刊讯｜SSCI 期刊《语言与认知》2023年第3-4期

Language and Cognition

Volume 15, Issue 3-4, 2023

Language and Cognition（SSCI二区，2022 IF：1.8，排名：67/194）2023年第3-4期共刊文21篇，其中2023年第3期共发文9篇，包括研究性论文8篇，书评1篇。研究论文涉及跨语言影响、早期双语研究、语言鲁棒性、词汇语义加工、元分析等主题。2023年第4期共发文12篇，研究论文涉及具身认知、认知负荷、抽象概念、跨文化研究、正字法加工、语码转换、词汇学习等主题，欢迎转发扩散！

往期推荐：

目录

ISSUE3

ARTICLES

■Uyghur–Chinese early successive adult bilinguals’ construal of caused motion events， by Alimujiang Tusun, Pages 427–452.

■Chunking up speech in real time: linguistic predictors and cognitive constraints, by Svetlana Vetchinnikova, Alena Konina, Nitin Williams, Nina Mikušová, Anna Mauranen, Pages 453–479.

■Variable motion encoding within Chinese: a usage-based perspective, by Shujun Chen, Lihuan Wu, Pages 480–502.

■Masked orthographic neighbor priming effects in Chinese two-character words, by Huilan Yang, Giacomo Spinelli, Lingling Li, Stephen J. Lupker, Pages 503–525.

■ Beyond the conservative hypothesis: a meta-analysis of lexical-semantic processing in Williams syndrome, by Carlos Romero-Rivas, Sara Rodríguez-Cuadrado, Lucía Sabater, Pablo Rodríguez Gómez, Irene Hidalgo de la Guía, Eva M. Moreno, Elena Garayzábal Heinze, Pages 526–550.

■Economy or ecology: metaphor use over time in China’s Government Work Reports, by Ya Sun, Deyi Kong, Chenmeng Zhou, Pages 551–573.

■Embodiment of color metaphor: an image-based visual analysis of the Chinese color terms hēi ‘black’ and bái ‘white’, by Jinmeng Dou, Meichun Liu, Tong Chen, Pages 574–600.

■Comparing the cognitive load of gesture and action production: a dual-task study, by Autumn B. Hostetter, Sonal Bahl, Pages 601–621.

BOOK REVIEW

■M. Bolognesi, M. Brdar, & K. Despot (eds.) (2019). Metaphor and metonymy in the digital age. Theory and methods for building repositories of figurative language. John Benjamins (Metaphor in Language, Cognition, and Communication, 8)., by Nina Julich-Warpakowski, Paula Pérez-Sobrino, Pages 622–627.

ISSUE4

ARTICLE

■Breaking the ice in a conversation: abstract words prompt dialogs more easily than concrete ones, by Chiara Fini, Ilenia Falcinelli, Giovanna Cuomo, Vanessa Era, Matteo Candidi, Luca Tummolini, Claudia Mazzuca, Anna M. Borghi, Pages 629–650.

■The semantic representation of food is shaped by cultural experience, by Claudia Mazzuca, Asifa Majid, Pages 651–669.

■How flexible is the orthographic processing of flankers? Effects for letter order and letter identification, by Miguel Lázaro, Lorena García, Víctor Illera, Pages 670–688.

■Role of arousal, subjective significance and valence of affect in task-switching effectiveness, by Kamil K. Imbir, Maciej Pastwa, Adrianna Wielgopolan, Aleksandra Modzelewska, Adam Sobieszek, Pages 689–715.

■Two measures are better than one: combining iconicity ratings and guessing experiments for a more nuanced picture of iconicity in the lexicon, by Bonnie McLean, Michael Dunn, Mark Dingemanse, Pages 716–739.

■A learning perspective on the emergence of abstractions: the curious case of phone(me)s, by Petar Milin, Benjamin V. Tucker, Dagmar Divjak, Pages 740–762.

■Sensitivity to syntactic dependency formation in child second language processing: a study of numeral quantifiers in Korean, by Hyunwoo Kim, Kitaek Kim, Kyuhee Jo, Haerim Hwang, Pages 763–785.

■What counts as a multimodal metaphor and metonymy? Evolution of inter-rater reliability across rounds of annotation, by Paula Pérez Sobrino, Samantha Ford, Pages 786–814.

