Nonword repetition in lexical decision: support for two opposing processes.

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Wagenmakers, Eric-Jan; Zeelenberg, René; Steyvers, Mark; Shiffrin, Richard; Raaijmakers, Jeroen

2004-10-01

We tested and confirmed the hypothesis that the prior presentation of nonwords in lexical decision is the net result of two opposing processes: (1) a relatively fast inhibitory process based on global familiarity; and (2) a relatively slow facilitatory process based on the retrieval of specific episodic information. In three studies, we manipulated speed-stress to influence the balance between the two processes. Experiment 1 showed item-specific improvement for repeated nonwords in a standard "respond-when-ready" lexical decision task. Experiment 2 used a 400-ms deadline procedure and showed performance for nonwords to be unaffected by up to four prior presentations. In Experiment 3 we used a signal-to-respond procedure with variable time intervals and found negative repetition priming for repeated nonwords. These results can be accounted for by dual-process models of lexical decision.

Do handwritten words magnify lexical effects in visual word recognition?

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Perea, Manuel; Gil-López, Cristina; Beléndez, Victoria; Carreiras, Manuel

2016-01-01

An examination of how the word recognition system is able to process handwritten words is fundamental to formulate a comprehensive model of visual word recognition. Previous research has revealed that the magnitude of lexical effects (e.g., the word-frequency effect) is greater with handwritten words than with printed words. In the present lexical decision experiments, we examined whether the quality of handwritten words moderates the recruitment of top-down feedback, as reflected in word-frequency effects. Results showed a reading cost for difficult-to-read and easy-to-read handwritten words relative to printed words. But the critical finding was that difficult-to-read handwritten words, but not easy-to-read handwritten words, showed a greater word-frequency effect than printed words. Therefore, the inherent physical variability of handwritten words does not necessarily boost the magnitude of lexical effects.

Non-Selective Lexical Access in Late Arabic-English Bilinguals: Evidence from Gating.

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Boudelaa, Sami

2018-02-07

Previous research suggests that late bilinguals who speak typologically distant languages are the least likely to show evidence of non-selective lexical access processes. This study puts this claim to test by using the gating task to determine whether words beginning with speech sounds that are phonetically similar in Arabic and English (e.g., [b,d,m,n]) give rise to selective or non-selective lexical access processes in late Arabic-English bilinguals. The results show that an acoustic-phonetic input (e.g., [bæ]) that is consistent with words in Arabic (e.g., [bædrun] "moon") and English (e.g., [bæd] "bad") activates lexical representations in both languages of the bilingual. This non-selective activation holds equally well for mixed lists with words from both Arabic and English and blocked lists consisting only of Arabic or English words. These results suggest that non-selective lexical access processes are the default mechanism even in late bilinguals of typologically distant languages.

Lexical tonal discrimination in Zapotec children. A study of the theta rhythm.

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Poblano, Adrián; Castro-Sierra, Eduardo; Arteaga, Carmina; Pérez-Ruiz, Santiago J

Zapotec is a language used mainly in the state of Oaxaca in Mexico of tonal characteristic; homophone words with difference in fundamental frequency with different meanings. Our objective was to analyze changes in the electroencephalographic (EEG) theta rhythm during word discrimination of lexical tonal bi-syllabic homophone word samples of Zapotec. We employed electroencephalography analysis during lexical tonal discrimination in 12 healthy subjects 9-16 years of age. We observed an increase in theta relative power between lexical discrimination and at rest eyes-open state in right temporal site. We also observed several significant intra- and inter-hemispheric correlations in several scalp sites, mainly in left fronto-temporal and right temporal areas when subjects were performing lexical discrimination. Our data suggest more engagement of neural networks of the right hemisphere are involved in Zapotec language discrimination. Copyright © 2015 Hospital Infantil de México Federico Gómez. Publicado por Masson Doyma México S.A. All rights reserved.

Prospects of application structural mathematical constructs as bases tool conceptualization the subject domain of sociology (statement of a problem

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E. V. Maslennikov

2016-01-01

Full Text Available In article the approach to the decision of a problem of conceptual integration of sociology as the set of theoretical knowledge belonging to type - conceptually difficult - the big theories. Development of theoretical sociology with use of forms of the mathematical theory is considered as a private problem in relation to more general problem of development of theoretical knowledge with use of forms of the mathematical theory. Development the theoretical sociology is offered to carry out with use of forms of the mathematical theory on the basis of properties structural mathematical constructs and with application the mathematical methods developed in a scientific direction “The Conceptual analysis and designing”[40] . In the given direction it is used not only a paradigm of structuralism, but also a principle of an ascention from abstract to concrete in the knowledge, realized in procedure of synthesis of formal theories with use of the device of structural mathematics. The system analysis, the theory of systems and the theory of structures of N. Burbaki concerns to sources of occurrence of a method of the conceptual analysis. The method is intended for the analysis of subject domains of a high level of complexity, realization of conceptual modeling of objects from these subject domains and reception of new knowledge about essence of subject domains and their relations. Conceptual complexity of phenomena is understood as complexity of the structures expressing the relations and interrelations between concepts, describing interesting area from the point of view of solved tasks. For a subject domain conceptual complexity is potentially established by quantity of basic sets on which scales of sets and the steps belonging to them representing definitions of developed theory of a subject domain are constructed. In article is exposed to the analysis role structural mathematical constructs device in expansion integrating tool conceptualization

Responding to Nonwords in the Lexical Decision Task: Insights from the English Lexicon Project

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Yap, Melvin J.; Sibley, Daragh E.; Balota, David A.; Ratcliff, Roger; Rueckl, Jay

2014-01-01

Researchers have extensively documented how various statistical properties of words (e.g., word-frequency) influence lexical processing. However, the impact of lexical variables on nonword decision-making performance is less clear. This gap is surprising, since a better specification of the mechanisms driving nonword responses may provide valuable insights into early lexical processes. In the present study, item-level and participant-level analyses were conducted on the trial-level lexical decision data for almost 37,000 nonwords in the English Lexicon Project in order to identify the influence of different psycholinguistic variables on nonword lexical decision performance, and to explore individual differences in how participants respond to nonwords. Item-level regression analyses reveal that nonword response time was positively correlated with number of letters, number of orthographic neighbors, number of affixes, and baseword number of syllables, and negatively correlated with Levenshtein orthographic distance and baseword frequency. Participant-level analyses also point to within- and between-session stability in nonword responses across distinct sets of items, and intriguingly reveal that higher vocabulary knowledge is associated with less sensitivity to some dimensions (e.g., number of letters) but more sensitivity to others (e.g., baseword frequency). The present findings provide well-specified and interesting new constraints for informing models of word recognition and lexical decision. PMID:25329078

Symbolic Machine Learning: A Different Answer to the Problem of the Acquisition of Lexical Knowledge from Corpora

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Pascale Sébillot

2008-07-01

Full Text Available One relevant way to structure the domain of lexical knowledge (e.g. relations between lexical units acquisition from corpora is to oppose numerical versus symbolic techniques. Numerical approaches of acquisition exploit the frequential aspect of data, have been widely used, and produce portable systems, but poor explanations of their results. Symbolic approaches exploit the structural aspect of data. Among them, the symbolic machine learning (ML techniques can infer efficient and expressive patterns of a target relation from examples of elements that verify this relation. These methods are however far less known, and the aim of this paper is to point out their interest through the description of one precise experiment. To remove their supervised characteristic, and instead of opposing them to numerical approaches, we finally show that it is possible to combine one symbolic ML technique to one numerical one, and keep advantages of both (meaningful patterns, efficient extraction, portability.

Usage labels network: an approach to lexical variation

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Danko Šipka

1994-12-01

Full Text Available The Problem of lexical variation is frequently addressed within the linguistic community. Its complexity and the broad implications of any possible solution have considerable appeal among theoretical linguists. Lexicographers, in their turn, have been forced to address it in order to provide dictionary usage information, which is normally done by means of dictionary labels such as: American English, obsolete, slang , etc. An insightful overview of the relevant lexicological approaches, as well as some lexicographis projects is provided in Lipka (1990. The most exhaustive sociolinguistic classification, however, can be found in Preston (1986. Lexicographis treatments of lexical variation have been addressed in numerous papers listed in Zgusta (1988.

Stuttering Frequency in Relation to Lexical Diversity, Syntactic Complexity, and Utterance Length

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Wagovich, Stacy A.; Hall, Nancy E.

2018-01-01

Children's frequency of stuttering can be affected by utterance length, syntactic complexity, and lexical content of language. Using a unique small-scale within-subjects design, this study explored whether language samples that contain more stuttering have (a) longer, (b) syntactically more complex, and (c) lexically more diverse utterances than…

Lexical Link Analysis (LLA) Application: Improving Web Service to Defense Acquisition Visibility Environment (DAVE)

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2015-05-01

1 LEXICAL LINK ANALYSIS (LLA) APPLICATION: IMPROVING WEB SERVICE TO DEFENSE ACQUISITION VISIBILITY ENVIRONMENT(DAVE) May 13-14, 2015 Dr. Ying...REPORT DATE MAY 2015 2. REPORT TYPE 3. DATES COVERED 00-00-2015 to 00-00-2015 4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE Lexical Link Analysis (LLA) Application...Making 3 2 1 3 L L A Methods • Lexical Link Analysis (LLA) Core – LLA Reports and Visualizations • Collaborative Learning Agents (CLA) for

The Role of Low-Spatial Frequencies in Lexical Decision and Masked Priming

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Boden, C.; Giaschi, D.

2009-01-01

Spatial frequency filtering was used to test the hypotheses that low-spatial frequency information in printed text can: (1) lead to a rapid lexical decision or (2) facilitate word recognition. Adult proficient readers made lexical decisions in unprimed and masked repetition priming experiments with unfiltered, low-pass, high-pass and notch…

How Logical Reasoning Mediates the Relation between Lexical Quality and Reading Comprehension

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Segers, Eliane; Verhoeven, Ludo

2016-01-01

The present study aimed to examine the role of logical reasoning in the relation between lexical quality and reading comprehension in 146 fourth grade Dutch children. We assessed their standardized reading comprehension measure, along with their decoding efficiency and vocabulary as measures of lexical quality, syllogistic reasoning as measure of…

The Challenge and the Opportunity of Lexical Inferencing in Language Minority Students

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Shahar-Yames, Daphna; Prior, Anat

2018-01-01

Lexical inferencing from text is a powerful tool for vocabulary and reading comprehension enhancement. Lexical inferencing relies on the pre-requisite skills of reading and existing vocabulary, and is also linked to non-verbal inferencing abilities and reading comprehension. In this study, we examined whether Fifth-grade Russian-speaking language…

Comparing the Lexical Features of EAP Students' Essays by Prompt and Rating

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Lavallée, Maxime; McDonough, Kim

2015-01-01

Previous research has shown that high frequency lexical items, such as AWL words and formulaic expressions, may differentiate between texts written by expert and novice writers (Chen & Baker, 2010; Hancioglu, 2009), and that lexical features related to breadth, depth, and accessibility differentiate among texts from L2 writers of different…

Lexical characteristics of expressive vocabulary in toddlers with autism spectrum disorder.

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Kover, Sara T; Ellis Weismer, Susan

2014-08-01

Vocabulary is a domain of particular challenge for many children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Recent research has drawn attention to ways in which lexical characteristics relate to vocabulary acquisition. The current study tested the hypothesis that lexical characteristics account for variability in vocabulary size of young children with ASD, applying the extended statistical learning theory of vocabulary delay in late talkers (Stokes, Kern, & Dos Santos, 2012) to toddlers with ASD. Parents reported the words produced by toddlers with ASD (n = 57; age 21-37 months) or toddlers without ASD (n = 41; age 22-26 months) on the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories. The average phonological neighborhood density, word frequency, and word length of each toddler's lexicon were calculated. These lexical characteristics served as predictors of vocabulary size. Findings differed for toddlers with and without ASD and according to subsamples. Word length was the most consistent predictor of vocabulary size for toddlers with ASD. Distinct relationships between lexical characteristics and vocabulary size were observed for toddlers with and without ASD. Experimental studies on distributional cues to vocabulary acquisition are needed to inform what is known about mechanisms of learning in neurodevelopmental disorders.

Conceptual optimal design of jackets

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sandal, Kasper; Verbart, Alexander; Stolpe, Mathias

Structural optimization can explore a large design space (400 jackets) in a short time (2 hours), and thus lead to better conceptual jacket designs.......Structural optimization can explore a large design space (400 jackets) in a short time (2 hours), and thus lead to better conceptual jacket designs....

Effects of Lexical Modification on Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition of Iranian EFL Students

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Negari, Giti Mousapour; Rouhi, Mahdieh

2012-01-01

The present article reports on the results of a study designed to investigate the effects of two types of lexical modification i.e., lexical simplification and elaboration, on incidental vocabulary acquisition of Iranian EFL learners.To this end, four versions of experimental texts containing 20 target words were created: baseline and simplified…

Lexical and age effects on word recognition in noise in normal-hearing children.

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Ren, Cuncun; Liu, Sha; Liu, Haihong; Kong, Ying; Liu, Xin; Li, Shujing

2015-12-01

The purposes of the present study were (1) to examine the lexical and age effects on word recognition of normal-hearing (NH) children in noise, and (2) to compare the word-recognition performance in noise to that in quiet listening conditions. Participants were 213 NH children (age ranged between 3 and 6 years old). Eighty-nine and 124 of the participants were tested in noise and quiet listening conditions, respectively. The Standard-Chinese Lexical Neighborhood Test, which contains lists of words in four lexical categories (i.e., dissyllablic easy (DE), dissyllablic hard (DH), monosyllable easy (ME), and monosyllable hard (MH)) was used to evaluate the Mandarin Chinese word recognition in speech spectrum-shaped noise (SSN) with a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 0dB. A two-way repeated-measures analysis of variance was conducted to examine the lexical effects with syllable length and difficulty level as the main factors on word recognition in the quiet and noise listening conditions. The effects of age on word-recognition performance were examined using a regression model. The word-recognition performance in noise was significantly poorer than that in quiet and the individual variations in performance in noise were much greater than those in quiet. Word recognition scores showed that the lexical effects were significant in the SSN. Children scored higher with dissyllabic words than with monosyllabic words; "easy" words scored higher than "hard" words in the noise condition. The scores of the NH children in the SSN (SNR=0dB) for the DE, DH, ME, and MH words were 85.4, 65.9, 71.7, and 46.2% correct, respectively. The word-recognition performance also increased with age in each lexical category for the NH children tested in noise. Both age and lexical characteristics of words had significant influences on the performance of Mandarin-Chinese word recognition in noise. The lexical effects were more obvious under noise listening conditions than in quiet. The word

Pre-Attentive Auditory Processing of Lexicality

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Jacobsen, Thomas; Horvath, Janos; Schroger, Erich; Lattner, Sonja; Widmann, Andreas; Winkler, Istvan

2004-01-01

The effects of lexicality on auditory change detection based on auditory sensory memory representations were investigated by presenting oddball sequences of repeatedly presented stimuli, while participants ignored the auditory stimuli. In a cross-linguistic study of Hungarian and German participants, stimulus sequences were composed of words that…

Within-category variance and lexical tone discrimination in native and non-native speakers

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Hoffmann, C.W.G.; Sadakata, M.; Chen, A.; Desain, P.W.M.; McQueen, J.M.; Gussenhove, C.; Chen, Y.; Dediu, D.

2014-01-01

In this paper, we show how acoustic variance within lexical tones in disyllabic Mandarin Chinese pseudowords affects discrimination abilities in both native and non-native speakers of Mandarin Chinese. Within-category acoustic variance did not hinder native speakers in discriminating between lexical

Lexical retrieval : An aspect of fluent second language production that can be enhanced

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Snellings, P; de Glopper, Kees; van Gelderen, A.

2002-01-01

The efficiency of lexical retrieval, an essential subprocess of productive language skills, is crucial in fluent writing and speaking. We examine the feasibility of an experimental computerized training for fluent lexical retrieval in the second language in a classroom setting, applying techniques

Tune in to the Tone: Lexical Tone Identification is Associated with Vocabulary and Word Recognition Abilities in Young Chinese Children.

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Tong, Xiuli; Tong, Xiuhong; McBride-Chang, Catherine

2015-12-01

Lexical tone is one of the most prominent features in the phonological representation of words in Chinese. However, little, if any, research to date has directly evaluated how young Chinese children's lexical tone identification skills contribute to vocabulary acquisition and character recognition. The present study distinguished lexical tones from segmental phonological awareness and morphological awareness in order to estimate the unique contribution of lexical tone in early vocabulary acquisition and character recognition. A sample of 199 Cantonese children aged 5-6 years was assessed on measures of lexical tone identification, segmental phonological awareness, morphological awareness, nonverbal ability, vocabulary knowledge, and Chinese character recognition. It was found that lexical tone awareness and morphological awareness were both associated with vocabulary knowledge and character recognition. However, there was a significant relationship between lexical tone awareness and both vocabulary knowledge and character recognition, even after controlling for the effects of age, nonverbal ability, segmental phonological awareness and morphological awareness. These findings suggest that lexical tone is a key factor accounting for individual variance in young children's lexical acquisition in Chinese, and that lexical tone should be considered in understanding how children learn new Chinese vocabulary words, in either oral or written forms.

The Conceptual Framework of Thematic Mapping in Case Conceptualization.

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Ridley, Charles R; Jeffrey, Christina E

2017-04-01

This article, the 3rd in a series of 5, introduces the conceptual framework for thematic mapping, a novel approach to case conceptualization. The framework is transtheoretical in that it is not constrained by the tenets or concepts of any one therapeutic orientation and transdiagnostic in that it conceptualizes clients outside the constraints of diagnostic criteria. Thematic mapping comprises 4 components: a definition, foundational principles, defining features, and core concepts. These components of the framework, deemed building blocks, are explained in this article. Like the foundation of any structure, the heuristic value of the method requires that the building blocks have integrity, coherence, and sound anchoring. We assert that the conceptual framework provides a solid foundation, making thematic mapping a potential asset in mental health treatment. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Prioritising lexical patterns to increase axiomatisation in biomedical ontologies. The role of localisation and modularity.

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Quesada-Martínez, M; Fernández-Breis, J T; Stevens, R; Mikroyannidi, E

2015-01-01

This article is part of the Focus Theme of METHODS of Information in Medicine on "Managing Interoperability and Complexity in Health Systems". In previous work, we have defined methods for the extraction of lexical patterns from labels as an initial step towards semi-automatic ontology enrichment methods. Our previous findings revealed that many biomedical ontologies could benefit from enrichment methods using lexical patterns as a starting point.Here, we aim to identify which lexical patterns are appropriate for ontology enrichment, driving its analysis by metrics to prioritised the patterns. We propose metrics for suggesting which lexical regularities should be the starting point to enrich complex ontologies. Our method determines the relevance of a lexical pattern by measuring its locality in the ontology, that is, the distance between the classes associated with the pattern, and the distribution of the pattern in a certain module of the ontology. The methods have been applied to four significant biomedical ontologies including the Gene Ontology and SNOMED CT. The metrics provide information about the engineering of the ontologies and the relevance of the patterns. Our method enables the suggestion of links between classes that are not made explicit in the ontology. We propose a prioritisation of the lexical patterns found in the analysed ontologies. The locality and distribution of lexical patterns offer insights into the further engineering of the ontology. Developers can use this information to improve the axiomatisation of their ontologies.

Carpet or Carcel: The Effect of Age of Acquisition and Language Mode on Bilingual Lexical Access

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Canseco-Gonzalez, Enriqueta; Brehm, Laurel; Brick, Cameron A.; Brown-Schmidt, Sarah; Fischer, Kara; Wagner, Katie

2010-01-01

Lexical access was examined in English-Spanish bilinguals by monitoring eye fixations on target and lexical competitors as participants followed spoken instructions in English to click on one of the objects presented on a computer (e.g., "Click on the beans"). Within-language lexical competitors had a phoneme onset in English that was shared with…

Lexical processing and organization in bilingual first language acquisition: Guiding future research.

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DeAnda, Stephanie; Poulin-Dubois, Diane; Zesiger, Pascal; Friend, Margaret

2016-06-01

A rich body of work in adult bilinguals documents an interconnected lexical network across languages, such that early word retrieval is language independent. This literature has yielded a number of influential models of bilingual semantic memory. However, extant models provide limited predictions about the emergence of lexical organization in bilingual first language acquisition (BFLA). Empirical evidence from monolingual infants suggests that lexical networks emerge early in development as children integrate phonological and semantic information. These findings tell us little about the interaction between 2 languages in early bilingual memory. To date, an understanding of when and how languages interact in early bilingual development is lacking. In this literature review, we present research documenting lexical-semantic development across monolingual and bilingual infants. This is followed by a discussion of current models of bilingual language representation and organization and their ability to account for the available empirical evidence. Together, these theoretical and empirical accounts inform and highlight unexplored areas of research and guide future work on early bilingual memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

A diffusion decision model analysis of evidence variability in the lexical decision task

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Tillman, Gabriel; Osth, Adam F.; van Ravenzwaaij, Don; Heathcote, Andrew

2017-01-01

The lexical-decision task is among the most commonly used paradigms in psycholinguistics. In both the signal-detection theory and Diffusion Decision Model (DDM; Ratcliff, Gomez, & McKoon, Psychological Review, 111, 159–182, 2004) frameworks, lexical-decisions are based on a continuous source of

Nicotine patches improve mood and response speed in a lexical decision task.

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Gentry, M V; Hammersley, J J; Hale, C R; Nuwer, P K; Meliska, C J

2000-01-01

The effects of smoking a cigarette or wearing a transdermal nicotine patch on mood and lexical decision-making were tested in eight smokers. Each participant was tested after 4 hours of smoking abstinence, under 4 conditions: placebo (very low nicotine) cigarette, nicotine cigarette, placebo patch, and nicotine patch. Relative to placebo, wearing the nicotine patch reduced Profile of Mood States (POMS) Total Mood Disturbance and Fatigue/Inertia scores, while increasing the speed of some types of lexical decisions. Smoking a nicotine cigarette did not affect reaction times, but unexpectedly decreased the accuracy of Word/ Nonword lexical decisions. Thus, transdermal nicotine may improve mood and facilitate longterm memory search and/or attentional processes in nicotine-deprived smokers.

Lexical retrieval in discourse: an early indicator of Alzheimer's dementia.

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Pekkala, Seija; Wiener, Debra; Himali, Jayandra J; Beiser, Alexa S; Obler, Loraine K; Liu, Yulin; McKee, Ann; Auerbach, Sanford; Seshadri, Sudha; Wolf, Philip A; Au, Rhoda

2013-12-01

We examined the progression of lexical-retrieval deficits in individuals with neuropathologically determined Alzheimer's disease (AD; n = 23) and a comparison group without criteria for AD (n = 24) to determine whether linguistic changes were a significant marker of the disease. Our participants underwent multiple administrations of a neuropsychological battery, with initial administration occurring on average 16 years prior to death. The battery included the Boston Naming Test (BNT), a letter fluency task (FAS) and written description of the Cookie Theft Picture (CTP). Repeated measures analysis revealed that the AD-group showed progressively greater decline in FAS and CTP lexical performance than the comparison group. Cross-sectional time-specific group comparisons indicated that the CTP differentiated performance between the two groups at 7-9 years prior to death and FAS and BNT only at 2-4 years. These results suggest that lexical-retrieval deficits in written discourse serve as an early indicator of AD.

Reducing structural uncertainty in conceptual hydrological modeling in the semi-arid Andes

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Hublart, P.; Ruelland, D.; Dezetter, A.; Jourde, H.

2014-10-01

The use of lumped, conceptual models in hydrological impact studies requires placing more emphasis on the uncertainty arising from deficiencies and/or ambiguities in the model structure. This study provides an opportunity to combine a multiple-hypothesis framework with a multi-criteria assessment scheme to reduce structural uncertainty in the conceptual modeling of a meso-scale Andean catchment (1515 km2) over a 30 year period (1982-2011). The modeling process was decomposed into six model-building decisions related to the following aspects of the system behavior: snow accumulation and melt, runoff generation, redistribution and delay of water fluxes, and natural storage effects. Each of these decisions was provided with a set of alternative modeling options, resulting in a total of 72 competing model structures. These structures were calibrated using the concept of Pareto optimality with three criteria pertaining to streamflow simulations and one to the seasonal dynamics of snow processes. The results were analyzed in the four-dimensional space of performance measures using a fuzzy c-means clustering technique and a differential split sample test, leading to identify 14 equally acceptable model hypotheses. A filtering approach was then applied to these best-performing structures in order to minimize the overall uncertainty envelope while maximizing the number of enclosed observations. This led to retain 8 model hypotheses as a representation of the minimum structural uncertainty that could be obtained with this modeling framework. Future work to better consider model predictive uncertainty should include a proper assessment of parameter equifinality and data errors, as well as the testing of new or refined hypotheses to allow for the use of additional auxiliary observations.

Reducing structural uncertainty in conceptual hydrological modelling in the semi-arid Andes

Science.gov (United States)

Hublart, P.; Ruelland, D.; Dezetter, A.; Jourde, H.

