This paper investigates the extent of second language (L2) use in four cognitive domains including mental calculation, planning (action plans), note-taking, and shopping lists. Participants include 149 highly educated L2-competent sequential Polish–English bilinguals who relocated to the UK1 in early adulthood, and underwent processes of acculturation. The independent variables in this study include acculturation level, social network profile, predicted future domicile, and length of residence. The study employed both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Participants completed an online questionnaire and 14 were interviewed by the researcher. The study included the Complementarity Principle (CP) into the operationalisation and measurement of language use in bilinguals (Grosjean, 2010). The results show that acculturation level, social network profile, and predicted future domicile are strong predictors of the extent of L2 use in cognitive domains. Effects of context-specificity and language-dependence were also found, the latter specifically in the domain of mental calculation.

We spend much of our time consuming stories across different types of media, often becoming deeply engaged or transported into these stories. However, there has been almost no research into whether processing a story in one’s non-native language influences our level of transportation. We analyzed three existing datasets in order to compare engagement with English-language stories for those who reported English as their first language and those who reported English as their second language. Stories were presented as text (Study 1), audio (Study 2), and short films (Study 3). Across all studies, equivalent levels of narrative transportation between language groups were found, even after accounting for age and years of English fluency. These results are in contrast to some previous proposals that emotional reactions are attenuated during non-native language processing, despite equivalent levels of comprehension. Our evidence indicates that individuals processing a narrative in their second language feel just as transported into the story as those processing the same narrative in their native language.

Recent embodied theories of meaning known as ‘simulation semantics’ posit that language comprehension engages, or even amounts to, mental simulation. What is meant here by ‘language comprehension’, however, deviates from the perspectives on interpersonal communication adhered to by researchers in social psychology and interactional linguistics. In this paper, we outline four alternative perspectives on comprehension in spoken interaction, each of which highlights factors that have remained largely outside the current purview of simulation theories. These include perspectives on language comprehension in terms of (i) striving for inter-subjective conformity; (ii) recognition of communicative intentions; (iii) prediction and anticipation in a dynamic environment; and (iv) integration of multimodal cues. By contrasting these views with simulation theories of comprehension, we outline a number of fundamental differences in terms of the kind of process comprehension is assumed to be (passive and event-like versus active and continuous), as well as the kind of stimulus that language is assumed to be (comprising unimodal units versus being multimodal and distributed across conversational turns). Finally, we discuss potential points of connection between simulation semantics and research on spoken interaction, and touch on some methodological implications of an interactive and multimodal reappraisal of simulation semantics.

Boye and Harder (2012) claim that the grammatical–lexical distinction has to do with discourse prominence: lexical elements can convey discursively primary (or foreground) information, whereas grammatical elements cannot (outside corrective contexts). This paper reports two experiments that test this claim. Experiment 1 was a letter detection study, in which readers were instructed to mark specific letters in the text. Experiment 2 was a text-change study, in which participants were asked to register omitted words. Experiment 2 showed a main effect of word category: readers attend more to words in lexical elements (e.g., full verbs) than to those in grammatical elements (e.g., auxiliaries). Experiment 1 showed an interaction: attention to letters in focused constituents increased more for grammatical words than for lexical words. The results suggest that the lexical–grammatical contrast does indeed guide readers’ attention to words.

We intended to establish if two lexical tone contrasts in Zhumadian Mandarin, one between early and late aligned falls and another between early and late aligned rises, are perceived categorically, while the difference between declarative and interrogative pronunciations of these four tones is perceived gradiently. Presenting stimuli from 7-point acoustic continua between tones and between intonations, we used an identification task and a discrimination task with an experimental group of native listeners and a control group of Indonesian listeners, whose language employs none of the differences within either the falling or the rising pitch contours in its phonology. Only the lexical condition as perceived by the experimental group yielded sigmoid identification functions and a heightened discriminatory sensitivity around the midpoint of continua. The intonational condition in the native group and both conditions in the control group yielded gradient identification functions and smaller, reverse effects of the continuum midpoints in the discrimination task. The results are interpreted to mean that sentence modality contrasts can be expressed gradiently, but that lexical tone differences are represented phonologically, and hence are perceived categorically, despite low phonetic salience of the contrast. This conclusion challenges assumptions about the relation between linguistic functions and linguistic structures.

