Rob Hartsuiker
2023-07-10 11:00 - 12:00 (Europe/Paris) | B011 LPL, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
Titre à préciser

Annulé
2023-10-27 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Prediction in Language Processing: Some Ideas About How It’s Done
Tamara Swaab, Ph.D.
Editor-in-Chief: Cognition
Professor, Department of Psychology and
Center for Mind and Brain
University of California, Davis
Title of Talk: Prediction in Language Processing: Some Ideas About How It’s Done.
Rooted in century old ideas of Kant, recent theories of perception, cognition, language, and neuroscience propose that active generation of top-down predictions of imminent sensory input guide our perceptual experiences. These predictions can be based on long-term knowledge representations stored in memory, experience based probabilistic constraints and immediate contextual constraints. Several prominent contemporary approaches to language interpretation assign significant impact to predictive processing during language interpretation. According to these accounts, comprehenders engage in a set of processes by which they can predict and pre-activate imminent bits of the linguistic input. Some models suggest that predictive processing during language comprehension happens reflexively and under all circumstances. I will present the results of a series of studies from our lab that suggest that comprehenders do not automatically and uniformly predict, but instead flexibly adapt predictive processing depending on its utility in a given processing environment.

Journée de séminaire à l’occasion de la soutenance HDR de Cristel Portes
2023-12-01 10:00 - 19:00 | B011 LPL, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
Programme
10h Brechtje Post (University of Cambridge, England)
10h Elisabeth Delais-Roussarie (Université de Nantes & LLING)
11h Coffee break
11h30 Stefan Baumann (University of Cologne, Germany)
12h15 Lunch ILCB
14h Soutenance HDR, Cristel Portes (Aix-Marseille University & CNRS/LPL)

Présentation de Elisabeth Delais-Roussarie (Université de Nantes & LLING)

Title: Faisceau d’indices phonétiques fins et interprétation : le cas des questions non-canoniques
Abstract: En m’appuyant sur les résultats de différentes études menées dans le but de caractériser la prosodie associée à des formes particulières de questions (questions alternatives (Delais-Roussarie & Turco 2019), questions rhétoriques (Beyssade & Delais-Roussarie 2022), questions non-canoniques de surprise (Celle & Pélissier 2022)), je tenterai de montrer que l’interprétation d’un énoncé, notamment d’une question non-canonique, est le résultat d’une convergence d’indices de nature diverse (grammaticaux, mais aussi phonétiques, gestuels, situationnels). Au plan simplement prosodique, des détails phonétiques fins tels que le débit, le registre, les trajectoires des mouvements mélodiques ou la qualité vocale interviennent sans doute davantage que la forme et la distribution des contours intonatifs nucléaires.

