The myth of language universals: language diversity and its importance for cognitive science

Incremental processing in a polysynthetic language (Murrinhpatha)

Language processing is rapidly incremental, but evidence bearing upon this assumption comes from very few languages. In this paper we report on a study of incremental processing in Murrinhpatha, a polysynthetic Australian language, which expresses complex sentence-level meanings in a single verb, the full meaning of which is not clear until the final morph. Forty native Murrinhpatha speakers participated in a visual world eyetracking experiment in which they viewed two complex scenes as they heard a verb describing one of the scenes. The scenes were selected so that the verb describing the target scene had either no overlap with a possible description of the competitor image, or overlapped from the start (onset overlap) or at the end of the verb (rhyme overlap). The results showed that, despite meaning only being clear at the end of the verb, Murrinhpatha speakers made incremental predictions that differed across conditions. The findings demonstrate that processing in polysynthetic languages is rapid and incremental, yet unlike in commonly studied languages like English, speakers make parsing predictions based on information associated with bound morphs rather than discrete words.

Diversity in research on the psychology of language: A large-scale examination of sampling bias

The human capacity for language cannot be fully understood without appreciation of its ability to adapt to startling diversity. Narrow sampling therefore undermines the psycholinguistic enterprise. Concerns regarding a lack of sample diversity in psycholinguistics are increasingly being raised, but large-scale data on the state of the field remain absent. In the current paper, we address this empirical gap by documenting sample diversity in over 5500 psycholinguistic studies published over two decades. Moreover, we consider several hitherto unexplored issues regarding diversity in (psycho)linguistics, including the impact of sample biases on knowledge uptake and the implementation of diversification strategies often proposed in the literature. We identify marked overrepresentations in the data - of English, North America, and tertiary education students - and provide new evidence of their consequences, where papers on more commonly studied languages and locations tend to be cited more. We also demonstrate that absolute diversity has increased over time, albeit insufficiently to disrupt the linguistic and geographic concentrations observed. We find that representation of Global South researchers and contexts has grown, but this growth is centered in a handful of countries (China, Israel), and Africa and Southeast Asia remain severely underrepresented. Regarding the implementation of diversification strategies, we show that online data collection has yet to contribute much to diversification, while cross-national collaboration is effective in this respect. Finally, we challenge prevalent conceptions of diversification in which "exotic" languages spoken in remote locations assume a central role by highlighting the neglected linguistic diversity of the major hubs of psycholinguistic knowledge production.

The cognitive science of language diversity: achievements and challenges

Linguistics needs to embrace all the way down a key feature of language: its diversity. In this paper, we build on recent experimental findings and theoretical discussions about the neuroscience and the cognitive science of linguistic variation, but also on proposals by theoretical biology, to advance some future directions for a more solid neurocognitive approach to language diversity. We argue that the cognitive foundations and the neuroscience of human language will be better understood if we pursue a unitary explanation of four key dimensions of linguistic variation: the different functions performed by language, the diversity of sociolinguistic phenomena, the typological differences between human languages, and the diverse developmental paths to language. Succeeding in the cognitive and neurobiological examination and explanation of these four dimensions will not only result in a more comprehensive understanding of how our brain processes language, but also of how language evolved and the core properties of human language(s).

Projected speaker numbers and dormancy risks of Canada's Indigenous languages

UNESCO launched the International Decade of Indigenous Languages in 2022 to draw attention to the impending loss of nearly half of the world's linguistic diversity. However, how the speaker numbers and dormancy risks of these languages will evolve remains largely unexplored. Here, we use Canadian census data and probabilistic population projection to estimate changes in speaker numbers and dormancy risks of 27 Indigenous languages. Our model suggests that speaker numbers could, over the period 2001-2101, decline by more than 90% in 16 languages and that dormancy risks could surpass 50% among five. Since the declines are greater among already less commonly spoken languages, just nine languages could account for more than 99% of all Canadian Indigenous language speakers in 2101. Finally, dormancy risks tend to be higher among isolates and within specific language families, providing additional evidence about the uneven nature of language endangerment worldwide. Our approach further illustrates the magnitude of the crisis in linguistic diversity and suggests that demographic projection could be a useful tool in assessing the vitality of the world's languages.

Global language geography and language history: challenges and opportunities

While it has almost become a truism of comparative linguistics that linguistic diversity is unevently distributed across the globe, the reasons are poorly understood up to the present day. Linguists are thus in the embarassing situation that they do not understand significant regularities in the way the objects of their study -languages- pattern. In this essay, I explore three interrelated strands of thought to create a perspective on the question that is different from those explored so far: first, I suggest that instead of looking at present-day levels of diversity statically, we should take an approach that looks into how these distributions were generated. Related to this point and in contradistinction to extant work, second, I advocate an inductive approach that departs from qualitative case studies that inform theory-building. Third, I ponder that, in contrast to the traditional focus of historical linguistics on language diversification and expansion, understanding how the ranges of languages are reduced might be the key missing piece of evidence in a global theory of language diversity and its genesis. This new perspective is also able to address the striking correlation between linguistic and biological diversity that suggest that the processes that created and maintain both are, on some level, qualitatively similar.

