The Production of Nominal and Verbal Inflection in an Agglutinative Language: Evidence from Hungarian

The contrast between regular and irregular inflectional morphology has been useful in investigating the functional and neural architecture of language. However, most studies have examined the regular/irregular distinction in non-agglutinative Indo-European languages (primarily English) with relatively simple morphology. Additionally, the majority of research has focused on verbal rather than nominal inflectional morphology. The present study attempts to address these gaps by introducing both plural and past tense production tasks in Hungarian, an agglutinative non-Indo-European language with complex morphology. Here we report results on these tasks from healthy Hungarian native-speaking adults, in whom we examine regular and irregular nominal and verbal inflection in a within-subjects design. Regular and irregular nouns and verbs were stem on frequency, word length, and phonological structure, and both accuracy and response times were acquired. The results revealed that the regular/irregular contrast yields similar patterns in Hungarian, for both nominal and verbal inflection, as in previous studies of non-agglutinative Indo-European languages: the production of irregular inflected forms was both less accurate and slower than of regular forms, both for plural and past-tense inflection. The results replicate and extend previous findings to an agglutinative language with complex morphology. Together with previous studies, the evidence suggests that the regular/irregular distinction yields a basic behavioral pattern that holds across language families and linguistic typologies. Finally, the study sets the stage for further research examining the neurocognitive substrates of regular and irregular morphology in an agglutinative non-Indo-European language.     

Problems with tense marking in children with specific language impairment: not how but when

Many children with specific language impairment (SLI) have persisting problems in the correct use of verb tense, but there has been disagreement as to the underlying reason. When we take into account studies using receptive as well as expressive language tasks, the data suggest that the difficulty for children with SLI is in knowing when to inflect verbs for tense, rather than how to do so. This is perhaps not surprising when we consider that tense does not have a transparent semantic interpretation, but depends on complex relationships between inflections and hierarchically organized clauses. An explanation in terms of syntactic limitations contrasts with a popular morpho-phonological account, the Words and Rules model. This model, which attributes problems to difficulties with applying a rule to generate regular inflected forms, has been widely applied to adult-acquired disorders. There are striking similarities in the pattern of errors in adults with anterior aphasia and children with SLI, suggesting that impairments in appreciation of when to mark tense may apply to acquired as well as developmental disorders.     

Patients with impaired verb-tense processing: do they know that yesterday is past?

This paper begins with a focus on the task of stem inflection, where participants are given a verb stem and asked to produce the verb''s past-tense form, which can produce a neuropsychological double dissociation with respect to regular versus irregular verbs. Two differing theoretical interpretations are outlined: one is based on specifically morphological and separate brain mechanisms for processing regular versus irregular verbs; the other argues that the two sides of the dissociation can arise from one procedure, which is not specifically morphological, and which relies to differing extents on phonological versus semantic information for regular versus irregular verbs. We then present data from a different version of the task, in which patients were given past-tense forms and asked to produce the present-tense or stem forms (talked → talk and ate → eat). This change yielded a very different pattern of performance in four non-fluent aphasic patients as a function of the regular–irregular manipulation, an outcome which is argued to be more compatible with the single- than the dual-mechanism account. Finally, we present a small amount of data from a task in which the patient was asked to judge whether spoken regular and irregular verb stems and past-tense forms indicated actions occurring today or yesterday. This task produced an even more different and intriguing pattern of performance suggesting a deficit in morpho-syntactic knowledge: not how to produce past-tense forms but what such forms mean and how that understanding interacts with verb regularity. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the research field of acquired disorders of tense processing might advance as a result of new approaches, in particular those informed by studies of developmental disorders.     