Présentation de Stefan Baumann (Université de Cologne, Allemagne)
Title: Head movements and pitch accents as cues to information status in (L1 and L2) French
Abstract: Languages differ in the way prosodic prominence is implemented to mark information status or focus (e.g. Kügler & Calhoun, 2020). At a parallel level of description, gestures have been found to occur more frequently with new and inferable referents than with given ones (e.g. Debreslioska & Gullberg 2020). For foreign languages, previous research has shown that deaccenting given information may be challenging for speakers of languages which use this strategy less (e.g. Rasier & Hiligsmann 2007). As for gestures, there is evidence that learners tend to over-explicitly mark referring expressions such as pronouns (Yoshioka 2008). To our knowledge, an analysis of information status expressed through both prosodic and gestural prominence (here: head movements) in L2 speech has not been carried out so far. In the present study, 25 Catalan learners of French were video recorded giving a short description of their best friend in French. The recordings were annotated in terms of information status (RefLex Scheme, Riester & Baumann 2017), pitch accents (F_ToBI, Delais- Roussarie et al. 2015), perceived prominence (DIMA, Kügler et al. 2022) and head movement types and apexes (M3D, Rohrer et al. 2020). Results show that Catalan learners of French marked new and inferable information more than given information either with pitch accents alone or with a combination of pitch accents and gestures. Given information was generally marked as less prominent than new(er) information (more initial accents, fewer rises, lower level of perceived prominence, fewer head movements) but still received a large proportion of pitch accents. However, no difference between the types of accent and only slight differences between the types of head movement were found in non-given categories. The results of an analysis of the same task by 7 French native speakers are compared with the learners’ results. L1 French speakers mark the extreme values of information status (i.e. given and new) in a more pronounced way using more fine-grained differences in pitch accent type.
References: Debreslioska, S., & Gullberg, M. (2020). What’s New? Gestures accompany inferable rather than brand-new referents in discourse. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 1935.
Delais-Roussarie et al. (2015) Intonational Phonology of French: Developing a ToBI system for French In S. Frota & P. Prieto (Eds.), Intonation in Romance. OUP.
Kügler, F., Baumann, S. & Röhr, C.T. (2022). Deutsche Intonation, Modellierung und Annotation (DIMA) – Richtlinien zur prosodischen Annotation des Deutschen. In: Schwarze, C. & Grawunder, S. (Eds.),
Transkription und Annotation gesprochener Sprache und multimodaler Interaktion (pp. 23–54). Narr. Kügler, F. & Calhoun, S. (2020). Prosodic encoding of information structure: A typological perspective. The Oxford Handbook of Language Prosody (pp. 454–467). Oxford Academic.
Rasier, L. & Hiligsmann, P. (2007). Prosodic transfer from L1 to L2. Theoretical and methodological issues. Nouveaux cahiers de linguistique française, 28, 41–66.
Riester, A. & Baumann S. (2017). The RefLex Scheme – Annotation Guidelines. SinSpeC. Working Papers of the SFB 732, vol. 14. University of Stuttgart.
Rohrer, P., Vilà-Giménez, I, Florit-Pons, J., Esteve-Gibert, N., Ren, A., Shattuck-Hufnagel, S., Prieto, P. (2020).
The MultiModal MultiDimensional (M3D) labeling system. Yoshioka, K. (2008). Gesture and information structure in first and second language. Gesture, 8, 236–255.
Présentation HDR Cristel Portes
Titre : De la prosodie du discours au sens de l’intonation en dialogue(s)
Résumé : Même s’il est aujourd’hui moins controversé que cela ne le fut que l’intonation fait partie de la grammaire des langues, définir quelles sont les primitives de l’analyse intonative et comment elles contribuent au sens d’un énoncé reste un défi et un enjeu majeur. Mes recherches défendent l’idée de la ‘normalité linguistique’ de l’intonation et du sens de l’intonation en essayant d’en identifier la spécificité. Je défends l’idée d’une ‘double articulation’ des configurations intonatives en unités porteuses de sens (les accents mélodiques et les tons de frontière), elles-mêmes décomposables en unités sans signification (les tons). Je défends la thèse que le sens de l’intonation reflète la dimension intimement dialogique et interactionnelle du langage à plusieurs égards : 1) il indique quelles parties de l’énoncé font référence aux connaissances partagées par les interlocuteurs versus à l’enjeu spécifique de l’énoncé ; 2) il indique comment le locuteur assume et/ou attribue à l’interlocuteur les connaissances ou les croyances mises en jeu par la situation évoquée par l’énoncé ; 3) il suggère les attentes du locuteur concernant la forme que l’énoncé suivant devrait avoir, sa source et ses relations potentielles avec l’énoncé en cours.
Title: From the prosody of discourse to intonational meaning in dialogue(s)
Abstract: Even if it is less controversial today than it used to be that intonation is part of the grammar of languages, it is still a challenge and a major issue to define what the primitives of intonational analysis are and how they contribute to the meaning of the utterance. My research defends the idea of the ‘linguistic normality’ of intonation and intonational meaning by attempting to identify its specificity. I defend the ‘double articulation’ of intonational patterns into meaning-carrying units (pitch accents and boundary tones), which can themselves be broken down into meaningless units (tones). I argue that the meaning of intonation reflects the intimately dialogical and interactional dimension of language in several respects: 1) it indicates which parts of the utterance refer to the knowledge shared by the interlocutors versus to the specific issue at stake in the utterance; 2) it indicates how the speaker assumes and/or attributes to the addressee the knowledge and beliefs brought into play by the situation evoked by the utterance; 3) it suggests speakers’ expectations about the form that the following utterance should take, its source and its potential relations with the utterance in progress.
Jury/committee: Stefan Baumann, Claire Beyssade, Elisabeth Delais-Roussarie, Mariapaola D’Imperio, Martine Grice, Brechtje Post, Michael Wagner.

