This paper explores the acquisition of syllable types in German. It follows the approach of Levelt et al. (2000), who looked at Dutch syllable type acquisition. In line with the findings of Levelt...Show moreThis paper explores the acquisition of syllable types in German. It follows the approach of Levelt et al. (2000), who looked at Dutch syllable type acquisition. In line with the findings of Levelt et al., a couple of hypotheses regarding German syllable type acquisition were formulated. Since German does not have onsetless syllables, the syllable types V, VC, and VCC were not expected to appear in child language. The German data for this study consisted of recordings of four German children between the ages 1;00 and 2;00. The data was searched for different syllable types at different stages of acquisition. Unexpectedly, onsetless syllables did appear in the recordings. However, additional analysis showed that they appear unsystematically and are thus likely produced due to a phonetic or articulatory error and do not emerge from underlying grammar. Therefore, onsetless syllables were disregarded, in the order of acquisition. All children showed the same order of acquisition for the rest of the syllable types. The acquisitional order of the syllable types was accounted for by an OT analysis in which each new syllable type emerges from a reranking of constraints in the underlying grammar. The most prominent difference to the Dutch OT grammar is that in German grammar ONSET remains high ranked and does not get outranked by FAITH.Show less
In previous research, covert contrast in child language has mainly been found in English-speaking and non-typically developing children. Since Dutch, like English, contrasts voiced and voiceless...Show moreIn previous research, covert contrast in child language has mainly been found in English-speaking and non-typically developing children. Since Dutch, like English, contrasts voiced and voiceless plosives, it is likely that Dutch speaking children also produce a covert contrast when learning to differentiate between these different plosives. In order to test this hypothesis a data sample from a Dutch child was used to measure and compare the voice onset time (VOT) of bilabial plosives, which were all transcribed as [p], but for which the target form was either voiced (/b/) or voiceless (/p/). A single-sample T-test with bootstrapping was performed to test the difference between the VOT means. Although the mean VOT for voiceless plosives which had a voiced target form was shorter than for plosives with a voiceless target, the difference was not significant, indicating that no covert contrast in VOT was present in this data. However, as the sample size was quite small, with only one subject and 74 utterances, no large-scale conclusions can be drawn for the Dutch population yet.Show less
Gesture annotation is a fundamental process in all types of gesture research. However, it is usually performed manually, making it a time- and resource-consuming process. Recent progress in...Show moreGesture annotation is a fundamental process in all types of gesture research. However, it is usually performed manually, making it a time- and resource-consuming process. Recent progress in automatic human motion tracking has sparked the development of tools that partly automate gesture annotation, such as the tools by Ripperda et al. (2020) and Ienaga et al. (2022). Although aimed at annotating signs, the tool by Fragkiadakis et al. (2021) could also be useful for gesture research. As the tools are only recently developed, it is not yet confirmed whether they can facilitate the annotation process. In this thesis, the extent to which the tools can be made operable is tested through User Acceptance Testing, and their performance and usability are evaluated based on criteria sets. It was observed that the tools by Ripperda et al. (2020) and Ienaga et al. (2022) still contained fatal errors and failed to generate annotations, whereas the tool by Fragkiadakis et al. (2021) was easily made operable. However, the accuracy of the produced annotations was low and robustness could be improved, for example by training a new model. Overall, the results indicate that the tools by Ripperda et al. (2020) and Ienaga et al. (2022) still require development, and that the sign language-based tool by Fragkiadakis et al. (2021) could potentially be used for facilitating gesture annotation.Show less
This thesis covers a pilot study that examines whether Dutch infants can distinguish lexical tonal patterns in pseudowords. It is inspired by Sato et al.’s 'Development of Hemispheric...Show moreThis thesis covers a pilot study that examines whether Dutch infants can distinguish lexical tonal patterns in pseudowords. It is inspired by Sato et al.’s 'Development of Hemispheric Specialization for Lexical Pitch–Accent in Japanese Infants' (2010). Sato et al. found that Japanese infants can distinguish lexical tonal patterns in Japanese disyllabic words, and that they start processing these stimuli mostly in the left hemisphere (rather than bilaterally) as they get older in their first year of life, suggesting that Japanese infants perceive lexical pitch-accent as a lexical acoustic cue. Since Dutch does not use pitch-accent as a lexical cue, we would not expect Dutch infants to start processing tonal patterns in the left hemisphere as they get older within their first year. The first step to examining this expectation is carrying out a behavioural discrimination task to establish whether Dutch infants can distinguish lexical tonal patterns in pseudowords in the first place. Only then does it become fruitful to carry out a NIRS experiment like Sato et al. to investigate in what parts of the brain Dutch infants process lexical tonal patterns, and whether this differs as they get older. We found that Dutch infants do seem to be able to distinguish lexical tonal patterns in pseudowords. Though the sample size of this pilot is small, the effect that we found is of such significance that we expect to find it in the larger sample size of the official study as well, showing that Dutch infants can distinguish words on the basis of their tonal pattern. We therefore expect that performing a NIRS study like Sato et al. (2010) will be feasible.Show less