This paper presents a usage-based method for investigating metaphor acquisition in the speech of children aged two and above. The method draws on the strengths of the established tools for metaphor identification such as Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP), and Metaphor Identification Procedure VU University Amsterdam (MIP-VU), and adapts them for coding and analysing metaphors in the corpora of naturalistic interactions between children and their primary caregivers, such as those stored online in the CHILDES TalkBank. First, we discuss the premises underlying our methodological framework and provide a coding manual for working with child language. Second, we explain how to approach the challenges of coding transcripts of child speech and demonstrate how we reached high inter-annotator reliability scores of 0.97. We then show how the coding scheme works with a sample corpus of a child recorded between the ages of 2;0–3;1. To illustrate how the scheme can be applied to the study of metaphor acquisition, we analyse the coded metaphors for input–output frequencies. It is argued that our method can offer a unique lens for exploring metaphor production in very young children and it can help us to understand how children come to express their very first figurative meanings.

English speakers expressing futurity have the choice of two primary verb forms, will or be going to (BGT). Previous studies establish that BGT has multiple meanings not associated with will. Langacker (1987) rejected a metaphoric analysis of BGT (time is motion) as inadequate and offered a binary feature analysis. Brisard (2001) expanded on this analysis and argued that manipulating the configurations of binary features explains the semantic differences between will and BGT. However, Brisard’s analysis overlooks the semantic overlap among will, BGT, and the simple present. Moreover, it does not provide a framework that treats will and BGT as part of the larger English modal verb system. Finally, it lacks a persuasive explanation of how the meanings associated with will versus BGT arose. We address these gaps by proposing a polysemy-based explanation that emphasizes invited inferences (e.g., Bybee, Perkins, & Pagliuca, 1994) and embodied experience; a particularly novel aspect of the analysis is that all the meanings of BGT are related straightforwardly to components of the human walk cycle. Further, we argue that the shared future meaning of will and BGT represent inter-lexical polysemy (Evans, 2015b), thus providing additional evidence for the Theory of Lexical Concepts and Cognitive Models (LCCM).

Many studies in cognitive linguistics have analyzed the semantics of over, notably the semantics associated with over as a preposition. Most of them generally conclude that over is polysemic and that this polysemy is to be described thanks to a semantic radial network, showing the relationships between the different meanings of the word. What we would like to suggest, to the contrary, is that the meanings of over are highly dependent on the utterance context in which its occurrences are embedded, and consequently that the meaning of over itself is under-specified, rather than polysemic. Moreover, to provide a more accurate account of the apparently wide range of meanings of over in context, we ought to take into account the other uses of this unit: as an adverb and particle, and not only as a preposition. In this paper, we provide a corpus-based description of over which leads us to propose a monosemic definition.

The question of whether different linguistic patterns differentially influence semantic and conceptual representations is of central interest in cognitive science. In this paper, we investigate whether the regular encoding of shape within a nominal classification system leads to an increased salience of shape in speakers' semantic representations by comparing English, (Amazonian) Spanish, and Bora, a shape-based classifier language spoken in the Amazonian regions of Columbia and Peru. Crucially, in displaying obligatory use, pervasiveness in grammar, high discourse frequency, and phonological variability of forms corresponding to particular shape features, the Bora classifier system differs in important ways from those in previous studies investigating effects of nominal classification, thereby allowing better control of factors that may have influenced previous findings. In addition, the inclusion of Spanish monolinguals living in the Bora village allowed control for the possibility that differences found between English and Bora speakers may be attributed to their very different living environments. We found that shape is more salient in the semantic representation of objects for speakers of Bora, which systematically encodes shape, than for speakers of English and Spanish, which do not. Our results are consistent with assumptions that semantic representations are shaped and modulated by our specific linguistic experiences.

This corpus study explores how sound events are communicated in English and Spanish. The aims are to (i) contribute production data for a better understanding of the couplings of meanings and their realizations, (ii) account for typological differences between the languages, and (iii) further the theoretical discussion of how sound is conceptualized through the window of language. We found that, while there are significant differences between the languages with respect to how sound events are communicated, they are similar with respect to what domains the sound descriptions are instantiated in, namely perception, motion, manipulation, emotion-reaction, consumption, and cognition. One striking difference has to do with the conflation of sound for action, e.g., creak, squeak, and sound for motion, e.g., slam, crash. This finding supports the received view of English as a language that may lexicalize manner in those kinds of verbs, while Spanish expresses manner through qualifiers outside the verb. Moreover, both languages employ three different perspectives on the soundscapes: Producer-, Experiencer-, and Phenomenon-based. While English favours the Producer perspective, Spanish features an even distribution between Producer and Experiencer. Phenomenon-based descriptions are relatively few in both languages.