Understanding Understanding -- in General, and in Large Language Models
2024-02-09 12:00 - 13:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
David Schlangen : Professor, “Foundations of Computational Linguistics”, University of Potsdam
Abstract:
In the first part of the talk I will present an overview of the activities of my group (Foundations of CompLing at Uni Potsdam), organised around the quest to understand how linguistic communication can yield shared understanding. I will present an analytical framework in which similarities and differences in method and approach between text NLU (natural language understanding) and SLU (situated language understanding) can be described.
In the second part, and motivated by this framework, I will present a new computational framework for the evaluation of “chat-optimized LLMs” (cLLMs) like ChatGPT for their capabilities in task-oriented interaction.

Leveraging the auditory oscillatory function to treat speech and language disorders.
2024-03-15 12:00 - 14:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Anne-Lise Giraud
Abstract:
The neural computations that make oral communication possible must operate on multiple time scales, both in parallel and recursively. Neuronal oscillations at different scales and their precise coordination are a key instrument of this necessary multiplexing, a phenomenon we are exploring in humans through surface and intracortical EEG. In this presentation, I will recall the key computational principles and show how we can exploit them to address fundamental questions about neurodevelopmental pathologies and propose therapeutic solutions.
Link Zoom : https://univ-amu-fr.zoom.us/j/82661920965?pwd=[REDACTED]

Beyond typology: experimental explorations of language universals
2024-04-19 12:00 - 13:30 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Jennifer Culbertson
Human languages exhibit striking variation. At the same time, certain linguistic patterns crop up again and again, while others seem to be extremely rare. What these tantalising observations tell us about human language is one of the most contentious questions in linguistics. Do similarities between languages reflect a special capacity for language that has evolved only in humans? Do they reflect more general features of the human mind, potentially shared with our ancestors? Are they just down to accidents of history? Traditionally, linguists have argued for one or another of these answers based on limited sources of evidence. For example, it is common to base claims on small samples of languages, case studies of how a handful of languages change over time, or examples of how individual languages are learned. In this talk, I highlight problems with these traditional sources of evidence and survey what I see as the solution: cross-cultural experiments. I show how this approach can be used to bring crucial empirical evidence to bear on how language is shaped (or not!) by the human linguistic and cognitive system.

Subdivide and Conquer. brain processing of musical melody, harmony and rhythm
2024-05-24 11:00 - 13:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Peter Vuust : Director of the Center for Music in the Brain (MIB), MSc, PhD, Prof. in Neuroscience, Dept. of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University, Prof. in Music, the Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus/Aalborg, Denmark, Bassist and composer

Music is ubiquitous across human cultures—as a source of affective and pleasurable experience, moving us both physically and emotionally—and learning to play music shapes both brain structure and function. Music processing in the brain—namely, perception of melody, harmony, and rhythm—has traditionally been studied as an auditory phenomenon using passive listening paradigms. However, when listening to music, we actively generate predictions about what is likely to happen next. This enactive aspect has led to a more complete understanding of music processing involving brain structures implicated in action, emotion, and learning.
The present talk is highlights how music perception, action, emotion, and learning all rest on the human brain’s fundamental capacity for prediction—as formulated by the predictive coding of music model and elucidates how this formulation of music perception and expertise in individuals can be extended to account for the dynamics and underlying brain mechanisms of collective music making. This sheds new light on what makes music meaningful from a neuroscientific perspective.

About Peter Vuust
Professor Peter Vuust, Ph.D. is a unique combination of a top-level jazz musician and a world class scientist. He leads the Danish National Research Foundation’s Center for Music In the Brain” and holds joint appointments as full professor at the Danish Royal Academy of Music and Dept of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University.
He has published more than 150 scientific papers in high ranking international journals, most recently the review “Music in the brain” in Nature Reviews Neuroscience (March, 2022). He uses state-of-the-art brain scanning techniques such as fMRI, PET, EEG, MEG and behavioral measures and is a world leading expert in the field of music and the brain – a research field he has single-handedly built up in Denmark as leader of the center for Music In the Brain (MIB) currently employing more than 30 researchers. Among many other grants, he has received DKK 98 million (~ US $ 15 billion) as PI, from the Danish National Research Foundation.
In addition, Prof Vuust is a renowned jazz bassist and composer; leading the Peter Vuust Quartet with Alex Riel, Lars Jansson and Ove Ingemarsson of which seven records have been released so far. He has also played on more than 100 recordings and been sideman with international jazz stars such as Lars Jansson, Tim Hagans, John Abercrombie, Dave Liebman and many more. He is the recipient of the 2009 Jazz Society of Aarhus’ “Gaffel”-prize. His album “September Song” was widely acclaimed by reviewers and received a nomination for a Danish Music Award in 2014. In 2022, he released the album “Further to Fly”, which contained jazz arrangements by Peter Vuust of the Songs of Paul Simon with unanimously excellent reviews.
As professor at the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus, Denmark, he has taught electric and acoustic bass as well as music theory, ear training and ensemble playing. He has given many keynote talks and masterclasses at international conferences and institutions on a wide range of topics ranging from the neuroscience of music to improvisation and composition. He has written three monograph’s “Polyrhythm and –meter in modern jazz; a study of Miles Davis’ Quintet from the 1960s”, “Music on the Brain”, and most recently a book on musical leadership.

