Proceedings, Thesis
Becker, M. (2016). On the identification of FOXP2 gene enhancers and their role in brain development. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
full text via Radboud Repository
Bergmann, C. (2014). Computational models of early language acquisition and the role of different voices. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
Bosker, H. R. (2014). The processing and evaluation of fluency in native and non-native speech. PhD Thesis, Utrecht University, Utrecht.
Disfluency is a common characteristic of spontaneously produced speech. Disfluencies (e.g., silent pauses, filled pauses [uh's and uhm's], corrections, repetitions, etc.) occur in both native and non-native speech. There appears to be an apparent contradiction between claims from the evaluative and cognitive approach to fluency. On the one hand, the evaluative approach shows that non-native disfluencies have a negative effect on listeners' subjective fluency impressions. On the other hand, the cognitive approach reports beneficial effects of native disfluencies on cognitive processes involved in speech comprehension, such as prediction and attention. This dissertation aims to resolve this apparent contradiction by combining the evaluative and cognitive approach. The reported studies target both the evaluation (Chapters 2 and 3) and the processing of fluency (Chapters 4 and 5) in native and non-native speech. Thus, it provides an integrative account of native and non-native fluency perception, informative to both language testing practice and cognitive psycholinguists. The proposed account of fluency perception testifies to the notion that speech performance matters: communication through spoken language does not only depend on what is said, but also on how it is said and by whom.
Brehm, L. (2014). Speed limits and red flags: Why number agreement accidents happen. PhD Thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana-Champaign, Il.
Bruggeman, L. (2016). Nativeness, dominance, and the flexibility of listening to spoken language. PhD Thesis, Western Sydney University, Sydney.
Buckler, H. (2014). The acquisition of morphophonological alternations across languages. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
Carrion Castillo, A. (2016). Deciphering common and rare genetic effects on reading ability. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
Choi, J. (2014). Rediscovering a forgotten language. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
Cholin, J. (2004). Syllables in speech production: Effects of syllable preparation and syllable frequency. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen. doi:10.17617/2.60589.
The fluent production of speech is a very complex human skill. It requires the coordination of several articulatory subsystems. The instructions that lead articulatory movements to execution are the result of the interplay of speech production levels that operate above the articulatory network. During the process of word-form encoding, the groundwork for the articulatory programs is prepared which then serve the articulators as basic units. This thesis investigated whether or not syllables form the basis for the articulatory programs and in particular whether or not these syllable programs are stored, separate from the store of the lexical word-forms. It is assumed that syllable units are stored in a so-called 'mental syllabary'. The main goal of this thesis was to find evidence of the syllable playing a functionally important role in speech production and for the assumption that syllables are stored units. In a variant of the implicit priming paradigm, it was investigated whether information about the syllabic structure of a target word facilitates the preparation (advanced planning) of a to-be-produced utterance. These experiments yielded evidence for the functionally important role of syllables in speech production. In a subsequent row of experiments, it could be demonstrated that the production of syllables is sensitive to frequency. Syllable frequency effects provide strong evidence for the notion of a mental syllabary because only stored units are likely to exhibit frequency effects. In a last study, effects of syllable preparation and syllable frequency were investigated in a combined study to disentangle the two effects. The results of this last experiment converged with those reported for the other experiments and added further support to the claim that syllables play a core functional role in speech production and are stored in a mental syllabary.
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Defina, R. (2016). Events in language and thought: The case of serial verb constructions in Avatime. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
Erkelens, M. (2003). The semantic organization of "cut" and "break" in Dutch: A developmental study. Master Thesis, Free University Amsterdam, Amsterdam.
Francken, J. C. (2016). Viewing the world through language-tinted glasses: Elucidating the neural mechanisms of language-perception interactions. PhD Thesis, Radboud University, Nijmegen.
Frank, S. L. (2004). Computational modeling of discourse comprehension. PhD Thesis, Tilburg University, Tilburg.
Frost, R. (2014). Learning grammatical structures with and without sleep. PhD Thesis, Lancaster University, Lancaster.
Gussenhoven, C., Chen, Y., & Dediu, D. (Eds.). (2014). 4th International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Language, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, May 13-16, 2014. ISCA Archive.
Hellwig, B. (2003). The grammatical coding of postural semantics in Goemai (a West Chadic language of Nigeria). PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen. doi:10.17617/2.58463.
Holler, J. (2004). Semantic and pragmatic aspects of representational gestures: Towards a unified model of communication in talk. PhD Thesis, University of Manchester, Manchester.
Irizarri van Suchtelen, P. (2016). Spanish as a heritage language in the Netherlands. A cognitive linguistic exploration. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
St. John-Saaltink, E. (2016). When the past influences the present: Modulations of the sensory response by prior knowledge and task set. PhD Thesis, Radboud University, Nijmegen.
Jongman, S. R. (2016). Sustained attention in language production. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
Kemps, R. J. J. K. (2004). Morphology in auditory lexical processing: Sensitivity to fine phonetic detail and insensitivity to suffix reduction. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen. doi:10.17617/2.59193.