■Classifiers in competition for categorization, by Lin Peng, Sang-Gu Kang, Pages 815–833.

■The impact of L2 English on choice perception, interpretation, and preference for L1 Arabic speakers, by Lama AboHamed, Bassil Mashaqba, Nisreen Al-Khawaldeh, Pages 834–853.

■Quality, not quantity, impacts the differentiation of near-synonyms, by Aja Altenhof, Gareth Roberts, Pages 854–883.

■Sound-symbolic association between speech sound and spatial meaning in relation to the concepts of up/down and above/below, by Lari Vainio, Alexandra Wikström, Claudia Repetto, Martti Vainio, Pages 884–903.

摘要

Uyghur–Chinese early successive adult bilinguals’ construal of caused motion events

Alimujiang Tusun, Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

Abstract Talmy’s motion event typology has served as a fruitful framework for exploring bilingual cognition and language use. The present study extends this line of research to the bilingualism situation of an underrepresented Turkic language, i.e., Modern Uyghur, and Mandarin Chinese, and it does so by focusing on a relatively understudied type of motion, i.e., caused motion. The two languages are genetically and typologically distinct, and yet they share verb-framing as an important lexicalization pattern in encoding motion. This study, therefore, investigated whether and to what extent this structural overlap contributes to crosslinguistic influence in Uyghur–Chinese adult bilinguals’ construal of caused motion. Thirty Uyghur–Chinese adult bilinguals’ verbalizations were analyzed with respect to the number of semantic components expressed and the way they were syntactically packaged. Results were compared with relevant monolingual data, which showed that Uyghur–Chinese adult bilinguals displayed a strong L1 to L2 influence in syntactic packaging by overusing the verb-framed strategy in Mandarin Chinese. However, further comparisons with previous research on Uyghur–Chinese child and adult bilinguals’ motion construal revealed that, while structural overlap is a key factor motivating crosslinguistic influence, a coherent explanation of this phenomenon must consider more general principles of bilingual language processing and use.

Key words caused motion; Chinese; crosslinguistic influence;  early successive bilingual; Uyghur

Chunking up speech in real time: linguistic predictors and cognitive constraints

Svetlana Vetchinnikova, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

Alena Konina, Department of Languages, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

Nitin Williams, Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland

Nina Mikušová, Department of Languages, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

Anna Mauranen, Department of Languages, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

Abstract There have been some suggestions in linguistics and cognitive science that humans process continuous speech by routinely chunking it up into smaller units. The nature of the process is open to debate, which is complicated by the apparent existence of two entirely different chunking processes, both of which seem to be warranted by the limitations of working memory. To overcome them, humans seem to both combine items into larger units for future retrieval (usage-based chunking), and partition incoming streams into temporal groups (perceptual chunking). To determine linguistic properties and cognitive constraints of perceptual chunking, most previous research has employed short-constructed stimuli modeled on written language. In contrast, we presented linguistically naïve listeners with excerpts of natural speech from corpora and collected their intuitive perceptions of chunk boundaries. We then used mixed-effects logistic regression models to find out to what extent pauses, prosody, syntax, chunk duration, and surprisal predict chunk boundary perception. The results showed that all cues were important, suggesting cue degeneracy, but with substantial variation across listeners and speech excerpts. Chunk duration had a strong effect, supporting the cognitive constraint hypothesis. The direction of the surprisal effect supported the distinction between perceptual and usage-based chunking.

Key words chunking; speech perception; neural oscillations; prosody; syntax; surprisal; individual variation; cue degeneracy; syntagmatic redundancy; linguistic robustness

Variable motion encoding within Chinese: a usage-based perspective

Shujun Chen, Faculty of English Language and Culture, Center for Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China

Lihuan Wu, School of Foreign Languages, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai, China

Abstract Languages differ considerably in the way they encode motion. Previous research on motion encoding has paid much attention to inter-typological variation (i.e., variation between language types) and intra-typological variation (i.e., variation within language types), but less focus on intra-linguistic variation (i.e., variation within particular languages). To fill this niche, the current study compares actual motion and metaphorical motion in Standard Mandarin Chinese with a corpus-based approach. We ask whether the typological properties in actual motion extend to metaphorical motion. The results indicate that the answer is negative. The typological properties including lexicalization patterns and the distribution of semantic components vary by both event type (actual motion vs. metaphorical motion) and genre (fiction vs. non-fiction) within Chinese. The intra-linguistic variation can be explained by additional factors – the pragmatic context and the structural property of Chinese. These findings support a constructional proposal of the motion event typology, which is a more nuanced typology that expands the binary distinction between V-languages and S-languages. In this proposal, the consideration of the scalar dimension enables more explicit descriptions of variation within languages (shift left- or rightward on the scale) and more accurate explanations for these phenomena.