2015-05-01

The use of lumped, conceptual models in hydrological impact studies requires placing more emphasis on the uncertainty arising from deficiencies and/or ambiguities in the model structure. This study provides an opportunity to combine a multiple-hypothesis framework with a multi-criteria assessment scheme to reduce structural uncertainty in the conceptual modelling of a mesoscale Andean catchment (1515 km2) over a 30-year period (1982-2011). The modelling process was decomposed into six model-building decisions related to the following aspects of the system behaviour: snow accumulation and melt, runoff generation, redistribution and delay of water fluxes, and natural storage effects. Each of these decisions was provided with a set of alternative modelling options, resulting in a total of 72 competing model structures. These structures were calibrated using the concept of Pareto optimality with three criteria pertaining to streamflow simulations and one to the seasonal dynamics of snow processes. The results were analyzed in the four-dimensional (4-D) space of performance measures using a fuzzy c-means clustering technique and a differential split sample test, leading to identify 14 equally acceptable model hypotheses. A filtering approach was then applied to these best-performing structures in order to minimize the overall uncertainty envelope while maximizing the number of enclosed observations. This led to retain eight model hypotheses as a representation of the minimum structural uncertainty that could be obtained with this modelling framework. Future work to better consider model predictive uncertainty should include a proper assessment of parameter equifinality and data errors, as well as the testing of new or refined hypotheses to allow for the use of additional auxiliary observations.

Lexical Range and Communicative Competence of Learners in Bilingual Schools in Lower Austria

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Claudia Mewald

2015-04-01

Full Text Available Abstract This article discusses the impact of lexical range on the learners’ ability to communicate in English when taught as a foreign language in bilingual schools, and emphasizes the importance of explicit vocabulary instruction. It draws on data from classroom observation, lexis-retrieval tasks, written and spoken performance in bilingual (German-English and regular school classes at grades 5-8 in Austrian secondary schools. Results suggest that a wider lexical range results in better communicative competence and fluency and that breakdown of communication in spoken or written performance is more frequently caused by insufficient vocabulary rather than by lack of control or grammatical problems. Consequently, insights from cognitive linguistics, the Lexical Approach, and Lexical Priming are discussed to justify the concept of vocabulary instruction in contextualized units. Taking the scarceness of theoretical and practical concepts into consideration, the need for research on the explicit instruction of vocabulary and metacognitive strategies is fleshed out.

RDBMS Based Lexical Resource for Indian Heritage: The Case of Mahābhārata

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Mani, Diwakar

The paper describes a lexical resource in the form of a relational database based indexing system for Sanskrit documents - Mahābhārata (MBh) as an example. The system is available online on http://sanskrit.jnu.ac.in/mb with input and output in Devanāgarī Unicode, using technologies such as RDBMS and Java Servlet. The system works as an interactive and multi-dimensional indexing system with search facility for MBh and has potentials for use as a generic system for all Sanskrit texts of similar structure. Currently, the system allows three types of searching facilities- 'Direct Search', 'Alphabetical Search' and 'Search by Classes'. The input triggers an indexing process by which a temporary index is created for the search string, and then clicking on any indexed word displays the details for that word and also a facility to search that word in some other online lexical resources.

Productivity of lexical categories in French-speaking children with cochlear implants.

Science.gov (United States)

Le Normand, M-T; Ouellet, C; Cohen, H

2003-11-01

The productivity of lexical categories was studied longitudinally in a sample of 17 young hearing-impaired French-speaking children with cochlear implants. Age of implantation ranged from 22 months to 76 months. Spontaneous speech samples were collected at six-month intervals over a period of 36 months, starting at the one-word stage. Four general measures of their linguistic production (number of utterances, verbal fluency, vocabulary, and grammatical production) as well as 36 specific lexical categories, according to the CHILDES codes, were computed in terms of tokens, i.e., total number of words. Cochlear-implanted children (CI) were compared to a French database of normally hearing children aged 2-4 compiled by the first author. Follow-up results indicate that, at the two-year post-implantation follow-up, noun, and verb morphology was significantly impaired. At the three-year follow-up, the cochlear-implanted group had recovered on adjectives, determiners and nouns, main verbs, and auxiliaries. The two groups differed significantly in processing locative adverbs, prepositions, pronouns, and verbs (infinitive verb, modal, and modal lexical), but individual variability within the cochlear-implanted group was substantial. Results are discussed in terms of recovery and developmental trends and variability in the acquisition of lexical categories by French children two years and three years post-implantation.

Are lexical tones musical? Native language's influence on neural response to pitch in different domains.

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Ao; Peter, Varghese; Wijnen, Frank; Schnack, Hugo; Burnham, Denis

2018-04-21

Language experience shapes musical and speech pitch processing. We investigated whether speaking a lexical tone language natively modulates neural processing of pitch in language and music as well as their correlation. We tested tone language (Mandarin Chinese), and non-tone language (Dutch) listeners in a passive oddball paradigm measuring mismatch negativity (MMN) for (i) Chinese lexical tones and (ii) three-note musical melodies with similar pitch contours. For lexical tones, Chinese listeners showed a later MMN peak than the non-tone language listeners, whereas for MMN amplitude there were no significant differences between groups. Dutch participants also showed a late discriminative negativity (LDN). In the music condition two MMNs, corresponding to the two notes that differed between the standard and the deviant were found for both groups, and an LDN were found for both the Dutch and the Chinese listeners. The music MMNs were significantly right lateralized. Importantly, significant correlations were found between the lexical tone and the music MMNs for the Dutch but not the Chinese participants. The results suggest that speaking a tone language natively does not necessarily enhance neural responses to pitch either in language or in music, but that it does change the nature of neural pitch processing: non-tone language speakers appear to perceive lexical tones as musical, whereas for tone language speakers, lexical tones and music may activate different neural networks. Neural resources seem to be assigned differently for the lexical tones and for musical melodies, presumably depending on the presence or absence of long-term phonological memory traces. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Processing of Acoustic Cues in Lexical-Tone Identification by Pediatric Cochlear-Implant Recipients

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Peng, Shu-Chen; Lu, Hui-Ping; Lu, Nelson; Lin, Yung-Song; Deroche, Mickael L. D.; Chatterjee, Monita

2017-01-01

Purpose: The objective was to investigate acoustic cue processing in lexical-tone recognition by pediatric cochlear-implant (CI) recipients who are native Mandarin speakers. Method: Lexical-tone recognition was assessed in pediatric CI recipients and listeners with normal hearing (NH) in 2 tasks. In Task 1, participants identified naturally…

Structuring Cooperative Learning for Motivation and Conceptual Change in the Concepts of Mixtures

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Belge Can, Hatice; Boz, Yezdan

2016-01-01

This study investigates the effect of structuring cooperative learning based on conceptual change approach on grade 9 students' understanding the concepts of mixtures and their motivation, compared with traditional instruction. Among six classes of a high school, two of them were randomly assigned to cooperative learning group where students were…

Richness of information about novel words influences how episodic and semantic memory networks interact during lexicalization.

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Takashima, Atsuko; Bakker, Iske; van Hell, Janet G; Janzen, Gabriele; McQueen, James M

2014-01-01

The complementary learning systems account of declarative memory suggests two distinct memory networks, a fast-mapping, episodic system involving the hippocampus, and a slower semantic memory system distributed across the neocortex in which new information is gradually integrated with existing representations. In this study, we investigated the extent to which these two networks are involved in the integration of novel words into the lexicon after extensive learning, and how the involvement of these networks changes after 24h. In particular, we explored whether having richer information at encoding influences the lexicalization trajectory. We trained participants with two sets of novel words, one where exposure was only to the words' phonological forms (the form-only condition), and one where pictures of unfamiliar objects were associated with the words' phonological forms (the picture-associated condition). A behavioral measure of lexical competition (indexing lexicalization) indicated stronger competition effects for the form-only words. Imaging (fMRI) results revealed greater involvement of phonological lexical processing areas immediately after training in the form-only condition, suggesting that tight connections were formed between novel words and existing lexical entries already at encoding. Retrieval of picture-associated novel words involved the episodic/hippocampal memory system more extensively. Although lexicalization was weaker in the picture-associated condition, overall memory strength was greater when tested after a 24hour delay, probably due to the availability of both episodic and lexical memory networks to aid retrieval. It appears that, during lexicalization of a novel word, the relative involvement of different memory networks differs according to the richness of the information about that word available at encoding. © 2013.

A FIRST APPROACH TO THE LEXICAL PROFILE OF TELECOMMUNICATION ENGLISH: FREQUENCY, DISTRIBUTION, RESTRICTION AND KEYNESS

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Camino Rea Rizzo

2009-10-01

Full Text Available This corpus-based study is conducted to gain an insight into the lexis of Telecommunication English, with the aim of characterizing the lexical profile of this specialized language. The applied methodology integrates quantitative techniques and qualitative interpretations to perform an analysis from two different perspectives, and according to two parameters: restriction and keyness. The first approach is focused on the lexical behaviour and the extent that a word is restricted to the constituent areas of a domain, whereas the second approach is directed towards the extent that a word is significant in the domain, regardless of lexical category. The set of empirical and statistical data obtained contribute to map the lexical profile and will serve as a baseline for future studies.

Lexical Link Analysis Application: Improving Web Service to Acquisition Visibility Portal Phase III

Science.gov (United States)

2015-04-30

ååì~ä=^Åèìáëáíáçå= oÉëÉ~êÅÜ=póãéçëáìã= qÜìêëÇ~ó=pÉëëáçåë= sçäìãÉ=ff= = Lexical Link Analysis Application: Improving Web Service to Acquisition...2015 2. REPORT TYPE 3. DATES COVERED 00-00-2015 to 00-00-2015 4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE Lexical Link Analysis Application: Improving Web Service...processes. Lexical Link Analysis (LLA) can help, by applying automation to reveal and depict???to decisionmakers??? the correlations, associations, and

Capturing the Diversity in Lexical Diversity

Science.gov (United States)

Jarvis, Scott

2013-01-01

The range, variety, or diversity of words found in learners' language use is believed to reflect the complexity of their vocabulary knowledge as well as the level of their language proficiency. Many indices of lexical diversity have been proposed, most of which involve statistical relationships between types and tokens, and which ultimately…

Lexical selectivity in Danish toddlers with cleft palate

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Willadsen, Elisabeth

2013-01-01

. Methods: All participants were video recorded at 18 months of age during play interaction with a parent. The video recordings were transcribed according to the IPA and an individual consonant inventory was established for each participant. The video recordings were also analysed with respect to word...... productions establishing an observed productive vocabulary size for each participant. Results: At 18 months of age Danish toddlers with cleft palate showed marked lexical selectivity in their early words. The distribution of consonant classes observed at 11 months of age in a previous study of the children...... as it has been described for English speaking toddlers with and without cleft palate, even though some qualitative differences were found. Keywords: consonant inventory, lexical selectivity, early words, cleft palate....

Does Lexical Stress Influence 17-Month-Olds' Mapping of Verbs and Nouns?

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Campbell, Jennifer; Mihalicz, Patrick; Thiessen, Erik; Curtin, Suzanne

2018-01-01

English-learning infants attend to lexical stress when learning new words. Attention to lexical stress might be beneficial for word learning by providing an indication of the grammatical class of that word. English disyllabic nouns commonly have trochaic (strong-weak) stress, whereas English disyllabic verbs commonly have iambic (weak-strong)…

Effect of lexical and syllable frequency in anomic aphasia

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Janeth Hernández Jaramillo

2012-09-01

Full Text Available Objective: this study compares the performance of two groups of participants with and without aphasia anomic in a lexical decision tasks (LDT and spelling, in relation to the effect of the variables of word frequency and syllable. Materials and methods: a prospective study with a 2x2x2 design, which administered the LDT, in which each she/he had to decide if it was a real Spanish word or not, pressing one of two keys. To the task of spelling, they had to spell orally each of words presented auditorily. Results: It was found that in the LTD, the experimental group made more errors in the high-frequency stimuli syllable while the control group had more errors in the low-frequency syllables. In terms of reaction times was evident that the experimental group took longer to solve the task than the control group. The spelling task performance showed no difference in groups or conditions (lexical frequency and syllable. Conclusions: similar than other researches in normalized population, the results of this study demonstrate the effect of lexical frequency facilitation and inhibition that generates high syllable frequency.

Investigating lexical competition and the cost of phonemic restoration.

Science.gov (United States)

Balling, Laura Winther; Morris, David Jackson; Tøndering, John

2017-12-01

Due to phonemic restoration, listeners can reliably perceive words when a phoneme is replaced with noise. The cost associated with this process was investigated along with the effect of lexical uniqueness on phonemic restoration, using data from a lexical decision experiment where noise replaced phonemes that were either uniqueness points (the phoneme at which a word deviates from all nonrelated words that share the same onset) or phonemes immediately prior to these. A baseline condition was also included with no noise-interrupted stimuli. Results showed a significant cost of phonemic restoration, with 100 ms longer word identification times and a 14% decrease in word identification accuracy for interrupted stimuli compared to the baseline. Regression analysis of response times from the interrupted conditions showed no effect of whether the interrupted phoneme was a uniqueness point, but significant effects for several temporal attributes of the stimuli, including the duration and position of the interrupted segment. These results indicate that uniqueness points are not distinct breakpoints in the cohort reduction that occurs during lexical processing, but that temporal properties of the interrupted stimuli are central to auditory word recognition. These results are interpreted in the context of models of speech perception.

Emotion, Etmnooi, or Emitoon?--Faster lexical access to emotional than to neutral words during reading.

Science.gov (United States)

Kissler, Johanna; Herbert, Cornelia

2013-03-01

Cortical processing of emotional words differs from that of neutral words. Using EEG event-related potentials (ERPs), the present study examines the functional stage(s) of this differentiation. Positive, negative, and neutral nouns were randomly mixed with pseudowords and letter strings derived from words within each valence and presented for reading while participants' EEG was recorded. Results indicated emotion effects in the N1 (110-140 ms), early posterior negativity (EPN, 216-320) and late positive potential (LPP, 432-500 ms) time windows. Across valence, orthographic word-form effects occurred from about 180 ms after stimulus presentation. Crucially, in emotional words, lexicality effects (real words versus pseudowords) were identified from 216 ms, words being more negative over posterior cortex, coinciding with EPN effects, whereas neutral words differed from pseudowords only after 320 ms. Emotional content affects word processing at pre-lexical, lexical and post-lexical levels, but remarkably lexical access to emotional words is faster than access to neutral words. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Lexical and metaphonological abilities in preschoolers with phonological disorders

OpenAIRE

Costa, Ranilde Cristiane Cavalcante [UNIFESP; Ávila, Clara Regina Brandão de [UNIFESP

2010-01-01

TEMA: competência lexical e metafonológica em pré-escolares com transtorno fonológico OBJETIVO: investigar, em um grupo de pré-escolares a influência do transtorno fonológico sobre as competências lexical e metafonológica e a existência de correlações entre ambas. MÉTODO: a amostra foi composta por 56 pré-escolares, 32 meninos e 24 meninas, entre 4:0 a 6:11 anos, que constituíram dois grupo: o Grupo Pesquisa, composto por 28 pré-escolares com transtorno fonológico e o grupo de comparação, com...

A Lexical Approach to Identifying Dimensions of Organizational Culture

Science.gov (United States)

Chapman, Derek S.; Reeves, Paige; Chapin, Michelle

2018-01-01

A comprehensive measure of organizational culture was developed using a lexical approach, a method typically employed within the study of personality. 1761 adjectives were narrowed down and factor analyzed, which resulted in the identification of a nine factor solution to organizational culture, including the dimensions of: Innovative, Dominant, Pace, Friendly, Prestigious, Trendy, Corporate Social Responsibility, Traditional, and Diverse. Comprised of 135 adjectives most frequently used in describing organizational culture by current employees of several hundred organizations, the Lexical Organizational Culture Scale (LOCS) was found to predict employee commitment, job satisfaction, job search behaviors, and subjective fit better than earlier scales of organizational culture. PMID:29922200

[Impacts of biological and family factors on lexical and intellectual development in Mandarin-speaking children].

Science.gov (United States)

Niu, Jie; Chen, Yong-Xiang; Zhu, Li-Qi

2015-07-01

To investigate the impacts of biological factors (age and sex) and family factors (socioeconomic status and parenting style) on the early lexical and intellectual development of children in a longitudinal tracking study. A total of 38 Mandarin-speaking children aged from 18 to 24 months were surveyed using the Putonghua Chinese Communicative Development Inventory (PCDI), the Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ), and a self-designed Questionnaire for Parents. All of the subjects were retested using PCDI and ASQ after 6 months. Biological factors accounted for 65% of the variance in lexical development, 10% of which was attributed to gender, in the first survey. After six months, the contribution of age decreased to 26% and gender had no significant impact. Lexical development could positively predict the intellectual development of children. When age and gender were controlled, it accounted for 22% of the variance in intellectual development. Family socioeconomic factors had no significant impacts on lexical and intellectual development. Children's recognition of people and objects around them with guidance of parents in parenting styles could positively predict the intellectual development of children six months later, which accounted for 10% of the variance. Biological factors play an important role in the early lexical development of children. However, the influence decreases with the increase of age (months). Biological factors, lexical development, and parenting style have a combined influence on children's intellectual development.

Where Is the Beat? The Neural Correlates of Lexical Stress and Rhythmical Well-formedness in Auditory Story Comprehension.

Science.gov (United States)

Kandylaki, Katerina D; Henrich, Karen; Nagels, Arne; Kircher, Tilo; Domahs, Ulrike; Schlesewsky, Matthias; Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, Ina; Wiese, Richard

2017-07-01

While listening to continuous speech, humans process beat information to correctly identify word boundaries. The beats of language are stress patterns that are created by combining lexical (word-specific) stress patterns and the rhythm of a specific language. Sometimes, the lexical stress pattern needs to be altered to obey the rhythm of the language. This study investigated the interplay of lexical stress patterns and rhythmical well-formedness in natural speech with fMRI. Previous electrophysiological studies on cases in which a regular lexical stress pattern may be altered to obtain rhythmical well-formedness showed that even subtle rhythmic deviations are detected by the brain if attention is directed toward prosody. Here, we present a new approach to this phenomenon by having participants listen to contextually rich stories in the absence of a task targeting the manipulation. For the interaction of lexical stress and rhythmical well-formedness, we found one suprathreshold cluster localized between the cerebellum and the brain stem. For the main effect of lexical stress, we found higher BOLD responses to the retained lexical stress pattern in the bilateral SMA, bilateral postcentral gyrus, bilateral middle fontal gyrus, bilateral inferior and right superior parietal lobule, and right precuneus. These results support the view that lexical stress is processed as part of a sensorimotor network of speech comprehension. Moreover, our results connect beat processing in language to domain-independent timing perception.

Inter- and Intralingual Lexical Influences in Advanced Learners' French L3 Oral Production

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Lindqvist, Christina

2010-01-01

The present study investigates lexical inter- and intralingual influences in the oral production of 14 very advanced learners of French L3. Lexical deviances are divided into two main categories: formal influence and meaning-based influence. The results show that, as predicted with respect to advanced learners, meaning-based influence is the most…

Lexical preferences in Dutch verbal cluster ordering

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Bloem, J.; Bellamy, K.; Karvovskaya, E.; Kohlberger, M.; Saad, G.

2016-01-01

This study discusses lexical preferences as a factor affecting the word order variation in Dutch verbal clusters. There are two grammatical word orders for Dutch two-verb clusters, with no clear meaning difference. Using the method of collostructional analysis, I find significant associations

Bilingual visual word recognition and lexical access

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Dijkstra, A.F.J.; Kroll, J.F.; Groot, A.M.B. de

2005-01-01

In spite of the intuition of many bilinguals, a review of empirical studies indicates that during reading under many circumstances, possible words from different languages temporarily become active. Such evidence for "language non-selective lexical access" is found using stimulus materials of

O campo lexical Economia em documentos do século XVIII

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Vanessa Regina Duarte Xavier

2010-01-01

Full Text Available This text aims to analyze the lexical field Economy in documents of Goiás from 1751 to 1753, that were submitted to facsimile and semidiplomatic editions, in desideratum of to enable greater contact with the originals and the confrontation of their image to their conservative lesson. In addition, notes on the historical context alluded in the corpus seek clarify it and to explicit the semantic relationships that motivated the grouping of lexical items in fields.

The many places of frequency: evidence for a novel locus of the lexical frequency effect in word production.

Science.gov (United States)

Knobel, Mark; Finkbeiner, Matthew; Caramazza, Alfonso

2008-03-01

The effect of lexical frequency on language-processing tasks is exceptionally reliable. For example, pictures with higher frequency names are named faster and more accurately than those with lower frequency names. Experiments with normal participants and patients strongly suggest that this production effect arises at the level of lexical access. Further work has suggested that within lexical access this effect arises at the level of lexical representations. Here we present patient E.C. who shows an effect of lexical frequency on his nonword error rate. The best explanation of his performance is that there is an additional locus of frequency at the interface of lexical and segmental representational levels. We confirm this hypothesis by showing that only computational models with frequency at this new locus can produce a similar error pattern to that of patient E.C. Finally, in an analysis of a large group of Italian patients, we show that there exist patients who replicate E.C.'s pattern of results and others who show the complementary pattern of frequency effects on semantic error rates. Our results combined with previous findings suggest that frequency plays a role throughout the process of lexical access.

Orthographic familiarity, phonological legality and number of orthographic neighbours affect the onset of ERP lexical effects

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Adorni Roberta

2008-07-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background It has been suggested that the variability among studies in the onset of lexical effects may be due to a series of methodological differences. In this study we investigated the role of orthographic familiarity, phonological legality and number of orthographic neighbours of words in determining the onset of word/non-word discriminative responses. Methods ERPs were recorded from 128 sites in 16 Italian University students engaged in a lexical decision task. Stimuli were 100 words, 100 quasi-words (obtained by the replacement of a single letter, 100 pseudo-words (non-derived and 100 illegal letter strings. All stimuli were balanced for length; words and quasi-words were also balanced for frequency of use, domain of semantic category and imageability. SwLORETA source reconstruction was performed on ERP difference waves of interest. Results Overall, the data provided evidence that the latency of lexical effects (word/non-word discrimination varied as a function of the number of a word's orthographic neighbours, being shorter to non-derived than to derived pseudo-words. This suggests some caveats about the use in lexical decision paradigms of quasi-words obtained by transposing or replacing only 1 or 2 letters. Our findings also showed that the left-occipito/temporal area, reflecting the activity of the left fusiform gyrus (BA37 of the temporal lobe, was affected by the visual familiarity of words, thus explaining its lexical sensitivity (word vs. non-word discrimination. The temporo-parietal area was markedly sensitive to phonological legality exhibiting a clear-cut discriminative response between illegal and legal strings as early as 250 ms of latency. Conclusion The onset of lexical effects in a lexical decision paradigm depends on a series of factors, including orthographic familiarity, degree of global lexical activity, and phonologic legality of non-words.

Approaching the axiomatic enrichment of the Gene Ontology from a lexical perspective.

Science.gov (United States)

Quesada-Martínez, Manuel; Mikroyannidi, Eleni; Fernández-Breis, Jesualdo Tomás; Stevens, Robert

2015-09-01

The main goal of this work is to measure how lexical regularities in biomedical ontology labels can be used for the automatic creation of formal relationships between classes, and to evaluate the results of applying our approach to the Gene Ontology (GO). In recent years, we have developed a method for the lexical analysis of regularities in biomedical ontology labels, and we showed that the labels can present a high degree of regularity. In this work, we extend our method with a cross-products extension (CPE) metric, which estimates the potential interest of a specific regularity for axiomatic enrichment in the lexical analysis, using information on exact matches in external ontologies. The GO consortium recently enriched the GO by using so-called cross-product extensions. Cross-products are generated by establishing axioms that relate a given GO class with classes from the GO or other biomedical ontologies. We apply our method to the GO and study how its lexical analysis can identify and reconstruct the cross-products that are defined by the GO consortium. The label of the classes of the GO are highly regular in lexical terms, and the exact matches with labels of external ontologies affect 80% of the GO classes. The CPE metric reveals that 31.48% of the classes that exhibit regularities have fragments that are classes into two external ontologies that are selected for our experiment, namely, the Cell Ontology and the Chemical Entities of Biological Interest ontology, and 18.90% of them are fully decomposable into smaller parts. Our results show that the CPE metric permits our method to detect GO cross-product extensions with a mean recall of 62% and a mean precision of 28%. The study is completed with an analysis of false positives to explain this precision value. We think that our results support the claim that our lexical approach can contribute to the axiomatic enrichment of biomedical ontologies and that it can provide new insights into the engineering of

The lexical development of children with hearing impairment and associated factors.

Science.gov (United States)

Penna, Leticia Macedo; Lemos, Stela Maris Aguiar; Alves, Cláudia Regina Lindgren

2014-01-01

This study aimed at analyzing the association between the lexical development of children with hearing impairment and their psychosocial and socioeconomic characteristics and medical history. An analytic transversal study was conducted in an Auditive Health Attention Service. One hundred and ten children from 6 to 10 years old using hearing aids and presenting hearing loss that ranged from light to deep levels were evaluated. All children were subjected to oral, written language and auditory perception tests. Parents answered a structured questionnaire to collect data from their medical history and socioeconomic status, and questionnaires about the features of the family environment and psychosocial characteristics. Multivariate analysis was performed by logistic regression, being the initial model composed by variables with panalysis. In the final model, we adopted a significance level of 5%. The final model of the multivariate analysis showed an association between the performance on the vocabulary test and the results of phonemic discrimination test (OR=0.81; 95%CI 0.73-0.89). The results show the importance of stimulating the auditory processing, particularly the phonemic discrimination skill, throughout the rehabilitation process of children with hearing impairment. This stimulation can enhance lexical development and minimize the metalanguage and learning difficulties often observed in these children.

