Wording, Meaning, and Linguistic Ideology

Two seemingly disparate areas of English language structure—the grammar of reported speech and of textual cohesion—are functionally related in that both entail a distinction between "wording" and "meaning." This is consistent with the Western ideological disjunction between language and reality, talk and action. Neither these language structures nor this linguistic ideology are found among the Ngarinyin people of northwestern Australia, suggesting a Whorfian hypothesis about their possible interrelationship.     

Ideologies of Language: Some Reflections on Language and U.S. Law

I present two U.S. court cases in which I participated as a linguistic anthropological "expert" to show how language ideologies of the law both influence legal outcomes and conflict with "scientific" ideas about language. One case was the murder trial of a young Mixtec-speaking Indian from Oaxaca; the other was a civil suit brought by four Hispanic women dismissed from an elder-care center for speaking Spanish on the job. I identify in the linguistic ideologies of both cases a principle of "referential transparency" that takes the essential business of words, regardless of the linguistic code, to be communicating propositional information. In the second case, 1 describe a further notion of "linguistic paranoia" in which speaking a language other than English is taken as inherently insulting or threatening. I relate these implicit ideological threads to the legal outcomes, to the restricted notions of potential "language rights" that might emerge from such ideologies, and to the clash between theoretical and judicial perspectives on language. [Keywords: U.S. law, language rights, linguistic ideology, expert witnesses, linguistic anthropology]     

Biology of human speech communication

In this paper the analysis of the human acoustic communication channel is presented as a potentially bio-anthropological subject of interest. After a crude survey concerning some important aspects of speech and expressive behaviour a hypothesis is outlined saying that the verbal and the nonverbal content of the speech signal are not just transferred side by side; rather there exist close interconnections between the linguistic and the expressive structures, which is shown regarding the speech melody; the 'cultural' language code makes use of a predominantly 'non-cultural' code of vocalisations for the purpose of linguistic disambiguation and speeding up the communication process. The complementarity of these two codes, their principal independence of each other as well as their different cerebral representation contribute to the high efficiency of speech as a communication tool.     

The self-organization of speech sounds

The speech code is a vehicle of language: it defines a set of forms used by a community to carry information. Such a code is necessary to support the linguistic interactions that allow humans to communicate. How then may a speech code be formed prior to the existence of linguistic interactions? Moreover, the human speech code is discrete and compositional, shared by all the individuals of a community but different across communities, and phoneme inventories are characterized by statistical regularities. How can a speech code with these properties form? We try to approach these questions in the paper, using the "methodology of the artificial". We build a society of artificial agents, and detail a mechanism that shows the formation of a discrete speech code without pre-supposing the existence of linguistic capacities or of coordinated interactions. The mechanism is based on a low-level model of sensory-motor interactions. We show that the integration of certain very simple and non-language-specific neural devices leads to the formation of a speech code that has properties similar to the human speech code. This result relies on the self-organizing properties of a generic coupling between perception and production within agents, and on the interactions between agents. The artificial system helps us to develop better intuitions on how speech might have appeared, by showing how self-organization might have helped natural selection to find speech.     

A contrastive view of Irish language dynamics

This paper presents an analysis of the linguistic anthropology which underpins the language dynamics of two Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking) areas, Ros Muc in Conamara, Co. Galway and Ráth Cairn in Co. Meath. This research highlights what could be considered a socio-linguistic paradox: the community (Ráth Cairn) which engages more vigorously in language maintenance endeavors, and exhibits a greater awareness of language policy and of linguistic ideology among members of the community, fares less favorably in socio-linguistic terms to the contrasting community (Ros Muc) which has to endure a more challenging socio-economic climate than that of Ráth Cairn. The relative socio-economic success of the Ráth Cairn community appears to be masking a greater malaise of socio-cultural fragility and language endangerment. In contrast, the language obsolescence issues faced by the Ros Muc community, though superficially not as severe, are enmeshed in what would be considered more pressing issues of socio-economic marginalization.     

Cost and complexity: selection for speech and language

The handicap principle has been applied to a number of different traits in the last three decades, but it is difficult to characterize its record, or even its perceived relevance, when it comes to an important human attribute—spoken language. In some cases, assumptions regarding the energetic cost of speech, and the veracity of linguistically encoded messages, have failed to recognize critical aspects of human development, cognition, and social ecology. In other cases, the fact that speech contains honest (physiological) information, and tends to be used honestly with family and friends, has been overlooked. Speech and language are functionally related but they involve different resources. Individuals can increase the attractiveness of their speech, and of more stylized vocal and verbal performances, without enhancing linguistic structure or content; and they can modify their use of language without significant changes in the physical form of speech. That its production costs are normally low enables speech to be produced extravagantly in bids for status and mating relationships, and in evolution, may have allowed its content—linguistic knowledge and structure—to become complex.     

