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PubMed1986

Brain functional asymmetry and neural organization of linguistic competence.

Neural organization of linguistic competence in the light of brain functional asymmetry was studied in patients after unilateral electroconvulsive therapy. We have gathered further evidence that the cerebral hemispheres play essentially different roles: the right hemisphere operates largely with extralinguistic reality and is responsible for the ideational (intentional) level, initiating the process of speech production. It relates sign to its referent; its syntax is the word order. The left hemisphere interrelates signs; it refines and ultimately completes the process of speech production. The right hemispheric linguistic competence demonstrates the most universal linguistic abilities, whereas left hemispheric competence probably reveals the features of national languages.

Brain↗
PubMed2005

Are the postures adopted according to requested linguistic categories similar to those classified by the recording protocols?

Knowledge on how workers perceive and associate their postures for trunk flexion with respect to linguistic categories, could allow for the development of simple and valid instruments for self-assessment and for more effective postural training. Considerable time and expense could be saved if reliable self-assessments were available. This study describes the anterior flexion angles of the trunk adopted by individuals according to linguistic categories (mild, moderate and severe) and registered by photograph. The postures were compared with postural recording protocols. Twenty sedentary individuals (10 male and 10 female) and 12 industrial female workers (6 healthy and 6 low back sufferers) participated. Subjects were capable of discriminating linguistic postural categories, since they adopted different trunk postures when distinct categories were requested (p< 0.0001). However, the individual variability was high for each category estimated. This could explain, at least in part, the low level of agreement between self-assessment and observational studies.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2003

Direct causation in the linguistic coding and individuation of causal events.

This research proposes a new theory of direct causation and examines how this concept plays a key role in the linguistic coding and individuation of causal events. According to the no-intervening-cause hypothesis, a causal chain can be described by a single-clause sentence and construed as a single event if there are no intervening causers between the initial causer and the final causee. Consistent with this hypothesis, participants used single-clause sentences (lexical causatives) more often than two-clause sentences (e.g. periphrastic causatives) for causal chains in which (1) the causer and causee touched (Experiments 1 and 2), and (2) an intervening entity could be construed as an enabling condition rather than another cause (Experiments 2-4). In addition, event judgments paralleled linguistic descriptions: chains that could be described with single-clause expressions were more often construed as single events than chains that could not (Experiments 1-3). Implications for languages other than English, for the linguistic coding of accidental outcomes and for the relationship between cognition and language in general are discussed.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2003

Embodied experience and linguistic meaning.

What role does people's embodied experiences have in their use and understanding of meaning? Most theories in cognitive science view meaning in terms of propositional structures that may be combined to form higher-order complexes in representing the meanings of conversations and texts. A newer approach seeks to capture meaning in terms of high-dimensional semantic space. Both views reflect the idea that meaning is best understood as abstract and disembodied symbols. My aim in this article is to make the case for an embodied view of linguistic meaning. This view provides a challenge to traditional approaches to linguistic meaning (although may not necessarily be entirely incompatible with them). I discuss several new lines of research from both linguistics and psychology that explore the importance of embodied perception and action in people's understanding of words, phrases, and texts. These data provide strong evidence in favor of the idea that significant aspects of thought and language arises from, and is grounded in, embodiment.

Cognition↗
PubMed2002

Culturally and linguistically appropriate health care for racial or ethnic minorities: analysis of the US Office of Minority Health's recommended standards.

As the demographic make-up of the United States becomes more culturally diverse, there is more emphasis on providing culturally and linguistically appropriate health care to racial or ethnic minorities. This paper examines the recommended standards for culturally and linguistically competent health care delivery released by the Office of Minority Health of the US Department of Health and Human Services in December 2000. This paper presents a discussion of the impact of these standards on health care organizations in terms of structural requirements, process requirements and outcome expectations. Although the role of the public health agency is only implied in the standards, this paper argues that the public health agency must play a pivotal role in the delivery of culturally and linguistically competent health care in the community.

Community Health Services↗
PubMed2003

Right-hemispheric dominance for processing extended non-linguistic frequency transitions.