NEBULA101: an open dataset for the study of language aptitude in behaviour, brain structure and function

This paper introduces the "NEBULA101 - Neuro-behavioural Understanding of Language Aptitude" dataset, which comprises behavioural and brain imaging data from 101 healthy adults to examine individual differences in language and cognition. Human language, a multifaceted behaviour, varies significantly among individuals, at different processing levels. Recent advances in cognitive science have embraced an integrated approach, combining behavioural and brain studies to explore these differences comprehensively. The NEBULA101 dataset offers brain structural, diffusion-weighted, task-based and resting-state MRI data, alongside extensive linguistic and non-linguistic behavioural measures to explore the complex interaction of language and cognition in a highly multilingual sample. By sharing this multimodal dataset, we hope to promote research on the neuroscience of language, cognition and multilingualism, enabling the field to deepen its understanding of the multivariate panorama of individual differences and ultimately contributing to open science.

Deep neural networks and humans both benefit from compositional language structure

Deep neural networks drive the success of natural language processing. A fundamental property of language is its compositional structure, allowing humans to systematically produce forms for new meanings. For humans, languages with more compositional and transparent structures are typically easier to learn than those with opaque and irregular structures. However, this learnability advantage has not yet been shown for deep neural networks, limiting their use as models for human language learning. Here, we directly test how neural networks compare to humans in learning and generalizing different languages that vary in their degree of compositional structure. We evaluate the memorization and generalization capabilities of a large language model and recurrent neural networks, and show that both deep neural networks exhibit a learnability advantage for more structured linguistic input: neural networks exposed to more compositional languages show more systematic generalization, greater agreement between different agents, and greater similarity to human learners.

HED LANG - A Hierarchical Event Descriptors library extension for annotation of language cognition experiments

Experimental design in language cognition research often involves presenting language material while measuring associated behavior and/or neural activity. To make the collected data easily and fully analyzable by both the original data authors and others, it is important to have detailed information about the stimulus presentation events, including the nature and properties of the presented stimuli, using a common vocabulary and syntax. We present HED LANG, a library extension of the Hierarchical Event Descriptors (HED) event annotation schema for time series behavioral and neuroimaging data. HED LANG provides an open source, standardized vocabulary for building detailed, human- and machine-actionable annotations for language cognition datasets. It builds on existing annotation systems in linguistics and is supported by a suite of HED tools for annotating, validating, searching, and characterizing HED-tagged datasets. HED LANG is specific enough to allow event data annotation at the range of levels needed to support many current research paradigms and analyses. Both HED and HED LANG are open to community input and participation, enabling them to evolve with continuing developments in language cognition research.

Lessons for Theory from Scientific Domains Where Evidence is Sparse or Indirect

In many scientific fields, sparseness and indirectness of empirical evidence pose fundamental challenges to theory development. Theories of the evolution of human cognition provide a guiding example, where the targets of study are evolutionary processes that occurred in the ancestors of present-day humans. In many cases, the evidence is both very sparse and very indirect (e.g., archaeological findings regarding anatomical changes that might be related to the evolution of language capabilities); in other cases, the evidence is less sparse but still very indirect (e.g., data on cultural transmission in groups of contemporary humans and non-human primates). From examples of theoretical and empirical work in this domain, we distill five virtuous practices that scientists could aim to satisfy when evidence is sparse or indirect: (i) making assumptions explicit, (ii) making alternative theories explicit, (iii) pursuing computational and formal modelling, (iv) seeking external consistency with theories of related phenomena, and (v) triangulating across different forms and sources of evidence. Thus, rather than inhibiting theory development, sparseness or indirectness of evidence can catalyze it. To the extent that there are continua of sparseness and indirectness that vary across domains and that the principles identified here always apply to some degree, the solutions and advantages proposed here may generalise to other scientific domains.

The Psychology of Framing: How Everyday Language Shapes the Way We Think, Feel, and Act