Key words Actual motion; construction grammar; intra-linguistic variation; metaphorical motion; motion event typology

Masked orthographic neighbor priming effects in Chinese two-character words

Huilan Yang, Department of Foreign Languages, Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China

Giacomo Spinelli, Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, MI, Italy

Lingling Li, Department of Applied Foreign Languages, Zhejiang International Studies University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China

Stephen J. Lupker, Department of Psychology, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada

Abstract In masked priming lexical decision tasks in alphabetic or syllabic script languages, latencies are longer when a word target is primed by a higher frequency neighbor (e.g., blue–BLUR) than when primed by an unrelated word of equivalent frequency (e.g., care–BLUR) – an “inhibitory neighbor priming effect.” In contrast, Zhou et al. (1999) demonstrated facilitatory orthographic neighbor priming for two-character Chinese words (e.g., 华丽–华贵). However, Zhou et al. did not control for relative prime-target frequency, which has been shown to be important in experiments when examining languages with other scripts. In the present Experiment 1 word neighbor primes (e.g., 容易-容貌) produced an inhibitory neighbor priming effect when the prime was higher frequency than the target, paralleling effects in other script languages. In further experiments, paralleling those in other script languages, two-character targets primed by nonword neighbors (容待-容貌) or single constituent characters matching the target in either position (容-容貌) showed significant facilitation. These results suggest that lexical activation/competition processes for two-character Chinese words are reasonably similar to those for words in alphabetic/syllabic script languages.

Key words Inhibitory neighbor priming effect;  Chinese;  masked priming lexical decision

Beyond the conservative hypothesis: a meta-analysis of lexical-semantic processing in Williams syndrome

Carlos Romero-Rivas, Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

Sara Rodríguez-Cuadrado, Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

Lucía Sabater, Universidad Internacional de La Rioja, Logroño, Spain

Pablo Rodríguez Gómez, Department of Psychology, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain

Irene Hidalgo de la Guía, Department of Spanish and Literature Theory, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

Eva M. Moreno, Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Madrid, SpainFaculty of Languages and Education, Universidad Antonio de Nebrija, Madrid, Spain

Elena Garayzábal Heinze, Department of General Linguistics, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

Abstract

Williams syndrome (WS) is a rare genetic disorder, characterised at the cognitive level by a phenotypic pattern of relative weaknesses (e.g., visuospatial skills) and strengths (e.g., some linguistic and nonverbal reasoning skills). In this study, we performed a systematic search and meta-analysis on lexical-semantic processing in WS, an area of knowledge in which contradictory results have been obtained. We found 42 studies matching our criteria, and, in total, 78 effect sizes were included in the meta-analysis. Results showed that individuals with WS have worse lexical-semantic skills than individuals with typical development, whether matched by chronological or mental age. However, people with WS have better lexical-semantic skills than people diagnosed with other cognitive disabilities. Finally, vocabulary skills seem to be relatively spared in WS, although they present some difficulties in semantic processing/integration, semantic memory organisation and verbal working memory skills. Taken together, these results support a neuroconstructivist approach, according to which the cognitive mechanisms involved in lexical-semantic processing may be modulated, even when performance in some tasks (i.e., vocabulary tasks) might be optimal.

Key words Williams syndrome; lexical-semantic processing; meta-analysis; neuroconstructivism; modularity

Economy or ecology: metaphor use over time in China’s Government Work Reports

Ya Sun, School of International Studies, University of International Business and Economics, Beijing, China

Deyi Kong, School of International Studies, University of International Business and Economics, Beijing, China

Chenmeng Zhou, School of Chinese Language and Literature, University of International Business and Economics, Beijing, China