Duets in Yellow-Naped Amazons: Variation in Syntax, Note Composition and Phonology at Different Levels of Social Organization

Complex vocal signals composed of multiple notes are used by many species. Such signals may vary in a number of features such as the rules that govern note order and timing (syntax), the relative number and types of different notes (note composition), and the acoustic structure of notes (phonology). Previous research examining male song in songbirds typically has shown greater conservation of syntax than phonology. Here we investigated whether these patterns of variation are also found in the duets of parrots. We examined geographic variation in the pair duets of yellow-naped amazons, Amazona auropalliata , at five sites within one vocal dialect. We also examined variation at several levels of social organization, including within pairs, among pairs and among sites, to assess where variability was greatest. Variation was highest at the within-pair level, although variation was also present at all other levels and for all of the duet factors. We hypothesize that variation at the among-site level allows duets to indicate site membership, while variation at the within-pair level allows pairs to change their duet to match their current social or physical environment. Syntax and phonology are also more conserved than note composition for all levels of social organization. This pattern may result because note composition is less important in duet function than syntax or phonology, or because development of syntax and phonology is more heavily influenced by genetic templates.     

Clausal order and the acquisition of Dutch deverbal compounds

The purpose of this study was to explore how Dutch-speaking children acquire deverbal compounds, particularly in ordering verbs and nouns. English-speaking children form compounds like bottle breaker around 5–6 years of age and make noun-verb reversal errors at younger ages. These errors have been attributed to clausal ordering. Dutch allows more variations in clausal ordering, so Dutch-speaking children might acquire deverbal compounds differently from English-speaking children. In Study 1, we examined the input to a Dutch-speaking child between 4;8 and 5;2 and her compound acquisition. She heard a variety of clausal orderings, mostly with verbs before objects, and her deverbal compounds were already well acquired. In Study 2, we tested 24 Dutch-speaking preschool children’s production and comprehension of novel compounds. They produced many of the same forms as have been reported for English-speaking children, making reversal errors at around the same age. In Study 3, we compared a subset of the Dutch-speaking children with age-matched English monolingual children. We found a slight advantage for the Dutch-speaking children on production but no difference on comprehension. We argue that children’s ordering errors with OV-er compounds are not due to clausal word order but to ordering of other complex word forms.     

Internal and External Dynamics in Language: Evidence from Verb Regularity in a Historical Corpus of English

Human languages are rule governed, but almost invariably these rules have exceptions in the form of irregularities. Since rules in language are efficient and productive, the persistence of irregularity is an anomaly. How does irregularity linger in the face of internal (endogenous) and external (exogenous) pressures to conform to a rule? Here we address this problem by taking a detailed look at simple past tense verbs in the Corpus of Historical American English. The data show that the language is open, with many new verbs entering. At the same time, existing verbs might tend to regularize or irregularize as a consequence of internal dynamics, but overall, the amount of irregularity sustained by the language stays roughly constant over time. Despite continuous vocabulary growth, and presumably, an attendant increase in expressive power, there is no corresponding growth in irregularity. We analyze the set of irregulars, showing they may adhere to a set of minority rules, allowing for increased stability of irregularity over time. These findings contribute to the debate on how language systems become rule governed, and how and why they sustain exceptions to rules, providing insight into the interplay between the emergence and maintenance of rules and exceptions in language.     

Spatial and temporal measurements of eye movement in children with dyslexia

This paper presents the first reading data in Croatian collected with an eye-tracking device. The eye-tracking method allows for research into two crucial levels underlying reading: the visual and the cognitive. The aim of this paper is to show the differences in eye movements in children with dyslexia using the principles of cognitive-control view. Despite the well-known definitions and vast literature on dyslexia, the neural basis of dyslexia varies greatly on the individual level. The three children studied in this paper were tested behaviorally using set of language tests for language behavior assessment on all language levels: phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicon and pragmatics. Two children had low scores on most language tests, and all three children had poor reading and writing level. Each of the children had to read two texts silently while their eye movements were recorded by means of an infrared eye-tracking system. We analyzed the number, position, and duration of fixations and the number and position of regressive (or back) saccades. Our results show intergroup differences (between a typically developing child and the three children with dyslexia), and intragroup differences (among all three children with dyslexia). The great number of fixations, longer duration of fixations, and great number of regression saccades are the main features that differentiate the children with dyslexia form the typically developing child. The only difference found between language and visual subtypes of dyslexia was a shorter duration of fixations for the child with a visual processing disorder.     