Language, Ideology, and the Press in Catalonia

This article, relying on Bakhtin's approach to canonization, demonstrates an empirical link between language and ideology. The authors employ content and discourse analysis to examine political discourse exemplified in editorial writing as a particular speech genre. They scrutinize editorials in four newspapers published in Catalonia, two of them in Castilian and two in Catalan. Despite political differences between the papers in each language, the authors discern a Catalan-language discourse style that differs significantly from the Caslilian-language discourse style. They conclude that the historically canonized discourse styles, different in Catalonia's Castilian and Catalan press, reflect the intimate relationship between language of use and ideology.     

Let's All Speak Together! Exploring the Masking Effects of Various Languages on Spoken Word Identification in Multi-Linguistic Babble

This study aimed to characterize the linguistic interference that occurs during speech-in-speech comprehension by combining offline and online measures, which included an intelligibility task (at a −5 dB Signal-to-Noise Ratio) and 2 lexical decision tasks (at a −5 dB and 0 dB SNR) that were performed with French spoken target words. In these 3 experiments we always compared the masking effects of speech backgrounds (i.e., 4-talker babble) that were produced in the same language as the target language (i.e., French) or in unknown foreign languages (i.e., Irish and Italian) to the masking effects of corresponding non-speech backgrounds (i.e., speech-derived fluctuating noise). The fluctuating noise contained similar spectro-temporal information as babble but lacked linguistic information. At −5 dB SNR, both tasks revealed significantly divergent results between the unknown languages (i.e., Irish and Italian) with Italian and French hindering French target word identification to a similar extent, whereas Irish led to significantly better performances on these tasks. By comparing the performances obtained with speech and fluctuating noise backgrounds, we were able to evaluate the effect of each language. The intelligibility task showed a significant difference between babble and fluctuating noise for French, Irish and Italian, suggesting acoustic and linguistic effects for each language. However, the lexical decision task, which reduces the effect of post-lexical interference, appeared to be more accurate, as it only revealed a linguistic effect for French. Thus, although French and Italian had equivalent masking effects on French word identification, the nature of their interference was different. This finding suggests that the differences observed between the masking effects of Italian and Irish can be explained at an acoustic level but not at a linguistic level.     

God Is Nothing but Talk: Modernity, Language, and Prayer in a Papua New Guinea Society

This article brings together theories of local modernity and of linguistic ideology to analyze the way the Urapmin of Papua New Guinea have encountered modern linguistic ideology through their Christianization. Against the prevailing anthropological focus on the indigenization of modernity, this article argues the importance of attending to cases in which people grasp the content of modernity on its own terms. Studying this kind of local modernity allows us to model an important kind of contemporary cultural change and discover neglected aspects of modernity as refracted through the experiences of people new to it. Here, an analysis of the Urapmin encounter with modern linguistic ideology reveals that ideology's rootedness in a model that ties meaning to intention and truthfulness and favors the speaker over the listener in the construction of meaning. It is suggested that an awareness of the biases of this ideology can open up new topics in linguistic anthropology. [ modernity, linguistic ideology, religion, Christianity, Melanesia ]     

Factors affecting the variability of the central mechanisms for maintaining bilingualism

The article discusses the probable role of many factors that determine the individual variety of the neurophysiological mechanisms that provide the opportunity to learn and use fluently two or more languages. The formation of the speech function is affected by both the general factors for bilinguals and monolinguals, as well as by the specific characteristic of bilingualism. General factors include genetic and environmental impacts explaining the diversity of individual options for the development of the morphofunctional organization of the speech function. Bilinguals, obviously, have an even wider variation of the central maintenance of speech ability, due to the combination of different conditions that influence the language environment, which include the age of second language acquisition, the language proficiency, the linguistic similarity of the languages, the method of their acquisition, intensity of use, and the area where each language is used. The influence of these factors can be mediated in different ways by the individual characteristics of the bilingual??s brain. Being exposed to two languages from the first days of life, the child uses for the development of speech skills the unique features of the brain that exist only at the initial stages of postnatal ontogenesis. At an older age, mastering a second language requires much more effort, when, in the course of maturation, the brain acquires new additional possibilities but permanently loses that special ??bonus?? that nature gives to a small child only in the first months of life. Large individual variability patterns of activation of the cortex during verbal activity in older bilinguals, compared with the younger ones, allows us to assume that the brain of the older bilingual mastering a new language is forced to manipulate a large number of backup mechanisms, and this is reflected in an increase in the variation of the cerebral processes responsible for speech functions. In addition, there is a serious reason to believe that learning a second language contributes to the expansion of the functional capabilities of the brain and creates the basis for successful cognitive activity.     