The left hemisphere is specialized for most linguistic tasks and the right hemisphere is specialized for many non-linguistic tasks, but the cause of these functional asymmetries is unknown. One of the stimulus factors that appears to influence these asymmetries is the rate at which stimuli change. In the present experiment, 41 participants completed the Fused Dichotic Words Test (FDWT) and a non-linguistic Frequency Transition Task (FTT) wherein the Frequency Transitions (FTs) were either rapid (40 ms) or relatively slow (200 ms). There was a right hemisphere advantage for slow FTs when the change was at the front of the stimulus, but no corresponding left hemisphere advantage for the rapid FTs. There was no relationship between either FTT and the left hemisphere advantage exhibited on the FDWT. This finding provides support for the position that the right hemisphere dominates tasks that require temporal processing over relatively long periods of time.

Adult↗
PubMed1993

Naming as a function of linguistic form-class and object categories.

We examined whether children rely on linguistic information (i.e. mass vs. count nouns) or object category information (i.e. objects vs. substances) when they name things. A grinder test was used, in which substances (e.g. water) maintain identity through transformation but objects (e.g. a cup) do not. Thirty children aged three through six were asked if the same name could be used for the same item after transformation. The items included pairs of amorphous substances and discrete objects (e.g. water--a cup), perceptually similar discrete objects (e.g. chalk--a crayon), and food items (e.g. corn--a bean). Children accepted the same name for food, ignoring linguistic information, and for objects, relying on linguistic information. In Experiment 2, 32 children aged five through eight were asked if the same name could be used for unfamiliar hardware and food items after transformation when they were labelled by nonsense mass and count nouns. Children tended to use the same name for food, relying on perceptual information. These results are discussed in terms of the active conceptualization about names of objects in relation to object characteristics.

Child↗
PubMed1989

Cross-linguistic studies of directionality in first language acquisition: the Japanese data--a response to O'Grady, Suzuki-Wei & Cho 1986.

Elsewhere we have argued on the basis of cross linguistic studies of directionality effects on anaphora in child language, that there is no universal 'forward directionality preference (FDP)'; rather such a preference is linked to languages with specific grammatical properties. Although such a preference has been attested in English acquisition, matched experimental designs in Japanese, Chinese and Sinhalese, for example, do not show this effect. In this paper we argue that current attempts to show that forward directionality effects can also be induced in Japanese acquisition do not succeed in supporting the FDP. Specifics of the design of stimulus sentences in these experiments vary previous cross-linguistic designs so as to favour forward directionality on independent grounds, and confound cross linguistic comparisons. They in fact support a universal structure dependence in children's hypotheses about directionality of anaphora.

Child Language↗
PubMed2000

Minority language education in unbalanced bilingual situations: a case for the linguistic interdependence hypothesis.

This paper is placed in the linguistic and sociocultural context of Eastern Aragon, a region of Spain where two contact languages (Spanish and Catalan) coexist in an unbalanced situation favoring Spanish. The research was prompted by the regulation for the teaching of Catalan in that area, by means of the Cooperation Agreement signed by the Spanish Educational Ministry (MEC) and the local autonomous Cultural and Educational Department of the Diputación General de Aragon in November 1986. A comparative analysis is made between Eastern Aragon students' linguistic competence in Catalan and Spanish; a further comparison is established between these students and others living in bilingual Catalonia and in monolingual Aragon. We conclude by pointing out that the Linguistic Interdependence Hypothesis accounts for the results obtained in the study.

Child↗
PubMed2006

Protein linguistics - a grammar for modular protein assembly?

The correspondence between biology and linguistics at the level of sequence and lexical inventories, and of structure and syntax, has fuelled attempts to describe genome structure by the rules of formal linguistics. But how can we define protein linguistic rules? And how could compositional semantics improve our understanding of protein organization and functional plasticity?

Linguistics↗
PubMed2006

Coach talk: linguistic demands inherent in youth sports.