The perfective past tense in Greek children with specific language impairment

This study presents experimental results examining the production of perfective past tense forms of Greek in eighteen individuals with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) in comparison to typically developing children. We found that both individuals with SLI and typically developing children were more accurate in producing sigmatic than non-sigmatic verb forms. On the other hand, children with SLI were found to be impaired in their use of sigmatic forms and to over-rely on non-sigmatic forms, relative to typically developing children. We discuss linguistic and neuro-psychological accounts of these findings. In addition, we compare the SLI data with data from individuals with a different genetic disorder (Williams Syndrome), and show that individuals with Williams Syndrome exhibit different performance patterns.     

Language evolution: syntax before phonology?

Phonology and syntax represent two layers of sound combination central to language''s expressive power. Comparative animal studies represent one approach to understand the origins of these combinatorial layers. Traditionally, phonology, where meaningless sounds form words, has been considered a simpler combination than syntax, and thus should be more common in animals. A linguistically informed review of animal call sequences demonstrates that phonology in animal vocal systems is rare, whereas syntax is more widespread. In the light of this and the absence of phonology in some languages, we hypothesize that syntax, present in all languages, evolved before phonology.     

Electrical brain responses in language-impaired children reveal grammar-specific deficits

Background

Scientific and public fascination with human language have included intensive scrutiny of language disorders as a new window onto the biological foundations of language and its evolutionary origins. Specific language impairment (SLI), which affects over 7% of children, is one such disorder. SLI has received robust scientific attention, in part because of its recent linkage to a specific gene and loci on chromosomes and in part because of the prevailing question regarding the scope of its language impairment: Does the disorder impact the general ability to segment and process language or a specific ability to compute grammar? Here we provide novel electrophysiological data showing a domain-specific deficit within the grammar of language that has been hitherto undetectable through behavioural data alone.

Methods and Findings

We presented participants with Grammatical(G)-SLI, age-matched controls, and younger child and adult controls, with questions containing syntactic violations and sentences containing semantic violations. Electrophysiological brain responses revealed a selective impairment to only neural circuitry that is specific to grammatical processing in G-SLI. Furthermore, the participants with G-SLI appeared to be partially compensating for their syntactic deficit by using neural circuitry associated with semantic processing and all non-grammar-specific and low-level auditory neural responses were normal.

Conclusions

The findings indicate that grammatical neural circuitry underlying language is a developmentally unique system in the functional architecture of the brain, and this complex higher cognitive system can be selectively impaired. The findings advance fundamental understanding about how cognitive systems develop and all human language is represented and processed in the brain.     

A Realization Optimality-Theoretic approach to affix order

The interplay of the main factors affecting affix order in inflection (semantic scope, phonology, and morphological templates) can be accounted for in an inferential-realizational Optimality-Theoretic model of morphology, which we present here. Within this model, phonological form is spelled out by means of individual-language-particular realization constraints that associate abstract morphosyntactic feature values with phonological forms and that are ordered among more general constraints governing factors like scope and feature splitting. The data used to exemplify the application of our theory to affix order are drawn from Haspelmath’s (A grammar of Lezgian, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, 1993) grammar of Lezgian, a language of the Northeast Caucasian family spoken largely in Dagestan (Russia) and Azerbaijan.     

Constructing verb paradigms in French: adult construals and emerging grammatical contrasts

Children acquiring French at first use just one form of each verb, where the meaning identifies only the event-type. How and when do they add additional forms, with the appropriate meanings? In this paper, we explore the information available to children from adult reformulations of these early verb-form uses, and show how adult construals contribute to children’s learning to distinguish between the homophonous infinitival (donner ‘give-Inf’) and participial (donné ‘give-PP’) forms, both /done/, of class 1 verbs. We argue that conversational exchanges, with the construals adults contribute, enable children to differentiate the meanings of homophonous forms, and so begin to construct verb paradigms.     

