Sentence Processing

Cerebral organization during sentence processing in English and in American Sign Language (ASL) was characterized by employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at 4 T. Effects of deafness, age of language acquisition, and bilingualism were assessed by comparing results from (i) normally hearing, monolingual, native speakers of English, (ii) congenitally, genetically deaf, native signers of ASL who learned English late and through the visual modality, and (iii) normally hearing bilinguals who were native signers of ASL and speakers of English. All groups, hearing and deaf, processing their native language, English or ASL, displayed strong and repeated activation within classical language areas of the left hemisphere. Deaf subjects reading English did not display activation in these regions. These results suggest that the early acquisition of a natural language is important in the expression of the strong bias for these areas to mediate language, independently of the form of the language. In addition, native signers, hearing and deaf, displayed extensive activation of homologous areas within the right hemisphere, indicating that the specific processing requirements of the language also in part determine the organization of the language systems of the brain.

Summary:
This book introduces a principled approach to conceptualizing and measuring working memory in first and second language research. It presents comprehensive, thorough and updated reviews of relevant literatures of WM and SLA research in cognitive sciences, cognitive psychology and applied linguistics. Drawing on multidisciplinary research insights, it advocates an integrated framework for implementing working memory and second language acquisition research. In light of the basic tenets and general principles of this integrated perspective, the book then proposes an overarching theoretical model that clearly specifies the distinctive roles of phonological and executive working memory as they relate to specific second language acquisition domains and processing activities. The implications of this innovative Phonological/Executive Model are further discussed and elaborated, first for the specific realm of L2 task-based speech planning and performance, and then within the broader context of foreign language aptitude.

Reviews:
"One of the most encouraging features of the development of the multicomponent model of working memory has been its application beyond the laboratory to a range of  issues of which language learning is among the most important. Work was initially focused on native language acquisition but subsequently exciting developments are increasingly occurring in the hugely significant field of second language learning. This book surveys the field in detail , producing a synthesis of evidence and theory that will make a substantial contribution to this important field." Alan Baddeley, University of York, U.K.

"There are perhaps few predicaments as frustrating as being unable to communicate with another person because he or she does not speak the same language as you. In this volume, Dr. Wen comprehensively considers the importance for second-language learning of the individual’s working memory, the small amount of information that can be readily held in mind to carry out cognitive tasks. Different theoretical views are considered in detail and they are judiciously applied in an up-to-date treatment of various facets of language learning. The volume will be of great interest to students of both memory and language, ranging from novices to experts." Nelson Cowan, University of Missouri-Columbia, USA

"A well-informed, up-to-date, and comprehensive review of phonological and executive aspects of working memory, their  components and measurement, their roles in second language acquisition and processing, and their status as language aptitudes. An excellent overview for scholars in these areas." Nick Ellis, University of Michigan, U.S.A.

"A thorough analysis of how the various components of the working memory system relate to different aspects of second language processing and learning. This is a very timely and useful contribution to a centrally important topic in the field of individual differences."  John Williams, University of Cambridge, UK

Author Biography:
Zhisheng (Edward) Wen is Associate Professor at School of Languages and Translation at Macao Polytechnic Institute (MPI). Dr. Wen has been lecturing undergraduate and postgraduate courses in applied linguistics and psycholinguistics for over 15 years. He has published extensively in these areas. His paper publications have appeared in key academic journals (e.g., Language Teaching, ELT Journal, InJAL). He is recipient of the ‘Language Learning Roundtable Conference Grant’ and lead-editor of “Working memory in second language acquisition and processing” (2015, Multilingual Matters).  His another forthcoming monograph “Cognitive individual differences in second language acquisition” will be published by Mouton de Gruyter in 2017.

A interação entre linguagem e cognição é, há muito tempo, foco de estudos linguísticos.  A linguagem é, em si, um sistema cognitivo, isto é, uma inteligência, capacidade, do cérebro humano. Nós, humanos, somos os únicos seres vivos que têm a capacidade de produzir e compreender uma língua e fazemos isso de forma inconsciente. É na mente humana que a linguagem é produzida e compreendida. Para descobrir o funcionamento da linguagem no cérebro humano, linguistas, psicolinguistas e neurocientistas da linguagem estudam a linguagem em diferentes dimensões. Linguistas teóricos procuram responder em que consiste o conhecimento linguístico na mente das pessoas, formulam teorias abstratas sobre quais são e como funcionam os conhecimentos linguísticos na faculdade humana da linguagem. Psicolinguistas são cientistas empíricos que investigam, através de métodos e técnicas experimentais, como as crianças adquirem uma língua natural e como esse conhecimento linguístico é posto em uso tanto por crianças quanto por adultos. Neurocientistas da linguagem estudam os mecanismos cerebrais que dão origem à linguagem humana, estudam o que acontece no cérebro humano quando a linguagem está em funcionamento e procuram responder quais são os fundamentos físicos e fisiológicos do conhecimento linguístico. Neste artigo, nos situamos na dimensão psicolinguística, que é o resultado da interface entre a Psicologia Cognitiva, área que estuda a natureza e o funcionamento da cognição humana, e a Linguística, área que estuda a linguagem.