Negation has interested many a linguist, there are books and papers on this subject, ranging from world-wide cross-linguistic typologies to small highly specific in-depth case studies. However,...Show moreNegation has interested many a linguist, there are books and papers on this subject, ranging from world-wide cross-linguistic typologies to small highly specific in-depth case studies. However, some parts of the world are as yet under-explored on the subject of negation. This thesis aims to fill in a few of those blanks and hopes to contribute to our understanding of non-standard negation in the indigenous languages of South America. The main focus lies on non-standard negation, such as negative existentials, prohibitives and privatives, and how these relate to the standard negation as expressed in the respective languages. These types of non-standard negation have not yet been fully investigated in South American languages and this study aims to reveal particular areas in which more research should be done. The study is based on a sample of 26 languages from different language families and geographical areas within South America. The approach to the topic is of a typological nature and focuses on synchronic data. The different types of negation can be diachronically related, however. Therefore, this study serves as a foundation for follow-up research examining the diachronic processes of negation in these language families.Show less
The paper discribes the different ways in which Tanzanian Sign Language and Kenyan Sign Language portray temporal lexicon compared to the theory on how spoken languages portray temporal lexicon,...Show moreThe paper discribes the different ways in which Tanzanian Sign Language and Kenyan Sign Language portray temporal lexicon compared to the theory on how spoken languages portray temporal lexicon, how other sign languages portray temporal lexicon and compared to each other.Show less
The glottal stop is frequently used in Finnish but it is usually not considered a phoneme. It participates in sound rules like other phonemes and has prosodic uses in turn-holding and signaling...Show moreThe glottal stop is frequently used in Finnish but it is usually not considered a phoneme. It participates in sound rules like other phonemes and has prosodic uses in turn-holding and signaling syllable boundaries. Studies on Maltese have suggested the glottal stop can occur both as a phoneme and as a prosodic effect (Mitterer et al., 2021). The present study had 28 participants listen and rate the comprehensibility and fluency of utterances with a glottal stop or a glottal stop unpronounced in an online experiment. The participants rated the items without a glottal stop significantly lower than the items with a glottal stop. The ratings were significantly affected by the likelihood that specific suffixes occur with a glottal stop. The findings suggest that a glottal stop between two separate words is a phoneme that only occurs with certain suffixes. The results concerning compound words were inconclusive and the effect of identical vowels around the glottal stop should be further investigated.Show less
An essential part of communication in Korean involves a set of rigorously gendered, family-derived kinship terms which are used when referencing or addressing any slightly older peer. These terms –...Show moreAn essential part of communication in Korean involves a set of rigorously gendered, family-derived kinship terms which are used when referencing or addressing any slightly older peer. These terms – oppa (older brother of a woman), hyeong (older brother of a man), eonni (older sister of a woman) and nuna (older sister of a man) – can be “adopted” across gender identities to manipulate the social and communicative relations between speaker and addressee. This thesis posits that they can also be used unconventionally as a way of negotiating and expressing to negotiate and express identity. An online questionnaire surveying attitudes and perceptions of such “cross-adoption” (Kim 1999) is used as a way to gain insights into how successfully identity and gender expression can be negotiated and to what extent this kind of linguistic behaviour is perceived as indexical of LGBT identities. Said questionnaire also offers insights into other views that Korean speakers tend to have about speech scenarios where cross-adoption occurs. One of the main findings is that there is a difference depending on whether the “adopted” kinship term is traditionally used in same-gender communication (hyeong and eonni) or mixed-gender communication (oppa and nuna), and argues that the former is used to negotiate peer-like and platonic relations, while the latter is perceived to be an expression of personal identity.Show less
Time is an invisible construct and languages express its passage in different ways. This thesis focusses on deictic spatio-temporal expressions in Mandarin Chinese and Korean, with special...Show moreTime is an invisible construct and languages express its passage in different ways. This thesis focusses on deictic spatio-temporal expressions in Mandarin Chinese and Korean, with special attention given to expressions containing ‘up’, ‘down’, ‘front’ and ‘back’. It endeavours to see if Mandarin Chinese has influenced Korean in the domain of spatio-temporal expressions. On the grounds of linguistic theories on (spatio-temporal) deixis and conceptual metaphors and by taking into account historical linguistic and cultural contact between the regions nowadays called the People’s Republic of China, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the Republic of Korea, this thesis compares modern (spatio-)temporal expressions in both Mandarin Chinese and Korean to conclude that there has been influence.Show less