Development of the lexical-semantic organization in the infant brain: electrophysiological evidence
2024-06-14 12:00 - 13:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Dr. Pia Rämä
Until recently, there has been little evidence regarding how and when infants begin to integrate words into an inter-connected lexical-semantic system. Recent event-related potential (ERP) studies show that lexical-semantic system emerges together with early vocabulary during the second year of life (Rämä et al., 2013; Rämä et al., 2018). These studies also suggest that the N400 component is an useful tool to investigate lexical-semantic development in infancy. Some further evidence shows that lexical-semantic organization develops later in bilingual than in monolingual infants. There is mixed evidence as to whether lexical-semantic activation occurs similarly in dominant and non-dominant languages in bilingual language learners (e.g., Sirri & Rämä, 2019). In my talk, I will present our findings regarding neurophysiological mechanisms underlying lexical-semantic activation in monolingual and bilingual infants, and I will also describe my recent findings on the effect of speaker familiarity on processing of word meanings.
References
Rämä, P., Sirri, L., & Serres, J. (2013). Development of lexical–semantic language system: N400 priming effect for spoken words in 18-and 24-month old children. Brain and language, 125(1), 1-10.
Rämä, P., Sirri, L., & Goyet, L. (2018). Event-related potentials associated with cognitive mechanisms underlying lexical-semantic processing in monolingual and bilingual 18-month-old children. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 47, 123-130.
Sirri, L., & Rämä, P. (2019). Similar and distinct neural mechanisms underlying semantic priming in the languages of the French–Spanish bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 22(1), 93-102.

Revisiting the origins of meaning
2024-11-29 11:00 - 12:00 | Espace Pouillon, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13003
Klaus Zuberbuhler

The three core properties of language – meaning, syntax and social interaction – have received considerable comparative research attention in recent years, driven by a desire to advance theories of language evolution. Somewhat surprisingly, progress on the origins of meaning has been least remarkable, after the initial pioneering discoveries of referential signals in primate communication some 50 years ago. Here, I will revisit the problem of animal meaning and reference, first, by taking stock of the current state of the art and, second, by pointing out possible new directions of research. I will discuss new conceptual and methodological tools that are likely to provide progress in our understanding of the evolutionary transition from animal signal meaning to human linguistic meaning.

The foundations of verbal working memory in the language system”
2025-02-26 12:00 - 13:00
Steve Majerus
Professeur à l’Université de Liège
https://www.uliege.be/cms/c_9054334/fr/repertoire?uid=u182078

Many models of verbal working memory acknowledge interactions with verbal long-term memory. The nature of these interactions remains, however, a matter of debate. I will present a series of behavioral and neuroimaging studies showing that (1) even subtle aspects of language knowledge such as syntactic positional knowledge can influence verbal working memory, (2) the capacity and neural substrates of verbal working memory cannot be defined independently of the linguistic nature of the stimuli to-be-maintained, (3) recruitment of deep semantic knowledge may not characterize all WM situations. Our results support hybrid linguistic models of verbal WM considering that verbal WM is grounded in the language system but cannot be reduced to it.

Functionally specific multi-sensory brain networks and their plasticity
2025-02-28 12:00 - 13:00 | Espace Pouillon, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13003
Professor : Olivier Collignon
Evolution has endowed humans with several senses allowing them to capture distinct forms of energies from their physical environment, opening different windows through which we can experience the world around us. Being able to capture redundant sensory information allows us to build stronger representations and react faster to an event (eg focusing on the lips while listening to a speaker in a cocktail party). How do we represent in our mind and brain a perceptual unit that we can see and hear (eg, a corresponding phoneme/viseme)? Is there representation somewhere in the brain that goes beyond the sensory experience we have of things? The presence of these different sensory systems also paves the way for considerable flexibility by allowing brain systems to supplement another following sensory deprivation. In the talk, I will rely on the most recent data collected in my lab to suggest that crossmodal plasticity in blind and deaf people recycles the intrinsic multisensory scaffolding of functional brain regions, with a specific emphasis on face and voice networks.