When we use language to communicate, we must choose what to say, what not to say, and how to say it. That is, we must decide how to frame the message. These linguistic choices matter: Framing a discussion one way or another can influence how people think, feel, and act in many important domains, including politics, health, business, journalism, law, and even conversations with loved ones. The ubiquity of framing effects raises several important questions relevant to the public interest: What makes certain messages so potent and others so ineffectual? Do framing effects pose a threat to our autonomy, or are they a rational response to variation in linguistic content? Can we learn to use language more effectively to promote policy reforms or other causes we believe in, or is this an overly idealistic goal? In this article, we address these questions by providing an integrative review of the psychology of framing. We begin with a brief history of the concept of framing and a survey of common framing effects. We then outline the cognitive, social-pragmatic, and emotional mechanisms underlying such effects. This discussion centers on the view that framing is a natural-and unavoidable-feature of human communication. From this perspective, framing effects reflect a sensible response to messages that communicate different information. In the second half of the article, we provide a taxonomy of linguistic framing techniques, describing various ways that the structure or content of a message can be altered to shape people's mental models of what is being described. Some framing manipulations are subtle, involving a slight shift in grammar or wording. Others are more overt, involving wholesale changes to a message. Finally, we consider factors that moderate the impact of framing, gaps in the current empirical literature, and opportunities for future research. We conclude by offering general recommendations for effective framing and reflecting on the place of framing in society. Linguistic framing is powerful, but its effects are not inevitable-we can always reframe an issue to ourselves or other people.

When No Speech Norms Exist: Observations From Sinhala

PURPOSE

A well-established set of language-specific norms for phonological development is imperative in the assessment of child speech sound difficulties. Currently, English norms are used clinically (in the absence of norms for local languages) to determine if a child displays age-appropriate, delayed or disordered speech patterns in Sinhala. This preliminary exploratory study aimed to document phonological processes observed in typically developing Sinhala-speaking children aged 3;0-6;11 (years;months).

METHOD

The Test of Articulation and Phonology-Sinhala, a picture-based assessment, was devised by the researchers and administered to 102 Sinhala-speaking children from three geographical locations (Colombo, Kandy, and Gampaha). The quantitative measures included percent consonants correct, percent vowels correct, and percent phonemes correct, while the qualitative analysis identified phonological processes.

RESULTS

The quantitative results showed a marked influence of age on phoneme production accuracy with over 75% consonants correct by 3 years 6 months. The qualitative findings demonstrate common typical phonological processes and less common phonological processes in Sinhala compared to the speech pathology and cross-linguistic literature. Common phonological processes included fronting, stopping, and weak syllable deletion widely documented in linguistic and speech-language pathology literature. Many shared phonological processes were observed between Sinhala and Sri Lankan Tamil, the two main local languages, including fronting of retroflex sounds and lateralization. The phonological process of denasalization of prenasalized stops was observed in Sinhala, with no documentation of the phonological process found within the mainstream speech-language pathology literature.

CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS

These findings reinforce the need to document and use language-specific typical phonological processes in Sinhala given the implications for early and accurate identification of speech difficulties and intervention.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.27068173.

Consonant lengthening marks the beginning of words across a diverse sample of languages

Speech consists of a continuous stream of acoustic signals, yet humans can segment words and other constituents from each other with astonishing precision. The acoustic properties that support this process are not well understood and remain understudied for the vast majority of the world's languages, in particular regarding their potential variation. Here we report cross-linguistic evidence for the lengthening of word-initial consonants across a typologically diverse sample of 51 languages. Using Bayesian multilevel regression, we find that on average, word-initial consonants are about 13 ms longer than word-medial consonants. The cross-linguistic distribution of the effect indicates that despite individual differences in the phonology of the sampled languages, the lengthening of word-initial consonants is a widespread strategy to mark the onset of words in the continuous acoustic signal of human speech. These findings may be crucial for a better understanding of the incremental processing of speech and speech segmentation.

Grammatical gender universalities underlying uniform mental representations of the world: Myth or reality?

The subject of grammatical gender and cognition has been continuously examined in psycholinguistics, wherein findings show essential support for gender congruency effects, suggesting that grammar lends matrices for speakers' mental representations. Based on these psycholinguistic data, this study offers an innovative vista of investigation that combines typological and cognitive linguistic approaches. Its purpose lies in determining whether grammatical gender patterns sanction cross-linguistic universality in conceptualising entities as male or female, and whether grammatical gender universalities have semantic motivation. This research reveals universal tendencies in grammatical gender affiliation of the analysed nouns in 32 two and three gender languages belonging to different groups of the Indo-European, Indo-Iranian and Afro-Asiatic language families. From a cognitive perspective, these findings testify to the identical mental images of the entities denoting artefacts, natural phenomena and abstract concepts in speakers of the languages under consideration. Furthermore, grammatical gender universalities manifest certain semantic dimensions involving the motives associated with masculine or feminine and symbolic suggestions of the Woman archetype. As per the data from cognitive poetics, grammatical gender universalities become objects of special stylistic choices emerging as personified images of symbolic relevance in gender and non-gender languages.

Spatial communication systems and action

Spatial cognition is fundamental to our species. One might therefore expect that spatial communication systems would have evolved to make common distinctions. However, many have argued that spatial communication systems exhibit considerable cross-linguistic diversity, challenging the view that space structures language. We review recent work on spatial communication that merits revisiting the relationship between language and space. We provide a framework that places action as the driver of spatial communication systems across languages, in which spatial demonstratives - the earliest spatial terms - play a fundamental role in honing attention and theory of mind capacities that are crucial for language and cognition more broadly. We discuss how demonstratives emerged early in language evolution to serve a combination of spatial, social, and functional needs.