Event-related brain potentials when conjugating Russian verbs: The modularity of language procedures

Within the alternative concepts of “two-system” and “single-system” language models, brain mechanisms for the generation of regular and irregular forms of Russian verbs have been studied. The evoked EEG activity was recorded in 19 channels with random alternation of different speech-morphology operations. The infinitives of imperfective verbs that belong either to the productive group (conventionally, the default, or regular, class) or to the unproductive group (conventionally, the irregular class) were presented to healthy subjects. The subjects were to produce the first-person present-time forms of these verbs. The results of the analysis of the event-related potentials (ERPs) of 22 subjects are presented. Statistically valid ERP amplitude distinctions between the verb groups are found only in latencies of 600–850 ms in the central and parietal zones of the cortex. The peak values of the irregular-verb potentials are negative in this region in relation to the peak values of the regular-verb potentials. The findings are interpreted as the effect of various complexities of mental work with verbs of different groups and do not support the hypothesis of the universality of the two-system brain mechanism for processing regular and irregular language phenomena.     

Complex -éō verbs in Ancient Greek. A case study at the interface between derivation and compounding

The article aims to analyze Ancient Greek complex verbs in -é?? from a constructionist perspective. These verbs are usually accounted for as the effect of a conversion from adjectival and/or nominal compounds in -os (and, eventually, -on). However, this account does not explain why in complex -é?? verb formations there seem to be two parallel morphological processes which ??feed into?? each other: nominal/adjectival compounds in -os can generate complex -é?? verbs, but also complex -é?? verbs can generate compound nouns or adjectives ending in -os. Moreover, both of these complex formations can give rise to new free simple words (both nouns and verbs) by means of a process of reanalysis. Construction morphology allows us to provide a single picture describing these processes, exploring and explaining all possible interrelations.     

Motor and Linguistic Linking of Space and Time in the Cerebellum

Background

Recent literature documented the presence of spatial-temporal interactions in the human brain. The aim of the present study was to verify whether representation of past and future is also mapped onto spatial representations and whether the cerebellum may be a neural substrate for linking space and time in the linguistic domain. We asked whether processing of the tense of a verb is influenced by the space where response takes place and by the semantics of the verb.

Principal Findings

Responses to past tense were facilitated in the left space while responses to future tense were facilitated in the right space. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) of the right cerebellum selectively slowed down responses to future tense of action verbs; rTMS of both cerebellar hemispheres decreased accuracy of responses to past tense in the left space and to future tense in the right space for non-verbs, and to future tense in the right space for state verbs.

Conclusions

The results suggest that representation of past and future is mapped onto spatial formats and that motor action could represent the link between spatial and temporal dimensions. Right cerebellar, left motor brain networks could be part of the prospective brain, whose primary function is to use past experiences to anticipate future events. Both cerebellar hemispheres could play a role in establishing the grammatical rules for verb conjugation.     

Language development: breaking the code

This paper reviews the major achievements of the preschool years regarding language acquisition. Although most children appear to master their native language with little apparent effort, learning a language is a complex task. It requires the ability to extract clues from environmental stimuli and to discover how those stimuli convey meanings and are modified according to the meaning conveyed. In general, language learning follows a similar sequence regardless of the language being learned. The major accomplishments in the areas of speech perception, early sound production, phonology, lexicon, syntax, and morphology are described, with specific examples from recent studies of acquisition of French in young children from Québec. These examples confirm major milestones observed in other languages, but also illustrate how comparisons across languages and across children learning the same language can be challenging. For each area, current issues are identified regarding the bases (neurological, genetic) of language development, as well as the processes (social, cognitive, linguistic) involved. Current hypotheses regarding language acquisition and language disorders are briefly discussed.     