Abstract Government attention selectively distributed to various issues in policy-making processes is usually reflected in language, such as metaphors in political discourse. In addition, metaphor change may reveal how conceptualizations of major topics such as ECONOMY and ECOLOGY evolve over time. After self-building a corpus of China’s 45-year Government Work Reports, this study explores whether there is a difference in attention to topics of ECONOMY and ECOLOGY over time and investigates the diachronic change of metaphor use on them based on a modified framework for diachronic metaphor change analysis. Results show that attention to ECONOMY has been steadily decreasing while attention to ECOLOGY has been growing, and that there is an increasing tendency of using more ECONOMY and ECOLOGY metaphors. Metaphor change on the use of source domains is arranged on a continuum, ranging from constant use (WAR for ECONOMY and ECOLOGY, and JOURNEY and OBJECT for ECONOMY), incremental change (LIVING ORGANISM and BUILDING for ECONOMY and ECOLOGY, and OBJECT for ECOLOGY) to fundamental change (BUILDING and LIVING ORGANISM for ECOLOGY). This study may enrich the understanding of diachronic metaphor change by providing a Chinese perspective on the metaphor use in government discourse over time.

Key words Metaphor change; ecology; economy; government attention; China’s Government Work Report

Embodiment of color metaphor: an image-based visual analysis of the Chinese color terms hēi ‘black’ and bái ‘white’

Jinmeng Dou, Department of Linguistics and Translation, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

Meichun Liu, Department of Linguistics and Translation, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

Tong Chen, School of Data Science, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

Abstract Perceptual information includes sensorimotor and emotional experience regarding the multimodality of the perceptual system. The current study provides an image-based visual analysis on the embodiment of color metaphors through the investigation of (i) the perceptual (dis)similarities between the literal and metaphorical meanings of the Chinese color terms hēi ‘black’ and bái ‘white’ and (ii) the influence of emotional valence on the degree of their perceptual (dis)similarities. Specifically, 24 concepts in three semantic domains were represented as eight-dimensional vectors based on the color information extracted from online images, including two color concepts of black and white, 20 abstract concepts referring to 8 metaphorical meanings of hēi and 12 metaphorical meanings of bái, and two abstract concepts referring to positive and negative affective polarity. Statistical analyses show that (i) the literal and metaphorical meanings of hēi and bái are perceptually distinguishable given their significant perceptual (dis)similarities and (ii) the observed perceptual distinguishability cannot be solely attributed to the (in)consistency of emotional valence associated with the senses. The present study provides nonlinguistic evidence for the embodiment of color metaphors in the Chinese context with an empirical approach that can simultaneously capture the metaphorical mappings and affective associations among cross-domain concepts with sensory data.

Key words Embodied cognition；color metaphor；image-based color distribution；emotional valence；sensory data

Comparing the cognitive load of gesture and action production: a dual-task study

Autumn B. Hostetter, Department of Psychology, Kalamazoo College, Kalamazoo, MI, USA

Sonal Bahl, Department of Psychology, Kalamazoo College, Kalamazoo, MI, USA

Abstract Speech-accompanying gestures have been shown to reduce cognitive load on a secondary task compared to speaking without gestures. In the current study, we investigate whether this benefit of speech-accompanying gestures is shared by speech-accompanying actions (i.e., movements that leave a lasting trace in the physical world). In two experiments, participants attempted to retain verbal and spatial information from a grid while describing a pattern while gesturing, while making the pattern, or while keeping hands still. Producing gestures reduced verbal load compared to keeping hands still when the pattern being described was visually present (Experiment 1), and this benefit was not shared by making the pattern. However, when the pattern being described was not visually present (Experiment 2), making the pattern benefited verbal load compared to keeping hands still. Neither experiment revealed a significant difference between gesture and action. Taken together, the findings suggest that moving the hands in meaningful ways can benefit verbal load.

Key words Gesture; action; cognitive load

Breaking the ice in a conversation: abstract words prompt dialogs more easily than concrete onesChiara Fini, Claudia Mazzuca, Anna M. Borghi, Department of Dynamic and Clinical Psychology and Health Studies, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, ItalyIlenia Falcinelli, Department of Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, ItalyGiovanna Cuomo, Vanessa Era, Matteo Candidi, Department of Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, ItalyIRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, Rome, ItalyLuca Tummolini, Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, Italian National Research Council, Rome, Italy