Supernatural beliefs, natural kinds, and conceptual structure.

Science.gov (United States)

Walker, S J

1992-11-01

This article presents cross-cultural evidence in support of the notion that adults' natural kind concepts are theory based but may be informed by knowledge/belief systems other than the biological. Three groups of subjects from western Nigeria--rural, urban, and elite--participated in the study. Subjects heard stories describing alterations of appearance; that is, one natural kind was made to resemble another in both ritual and nonritual contexts. Subjects then were required to judge the identity of the altered item and to give an explanation for the category judgment. It was predicted that subjects would make more nonpreservation-of-identity category judgments supported by supernatural explanations in the ritual contexts and that subjects' use of supernatural explanations would reflect the extent of their engagement with the supernatural. The first prediction was borne out; the second prediction was only partially supported. Discussion of the results emphasizes the importance of exploring the role of sociocultural factors in conceptual structure.

Assessment of lexical semantic judgment abilities in alcohol ...

Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

2013-11-06

Nov 6, 2013 ... Keywords. Alcoholism; brain; fMRI; language processing; lexical; semantic judgment .... (English for all subjects) and hours spent reading one/both languages. ..... and alcoholism on verbal and visuospatial learning. J. Nerv.

INSTRUMENTAL CONCEPTUALIZATION SUBJECT AREA SOCIOLOGY: SOME POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

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E. V. Maslennikov

2016-01-01

Full Text Available The article outlines some of the possible ways of integrating the deployment tool conceptualizing domains of sociology on the basis of the machine sets of steps3. Substantiates the urgency of the problem of application of structural constructs of mathematics as a structure-formalism domain of sociology as a combination of theoretical knowledge. Formulated understanding of the sociological dimension in a broad sense of the concept of research as a measurement based on the use of instrumental in conceptualizing the methodology of sociological research. Under instrumental conceptualization refers to the construction of complex conceptual (conceptual schema structurally interconnected relationships between their individual elements, which are the units of the consideration related conceptual integrity, derived from interpretation of the properties “Set” construct. The paper proposes a definition based on the properties set in the scale set by the structure of N. Bourbaki4 relations systems in the data sets under the structural dimension of social phenomena to understand the interpretation of the investigated properties of social phenomena in terms of a construct that lies at the basis of the theoretical model that reflects the diversity of these qualities with the help of conceptual schemes that determine the quality of each as a structure of relations systems (ie, property in these qualities. In conclusion, the article lists presented in a number of publications, some preliminary results of the application of the methodology of conceptualizing instrumental in related disciplines from sociology. These works can perform suggestive role in the knowledge and understanding of methods of problem fields and objectives of the work on the conceptualization of theoretical sociology, using the mathematical theory of forms. 

Conceptual Design Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) Tower Structure

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Jennings, Chad

2002-07-18

The main objective of this work was to develop a conceptual design and engineering prototype for the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) tower structure. This thesis describes the conceptual design of a GLAST tower and the fabrication and testing of a prototype tower tray. The requirements were that the structure had to support GLAST's delicate silicon strip detector array through ground handling, launch and in orbit operations as well as provide for thermal and electrical pathways. From the desired function and the given launch vehicle for the spacecraft that carries the GLAST detector, an efficient structure was designed which met the requirements. This thesis developed in three stages: design, fabrication, and testing. During the first stage, a general set of specifications was used to develop the initial design, which was then analyzed and shown to meet or exceed the requirements. The second stage called for the fabrication of prototypes to prove manufacturability and gauge cost and time estimates for the total project. The last step called for testing the prototypes to show that they performed as the analysis had shown and prove that the design met the requirements. As a spacecraft engineering exercise, this project required formulating a solution based on engineering judgment, analyzing the solution using advanced engineering techniques, then proving the validity of the design and analysis by the manufacturing and testing of prototypes. The design described here met all the requirements set out by the needs of the experiment and operating concerns. This strawman design is not intended to be the complete or final design for the GLAST instrument structure, but instead examines some of the main challenges involved and demonstrates that there are solutions to them. The purpose of these tests was to prove that there are solutions to the basic mechanical, electrical and thermal problems presented with the GLAST project.

Philosophy and conceptual framework: collectively structuring nursing care systematization.

Science.gov (United States)

Schmitz, Eudinéia Luz; Gelbcke, Francine Lima; Bruggmann, Mario Sérgio; Luz, Susian Cássia Liz

2017-03-30

To build the Nursing Philosophy and Conceptual Framework that will support the Nursing Care Systematization in a hospital in southern Brazil with the active participation of the institution's nurses. Convergent Care Research Data collection took place from July to October 2014, through two workshops and four meetings, with 42 nurses. As a result, the nursing philosophy and conceptual framework were created and the theory was chosen. Data analysis was performed based on Morse and Field. The philosophy involves the following beliefs: team nursing; team work; holistic care; service excellence; leadership/coordination; interdisciplinary team commitment. The conceptual framework brings concepts such as: human being; nursing; nursing care, safe care. The nursing theory defined was that of Wanda de Aguiar Horta. As a contribution, it brought the construction of the institutions' nursing philosophy and conceptual framework, and the definition of a nursing theory.

Investigating Profiles of Lexical Quality in Preschool and Their Contribution to First Grade Reading

Science.gov (United States)

Murphy, Kimberly A.; Farquharson, Kelly

2016-01-01

This longitudinal study investigated profiles of lexical quality domains in preschool children and the extent to which profile membership predicted reading comprehension in first grade. A latent profile analysis was conducted to classify 420 preschool children on lexical quality domains, including orthography, phonology, morphosyntax, and…

A patient with aphasia using the nonsemantic lexical route for Kanji reading.

Science.gov (United States)

Hashimoto, Kosei; Uno, Akira; Sambai, Ami; Mizumoto, Go

We report a patient with aphasia, caused by cerebral hemorrhage, who probably used the nonsemantic lexical route when reading words aloud. To investigate the mechanisms underlying her reading dysfunction, we analyzed her reading abilities using the Dual-Route Cascaded Model. Language tests resulted in low correct percentages for both reading comprehension and reading nonwords aloud, suggesting problems in the semantic system and the nonlexical route. Conversely, the patient showed high scores on the reading words aloud task. Although she failed to understand many inconsistent-atypical words in the reading comprehension test, she correctly read most words aloud, suggesting that she used the nonsemantic lexical route. In addition, the lexical reading route was analyzed in detail by using inconsistent-atypical Kanji words as stimuli. Finally, we analyzed her reading dysfunction compared with previous cases.

Lexical learning in mild aphasia: gesture benefit depends on patholinguistic profile and lesion pattern.

Science.gov (United States)

Kroenke, Klaus-Martin; Kraft, Indra; Regenbrecht, Frank; Obrig, Hellmuth

2013-01-01

Gestures accompany speech and enrich human communication. When aphasia interferes with verbal abilities, gestures become even more relevant, compensating for and/or facilitating verbal communication. However, small-scale clinical studies yielded diverging results with regard to a therapeutic gesture benefit for lexical retrieval. Based on recent functional neuroimaging results, delineating a speech-gesture integration network for lexical learning in healthy adults, we hypothesized that the commonly observed variability may stem from differential patholinguistic profiles in turn depending on lesion pattern. Therefore we used a controlled novel word learning paradigm to probe the impact of gestures on lexical learning, in the lesioned language network. Fourteen patients with chronic left hemispheric lesions and mild residual aphasia learned 30 novel words for manipulable objects over four days. Half of the words were trained with gestures while the other half were trained purely verbally. For the gesture condition, rootwords were visually presented (e.g., Klavier, [piano]), followed by videos of the corresponding gestures and the auditory presentation of the novel words (e.g., /krulo/). Participants had to repeat pseudowords and simultaneously reproduce gestures. In the verbal condition no gesture-video was shown and participants only repeated pseudowords orally. Correlational analyses confirmed that gesture benefit depends on the patholinguistic profile: lesser lexico-semantic impairment correlated with better gesture-enhanced learning. Conversely largely preserved segmental-phonological capabilities correlated with better purely verbal learning. Moreover, structural MRI-analysis disclosed differential lesion patterns, most interestingly suggesting that integrity of the left anterior temporal pole predicted gesture benefit. Thus largely preserved semantic capabilities and relative integrity of a semantic integration network are prerequisites for successful use of

The Effect of Lexical Frequency on Spoken Word Recognition in Young and Older Listeners

Science.gov (United States)

Revill, Kathleen Pirog; Spieler, Daniel H.

2011-01-01

When identifying spoken words, older listeners may have difficulty resolving lexical competition or may place a greater weight on factors like lexical frequency. To obtain information about age differences in the time course of spoken word recognition, young and older adults’ eye movements were monitored as they followed spoken instructions to click on objects displayed on a computer screen. Older listeners were more likely than younger listeners to fixate high-frequency displayed phonological competitors. However, degradation of auditory quality in younger listeners does not reproduce this result. These data are most consistent with an increased role for lexical frequency with age. PMID:21707175

Patterns of cerebral activation during lexical and phonological reading in Portuguese

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Senaha M.L.H.

2005-01-01

Full Text Available According to the concepts of cognitive neuropsychology, there are two principal routes of reading processing: a lexical route, in which global reading of words occurs and a phonological route, responsible for the conversion of the graphemes into their respective phonemes. In the present study, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI was used to investigate the patterns of cerebral activation in lexical and phonological reading by 13 healthy women with a formal educational level greater than 11 years. Participants were submitted to a silent reading task containing three types of stimuli: real words (irregular and foreign words, nonwords and illegitimate graphic stimuli. An increased number of activated voxels were identified by fMRI in the word reading (lexical processing than in the nonword reading (phonological processing task. In word reading, activation was greater than for nonwords in the following areas: superior, middle and inferior frontal gyri, and bilateral superior temporal gyrus, right cerebellum and the left precentral gyrus, as indicated by fMRI. In the reading of nonwords, the activation was predominant in the right cerebellum and in the left superior temporal gyrus. The results of the present study suggest the existence of differences in the patterns of cerebral activation during lexical and phonological reading, with greater involvement of the right hemisphere in reading words than nonwords.

An eye movement based reading intervention in lexical and segmental readers with acquired dyslexia.

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Ablinger, Irene; von Heyden, Kerstin; Vorstius, Christian; Halm, Katja; Huber, Walter; Radach, Ralph

2014-01-01

Due to their brain damage, aphasic patients with acquired dyslexia often rely to a greater extent on lexical or segmental reading procedures. Thus, therapy intervention is mostly targeted on the more impaired reading strategy. In the present work we introduce a novel therapy approach based on real-time measurement of patients' eye movements as they attempt to read words. More specifically, an eye movement contingent technique of stepwise letter de-masking was used to support sequential reading, whereas fixation-dependent initial masking of non-central letters stimulated a lexical (parallel) reading strategy. Four lexical and four segmental readers with acquired central dyslexia received our intensive reading intervention. All participants showed remarkable improvements as evident in reduced total reading time, a reduced number of fixations per word and improved reading accuracy. Both types of intervention led to item-specific training effects in all subjects. A generalisation to untrained items was only found in segmental readers after the lexical training. Eye movement analyses were also used to compare word processing before and after therapy, indicating that all patients, with one exclusion, maintained their preferred reading strategy. However, in several cases the balance between sequential and lexical processing became less extreme, indicating a more effective individual interplay of both word processing routes.

Lexical Link Analysis Application: Improving Web Service to Acquisition Visibility Portal Phase II

Science.gov (United States)

2014-04-30

bäÉîÉåíÜ=^ååì~ä=^Åèìáëáíáçå= oÉëÉ~êÅÜ=póãéçëáìã= qÜìêëÇ~ó=pÉëëáçåë= sçäìãÉ=ff= = Lexical Link Analysis Application: Improving Web Service to...DATE 30 APR 2014 2. REPORT TYPE 3. DATES COVERED 00-00-2014 to 00-00-2014 4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE Lexical Link Analysis Application: Improving...vocabulary or lexicon, to describe the attributes and surrounding environment of the system. Lexical Link Analysis (LLA) is a form of text mining in which

Cross-Lingual Lexical Triggers in Statistical Language Modeling

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Kim, Woosung; Khudanpur, Sanjeev

2003-01-01

.... We achieve this through an extension of the method of lexical triggers to the cross-language problem, and by developing a likelihoodbased adaptation scheme for combining a trigger model with an N-gram model...

Observer Bias: An Interaction of Temperament Traits with Biases in the Semantic Perception of Lexical Material

Science.gov (United States)

Trofimova, Ira

2014-01-01

The lexical approach is a method in differential psychology that uses people's estimations of verbal descriptors of human behavior in order to derive the structure of human individuality. The validity of the assumptions of this method about the objectivity of people's estimations is rarely questioned. Meanwhile the social nature of language and the presence of emotionality biases in cognition are well-recognized in psychology. A question remains, however, as to whether such an emotionality-capacities bias is strong enough to affect semantic perception of verbal material. For the lexical approach to be valid as a method of scientific investigations, such biases should not exist in semantic perception of the verbal material that is used by this approach. This article reports on two studies investigating differences between groups contrasted by 12 temperament traits (i.e. by energetic and other capacities, as well as emotionality) in the semantic perception of very general verbal material. Both studies contrasted the groups by a variety of capacities: endurance, lability and emotionality separately in physical, social-verbal and mental aspects of activities. Hypotheses of “background emotionality” and a “projection through capacities” were supported. Non-evaluative criteria for categorization (related to complexity, organization, stability and probability of occurrence of objects) followed the polarity of evaluative criteria, and did not show independence from this polarity. Participants with stronger physical or social endurance gave significantly more positive ratings to a variety of concepts, and participants with faster physical tempo gave more positive ratings to timing-related concepts. The results suggest that people's estimations of lexical material related to human behavior have emotionality, language- and dynamical capacities-related biases and therefore are unreliable. This questions the validity of the lexical approach as a method for the objective

Conceptual design of reinforced concrete structures using topology optimization with elastoplastic material modeling

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bogomolny, Michael; Amir, Oded

2012-01-01

Design of reinforced concrete structures is governed by the nonlinear behavior of concrete and by its different strengths in tension and compression. The purpose of this article is to present a computational procedure for optimal conceptual design of reinforced concrete structures on the basis...... response must be considered. Optimized distribution of materials is achieved by introducing interpolation rules for both elastic and plastic material properties. Several numerical examples illustrate the capability and potential of the proposed procedure. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd....

Clear speech and lexical competition in younger and older adult listeners.

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Van Engen, Kristin J

2017-08-01

This study investigated whether clear speech reduces the cognitive demands of lexical competition by crossing speaking style with lexical difficulty. Younger and older adults identified more words in clear versus conversational speech and more easy words than hard words. An initial analysis suggested that the effect of lexical difficulty was reduced in clear speech, but more detailed analyses within each age group showed this interaction was significant only for older adults. The results also showed that both groups improved over the course of the task and that clear speech was particularly helpful for individuals with poorer hearing: for younger adults, clear speech eliminated hearing-related differences that affected performance on conversational speech. For older adults, clear speech was generally more helpful to listeners with poorer hearing. These results suggest that clear speech affords perceptual benefits to all listeners and, for older adults, mitigates the cognitive challenge associated with identifying words with many phonological neighbors.

Beyond Auditory Sensory Processing Deficits: Lexical Tone Perception Deficits in Chinese Children With Developmental Dyslexia.

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Tong, Xiuhong; Tong, Xiuli; King Yiu, Fung

Increasing evidence suggests that children with developmental dyslexia exhibit a deficit not only at the segmental level of phonological processing but also, by extension, at the suprasegmental level. However, it remains unclear whether such a suprasegmental phonological processing deficit is due to a difficulty in processing acoustic cues of speech rhythm, such as rise time and intensity. This study set out to investigate to what extent suprasegmental phonological processing (i.e., Cantonese lexical tone perception) and rise time sensitivity could distinguish Chinese children with dyslexia from typically developing children. Sixteen children with dyslexia and 44 age-matched controls were administered a Cantonese lexical tone perception task, psychoacoustic tasks, a nonverbal reasoning ability task, and word reading and dictation tasks. Children with dyslexia performed worse than controls on Cantonese lexical tone perception, rise time, and intensity. Furthermore, Cantonese lexical tone perception appeared to be a stable indicator that distinguishes children with dyslexia from controls, even after controlling for basic auditory processing skills. These findings suggest that suprasegmental phonological processing (i.e., lexical tone perception) is a potential factor that accounts for reading difficulty in Chinese.

Optimality Theory and Lexical Interpretation and Selection

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hogeweg, L.; Legendre, G.; Putnam, M.T.; de Swart, H.; Zaroukian, E.

2016-01-01

This chapter argues for an optimization approach to the selection and interpretation of words. Several advantages of such an approach to lexical semantics are discussed. First of all, it will be argued that competition, entailing that words and interpretations are always judged in relation to other

Three Dimensional Response Spectrum Soil Structure Modeling Versus Conceptual Understanding To Illustrate Seismic Response Of Structures

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Touqan, Abdul Razzaq

2008-01-01

Present methods of analysis and mathematical modeling contain so many assumptions that separate them from reality and thus represent a defect in design which makes it difficult to analyze reasons of failure. Three dimensional (3D) modeling is so superior to 1D or 2D modeling, static analysis deviates from the true nature of earthquake load which is ''a dynamic punch'', and conflicting assumptions exist between structural engineers (who assume flexible structures on rigid block foundations) and geotechnical engineers (who assume flexible foundations supporting rigid structures). Thus a 3D dynamic soil-structure interaction is a step that removes many of the assumptions and thus clears reality to a greater extent. However such a model cannot be analytically analyzed. We need to anatomize and analogize it. The paper will represent a conceptual (analogical) 1D model for soil structure interaction and clarifies it by comparing its outcome with 3D dynamic soil-structure finite element analysis of two structures. The aim is to focus on how to calculate the period of the structure and to investigate effect of variation of stiffness on soil-structure interaction

Lexical development of noun and predicate comprehension and production in isiZulu.

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Nicolas, Ramona Kunene; Ahmed, Saaliha

2016-07-28

This study seeks to investigate the development of noun and predicate comprehension and production in isiZulu-speaking children between the ages of 25 and 36 months. It compares lexical comprehension and production in isiZulu, using an Italian developed and validated vocabulary assessment tool: The Picture Naming Game (PiNG) developed by Bello, Giannantoni, Pettenati, Stefanini and Caselli (2012). The PiNG tool includes four subtests, one each for subnoun comprehension (NC), noun production (NP), predicate comprehension (PC), and predicate production (PP). Children are shown these lexical items and then asked to show comprehension and produce certain lexical items. After adaptation into the South African context, the adapted version of PiNG was used to directly assess the lexical development of isiZulu with the three main objectives to (1) test the efficiency of the adaptation of a vocabulary tool to measure isiZulu comprehension and production development, (2) test previous findings done in many cross-linguistic comparisons that have found that both comprehension and production performance increase with age for a lesser-studied language, and (3) present our findings around the comprehension and production of the linguistic categories of nouns and predicates. An analysis of the results reported in this study show an age effect throughout the entire sample. Across all the age groups, the comprehension of the noun and predicate subtests was better performed than the production of noun and predicate subtests. With regard to lexical items, the responses of children showed an influence of various factors, including the late acquisition of items, possible problems with stimuli presented to them, and the possible input received by the children from their home environment.

Lexical development of noun and predicate comprehension and production in isiZulu

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Ramona Kunene Nicolas

2016-07-01

Full Text Available This study seeks to investigate the development of noun and predicate comprehension and production in isiZulu-speaking children between the ages of 25 and 36 months. It compares lexical comprehension and production in isiZulu, using an Italian developed and validated vocabulary assessment tool: The Picture Naming Game (PiNG developed by Bello, Giannantoni, Pettenati, Stefanini and Caselli (2012. The PiNG tool includes four subtests, one each for subnoun comprehension (NC, noun production (NP, predicate comprehension (PC, and predicate production (PP. Children are shown these lexical items and then asked to show comprehension and produce certain lexical items. After adaptation into the South African context, the adapted version of PiNG was used to directly assess the lexical development of isiZulu with the three main objectives to (1 test the efficiency of the adaptation of a vocabulary tool to measure isiZulu comprehension and production development, (2 test previous findings done in many cross-linguistic comparisons that have found that both comprehension and production performance increase with age for a lesser-studied language, and (3 present our findings around the comprehension and production of the linguistic categories of nouns and predicates. An analysis of the results reported in this study show an age effect throughout the entire sample. Across all the age groups, the comprehension of the noun and predicate subtests was better performed than the production of noun and predicate subtests. With regard to lexical items, the responses of children showed an influence of various factors, including the late acquisition of items, possible problems with stimuli presented to them, and the possible input received by the children from their home environment.

Lexical exposure to native language dialects can improve non-native phonetic discrimination.

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Olmstead, Annie J; Viswanathan, Navin

2018-04-01

Nonnative phonetic learning is an area of great interest for language researchers, learners, and educators alike. In two studies, we examined whether nonnative phonetic discrimination of Hindi dental and retroflex stops can be improved by exposure to lexical items bearing the critical nonnative stops. We extend the lexical retuning paradigm of Norris, McQueen, and Cutler (Cognitive Psychology, 47, 204-238, 2003) by having naive American English (AE)-speaking participants perform a pretest-training-posttest procedure. They performed an AXB discrimination task with the Hindi retroflex and dental stops before and after transcribing naturally produced words from an Indian English speaker that either contained these tokens or not. Only those participants who heard words with the critical nonnative phones improved in their posttest discrimination. This finding suggests that exposure to nonnative phones in native lexical contexts supports learning of difficult nonnative phonetic discrimination.

Lexical ambiguity resolution

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Small, S.; Cottrell, G.; Tanenhaus, M.

1987-01-01

This book collects much of the best research currently available on the problem of lexical ambiguity resolution in the processing of human language. When taken out of context, sentences are usually ambiguous. When actually uttered in a dialogue or written in text, these same sentences often have unique interpretations. The inherent ambiguity of isolated sentences, becomes obvious in the attempt to write a computer program to understand them. Different views have emerged on the nature of context and the mechanisms by which it directs unambiguous understanding of words and sentences. These perspectives are represented and discussed. Eighteen original papers from a valuable source book for cognitive scientists in AI, psycholinguistics, neuropsychology, or theoretical linguistics.

Lexical Reading in Dysfluent Readers of German

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Gangl, Melanie; Moll, Kristina; Jones, Manon W.; Banfi, Chiara; Schulte-Körne, Gerd; Landerl, Karin

2018-01-01

Dyslexia in consistent orthographies like German is characterized by dysfluent reading, which is often assumed to result from failure to build up an orthographic lexicon and overreliance on decoding. However, earlier evidence indicates effects of lexical processing at least in some German dyslexic readers. We investigated variations in reading…

Significance analysis of lexical bias in microarray data

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Falkow Stanley

2003-04-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Genes that are determined to be significantly differentially regulated in microarray analyses often appear to have functional commonalities, such as being components of the same biochemical pathway. This results in certain words being under- or overrepresented in the list of genes. Distinguishing between biologically meaningful trends and artifacts of annotation and analysis procedures is of the utmost importance, as only true biological trends are of interest for further experimentation. A number of sophisticated methods for identification of significant lexical trends are currently available, but these methods are generally too cumbersome for practical use by most microarray users. Results We have developed a tool, LACK, for calculating the statistical significance of apparent lexical bias in microarray datasets. The frequency of a user-specified list of search terms in a list of genes which are differentially regulated is assessed for statistical significance by comparison to randomly generated datasets. The simplicity of the input files and user interface targets the average microarray user who wishes to have a statistical measure of apparent lexical trends in analyzed datasets without the need for bioinformatics skills. The software is available as Perl source or a Windows executable. Conclusion We have used LACK in our laboratory to generate biological hypotheses based on our microarray data. We demonstrate the program's utility using an example in which we confirm significant upregulation of SPI-2 pathogenicity island of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium by the cation chelator dipyridyl.

Lexical analysis of the Code of Medical Ethics of the Federal Council of Medicine.

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Andrade, Edson de Oliveira; Andrade, Edson de Oliveira

2016-04-01

The Code of Medical Ethics (CME) of the Federal Council of Medicine is the legal document that exposes the moral discourse of Brazilian physicians to society and the profession. It is a set of propositions based on which doctors say they are committed to values of conduct aimed at fair and proper professional practice. To verify through lexical analysis of the CME corpus if the goals presented in the arguments of the resolution that established the code are properly addressed in these regulations. This is a quantitative and qualitative study of descriptive nature, aiming at a lexical analysis of the CME. The lexical analysis was performed using a method of Top-Down Hierarchical Classification of vocabulary, as described by Reinert in 1987, assuming that words used in similar contexts are associated with a single lexical world. In addition to the analysis of results, an improved representation of the charts related with Factorial and Similitude Analyses was made. Six clusters were extracted, leading to the identification of three major branches: health care, professional practice and research. These branches revolve around the figures of physician and patient. The similitude analysis revealed a complementarity status between these two figures. The lexical analysis showed that the purposes contained in the resolution that established the CME were adequately represented in the document body.