Cross-Linguistic Analysis of Speech Markers: Insights from English, Chinese, and Italian Speakers

Cross-linguistic studies with healthy individuals are vital, as they can reveal typologically common and different patterns while providing tailored benchmarks for patient studies. Nevertheless, cross-linguistic differences in narrative speech production, particularly among speakers of languages belonging to distinct language families, have been inadequately investigated. Using a picture description task, we analyze cross-linguistic variations in connected speech production across three linguistically diverse groups of cognitively normal participants-English, Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese), and Italian speakers. We extracted 28 linguistic features, encompassing phonological, lexico-semantic, morpho-syntactic, and discourse/pragmatic domains. We utilized a semi-automated approach with Computerized Language ANalysis (CLAN) to compare the frequency of production of various linguistic features across the three language groups. Our findings revealed distinct proportional differences in linguistic feature usage among English, Chinese, and Italian speakers. Specifically, we found a reduced production of prepositions, conjunctions, and pronouns, and increased adverb use in the Chinese-speakers compared to the other two languages. Furthermore, English participants produced a higher proportion of prepositions, while Italian speakers produced significantly more conjunctions and empty pauses than the other groups. These findings demonstrate that the frequency of specific linguistic phenomena varies across languages, even when using the same harmonized task. This underscores the critical need to develop linguistically tailored language assessment tools and to identify speech markers that are appropriate for aphasia patients across different languages.

Neural populations in the language network differ in the size of their temporal receptive windows

Despite long knowing what brain areas support language comprehension, our knowledge of the neural computations that these frontal and temporal regions implement remains limited. One important unresolved question concerns functional differences among the neural populations that comprise the language network. Here we leveraged the high spatiotemporal resolution of human intracranial recordings (n = 22) to examine responses to sentences and linguistically degraded conditions. We discovered three response profiles that differ in their temporal dynamics. These profiles appear to reflect different temporal receptive windows, with average windows of about 1, 4 and 6 words, respectively. Neural populations exhibiting these profiles are interleaved across the language network, which suggests that all language regions have direct access to distinct, multiscale representations of linguistic input-a property that may be critical for the efficiency and robustness of language processing.

The child the apple eats: processing of argument structure in Mandarin verb-final sentences

Mandarin Chinese is typologically unusual among the world's languages in having flexible word order despite a near absence of inflectional morphology. These features of Mandarin challenge conventional linguistic notions such as subject and object and the divide between syntax and semantics. In the present study, we tested monolingual processing of argument structure in Mandarin verb-final sentences, where word order alone is not a reliable cue. We collected participants' responses to a forced agent-assignment task while measuring their electroencephalography data to capture real-time processing throughout each sentence. We found that sentence interpretation was not informed by word order in the absence of other cues, and while the coverbs BA and BEI were strong signals for agent selection, comprehension was a result of multiple cues. These results challenge previous reports of a linear ranking of cue strength. Event-related potentials showed that BA and BEI impacted participants' processing even before the verb was read and that role reversal anomalies elicited an N400 effect without a subsequent semantic P600. This study demonstrates that Mandarin sentence comprehension requires online interaction among cues in a language-specific manner, consistent with models that predict crosslinguistic differences in core sentence processing mechanisms.

Lingualyzer: A computational linguistic tool for multilingual and multidimensional text analysis

Most natural language models and tools are restricted to one language, typically English. For researchers in the behavioral sciences investigating languages other than English, and for those researchers who would like to make cross-linguistic comparisons, hardly any computational linguistic tools exist, particularly none for those researchers who lack deep computational linguistic knowledge or programming skills. Yet, for interdisciplinary researchers in a variety of fields, ranging from psycholinguistics, social psychology, cognitive psychology, education, to literary studies, there certainly is a need for such a cross-linguistic tool. In the current paper, we present Lingualyzer ( https://lingualyzer.com ), an easily accessible tool that analyzes text at three different text levels (sentence, paragraph, document), which includes 351 multidimensional linguistic measures that are available in 41 different languages. This paper gives an overview of Lingualyzer, categorizes its hundreds of measures, demonstrates how it distinguishes itself from other text quantification tools, explains how it can be used, and provides validations. Lingualyzer is freely accessible for scientific purposes using an intuitive and easy-to-use interface.