The foundations of verbal working memory in the language system
2025-05-23 12:00 - 13:00 | Espace Pouillon, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13003

Seminars
2026-04-10 10:00 - 12:00 | Amphi 7 Université, 29 avenue Robert Schuman, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
Usha Goswami :Centre for Neuroscience in Education, University of Cambridge
Dyslexia, Rhythm, Language and the Developing Brain
Recent insights from auditory neuroscience provide a new perspective on how the brain encodes speech. Using these recent insights, I will provide an overview of key factors underpinning individual differences in children’s development of language and phonology, providing a context for exploring atypical reading development (dyslexia). Children with dyslexia are relatively insensitive to acoustic cues related to speech rhythm patterns. This lack of rhythmic sensitivity is related to the atypical neural encoding of rhythm patterns in speech by the brain. I will describe our recent data from infants as well as children, demonstrating developmental continuity in the key neural variables.

Martin Pickering : University of Edinburgh
An augmented psychology of language

Integrating Neural Noise and Neuroinflammatory Hypotheses: Exploring the Comorbidity of Dyslexia, Depression, and Stress
2026-05-22 12:00 - 13:00 | Salle des voûtes, St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo, Marseille, 13001, France
Fumiko Hoeft
Recent advancements in our understanding of dyslexia have highlighted the complex interplay between neurobiological mechanisms and comorbid conditions such as depression and stress. The Neural Noise Hypothesis (NNH) of dyslexia proposes that dysregulated neural activity, characterized by excessive glutamatergic neurotransmission, leads to the disrupted auditory and visual processing that typifies this learning disorder. Concurrently, emerging research suggests that these neural irregularities may overlap with pathways involved in stress and depression, pointing to a shared neurobiological foundation. This presentation explores the synthesis of the NNH with recent findings on the role of neuroinflammation in dyslexia and its comorbidities. Building on our foundational work (Hancock, Pugh, and Hoeft, TiCS. 2017), and integrating recent insights into stress and mood disorders from neuroimaging studies, we propose a model where dyslexia-related neural noise may exacerbate susceptibility to depression through neuroinflammatory pathways. This model is supported by recent research by Lasnick and Hoeft (Front Hum Neurosci. 2023), which provides compelling evidence of altered neural connectivity in regions critical for emotional and stress regulation in individuals with dyslexia. Furthermore, this talk will delve into how environmental stressors and individual resilience factors contribute to the variability in dyslexia presentations, particularly focusing on how these elements interact with neurobiological mechanisms to influence the severity and range of comorbid symptoms. By bridging gaps between disparate research domains, we aim to foster a more comprehensive understanding of dyslexia that acknowledges its potential as a multisystem disorder with significant neurobiological and psychosocial dimensions. This integrated approach sets the stage for discussing potential interventions that target these overlapping pathways, offering hope for more effective treatments that address both the core symptoms of dyslexia and its common comorbidities.

The evolution and social functions of human nonverbal vocalisations
2026-06-05 12:00 - 13:00 | B011 LPL, 5 avenue Pasteur, Aix-en-Provence, 13100, France
Dr. Katarzyna PISANSKI
Human nonverbal vocalisations such as screams, cries, and laughter convey socially vital information, yet have received far less attention than speech. We still know very little about how emotional vocalisations develop, how we use them in everyday life, or how they vary across cultures. While human vocalisations share important features with the calls of other mammals including primates, humans are unique in one crucial respect: we can flexibly and deliberately modulate our voices for social ends, for instance by exaggerating or completely faking pain or pleasure. In this talk, I argue that our advanced capacity for volitional vocal control represents a critical bridge between animal calls and human speech. I will present evidence that (1) the acoustic forms of human vocalisations have evolved to support their communicative functions; (2) voluntary vocalisations systematically exploit these same form–function mappings for social benefit; (3) data from children and deaf adults show that such vocal control depends on learning; and (4) cross-cultural findings reveal both universal patterns and culturally specific variation in emotional vocalisations. Together, this body of work shows that human vocalisations — and our capacity to produce them voluntarily — are powerful social tools shaped by both selection pressures and social experience, offering unique insights into the evolution of vocal control.

Christian Kell
2026-10-05 12:00 - 13:00