A Conceptual Framework of Corporate and Business Ethics across Organizations: Structures, Processes and Performance

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Svensson, Goran; Wood, Greg

2011-01-01

Purpose: The objective of this paper is to introduce and describe a conceptual framework of corporate and business ethics across organizations in terms of ethical structures, ethical processes and ethical performance. Design/methodology/approach: A framework is outlined and positioned incorporating an ethical frame of reference in the field of…

Lexical Tones in Mandarin Chinese Infant-Directed Speech: Age-Related Changes in the Second Year of Life

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Mengru Han

2018-04-01

Full Text Available Tonal information is essential to early word learning in tone languages. Although numerous studies have investigated the intonational and segmental properties of infant-directed speech (IDS, only a few studies have explored the properties of lexical tones in IDS. These studies mostly focused on the first year of life; thus little is known about how lexical tones in IDS change as children’s vocabulary acquisition accelerates in the second year (Goldfield and Reznick, 1990; Bloom, 2001. The present study examines whether Mandarin Chinese mothers hyperarticulate lexical tones in IDS addressing 18- and 24-month-old children—at which age children are learning words at a rapid speed—vs. adult-directed speech (ADS. Thirty-nine Mandarin Chinese–speaking mothers were tested in a semi-spontaneous picture-book-reading task, in which they told the same story to their child (IDS condition and to an adult (ADS condition. Results for the F0 measurements (minimum F0, maximum F0, and F0 range of tone in the speech data revealed a continuum of differences among IDS addressing 18-month-olds, IDS addressing 24-month-olds, and ADS. Lexical tones in IDS addressing 18-month-old children had a higher minimum F0, higher maximum F0, and larger pitch range than lexical tones in ADS. Lexical tones in IDS addressing 24-month-old children showed more similarity to ADS tones with respect to pitch height: there were no differences in minimum F0 and maximum F0 between ADS and IDS. However, F0 range was still larger. These results suggest that lexical tones are generally hyperarticulated in Mandarin Chinese IDS addressing 18- and 24- month-old children despite the change in pitch level over time. Mandarin Chinese mothers hyperarticulate lexical tones in IDS when talking to toddlers and potentially facilitate tone acquisition and word learning.

Using a Conceptual-Change Approach to Help Preservice Science Teachers Reorganize Their Knowledge Structures for Constructivist Teaching

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Dhindsa, H. S.; Anderson, O. R.

2004-02-01

This study, based on constructivist learning theory, examined how effectively preservice chemistry teachers (N = 43) can be educated to think flexibly and to reorganize their thinking in a way that may complement diverse ways students approach the subject domain. The teacher's cognitive structure was assessed prior to and after a conceptual change intervention using flow-map narrative analyses. There was a significant change in the organization of the preservice teacher's narrative after the conceptual change intervention, including greater networking of ideas and more thematic development of the content. Hence, a conceptual change approach may be a useful way to educate teachers to be more responsive to student individual differences when planning and delivering science lessons.

Developmental Trajectory for Production of Prosody: Lexical Stress Contrastivity in Children Ages 3 to 7 Years and in Adults

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Ballard, Kirrie J.; Djaja, Danica; Arciuli, Joanne; James, Deborah G. H.; van Doorn, Jan

2012-01-01

Purpose: Accurate production of lexical stress within English polysyllabic words is critical for intelligibility and is affected in many speech-language disorders. However, models of speech production remain underspecified with regard to lexical stress. In this study, the authors report a large-scale acoustic investigation of lexical stress…

Putting lexical constraints in context into the visual-world paradigm.

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Novick, Jared M; Thompson-Schill, Sharon L; Trueswell, John C

2008-06-01

Prior eye-tracking studies of spoken sentence comprehension have found that the presence of two potential referents, e.g., two frogs, can guide listeners toward a Modifier interpretation of Put the frog on the napkin... despite strong lexical biases associated with Put that support a Goal interpretation of the temporary ambiguity (Tanenhaus, M. K., Spivey-Knowlton, M. J., Eberhard, K. M. & Sedivy, J. C. (1995). Integration of visual and linguistic information in spoken language comprehension. Science, 268, 1632-1634; Trueswell, J. C., Sekerina, I., Hill, N. M. & Logrip, M. L. (1999). The kindergarten-path effect: Studying on-line sentence processing in young children. Cognition, 73, 89-134). This pattern is not expected under constraint-based parsing theories: cue conflict between the lexical evidence (which supports the Goal analysis) and the visuo-contextual evidence (which supports the Modifier analysis) should result in uncertainty about the intended analysis and partial consideration of the Goal analysis. We reexamined these put studies (Experiment 1) by introducing a response time-constraint and a spatial contrast between competing referents (a frog on a napkin vs. a frog in a bowl). If listeners immediately interpret on the... as the start of a restrictive modifier, then their eye movements should rapidly converge on the intended referent (the frog on something). However, listeners showed this pattern only when the phrase was unambiguously a Modifier (Put the frog that's on the...). Syntactically ambiguous trials resulted in transient consideration of the Competitor animal (the frog in something). A reading study was also run on the same individuals (Experiment 2) and performance was compared between the two experiments. Those individuals who relied heavily on lexical biases to resolve a complement ambiguity in reading (The man heard/realized the story had been...) showed increased sensitivity to both lexical and contextual constraints in the put-task; i

Fine motor skills enhance lexical processing of embodied vocabulary: A test of the nimble-hands, nimble-minds hypothesis.

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Suggate, Sebastian; Stoeger, Heidrun

2017-10-01

Research suggests that fine motor skills (FMS) are linked to aspects of cognitive development in children. Additionally, lexical processing advantages exist for words implying a high body-object interaction (BOI), with initial findings indicating that such words in turn link to children's FMS-for which we propose and evaluate four competing hypotheses. First, a maturational account argues that any links between FMS and lexical processing should not exist once developmental variables are controlled for. Second, functionalism posits that any link between FMS and lexical processing arises due to environmental interactions. Third, the semantic richness hypothesis argues that sensorimotor input improves lexical processing, but predicts no links between FMS and lexical processing. A fourth account, the nimble-hands, nimble minds (NHNM) hypothesis, proposes that having greater FMS improves lexical processing for high-BOI words. In two experiments, the response latencies of preschool children (n = 90, n = 76, ages = 5;1) to 45 lexical items encompassing high-BOI, low-BOI, and less imageable words were measured, alongside measures of FMS, reasoning, and general receptive/expressive vocabulary. High-BOI words appeared to show unique links to FMS, which remained after accounting for low-BOI and less imageable words, general vocabulary, reasoning, and chronological age. Although further work is needed, the findings provide initial support for the NHNM hypothesis.

Using stochastic language models (SLM) to map lexical, syntactic, and phonological information processing in the brain.

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Lopopolo, Alessandro; Frank, Stefan L; van den Bosch, Antal; Willems, Roel M

2017-01-01

Language comprehension involves the simultaneous processing of information at the phonological, syntactic, and lexical level. We track these three distinct streams of information in the brain by using stochastic measures derived from computational language models to detect neural correlates of phoneme, part-of-speech, and word processing in an fMRI experiment. Probabilistic language models have proven to be useful tools for studying how language is processed as a sequence of symbols unfolding in time. Conditional probabilities between sequences of words are at the basis of probabilistic measures such as surprisal and perplexity which have been successfully used as predictors of several behavioural and neural correlates of sentence processing. Here we computed perplexity from sequences of words and their parts of speech, and their phonemic transcriptions. Brain activity time-locked to each word is regressed on the three model-derived measures. We observe that the brain keeps track of the statistical structure of lexical, syntactic and phonological information in distinct areas.

Planning and production of grammatical and lexical verbs in multi-word messages

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Lange, Violaine Michel; Messerschmidt, Maria; Harder, Peter

2017-01-01

to lexical words. First, based on the assumption that grammatical words are less crucial for communication and therefore paid less attention to, it is predicted that they show shorter articulation times and/or higher error rates than lexical words. Second, based on the assumption that grammatical words...... were reported, successfully reflecting grammatical word properties as defined by linguistic theories and psycholinguistic models. Importantly, this study provides insight into the span of encoding and grammatical encoding processes in speech production....

The influence of emotion on lexical processing: insights from RT distributional analysis.

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Yap, Melvin J; Seow, Cui Shan

2014-04-01

In two lexical decision experiments, the present study was designed to examine emotional valence effects on visual lexical decision (standard and go/no-go) performance, using traditional analyses of means and distributional analyses of response times. Consistent with an earlier study by Kousta, Vinson, and Vigliocco (Cognition 112:473-481, 2009), we found that emotional words (both negative and positive) were responded to faster than neutral words. Finer-grained distributional analyses further revealed that the facilitation afforded by valence was reflected by a combination of distributional shifting and an increase in the slow tail of the distribution. This suggests that emotional valence effects in lexical decision are unlikely to be entirely mediated by early, preconscious processes, which are associated with pure distributional shifting. Instead, our results suggest a dissociation between early preconscious processes and a later, more task-specific effect that is driven by feedback from semantically rich representations.

Does Discourse Congruence Influence Spoken Language Comprehension before Lexical Association? Evidence from Event-Related Potentials

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Boudewyn, Megan A.; Gordon, Peter C.; Long, Debra; Polse, Lara; Swaab, Tamara Y.

2011-01-01

The goal of this study was to examine how lexical association and discourse congruence affect the time course of processing incoming words in spoken discourse. In an ERP norming study, we presented prime-target pairs in the absence of a sentence context to obtain a baseline measure of lexical priming. We observed a typical N400 effect when participants heard critical associated and unassociated target words in word pairs. In a subsequent experiment, we presented the same word pairs in spoken discourse contexts. Target words were always consistent with the local sentence context, but were congruent or not with the global discourse (e.g., “Luckily Ben had picked up some salt and pepper/basil”, preceded by a context in which Ben was preparing marinara sauce (congruent) or dealing with an icy walkway (incongruent). ERP effects of global discourse congruence preceded those of local lexical association, suggesting an early influence of the global discourse representation on lexical processing, even in locally congruent contexts. Furthermore, effects of lexical association occurred earlier in the congruent than incongruent condition. These results differ from those that have been obtained in studies of reading, suggesting that the effects may be unique to spoken word recognition. PMID:23002319

The Precise Time Course of Lexical Activation: MEG Measurements of the Effects of Frequency, Probability, and Density in Lexical Decision

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Stockall, Linnaea; Stringfellow, Andrew; Marantz, Alec

2004-01-01

Visually presented letter strings consistently yield three MEG response components: the M170, associated with letter-string processing (Tarkiainen, Helenius, Hansen, Cornelissen, & Salmelin, 1999); the M250, affected by phonotactic probability, (Pylkkanen, Stringfellow, & Marantz, 2002); and the M350, responsive to lexical frequency (Embick,…

Functional MRI assessment of hemispheric language dominance with using a lexical decision task

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ryoo, Jae Wook; Choi, Dae Seob; Cho, Jae Min; Park, Eui Dong; You, Jin Jong; Na, Dong Gyu; Kim, Sam Soo; Cha, Sang Hoon

2005-01-01

We wanted to compare the fMRIs (functional magnetic resonance images) obtained during a lexical decision task and also during a word generation task, and we wanted to evaluate the usefulness of using a lexical decision task for the visualization of the brain language area and for the determination of language dominance. Sixteen patients (9 women and 7 men) who had had undergone the Wada test were included in our study. All the patients were left dominant for language, as tested for on the Wada test. The functional maps of the brain language area were obtained in all the subjects during the performance of a lexical decision task and also during the performance of a word generation task. The MR examinations were performed with a 1.5 T scanner and with using the EPI BOLD technique. We used the SPM program for the postprocessing of the images. The threshold for significance was set at ρ <0.001 or ρ <0.01. A lateralization index was calculated from the number of activated pixels in each hemispheric region (the whole hemisphere, the frontal lobe and the temporoparietal lobe), and the hemispheric language dominance was assessed by the lateralization index; the results were then compared with those results of the Wada test. The differences for the lateralization of the language area were analyzed with regard to the stimulation tasks and the regions used for the calculation of the lateralization indices. The number of activated pixels during the lexical decision task was significantly smaller than that of the word generation task. The language dominance based on the activated signals in each hemisphere, was consistent with the results of the Wada test for the word generation tasks in all the subjects. On the lexical decision task, the language dominance, as determined by the activated signals in each hemisphere and the temporoparietal lobe, correlated for 94% of the patients. The mean values of the lateralization index for the lexical decision task were higher than those

Functional MRI assessment of hemispheric language dominance with using a lexical decision task

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Ryoo, Jae Wook; Choi, Dae Seob; Cho, Jae Min; Park, Eui Dong; You, Jin Jong [Gyeongsang National University College of Medicine, Jinju (Korea, Republic of); Na, Dong Gyu [Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul (Korea, Republic of); Kim, Sam Soo [Kangwon National University College of Medicine, Chuncheon (Korea, Republic of); Cha, Sang Hoon [Chungbuk National University College of Medicine, Cheonju (Korea, Republic of)

2005-07-15

We wanted to compare the fMRIs (functional magnetic resonance images) obtained during a lexical decision task and also during a word generation task, and we wanted to evaluate the usefulness of using a lexical decision task for the visualization of the brain language area and for the determination of language dominance. Sixteen patients (9 women and 7 men) who had had undergone the Wada test were included in our study. All the patients were left dominant for language, as tested for on the Wada test. The functional maps of the brain language area were obtained in all the subjects during the performance of a lexical decision task and also during the performance of a word generation task. The MR examinations were performed with a 1.5 T scanner and with using the EPI BOLD technique. We used the SPM program for the postprocessing of the images. The threshold for significance was set at {rho} <0.001 or {rho} <0.01. A lateralization index was calculated from the number of activated pixels in each hemispheric region (the whole hemisphere, the frontal lobe and the temporoparietal lobe), and the hemispheric language dominance was assessed by the lateralization index; the results were then compared with those results of the Wada test. The differences for the lateralization of the language area were analyzed with regard to the stimulation tasks and the regions used for the calculation of the lateralization indices. The number of activated pixels during the lexical decision task was significantly smaller than that of the word generation task. The language dominance based on the activated signals in each hemisphere, was consistent with the results of the Wada test for the word generation tasks in all the subjects. On the lexical decision task, the language dominance, as determined by the activated signals in each hemisphere and the temporoparietal lobe, correlated for 94% of the patients. The mean values of the lateralization index for the lexical decision task were higher than

Lexical mediation of phonotactic frequency effects on spoken word recognition: A Granger causality analysis of MRI-constrained MEG/EEG data.

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Gow, David W; Olson, Bruna B

2015-07-01

Phonotactic frequency effects play a crucial role in a number of debates over language processing and representation. It is unclear however, whether these effects reflect prelexical sensitivity to phonotactic frequency, or lexical "gang effects" in speech perception. In this paper, we use Granger causality analysis of MR-constrained MEG/EEG data to understand how phonotactic frequency influences neural processing dynamics during auditory lexical decision. Effective connectivity analysis showed weaker feedforward influence from brain regions involved in acoustic-phonetic processing (superior temporal gyrus) to lexical areas (supramarginal gyrus) for high phonotactic frequency words, but stronger top-down lexical influence for the same items. Low entropy nonwords (nonwords judged to closely resemble real words) showed a similar pattern of interactions between brain regions involved in lexical and acoustic-phonetic processing. These results contradict the predictions of a feedforward model of phonotactic frequency facilitation, but support the predictions of a lexically mediated account.

Lexical Inferencing in Reading L2 Russian

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Comer, William J.

2012-01-01

This study describes how intermediate-level first language English readers of Russian as a second language deploy lexical inferencing and other strategies when reading informational texts. Fifth-semester students of Russian performed think-alouds while reading two texts; one written for the general adult reader, and the other meant for school-age…

Cognitive status, lexical learning and memory in deaf adults using sign language

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Zahra Jafari

2013-05-01

Full Text Available Background and Aim : Learning and memory are two high level cognitive performances in human that hearing loss influences them. In our study, mini-mental state examination (MMSE and Ray auditory-verbal learning test (RAVLT was conducted to study cognitive stat us and lexical learning and memory in deaf adults using sign language. Methods: This cross-sectional comparative study was conducted on 30 available congenitally deaf adults using sign language in Persian and 46 normal adults aged 19 to 27 years for both sexes, with a minimum of diploma level of education. After mini-mental state examination, Rey auditory-verbal learning test was run through computers to evaluate lexical learning and memory with visual presentation. Results: Mean scores of mini-mental state examination and Rey auditory-verbal learning test in congenitally deaf adults were significantly lower than normal individuals in all scores (p=0.018 except in the two parts of the Rey test. Significant correlation was found between results of two tests just in the normal group (p=0.043. Gender had no effect on test results. Conclusion: Cognitive status and lexical memory and learning in congenitally deaf individuals is weaker than in normal subjects. It seems that using sign language as the main way of communication in deaf people causes poor lexical memory and learning.

Lexically-based learning and early grammatical development.

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Lieven, E V; Pine, J M; Baldwin, G

1997-02-01

Pine & Lieven (1993) suggest that a lexically-based positional analysis can account for the structure of a considerable proportion of children's early multiword corpora. The present study tests this claim on a second, larger sample of eleven children aged between 1;0 and 3;0 from a different social background, and extends the analysis to later in development. Results indicate that the positional analysis can account for a mean of 60% of all the children's multiword utterances and that the great majority of all other utterances are defined as frozen by the analysis. Alternative explanations of the data based on hypothesizing underlying syntactic or semantic relations are investigated through analyses of pronoun case marking and of verbs with prototypical agent-patient roles. Neither supports the view that the children's utterances are being produced on the basis of general underlying rules and categories. The implications of widespread distributional learning in early language development are discussed.

Lexical-Semantic Reading in a Shallow Orthography: Evidence from a Girl with Williams Syndrome

Science.gov (United States)

Barca, Laura; Bello, Arianna; Volterra, Virginia; Burani, Cristina

2010-01-01

The reading skills of a girl with Williams Syndrome are assessed by a timed word-naming task. To test the efficiency of lexical and nonlexical reading, we considered four marker effects: Lexicality (better reading of words than nonwords), frequency (better reading of high than low frequency words), length (better reading of short than long words),…

An Analysis of Lexical Errors of Korean Language Learners: Some American College Learners' Case

Science.gov (United States)

Kang, Manjin

2014-01-01

There has been a huge amount of research on errors of language learners. However, most of them have focused on syntactic errors and those about lexical errors are not found easily despite the importance of lexical learning for the language learners. The case is even rarer for Korean language. In line with this background, this study was designed…

Reduced short-term memory capacity in Alzheimer's disease: the role of phonological, lexical, and semantic processing.

Science.gov (United States)

Caza, Nicole; Belleville, Sylvie

2008-05-01

Individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD) are often reported to have reduced verbal short-term memory capacity, typically attributed to their attention/executive deficits. However, these individuals also tend to show progressive impairment of semantic, lexical, and phonological processing which may underlie their low short-term memory capacity. The goals of this study were to assess the contribution of each level of representation (phonological, lexical, and semantic) to immediate serial recall performance in 18 individuals with AD, and to examine how these linguistic effects on short-term memory were modulated by their reduced capacity to manipulate information in short-term memory associated with executive dysfunction. Results showed that individuals with AD had difficulty recalling items that relied on phonological representations, which led to increased lexicality effects relative to the control group. This finding suggests that patients have a greater reliance on lexical/semantic information than controls, possibly to make up for deficits in retention and processing of phonological material. This lexical/semantic effect was not found to be significantly correlated with patients' capacity to manipulate verbal material in short-term memory, indicating that language processing and executive deficits may independently contribute to reducing verbal short-term memory capacity in AD.

Neural correlates of rhyming vs. lexical and semantic fluency.

Science.gov (United States)

Kircher, Tilo; Nagels, Arne; Kirner-Veselinovic, André; Krach, Sören

2011-05-19

Rhyming words, as in songs or poems, is a universal feature of human language across all ages. In the present fMRI study a novel overt rhyming task was applied to determine the neural correlates of rhyme production. Fifteen right-handed healthy male volunteers participated in this verbal fluency study. Participants were instructed to overtly articulate as many words as possible either to a given initial letter (LVF) or to a semantic category (SVF). During the rhyming verbal fluency task (RVF), participants had to generate words that rhymed with pseudoword stimuli. On-line overt verbal responses were audiotaped in order to correct the imaging results for the number of generated words. Fewer words were generated in the rhyming compared to both the lexical and the semantic condition. On a neural level, all language tasks activated a language network encompassing the left inferior frontal gyrus, the middle and superior temporal gyri as well as the contralateral right cerebellum. Rhyming verbal fluency compared to both lexical and semantic verbal fluency demonstrated significantly stronger activation of left inferior parietal region. Generating novel rhyme words seems to be mainly mediated by the left inferior parietal lobe, a region previously found to be associated with meta-phonological as well as sub-lexical linguistic processes. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Learning new vocabulary during childhood: effects of semantic training on lexical consolidation and integration.

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Henderson, Lisa; Weighall, Anna; Gaskell, Gareth

2013-11-01

Research suggests that word learning is an extended process, with offline consolidation crucial for the strengthening of new lexical representations and their integration with existing lexical knowledge (as measured by engagement in lexical competition). This supports a dual memory systems account, in which new information is initially sparsely encoded separately from existing knowledge and integrated with long-term memory over time. However, previous studies of this type exploited unnatural learning contexts, involving fictitious words in the absence of word meaning. In this study, 5- to 9-year-old children learned real science words (e.g., hippocampus) with or without semantic information. Children in both groups were slower to detect pauses in familiar competitor words (e.g., hippopotamus) relative to control words 24h after training but not immediately, confirming that offline consolidation is required before new words are integrated with the lexicon and engage in lexical competition. Children recalled more new words 24h after training than immediately (with similar improvements shown for the recall and recognition of new word meanings); however, children who were exposed to the meanings during training showed further improvements in recall after 1 week and outperformed children who were not exposed to meanings. These findings support the dual memory systems account of vocabulary acquisition and suggest that the association of a new phonological form with semantic information is critical for the development of stable lexical representations. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Mental Imagery as Facilitator to Lexical Learning-Blocked and Random Trials

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Subhash Bhatnagar

2014-04-01

Full Text Available Developing an effective treatment plan that promotes learning-generalization beyond treated stimuli remains a challenging task in language rehabilitation. Many specific treatments have been used to document therapeutic gains in learned lexical behaviors and now learning generalizations beyond practiced stimuli are being forged (Boyle, 2004 and Kiran & Thompson, 2003.Accordingly, generalization beyond practiced structures still remains an exciting therapeutic strategy. As major elements of cognitive processing, the perceptual representations embedded within mental imagery (MI, have long been recognized for their healing potential (Thomas, 2008, and training mindfulness. MI is also known to modulate the brain’s neural-circuitry in new learning (Davidson, 2000. It also acts as a mean to access memories and passes undistorted through mental resistances (Singer 1974. Purpose We integrated blocked and random presentations of MI with our treatment of anomia with three goals in mind: (1 to evaluate whether activation of the neural circuitry through controlled MI facilitated word finding skills; (2 to determine if the blocked or random modes of MI presentation facilitate learning equally or not; and, (3 to evaluate if the effects of evoked MI generalize to untrained lexical items. Subject The participating subject was a three-year post-onset, right-handed, 68-year old University-educated male with chronic aphasia secondary to a MRI confirmed large left temporal-parietal infarct in addition to an earlier left frontal infarct. These strokes resulted in moderately impaired comprehension and verbal expression. He made gains in both aspects of language following two years of SLP treatment. However, he continued to exhibit moderate to severe word finding (Goodglass & Kaplan, 1983. Methods We incorporated MI with random and blocked presentations in ABA format to explore the learning and generalization of trained mental representations that comprised of both

A Lexical Approach to Passive in ESL.

Science.gov (United States)

Marshall, Fred

Dissatisfaction with the standard transformational grammar approach to teaching passive voice sentences gave rise to the method developed. It is based on the framework of a lexical-functional grammar, which claims that both active and passive sentences are base-generated, and that both active and passive verb forms occur in the lexicon. It would…

Extensive Reading in Enhancing Lexical Chunks Acquisition

Science.gov (United States)

Pereyra, Nilsa

2015-01-01

The purpose of this action research was to investigate the effect of extensive reading and related activities on the acquisition of lexical chunks in EFL students. Seven adult EFL learners with an Intermediate level volunteered to take part in the 16 week project following Extensive Reading principles combined with tasks based on the Lexical…

Conceptualizing structural change in health promotion: why we still need to know more about theory.

Science.gov (United States)

Gelius, Peter; Rütten, Alfred

2017-02-28

As recently discussed in the public health literature, many questions concerning 'structural' approaches in health promotion seem to remain unanswered. We argue that, before attempting to provide answers, it is essential to clarify the underlying theoretical assumptions in order to arrive at the right questions one should ask. To this end, we introduce into the current debate an existing theoretical framework that helps conceptualize structural and individual aspects of health promotion interventions at different levels of action. Using an example from the field of physical activity promotion, we illustrate how an integrated framework can help researchers and health promoters rethink important issues and design better interventions. In particular, such an approach may help overcome perceived distinctions between different types of approaches, re-conceptualize ideas about the effectiveness of interventions, and appropriately address issues of health disparities. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Measuring Conceptual Change on Stoichiometry Using Mental Models and IllStructured Problems In a Flipped Classroom Environment

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Norrie E. Gayeta

2017-05-01

Full Text Available This study aimed to measure conceptual change on stoichiometry using mental models and ill-structured problems in flipped classroom environment. This study examined the level of conceptual understanding of students on stoichiometry before and after exposure to flipped and traditional lecture method. It also covered the type of conceptual change, and students’ description in flipped classroom environment. Qualitative and quantitative research methods were used in the study. Respondents were two sections of third year Bachelor of Secondary Education, Biological Science. Frequency, percentage, ranking, mean, standard deviation, Hake factor test, and t-test were the statistical tools applied to answer specific questions. Results showed profound increase towards conceptual change representing a shift from intuitive understanding to correct incomplete understanding level. Thus, change for the better, in theoretical type was determined from pretest to posttest of students exposed to flipped and traditional instruction. Results also indicated that there is no significant difference on students’ conceptual change on stoichiometry exposed to flipped and traditional lecture method. Furthermore, students strongly agreed that flipped classroom instruction helped them develop positive attitude towards chemistry and appropriate for learning college chemistry.