Looking at the way different linguistic communities speak about a universally shared domain of experience raises questions that are central to the language sciences. How can we compare meaning across languages? What is the interaction between language, thought, and perception? Does linguistic diversity entail linguistic relativism? The literature on the naming systems of the body across languages have addressed these questions with little consensus. In the present study, we contribute to this debate with a comparison of body part terms in French, Indonesian, and Japanese. Using an updated version of the body coloring task, we observed both diversity and cross-linguistically shared patterns. Importantly, we also observed that speakers of languages which violate the wrist/ankle joint boundary rule do not collapse the distinction in thought. This key finding goes against the conflation of language and thought and leads us to conclude that linguistic diversity does not entail linguistic relativism. Methodologically, we advocate for the use of a culturally neutral etic space as a necessary tool in semantic typology. Theoretically, we propose that language is a multilevel phenomenon, which results from the interaction of non-linguistic and cross-culturally shared embodied motivations, context-specific situated language use, and culturally specific sedimented linguistic conventions.

In this study, we propose an operationalization of the concept of emergence which plays a crucial role in usage-based theories of language. The abstractions linguists operate with are assumed to emerge through a process of generalization over the data language users are exposed to. Here, we use two types of computational learning algorithms that differ in how they formalize and execute generalization and, consequently, abstraction, to probe whether a type of language knowledge that resembles linguistic abstractions could emerge from exposure to raw data only. More specifically, we investigated whether a phone, undisputedly the simplest of all linguistic abstractions, could emerge from exposure to speech sounds using two computational learning processes: memory-based learning and error-correction learning (ECL). Both models were presented with a significant amount of pre-processed speech produced by one speaker. We assessed (1) the consistency or stability of what these simple models learn and (2) their ability to approximate abstract categories. Both types of models fare differently regarding these tests. We show that only ECL models can learn abstractions and that at least part of the phone inventory and its grouping into traditional types can be reliably identified from the input.

Much prior research has investigated how humans understand time using body-based contrasts like front/back and left/right. It has recently come to light, however, that some communities instead understand time using environment-based contrasts. Here, we present the richest portrait yet of one such case: the topographic system used by the Yupno of Papua New Guinea, in which the past is construed as downhill and the future as uphill. We first survey topographic concepts in Yupno language and culture, showing how they constitute a privileged resource for communicating about space. Next, we survey time concepts in Yupno, focusing on how topographic concepts are used to construe past, present, and future. We then illustrate how this topographic understanding of time comes to life in the words, hands, and minds of Yupno speakers. Drawing on informal interviews, we offer a view of the topographic system that goes beyond a community-level summary, and offers a glimpse of its individual-level and moment-to-moment texture. Finally, we step back to account for how this topographic understanding of time is embedded within a rich cognitive ecology of linguistic, cultural, gestural, and architectural practices. We close by discussing an elusive question: Why is the future uphill?

Dialogic resonance, when speakers reproduce constructions from prior turns, is a compelling type of coordination in everyday conversation. This study takes its starting point in resonance in stance-taking sequences with the aim to account for the interplay between intersubjective motivations and cognitive facilitation in resonance production. It analyzes stance-taking sequences in the London–Lund Corpus 2, determining (i) the type of stance alignment (agreement or disagreement), and (ii) the time lapse between the stance-taking turns. The main findings are, firstly, that resonance is more likely than non-resonance to be used by speakers who express disagreement than agreement, which we interpret as a mitigating function of resonance, and, secondly, that the turn transitions are faster in resonating sequences due to cognitive activation in the prior turn. We propose that the face-saving intersubjective motivation of resonance combines with its facilitating cognitive effect to promote appeasing communication.