Language follows a distinct mode of extra-genomic evolution

As one of the most specific, yet most diverse of human behaviors, language is shaped by both genomic and extra-genomic evolution. Sharing methods and models between these modes of evolution has significantly advanced our understanding of language and inspired generalized theories of its evolution. Progress is hampered, however, by the fact that the extra-genomic evolution of languages, i.e. linguistic evolution, maps only partially to other forms of evolution. Contrasting it with the biological evolution of eukaryotes and the cultural evolution of technology as the best understood models, we show that linguistic evolution is special by yielding a stationary dynamic rather than stable solutions, and that this dynamic allows the use of language change for social differentiation while maintaining its global adaptiveness. Linguistic evolution furthermore differs from technological evolution by requiring vertical transmission, allowing the reconstruction of phylogenies; and it differs from eukaryotic biological evolution by foregoing a genotype vs phenotype distinction, allowing deliberate and biased change. Recognising these differences will improve our empirical tools and open new avenues for analyzing how linguistic, cultural, and biological evolution interacted with each other when language emerged in the hominin lineage. Importantly, our framework will help to cope with unprecedented scientific and ethical challenges that presently arise from how rapid cultural evolution impacts language, most urgently from interventional clinical tools for language disorders, potential epigenetic effects of technology on language, artificial intelligence and linguistic communicators, and global losses of linguistic diversity and identity. Beyond language, the distinctions made here allow identifying variation in other forms of biological and cultural evolution, developing new perspectives for empirical research.

Demonstratives as attention tools: Evidence of mentalistic representations within language

Linguistic communication is an intrinsically social activity that enables us to share thoughts across minds. Many complex social uses of language can be captured by domain-general representations of other minds (i.e., mentalistic representations) that externally modulate linguistic meaning through Gricean reasoning. However, here we show that representations of others' attention are embedded within language itself. Across ten languages, we show that demonstratives-basic grammatical words (e.g., "this"/"that") which are evolutionarily ancient, learned early in life, and documented in all known languages-are intrinsic attention tools. Beyond their spatial meanings, demonstratives encode both joint attention and the direction in which the listener must turn to establish it. Crucially, the frequency of the spatial and attentional uses of demonstratives varies across languages, suggesting that both spatial and mentalistic representations are part of their conventional meaning. Using computational modeling, we show that mentalistic representations of others' attention are internally encoded in demonstratives, with their effect further boosted by Gricean reasoning. Yet, speakers are largely unaware of this, incorrectly reporting that they primarily capture spatial representations. Our findings show that representations of other people's cognitive states (namely, their attention) are embedded in language and suggest that the most basic building blocks of the linguistic system crucially rely on social cognition.

Word Forms Reflect Trade-Offs Between Speaker Effort and Robust Listener Recognition

How do cognitive pressures shape the lexicons of natural languages? Here, we reframe George Kingsley Zipf's proposed "law of abbreviation" within a more general framework that relates it to cognitive pressures that affect speakers and listeners. In this new framework, speakers' drive to reduce effort (Zipf's proposal) is counteracted by the need for low-frequency words to have word forms that are sufficiently distinctive to allow for accurate recognition by listeners. To support this framework, we replicate and extend recent work using the prevalence of subword phonemic sequences (phonotactic probability) to measure speakers' production effort in place of Zipf's measure of length. Across languages and corpora, phonotactic probability is more strongly correlated with word frequency than word length. We also show this measure of ease of speech production (phonotactic probability) is strongly correlated with a measure of perceptual difficulty that indexes the degree of competition from alternative interpretations in word recognition. This is consistent with the claim that there must be trade-offs between these two factors, and is inconsistent with a recent proposal that phonotactic probability facilitates both perception and production. To our knowledge, this is the first work to offer an explanation why long, phonotactically improbable word forms remain in the lexicons of natural languages.

Information density as a predictor of communication dynamics

In a recent paper, Aceves and Evans computed information and semantic density measures for hundreds of languages, and showed that these measures predict the pace and breadth of ideas in communication. Here, we summarize their key findings and situate them in a broader debate about the adaptive nature of language.

Globally, songs and instrumental melodies are slower and higher and use more stable pitches than speech: A Registered Report

Both music and language are found in all known human societies, yet no studies have compared similarities and differences between song, speech, and instrumental music on a global scale. In this Registered Report, we analyzed two global datasets: (i) 300 annotated audio recordings representing matched sets of traditional songs, recited lyrics, conversational speech, and instrumental melodies from our 75 coauthors speaking 55 languages; and (ii) 418 previously published adult-directed song and speech recordings from 209 individuals speaking 16 languages. Of our six preregistered predictions, five were strongly supported: Relative to speech, songs use (i) higher pitch, (ii) slower temporal rate, and (iii) more stable pitches, while both songs and speech used similar (iv) pitch interval size and (v) timbral brightness. Exploratory analyses suggest that features vary along a "musi-linguistic" continuum when including instrumental melodies and recited lyrics. Our study provides strong empirical evidence of cross-cultural regularities in music and speech.