Standard-Chinese Lexical Neighborhood Test in normal-hearing young children.

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Liu, Chang; Liu, Sha; Zhang, Ning; Yang, Yilin; Kong, Ying; Zhang, Luo

2011-06-01

The purposes of the present study were to establish the Standard-Chinese version of Lexical Neighborhood Test (LNT) and to examine the lexical and age effects on spoken-word recognition in normal-hearing children. Six lists of monosyllabic and six lists of disyllabic words (20 words/list) were selected from the database of daily speech materials for normal-hearing (NH) children of ages 3-5 years. The lists were further divided into "easy" and "hard" halves according to the word frequency and neighborhood density in the database based on the theory of Neighborhood Activation Model (NAM). Ninety-six NH children (age ranged between 4.0 and 7.0 years) were divided into three different age groups of 1-year intervals. Speech-perception tests were conducted using the Standard-Chinese monosyllabic and disyllabic LNT. The inter-list performance was found to be equivalent and inter-rater reliability was high with 92.5-95% consistency. Results of word-recognition scores showed that the lexical effects were all significant. Children scored higher with disyllabic words than with monosyllabic words. "Easy" words scored higher than "hard" words. The word-recognition performance also increased with age in each lexical category. A multiple linear regression analysis showed that neighborhood density, age, and word frequency appeared to have increasingly more contributions to Chinese word recognition. The results of the present study indicated that performances of Chinese word recognition were influenced by word frequency, age, and neighborhood density, with word frequency playing a major role. These results were consistent with those in other languages, supporting the application of NAM in the Chinese language. The development of Standard-Chinese version of LNT and the establishment of a database of children of 4-6 years old can provide a reliable means for spoken-word recognition test in children with hearing impairment. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

PESQUISAS EM AQUISIÇÃO LEXICAL ATRAVÉS DA LEITURA

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Lucilene Bender de Sousa

2012-07-01

Full Text Available A aquisição de palavras através da leitura é um tema de pesquisa pouco estudado no país, embora seja objeto de estudo desde a década de 80 no exterior. Neste artigo, nosso objetivo é mostrar a relevância desse tema e o que já foi pesquisado sobre ele. Partimos da seguinte citação: “o vocabulário serve de ponte entre o processamento fônico no nível da palavra e o processo cognitivo de compreensão.”(KAMIL; HIEBERT, 2005, p. 4, que nos faz enxergar de modo mais claro a relação entre o conhecimento lexical e o desenvolvimento da proficiência em leitura. Refletir sobre essa relação também pode trazer mudanças interessantes no trabalho com leitura em sala de aula. Inicialmente, abordamos o que é contexto, qual é o seu papel na aquisição lexical e que tipos de informações ele pode fornecer; também identificamos fatores relacionados ao contexto que podem interferir no processo de aquisição lexical. Em seguida, descrevemos algumas pesquisas relevantes realizadas nessa área de estudo tanto em língua materna quanto em segunda língua, em períodos diversos, desde 1984 a 2005. Essa descrição busca revisar os resultados obtidos por essas pesquisas e as metodologias por elas utilizadas. Por fim, analisamos as características predominantes nos experimentos descritos e questões que ainda precisam ser investigadas dentro da aquisição lexical através da leitura.

Environmental Determinants of Lexical Processing Effort

OpenAIRE

McDonald, Scott

2000-01-01

Institute for Adaptive and Neural Computation A central concern of psycholinguistic research is explaining the relative ease or difficulty involved in processing words. In this thesis, we explore the connection between lexical processing effort and measurable properties of the linguistic environment. Distributional information (information about a word’s contexts of use) is easily extracted from large language corpora in the form of co-occurrence statistics. We claim that su...

Conceptual model study using origami for membrane space structures : a perspective of origami-based engineering

OpenAIRE

NATORI, M. C.; SAKAMOTO, Hiraku; KATSUMATA, Nobuhisa; YAMAKAWA, Hiroshi; KISHIMOTO, Naoko

2015-01-01

This paper discusses what has been found and what will be found using conceptual “origami” models to develop deployable space structures. The study covers the following: (i) one-dimensional structural elements, which are axially buckled inflatable tubes; (ii) two-dimensional elements, which are deployable membranes, such as solar arrays and solar sails; and (iii) deployable elements in nature. The study clarifies what design considerations are necessary to adapt the basic concepts to actual s...

Contrasting effects of vocabulary knowledge on temporal and parietal brain structure across lifespan.

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Richardson, Fiona M; Thomas, Michael S C; Filippi, Roberto; Harth, Helen; Price, Cathy J

2010-05-01

Using behavioral, structural, and functional imaging techniques, we demonstrate contrasting effects of vocabulary knowledge on temporal and parietal brain structure in 47 healthy volunteers who ranged in age from 7 to 73 years. In the left posterior supramarginal gyrus, vocabulary knowledge was positively correlated with gray matter density in teenagers but not adults. This region was not activated during auditory or visual sentence processing, and activation was unrelated to vocabulary skills. Its gray matter density may reflect the use of an explicit learning strategy that links new words to lexical or conceptual equivalents, as used in formal education and second language acquisition. By contrast, in left posterior temporal regions, gray matter as well as auditory and visual sentence activation correlated with vocabulary knowledge throughout lifespan. We propose that these effects reflect the acquisition of vocabulary through context, when new words are learnt within the context of semantically and syntactically related words.

Electrophysiology of prosodic and lexical-semantic processing during sentence comprehension in aphasia.

Science.gov (United States)

Sheppard, Shannon M; Love, Tracy; Midgley, Katherine J; Holcomb, Phillip J; Shapiro, Lewis P

2017-12-01

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to examine how individuals with aphasia and a group of age-matched controls use prosody and themattic fit information in sentences containing temporary syntactic ambiguities. Two groups of individuals with aphasia were investigated; those demonstrating relatively good sentence comprehension whose primary language difficulty is anomia (Individuals with Anomic Aphasia (IWAA)), and those who demonstrate impaired sentence comprehension whose primary diagnosis is Broca's aphasia (Individuals with Broca's Aphasia (IWBA)). The stimuli had early closure syntactic structure and contained a temporary early closure (correct)/late closure (incorrect) syntactic ambiguity. The prosody was manipulated to either be congruent or incongruent, and the temporarily ambiguous NP was also manipulated to either be a plausible or an implausible continuation for the subordinate verb (e.g., "While the band played the song/the beer pleased all the customers."). It was hypothesized that an implausible NP in sentences with incongruent prosody may provide the parser with a plausibility cue that could be used to predict syntactic structure. The results revealed that incongruent prosody paired with a plausibility cue resulted in an N400-P600 complex at the implausible NP (the beer) in both the controls and the IWAAs, yet incongruent prosody without a plausibility cue resulted in an N400-P600 at the critical verb (pleased) only in healthy controls. IWBAs did not show evidence of N400 or P600 effects at the ambiguous NP or critical verb, although they did show evidence of a delayed N400 effect at the sentence-final word in sentences with incongruent prosody. These results suggest that IWAAs have difficulty integrating prosodic cues with underlying syntactic structure when lexical-semantic information is not available to aid their parse. IWBAs have difficulty integrating both prosodic and lexical-semantic cues with syntactic structure, likely due to a

Event-Based Conceptual Modeling

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bækgaard, Lars

2009-01-01

The purpose of the paper is to obtain insight into and provide practical advice for event-based conceptual modeling. We analyze a set of event concepts and use the results to formulate a conceptual event model that is used to identify guidelines for creation of dynamic process models and static...... information models. We characterize events as short-duration processes that have participants, consequences, and properties, and that may be modeled in terms of information structures. The conceptual event model is used to characterize a variety of event concepts and it is used to illustrate how events can...... be used to integrate dynamic modeling of processes and static modeling of information structures. The results are unique in the sense that no other general event concept has been used to unify a similar broad variety of seemingly incompatible event concepts. The general event concept can be used...

A DISTRIBUIÇÃO GEOLINGUÍSTICA DO ITEM LEXICAL TOCO DE CIGARRO NAS CAPITAIS BRASILEIRAS

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Abdelhak Razky

2016-01-01

Full Text Available O léxico da Língua Portuguesa, há muito, tem sidotema de estudos de dialetólogos e geolinguístas brasileiros.Muitos são os trabalhos já publicados sobre a variedadelexical no Português Brasileiro (PB. Isso é constatado pormeio do grande volume de trabalhos publicados sob formade artigos científicos, dissertações de mestrado ou teses dedoutorado. Entretanto, dada a riqueza e diversidade queenvolve o tema, é praticamente impossível esgotar as possibilidadesde estudo do léxico de uma língua. Neste artigo,tomamos o léxico como objeto de estudo. A análise quefaremos se pauta na orientação geossociolinguística. Analisaremoso item lexical toco de cigarro, variante linguísticaque integra o campo semântico “Convívio e comportamentosocial” do Questionário Semântico-Lexical (QSLdo projeto Atlas Linguístico do Brasil (ALiB. Trata-se deuma abordagem geolinguística multidimensional que tempor objetivo a elaboração de uma carta lexical experimentalpara a visualização da variação diatópica, diastrática, diagenéricae diageracional do item lexical referido.Palavras-chave: Variação Lexical. Geolinguística Multidimensional.Atlas Linguístico do Brasil.

Effects of Emotional Experience in Lexical Decision

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Paul D Siakaluk

2016-08-01

Full Text Available Previous research has examined the effects of emotional experience (i.e., the ease with which words evoke emotion information in semantic categorization, word naming, and Stroop tasks (Moffat, Siakaluk, Sidhu, & Pexman, 2015; Newcombe, Campbell, Siakaluk, & Pexman, 2012; Siakaluk, Knol, & Pexman, 2014. However, to date there are no published reports on whether emotional experience influences performance in the lexical decision task (LDT. In the present study, we examined the influence of emotional experience in LDT using three different stimulus sets. In Experiment 1 we used a stimulus set used by both Kousta, Vinson, and Vigliocco (2009; Experiment 1 and Yap and Seow (2014 that is comprised of 40 negative, 40 positive, and 40 neutral words; in Experiment 2 we used a stimulus set comprised of 150 abstract nouns; and in Experiment 3 we used a stimulus set comprised of 373 verbs. We observed facilitatory effects of emotional experience in each of the three experiments, such that words with higher emotional experience ratings were associated with faster response latencies. These results are important because the influence of emotional experience: (a is observed in stimulus sets comprised of different types of words, demonstrating the generalizability of the effect in LDT; (b accounts for LDT response latency variability above and beyond the influences of valence and arousal, and is thus a robust dimension of conceptual knowledge; (c suggests that a richer representation of emotional experience provides more reliable evidence that a stimulus is a word, which facilitates responding in LDT; and (d is consistent with grounded cognition frameworks that propose that emotion information may be grounded in bodily experience with the world (Barsalou, 2003, 2009; Vigliocco, Meteyard, Andrews, & Kousta, 2009.

Structural adjustment and health: A conceptual framework and evidence on pathways.

Science.gov (United States)

Kentikelenis, Alexander E

2017-08-01

Economic reform programs designed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank-so-called 'structural adjustment programs'-have formed one of the most influential policy agendas of the past four decades. To gain access to financial support from these organizations, countries-often in economic crisis-have reduced public spending, limited the role of the state, and deregulated economic activity. This article identifies the multiple components of structural adjustment, and presents a conceptual framework linking them to health systems and outcomes. Based on a comprehensive review of the academic literature, the article identifies three main pathways through which structural adjustment affects health: policies directly targeting health systems; policies indirectly impacting health systems; and policies affecting the social determinants of health. The cogency of the framework is illustrated by revisiting Greece's recent experience with structural adjustment, drawing on original IMF reports and secondary literature. Overall, the framework offers a lens through which to analyze the health consequences of structural adjustment across time, space and levels of socioeconomic development, and can be utilized in ex ante health impact assessments of these policies. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Application of core structural design guidelines in conceptual fuel pin design

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Patel, M.R.; Stephen, J.D.

1979-01-01

The paper describes an application of the Draft RDT Standards F9-7, -8, and -9 to conceptual design of Fast Breeder Reactor (FBR) fuel pins. The Standards are being developed to provide guidelines for structural analysis and design of the FBR core components which have limited ductility at high fluences and are not addressed by the prevalent codes. The development is guided by a national working group sponsored by the Division of Reactor Researcch and Technology of the Department of Energy. The development program summarized in the paper includes establishment of design margins consistent with the test data and component performance requirements, and application of the design rules in various design activities. The application program insures that the quantities required for proper application of the design rules are available from the analysis methods and test data, and that the use of the same design rules in different analysis tools used at different stages of a component design producees consistent results. This is illustrated in the paper by application of the design rules in the analysis methods developed for conceptual and more detailed designs of an FBR fuel pin

Impaired Orthographic Processing in Chinese Dyslexic Children: Evidence from the Lexicality Effect on N400

Science.gov (United States)

Tzeng, Yu-Lin; Hsu, Chun-Hsien; Lin, Wan-Hsuan; Lee, Chia-Ying

2017-01-01

This study used the lexicality effects on N400 to investigate orthographic processing in children with developmental dyslexia. Participants performed a Go/No-Go semantic judgment task; three types of stimuli--real characters (RC), pseudocharacters (PC), and noncharacters (NC)--were embedded in No-Go trials. Two types of lexicality effects (RC vs.…

Acoustic and Lexical Representations for Affect Prediction in Spontaneous Conversations.

Science.gov (United States)

Cao, Houwei; Savran, Arman; Verma, Ragini; Nenkova, Ani

2015-01-01

In this article we investigate what representations of acoustics and word usage are most suitable for predicting dimensions of affect|AROUSAL, VALANCE, POWER and EXPECTANCY|in spontaneous interactions. Our experiments are based on the AVEC 2012 challenge dataset. For lexical representations, we compare corpus-independent features based on psychological word norms of emotional dimensions, as well as corpus-dependent representations. We find that corpus-dependent bag of words approach with mutual information between word and emotion dimensions is by far the best representation. For the analysis of acoustics, we zero in on the question of granularity. We confirm on our corpus that utterance-level features are more predictive than word-level features. Further, we study more detailed representations in which the utterance is divided into regions of interest (ROI), each with separate representation. We introduce two ROI representations, which significantly outperform less informed approaches. In addition we show that acoustic models of emotion can be improved considerably by taking into account annotator agreement and training the model on smaller but reliable dataset. Finally we discuss the potential for improving prediction by combining the lexical and acoustic modalities. Simple fusion methods do not lead to consistent improvements over lexical classifiers alone but improve over acoustic models.

Metrical expectations from preceding prosody influence perception of lexical stress.

Science.gov (United States)

Brown, Meredith; Salverda, Anne Pier; Dilley, Laura C; Tanenhaus, Michael K

2015-04-01

Two visual-world experiments tested the hypothesis that expectations based on preceding prosody influence the perception of suprasegmental cues to lexical stress. The results demonstrate that listeners' consideration of competing alternatives with different stress patterns (e.g., 'jury/gi'raffe) can be influenced by the fundamental frequency and syllable timing patterns across material preceding a target word. When preceding stressed syllables distal to the target word shared pitch and timing characteristics with the first syllable of the target word, pictures of alternatives with primary lexical stress on the first syllable (e.g., jury) initially attracted more looks than alternatives with unstressed initial syllables (e.g., giraffe). This effect was modulated when preceding unstressed syllables had pitch and timing characteristics similar to the initial syllable of the target word, with more looks to alternatives with unstressed initial syllables (e.g., giraffe) than to those with stressed initial syllables (e.g., jury). These findings suggest that expectations about the acoustic realization of upcoming speech include information about metrical organization and lexical stress and that these expectations constrain the initial interpretation of suprasegmental stress cues. These distal prosody effects implicate online probabilistic inferences about the sources of acoustic-phonetic variation during spoken-word recognition. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved.

Flow structure through pool-riffle sequences and a conceptual model for their sustainability in gravel-bed rivers

Science.gov (United States)

D. Caamano; P. Goodwin; J. M. Buffington

2010-01-01

Detailed field measurements and simulations of three-dimensional flow structure were used to develop a conceptual model to explain the sustainability of self-formed pool-riffle sequences in gravel-bed rivers. The analysis was conducted at the Red River Wildlife Management Area in Idaho, USA, and enabled characterization of the flow structure through two consecutive...

Lexical Specificity Training Effects in Second Language Learners

Science.gov (United States)

Janssen, Caressa; Segers, Eliane; McQueen, James M.; Verhoeven, Ludo

2015-01-01

Children who start formal education in a second language may experience slower vocabulary growth in that language and subsequently experience disadvantages in literacy acquisition. The current study asked whether lexical specificity training can stimulate bilingual children's phonological awareness, which is considered to be a precursor to…

Novel second language words and asymmetric lexical access

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Escudero, P.; Hayes-Harb, R.; Mitterer, H.

2008-01-01

The lexical and phonetic mapping of auditorily confusable L2 nonwords was examined by teaching L2 learners novel words and by later examining their word recognition using an eye-tracking paradigm. During word learning, two groups of highly proficient Dutch learners of English learned 20 English

Lexical morphology and its role in the writing process: evidence from a case of acquired dysgraphia.

Science.gov (United States)

Badecker, W; Hillis, A; Caramazza, A

1990-06-01

A case of acquired dysgraphia is presented in which the deficit is attributed to an impairment at the level of the Graphemic Output Buffer. It is argued that this patient's performance can be used to identify the representational character of the processing units that are stored in the Orthographic Output Lexicon. In particular, it is argued that the distribution of spelling errors and the types of lexical items which affect error rates indicate that the lexical representations passed from the lexical output system to the Graphemic Output Buffer correspond to the productive morphemes of the language.

Compound words prompt arbitrary semantic associations in conceptual memory

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Bastien eBoutonnet

2014-03-01

Full Text Available Linguistic relativity theory has received empirical support in domains such as colour perception and object categorisation. It is unknown however, whether relations between words idiosyncratic to language impact nonverbal representations and conceptualisations. For instance, would one consider the concepts of horse and sea as related were it not for the existence of the compound seahorse? Here, we investigated such arbitrary conceptual relationships using a non-linguistic picture relatedness task in participants undergoing event-related brain potential recordings. Picture pairs arbitrarily related because of a compound and presented in the compound order elicited N400 amplitudes similar to unrelated pairs. Surprisingly, however, pictures presented in the reverse order (as in the sequence horse – sea reduced N400 amplitudes significantly, demonstrating the existence of a link in memory between these two concepts otherwise unrelated. These results break new ground in the domain of linguistic relativity by revealing predicted semantic associations driven by lexical relations intrinsic to language.

Concreteness and context availability in lexical decision tasks.

Science.gov (United States)

Levy-Drori, Shelly; Henik, Avishai

2006-01-01

Three experiments were carried out to elucidate the origins of the concreteness (C) effect in a lexical decision task. The first experiment was a replication of the work of Schwanenflugel et al. (1988) and Van Hell and De Groot (1998), who presented the context availability (CA) hypothesis. In this experiment CA seemed to be a dominant factor. Familiarity (FAM) was not incorporated in the ANOVA, but a regression analysis and negative correlation between C and FAM in the groups matched on CA showed that FAM could explain the disappearance of the C effect. Experiment 2 controlled FAM and revealed a C effect, although concrete and abstract words were matched on CA. Experiment 3 controlled C and FAM and revealed a CA effect. The current data emphasize the importance of controlling FAM and CA in examining the C effect in a lexical decision task and support a revised version of the dual-coding theory.

Phase synchronization of delta and theta oscillations increase during the detection of relevant lexical information

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Enzo eBrunetti

2013-06-01

Full Text Available During monitoring of the discourse, the detection of the relevance of incoming lexical information could be critical for its incorporation to update mental representations in memory. Because, in these situations, the relevance for lexical information is defined by abstract rules that are maintained in memory, results critical to understand how an abstract level of knowledge maintained in mind mediates the detection of the lower-level semantic information. In the present study, we propose that neuronal oscillations participate in the detection of relevant lexical information, based on ‘kept in mind’ rules deriving from more abstract semantic information. We tested our hypothesis using an experimental paradigm that restricted the detection of relevance to inferences based on explicit information, thus controlling for ambiguities derived from implicit aspects. We used a categorization task, in which the semantic relevance was previously defined based on the congruency between a kept in mind category (abstract knowledge, and the lexical-semantic information presented. Our results show that during the detection of the relevant lexical information, phase synchronization of neuronal oscillations selectively increases in delta and theta frequency bands during the interval of semantic analysis. These increments were independent of the semantic category maintained in memory, had a temporal profile specific for each subject, and were mainly induced, as they had no effect on the evoked mean global field power. Also, recruitment of an increased number of pairs of electrodes was a robust observation during the detection of semantic contingent words. These results are consistent with the notion that the detection of relevant lexical information based on a particular semantic rule, could be mediated by increasing the global phase synchronization of neuronal oscillations, which may contribute to the recruitment of an extended number of cortical regions.

Phase synchronization of delta and theta oscillations increase during the detection of relevant lexical information.

Science.gov (United States)

Brunetti, Enzo; Maldonado, Pedro E; Aboitiz, Francisco

2013-01-01

During monitoring of the discourse, the detection of the relevance of incoming lexical information could be critical for its incorporation to update mental representations in memory. Because, in these situations, the relevance for lexical information is defined by abstract rules that are maintained in memory, a central aspect to elucidate is how an abstract level of knowledge maintained in mind mediates the detection of the lower-level semantic information. In the present study, we propose that neuronal oscillations participate in the detection of relevant lexical information, based on "kept in mind" rules deriving from more abstract semantic information. We tested our hypothesis using an experimental paradigm that restricted the detection of relevance to inferences based on explicit information, thus controlling for ambiguities derived from implicit aspects. We used a categorization task, in which the semantic relevance was previously defined based on the congruency between a kept in mind category (abstract knowledge), and the lexical semantic information presented. Our results show that during the detection of the relevant lexical information, phase synchronization of neuronal oscillations selectively increases in delta and theta frequency bands during the interval of semantic analysis. These increments occurred irrespective of the semantic category maintained in memory, had a temporal profile specific for each subject, and were mainly induced, as they had no effect on the evoked mean global field power. Also, recruitment of an increased number of pairs of electrodes was a robust observation during the detection of semantic contingent words. These results are consistent with the notion that the detection of relevant lexical information based on a particular semantic rule, could be mediated by increasing the global phase synchronization of neuronal oscillations, which may contribute to the recruitment of an extended number of cortical regions.

A conceptual design of the ITER upper port plug structure and its cooling channels

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Pak, S.I.; Lee, H.G.; Jung, K.J.; Walker, C.I.; Kim, D.G.; Choi, K.S.

2008-01-01

A study is conducted on the conceptual design of the structure and cooling channels of the upper port plug of International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). Modification of the earlier port plug design is made and a simple fabrication method is proposed. It is shown that the newly designed port plug can accommodate the installation of both diagnostic and electron cyclotron heating (ECH) devices. Design assessment is carried out through structural and thermo-hydraulic analyses. Results of the analyses show that the port plug structure is stable against one of the most severe plasma events and the total pressure drop of the coolant is within the allowable level

Coats and bras and jeans – and clothes, too: Lexical contrast between hyperonyms and hyponyms

OpenAIRE

Koskela, Anu

2016-01-01

A special case of lexical contrast involves contrasting a hyperonym and a hyponym (as in clothes and socks), leading to the narrowing of the hyperonym’s sense. However, not all hyperonym/hyponym pairs are amenable to contrast (e.g. ?animals and cats). While category prototype structure forms a strong motivating and constraining factor for hyperonym/hyponym contrast (e.g. Lehrer 1990), what is lacking in previous work is a systematic consideration of the phenomenon in real language use. To tha...

Representing idioms: syntactic and contextual effects on idiom processing.

Science.gov (United States)

Holsinger, Edward

2013-09-01

Recent work on the processing of idiomatic expressions argues against the idea that idioms are simply big words. For example, hybrid models of idiom representation, originally investigated in the context of idiom production, propose a priority of literal computation, and a principled relationship between the conceptual meaning of an idiom, its literal lemmas and its syntactic structure. We examined the predictions of the hybrid representation hypothesis in the domain of idiom comprehension. We conducted two experiments to examine the role of syntactic, lexical and contextual factors on the interpretation of idiomatic expressions. Experiment I examines the role of syntactic compatibility and lexical compatibility on the real-time processing of potentially idiomatic strings. Experiment 2 examines the role of contextual information on idiom processing and how context interacts with lexical information during processing. We find evidence that literal computation plays a causal role in the retrieval of idiomatic meaning and that contextual, lexical and structural information influence the processing of idiomatic strings at early stages during processing, which provide support for the hybrid model of idiom representation in the domain of idiom comprehension.

Do good and poor readers make use of morphemic structure in English word recognition?