Abstract Abstract domains of knowledge may have social origins. However, whether abstract concepts (ACs) may also differentially affect communicative interaction and conversation has not been explored. Here, we studied ACs’ communicative functions by collecting in an Italian and an English sample, ratings for concrete concept (CC) and ACs related to three main dimensions: communicative/pragmatic [i.e., Openness to Negotiation (ON), Easiness to Start a Conversation (ESC)], semantic/metacognitive [i.e., Social Metacognition (SM) – perceived need of others, Word Confidence (WC), Contextual Availability (CA)], and emotional–experiential (i.e., Pleasantness, Valence, Familiarity). Overall, Italian participants judged it was easier to start a conversation, the more pleasant, familiar, and positively valenced were rated the concepts. Crucially, at lower values of the emotional–experiential component (i.e., Familiarity in the Italian sample, also Pleasantness and Valence in an English sample), there was an advantage of ACs over CCs in the ESC. Moreover, in the Italian sample, participants rated ACs higher on SM, ON, and lower on WC and CA. Notably, in both the Italian and English sample, ACs with higher ratings on the ESC dimension belonged to the Self-Sociality subcluster. The results offer new insights into the pragmatic aspects linked to ACs’ use.

Key words sociality; language; abstract concepts; conversation; ratings

The semantic representation of food is shaped by cultural experience

Claudia Mazzuca, Department of Dynamic and Clinical Psychology, and Health, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy

Asifa Majid, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

Abstract While eating is universally salient, food habits vary greatly even across similar western cultural groups. Italians, for example, are renowned pasta consumers whereas this habit is less pervasive in other western cultures. This variability might shape the conceptualization of food of different cultural groups. Against this backdrop, it has been proposed the semantic representation of food is universally organized along two main axes, with natural food (e.g., vegetables, fruit) relying more on sensory properties and manufactured food (e.g., pasta) relying more on functional properties. In this exploratory study, we compared the semantic representation of pasta, vegetables, and fruit across Italian and English-speaking participants with a free-listing task. We find the representation of pasta is not restricted to functional properties. Moreover, Italian and English speakers differed both quantitatively and qualitatively in their representation of pasta. Italians produced more exemplars of pasta than English-speaking participants, and their conceptual organization of pasta also included fine-grained distinctions (e.g., egg-based vs. flour-and-water pasta), whereas English-speaking participants mostly focused on perceptual components (e.g., long) – even when accounting for differential consumption, cooking, and preparation experience of pasta. Our results suggest that culture-specific experiences can shape the conceptualization of food.

Key words cross-cultural; concept; food; free-listing; pasta

How flexible is the orthographic processing of flankers? Effects for letter order and letter identification

Miguel Lázaro, Lorena García, Víctor Illera, Department of Experimental Psychology, Cognitive Processes and Speech and Language Therapy, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

Abstract This study explored the flexibility of the orthographic processing at parafoveal level by manipulating the relationship between flankers and targets in two lexical decision tasks. In the first, we presented the following flankers: (1) the same words as targets (farola farola farola); (2) targets with transposed non-adjacent letters (falora farola falora); (3) the targets with one different letter (fapola farola fapola); and (4) unrelated pseudowords as control stimuli (pilata farola pilata). The results show significant facilitatory effects for all three experimental conditions in comparison to the Unrelated one, as well as differences between the Transposed and One Different Letter when compared to the Identity condition. In the second experiment, the procedure was the same but with the following modifications: the transposed non-adjacent letters were vowels instead of consonants (forala farola forala), and we also presented a condition in which both vowels and consonants were transposed (folara farola folara). The results of the response latencies showed that all the experimental conditions generated facilitatory effects in comparison to the Unrelated condition, with no differences between them, although the analyses of the error rates additionally showed significant differences between the Identity and the Transposed and Vowel and Consonant Transposed conditions. These two experiments are interpreted in terms of a highly flexible orthographic processing of flankers at parafoveal level, both in relation to letter ordering and letter identification.

Key words flankers; orthographic processing; transposed letter

Role of arousal, subjective significance and valence of affect in task-switching effectiveness

Kamil K. Imbir, Maciej Pastwa, Adrianna Wielgopolan, Aleksandra Modzelewska, Adam Sobieszek, Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland

Abstract Switching between two concurrent tasks is an important ability of the mind. In a series of two experiments, we explored the role of activation (arousal and subjective significance) and emotional valence in shaping the effectiveness of switching between two cognitive tasks: gender-marking and emotional categorisations of verbal stimuli. We expected arousal to disrupt and subjective significance to boost the effectiveness of cognitive switching. We employed a paradigm that allowed us to present emotional words and measure the reaction latencies when a task given to the participants was switched; thus, the response was more costly than when continuing to respond to the same task. The first experiment, conducted with neutral words, showed that high subjective significance reduced reaction latencies in comparison with medium subjective significance. The second experiment showed a similar pattern only for neutral stimuli in the emotional categorisation task, but not for negative and positive stimuli. We did not find a clear effect of arousal or valence. The results of our studies suggest that subjective significance is independent of arousal in enhancing the cognitive control resources.