Speech Databases of Typical Children and Children with SLI

The extent of research on children’s speech in general and on disordered speech specifically is very limited. In this article, we describe the process of creating databases of children’s speech and the possibilities for using such databases, which have been created by the LANNA research group in the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at Czech Technical University in Prague. These databases have been principally compiled for medical research but also for use in other areas, such as linguistics. Two databases were recorded: one for healthy children’s speech (recorded in kindergarten and in the first level of elementary school) and the other for pathological speech of children with a Specific Language Impairment (recorded at a surgery of speech and language therapists and at the hospital). Both databases were sub-divided according to specific demands of medical research. Their utilization can be exoteric, specifically for linguistic research and pedagogical use as well as for studies of speech-signal processing.     

A neural network model with feature selection for Korean speech act classification

A speech act is a linguistic action intended by a speaker. Speech act classification is an essential part of a dialogue understanding system because the speech act of an utterance is closely tied with the user's intention in the utterance. We propose a neural network model for Korean speech act classification. In addition, we propose a method that extracts morphological features from surface utterances and selects effective ones among the morphological features. Using the feature selection method, the proposed neural network can partially increase precision and decrease training time. In the experiment, the proposed neural network showed better results than other models using comparatively high-level linguistic features. Based on the experimental result, we believe that the proposed neural network model is suitable for real field applications because it is easy to expand the neural network model into other domains. Moreover, we found that neural networks can be useful in speech act classification if we can convert surface sentences into vectors with fixed dimensions by using an effective feature selection method.     

Linguistic Syncretism and Language Ideologies: Transforming Sociolinguistic Hierarchy on Rapa Nui (Easter Island)

Recent work in linguistic anthropology highlights the role of linguistic ideologies, or cultural conceptions of language, in transforming social relations and linguistic structure and use. This article examines the links between language attitudes and uses in their institutional and interactional contexts on Rapa Nui, a Polynesian island community that is part of the Chilean nation-state. By the 1970s, a sociolinguistic hierarchy and functional compartmentalization of languages between Spanish and Rapa Nui—what I will describe as "colonial diglossia"—had become established in the community, which was rapidly becoming bilingual. Language shift toward Spanish has continued to advance since then. However, rising Rapa Nui syncretic language practice and consciousness, combined with the political successes of a local indigenous movement and changes in the local economy, are now contributing to the breakdown of colonial diglossia, generating better conditions for the maintenance of the Rapa Nui language.     

From Mind to Mouth: Event Related Potentials of Sentence Production in Classic Galactosemia

Patients with classic galactosemia, an inborn error of metabolism, have speech and language production impairments. Past research primarily focused on speech (motor) problems, but these cannot solely explain the language impairments. Which specific deficits contribute to the impairments in language production is not yet known. Deficits in semantic and syntactic planning are plausible and require further investigation. In the present study, we examined syntactic encoding while patients and matched controls overtly described scenes of moving objects using either separate words (minimal syntactic planning) or sentences (sentence-level syntactic planning). The design of the paradigm also allowed tapping into local noun phrase- and more global sentence-level syntactic planning. Simultaneously, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs). The patients needed more time to prepare and finish the utterances and made more errors. The patient ERPs had a very similar morphology to that of healthy controls, indicating overall comparable neural processing. Most importantly, the ERPs diverged from those of controls in several functionally informative time windows, ranging from very early (90–150 ms post scene onset) to relatively late (1820–2020 ms post scene onset). These time windows can be associated with different linguistic encoding stages. The ERP results form the first neuroscientific evidence for language production impairments in patients with galactosemia in lexical and syntactic planning stages, i.e., prior to the linguistic output phase. These findings hence shed new light on the language impairments in this disease.     

Language Ideology: The Case of Spanish in Departments of Foreign Languages

In this article we investigate language ideology in a department of Spanish. We are concerned with examining the acquisition and transmission of linguistic culture in departments of foreign languages within university settings and the ways in which views about non-English languages that are part of the American cultural dialogue are maintained and nurtured by educational institutions. Using long-term participant-observation data and focused interviews, we contend that foreign language departments in U.S. colleges and universities, although involved in a nonhegemonic practice—that is, in the teaching of non-English languages—are nevertheless working in concert with deeply held American ideologies about bilingualism and monolingualism.     