The present study was concerned with the question whether comprehension is based on mental simulation processes beyond the word level. In Experiment 1, participants were presented with coherent sentence pairs, consisting of a context sentence and a target sentence. Target sentences ended with a word referring to an entity with a typical location in the upper vertical space (e.g., bird in There she sees a bird). Context sentences either supported the target entity’s typical location or not (Anna looks to the sky vs. Anna looks to the ground, respectively). Participants responded to the final word of the sentence pair by pressing an up- or a down-key. The results showed a main effect of response direction (faster up compared to down responses) as well as an interaction between context location and response direction. In Experiment 2, participants were presented with incoherent sentence pairs with the same context sentences and different target sentences (whereby the target word was kept identical), but in an incoherent manner (target sentence: On the poster one sees a bird). Here, the results showed a main effect of response direction but no interaction. The same result was obtained in Experiment 3, in which participants were presented with word pairs consisting of an up- or down-context word (e.g., sky vs. ground) and an up-target word (e.g., bird). Overall, the results provide evidence for the view that comprehension involves simulation processes at the word level as well as simulation processes at the sentence or discourse level.

Recent psycholinguistic studies on the reality of alternative sets in processing focus NPs have shown that focus particles like ‘only’ play a special role in activating the mental representation of alternatives to focused nouns. In this paper we present a new corpus study which provides converging evidence to support psycholinguistic findings and suggests that alternatives preceded by a focus particle are not only more activated in experimental contexts, but are also more likely to be discussed in the subsequent context. To this end we develop and evaluate inter-annotator agreement on two novel annotation tasks in naturally occurring German corpus data: recognition of nominal alternatives in general without any context, and recognition of alternatives in the context of sentence pairs. We show that while annotators agree poorly on the first, they agree strongly on the second. We also develop a concept of ‘alternative density’, the number of alternatives realized in a sentence following a target NP, and present a mixed-effects model showing a very significant rise in density after the presence of German nur ‘only’ independently of other factors.

Philosophers and linguists currently lack the means to reliably identify evaluative concepts and measure their evaluative intensity. Using a corpus-based approach, we present a new method to distinguish evaluatively thick and thin adjectives like ‘courageous’ and ‘awful’ from descriptive adjectives like ‘narrow,’ and from value-associated adjectives like ‘sunny.’ Our study suggests that the modifiers ‘truly’ and ‘really’ frequently highlight the evaluative dimension of thick and thin adjectives, allowing for them to be uniquely classified. Based on these results, we believe our operationalization may pave the way for a more quantitative approach to the study of thick and thin concepts.

While eating is universally salient, food habits vary greatly even across similar western cultural groups. Italians, for example, are renowned pasta consumers whereas this habit is less pervasive in other western cultures. This variability might shape the conceptualization of food of different cultural groups. Against this backdrop, it has been proposed the semantic representation of food is universally organized along two main axes, with natural food (e.g., vegetables, fruit) relying more on sensory properties and manufactured food (e.g., pasta) relying more on functional properties. In this exploratory study, we compared the semantic representation of pasta, vegetables, and fruit across Italian and English-speaking participants with a free-listing task. We find the representation of pasta is not restricted to functional properties. Moreover, Italian and English speakers differed both quantitatively and qualitatively in their representation of pasta. Italians produced more exemplars of pasta than English-speaking participants, and their conceptual organization of pasta also included fine-grained distinctions (e.g., egg-based vs. flour-and-water pasta), whereas English-speaking participants mostly focused on perceptual components (e.g., long) – even when accounting for differential consumption, cooking, and preparation experience of pasta. Our results suggest that culture-specific experiences can shape the conceptualization of food.

Backchannels (BCs; listener signals such as ‘mmhm’ or ‘okay’) are a ubiquitous and essential feature of spoken interaction. They are used by listeners predominantly to support the ongoing turn of their interlocutor and to signal understanding and agreement. Listeners seem to be highly sensitive to the exact realisations of BCs and to judge deviations from typical forms as negative. Very little is known about the use of BCs by speakers diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In dialogue recordings of 28 German adults in two groups of disposition-matched dyads (i.e., both interlocutors were either autistic or non-autistic), we found that the ASD group was characterised by (1) a lower rate of BCs per minute (particularly in the early stages of conversation), (2) less diversity in the lexical realisation of BCs and (3) a less diverse and flexible mapping of different intonation contours to different BC types. We interpret these results as reflecting more general characteristics of autistic as compared to non-autistic individuals, namely different strategies in signalling attention towards an interlocutor and less flexible behaviour in social interaction.