Key words switching costs; emotion-laden words; emotional versus;  grammatical assessments; task switching; subjective significance

Two measures are better than one: combining iconicity ratings and guessing experiments for a more nuanced picture of iconicity in the lexicon

Bonnie McLean, Michael Dunn, Department of Linguistics and Philology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

Mark Dingemanse, Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Abstract Iconicity in language is receiving increased attention from many fields, but our understanding of iconicity is only as good as the measures we use to quantify it. We collected iconicity measures for 304 Japanese words from English-speaking participants, using rating and guessing tasks. The words included ideophones (structurally marked depictive words) along with regular lexical items from similar semantic domains (e.g., fuwafuwa ‘fluffy’, jawarakai ‘soft’). The two measures correlated, speaking to their validity. However, ideophones received consistently higher iconicity ratings than other items, even when guessed at the same accuracies, suggesting the rating task is more sensitive to cues like structural markedness that frame words as iconic.  These cues did not always guide participants to the meanings of ideophones in the guessing task, but they did make them more confident in their guesses, even when they were wrong. Consistently poor guessing results reflect the role different experiences play in shaping construals of iconicity. Using multiple measures in tandem allows us to explore the interplay between iconicity and these external factors. To facilitate this, we introduce a reproducible workflow for creating rating and guessing tasks from standardised wordlists, while also making improvements to the robustness, sensitivity and discriminability of previous approaches.

Key words Iconicity；Ideophones；Lexical norms；Iconicity ratings；Guessability

A learning perspective on the emergence of abstractions: the curious case of phone(me)s

Petar Milin, Department of Modern Languages, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

Benjamin V. Tucker, Department of Linguistics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada; Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, USA

Dagmar Divjak, Department of Modern Languages, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK; Department of English Language and Linguistics, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

Abstract In this study, we propose an operationalization of the concept of emergence which plays a crucial role in usage-based theories of language. The abstractions linguists operate with are assumed to emerge through a process of generalization over the data language users are exposed to. Here, we use two types of computational learning algorithms that differ in how they formalize and execute generalization and, consequently, abstraction, to probe whether a type of language knowledge that resembles linguistic abstractions could emerge from exposure to raw data only. More specifically, we investigated whether a phone, undisputedly the simplest of all linguistic abstractions, could emerge from exposure to speech sounds using two computational learning processes: memory-based learning and error-correction learning (ECL). Both models were presented with a significant amount of pre-processed speech produced by one speaker. We assessed (1) the consistency or stability of what these simple models learn and (2) their ability to approximate abstract categories. Both types of models fare differently regarding these tests. We show that only ECL models can learn abstractions and that at least part of the phone inventory and its grouping into traditional types can be reliably identified from the input.

Key words Error-correction learning; memory-based learning; phone; emergence; abstraction

Sensitivity to syntactic dependency formation in child second language processing: a study of numeral quantifiers in Korean

Hyunwoo Kim, Department of English Language and Literature, Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea

Kitaek Kim, Department of English Language Education, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea

Kyuhee Jo, Department of English Language Education, Gyeongin National University of Education, Incheon, South Korea

Haerim Hwang, Department of English, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

Abstract This study investigates whether child second language (L2) learners can use syntactic information during the processing of sentences involving unbounded dependencies and how their processing patterns compare to those of child monolinguals and adult L2 learners. Through a self-paced reading experiment involving the numeral quantifier (NQ) construction in Korean, we tested participants’ sensitivity to agreement violations between a noun phrase (NP) and an NQ in local and nonlocal conditions. The results showed that a subset of child L2 learners who demonstrated target-like knowledge of NP-NQ agreement in an offline task spent a longer processing time in the NP-NQ mismatch than in the NP-NQ match condition, in both local and nonlocal contexts. These child L2 learners’ processing patterns were comparable to those observed in child monolinguals and adult L2 learners. These findings suggest that child and adult L2 learners rely on the same system of syntactic representations and processing mechanisms that guide first language processing.

