J.A. Brown
University of Amsterdam, Department of Language and Literature, Faculty of Humanities, Former Undergraduate Student
I am https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7991-8206. Please do not confuse me with other scholars named J.A. Brown.
CURRENT PROJECTS:
Predictive processing, polysemy, multiple mapping (internship + Master's thesis)
RECENTLY COMPLETED:
Phonaesthemes and sound iconicity
Constraint-based phonology (feature contrasts)
Consciousness, cognition, and mind
Colour-pitch associations
Age differences in Chiac
FUTURE RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Ergativity
Differential case marking
Word order
Semantics and translation of kinship terms
Colour terms
Embodied cognition and conceptual metaphor
Pragmatics of polarity
Creolization
Memory, semantics, and pragmatics
Morphology
I am interested in researching the world around me and inside me as well as all of us, throughout time and space. I have obtained a BA in Linguistics from UvA and am now pursuing an MA at RU. My research interest, broadly speaking, is the relationship between language, cognition and culture, especially diachronically. I like interdisciplinary research and would like to work with researchers from other disciplines. Disciplines I like besides linguistics that relate to my research interests include anthropology, cognitive science, philosophy (especially philosophy of language and philosophy of mind), population genetics, palaeoanthropology, and musicology. I also enjoy reading about sociology, psychology, ethnobotany, archaeology, and even the exact sciences, although I have no formal training in those and pursue them purely out of personal interest.
Supervisors: Ton Dijkstra and Monique Flecken
CURRENT PROJECTS:
Predictive processing, polysemy, multiple mapping (internship + Master's thesis)
RECENTLY COMPLETED:
Phonaesthemes and sound iconicity
Constraint-based phonology (feature contrasts)
Consciousness, cognition, and mind
Colour-pitch associations
Age differences in Chiac
FUTURE RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Ergativity
Differential case marking
Word order
Semantics and translation of kinship terms
Colour terms
Embodied cognition and conceptual metaphor
Pragmatics of polarity
Creolization
Memory, semantics, and pragmatics
Morphology
I am interested in researching the world around me and inside me as well as all of us, throughout time and space. I have obtained a BA in Linguistics from UvA and am now pursuing an MA at RU. My research interest, broadly speaking, is the relationship between language, cognition and culture, especially diachronically. I like interdisciplinary research and would like to work with researchers from other disciplines. Disciplines I like besides linguistics that relate to my research interests include anthropology, cognitive science, philosophy (especially philosophy of language and philosophy of mind), population genetics, palaeoanthropology, and musicology. I also enjoy reading about sociology, psychology, ethnobotany, archaeology, and even the exact sciences, although I have no formal training in those and pursue them purely out of personal interest.
Supervisors: Ton Dijkstra and Monique Flecken
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Theses by J.A. Brown
In this literature study, I research the declarative-procedural memory model of language processing, as originally proposed by Michael T. Ullman. This model is in accordance with a modular view of language, in which the mental lexicon and the mental grammar are separate modules. I review evidence in favour of and against the model. A collection of evidence, mainly from the work of Jarrad Lum and Evan Kidd, shows that it is not an adequate description of language processing. I then discuss the implications of this finding for linguistic theory, especially as regards the position of Chomskyan generativist theory compared to other theories.
I corrected some ERRATA: for example, all instances of the word "connectivist" were removed and replaced by "connectionist", which is what I meant to write (thanks to Ferdy Hubers for pointing out my error); also, some italics missing in the Dutch version were added. IF YOU FIND ANY MORE ERRORS OR TYPOS, PLEASE LET ME KNOW!
I researched Michael Ullman’s claims about the explanatory power of his declarative/procedural model of lexicon and grammar, which states that lexical information is stored in declarative memory, whereas grammatical rules (in this case, verbal inflection) are accessed “in real time” using procedural memory. I reviewed existing literature on the subject and ultimately found that even though Ullman’s model is neurologically accurate, it is not sufficiently powerful to explain the psycholinguistics of verb inflection.
English translation available.
Conference Presentations by J.A. Brown
In my paper with the same title, I review Foolen (2019) who suggests that the vowels in the stems of certain Dutch verbs pose a case of diagrammatic iconicity. He discusses how such iconicity could have come to be from the point of view of three frameworks: iconic resemblance, phonaesthemes, and Mouth-Gesture theory. I propose an experiment that could be used to gather evidence for my idea about Foolen's idea. Secondly, it is concluded that an account in which such a sound-meaning mapping originated as direct iconicity and developed into a phonaestheme can be given that is not mutually exclusive with duality of patterning or with the the general arbitrariness of linguistic form.
Presented at De Grote Taaldag (Dutch Annual Linguistics Day) 2020, Utrecht University.