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Lynne G. Duncan

2011-06-01

Full Text Available The links between oral morphological awareness and the use of derivational morphology are examined in the English word recognition of 8-year-old good and poor readers. Morphological awareness was assessed by a sentence completion task. The role of morphological structure in lexical access was examined by manipulating the presence of embedded words and suffixes in items presented for lexical decision. Good readers were more accurate in the morphological awareness task but did not show facilitation for real derivations even though morpho-semantic information appeared to inform their lexical decisions. The poor readers, who were less accurate, displayed a strong lexicality effect in lexical decision and the presence of an embedded word led to facilitation for words and inhibition for pseudo-words. Overall, the results suggest that both good and poor readers of English are sensitive to the internal structure of written words, with the better readers showing most evidence of morphological analysis.

Spoken word production: A theory of lexical access

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Levelt, W.J.M.

2001-01-01

A core operation in speech production is the preparation of words from a semantic base. The theory of lexical access reviewed in this article covers a sequence of processing stages beginning with the speaker's focusing on a target concept and ending with the initiation of articulation. The initial

Investigating lexical competition and the cost of phonemic restoration

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Balling, Laura Winther; Morris, David Jackson; Tøndering, John

2017-01-01

Due to phonemic restoration, listeners can reliably perceive words when a phoneme is replaced with noise. The cost associated with this process was investigated along with the effect of lexical uniqueness on phonemic restoration, using data from a lexical decision experiment where noise replaced...... phonemes that were either uniqueness points (the phoneme at which a word deviates from all nonrelated words that share the same onset) or phonemes immediately prior to these. A baseline condition was also included with no noise-interrupted stimuli. Results showed a significant cost of phonemic restoration......, with 100 ms longer word identification times and a 14% decrease in word identification accuracy for interrupted stimuli compared to the baseline. Regression analysis of response times from the interrupted conditions showed no effect of whether the interrupted phoneme was a uniqueness point, but significant...

Investigating Lexical Competition and the Cost of Phonemic Restoration

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Balling, Laura Winther; Morris, David Jackson; Tøndering, John

2017-01-01

Due to phonemic restoration, listeners can reliably perceive words when a phoneme is replaced with noise. The cost associated with this process was investigated along with the effect of lexical uniqueness on phonemic restoration, using data from a lexical decision experiment where noise replaced...... phonemes that were either uniqueness points (the phoneme at which a word deviates from all nonrelated words that share the same onset) or phonemes immediately prior to these. A baseline condition was also included with no noise-interrupted stimuli. Results showed a significant cost of phonemic restoration......, with 100 ms longer word identification times and a 14% decrease in word identification accuracy for interrupted stimuli compared to the baseline. Regression analysis of response times from the interrupted conditions showed no effect of whether the interrupted phoneme was a uniqueness point, but significant...

Is conversion a syntactic or a lexical process of word formation?

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Alexandra Soares Rodrigues

2013-01-01

Full Text Available Conversion is sometimes described as a syntactic phenomenon by which a lexical item changes its lexical category according to the syntactic environment where it is inserted. This syntactic-ordered approach comes from theoretical fields that conceive the lexicon as the domain of irregularity, whilst regular patterns are treated in syntax (Chomsky 1995. However, Portuguese converted deverbal nouns (remendo ‘event of mending’, curte ‘event of having fun’, trinca ‘event of biting’ manifest a structural behaviour that permits us to situate their formation in the lexicon instead of in the syntax. According to the theoretical allusion we made above, this would characterise converted deverbal nouns as lacking a regular pattern. However, what we mean is that the lexicon is not the field of irregularity. Apart from the irregular material that must be stored in long term memory as to be used by speakers, such as inherited lexemes (e.g. rato ‘mouse’, cão ‘dog’, rir ‘to laugh’, verde ‘green’, etc., the lexicon is the domain of word formation, which is constraint-based (Rodrigues 2008, 2009. This means the word formation part of the lexicon is constrained by regular patterns that are neither directional in principle, nor syntactic in nature. We follow Jackendoff (2002 conception on the lexicon, conceiving it an interface of syntax, phonology and semantics. Converted deverbal nouns formation seems to agree with this conception, since it depends on phonological, semantic and syntactical constraints (Rodrigues 2004, 2009. Portuguese verb-into-noun conversion is not a simple case of syntactic environment. This is specially visible when we confront this lexical conversion with a purely syntactic type of nominalisation (Kerleroux 1996, such as the one that occurs in O estudar matemática traz-me vantagens. ‘Studying maths brings me advantages’ or O remendar roupa é um recurso nesta época. ‘Mending cloths is a good resource

Brain signatures of early lexical and morphological learning of a new language.

Science.gov (United States)

Havas, Viktória; Laine, Matti; Rodríguez Fornells, Antoni

2017-07-01

Morphology is an important part of language processing but little is known about how adult second language learners acquire morphological rules. Using a word-picture associative learning task, we have previously shown that a brief exposure to novel words with embedded morphological structure (suffix for natural gender) is enough for language learners to acquire the hidden morphological rule. Here we used this paradigm to study the brain signatures of early morphological learning in a novel language in adults. Behavioural measures indicated successful lexical (word stem) and morphological (gender suffix) learning. A day after the learning phase, event-related brain potentials registered during a recognition memory task revealed enhanced N400 and P600 components for stem and suffix violations, respectively. An additional effect observed with combined suffix and stem violations was an enhancement of an early N2 component, most probably related to conflict-detection processes. Successful morphological learning was also evident in the ERP responses to the subsequent rule-generalization task with new stems, where violation of the morphological rule was associated with an early (250-400ms) and late positivity (750-900ms). Overall, these findings tend to converge with lexical and morphosyntactic violation effects observed in L1 processing, suggesting that even after a short exposure, adult language learners can acquire both novel words and novel morphological rules. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Many Neighbors are not Silent. fMRI Evidence for Global Lexical Activity in Visual Word Recognition.

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Mario eBraun

2015-07-01

Full Text Available Many neurocognitive studies investigated the neural correlates of visual word recognition, some of which manipulated the orthographic neighborhood density of words and nonwords believed to influence the activation of orthographically similar representations in a hypothetical mental lexicon. Previous neuroimaging research failed to find evidence for such global lexical activity associated with neighborhood density. Rather, effects were interpreted to reflect semantic or domain general processing. The present fMRI study revealed effects of lexicality, orthographic neighborhood density and a lexicality by orthographic neighborhood density interaction in a silent reading task. For the first time we found greater activity for words and nonwords with a high number of neighbors. We propose that this activity in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex reflects activation of orthographically similar codes in verbal working memory thus providing evidence for global lexical activity as the basis of the neighborhood density effect. The interaction of lexicality by neighborhood density in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex showed lower activity in response to words with a high number compared to nonwords with a high number of neighbors. In the light of these results the facilitatory effect for words and inhibitory effect for nonwords with many neighbors observed in previous studies can be understood as being due to the operation of a fast-guess mechanism for words and a temporal deadline mechanism for nonwords as predicted by models of visual word recognition. Furthermore, we propose that the lexicality effect with higher activity for words compared to nonwords in inferior parietal and middle temporal cortex reflects the operation of an identification mechanism and based on local lexico-semantic activity.

Opposite patterns of hemisphere dominance for early auditory processing of lexical tones and consonants

OpenAIRE

Luo, Hao; Ni, Jing-Tian; Li, Zhi-Hao; Li, Xiao-Ou; Zhang, Da-Ren; Zeng, Fan-Gang; Chen, Lin

2006-01-01

in tonal languages such as Mandarin Chinese, a lexical tone carries semantic information and is preferentially processed in the left brain hemisphere of native speakers as revealed by the functional MRI or positron emission tomography studies, which likely measure the temporally aggregated neural events including those at an attentive stage of auditory processing. Here, we demonstrate that early auditory processing of a lexical tone at a preattentive stage is actually ...

Bilingual Children's Lexical Strategies in a Narrative Task

Science.gov (United States)

Barbosa, Poliana; Nicoladis, Elena; Keith, Margaux

2017-01-01

We investigated how bilinguals choose words in a narrative task, contrasting the possibilities of a developmental delay vs. compensatory strategies. To characterize a developmental delay, we compared younger (three to five years) and older (seven to ten years) children's lexicalization of target words (Study 1). The younger children told shorter…

Dissociating Visual Form from Lexical Frequency Using Japanese

Science.gov (United States)

Twomey, Tae; Duncan, Keith J. Kawabata; Hogan, John S.; Morita, Kenji; Umeda, Kazumasa; Sakai, Katsuyuki; Devlin, Joseph T.

2013-01-01

In Japanese, the same word can be written in either morphographic Kanji or syllabographic Hiragana and this provides a unique opportunity to disentangle a word's lexical frequency from the frequency of its visual form--an important distinction for understanding the neural information processing in regions engaged by reading. Behaviorally,…

Lexical Borrowings in Spanish: Function, Length, Genealogy and Chronology.

Science.gov (United States)

Patterson, William T.

1986-01-01

A study reveals that lexical borrowing in Spanish, from a variety of languages including Latin, French, Italian, Greek, Arabic, Provencal, and Catalan, accounts for 41 percent of the basic Spanish vocabulary, with variation in source according to historical period. (MSE)

Substantiating the Conceptual Model of Branding of the Integrated Business Structures

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Nifatova Olena M.

2017-11-01

Full Text Available The article is aimed at researching the theoretical foundations of the concept of branding and forming a conceptual model of branding of the integrated business structures. The concept of branding of IBS is systematized and synthesized by three directions: overview of theories of management of integrated business structures, based on the principle of economic integration; overview of the brand management models based on the principle of brand-oriented management; overview of management approaches, the essence of which is synthesized in the aspect of application to the management of brands of the integrated business structures. Special attention is paid to the factors influencing the efficiency of the process of integration of business structures. Further development of modelling the process of integration branding in the IBS system is of great importance, as the brands of two unifying companies usually have their own identities, unique features within the terms of formation of the brand’s style and philosophy. In such a fundamental issue it is necessary to define the strategy of brand integration, i.e. whether it will be a single brand, a joint brand, a flexible brand or a completely new one.

The naming of gender-marked pronouns supports interactivity in models of lexical access

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Albert Costa

2009-01-01

Full Text Available When a speaker names an object using a gender-marked pronominal form, the referent word corresponding to the target object has to be selected in order to access the grammatical gender. By contrast, the phonological content of the referent word is not needed. In two picture-naming interference experiments we explored whether the lexical selection of a referent word is affected by its phonological properties. In Experiment 1, Spanish participants named pictures using a sentence with a noun or a pronoun while ignoring words semantically or phonologically related. The results showed a semantic interference effect and a Phonological Facilitation Effect (PFE in both type of utterances. In Experiment 2 the PFE was replicated with Italian participants in a different pronominal utterance. The PFE suggests that the lexical selection of the referent word is facilitated by the presentation of a distractor word phonologically related. These findings are consistent with the predictions of interactive models of lexical access.

Visual Word Recognition in Deaf Readers: Lexicality Is Modulated by Communication Mode

Science.gov (United States)

Barca, Laura; Pezzulo, Giovanni; Castrataro, Marianna; Rinaldi, Pasquale; Caselli, Maria Cristina

2013-01-01

Evidence indicates that adequate phonological abilities are necessary to develop proficient reading skills and that later in life phonology also has a role in the covert visual word recognition of expert readers. Impairments of acoustic perception, such as deafness, can lead to atypical phonological representations of written words and letters, which in turn can affect reading proficiency. Here, we report an experiment in which young adults with different levels of acoustic perception (i.e., hearing and deaf individuals) and different modes of communication (i.e., hearing individuals using spoken language, deaf individuals with a preference for sign language, and deaf individuals using the oral modality with less or no competence in sign language) performed a visual lexical decision task, which consisted of categorizing real words and consonant strings. The lexicality effect was restricted to deaf signers who responded faster to real words than consonant strings, showing over-reliance on whole word lexical processing of stimuli. No effect of stimulus type was found in deaf individuals using the oral modality or in hearing individuals. Thus, mode of communication modulates the lexicality effect. This suggests that learning a sign language during development shapes visuo-motor representations of words, which are tuned to the actions used to express them (phono-articulatory movements vs. hand movements) and to associated perceptions. As these visuo-motor representations are elicited during on-line linguistic processing and can overlap with the perceptual-motor processes required to execute the task, they can potentially produce interference or facilitation effects. PMID:23554976

Visual word recognition in deaf readers: lexicality is modulated by communication mode.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Laura Barca

Full Text Available Evidence indicates that adequate phonological abilities are necessary to develop proficient reading skills and that later in life phonology also has a role in the covert visual word recognition of expert readers. Impairments of acoustic perception, such as deafness, can lead to atypical phonological representations of written words and letters, which in turn can affect reading proficiency. Here, we report an experiment in which young adults with different levels of acoustic perception (i.e., hearing and deaf individuals and different modes of communication (i.e., hearing individuals using spoken language, deaf individuals with a preference for sign language, and deaf individuals using the oral modality with less or no competence in sign language performed a visual lexical decision task, which consisted of categorizing real words and consonant strings. The lexicality effect was restricted to deaf signers who responded faster to real words than consonant strings, showing over-reliance on whole word lexical processing of stimuli. No effect of stimulus type was found in deaf individuals using the oral modality or in hearing individuals. Thus, mode of communication modulates the lexicality effect. This suggests that learning a sign language during development shapes visuo-motor representations of words, which are tuned to the actions used to express them (phono-articulatory movements vs. hand movements and to associated perceptions. As these visuo-motor representations are elicited during on-line linguistic processing and can overlap with the perceptual-motor processes required to execute the task, they can potentially produce interference or facilitation effects.

Visual word recognition in deaf readers: lexicality is modulated by communication mode.

Science.gov (United States)

Barca, Laura; Pezzulo, Giovanni; Castrataro, Marianna; Rinaldi, Pasquale; Caselli, Maria Cristina

2013-01-01

Evidence indicates that adequate phonological abilities are necessary to develop proficient reading skills and that later in life phonology also has a role in the covert visual word recognition of expert readers. Impairments of acoustic perception, such as deafness, can lead to atypical phonological representations of written words and letters, which in turn can affect reading proficiency. Here, we report an experiment in which young adults with different levels of acoustic perception (i.e., hearing and deaf individuals) and different modes of communication (i.e., hearing individuals using spoken language, deaf individuals with a preference for sign language, and deaf individuals using the oral modality with less or no competence in sign language) performed a visual lexical decision task, which consisted of categorizing real words and consonant strings. The lexicality effect was restricted to deaf signers who responded faster to real words than consonant strings, showing over-reliance on whole word lexical processing of stimuli. No effect of stimulus type was found in deaf individuals using the oral modality or in hearing individuals. Thus, mode of communication modulates the lexicality effect. This suggests that learning a sign language during development shapes visuo-motor representations of words, which are tuned to the actions used to express them (phono-articulatory movements vs. hand movements) and to associated perceptions. As these visuo-motor representations are elicited during on-line linguistic processing and can overlap with the perceptual-motor processes required to execute the task, they can potentially produce interference or facilitation effects.

Conflicts between domestic inequality and global poverty: lexicality versus proportionality

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Francisco García Gibson

2016-12-01

Full Text Available Current views on global justice often hold that affluent states are under at least two duties: a duty to reduce socioeconomic inequalities at home and a duty to reduce extreme poverty abroad. Potential duty conflicts deriving from resource scarcity can be solved in broadly two principled ways. The ‘lexical’ principle requires all disputed resources to be allocated to the weightiest duty. The ‘proportionality’ principle requires resources to be distributed between the two duties according to their relative weight (the weightiest duty receives the largest resource share, but the less weighty duty receives a share too. I argue that the proportionality principle is morally preferable. I show that it is sensitive to a number of factors that are intuitively relevant when solving duty conflicts: the number of affected individuals, the size of the benefits each individual could get, and the time it could take to eventually comply with the less weighty duty. Some argue that the lexical principle should nevertheless be preferred because domestic egalitarian duties are duties of justice, and they are therefore lexically prior to mere humanitarian duties to reduce global poverty. I reject this view by showing that duties of justice are not necessarily lexically prior to humanitarian duties, and that (even if they were duties to reduce global poverty can be regarded as duties of justice too.

Extracting of implicit information in English advertising texts with phonetic and lexical-morphological means

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Traikovskaya Natalya Petrovna

2015-12-01

Full Text Available The article deals with phonetic and lexical-morphological language means participating in the process of extracting implicit information in English-speaking advertising texts for men and women. The functioning of phonetic means of the English language is not the basis for implication of information in advertising texts. Lexical and morphological means play the role of markers of relevant information, playing the role of the activator ofimplicit information in the texts of advertising.

ASL-LEX: A lexical database of American Sign Language.

Science.gov (United States)

Caselli, Naomi K; Sehyr, Zed Sevcikova; Cohen-Goldberg, Ariel M; Emmorey, Karen

2017-04-01

ASL-LEX is a lexical database that catalogues information about nearly 1,000 signs in American Sign Language (ASL). It includes the following information: subjective frequency ratings from 25-31 deaf signers, iconicity ratings from 21-37 hearing non-signers, videoclip duration, sign length (onset and offset), grammatical class, and whether the sign is initialized, a fingerspelled loan sign, or a compound. Information about English translations is available for a subset of signs (e.g., alternate translations, translation consistency). In addition, phonological properties (sign type, selected fingers, flexion, major and minor location, and movement) were coded and used to generate sub-lexical frequency and neighborhood density estimates. ASL-LEX is intended for use by researchers, educators, and students who are interested in the properties of the ASL lexicon. An interactive website where the database can be browsed and downloaded is available at http://asl-lex.org .

Evidence for the Modulation of Sub-Lexical Processing in Go No-Go Naming: The Elimination of the Frequency x Regularity Interaction

Science.gov (United States)

Cummine, Jacqueline; Amyotte, Josee; Pancheshen, Brent; Chouinard, Brea

2011-01-01

The Frequency (high vs. low) x Regularity (regular vs. exception) interaction found on naming response times is often taken as evidence for parallel processing of sub-lexical and lexical systems. Using a Go/No-go naming task, we investigated the effect of nonword versus pseudohomophone foils on sub-lexical processing and the subsequent Frequency x…

Conceptual design and structural analysis for an 8.4-m telescope

Science.gov (United States)

Mendoza, Manuel; Farah, Alejandro; Ruiz Schneider, Elfego

2004-09-01

This paper describes the conceptual design of the optics support structures of a telescope with a primary mirror of 8.4 m, the same size as a Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) primary mirror. The design goal is to achieve a structure for supporting the primary and secondary mirrors and keeping them joined as rigid as possible. With this purpose an optimization with several models was done. This iterative design process includes: specifications development, concepts generation and evaluation. Process included Finite Element Analysis (FEA) as well as other analytical calculations. Quality Function Deployment (QFD) matrix was used to obtain telescope tube and spider specifications. Eight spiders and eleven tubes geometric concepts were proposed. They were compared in decision matrixes using performance indicators and parameters. Tubes and spiders went under an iterative optimization process. The best tubes and spiders concepts were assembled together. All assemblies were compared and ranked according to their performance.

An investigation into kana reading development in normal and dyslexic Japanese children using length and lexicality effects.

Science.gov (United States)

Sambai, Ami; Uno, Akira; Kurokawa, Suzuko; Haruhara, Noriko; Kaneko, Masato; Awaya, Noriko; Kozuka, Junko; Goto, Takashi; Tsutamori, Eishi; Nakagawa, Kazumi; Wydell, Taeko N

2012-06-01

This is the first study to report differences between Japanese children with and without dyslexia in the way string-length and lexicality effects are manifested when reading Japanese kana. These children were asked to read kana words and non-words consisting of either two or five kana characters. The results showed that the error rates of the normal Preschoolers and Primary-School children with dyslexia were higher than those of the normal Primary-School children. Further, the reading latencies of the normal Preschoolers, First-graders and dyslexics were significantly longer than those of the normal Second, Third and Fifth/Sixth graders. Moreover, reading latencies became shorter as the age of the participants increased. Both normal and dyslexic children showed significant effects of length and lexicality on reading latencies. However, the interaction between the length and lexicality was only seen in normal children from the Second-grade onwards. These results suggest that (1) normal First-graders reach a ceiling in terms of reading accuracy and that (2) as Japanese normal children become older, they become better at lexical reading processes, which leads to fluent kana reading, but that (3) the dyslexics, even at Fifth/Sixth grades, have not developed sufficient lexical reading processes. Copyright © 2011 The Japanese Society of Child Neurology. All rights reserved.

"The Purpose of This Study Is to": Connecting Lexical Bundles and Moves in Research Article Introductions

Science.gov (United States)

Cortes, Viviana

2013-01-01

This article presents a group of lexical bundles identified in a corpus of research article introductions as the first step in the analysis of these expressions in the different sections of the research article. A one-million word corpus of research article introductions from various disciplines was compiled and the lexical bundles identified in…

A Study of the Relationship between Type of Dictionary Used and Lexical Proficiency in Writings of Iranian EFL Students

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Fereidoon Vahdany

2014-12-01

Full Text Available This study aimed at investigating the relationship between types of dictionaries used and lexical proficiency in writing. Eighty TOEFL students took part in responding to two Questionnaires collecting information about their dictionary type preferences and habits of dictionary use, along with an interview for further in-depth responses. They were also asked to write a composition to be evaluated on their lexical proficiency. According to the results, the most frequently used dictionary type was Bilingual (E-P Desk Dictionary (BDD and the least favored dictionaries were Bilingual (P-E Desk Dictionary (BDD2 and Bilingual (P-E Mobile Dictionary (BMD. Referring to dictionaries in search of meaning during reading-writing, and after speaking-listening were the most common habits of students. Additionally, a significant relationship between the type of dictionary and lexical proficiency in participant’s writing was found. There was also a correlation between skill in dictionary use and lexical proficiency in writing. These finding entail some pedagogical benefits to enhance learners’ lexical competence by modifying the type of learners’ preferred dictionary and their habits in dictionary use.

The effects of bilingual status on lexical comprehension and production in Maltese five-year-old children: A LITMUS-CLT study.

Science.gov (United States)

Gatt, Daniela; Attard, Donna; Łuniewska, Magdalena; Haman, Ewa

2017-01-01

This article investigates whether the bilingual status of 56 typically developing children aged 60-69 months influenced their lexical abilities. The participants were identified as Maltese-dominant (Me) (n = 21), English-dominant (Em) (n = 15) and balanced bilingual (ME) (n = 20) on the basis of language exposure and proficiency, as reported by their parents. Comprehension and production of nouns and verbs were measured using Cross-Linguistic Lexical Tasks (LITMUS-CLT) in Maltese (CLT-MT) and British English (CLT-EN). Significant effects of bilingual group were identified for performance on lexical comprehension. For production, consistent bilingual group effects resulted when accurate concepts lexicalised in the test language were scored. Lexical mixing was more pronounced when children were tested in their non-dominant language. Maltese noun production elicited the highest levels of mixing across all groups. Findings point towards the need to consider specific exposure dynamics to each language within a single language pair when assessing children's bilingual lexical skills.

Nonword Repetition Priming in Lexical Decision Reverses as a Function of Study Task and Speed Stress

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Zeelenberg, Rene; Wagenmakers, Eric-Jan; Shiffrin, Richard M.

2004-01-01

The authors argue that nonword repetition priming in lexical decision is the net result of 2 opposing processes. First, repeating nonwords in the lexical decision task results in the storage of a memory trace containing the interpretation that the letter string is a nonword; retrieval of this trace leads to an increase in performance for repeated…

Writing nonsense: the interaction between lexical and sublexical knowledge in the priming of nonword spelling.

Science.gov (United States)

Martin, Daisy H; Barry, Christopher

2012-08-01

The task of spelling nonwords to dictation necessarily requires the operation of a sublexical or assembled sound-to-spelling conversion process. We report an experiment that shows a clear lexical priming effect on nonword spelling (e.g., /vi:m/ was spelled as VEME more often following the prime word "theme" and as VEAM more often following "dream"), which was larger for lexically low-probability (or low-contingency) than for common (or high-contingency) spellings. Priming diminished when an unrelated word intervened between the prime word and target nonword and did so more for the production of low- than for high-contingency spellings. We interpret these results within an interactive model of spelling production that proposes feedback from the graphemic level to both the lexical and assembled spelling processes.

Children's Use of Gesture to Resolve Lexical Ambiguity

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Kidd, Evan; Holler, Judith

2009-01-01

We report on a study investigating 3-5-year-old children's use of gesture to resolve lexical ambiguity. Children were told three short stories that contained two homonym senses; for example, "bat" (flying mammal) and "bat" (sports equipment). They were then asked to re-tell these stories to a second experimenter. The data were coded for the means…

The processing of lexical ambiguity in healthy ageing and Parkinson׳s disease: role of cortico-subcortical networks.