This dissertation investigates two seemingly contradictory properties of the speech perception system. On the one hand, listeners are extremely sensitive to the fine phonetic details in the speech signal. These subtle acoustic cues can reduce the temporal ambiguity between words that show initial segmental overlap, and can guide lexical activation. On the other hand, comprehension does not seem to be hampered at all by the drastic reductions that typically occur in casual speech. Complete segments, and sometimes even complete syllables, may be missing, but comprehension is seemingly unaffected. This thesis aims at elucidating how words are represented and accessed in the mental lexicon, by investigating these contradictory phenomena for the domain of morphology
Kidd, E. (2003). An investigation of children's sentence processing: A developmental perspective. PhD Thesis, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Australia.
Kok, P. (2014). On the role of expectation in visual perception: A top-down view of early visual cortex. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
Kösem, A. (2014). Cortical oscillations as temporal reference frames for perception. PhD Thesis, Université Pierre et Marie Curie-Paris VI, Paris.
Kouwenhoven, H. (2016). Situational variation in non-native communication: Studies into register variation, discourse management and pronunciation in Spanish English. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
Lam, K. J. Y. (2016). Understanding action-related language: Sensorimotor contributions to meaning. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
Lartseva, A. (2016). Reading emotions: How people with Autism Spectrum Disorders process emotional language. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
Meeuwissen, M. (2004). Producing complex spoken numerals for time and space. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen. doi:10.17617/2.60607.
This thesis addressed the spoken production of complex numerals for time and space. The production of complex numerical expressions like those involved in telling time (e.g., 'quarter to four') or producing house numbers (e.g., 'two hundred forty-five') has been almost completely ignored. Yet, adult speakers produce such expressions on a regular basis in everyday communication. Thus, no theory on numerical cognition or speech production is complete without an account of the production of multi-morphemic utterances such as complex numeral expressions. The main question of this thesis is which particular speech planning levels are involved in the naming and reading of complex numerals for time and space. More specifically, this issue was investigated by examining different modes of response (clock times versus house numbers), alternative input formats (Arabic digit versus alphabetic format; analog versus digital clock displays), and different expression types (relative 'quarter to four' versus absolute 'three forty-five' time expressions).
Moscoso del Prado Martín, F. (2003). Paradigmatic structures in morphological processing: Computational and cross-linguistic experimental studies. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen. doi:10.17617/2.58929.
O'Connor, L. (2004). Motion, transfer, and transformation: The grammar of change in Lowland Chontal. PhD Thesis, University of California at Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara.
Typologies are critical tools for linguists, but typologies, like grammars, are known to leak. This book addresses the question of typological overlap from the perspective of a single language. In Lowland Chontal of Oaxaca, a language of southern Mexico, change events are expressed with three types of predicates, and each predicate type corresponds to a different language type in the well-known typology of lexicalization patterns established by Talmy and elaborated by others. O'Connor evaluates the predictive powers of the typology by examining the consequences of each predicate type in a variety of contexts, using data from narrative discourse, stimulus response, and elicitation. This is the first de­tailed look at the lexical and grammatical resources of the verbal system in Chontal and their relation to semantics of change. The analysis of how and why Chontal speakers choose among these verbal resources to achieve particular communicative and social goals serves both as a documentation of an endangered language and a theoretical contribution towards a typology of language use.
Piai, V. (2014). Choosing our words: Lexical competition and the involvement of attention in spoken word production. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
Reifegerste, J. (2014). Morphological processing in younger and older people: Evidence for flexible dual-route access. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
Roberts, S. G., Cuskley, C., McCrohon, L., Barceló-Coblijn, L., Feher, O., & Verhoef, T. (Eds.). (2016). The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference (EVOLANG11). doi:10.17617/2.2248195.
Rojas-Berscia, L. M. (2014). A Heritage Reference Grammar of Selk'nam. Master Thesis, Radboud University, Nijmegen.
Rossano, F. (2004). Per una semiotica dell'interazione: Analisi del rapporto tra sguardo, corpo e parola in alcune interazione faccia a faccia. Master Thesis, Università di Bologna, Bologna, Italy.
Schmiedtová, B. (2004). At the same time.. The expression of simultaneity in learner varieties. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen. doi:10.17617/2.59569.
Simanova, I. (2014). In search of conceptual representations in the brain: Towards mind-reading. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
Sprenger, S. A. (2003). Fixed expressions and the production of idioms. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen. doi:10.17617/2.57562.
Ten Oever, S. (2016). How neuronal oscillations code for temporal statistics. PhD Thesis, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands.
Thorgrimsson, G. (2014). Infants' understanding of communication as participants and observers. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
Tsuji, S. (2014). The road to native listening. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
Turco, G. (2014). Contrasting opposite polarity in Germanic and Romance languages: Verum focus and affirmative particles in native speakers and advanced L2 learners. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
Twomey, K., Smith, A. C., Westermann, G., & Monaghan, P. (Eds.). (2016). Neurocomputational Models of Cognitive Development and Processing: Proceedings of the 14th Neural Computation and Psychology Workshop. Singapore: World Scientific.