Effects of Early Bilingual Experience with a Tone and a Non-Tone Language on Speech-Music Integration

We investigated music and language processing in a group of early bilinguals who spoke a tone language and a non-tone language (Cantonese and Dutch). We assessed online speech-music processing interactions, that is, interactions that occur when speech and music are processed simultaneously in songs, with a speeded classification task. In this task, participants judged sung pseudowords either musically (based on the direction of the musical interval) or phonologically (based on the identity of the sung vowel). We also assessed longer-term effects of linguistic experience on musical ability, that is, the influence of extensive prior experience with language when processing music. These effects were assessed with a task in which participants had to learn to identify musical intervals and with four pitch-perception tasks. Our hypothesis was that due to their experience in two different languages using lexical versus intonational tone, the early Cantonese-Dutch bilinguals would outperform the Dutch control participants. In online processing, the Cantonese-Dutch bilinguals processed speech and music more holistically than controls. This effect seems to be driven by experience with a tone language, in which integration of segmental and pitch information is fundamental. Regarding longer-term effects of linguistic experience, we found no evidence for a bilingual advantage in either the music-interval learning task or the pitch-perception tasks. Together, these results suggest that being a Cantonese-Dutch bilingual does not have any measurable longer-term effects on pitch and music processing, but does have consequences for how speech and music are processed jointly.     

Semantic couplets as an expression of cultural identity

Semantic couplets in the Nahuatl language can function as discourse markers that have the pragmatic function of building identities among speech communities. The subsistence of these linguistic structures in present day institutional discourses points to similarities, not only in social, religious but also in linguistic practices of speech communities that are distant in time. Semantic couplets are presented as evidence that links modern speech events with those from pre-Hispanic times.     

Reduplication and repetition of person markers in Guaporé isolates

The person marking system of the language isolate Kwazá, spoken in the Brazilian Amazon, has several unusual properties. Its bound inflectional person suffixes can be reduplicated in order to express temporal and aspectual notions in a rather un-iconic way. The reduplicated segments are not defined by phonotactic boundaries, such as the syllable, but they are based on morphological units, disregarding their phonotactic structure. The origin and nature of this rare type of reduplication are not very clear. Morphologically based reduplication is not attested in the neighbouring languages with which Kwazá forms a linguistic area. However, Kwazá person markers are also involved in an unusual type of recursive construction that is encountered in the neighbouring languages, too. Recursive application of person markers occurs in Kwazá to express quoted speech in a transparent manner and has also given rise to less transparent expressions such as the desiderative. Similar constructions in the Aikanã and Wari’ languages suggest that this quotative construction is an areal feature of at least the Brazilian part of the Guaporé region. The quotative construction may help to understand the poorly understood phenomenon of seemingly redundant person marking in Kanoê, another language isolate of the region. It remains a question whether it also plays a role in the origin of the unique morphologically determined reduplication constructions of Kwazá.     

Prediction of psychosis across protocols and risk cohorts using automated language analysis

Language and speech are the primary source of data for psychiatrists to diagnose and treat mental disorders. In psychosis, the very structure of language can be disturbed, including semantic coherence (e.g., derailment and tangentiality) and syntactic complexity (e.g., concreteness). Subtle disturbances in language are evident in schizophrenia even prior to first psychosis onset, during prodromal stages. Using computer‐based natural language processing analyses, we previously showed that, among English‐speaking clinical (e.g., ultra) high‐risk youths, baseline reduction in semantic coherence (the flow of meaning in speech) and in syntactic complexity could predict subsequent psychosis onset with high accuracy. Herein, we aimed to cross‐validate these automated linguistic analytic methods in a second larger risk cohort, also English‐speaking, and to discriminate speech in psychosis from normal speech. We identified an automated machine‐learning speech classifier – comprising decreased semantic coherence, greater variance in that coherence, and reduced usage of possessive pronouns – that had an 83% accuracy in predicting psychosis onset (intra‐protocol), a cross‐validated accuracy of 79% of psychosis onset prediction in the original risk cohort (cross‐protocol), and a 72% accuracy in discriminating the speech of recent‐onset psychosis patients from that of healthy individuals. The classifier was highly correlated with previously identified manual linguistic predictors. Our findings support the utility and validity of automated natural language processing methods to characterize disturbances in semantics and syntax across stages of psychotic disorder. The next steps will be to apply these methods in larger risk cohorts to further test reproducibility, also in languages other than English, and identify sources of variability. This technology has the potential to improve prediction of psychosis outcome among at‐risk youths and identify linguistic targets for remediation and preventive intervention. More broadly, automated linguistic analysis can be a powerful tool for diagnosis and treatment across neuropsychiatry.