Robustness of the random language model

The random language model [Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 128301 (2019)0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.122.128301] is an ensemble of stochastic context-free grammars, quantifying the syntax of human and computer languages. The model suggests a simple picture of first-language learning as a type of annealing in the vast space of potential languages. In its simplest formulation, it implies a single continuous transition to grammatical syntax, at which the symmetry among potential words and categories is spontaneously broken. Here this picture is scrutinized by considering its robustness against extensions of the original model, and trajectories through parameter space different from those originally considered. It is shown here that (i) the scenario is robust to explicit symmetry breaking, an inevitable component of learning in the real world, and (ii) the transition to grammatical syntax can be encountered by fixing the deep (hidden) structure while varying the surface (observable) properties. It is also argued that the transition becomes a sharp thermodynamic transition in an idealized limit. Moreover, comparison with human data on the clustering coefficient of syntax networks suggests that the observed transition is equivalent to that normally experienced by children at age 24 months. The results are discussed in light of the theory of first-language acquisition in linguistics, and recent successes in machine learning.

Adieu Bias: Debiasing Intuitions Among French Speakers

Recent debiasing studies have shown that a short, plain-English explanation of the correct solution strategy can improve reasoning performance. However, these studies have predominantly focused on English-speaking populations, who were tested with problem contents designed for an English-speaking test environment. Here we explore whether the key findings of previous debiasing studies can be extended to native French speakers living in continental Europe (France). We ran a training session with a battery of three reasoning tasks (i.e., base-rate neglect, conjunction fallacy, and bat-and-ball) on 147 native French speakers. We used a two-response paradigm in which participants first gave an initial intuitive response, under time pressure and cognitive load, and then gave a final response after deliberation. Results showed a clear training effect, as early as the initial (intuitive) stage. Immediately after training, most participants solved the problems correctly, without the need for a deliberation process. The findings confirm that the intuitive debiasing training effect extends to native French speakers.

Neurobiological Causal Models of Language Processing

The language faculty is physically realized in the neurobiological infrastructure of the human brain. Despite significant efforts, an integrated understanding of this system remains a formidable challenge. What is missing from most theoretical accounts is a specification of the neural mechanisms that implement language function. Computational models that have been put forward generally lack an explicit neurobiological foundation. We propose a neurobiologically informed causal modeling approach which offers a framework for how to bridge this gap. A neurobiological causal model is a mechanistic description of language processing that is grounded in, and constrained by, the characteristics of the neurobiological substrate. It intends to model the generators of language behavior at the level of implementational causality. We describe key features and neurobiological component parts from which causal models can be built and provide guidelines on how to implement them in model simulations. Then we outline how this approach can shed new light on the core computational machinery for language, the long-term storage of words in the mental lexicon and combinatorial processing in sentence comprehension. In contrast to cognitive theories of behavior, causal models are formulated in the "machine language" of neurobiology which is universal to human cognition. We argue that neurobiological causal modeling should be pursued in addition to existing approaches. Eventually, this approach will allow us to develop an explicit computational neurobiology of language.

Reversal of the concreteness effect can be detected in the natural speech of older adults with amnestic, but not non-amnestic, mild cognitive impairment

INTRODUCTION

Patients with Alzheimer's disease present with difficulty in lexical retrieval and reversal of the concreteness effect in nouns. Little is known about the phenomena before the onset of symptoms. We anticipate early linguistic signs in the speech of people who suffer from amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Here, we report the results of a corpus-linguistic approach to the early detection of cognitive impairment.

METHODS

One hundred forty-eight English-speaking Singaporeans provided natural speech data, on topics of their choice; 74 were diagnosed with single-domain MCI (38 amnestic, 36 non-amnestic), 74 cognitively healthy. The recordings yield 267,310 words, which are tagged for parts of speech. We calculate the per-minute word counts and concreteness scores of all tagged words, nouns, and verbs in the dataset.

RESULTS

Compared to controls, subjects with amnestic MCI produce fewer but more abstract nouns. Verbs are not affected.

DISCUSSION

Slower retrieval of nouns and the reversal of the concreteness effect in nouns are manifested in natural speech and can be detected early through corpus-based analysis.

Highlights

Reversal of the concreteness effect is manifested in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and semantic dementia.The paper reports a corpus-based analysis of natural speech by people with amnestic and non-amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and cognitively healthy controls.People with amnestic MCI produce fewer and more abstract nouns than people with non-amnestic MCI and healthy controls. Verbs appear to be unaffected.The imageability problem can be detected in natural everyday speech by people with amnestic MCI, which carries a higher risk of conversion to AD.

The evolutionary dynamics of how languages signal who does what to whom

Languages vary in how they signal "who does what to whom". Three main strategies to indicate the participant roles of "who" and "whom" are case, verbal indexing, and rigid word order. Languages that disambiguate these roles with case tend to have either verb-final or flexible word order. Most previous studies that found these patterns used limited language samples and overlooked the causal mechanisms that could jointly explain the association between all three features. Here we analyze grammatical data from a Grambank sample of 1705 languages with phylogenetic causal graph methods. Our results corroborate the claims that verb-final word order generally gives rise to case and, strikingly, establish that case tends to lead to the development of flexible word order. The combination of novel statistical methods and the Grambank database provides a model for the rigorous testing of causal claims about the factors that shape patterns of linguistic diversity.

