NAP-dag 2014: abstracts
Sterre Leufkens: Degrees of transparency – why some languages maintain their historical
junk
A transparent language is a language in which each linguistic form corresponds consistently to
one pragmatic or semantic element. I performed a typological comparison, which led to a
ranking of 22 languages in terms of their degree of deviation from full transparency. Relatively
non-transparent languages such as Dutch and Egyptian Arabic maintain certain elements that
convey no meaning at all, but have morphosyntactic or phonological relevance only. Why do
such features remain in these languages?
Konrad Rybka: The language of vanishing ecotopes
In this talk, I use first-hand landscape data from Lokono, a critically endangered Arawakan
language spoken in Suriname, Guyana and French Guiana to discuss the linguistic and
conceptual structure of ecotopes. The Lokono ecotope terms are derived from a noun encoding
a botanical resource with either the suffixe –wkaro or –wkili, for instance, mokorowkaro ‘an
area of the mokoro reed (Ischnosiphon arouma)’ or awarhawkili ‘an area of the awarha palm
(Astrocaryum vulgare)’. The speakers acknowledge a meaning difference between the two
derivational forms, but are unable to formulate it. I use hierarchical clustering and
multidimensional scaling to shed light on the semantics of the two suffixes. At the same time, I
expose the wealth of culturally specific knowledge associated with the ecotopes.
Jasmin Pfeifer: Congenital amusia and pitch memory
Congenital Amusia is a neuro-developmental disorder that has a negative influence on pitch
perception in language and music. For my PhD project I am conducting various perception
studies with Dutch and German amusics. This talk will give a brief introduction to congenital
amusia: its symptoms, surmised underlying deficits, how it is diagnosed, and current research
issues. I will give a short overview of my experiments so far and then focus on a study about
pitch memory, in which amusics’ pitch memory was manipulated with transcranial alternating
current stimulation (tACS).
Joey Weidema: Through the looking glass: an investigation into speech-specific and musicspecific mechanisms of pitch processing
One aspect of pitch perception, contour processing, has been shown to display a significant
overlap in terms of brain dynamics when attending to linguistic and musical stimuli. There is
no consensus, however, on whether pitch processing in language and music rely on shared
computational resources or operate in a modular, domain-specific manner. Auditory illusions
that blur the boundaries between language and music provide interesting grounds to test the
nature of pitch in both domains. In this talk I will discuss some of these illusions and propose
an experimental paradigm that can be used to investigate claims regarding modular vs. shared
pitch perception in language and music.
Mirjam de Jonge: Neural reflections of privative phonological features
The use of privative features in phonological representations, as opposed to binary features, has
consequences for the predicted levels of perceived contrast between speech sounds depending
on stimulus order. The current study was designed to critically test the predictions that arise
from binary features and from the different sets of privative features employed in the
Featurally Underspecified Lexicon model and in Element Theory. We measured the Mismatch
Negativity, a neural measure of auditory contrast, of French participants listening to French
vowels in an oddball paradigm. The results are in line with the predictions based on the
Featurally Underspecified Lexicon model.
Klaas Seinhorst: Learning preferences in plosive segment inventories
The sound systems of the world’s languages show clear patterns: certain sets of feature
combinations are preferred over others. In the literature, these tendencies have been linked to
ease of learning, but so far this hypothesis lacked empirical support. In this talk I present
results from a pilot study in which participants learned data sets that differed in feature
economy and logical complexity. The outcomes suggest three things: (i) certain sets are
significantly more difficult to learn than others; (ii) logical complexity is a better predictor of
learning success than feature economy; (iii) iteration of the attested learning preferences yields
a system that reflects typological tendencies.
Patrick Schetters: Accuracy in the written production of proficient learners of Dutch as a
second language with L1 German
Due to the close relatedness of both languages it is relatively easy for German L1 speakers to
obtain an advanced knowledge of Dutch. However, most of the learners still struggle when it
comes to bringing their command of language to perfection. Based on a corpus of written
essays from proficient German-speaking learners of Dutch as a foreign language a quantitative
and qualitative analysis of accuracy at levels B2/C1 (according to the CEFR) will be made. At
the same time the project tries to determine didactic measures and conducts relevant
experiments in order to optimise accuracy in advanced levels of written foreign language
production.