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Ketteler, Simon; Ketteler, Daniel; Vohn, René; Kastrau, Frank; Schulz, Jörg B; Reetz, Kathrin; Huber, Walter

2014-09-18

Previous neuroimaging studies showed that correct resolution of lexical ambiguity relies on the integrity of prefrontal and inferior parietal cortices. Whereas prefrontal brain areas were associated with executive control over semantic selection, inferior parietal areas were linked with access to modality-independent representations of semantic memory. Yet insufficiently understood is the contribution of subcortical structures in ambiguity processing. Patients with disturbed basal ganglia function such as Parkinson׳s disease (PD) showed development of discourse comprehension deficits evoked by lexical ambiguity. To further investigate the engagement of cortico-subcortical networks functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) was monitored during ambiguity resolution in eight early PD patients without dementia and 14 age- and education-matched controls. Participants were required to relate meanings to a lexically ambiguous target (homonym). Each stimulus consisted of two words arranged on top of a screen, which had to be attributed to a homonym at the bottom. Brain activity was found in bilateral inferior parietal (BA 39), right middle temporal (BA 21/22), left middle frontal (BA 10) and bilateral inferior frontal areas (BA 45/46). Extent and amplitude of activity in the angular gyrus changed depending on semantic association strength that varied between conditions. Less activity in the left caudate was associated with semantic integration deficits in PD. The results of the present study suggest a relationship between subtle language deficits and early stages of basal ganglia dysfunction. Uncovering impairments in ambiguity resolution may be of future use in the neuropsychological assessment of non-motor deficits in PD. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Bilinguals Show Weaker Lexical Access during Spoken Sentence Comprehension

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Shook, Anthony; Goldrick, Matthew; Engstler, Caroline; Marian, Viorica

2015-01-01

When bilinguals process written language, they show delays in accessing lexical items relative to monolinguals. The present study investigated whether this effect extended to spoken language comprehension, examining the processing of sentences with either low or high semantic constraint in both first and second languages. English-German…

Effects of visual familiarity for words on interhemispheric cooperation for lexical processing.

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Yoshizaki, K

2001-12-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of visual familiarity of words on interhemispheric lexical processing. Words and pseudowords were tachistoscopically presented in a left, a right, or bilateral visual fields. Two types of words, Katakana-familiar-type and Hiragana-familiar-type, were used as the word stimuli. The former refers to the words which are more frequently written with Katakana script, and the latter refers to the words which are written predominantly in Hiragana script. Two conditions for the words were set up in terms of visual familiarity for a word. In visually familiar condition, words were presented in familiar script form and in visually unfamiliar condition, words were presented in less familiar script form. The 32 right-handed Japanese students were asked to make a lexical decision. Results showed that a bilateral gain, which indicated that the performance in the bilateral visual fields was superior to that in the unilateral visual field, was obtained only in the visually familiar condition, not in the visually unfamiliar condition. These results suggested that the visual familiarity for a word had an influence on the interhemispheric lexical processing.

Addressing the Problem of Negative Lexical Transfer Errors in Chilean University Students

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Paul Anthony Dissington

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Studies of second language learning have revealed a connection between first language transfer and errors in second language production. This paper describes an action research study carried out among Chilean university students studying English as part of their degree programmes. The study focuses on common lexical errors made by Chilean Spanish-speakers due to negative first language transfer and aims to analyse the effects of systematic instruction and practice of this problematic lexis. It is suggested that raising awareness of lexical transfer through focused attention on common transfer errors is valued by students and seems essential for learners to achieve productive mastery.

Ontology lexicalization: Relationship between content and meaning in the context of Information Retrieval

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Marcelo SCHIESSL

Full Text Available Abstract The proposal presented in this study seeks to properly represent natural language to ontologies and vice-versa. Therefore, the semi-automatic creation of a lexical database in Brazilian Portuguese containing morphological, syntactic, and semantic information that can be read by machines was proposed, allowing the link between structured and unstructured data and its integration into an information retrieval model to improve precision. The results obtained demonstrated that the methodology can be used in the risco financeiro (financial risk domain in Portuguese for the construction of an ontology and the lexical-semantic database and the proposal of a semantic information retrieval model. In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed model, documents containing the main definitions of the financial risk domain were selected and indexed with and without semantic annotation. To enable the comparison between the approaches, two databases were created based on the texts with the semantic annotations to represent the semantic search. The first one represents the traditional search and the second contained the index built based on the texts with the semantic annotations to represent the semantic search. The evaluation of the proposal was based on recall and precision. The queries submitted to the model showed that the semantic search outperforms the traditional search and validates the methodology used. Although more complex, the procedure proposed can be used in all kinds of domains.

Conceptual structure design of experimental facility for advanced spent fuel conditioning process

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Joo, J. S.; Koo, J. H.; Jung, W. M.; Jo, I. J.; Kook, D. H.; Yoo, K. S.

2003-01-01

A study on the advanced spent fuel conditioning process (ACP) is carring out for the effective management of spent fuels of domestic nuclear power plants. This study presents basic shielding design, modification of IMEF's reserve hot cell facility which reserved for future usage, conceptual and structural architecture design of ACP hot cell and its contents, etc. considering the characteristics of ACP. The results of this study will be used for the basic and detail design of ACP demonstration facility, and utilized as basic data for the safety evaluation as essential data for the licensing of the ACP facility

A distribuição geolinguística do item lexical toco de cigarro nas capitais brasileiras

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Abdelhak Razky

2016-01-01

Full Text Available O léxico da Língua Portuguesa, há muito, tem sidotema de estudos de dialetólogos e geolinguístas brasileiros.Muitos são os trabalhos já publicados sobre a variedadelexical no Português Brasileiro (PB. Isso é constatado pormeio do grande volume de trabalhos publicados sob formade artigos científicos, dissertações de mestrado ou teses dedoutorado. Entretanto, dada a riqueza e diversidade queenvolve o tema, é praticamente impossível esgotar as possibilidadesde estudo do léxico de uma língua. Neste artigo,tomamos o léxico como objeto de estudo. A análise quefaremos se pauta na orientação geossociolinguística. Analisaremoso item lexical toco de cigarro, variante linguísticaque integra o campo semântico “Convívio e comportamentosocial” do Questionário Semântico-Lexical (QSLdo projeto Atlas Linguístico do Brasil (ALiB. Trata-se deuma abordagem geolinguística multidimensional que tempor objetivo a elaboração de uma carta lexical experimentalpara a visualização da variação diatópica, diastrática, diagenéricae diageracional do item lexical referido.Palavras-chave: Variação Lexical. Geolinguística Multidimensional.Atlas Linguístico do Brasil.

Feasibility and Utility of Lexical Analysis for Occupational Health Text.

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Harber, Philip; Leroy, Gondy

2017-06-01

Assess feasibility and potential utility of natural language processing (NLP) for storing and analyzing occupational health data. Basic NLP lexical analysis methods were applied to 89,000 Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) free text records. Steps included tokenization, term and co-occurrence counts, term annotation, and identifying exposure-health effect relationships. Presence of terms in the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) was assessed. The methods efficiently demonstrated common exposures, health effects, and exposure-injury relationships. Many workplace terms are not present in UMLS or map inaccurately. Use of free text rather than narrowly defined numerically coded fields is feasible, flexible, and efficient. It has potential to encourage workers and clinicians to provide more data and to support automated knowledge creation. The lexical method used is easily generalizable to other areas. The UMLS vocabularies should be enhanced to be relevant to occupational health.

Lexical representation of novel L2 contrasts

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Hayes-Harb, Rachel; Masuda, Kyoko

2005-04-01

There is much interest among psychologists and linguists in the influence of the native language sound system on the acquisition of second languages (Best, 1995; Flege, 1995). Most studies of second language (L2) speech focus on how learners perceive and produce L2 sounds, but we know of only two that have considered how novel sound contrasts are encoded in learners' lexical representations of L2 words (Pallier et al., 2001; Ota et al., 2002). In this study we investigated how native speakers of English encode Japanese consonant quantity contrasts in their developing Japanese lexicons at different stages of acquisition (Japanese contrasts singleton versus geminate consonants but English does not). Monolingual English speakers, native English speakers learning Japanese for one year, and native speakers of Japanese were taught a set of Japanese nonwords containing singleton and geminate consonants. Subjects then performed memory tasks eliciting perception and production data to determine whether they encoded the Japanese consonant quantity contrast lexically. Overall accuracy in these tasks was a function of Japanese language experience, and acoustic analysis of the production data revealed non-native-like patterns of differentiation of singleton and geminate consonants among the L2 learners of Japanese. Implications for theories of L2 speech are discussed.

A normative study of lexical verbal fluency in an educationally-diverse elderly population.

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Kim, Bong Jo; Lee, Cheol Soon; Oh, Byoung Hoon; Hong, Chang Hyung; Lee, Kang Soo; Son, Sang Joon; Han, Changsu; Park, Moon Ho; Jeong, Hyun-Ghang; Kim, Tae Hui; Park, Joon Hyuk; Kim, Ki Woong

2013-12-01

Lexical fluency tests are frequently used to assess language and executive function in clinical practice. We investigated the influences of age, gender, and education on lexical verbal fluency in an educationally-diverse, elderly Korean population and provided its' normative information. We administered the lexical verbal fluency test (LVFT) to 1676 community-dwelling, cognitively normal subjects aged 60 years or over. In a stepwise linear regression analysis, education (B=0.40, SE=0.02, standardized B=0.506) and age (B=-0.10, SE=0.01, standardized B=-0.15) had significant effects on LVFT scores (p0.05). Education explained 28.5% of the total variance in LVFT scores, which was much larger than the variance explained by age (5.42%). Accordingly, we presented normative data of the LVFT stratified by age (60-69, 70-74, 75-79, and ≥80 years) and education (0-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-12, and ≥13 years). The LVFT norms should provide clinically useful data for evaluating elderly people and help improve the interpretation of verbal fluency tasks and allow for greater diagnostic accuracy.

A taste for words and sounds: a case of lexical-gustatory and sound-gustatory synesthesia

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Olympia eColizoli

2013-10-01

Full Text Available Gustatory forms of synesthesia involve the automatic and consistent experience of tastes that are triggered by non-taste related inducers. We present a case of lexical-gustatory and sound-gustatory synesthesia within one individual, SC. Most words and a subset of nonlinguistic sounds induce the experience of taste, smell and physical sensations for SC. SC’s lexical-gustatory associations were significantly more consistent than those of a group of controls. We tested for effects of presentation modality (visual vs. auditory, taste-related congruency, and synesthetic inducer-concurrent direction using a priming task. SC’s performance did not differ significantly from a trained control group. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the neural correlates of SC’s synesthetic experiences by comparing her brain activation to the literature on brain networks related to language, music and sound processing, in addition to synesthesia. Words that induced a strong taste were contrasted to words that induced weak-to-no tastes (tasty vs. tasteless words. Brain activation was also measured during passive listening to music and environmental sounds. Brain activation patterns showed evidence that two regions are implicated in SC’s synesthetic experience of taste and smell: the left anterior insula and left superior parietal lobe. Anterior insula activation may reflect the synesthetic taste experience. The superior parietal lobe is proposed to be involved in binding sensory information across sub-types of synesthetes. We conclude that SC’s synesthesia is genuine and reflected in her brain activation. The type of inducer (visual-lexical, auditory-lexical, and non-lexical auditory stimuli could be differentiated based on patterns of brain activity.

Multiple perspectives on lexical word production [Reply to commentaries

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Levelt, W.J.M.; Roelofs, A.P.A.; Meyer, A.S.

1999-01-01

The commentaries provide a multitude of perspectives on the theory of lexical access presented in our target aticle. We respond on the one hand to criticisms that concern the embeddings of our model in the larger theoretical frameworks of human performance and of a speaker's multiword sentence and

Children and the world of words: remarks on lexical development research / As crianças e o mundo das palavras: considerações sobre a pesquisa em desenvolvimento lexical

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Débora de Hollanda Souza

2008-01-01

Full Text Available Developmental Psychology research in Brazil has made substantial progress in recent years, however, a basic process remains absent in discussions among Brazilian researchers in the area lexical development. The present paper is aimed at providing a literature review and showing how studies on word learning can contribute to our current understanding of child development. The main findings on lexical development are discussed as well as the main challenges found by researchers who are dedicated to the topic. It is also hoped that this paper can serve as a starting point for Brazilian researchers interested in investigating the process among Portuguese-speaking children.

Neural Dissociation in the Production of Lexical versus Classifier Signs in ASL: Distinct Patterns of Hemispheric Asymmetry

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Hickok, Gregory; Pickell, Herbert; Klima, Edward; Bellugi, Ursula

2009-01-01

We examine the hemispheric organization for the production of two classes of ASL signs, lexical signs and classifier signs. Previous work has found strong left hemisphere dominance for the production of lexical signs, but several authors have speculated that classifier signs may involve the right hemisphere to a greater degree because they can…

Characteristics of forming of synonymic rows within lexical phraseological field

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Мария Валерьевна Волнакова

2011-03-01

Full Text Available The article deals with the characteristics of forming of phraseological synonymic rows with a lexical identifier as a dominant of a row. Revealed synonymic rows mirror the deepness of systematic language relationships between lexis and phraseology.

Broadcast news gisting using lexical cohesion analysis

OpenAIRE

Stokes, Nicola; Newman, Eamonn; Carthy, Joe; Smeaton, Alan F.

2004-01-01

In this paper we describe an extractive method of creating very short summaries or gists that capture the essence of a news story using a linguistic technique called lexical chaining. The recent interest in robust gisting and title generation techniques originates from a need to improve the indexing and browsing capabilities of interactive digital multimedia systems. More specifically these systems deal with streams of continuous data, like a news programme, that require further annotation be...

Beyond the initial 140 ms, lexical decision and reading aloud are different tasks: An ERP study with topographic analysis.

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Mahé, Gwendoline; Zesiger, Pascal; Laganaro, Marina

2015-11-15

Most of our knowledge on the time-course of the mechanisms involved in reading derived from electrophysiological studies is based on lexical decision tasks. By contrast, very few ERP studies investigated the processes involved in reading aloud. It has been suggested that the lexical decision task provides a good index of the processes occurring during reading aloud, with only late processing differences related to task response modalities. However, some behavioral studies reported different sensitivity to psycholinguistic factors between the two tasks, suggesting that print processing could differ at earlier processing stages. The aim of the present study was thus to carry out an ERP comparison between lexical decision and reading aloud in order to determine when print processing differs between these two tasks. Twenty native French speakers performed a lexical decision task and a reading aloud task with the same written stimuli. Results revealed different electrophysiological patterns on both waveform amplitudes and global topography between lexical decision and reading aloud from about 140 ms after stimulus presentation for both words and pseudowords, i.e., as early as the N170 component. These results suggest that only very early, low-level visual processes are common to the two tasks which differ in core processes. Taken together, our main finding questions the use of the lexical decision task as an appropriate paradigm to investigate reading processes and warns against generalizing its results to word reading. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Contrasting the effects of duration and number of syllables on the perceptual normalization of lexical tones

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Ciocca, Valter; Francis, Alexander L.; Yau, Teresa S.-K.

2004-05-01

In tonal languages, syllabic fundamental frequency (F0) patterns (``lexical tones'') convey lexical meaning. Listeners need to relate such pitch patterns to the pitch range of a speaker (``tone normalization'') to accurately identify lexical tones. This study investigated the amount of tonal information required to perform tone normalization. A target CV syllable, perceived as either a high level, a low level, or a mid level Cantonese tone, was preceded by a four-syllable carrier sentence whose F0 was shifted (1 semitone), or not shifted. Four conditions were obtained by gating one, two, three, or four syllables from the onset of the target. Presentation rate (normal versus fast) was set such that the duration of the one, two, and three syllable conditions (normal carrier) was equal to that of the two, three, and four syllable conditions (fast carrier). Results suggest that tone normalization is largely accomplished within 250 ms or so prior to target onset, independent of the number of syllables; additional tonal information produces a relatively small increase in tone normalization. Implications for models of lexical tone normalization will be discussed. [Work supported by the RGC of the Hong Kong SAR, Project No. HKU 7193/00H.

The Chinese Lexicon Project: A megastudy of lexical decision performance for 25,000+ traditional Chinese two-character compound words.

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Tse, Chi-Shing; Yap, Melvin J; Chan, Yuen-Lai; Sze, Wei Ping; Shaoul, Cyrus; Lin, Dan

2017-08-01

Using a megastudy approach, we developed a database of lexical variables and lexical decision reaction times and accuracy rates for more than 25,000 traditional Chinese two-character compound words. Each word was responded to by about 33 native Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong. This resource provides a valuable adjunct to influential mega-databases, such as the Chinese single-character, English, French, and Dutch Lexicon Projects. Three analyses were conducted to illustrate the potential uses of the database. First, we compared the proportion of variance in lexical decision performance accounted for by six word frequency measures and established that the best predictor was Cai and Brysbaert's (PLoS One, 5, e10729, 2010) contextual diversity subtitle frequency. Second, we ran virtual replications of three previously published lexical decision experiments and found convergence between the original experiments and the present megastudy. Finally, we conducted item-level regression analyses to examine the effects of theoretically important lexical variables in our normative data. This is the first publicly available large-scale repository of behavioral responses pertaining to Chinese two-character compound word processing, which should be of substantial interest to psychologists, linguists, and other researchers.

Attention deficits revealed by passive auditory change detection for pure tones and lexical tones in ADHD children.

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Yang, Ming-Tao; Hsu, Chun-Hsien; Yeh, Pei-Wen; Lee, Wang-Tso; Liang, Jao-Shwann; Fu, Wen-Mei; Lee, Chia-Ying

2015-01-01

Inattention (IA) has been a major problem in children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), accounting for their behavioral and cognitive dysfunctions. However, there are at least three processing steps underlying attentional control for auditory change detection, namely pre-attentive change detection, involuntary attention orienting, and attention reorienting for further evaluation. This study aimed to examine whether children with ADHD would show deficits in any of these subcomponents by using mismatch negativity (MMN), P3a, and late discriminative negativity (LDN) as event-related potential (ERP) markers, under the passive auditory oddball paradigm. Two types of stimuli-pure tones and Mandarin lexical tones-were used to examine if the deficits were general across linguistic and non-linguistic domains. Participants included 15 native Mandarin-speaking children with ADHD and 16 age-matched controls (across groups, age ranged between 6 and 15 years). Two passive auditory oddball paradigms (lexical tones and pure tones) were applied. The pure tone oddball paradigm included a standard stimulus (1000 Hz, 80%) and two deviant stimuli (1015 and 1090 Hz, 10% each). The Mandarin lexical tone oddball paradigm's standard stimulus was /yi3/ (80%) and two deviant stimuli were /yi1/ and /yi2/ (10% each). The results showed no MMN difference, but did show attenuated P3a and enhanced LDN to the large deviants for both pure and lexical tone changes in the ADHD group. Correlation analysis showed that children with higher ADHD tendency, as indexed by parents' and teachers' ratings on ADHD symptoms, showed less positive P3a amplitudes when responding to large lexical tone deviants. Thus, children with ADHD showed impaired auditory change detection for both pure tones and lexical tones in both involuntary attention switching, and attention reorienting for further evaluation. These ERP markers may therefore be used for the evaluation of anti-ADHD drugs that aim to

Attention deficits revealed by passive auditory change detection for pure tones and lexical tones in ADHD children

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Ming-Tao eYang

2015-08-01

Full Text Available Inattention has been a major problem in children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD, accounting for their behavioral and cognitive dysfunctions. However, there are at least three processing steps underlying attentional control for auditory change detection, namely pre-attentive change detection, involuntary attention orienting, and attention reorienting for further evaluation. This study aimed to examine whether children with ADHD would show deficits in any of these subcomponents by using mismatch negativity (MMN, P3a, and late discriminative negativity (LDN as event-related potential (ERP markers, under the passive auditory oddball paradigm. Two types of stimuli - pure tones and Mandarin lexical tones - were used to examine if the deficits were general across linguistic and non-linguistic domains. Participants included 15 native Mandarin-speaking children with ADHD and 16 age-matched controls (across groups, age ranged between 6 and 15 years. Two passive auditory oddball paradigms (lexical tones and pure tones were applied. Pure tone paradigm included standard stimuli (1000 Hz, 80% and two deviant stimuli (1015 Hz and 1090 Hz, 10% each. The Mandarin lexical tone paradigm’s standard stimuli was /yi3/ (80% and two deviant stimuli were /yi1/ and /yi2/ (10% each. The results showed no MMN difference, but did show attenuated P3a and enhanced LDN to the large deviants for both pure and lexical tone changes in the ADHD group. Correlation analysis showed that children with higher ADHD tendency, as indexed by parents’ and teachers’ rating on ADHD symptoms, showed less positive P3a amplitudes when responding to large lexical tone deviants. Thus, children with ADHD showed impaired auditory change detection for both pure tones and lexical tones in both involuntary attention switching, and attention reorienting for further evaluation. These ERP markers may therefore be used for evaluation of anti-ADHD drugs that aim to alleviate these

Metamorphosed characters in dreams: constraints of conceptual structure and amount of theory of mind.

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Schweickert, Richard; Xi, Zhuangzhuang

2010-05-01

Dream reports from 21 dreamers in which a metamorphosis of a person-like entity or animal occurred were coded for characters and animals and for inner states attributed to them (Theory of Mind). In myths and fairy tales, Kelly and Keil (1985) found that conscious beings (people, gods) tend to be transformed into entities nearby in the conceptual structure of Keil (1979). This also occurred in dream reports, but perceptual nearness seemed more important than conceptual nearness. In dream reports, most inanimate objects involved in metamorphoses with person-like entities were objects such as statues that ordinarily resemble people physically, and moreover represent people. A metamorphosis of a person-like entity or animal did not lead to an increase in the amount of Theory of Mind attribution. We propose that a character-line starts when a character enters a dream; properties and Theory of Mind attributions tend to be preserved along the line, regardless of whether, metamorphoses occur on it. Copyright © 2009 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

The contribution to immediate serial recall of rehearsal, search speed, access to lexical memory, and phonological coding: an investigation at the construct level.

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Tehan, Gerald; Fogarty, Gerard; Ryan, Katherine

2004-07-01

Rehearsal speed has traditionally been seen to be the prime determinant of individual differences in memory span. Recent studies, in the main using young children as the participant population, have suggested other contributors to span performance. In the present research, we used structural equation modeling to explore, at the construct level, individual differences in immediate serial recall with respect to rehearsal, search, phonological coding, and speed of access to lexical memory. We replicated standard short-term phenomena; we showed that the variables that influence children's span performance influence adult performance in the same way; and we showed that speed of access to lexical memory and facility with phonological codes appear to be more potent sources of individual differences in immediate memory than is either rehearsal speed or search factors.

A selective deficit in imageable concepts: A window to the organization of the conceptual system

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Aviah eGvion

2013-06-01

Full Text Available Nissim, a 64 years old Hebrew-speaking man who sustained an ischemic infarct in the left occipital lobe, exhibited an intriguing pattern. He could hold a deep and fluent conversation about abstract and complex issues, such as the social risks in unemployment, but failed to retrieve imageable words such as ball, spoon, carrot, or giraffe. A detailed study of the words he could and could not retrieve, in tasks of picture naming, tactile naming, and naming to definition indicated that whereas he was able to retrieve abstract words, he had severe difficulties when trying to retrieve imageable words. The same dissociation also applied for proper names – he could retrieve names of people who have no visual image attached to their representation (such as the son of the biblical Abraham, but could not name people who had a visual image (such as his own son, or Barack Obama. When he tried to produce imageable words, he mainly produced perseverations and empty speech, and some semantic paraphasias. He did not produce perseverations when he tried to retrieve abstract words. This suggests that perseverations may occur when the phonological-production system produces a word without proper activation in the semantic lexicon. Nissim evinced a similar dissociation in comprehension – he could understand abstract words and sentences but failed to understand sentences with imageable words, and to match spoken imageable words to pictures or to semantically related imageable words. He was able to understand proverbs with imageable literal meaning but abstract figurative meaning. His comprehension was impaired also in tasks of semantic associations of pictures, pointing to a conceptual, rather than lexical source of the deficit. His visual perception as well as his phonological input and output lexicons and buffers (assessed by auditory lexical decision, word and sentence repetition, and writing to dictation were intact, supporting a selective conceptual system

Children's Abstraction and Generalization of English Lexical Stress Patterns

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Redford, Melissa A.; Oh, Grace E.

2016-01-01

The current study investigated school-aged children's internalization of the distributional patterns of English lexical stress as a function of vocabulary size. Sixty children (5;3 to 8;3) participated in the study. The children were asked to blend two individually presented, equally stressed syllables to produce disyllabic nonwords with different…

Lexical Coverage of TED Talks: Implications for Vocabulary Instruction

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Nurmukhamedov, Ulugbek

2017-01-01

Teachers of English are often in search of authentic audio and video materials that promote learners' listening comprehension and vocabulary development. TED Talks, a set of freely available web presentations, could be a useful resource to promote vocabulary instruction. The present replication study examines the lexical coverage of TED Talks by…

Neural regions supporting lexical processing of objects and actions: A case series analysis

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Bonnie L Breining

2014-04-01

Full Text Available Introduction. Linking semantic representations to lexical items is an important cognitive process for both producing and comprehending language. Past research has suggested that the bilateral anterior temporal lobes are critical for this process (e.g. Patterson, Nestor, & Rogers, 2007. However, the majority of studies focused on object concepts alone, ignoring actions. The few that considered actions suggest that the temporal poles are not critical for their processing (e.g. Kemmerer et al., 2010. In this case series, we investigated the neural substrates of linking object and action concepts to lexical labels by correlating the volume of defined regions of interest with behavioral performance on picture-word verification and picture naming tasks of individuals with primary progressive aphasia (PPA. PPA is a neurodegenerative condition with heterogeneous neuropathological causes, characterized by increasing language deficits for at least two years in the face of relatively intact cognitive function in other domains (Gorno-Tempini et al., 2011. This population displays appropriate heterogeneity of performance and focal atrophy for investigating the neural substrates involved in lexical semantic processing of objects and actions. Method. Twenty-one individuals with PPA participated in behavioral assessment within six months of high resolution anatomical MRI scans. Behavioral assessments consisted of four tasks: picture-word verification and picture naming of objects and actions. Performance on these assessments was correlated with brain volume measured using atlas-based analysis in twenty regions of interest that are commonly atrophied in PPA and implicated in language processing. Results. Impaired performance for all four tasks significantly correlated with atrophy in the right superior temporal pole, left anterior middle temporal gyrus, and left fusiform gyrus. No regions were identified in which volume correlated with performance for both

When Language Switching has No Apparent Cost: Lexical Access in Sentence Context

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Gullifer, Jason W.; Kroll, Judith F.; Dussias, Paola E.