The phenomenon of reversing with respect to Compound Verbs in Hindi is an interesting avenue to check for linguistic processing effects. However, if the same phenomenon is replicated in Bangla, the results are totally different with respect to the consequent set of verbal constructions. In Hindi, reversing the polar and the vector components does not shift the semantic focus. The meaning comes from the same component even after reversing. But in Bangla, in most cases such a reversal makes the resultant sentence unacceptable. These reversals make the sentences incorrect as the polar positioning of the vector is incompatible for that particular sentence or for all sentences in general. In certain acceptable cases, the vector becomes an instrumental case marker in the reversed construction. So, while checking for the acceptability of such reversals in a self-paced reading paradigm, some latency effects are noticed.

The right to ‘freedom from all forms of violence from public or private sources’, enshrined in Zimbabwe’s new Constitution, could have a significant impact on efforts to end violence against women (VAW) in the country. The right is particularly relevant in the Zimbabwean context where VAW occurs in a range of settings, from the most intimate of relationships in the home to the state’s use of rape as a political weapon. One way in which the state can fulfil its duty to address VAW is through the reform of the country’s rape law. With comparative reference to the impact of the right to freedom from violence in South African law, this article discusses three areas of Zimbabwean law that present potential obstacles to achieving justice for rape survivors: the definition of the crime of rape, the abolished but tenacious cautionary rule, and the sentencing of sexual offenders.

Research on word recognition across languages has gained popularity in recent years, due to its overall bearing on the psycholinguistic account of language acquisition. To this end, this study was an attempt to demonstrate the differential influences of L2 proficiency, and type of context on the lexical recognition and retrieval of bilinguals. For this purpose, ten participants who were native speakers of Persian and were learning English at the two distinct levels of elementary and advanced were requested to recite two texts, one in Persian and one in English, which were specifically modified for the current research purpose. The results revealed that while advanced learners were better performers on L2 lexis retrieval, their bare word recognition in L1 lagged behind in latency from elementary learners. 1. Introduction The expanding awareness on the importance of becoming a bilingual 1 in modern world has stimulated a plethora of research on the different processes of turning into a bilingual, including studies on how bilinguals recognize words in their first or second language. A core concern, especially in the psycholinguistic account of bilingualism (and SLA as well) has been the nature with which bilinguals activate lexical representations from both of their languages when reading a language. A central issue with regard to this area (Macnamara & Kushnir, 1971) was related to the debate of whether the process of word recognition for a bilingual undergoes the initial activation of word representations from a target language only (language-selective lexical access) or whether all words known to an individual, including those from a non-target language, are considered as potential candidates for recognition (nonselective access). Many studies have endeavored to disambiguate the phenomenon, among which most have revealed that the two languages do interrelate and interact during the process of word recognition. As an example, it has been shown that when bilinguals recognize words in one of their languages, they process identical words in another language (e.g. the words None in English as compared with Naan [meaning bread] in Persian). Assuming the dominance of non-selective lexical activation for bilinguals, what remains is to understand the nature of the lexical items that become activated (e.g., orthographic, phonological, and/or semantic) and the way context and linguistic task can probably influence the process of activation. For example, in the monolingual domain, much research has been devoted to determine the extent to which phonological codes within a language are automatically activated during visual word identification. These studies gave proof that phonological codes become activated and affect the visual identification of words (Glushko, 1979; Perfetti & Bell, 1991; Van Orden, 1987). Further it has been specified that visual word identification is influenced by the consistency of mappings between orthographic and phonological codes. When an orthographic code (e.g., lead) maps on to multiple phonological codes (e.g., [lid] and [lod]), feed-forward activation from those competing

What is independent clause?
An independent clause can stand alone as a sentence. It contains a subject and a verb and is a complete idea.
What is Dependent clause?
A dependent clause is not a complete sentence. It must be attached to an independent clause to become complete. This is also known as a subordinate clause.