A Universal Cognitive Bias in Word Order: Evidence From Speakers Whose Language Goes Against It

There is a long-standing debate in cognitive science surrounding the source of commonalities among languages of the world. Indeed, there are many potential explanations for such commonalities-accidents of history, common processes of language change, memory limitations, constraints on linguistic representations, and so on. Recent research has used psycholinguistic experiments to provide empirical evidence linking common linguistic patterns to specific features of human cognition, but these experiments tend to use English speakers, who in many cases have direct experience with the common patterns of interest. Here we highlight the importance of testing populations whose languages go against cross-linguistic trends. We investigate whether adult monolingual speakers of Kîîtharaka, which has an unusual way of ordering words, mirror the word-order preferences of English speakers. We find that they do, supporting the hypothesis that universal cognitive representations play a role in shaping word order.

Human languages with greater information density have higher communication speed but lower conversation breadth

Human languages vary widely in how they encode information within circumscribed semantic domains (for example, time, space, colour, human body parts and activities), but little is known about the global structure of semantic information and nothing about its relation to human communication. We first show that across a sample of ~1,000 languages, there is broad variation in how densely languages encode information into words. Second, we show that this language information density is associated with a denser configuration of semantic information. Finally, we trace the relationship between language information density and patterns of communication, showing that informationally denser languages tend towards faster communication but conceptually narrower conversations or expositions within which topics are discussed at greater depth. These results highlight an important source of variation across the human communicative channel, revealing that the structure of language shapes the nature and texture of human engagement, with consequences for human behaviour across levels of society.

Determining the Relativity of Word Meanings Through the Construction of Individualized Models of Semantic Memory

Distributional models of lexical semantics are capable of acquiring sophisticated representations of word meanings. The main theoretical insight provided by these models is that they demonstrate the systematic connection between the knowledge that people acquire and the experience that they have with the natural language environment. However, linguistic experience is inherently variable and differs radically across people due to demographic and cultural variables. Recently, distributional models have been used to examine how word meanings vary across languages and it was found that there is considerable variability in the meanings of words across languages for most semantic categories. The goal of this article is to examine how variable word meanings are across individual language users within a single language. This was accomplished by assembling 500 individual user corpora attained from the online forum Reddit. Each user corpus ranged between 3.8 and 32.3 million words each, and a count-based distributional framework was used to extract word meanings for each user. These representations were then used to estimate the semantic alignment of word meanings across individual language users. It was found that there are significant levels of relativity in word meanings across individuals, and these differences are partially explained by other psycholinguistic factors, such as concreteness, semantic diversity, and social aspects of language usage. These results point to word meanings being fundamentally relative and contextually fluid, with this relativeness being related to the individualized nature of linguistic experience.

Cognitive Science From the Perspective of Linguistic Diversity

This letter addresses two issues in language research that are important to cognitive science: the comparability of word meanings across languages and the neglect of an integrated approach to writing systems. The first issue challenges generativist claims by emphasizing the importance of comparability of data, drawing on typologists' findings about different languages. The second issue addresses the exclusion of diverse writing systems from linguistic investigation and argues for a more extensive study of their effects on language and cognition. We argue for a refocusing of cognitive science research on linguistic diversity in all modalities to develop the most robust understanding of language and its role in human cognition more broadly.

Language systematizes attention: How relational language enhances relational representation by guiding attention

Language can affect cognition, but through what mechanism? Substantial past research has focused on how labeling can elicit categorical representation during online processing. We focus here on a particularly powerful type of language-relational language-and show that relational language can enhance relational representation in children through an embodied attention mechanism. Four-year-old children were given a color-location conjunction task, in which they were asked to encode a two-color square, split either vertically or horizontally (e.g., red on the left, blue on the right), and later recall the same configuration from its mirror reflection. During the encoding phase, children in the experimental condition heard relational language (e.g., "Red is on the left of blue"), while those in the control condition heard generic non-relational language (e.g., "Look at this one, look at it closely"). At recall, children in the experimental condition were more successful at choosing the correct relational representation between the two colors compared to the control group. Moreover, they exhibited different attention patterns as predicted by the attention shift account of relational representation (Franconeri et al., 2012). To test the sustained effect of language and the role of attention, during the second half of the study, the experimental condition was given generic non-relational language. There was a sustained advantage in the experimental condition for both behavioral accuracies and signature attention patterns. Overall, our findings suggest that relational language enhances relational representation by guiding learners' attention, and this facilitative effect persists over time even in the absence of language. Implications for the mechanism of how relational language can enhance the learning of relational systems (e.g., mathematics, spatial cognition) by guiding attention will be discussed.