BONUS SLIDES (with CHIMPANZEMES) available at: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1s5vAtpx775WJf6ffF9RsrqyngtoDoCrx?usp=sharing
Meaning is often discussed in science and philosophy, but what
is it really? I will delve into this question by investigating the
relationship between meaning and another popular concept, that
of memes. Memes were originally described by Richard Dawkins
as a metaphor for cultural transmission, but the concept has since
taken on a life of its own---the notion of memes itself has become
a meme, one could say. In my presentation, I will try to argue that
meaning arises and spreads in the form of memes; in fact, that in
order to understand meaning, we need to understand memes (and
vice versa).
Oxford philosopher Mark Richard claims meanings are better
thought of as species, rather than memes. I will attempt to provide
a counterargument to his argument. In my view, humans (in fact,
all lifeforms) have a natural, evolutionarily adaptive tendency to
produce meaning, and this is what we mean when we use the
word "meaning" in the existential sense, the "meaning of life".
What makes humans so interesting is that we are capable of
conventionalizing meanings and transmitting them throughout
the generation in the form of self-reproducing symbols---i.e.,
memes. This requires what Dan Everett calls "dark matter of the
mind"; that is, implicit, emic cultural knowledge. Such emic
knowledge is what is necessary to successfully produce meanings
(and memes) and pass them on. I will illustrate this with the
examples of internet memes and linguistic semantics. I hope to
leave the audience with the idea that memes are the vehicle
through which human culture is succesfully transmitted;
therefore, that if we think of meaning (both in the existential
sense and in the semiotic sense) as self-reproducing information
that is transmitted from one generation to the next, then we can
felicitously think of meanings as memes.
Term Papers by J.A. Brown
(Semi-peer reviewed; unpublished.)
Originally a term paper I wrote for Optimality Theory class at Radboud University, taught by prof. dr. Haike Jacobs. I intend to rewrite it at some point, more elaborately, in order to more clearly express my thoughts.
Languages differ in the metaphorical terms they use to describe pitch (Shayan et al. 2011, Dolscheid et al. 2013). The origin of these differences is not known; the metaphorical mappings for pitch could originate either in experiential correspondences or in what has been called “cross-modal correspondences” (Walker et al., 2010, cited in Dolscheid et al., 2013, p. 619). To investigate this, a pilot experiment is being carried out that tests associations between pitch and colour in speakers of languages with different such mappings. The present paper discusses the preliminary results of the pilot experiment and addresses some of the methodological problems that could confound its results by describing a new, more elaborate experimental setup; implications of the possible outcomes are reviewed. If it is indeed the case that the perceptual properties, reflective of the physical properties, of one domain are mapped onto the other, we would expect no linguistic relativity. If, on the other hand, linguistic relativity is found, a different explanation is in order.
If you spot any other ERRATA, please let me know!
Updated, improved version (with some added paragraphs and references) of a term paper I originally wrote in June 2019 for the Linguistic Universals and Diversity course, taught by Drs. Lila San Roque and Saskia van Putten.
Different languages have different conceptual metaphors to describe pitch. These metaphors influence our mental representations of pitch, even at a nonlinguistic level (Shayan et al., 2011; Dolscheid et al., 2013). Thus there appears to be linguistic relativity in the domain of pitch. The present study investigates whether linguistic relativity also influences colour–pitch associations. A pilot experiment was carried out to test two hypotheses: 1) whether reliable colour–pitch associations are made; 2) whether these associations differ between speakers of native languages that use different metaphors for pitch. The experiment included two tones (high and low), three pairs of colours that differed either only in hue or only in brightness, and speakers of native languages that fell into one of two groups: languages that use ‘high’ and ‘low’ as pitch terms and those that use ‘thin’ and ‘thick’. It was found that reliable associations are made between hue and pitch, as well as brightness and pitch, and that these associations were the same for both language groups. These findings are discussed in the context of the origin of metaphorical mappings: from “cross-modal correspondences” (Walker et al., 2010, cited in Dolscheid et al., 2013, p. 619), the so-called ‘physical-properties view’; or from experiential regularities (Dolscheid et al., 2013, p. 621), the ‘skeptical-metonymical view’.
Chiac is a language variety of Maritime Canada, specifically southeastern New Brunswick, characterized by strong English influence on an Acadian French substrate. It has been described by Young (2002), King (2008), Papen (2014) and Perrot (2014), among others; it is variously defined as a mixed language, mixed code, or contact variety. The present study investigates differences between the Chiac of older speakers and that of younger speakers from a sociolinguistic perspective. Speech was collected from videos on YouTube and the documentary Éloge du Chiac Part 2 (Cadieux, 2009). Quantitative and qualitative analysis was performed on a number of phonetical/phonological, lexical, and syntactic features. It is concluded that the speech of younger people does not differ significantly from that of older people, except in the pronunciation of the phoneme /r/. This difference appears to be a result of pressure from standard (Quebec) French, rather than English.