Greek dialectal evidence for the role of the paradigm in inflectional change

Several dialectal variants of the inflectional ending for person, number, tense, and voice in the Modern Greek past imperfective nonactive paradigm are presented here by way of showing the relevance of dialect material for linguistic theory. In this case, the endings underwent reshapings based on other related endings (e.g., 3PL based on 1/2PL), providing a basis for understanding the nature of interactions among different “cells” within a paradigm and the constructs that can be employed to model them. As a result, both rules of referral and O–O correspondence relations are shown to have to take sub-word similarities into consideration, and various constraints on such interactions are considered and rejected in favor of a liberal view that allows for any cell to relate to any other cell. Finally, a distinction is motivated, based on cell-to-cell influences, between adventitious and significant syncretism of form.     

Developmental Changes in Memory-Related Linguistic Skills and Their Relationship to Episodic Recall in Children

This longitudinal study of nine children examined two issues concerning infantile amnesia: the time at which memories for events experienced before the age of 3–4 years disappear from consciousness and whether this timing of memory loss is related to the development of specific aspects of episodic and autobiographical memory. This study followed children from infancy to early childhood and examined the central role of three verbal–cognitive milestones related to autobiographical memory: the age at which children begin to report autobiographical memories using the past tense (Milestone 1); the age at which they begin to verbally acknowledge past events (Milestone 2); and the age at which they begin to spontaneously use memory-related verbs (Milestone 3). As expected, memories of events that occurred before 3–4 years of age were affected by infantile amnesia. Achievement of these milestones followed almost the same developmental progression: Milestone 1 (1 year; 10 months (1;10) to 3 years; 4 months (3;4)) was followed by Milestones 2 (3;1 to 4;0) and 3 (3;5 to 4;4). Milestone 2 was typically related to the onset of infantile amnesia, whereas Milestone 1 occurred during the period for which the children became amnesic as they aged. These data suggest that linguistic meta-cognitive awareness of personal memory is the key feature in infantile amnesia.     

Time course of changes in Gambel's white-crowned sparrow song behavior following transitions in breeding condition

Seasonal changes in behavior and in its underlying neural substrate are common across animal taxa. These changes are often triggered by steroid sex hormones. Song in seasonally breeding songbirds provides an excellent example of this phenomenon. In these species, dramatic seasonal changes mediated by testosterone and its metabolites occur in adult song behavior and in the neural circuitry controlling song. While song rate can quickly change in response to seasonal breeding cues, it is unknown how quickly other aspects of song change, particularly the stereotypy of song phonology and syntax. In this study we determined whether and how quickly song rate, phonology, and syntax change in response to breeding and non-breeding physiological cues. We asked these questions using Gambel's white-crowned sparrows (Zonotrichia leucophrys gambelii), a closed-ended learner with well-characterized changes in the neural circuitry controlling song behavior. We exposed ten photosensitive sparrows to long-day photoperiod and implanted them with subcutaneous testosterone pellets (day 0) to simulate breeding conditions. We continuously recorded song and found that song rate increased quickly, reaching maximum around day 6. The stereotypy of song phonology changed more slowly, reaching maximum by day 10 or later. Song syntax changed minimally after day 6, the earliest time point examined. After 21 days, we transitioned five birds from breeding to non-breeding condition. Song rate declined precipitously. These results suggest that while song rate changes quickly, song phonology changes more slowly, generally following or in parallel with previously investigated changes in the neural substrate.     

Phonological-dependent territorial responses in yellowhammers (Emberiza citrinella)

In songbirds, males sing to attract potential mate and to defend their territory. Information about the sender such as its sex, its motivational state, its strength or identity can be encoded through subtle modifications in songs. In this study, we investigated whether territorial responses of yellowhammer males may be affected by modifications of song syntax and phonology. Yellowhammer song is mainly composed of three elements among which the last one is a long and low frequency note that is supposed to be the main component used by males to assess their potential rival. We carried out field experiments and played back either fully natural songs or partly natural and partly artificial songs to test this hypothesis. We identified that phonology rather than syntax modifications altered territorial responses. Our results also suggest that the phonology of the first song element plays a critical role in driving territorial responses.