This volume presents peer-reviewed versions of papers presented at the 14th Neural Computation and Psychology Workshop (NCPW14), which took place in July 2014 at Lancaster University, UK. The workshop draws international attendees from the cutting edge of interdisciplinary research in psychology, computational modeling, artificial intelligence and psychology, and aims to drive forward our understanding of the mechanisms underlying a range of cognitive processes.
Van den Brink, D. (2004). Contextual influences on spoken-word processing: An electrophysiological approach. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen. doi:10.17617/2.57773.
The aim of this thesis was to gain more insight into spoken-word comprehension and the influence of sentence-contextual information on these processes using ERPs. By manipulating critical words in semantically constraining sententes, in semantic or syntactic sense, and examining the consequences in the electrophysiological signal (e.g., elicitation of ERP components such as the N400, N200, LAN, and P600), three questions were tackled: I At which moment is context information used in the spoken-word recognition process? II What is the temporal relationship between lexical selection and integration of the meaning of a spoken word into a higher-order level representeation of the preceding sentence? III What is the time course of the processing of different sources of linguistic information obtained from the context, such as phonological, semantic and syntactic information, during spoken-word comprehension? From the results of this thesis it can be concluded that sentential context already exerts an influence on spoken-word processing at approximately 200 ms after word onset. In addition, semantic integration is attempted before a spoken word can be selected on the basis of the acoustic signal, i.e. before lexical selection is completed. Finally, knowledge of the syntactic category of a word is not needed before semantic integration can take place. These findings, therefore, were interpreted as providing evidence for an account of cascaded spoken-word processing that proclaims an optimal use of contextual information during spoken-word identification. Optimal use is accomplished by allowing for semantic and syntactic processing to take place in parallel after bottom-up activation of a set of candidates, and lexical integration to proceed with a limited number of candidates that still match the acoustic input
Van Putten, S. (2014). Information structure in Avatime. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
Van Alphen, P. M. (2004). Perceptual relevance of prevoicing in Dutch. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen. doi:10.17617/2.58551.
In this dissertation the perceptual relevance of prevoicing in Dutch was investigated. Prevoicing is the presence of vocal fold vibration during the closure of initial voiced plosives (negative voice onset time). The presence or absence of prevoicing is generally used to describe the difference between voiced and voiceless Dutch plosives. The first experiment described in this dissertation showed that prevoicing is frequently absent in Dutch and that several factors affect the production of prevoicing. A detailed acoustic analysis of the voicing distinction identified several acoustic correlates of voicing. Prevoicing appeared to be by far the best predictor. Perceptual classification data revealed that prevoicing was indeed the strongest cue that listeners use when classifying plosives as voiced or voiceless. In the cases where prevoicing was absent, other acoustic cues influenced classification, such that some of these tokens were still perceived as being voiced. In the second part of this dissertation the influence of prevoicing variation on spoken-word recognition was examined. In several cross-modal priming experiments two types of prevoicing variation were contrasted: a difference between the presence and absence of prevoicing (6 versus 0 periods of prevoicing) and a difference in the amount of prevoicing (12 versus 6 periods). All these experiments indicated that primes with 12 and 6 periods of prevoicing had the same effect on lexical decisions to the visual targets. The primes without prevoicing had a different effect, but only when their voiceless counterparts were real words. Phonetic detail appears to influence lexical access only when it is useful: In Dutch, the presence versus absence of prevoicing is informative, while the amount of prevoicing is not.
Van Rijswijk, R. (2016). The strength of a weaker first language: Language production and comprehension by Turkish heritage speakers in the Netherlands. PhD Thesis, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Veenstra, A. (2014). Semantic and syntactic constraints on the production of subject-verb agreement. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
Verkerk, A. (2014). The evolutionary dynamics of motion event encoding. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
Viebahn, M. (2016). Acoustic reduction in spoken-word processing: Distributional, syntactic, morphosyntactic, and orthographic effects. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
Wnuk, E. (2016). Semantic specificity of perception verbs in Maniq. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
Zwitserlood, I. (2003). Classifying hand configurations in Nederlandse Gebarentaal (Sign Language of the Netherlands). PhD Thesis, LOT, Utrecht. Retrieved from http://igitur-archive.library.uu.nl/dissertations/2003-0717-122837/UUindex.html.
This study investigates the morphological and morphosyntactic characteristics of hand configurations in signs, particularly in Nederlandse Gebarentaal (NGT). The literature on sign languages in general acknowledges that hand configurations can function as morphemes, more specifically as classifiers , in a subset of signs: verbs expressing the motion, location, and existence of referents (VELMs). These verbs are considered the output of productive sign formation processes. In contrast, other signs in which similar hand configurations appear ( iconic or motivated signs) have been considered to be lexicalized signs, not involving productive processes. This research report shows that meaningful hand configurations have (at least) two very different functions in the grammar of NGT (and presumably in other sign languages, too). First, they are agreement markers on VELMs, and hence are functional elements. Second, they are roots in motivated signs, and thus lexical elements. The latter signs are analysed as root compounds and are formed from various roots by productive processes. The similarities in surface form and differences in morphosyntactic characteristics observed in comparison of VELMs and root compounds are attributed to their different structures and to the sign language interface between grammar and phonetic form
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