Term paper for The Syntax-Semantics Interface class, taught by Prof. Dr. Helen de Hoop.
If you find any ERRATA, please let me know!
Term paper for New Ways of Analyzing Syntactic Variation class, taught by Prof. Dr. Ans van Kemenade and Dr. Stefan Grondelaers.
If you find any ERRATA, please let me know!
Lists of query results available upon request.
Term paper for Translation Studies Class, taught by Dr. Gijs Mulder.
Two references were missing from the list, I have since added these. If you find any more ERRATA, please let me know!
Although we all contributed ideas in roughly equal proportions, most of the writing was done by Walter.
Compared to the original version, apart from anonymizing two co-authors at their request, I edited the layout considerably, as well as reformatting the references and rewriting a small number of sentences to make them flow slightly better.
ERRATUM: Alfred Russell Wallace's name is misspelled in the bibliography.
If you find any other ERRATA, please let me know!
ERRATA: Right after uploading, I realized that the reference list was not properly formatted; I have corrected this. I also replaced "ij" with the ij ligature wherever this was appropriate.
If you find any more ERRATA (such as typos), please let me know!
Papers by J.A. Brown
If you spot any ERRATA I missed, please let me know!
If you spot any ERRATA I missed, please let me know!
Essays by J.A. Brown
In this literature study, I research the declarative-procedural memory model of language processing, as originally proposed by Michael T. Ullman. This model is in accordance with a modular view of language, in which the mental lexicon and the mental grammar are separate modules. I review evidence in favour of and against the model. A collection of evidence, mainly from the work of Jarrad Lum and Evan Kidd, shows that it is not an adequate description of language processing. I then discuss the implications of this finding for linguistic theory, especially as regards the position of Chomskyan generativist theory compared to other theories.
I corrected some ERRATA: for example, all instances of the word "connectivist" were removed and replaced by "connectionist", which is what I meant to write (thanks to Ferdy Hubers for pointing out my error); also, some italics missing in the Dutch version were added. IF YOU FIND ANY MORE ERRORS OR TYPOS, PLEASE LET ME KNOW!
I researched Michael Ullman’s claims about the explanatory power of his declarative/procedural model of lexicon and grammar, which states that lexical information is stored in declarative memory, whereas grammatical rules (in this case, verbal inflection) are accessed “in real time” using procedural memory. I reviewed existing literature on the subject and ultimately found that even though Ullman’s model is neurologically accurate, it is not sufficiently powerful to explain the psycholinguistics of verb inflection.
English translation available.
In my paper with the same title, I review Foolen (2019) who suggests that the vowels in the stems of certain Dutch verbs pose a case of diagrammatic iconicity. He discusses how such iconicity could have come to be from the point of view of three frameworks: iconic resemblance, phonaesthemes, and Mouth-Gesture theory. I propose an experiment that could be used to gather evidence for my idea about Foolen's idea. Secondly, it is concluded that an account in which such a sound-meaning mapping originated as direct iconicity and developed into a phonaestheme can be given that is not mutually exclusive with duality of patterning or with the the general arbitrariness of linguistic form.
Presented at De Grote Taaldag (Dutch Annual Linguistics Day) 2020, Utrecht University.
BONUS SLIDES (with CHIMPANZEMES) available at: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1s5vAtpx775WJf6ffF9RsrqyngtoDoCrx?usp=sharing
Meaning is often discussed in science and philosophy, but what
is it really? I will delve into this question by investigating the
relationship between meaning and another popular concept, that
of memes. Memes were originally described by Richard Dawkins
as a metaphor for cultural transmission, but the concept has since
taken on a life of its own---the notion of memes itself has become
a meme, one could say. In my presentation, I will try to argue that
meaning arises and spreads in the form of memes; in fact, that in
order to understand meaning, we need to understand memes (and
vice versa).
Oxford philosopher Mark Richard claims meanings are better
thought of as species, rather than memes. I will attempt to provide
a counterargument to his argument. In my view, humans (in fact,
all lifeforms) have a natural, evolutionarily adaptive tendency to
produce meaning, and this is what we mean when we use the
word "meaning" in the existential sense, the "meaning of life".
What makes humans so interesting is that we are capable of
conventionalizing meanings and transmitting them throughout
the generation in the form of self-reproducing symbols---i.e.,
memes. This requires what Dan Everett calls "dark matter of the
mind"; that is, implicit, emic cultural knowledge. Such emic
knowledge is what is necessary to successfully produce meanings
(and memes) and pass them on. I will illustrate this with the
examples of internet memes and linguistic semantics. I hope to
leave the audience with the idea that memes are the vehicle
through which human culture is succesfully transmitted;
therefore, that if we think of meaning (both in the existential
sense and in the semiotic sense) as self-reproducing information
that is transmitted from one generation to the next, then we can
felicitously think of meanings as memes.