Speakers show a remarkable tendency to align their productions with their interlocutors’. Focusing on sentence production, we investigate the cognitive systems underlying such alignment (syntactic priming). Our guiding hypothesis is that syntactic priming is a consequence of a language processing system that is organized to achieve efficient communication in an ever-changing (subjectively non-stationary) environment. We build on recent work suggesting that comprehenders adapt to the statistics of the current environment. If such adaptation is rational or near-rational, the extent to which speakers adapt their expectations for a syntactic structure after processing a prime sentence should be sensitive to the prediction error experienced while processing the prime. This prediction is shared by certain error-based implicit learning accounts, but not by most other accounts of syntactic priming. In three studies, we test this prediction against data from conversational speech, speech during picture description, and written production during sentence completion. All three studies find stronger syntactic priming for primes associated with a larger prediction error (primes with higher syntactic surprisal). We find that the relevant  prediction error is sensitive to both prior and recent experience within the experiment. Together with other findings, this supports accounts that attribute syntactic priming to expectation adaptation.

The Cambridge Handbook of Working Memory and Language discusses the role of memory in the development and use of language, both mother tongues and additional languages. The book is divided into sections that cover general theoretical frameworks and measures, linguistic theory and models, and how memory, particularly working memory, functions in first and second language acquisition with respect to vocabulary development, formulaic chunking, sentence processing, reading comprehension, writing, discourse comprehension, learning difficulties, and specific language impairments. Given that this book features contributions from a team of world-leading experts who discuss cutting-edge work from a variety of approaches, it is hoped that the book will benefit researchers and advanced undergraduate and graduate students of several fields including, but not limited to, language acquisition, linguistics, and psychology.

As a legal phenomenon, the plea of Allocutus is enshrined in the criminal procedures of every criminal justice system. Most countries hold it as an absolute right of the convict which the trial court cannot overlook. In Nigeria, the plea of Allocutus is not absolute but rarely goes unobserved in any criminal proceeding. Allocutus is an opportunity given to the criminal defendant convicted of a certain crime to say something in mitigation of punishment before sentence is passed on him and is not an act of kindness on the part of the court but a part of criminal processes that ought to be performed after conviction before sentencing. Most criminal defendants see this process as their last opportunity for mitigation of sentence. This paper therefore examines the legality and the effects of Allocutus in sentencing. And reveals that the plea of allocutus is often abused by the court due to personal inclinations of a particular judge involved. The paper also makes some recommendations which include the need for the court to be wary of the cardinal purpose of criminal law which is punishment and its objectives in line with sections 311 and 401 of ACJA, amongst others. The method of the research is analytical with resources garnered from texts, law reports and internet.

This paper describes a system that resolves prepositional phrase attachment ambiguity in English sentence process- ing. This attachment problem is ubiquitous in English text, and is widely known as a place where semantics determines syntactic form. The decision is made based on a four-tuple composed of the head verb of the verb phrase, the head noun of the noun phrase,

This paper challenges the characterization of bilingual behavior derived from the code-switching model, and especially the notion of linguistic independence on which psychological studies of bilingualism have focused almost exclusively. While linguists have concentrated on the situational determinants of code-switching, psychologists have focused on the bilingual's ability to keep his two language systems separate. In the process, the phenomenon of code mixing, that is, switching between languages in an unchanged speech situation and within a single sentence, has been neglected. However, recent linguistic studies have shown that the use of both languages in the same discourse and even within a single sentence is quite common. Such code-mixing has been shown to be an effective, versatile communicative strategy, subject to a number of interlingual syntactic constraints. Discussion focuses on some of these constraints, showing that they have implications for a psychological model of bilingual information processing. Emphasis is placed on: (1) their relevance to issues such as the single versus separate storage hypothesis, (2) the language switch model and models of sentence production, (3) the psychological reality of syntactic constituents, and (4) the relationship between language units and thought units.

This chapter develops a relevance-theoretic model – building on and refining the ideas of Wilson and Sperber (1979), Sperber and Wilson (1995), and Breheny (1998) – of how one aspect of intonation, the position of sentence stress, affects the incremental processing of simple utterances in English. After proposing a notation (adapted from Wedgwood, 2005) for modeling how cognitive effects may be derived from not-yet-fully-decoded utterances, the chapter advances the central tenet that the position of sentence stress should be seen as marking a particular stage in the hearer's incremental processing, encouraging the investment of effort in deriving cognitive effects at that stage. It sketches how this approach compares against other work within Relevance Theory, including efforts to analyze intonational contours or tones themselves in terms of procedural meaning, and it concludes, contra Breheny (1998), that although the position of sentence stress has an impact on the procedures of utterance comprehension, it is not best viewed as constituting a type of “procedural meaning” per se.