PURPOSE: This investigation expands the notion of academic language to extracurricular activities and provides preliminary data regarding linguistic expectations that are place on students who are participating in youth sports. METHOD: Five coaches of young girls' basketball teams (2 competitive; 3 recreational) were observed during practice sessions divided into individual versus group and stationary versus active contexts. Communication was characterized with various measures of content, form, and use. RESULTS: Coaches rarely used pauses or communicative repetitions. Recreational coaches' utterances contained more mazes than competitive coaches' utterances. Utterances used during stationary activities tended to be longer and contain more than one verb compared to utterances used during active activities; sentence fragments were more frequent during active contexts. All coaches used jargon quite frequently. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: The system reported here can be used to document linguistic demands in other extracurricular activities, such as music programs and scouting. Speech-language pathologists might include clinical activities to help students deal successfully with the linguistic requirements that are inherent in sporting activities.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1983

Training generative repertoires within agent-action-object miniature linguistic systems with children.

This study investigated processes responsible for generative language acquisition through the use of a miniature linguistic system. The miniature linguistic system consisted of nonsense syllables and concrete-enactive, agent-action referents. The purpose of Experiment 1 was to determine (a) whether children would recombine agent and action constituents to produce novel utterances and (b) whether children would generate further extensions of the linguistic system (e.g., agent-action-object sentences) following training of a novel syntactic construction. Four children (aged 8:8, 7:4, 4:9, and 4:5) produced novel utterances to describe untrained agent-action referents. They also progressed from agent-action learning to producing agent-action-object sentences after training on only one or two examples of this sentence type with the appropriate referents. Experiment 2 explored conditions more likely to facilitate recombinative generalization among preschoolers. In particular, how a history of lexical learning affects subsequent language learning was investigated with seven 4-year-olds. Results indicated that a history of lexical learning greatly enhanced generative production of untrained agent-action utterances. In addition, all seven children learned new syntactic rules to generate three-word utterances, regardless of the orderings of agent, action, and object words. Implications for developing efficient language remediation programs are discussed.

Child↗
PubMed1993

Children with specific language impairment: linguistic impairment or short-term memory deficit?

This study is concerned with characteristics of short-term memory (STM) in children with specific language impairment (SLI). The linguistic requirements of the test procedure, the characteristics of the test materials, and the development of linguistic representations were considered. Two experimental tasks were used: a verbal-repetition and a picture-pointing procedure. The tasks used auditory presentation and were designed to explore different underlying processes during immediate recall. The linguistic characteristics of the test materials were designed to explore the influence of semantic, lexical, and phonological factors on STM. Six SLI children (aged 6:1 to 9:6) (years:months) were individually matched on comprehension and expression of language to 17 younger children (age 3:4 to 6:5). Both groups were differentially influenced by the materials as a function of the test procedure. In general, both group and individual analyses found no significant difference between the performance of the SLI children and language-age (LA) controls. The implications of the results in relation to previous findings from investigations of STM and the underlying cause of SLI in children are discussed.

Child↗
PubMed1995

Effects of linguistic correlates of stuttering on Emg activity in nonstuttering speakers.

In this study changes in upper lip and lower lip integrated electromyographic (IEMG) amplitude and temporal measures related to linguistic factors known for their influence on stuttering were investigated. Nonstuttering subjects first read and then verbalized sentences of varying length (sentence length factor), in which meaningless but phonologically appropriate character strings were varied in their position within the sentence (word position factor) and their size (word size factor). It was hypothesized that the production of stressed, vowel-rounding gestures of words in initial position, longer words, and words in longer sentences would be characterized by specific changes in IEMG amplitude that would reflect an increase in speech motor demands, intuitively defined as articulatory effort. Basically, the findings corroborated our assumptions, showing that words in sentence initial position have shorter word and vowel durations in combination with an increase in IEMG activity. Similarly, we found shorter vowel durations for longer words, and in sentence final position an increase in IEMG activity. For longer sentences we found a clear increase in speech rate, but contrary to our expectations a decrease in IEMG activity. It was speculated that this might relate to the use of a movement reduction strategy to allow higher speech rates with increased coarticulation. These findings were discussed both for their implications in normal speech production, as well as for their possible implications for explaining stuttering behavior. To this end our data can illustrate both why stutterers might run a higher risk of stuttering at these linguistic loci of stuttering, and why they might come up with a strategic solution to decrease the motor demands in speech production. The basic outcome of this study shows that higher order (linguistic) specifications can have clear effects on speech motor production.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2000

The relationship between event representation and linguistic skill in narratives of children and adolescents with Down syndrome.

