Integrating the Study of Mind, Brain, Behavior and Language

• Ling Lang Lunch

  February 23, 2012 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM Speakers - Pritty Patel, MIT and Patrick Grosz, Tubingen. LOCATION - Metcalf, room 230. "On Donkey Pronouns: Theoretical and Experimental Lines of Inquiry". In this talk, we focus on the anaphoric processes that underly so-called donkey pronouns. Specifically, we address the question of whether the anaphoric processes that underly donkey anaphora are uniform or not. In cross-linguistic surveys, we observe that many languages have two types of pronouns that can be used as donkey pronouns, one of which is prosodically stronger (e.g. German "der", Portuguese "esta", and Kutchi Gujarati "i") and one which is prosodically weaker (e.g. German "er", Portuguese "ela", and null pronouns in Kutchi Gujarati). In such languages, we observe that the stronger pronouns more rigidly require an overt antecedent than the weaker pronouns; this mirrors the more familiar distinction between surface anaphora and deep anaphora, respectively (cf. Hankamer & Sag 1976, 1984). What we also notice is that "deep anaphoric" donkey pronouns are subject to general constraints on pronoun resolution, such as salience / accessibility of an intended antecedent. In an experimental study on English, we confirm that donkey pronouns in English (which lacks an overt distinction between strong and weak pronouns) also exhibit such a sensitivity to salience / accessibility, and we further observe that the presence / absence of an overt NP antecedent does not affect acceptability of a donkey pronoun in a deterministic fashion. This indicates that English donkey pronouns may be resolved by means of deep anaphora, running counter to strictly surface anaphoric analyses of donkey pronouns in English. http://www.brown.edu/Departments/CLPS/events > Other location: see description for details Dept: CLPS, Brown Bag Lunch, Lectures, Conferences, and Meetings, Departments

• Cognition Seminar

  February 24, 2012 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Speaker - Rob Komorowski, Boston University. Location: Metcalf 305 > Other location: see description for details Dept: CLPS, Lectures, Conferences, and Meetings, Departments, Seminars

• ADVANCE Seminar Series/Ling Lang Lunch

  March 1, 2012 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM Professor Carol Padden, UCSD. LOCATION Lower Salomon, 001. “From gesture to language”. Abstract: Because they can be created spontaneously with little outside influence,new sign languages are natural laboratories for understanding the emergence of linguistic properties. Unlike established sign languages like American Sign Language, or British Sign Language (each are at least 200 years old), new sign languages are only one to three generations old, yet they are fully communicative and already exhibit linguistic structure. We find that signers of one new sign language, Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language, have consistent word order, and lexical categories by the second generation. However, the phonological or formational properties of the new sign language are still developing. How do such languages begin life, in their earliest years? I will describe studies our research group has carried out with hearing non-signers' novel use of gestures and gesture strings. Rudimentary word order can be found in their gesture strings and some very basic gesture types are consistently used. Our work offers a different view of how linguistic structure can emerge in a short time, in contrast to some claims offered about the course of language evolution. http://www.brown.edu/Departments/CLPS/events > Other location: see description for details Open to the Public, Dept: CLPS, First Years, Sophomores, Juniors, Seniors, For Masters candidates only, For PhD candidates only, Audience, Lectures, Conferences, and Meetings, Faculty, Staff, Postdocs, Departments, Seminars

• Social Cognitive Science Brown Bag Series

  March 2, 2012 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM Speaker - Dr. Jason Mitchell, Harvard University. Location: Metcalf 305 > Other location: see description for details Dept: CLPS, Lectures, Conferences, and Meetings, Departments, Seminars

• Cognition Seminar

  March 2, 2012 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Speaker - Carlo Campagnoli, Brown University. Location: Metcalf 305 > Other location: see description for details Dept: CLPS, Lectures, Conferences, and Meetings, Departments, Seminars

• Dr. Gina Kuperberg, Tufts University

  March 7, 2012 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM CLPS, Michael S. Goodman '74 Colloquium. Gina Kuperberg M.D.,Ph.D., Tufts University. "The Neural Basis of Language Processing: Challenges to Syntax", Traditional models of sentence comprehension have generally focused on the syntactic mechanisms by which words are integrated to construct higher order meaning. The assumption here is that single words are retrieved from the lexicon and then combined together through their syntactic representations. Any material stored within semantic memory, beyond the single word, is assumed to exert its influence by directly influencing syntactic combination or during a later phase of processing. I will discuss data using event-related potentials (ERPs) and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies of language comprehension that challenge such assumptions. I will suggest that word-by-word syntactic-based combination operates in parallel with semantic memory-based mechanisms, giving rise to a highly dynamic system, with additional analysis occurring when the outputs of these distinct but interactive neural mechanisms of processing contradict one another. The parallel operation of these processing mechanisms gives rise to a highly dynamic interactive and balanced system that may be a fundamental aspect of language comprehension, ensuring that it is fast and efficient, making maximal use of our prior experience, but also accurate and flexible in the face of novel input. Indeed, it may be a more general feature of comprehension outside language domain: I will present data suggesting that analogous streams of processing may be engaged during our comprehension of real-world visual events, depicted in short, silent video-clips. Finally, I will suggest that imbalances between semantic memory-based and combinatorial streams of processing may help explain patterns of language abnormalities in various disorders. In particular, I will briefly discuss the syndrome of schizophrenia – a common neuropsychiatric disorder in which language processing can be dominated by semantic associations, at the expense of syntactic-based combination, possibly leading to symptoms of psychosis. http://www.brown.edu/Departments/CLPS/events Metcalf 101, Friedman Auditorium Colloquia, Open to the Public, Dept: CLPS, First Years, Sophomores, Juniors, Seniors, For Masters candidates only, For PhD candidates only, Audience, Lectures, Conferences, and Meetings, Faculty, Staff, Postdocs, Departments

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