"Σύγχρονες έρευνες στο χώρο της γλωσσικής επεξεργασίας έχουν δείξει αναπτυξιακές διαφορές ως προς τις στρατηγικές κατανόησης που χρησιμοποιούν ενήλικες ομιλητές και παιδιά ηλικίας 10-11 ετών, γεγονός που δηλώνει ότι κατά τη γλωσσική ανάπτυξη υπάρχει διαφοροποίηση ανάμεσα στη γραμματική
ικανότητα και την πραγμάτωσή της. Αντίστοιχα, μελέτες σε παιδιά με αναγνωστικές διαταραχές έχουν δείξει πως η προτασιακή επεξεργασία (ακουστική και οπτική) διαταράσσεται σημαντικά, γεγονός το οποίο συνήθως αποδίδεται σε περιορισμούς στη φωνολογική επεξεργασία και τη λεκτική
βραχυπρόθεσμη μνήμη (Bar-Shalom κ.ά. 1993, Smith κ.ά. 1989). Στόχος της εργασίας είναι η μελέτη της γλωσσικής επεξεργασίας (μη)-γραμματικών προτάσεων και δομικών αμφισημιών από τυπικά αναπτυσσόμενα παιδιά και από παιδιά με αναγνωστικές δυσκολίες οι οποίες αφορούν και την ανάπτυξη
αναγνωστικών ικανοτήτων. Δύο ομάδες παιδιών – με και χωρίς αναγνωστικές δυσκολίες – συμμετείχαν σε ένα χρονομετρικό πείραμα ανάγνωσης προτάσεων, στο οποίο οι προτάσεις εμφανίζονται στην οθόνη ενός υπολογιστή λέξη-λέξη και στο τέλος κάθε πρότασης οι συμμετέχοντες καλούνται να κρίνουν την
(μη)-αποδεκτότητα των προτάσεων. Το πείραμα ελέγχει τον τρόπο με τον οποίο χρησιμοποιούνται γραμματικές πληροφορίες για (α) την εύρεση (μη)-αποδεκτών δομών και (β) την κατανόηση δομικών αμφισημιών σε προτάσεις, όπως

Καθώς έτρεχε/μαγείρευε οι/τους αστακοί/αστακούς κάηκαν/κάηκε στην κατσαρόλα.

Τα αποτελέσματα έδειξαν ότι, ενώ τα τυπικά αναπτυσσόμενα παιδιά δεν διαφέρουν από τους ενήλικες ως προς τη χρήση των γραμματικών χαρακτηριστικών για την εύρεση (μη)-γραμματικών
δομών, χρησιμοποιούν σε μικρότερο βαθμό από τους ενήλικες πληροφορίες που δεν είναι αμιγώς γραμματικές. Αντίθετα, τα παιδιά με αναγνωστικές διαταραχές διαφοροποιούνται από τα τυπικά αναπτυσσόμενα, καθώς παρατηρείται καθυστέρηση στην ενσωμάτωση των γραμματικών πληροφοριών κατά την επεξεργασία (μη)-γραμματικών προτάσεων αλλά και δομικών αμφισημιών (πρβλ. Isakson & Miller 1976, Mann κ.ά.1984)."

Relative clause processing depends on the grammatical role of the head noun in the subordinate clause. This has traditionally been explained in terms of cognitive limitations. We suggest that structure-related processing differences arise from differences in experience with these structures. We present a connectionist model which learns to produce utterances with relative clauses from exposure to message-sentence pairs. The model shows how various factors such as frequent subsequences, structural variations, and meaning conspire to create differences in the processing of these structures. The predictions of this learning-based account have been confirmed in behavioral studies with adults. This work shows that structural regularities that govern relative clause processing can be explained within a usage-based approach to recursion.

Focus particles such as 'only' and 'even' indicate that the focused element(s) in a sentence should be contrasted with a set of contextually defined alternatives. 'Only' indicates that properties assigned to the focus set are not shared by elements of the alternative set, whereas 'even' indicates that the focus and alternative sets share the
properties mentioned in the sentence. 'Even' has the additional function of marking the focused element as being low on a scale of alternatives ranked in terms of likelihood, thereby signaling that what is being described is somewhat surprising. Using eyetracking, we demonstrate that contrast information associated with 'only' and 'even' is rapidly processed online, with effects for 'even' being delayed, as compared with 'only' (Experiment 1). This difference in time course was not driven by the underlying semantics of the sentence without the focus particle (Experiment 2) but was probably due to even’s more complex semantic function.