Key words Child L2 processing; numeral quantifier; syntactic dependency; self-paced reading

What counts as a multimodal metaphor and metonymy? Evolution of inter-rater reliability across rounds of annotation

Paula Pérez Sobrino, Departamento de Filologías Modernas, Universidad de La Rioja, c/San José de Calasanz 33, 26004 Logroño, La Rioja, Spain

Samantha Ford, Department of English Language and Linguistics, University of Birmingham, Frankland Building, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, United Kingdom

Abstract An open question in research on multimodal figuration is how to mitigate the analyst’s bias in identifying and interpreting metaphor and metonymy; an issue that determines the generalizability of the findings. Little is known about the causes that motivate different annotations. Inter-rater reliability tests are useful to investigate the sources of variation in annotations by independent researchers that can help inform and refine protocols. 

Inspired by existing procedures for verbal, visual, and filmic metaphor identification, we formulated instructions to identify multimodal metaphor and metonymy and tested it against a corpus of 21 generic advertisements and 21 genre-specific advertisements (mobile phones). Two independent researchers annotated the advertisements in six rounds. A joint discussion followed each round to consider conflicting annotations and refine the protocol for the ensuing round. 

By examining the evolution of inter-rater reliability results, we found that (1) we reached similar levels of agreement for the identification of metaphor and metonymy, although converging on the interpretation of metonymy was more difficult; (2) some genre specificities made it easier to agree on the annotations for mobile advertisements than for the general advertisements; and (3) there was a consistent increase in the kappa scores reaching substantial agreement by the sixth round.

Key words advertising; inter-rater reliability; metaphor and metonymy identification; multimodality

Classifiers in competition for categorization

Lin Peng, Department of Foreign Languages, Shangqiu Normal University, Shangqiu, China

Sang-Gu Kang, Department of English Language and Literature, Gangneung-Wonju National University, Gangneung, Korea

Abstract This research probed how classifiers marking an object’s membership in the grammar of classifier languages like Mandarin Chinese and Korean may influence their speakers to categorize objects differently compared to speakers of non-classifier languages like English. Surveys in multiple-choice format were given to native speakers of the three languages. Analysis of the results demonstrated that significant proportions of Mandarin Chinese and Korean speakers behaved differently from English speakers due to the classifier-based strategy influencing classifier language speakers’ categorization. Adopting the Competition Model, we suggest that among the various categorizing strategies available to language users, the one with the greatest strength at the moment of performing the task wins the categorization competition. Classifiers that are grammaticalized in classifier languages may be providing their speakers with a powerful cognitive tool to notice diverse characteristics shared between objects, which is usually unavailable to non-classifier languages. Therefore, the strength of classifier-based strategy in the minds of classifier language speakers is strong enough to win some of the categorization competitions, which guides them to make different categorizing decisions from non-classifier language users.

Key words categorization; classifiers; categorizing strategies; Competition Model

The impact of L2 English on choice perception, interpretation, and preference for L1 Arabic speakers

Lama AboHamed, Bassil Mashaqba, Nisreen Al-Khawaldeh, Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Arts, The Hashemite University, Zarqa, Jordan

Abstract This article compares risk tolerance of native Arabic speakers under two language contexts: their first language (L1 Arabic) and their foreign language (L2 English). We aim to evaluate whether thinking in a foreign language actually reduces the negative effects of cognitive biases, such as loss aversion and mental accounting, on financial decision-making. Toward this aim, we conducted two experiments in which the risk tolerance levels of 144 participants were evaluated across four different types of decision-making problems: the Asian disease problem, the financial crisis problem, the discount problem, and the ticket/money lost problem. In study 1, we adopted Keysar et al.’s (2012, Psychological Science, 23, 661–668) experiment to test the effect of L2 on framing effects associated with loss aversion, and in Study 2, we adopted Costa et al.’s (2014, Cognition, 130, 236–254) experiment to test the effect of L2 on framing effects associated with mental accounting biases. We found that individuals were risk-averse for gains and risk-seeking for losses when presented with choices in their L1, but were almost unaffected by framing manipulation under the L2 condition. When it came to mental accounting, however, framing effects were nearly absent in both L1 and L2 conditions. In our investigation, we examined various potential factors that could explain the foreign language effect on decision-making. The primary factor that appears to account for this linguistic phenomenon is the heightened cognitive and emotional distance experienced when using an L2.