2013-01-01

We report two experiments that investigate the effects of sentence context on bilingual lexical access in Spanish and English. Highly proficient Spanish-English bilinguals read sentences in Spanish and English that included a marked word to be named. The word was either a cognate with similar orthography and/or phonology in the two languages, or a matched non-cognate control. Sentences appeared in one language alone (i.e., Spanish or English) and target words were not predictable on the basis of the preceding semantic context. In Experiment 1, we mixed the language of the sentence within a block such that sentences appeared in an alternating run in Spanish or in English. These conditions partly resemble normally occurring inter-sentential code-switching. In these mixed-language sequences, cognates were named faster than non-cognates in both languages. There were no effects of switching the language of the sentence. In Experiment 2, with Spanish-English bilinguals matched closely to those who participated in the first experiment, we blocked the language of the sentences to encourage language-specific processes. The results were virtually identical to those of the mixed-language experiment. In both cases, target cognates were named faster than non-cognates, and the magnitude of the effect did not change according to the broader context. Taken together, the results support the predictions of the Bilingual Interactive Activation + Model (Dijkstra and van Heuven, 2002) in demonstrating that bilingual lexical access is language non-selective even under conditions in which language-specific cues should enable selective processing. They also demonstrate that, in contrast to lexical switching from one language to the other, inter-sentential code-switching of the sort in which bilinguals frequently engage, imposes no significant costs to lexical processing. PMID:23750141

Lexical Retrieval is not by Competition: Evidence from the Blocked Naming Paradigm

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Navarrete, Eduardo; Del Prato, Paul; Peressotti, Francesca; Mahon, Bradford Z.

2014-01-01

A central issue in research on speech production is whether or not the retrieval of words from the mental lexicon is a competitive process. An important experimental paradigm to study the dynamics of lexical retrieval is the blocked naming paradigm, in which participants name pictures of objects that are grouped by semantic category (‘homogenous’ or ‘related’ blocks) or not grouped by semantic category (‘heterogeneous’ or ‘unrelated’ blocks). Typically, pictures are repeated multiple times (or cycles) within both related and unrelated blocks. It is known that participants are slower in related than in unrelated blocks when the data are collapsed over all within-block repetitions. This semantic interference effect, as observed in the blocked naming task, is the strongest empirical evidence for the hypothesis of lexical selection by competition. Here we show, contrary to the accepted view, that the default polarity of semantic context effects in the blocked naming paradigm is facilitation, rather than interference. In a series of experiments we find that interference arises only when items repeat within a block, and only because of that repetition: What looks to be ‘semantic interference’ in the blocked naming paradigm is actually less repetition priming in related compared to unrelated blocks. These data undermine the theory of lexical selection by competition and indicate a model in which the most highly activated word is retrieved, regardless of the activation levels of nontarget words. We conclude that the theory of lexical selection by competition, and by extension the important psycholinguistic models based on that assumption, are no longer viable, and frame a new way to approach the question of how words are retrieved in spoken language production. PMID:25284954

When language switching has no apparent cost: Lexical access in sentence context

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Jason W. Gullifer

2013-05-01

Full Text Available We report two experiments that investigate the effects of sentence context on bilingual lexical access in Spanish and English. Highly proficient Spanish-English bilinguals read sentences in Spanish and English that included a marked word to be named. The word was either a cognate with similar orthography and/or phonology in the two languages, or a matched non-cognate control. Sentences appeared in one language alone (i.e., Spanish or English and target words were not predictable on the basis of the preceding semantic context. In Experiment 1, we mixed the language of the sentence within a block such that sentences appeared in an alternating run in Spanish or in English. These conditions partly resemble normally occurring inter-sentential code-switching. In these mixed language sequences, cognates were named faster than non-cognates in both languages. There were no effects of switching the language of the sentence. In Experiment 2, with Spanish-English bilinguals matched closely to those who participated in the first experiment, we blocked the language of the sentences to encourage language-specific processes. The results were virtually identical to those of the mixed language experiment. In both cases, target cognates were named faster than non-cognates, and the magnitude of the effect did not change according to the broader context. Taken together, the results support the predictions of the Bilingual Interactive Activation + Model (Dijkstra & Van Heuven, 2002 in demonstrating that bilingual lexical access is language nonselective even under conditions in which language-specific cues should enable selective processing. They also demonstrate that, in contrast to lexical switching from one language to the other, inter-sentential code-switching of the sort in which bilinguals frequently engage, imposes no significant costs to lexical processing.

Student perception and conceptual development as represented by student mental models of atomic structure

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Park, Eun Jung

The nature of matter based upon atomic theory is a principal concept in science; hence, how to teach and how to learn about atoms is an important subject for science education. To this end, this study explored student perceptions of atomic structure and how students learn about this concept by analyzing student mental models of atomic structure. Changes in student mental models serve as a valuable resource for comprehending student conceptual development. Data was collected from students who were taking the introductory chemistry course. Responses to course examinations, pre- and post-questionnaires, and pre- and post-interviews were used to analyze student mental models of atomic structure. First, this study reveals that conceptual development can be achieved, either by elevating mental models toward higher levels of understanding or by developing a single mental model. This study reinforces the importance of higher-order thinking skills to enable students to relate concepts in order to construct a target model of atomic structure. Second, Bohr's orbital structure seems to have had a strong influence on student perceptions of atomic structure. With regard to this finding, this study suggests that it is instructionally important to teach the concept of "orbitals" related to "quantum theory." Third, there were relatively few students who had developed understanding at the level of the target model, which required student understanding of the basic ideas of quantum theory. This study suggests that the understanding of atomic structure based on the idea of quantum theory is both important and difficult. Fourth, this study included different student assessments comprised of course examinations, questionnaires, and interviews. Each assessment can be used to gather information to map out student mental models. Fifth, in the comparison of the pre- and post-interview responses, this study showed that high achieving students moved toward more improved models or to advanced

Keeping it simple: Studying grammatical encoding with lexically-reduced item sets

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Alma eVeenstra

2014-07-01

Full Text Available Compared to the large body of work on lexical access, little research has been done on grammatical encoding in language production. An exception is the generation of subject-verb agreement. Here, two key findings have been reported: (1 Speakers make more agreement errors when the head and local noun of a phrase mismatch in number than when they match (e.g., the key to the cabinet(s; and (2 this attraction effect is asymmetric, with stronger attraction for singular than for plural head nouns. Although these findings are robust, the cognitive processes leading to agreement errors and their significance for the generation of correct agreement are not fully understood. We propose that future studies of agreement, and grammatical encoding in general, may benefit from using paradigms that tightly control the variability of the lexical content of the material.We report two experiments illustrating this approach. In both of them, the experimental items featured combinations of four nouns, four color adjectives, and two prepositions. In Experiment 1, native speakers of Dutch described pictures in sentences such as the circle next to the stars is blue. In Experiment 2, they carried out a forced-choice task, where they read subject noun phrases (e.g., the circle next to the stars and selected the correct verb-phrase (is blue or are blue with a button press. Both experiments showed an attraction effect, with more errors after subject phrases with mismatching, compared to matching head and local nouns. This effect was stronger for singular than plural heads, replicating the attraction asymmetry. In contrast, the response times recorded in Experiment 2 showed similar attraction effects for singular and plural head nouns. These results demonstrate that critical agreement phenomena can be elicited reliably in lexically-reduced contexts. We discuss the theoretical implications of the findings and the potential and limitations of studies using lexically simple

Lexical access in sign language: a computational model.

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Caselli, Naomi K; Cohen-Goldberg, Ariel M

2014-01-01

PSYCHOLINGUISTIC THEORIES HAVE PREDOMINANTLY BEEN BUILT UPON DATA FROM SPOKEN LANGUAGE, WHICH LEAVES OPEN THE QUESTION: How many of the conclusions truly reflect language-general principles as opposed to modality-specific ones? We take a step toward answering this question in the domain of lexical access in recognition by asking whether a single cognitive architecture might explain diverse behavioral patterns in signed and spoken language. Chen and Mirman (2012) presented a computational model of word processing that unified opposite effects of neighborhood density in speech production, perception, and written word recognition. Neighborhood density effects in sign language also vary depending on whether the neighbors share the same handshape or location. We present a spreading activation architecture that borrows the principles proposed by Chen and Mirman (2012), and show that if this architecture is elaborated to incorporate relatively minor facts about either (1) the time course of sign perception or (2) the frequency of sub-lexical units in sign languages, it produces data that match the experimental findings from sign languages. This work serves as a proof of concept that a single cognitive architecture could underlie both sign and word recognition.

Lexical access in sign language: A computational model

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Naomi Kenney Caselli

2014-05-01

Full Text Available Psycholinguistic theories have predominantly been built upon data from spoken language, which leaves open the question: How many of the conclusions truly reflect language-general principles as opposed to modality-specific ones? We take a step toward answering this question in the domain of lexical access in recognition by asking whether a single cognitive architecture might explain diverse behavioral patterns in signed and spoken language. Chen and Mirman (2012 presented a computational model of word processing that unified opposite effects of neighborhood density in speech production, perception, and written word recognition. Neighborhood density effects in sign language also vary depending on whether the neighbors share the same handshape or location. We present a spreading activation architecture that borrows the principles proposed by Chen and Mirman (2012, and show that if this architecture is elaborated to incorporate relatively minor facts about either 1 the time course of sign perception or 2 the frequency of sub-lexical units in sign languages, it produces data that match the experimental findings from sign languages. This work serves as a proof of concept that a single cognitive architecture could underlie both sign and word recognition.

On different approaches to syntactic analysis into bi-lexical dependencies: An empirical comparison of direct, PCFG-based, and HPSG-based parsers

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Angelina Ivanova

2016-04-01

Full Text Available We compare three different approaches to parsing into syntactic, bi- lexical dependencies for English: a ‘direct’ data-driven dependency parser, a statistical phrase structure parser, and a hybrid, ‘deep’ grammar-driven parser. The analyses from the latter two are post- converted to bi-lexical dependencies. Through this ‘reduction’ of all three approaches to syntactic dependency parsers, we determine empirically what performance can be obtained for a common set of de- pendency types for English, across a broad variety of domains. In doing so, we observe what trade-offs apply along three dimensions, accuracy, efficiency, and resilience to domain variation. Our results suggest that the hand-built grammar in one of our parsers helps in both accuracy and cross-domain parsing performance, but these accuracy gains do not necessarily translate to improvements in the downstream task of negation resolution.

FIGURATIVE AND LEXICAL VARIETIES IN FACEBOOK POSTS

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I Gusti Ayu Vina Widiadnya Putri

2017-11-01

Full Text Available Language is a highly elaborated signaling system. It serves various functions in communication, it is used to share ideas, convey feelings and emotions, etc. The researchers are interested to uncover more on how people use language in terms of its variety and lexical in one of the popular social media networking platforms that we all know as Facebook. Based on the aforementioned background of the study, the problem of the research can be formulated as follows: (1 what are the figurative languages used in Facebook posts by female and male Facebook users? (2 How are the emotional lexical varieties e.g. used in Facebook posts? Method of research is a procedure needed to do the research better. In this case, method of research covers data source, data collection and data analysis. The data of this research have been taken from Facebook, it is as an online social networking website where people can create profiles, share information such as photos and quotes about themselves, and respond or link to the information posted by others. The method that used in collecting data is method of library research. They are collected by reading the Facebook user’s post, by underlining and note taking as well. The data analysis is the last step in this process of writing this research. The analysis is done by descriptive method. To make the analysis clearer, all of examples are completed with explanation. Referring to the first research problem, there are some figurative languages used by the Facebook users such as, Simile (female 1 or 4.3% and male 0%, Metaphor (female 4 or 17.3% and male 0%,, Personification (female 3 or 1.3% and male 1% or 4.3%,, Hyperbole (female 4 or 17.3% and male 1 or 4.3%, and Idiom (female 3 or 13% and male 0%,. Furthermore, in regards to the second problem that is emotional lexical used by the Facebook Users, we could mention that both the Augmentatives (female 3 or 13% and male 1 or 4.3%, and Euphemisms (female 1 or 4.3% and male 1 or

Lexical decoder for continuous speech recognition: sequential neural network approach

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Iooss, Christine

1991-01-01

The work presented in this dissertation concerns the study of a connectionist architecture to treat sequential inputs. In this context, the model proposed by J.L. Elman, a recurrent multilayers network, is used. Its abilities and its limits are evaluated. Modifications are done in order to treat erroneous or noisy sequential inputs and to classify patterns. The application context of this study concerns the realisation of a lexical decoder for analytical multi-speakers continuous speech recognition. Lexical decoding is completed from lattices of phonemes which are obtained after an acoustic-phonetic decoding stage relying on a K Nearest Neighbors search technique. Test are done on sentences formed from a lexicon of 20 words. The results are obtained show the ability of the proposed connectionist model to take into account the sequentiality at the input level, to memorize the context and to treat noisy or erroneous inputs. (author) [fr

Eye Movements Reveal Readers' Lexical Quality and Reading Experience

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Taylor, Jessica Nelson; Perfetti, Charles A.

2016-01-01

Two experiments demonstrate that individual differences among normal adult readers, including lexical quality, are expressed in silent reading at the word level. In the first of two studies we identified major dimensions of variability among college readers and among words using factor analysis. We then examined the effects of these dimensions of…

Psychometric Evaluation of Lexical Diversity Indices: Assessing Length Effects

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Fergadiotis, Gerasimos; Wright, Heather Harris; Green, Samuel B.

2015-01-01

Purpose: Several novel techniques have been developed recently to assess the breadth of a speaker's vocabulary exhibited in a language sample. The specific aim of this study was to increase our understanding of the validity of the scores generated by different lexical diversity (LD) estimation techniques. Four techniques were explored: D, Maas,…

Lexical borrowing by Khoekhoegowab from Cape Dutch and Afrikaans

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Wilfrid Haacke

2015-02-01

Full Text Available The present article instantiates types of lexical borrowing from Afrikaans and Dutch in Namibian Khoekhoegowab (also known as “Nama”/“Damara”, but occasionally also refers to borrowings in the opposite direction. Where evidence allows, loans are traced back beyond Afrikaans to the era of Cape Dutch and contemporary interethnic contacts. Various categories ranging from adoptions to phonologically integrated loans, hybrids and calques are presented and, where possible, historical inferences are offered. The high degree of translational equivalence between Khoekhoe serial verbs and Afrikaans compound verbs leads to the consideration of some grammatical aspects including replication and relexification. Finally, reference is made to a parallel between Afrikaans and “Khoekhoe Afrikaans” syntax pointed out by den Besten (2013: Afrikaans circumlocutions like ek / sy wat Anna is (Khoekhoe: Anna.ta / Anna.s are literal equivalents of the underlying phrasal structures of Khoekhoe surface nouns #stem.pgn# in first, second or third person, as accounted for by the “desentential hypothesis” (Haacke 2006.  

Structural analysis by load combination for conceptual design of HCCR TBM-set

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Lee, Dong Won, E-mail: dwlee@kaeri.re.kr [Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, Daejeon (Korea, Republic of); Jin, Hyung Gon; Lee, Eo Hwak; Kim, Suk-Kwon; Yoon, Jae Sung; Park, Seong Dae [Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, Daejeon (Korea, Republic of); Shin, Kyu In [Gentec Co., Daejeon (Korea, Republic of); Cho, Seungyon [National Fusion Research Institute, Daejeon (Korea, Republic of)

2016-11-01

Highlights: • The structural analyses of the load combination are performed for the HCCR TBM-set. • Structural analyses are performed with the conventional CFD and FEM codes (ANSYS-CFX and ANSYS). • The results of stresses and deformations for all the loads conditions are confirmed to meet the design criteria. - Abstract: Using a conceptual design of the Korean Helium Cooled Ceramic Reflector (HCCR) Test Blanket Module (TBM) including the TBM-shield for testing in ITER, a structural analysis is performed according to the selected Load Combinations (LCs), which is described in the TBM Port Plug (TBM PP) System Load Specifications. Single load analyses are performed such as dead weight (DW), operating pressure (PresO), operating temperature (THO), electromagnetic (EM; MD-I, MD-II, and MD-IV), seismic (SL-1, SL-2, and SMHV), and in-TBM LOCA-IV. In addition, their results are superposed for the selected LCs. Through an analysis with 14 single load cases and 10 LC cases, it is confirmed that all load combination results meet the design criteria from the stress breakdown analysis according to the RCC-MRx.

The integration of lexical, syntactic, and discourse features in bilingual adolescents' writing: an exploratory approach.

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Danzak, Robin L

2011-10-01

The purpose of this study was to assess the bilingual writing of adolescent English language learners (ELLs) using quantitative tools. Linguistic measures were applied to the participants' writing at the lexical, syntactic, and discourse levels, with the goal of comparing outcomes at each of these levels across languages (Spanish/English) and genres (expository/narrative). Twenty Spanish-speaking ELLs, ages 11-14 years, each produced 8 expository and narrative autobiographical texts. Texts were coded and scored for lexical sophistication, syntactic complexity, and overall text quality. Scores were analyzed using Friedman's 2-way analysis of variance by ranks (Siegel & Castellan, 1988); resulting ranks were compared across languages and genre topics. The text topic impacted rank differences at all levels. Performance at the three levels was similar across languages, indicating that participants were emerging writers in both Spanish and English. The impact of genre was generally inconsequential at all levels. Similar results across languages implied the potential transfer of writing skills. Overall, students appeared to apply a knowledge-telling strategy to writing rather than strategically planning, composing, and revising their writing. Finally, outcomes highlighted the synergistic relationships among linguistic levels in text composition, indicating a need to address the interaction of vocabulary, morphosyntax, and text-level structures in the instruction and assessment of ELL writing.

Lexical Learning in Bilingual Adults: The Relative Importance of Short-Term Memory for Serial Order and Phonological Knowledge

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Majerus, Steve; Poncelet, Martine; Van der Linden, Martial; Weekes, Brendan S.

2008-01-01

Studies of monolingual speakers have shown a strong association between lexical learning and short-term memory (STM) capacity, especially STM for serial order information. At the same time, studies of bilingual speakers suggest that phonological knowledge is the main factor that drives lexical learning. This study tested these two hypotheses…

White matter disease correlates with lexical retrieval deficits in primary progressive aphasia.

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Powers, John P; McMillan, Corey T; Brun, Caroline C; Yushkevich, Paul A; Zhang, Hui; Gee, James C; Grossman, Murray

2013-01-01

To relate fractional anisotropy (FA) changes associated with the semantic and logopenic variants of primary progressive aphasia (PPA) to measures of lexical retrieval. We collected neuropsychological testing, volumetric magnetic resonance imaging, and diffusion-weighted imaging on semantic variant PPA (svPPA) (n = 11) and logopenic variant PPA (lvPPA) (n = 13) patients diagnosed using published criteria. We also acquired neuroimaging data on a group of demographically comparable healthy seniors (n = 34). FA was calculated and analyzed using a white matter (WM) tract-specific analysis approach. This approach utilizes anatomically guided data reduction to increase sensitivity and localizes results within canonically defined tracts. We used non-parametric, cluster-based statistical analysis to relate language performance to FA and determine regions of reduced FA in patients. We found widespread FA reductions in WM for both variants of PPA. FA was related to both confrontation naming and category naming fluency performance in left uncinate fasciculus and corpus callosum in svPPA and left superior and inferior longitudinal fasciculi in lvPPA. SvPPA and lvPPA are associated with distinct disruptions of a large-scale network implicated in lexical retrieval, and the WM disease in each phenotype may contribute to language impairments including lexical retrieval.

Differential age effects on lexical ambiguity resolution mechanisms

OpenAIRE

Lee, Chia-lin; Federmeier, Kara D.

2010-01-01

Multiple neurocognitive subsystems are involved in resolving lexical ambiguity under different circumstances. We examined how processing in these subsystems changes with normal aging by comparing ERP responses to homographs and unambiguous words completing congruent sentences (with both semantic and syntactic contextual information) or syntactic prose (syntactic information only). Like young adults in prior work, older adults elicited more negative N400s to homographs in congruent sentences, ...

Emotion words and categories: evidence from lexical decision

OpenAIRE

Scott, Graham; O'Donnell, Patrick; Sereno, Sara C.

2014-01-01

We examined the categorical nature of emotion word recognition. Positive, negative, and neutral words were presented in lexical decision tasks. Word frequency was additionally manipulated. In Experiment 1, "positive" and "negative" categories of words were implicitly indicated by the blocked design employed. A significant emotion–frequency interaction was obtained, replicating past research. While positive words consistently elicited faster responses than neutral words, only low frequency nega...

Correlation Between Lexical Richness and Overall Quality of Argumentative Essays Written by English Department Students

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Rizky Lutviana

2015-03-01

Full Text Available Abstract: This study aims at revealing the contribution of diction to the overall quality of argumenta-tive essays written by 42 EFL students. The researcher compared two sets of scores, the score of students’ lexical richness, measured with LFP (Lexical Frequency Profile, and the score of overall quality of EFL students’ argumentative essay, using analytical scoring rubric. The small and not significant correlation (ñ=.18, sig=.23 implied that diction had small contribution to the overall quality of the essay. There might be another factor related to the diction that supports the quality of written text. Thus, further research is needed to be conducted. Key Words: diction, lexical richness, overall quality, argumentative essay Abstrak: Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menemukan kontribusi diksi untuk kualitas keseluruhan dari esai argumentatif yang ditulis oleh 42 siswa EFL. Peneliti membandingkan dua set nilai, skor siswa kekayaan leksikal, diukur dengan LFP (Lexical Frequency Profile, dan skor keseluruhan kualitas siswa EFL pada esai argumentatif, dengan menggunakan rubrik skoring analitis. Korelasi kecil dan tidak signifikan (ñ = 0,18, sig = 0,23 menunjukkan bahwa diksi memiliki kontribusi kecil untuk kualitas keseluruhan dari esai. Kemungkinan, ada faktor lain yang berhubungan dengan diksi yang mendukung kualitas dari teks. Dengan demikian, penelitian lebih lanjut diperlukan untuk dilakukan. Kata kunci: diksi, kekayaan leksikal, kualitas secara keseluruhan, esai argumentatif

Lexical orthography acquisition: Is handwriting better than spelling aloud?

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Bosse, Marie-Line; Chaves, Nathalie; Valdois, Sylviane

2014-01-01

Lexical orthography acquisition is currently described as the building of links between the visual forms and the auditory forms of whole words. However, a growing body of data suggests that a motor component could further be involved in orthographic acquisition. A few studies support the idea that reading plus handwriting is a better lexical orthographic learning situation than reading alone. However, these studies did not explore which of the cognitive processes involved in handwriting enhanced lexical orthographic acquisition. Some findings suggest that the specific movements memorized when learning to write may participate in the establishment of orthographic representations in memory. The aim of the present study was to assess this hypothesis using handwriting and spelling aloud as two learning conditions. In two experiments, fifth graders were asked to read complex pseudo-words embedded in short sentences. Immediately after reading, participants had to recall the pseudo-words' spellings either by spelling them aloud or by handwriting them down. One week later, orthographic acquisition was tested using two post-tests: a pseudo-word production task (spelling by hand in Experiment 1 or spelling aloud in Experiment 2) and a pseudo-word recognition task. Results showed no significant difference in pseudo-word recognition between the two learning conditions. In the pseudo-word production task, orthography learning improved when the learning and post-test conditions were similar, thus showing a massive encoding-retrieval match effect in the two experiments. However, a mixed model analysis of the pseudo-word production results revealed a significant learning condition effect which remained after control of the encoding-retrieval match effect. This later finding suggests that orthography learning is more efficient when mediated by handwriting than by spelling aloud, whatever the post-test production task.

Lexical orthographic acquisition: Is handwriting better than spelling aloud?

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Marie-Line eBosse

2014-02-01

Full Text Available Lexical orthography acquisition is currently described as the building of links between the visual forms and the auditory forms of whole words. However, a growing body of data suggests that a motor component could further be involved in orthographic acquisition. A few studies support the idea that reading plus handwriting is a better lexical orthographic learning situation than reading alone. However, these studies did not explore which of the cognitive processes involved in handwriting enhanced lexical orthographic acquisition. Some findings suggest that the specific movements memorized when learning to write may participate in the establishment of orthographic representations in memory. The aim of the present study was to assess this hypothesis using handwriting and spelling aloud as two learning conditions. In two experiments, fifth graders were asked to read complex pseudo-words embedded in short sentences. Immediately after reading, participants had to recall the pseudo-words’ spellings either by spelling them aloud or by handwriting them down. One week later, orthographic acquisition was tested using two post-tests: a pseudo-word production task (spelling by hand in Experiment 1 or spelling aloud in Experiment 2 and a pseudo-word recognition task. Results showed no significant difference in pseudo-word recognition between the two learning conditions. In the pseudo-word production task, orthography learning improved when the learning and post-test conditions were similar, thus showing a massive encoding-retrieval match effect in the two experiments. However, a mixed model analysis of the pseudo-word production results revealed a significant learning condition effect which remained after control of the encoding-retrieval match effect. This later finding suggests that orthography learning is more efficient when mediated by handwriting than by spelling aloud, whatever the post-test production task.