Children and adolescents with Down syndrome present with greater difficulty in expressive language than nonverbal cognitive domains. As narratives involve an understanding of the relationship(s) between events and their verbal expression, this divergence has implications for understanding narrative abilities in persons with Down syndrome. In this project, we investigated the relationship between event representation and linguistic expression in narratives of children and adolescents with Down syndrome (n = 31) and groups of typically developing children matched for mental age (n = 31), syntax comprehension (n = 28), or expressive language (n = 27). A short wordless film, the Pear Story (Chafe, 1980), was viewed individually by each participant and then each participant retold the story to an adult who (presumably) had not seen the film. Findings suggest a disparate relationship between linguistic expression and event representation in narratives of children and adolescents with Down syndrome. Participants with Down syndrome produced narratives that were significantly longer and more complex than the expressive-language-matched-group, with no differences observed in event structure when compared to the MA-matched group. Comparatively, use of linguistic devices and cohesion were poorer in the children and adolescents with Down syndrome than in the MA-matched children, with no differences observed in comparison to children matched for expressive language.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2002

Linguistic outcomes following traumatic brain injury in children.

Recent studies of outcome after traumatic brain injury (TBI) emphasize the adverse effect of diffuse brain injury on linguistic development. This article reviews studies of lexical development, discourse processes, and reading in children and adolescents with TBI. The child's developmental level at the time of injury is related to the pattern of deficits. Young children who sustain severe TBI are particularly vulnerable to linguistic deficits at both lexical and discourse levels. TBI in older children and adolescents preferentially disrupts higher-order discourse functions. The contribution of deficits in fundamental processes, such as working memory and processing speed, to linguistic outcomes requires further investigation.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2004

Theoretical and empirical bases for dialect-neutral language assessment: contributions from theoretical and applied linguistics to communication disorders.

Three avenues of theoretical research provide insights for discovering abstract properties of language that are subject to disorder and amenable to assessment: (1) the study of universal grammar and its acquisition; (2) descriptions of African American English (AAE) Syntax, Semantics, and Phonology within theoretical linguistics; and (3) the study of specific language impairment (SLI) cross-linguistically. Abstract linguistic concepts were translated into a set of assessment protocols that were used to establish normative data on language acquisition (developmental milestones) in typically developing AAE children ages 4 to 9 years. Testing AAE-speaking language impaired (LI) children and both typically developing (TD) and LI Mainstream American English (MAE)-learning children on these same measures provided the data to select assessments for which (1) TD MAE and AAE children performed the same, and (2) TD performance was reliably different from LI performance in both dialect groups.

Black or African American↗
PubMed2005

Gene flow across linguistic boundaries in Native North American populations.

Cultural and linguistic groups are often expected to represent genetic populations. In this article, we tested the hypothesis that the hierarchical classification of languages proposed by J. Greenberg [(1987) Language in the Americas (Stanford Univ. Press, Stanford, CA)] also represents the genetic structure of Native North American populations. The genetic data are mtDNA sequences for 17 populations gleaned from literature sources and public databases. The hypothesis was rejected. Further analysis showed that departure of the genetic structure from the linguistic classification was pervasive and not due to an outlier population or a problematic language group. Therefore, Greenberg's language groups are at best an imperfect approximation to the genetic structure of these populations. Moreover, we show that the genetic structure among these Native North American populations departs significantly from the best-fitting hierarchical models. Analysis of median joining networks for mtDNA haplotypes provides strong evidence for gene flow across linguistic boundaries. In principle, the language of a population can be replaced more rapidly than its genes because language can be transmitted both vertically from parents to children and horizontally between unrelated people. However, languages are part of a cultural complex, and there may be strong pressure to maintain a language in place whereas genes are free to flow.

DNA, Mitochondrial↗