(Semi-peer reviewed; unpublished.)
Originally a term paper I wrote for Optimality Theory class at Radboud University, taught by prof. dr. Haike Jacobs. I intend to rewrite it at some point, more elaborately, in order to more clearly express my thoughts.
Languages differ in the metaphorical terms they use to describe pitch (Shayan et al. 2011, Dolscheid et al. 2013). The origin of these differences is not known; the metaphorical mappings for pitch could originate either in experiential correspondences or in what has been called “cross-modal correspondences” (Walker et al., 2010, cited in Dolscheid et al., 2013, p. 619). To investigate this, a pilot experiment is being carried out that tests associations between pitch and colour in speakers of languages with different such mappings. The present paper discusses the preliminary results of the pilot experiment and addresses some of the methodological problems that could confound its results by describing a new, more elaborate experimental setup; implications of the possible outcomes are reviewed. If it is indeed the case that the perceptual properties, reflective of the physical properties, of one domain are mapped onto the other, we would expect no linguistic relativity. If, on the other hand, linguistic relativity is found, a different explanation is in order.
If you spot any other ERRATA, please let me know!
Updated, improved version (with some added paragraphs and references) of a term paper I originally wrote in June 2019 for the Linguistic Universals and Diversity course, taught by Drs. Lila San Roque and Saskia van Putten.
Different languages have different conceptual metaphors to describe pitch. These metaphors influence our mental representations of pitch, even at a nonlinguistic level (Shayan et al., 2011; Dolscheid et al., 2013). Thus there appears to be linguistic relativity in the domain of pitch. The present study investigates whether linguistic relativity also influences colour–pitch associations. A pilot experiment was carried out to test two hypotheses: 1) whether reliable colour–pitch associations are made; 2) whether these associations differ between speakers of native languages that use different metaphors for pitch. The experiment included two tones (high and low), three pairs of colours that differed either only in hue or only in brightness, and speakers of native languages that fell into one of two groups: languages that use ‘high’ and ‘low’ as pitch terms and those that use ‘thin’ and ‘thick’. It was found that reliable associations are made between hue and pitch, as well as brightness and pitch, and that these associations were the same for both language groups. These findings are discussed in the context of the origin of metaphorical mappings: from “cross-modal correspondences” (Walker et al., 2010, cited in Dolscheid et al., 2013, p. 619), the so-called ‘physical-properties view’; or from experiential regularities (Dolscheid et al., 2013, p. 621), the ‘skeptical-metonymical view’.
Chiac is a language variety of Maritime Canada, specifically southeastern New Brunswick, characterized by strong English influence on an Acadian French substrate. It has been described by Young (2002), King (2008), Papen (2014) and Perrot (2014), among others; it is variously defined as a mixed language, mixed code, or contact variety. The present study investigates differences between the Chiac of older speakers and that of younger speakers from a sociolinguistic perspective. Speech was collected from videos on YouTube and the documentary Éloge du Chiac Part 2 (Cadieux, 2009). Quantitative and qualitative analysis was performed on a number of phonetical/phonological, lexical, and syntactic features. It is concluded that the speech of younger people does not differ significantly from that of older people, except in the pronunciation of the phoneme /r/. This difference appears to be a result of pressure from standard (Quebec) French, rather than English.
Term paper for The Syntax-Semantics Interface class, taught by Prof. Dr. Helen de Hoop.
If you find any ERRATA, please let me know!
Term paper for New Ways of Analyzing Syntactic Variation class, taught by Prof. Dr. Ans van Kemenade and Dr. Stefan Grondelaers.
If you find any ERRATA, please let me know!
Lists of query results available upon request.
Term paper for Translation Studies Class, taught by Dr. Gijs Mulder.
Two references were missing from the list, I have since added these. If you find any more ERRATA, please let me know!
Although we all contributed ideas in roughly equal proportions, most of the writing was done by Walter.
Compared to the original version, apart from anonymizing two co-authors at their request, I edited the layout considerably, as well as reformatting the references and rewriting a small number of sentences to make them flow slightly better.
ERRATUM: Alfred Russell Wallace's name is misspelled in the bibliography.
If you find any other ERRATA, please let me know!
ERRATA: Right after uploading, I realized that the reference list was not properly formatted; I have corrected this. I also replaced "ij" with the ij ligature wherever this was appropriate.
If you find any more ERRATA (such as typos), please let me know!
If you spot any ERRATA I missed, please let me know!
If you spot any ERRATA I missed, please let me know!