The communicative basis of word order by Ted GIBSON (MIT) Some recent evidence suggests that subject-object-verb (SOV) may be the default word order for human language. For example, SOV is the preferred word order in a task where participants gesture event meanings (Goldin-Meadow et al. 2008). Critically, SOV gesture production occurs not only for speakers […]

Sound change and its relationship to variation in production and categorization in perception by Jonathan Harrington (Institute of Phonetics and Speech Processing, Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich, Germany) In some models (Lindblom et al, 1995; Bybee, 2002), sound change is associated with the type of synchronic reduction that occurs in prosodically weak and semantically predictable contexts. […]

Cartographie des fonctions du Langage par stimulation électrique corticale by Jean-François Demonet

Quantitative models of early language acquisition by Emmanuel Dupoux The past 40 years of psycholinguistic research has shown that infants learn their first language at an impressive speed. During the first year of life, even before they start to talk, infants converge on the basic building blocks of the phonological structure of their language. Yet, […]

Decomposition makes things worse: A discrimination learning approach to the time course of understanding compounds in reading by (Eberhard Karls University, Tübingen, Allemagne) The current literature on morphological processing is dominated by the view that reading a complex word is a two-staged process, with an early blind morphemic decomposition process followed by a late process […]

Simplicity and Expressivity Compete in Cultural Evolution : Linguistic Structure is the Result by Simon KIRBY (University of Edinburgh, UK) Language, like other human behaviours, exhibits striking systematic structure. For example, two central design features of human language are the way in which sentences are composed of recombinable words, and the way in which those […]

Speech perception across the adult lifespan with clinically normal hearings by Christian FULLGRABE (MRC Institute of Hearing Research, Nottingham, UK) Subjective reports suggest that older listeners experience increased listening difficulties in noisy environments, and experimental investigations seem to confirm this age-dependent deficit. However, older persons are generally unaware of their peripheral hearing status (i.e., the […]

Runt yak wahoo : baboon speak by Caralyn KEMP (BLRI) Primates vocalise to maintain contact with conspecifics, warn of predators, alert group members to food and to advertise territory, sexual availability and size, but we know surprisingly little about how and why these calls are produced. Can they be varied and is this context dependent? […]

Sonifying handwriting movements for the diagnosis and the rehabilitation of movement disorders by Jérémy DANNA (BLRI) Except for the slight scratching of the pen, handwriting is a silent activity. Transforming it into an audible activity might sound curious. However, because audition is particularly appropriate for the perception of fine temporal and dynamical differences, using sounds […]

Prosodic phrasing and ambiguity resolution as revealed by brain potentials by Karsten Steinhauer (McGill University, School of Communication Sciences & Disorders, Montréal) Prosodic phrasing has a major impact on our interpretation of utterances. For example, the sentence ""Mary said Peter's brother was the nicest girl at the party"" results in confusion, unless it is presented […]