Key words decision-making; framing effects; emotions; linguistic code

Quality, not quantity, impacts the differentiation of near-synonyms

Aja Altenhof, Gareth Roberts, Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

Abstract How much information do language users need to differentiate potentially absolute synonyms into near-synonyms? How consistent must the information be? We present two simple experiments designed to investigate this. After exposure to two novel verbs, participants generalized them to positive or negative contexts. In Experiment 1, there was a tendency across conditions for the verbs to become differentiated by context, even following inconsistent, random, or neutral information about context during exposure. While a subset of participants matched input probabilities, a high proportion did not. As a consequence, the overall pattern was of growth in differentiation that did not closely track input distributions. Rather, there were two main patterns: When each verb had been presented consistently in a positive or negative context, participants overwhelmingly specialized both verbs in their output. When this was not the case, the verbs tended to become partially differentiated, with one becoming specialized and the other remaining less specialized. Experiment 2 replicated and expanded on Experiment 1 with the addition of a pragmatic judgment task and neutral contexts at test. Its results were consistent with Experiment 1 in supporting the conclusion that quality of input may be more important than quantity in the differentiation of synonyms.

Key words synonymy; word learning; semantic differentiation; mutual exclusivity; statistical learning

Sound-symbolic association between speech sound and spatial meaning in relation to the concepts of up/down and above/below

Lari Vainio, Perception, Action & Cognition Research Group, Department of Psychology and Logopedics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland; Phonetics and Speech Synthesis Research Group, Department of Digital Humanities, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

Alexandra Wikström, Phonetics and Speech Synthesis Research Group, Department of Digital Humanities, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

Claudia Repetto, Department of Psychology, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano, Italy

Martti Vainio, Phonetics and Speech Synthesis Research Group, Department of Digital Humanities, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

Abstract Research has shown sound-symbolic associations between speech sounds and conceptual and/or perceptual properties of a referent. This study used the choice response time method to investigate hypothesized associations between a high/low vowel and spatial concepts of up/down and above/below. The participants were presented with a stimulus that moved either upward or downward (Experiments 1 and 2), or that was located above or below the reference stimulus (Experiment 3), and they had to pronounce a vowel ([i] or [æ]) based on the spatial location of the stimulus. The study showed that the high vowel [i] was produced faster in relation to the up-directed and the above-positioned stimulus, while the low vowel [æ] was produced faster in relation to the down-directed and the below-positioned stimulus. In addition, the study replicated the pitch-elevation effect showing a raising of the vocalization pitch when vocalizations were produced to the up-directed stimulus. The article discusses these effects in terms of the involvement of sensorimotor processes in representing spatial concepts.

Key words sound symbolism; spatial concepts; vocalization; speech

期刊简介

Language and cognition is a venue for the publication of high-quality empirical research focusing on the interface between language and cognition. It is open to research from the full range of subject disciplines, theoretical backgrounds, and analytical frameworks that populate linguistics and the cognitive sciences. We aim to cover a wide range of interdisciplinary research focused on theoretical issues surrounding the language system.

《语言与认知》专注于语言和认知之间的界面。它对来自语言学和认知科学的所有学科、理论背景和分析框架的研究都是开放的。我们的目标是涵盖广泛的跨学科研究，重点是围绕语言系统的理论问题。

In addition to the traditional areas of cognitive linguistics (e.g., construction grammar, metaphor theory, linguistic relativity, sensorimotor simulation), we especially welcome research which considers theoretical linguistic questions within a broader cognitive context. We also strongly encourage submissions investigating iconicity, multimodality, signed languages, gesture, or language evolution. We generally do not consider applied work, such as classroom based research, or studies focused on education, language aptitude or language teaching.

除了认知语言学的传统领域(如结构语法、隐喻理论、语言相对论、感觉运动模拟)，我们特别欢迎在更广泛的认知背景下考虑理论语言学问题的研究。我们也强烈鼓励提交研究象似性、多模态、手语、手势或语言进化的作品。我们通常不考虑应用工作，例如基于课堂的研究，或专注于教育、语言能力或语言教学的研究。

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