Developmental psychologists should adopt citizen science to improve generalization and reproducibility

Widespread failures of replication and generalization are, ironically, a scientific triumph, in that they confirm the fundamental metascientific theory that underlies our field. Generalizable and replicable findings require testing large numbers of subjects from a wide range of demographics with a large, randomly-sampled stimulus set, and using a variety of experimental parameters. Because few studies accomplish any of this, meta-scientists predict that findings will frequently fail to replicate or generalize. We argue that to be more robust and replicable, developmental psychology needs to find a mechanism for collecting data at greater scale and from more diverse populations. Luckily, this mechanism already exists: Citizen science, in which large numbers of uncompensated volunteers provide data. While best-known for its contributions to astronomy and ecology, citizen science has also produced major findings in neuroscience and psychology, and increasingly in developmental psychology. We provide examples, address practical challenges, discuss limitations, and compare to other methods of obtaining large datasets. Ultimately, we argue that the range of studies where it makes sense *not* to use citizen science is steadily dwindling.

Cleaning up the Brickyard: How Theory and Methodology Shape Experiments in Cognitive Neuroscience of Language

The capacity for language is a defining property of our species, yet despite decades of research, evidence on its neural basis is still mixed and a generalized consensus is difficult to achieve. We suggest that this is partly caused by researchers defining "language" in different ways, with focus on a wide range of phenomena, properties, and levels of investigation. Accordingly, there is very little agreement among cognitive neuroscientists of language on the operationalization of fundamental concepts to be investigated in neuroscientific experiments. Here, we review chains of derivation in the cognitive neuroscience of language, focusing on how the hypothesis under consideration is defined by a combination of theoretical and methodological assumptions. We first attempt to disentangle the complex relationship between linguistics, psychology, and neuroscience in the field. Next, we focus on how conclusions that can be drawn from any experiment are inherently constrained by auxiliary assumptions, both theoretical and methodological, on which the validity of conclusions drawn rests. These issues are discussed in the context of classical experimental manipulations as well as study designs that employ novel approaches such as naturalistic stimuli and computational modeling. We conclude by proposing that a highly interdisciplinary field such as the cognitive neuroscience of language requires researchers to form explicit statements concerning the theoretical definitions, methodological choices, and other constraining factors involved in their work.

Spatial communication systems across languages reflect universal action constraints

The extent to which languages share properties reflecting the non-linguistic constraints of the speakers who speak them is key to the debate regarding the relationship between language and cognition. A critical case is spatial communication, where it has been argued that semantic universals should exist, if anywhere. Here, using an experimental paradigm able to separate variation within a language from variation between languages, we tested the use of spatial demonstratives-the most fundamental and frequent spatial terms across languages. In n = 874 speakers across 29 languages, we show that speakers of all tested languages use spatial demonstratives as a function of being able to reach or act on an object being referred to. In some languages, the position of the addressee is also relevant in selecting between demonstrative forms. Commonalities and differences across languages in spatial communication can be understood in terms of universal constraints on action shaping spatial language and cognition.

Sequence representation as an early step in the evolution of language

Human language is unique in its compositional, open-ended, and sequential form, and its evolution is often solely explained by advantages of communication. However, it has proven challenging to identify an evolutionary trajectory from a world without language to a world with language, especially while at the same time explaining why such an advantageous phenomenon has not evolved in other animals. Decoding sequential information is necessary for language, making domain-general sequence representation a tentative basic requirement for the evolution of language and other uniquely human phenomena. Here, using formal evolutionary analyses of the utility of sequence representation we show that sequence representation is exceedingly costly and that current memory systems found in animals may prevent abilities necessary for language to emerge. For sequence representation to evolve, flexibility allowing for ignoring irrelevant information is necessary. Furthermore, an abundance of useful sequential information and extensive learning opportunities are required, two conditions that were likely fulfilled early in human evolution. Our results provide a novel, logically plausible trajectory for the evolution of uniquely human cognition and language, and support the hypothesis that human culture is rooted in sequential representational and processing abilities.

Explaining First Language Acquisition in Terms of Basic Behavioral Processes: Introduction to the Special Section

This special section of Perspectives on Behavior Science follows up on a virtual panel discussion on the role of operant and Pavlovian processes in children's language learning. We present four articles, including two contributed by panelists, that illustrate the explanatory power of operant conditioning processes in the study of language.

Consensus Paper: Current Perspectives on Abstract Concepts and Future Research Directions

concepts are relevant to a wide range of disciplines, including cognitive science, linguistics, psychology, cognitive, social, and affective neuroscience, and philosophy. This consensus paper synthesizes the work and views of researchers in the field, discussing current perspectives on theoretical and methodological issues, and recommendations for future research. In this paper, we urge researchers to go beyond the traditional abstract-concrete dichotomy and consider the multiple dimensions that characterize concepts (e.g., sensorimotor experience, social interaction, conceptual metaphor), as well as the mediating influence of linguistic and cultural context on conceptual representations. We also promote the use of interactive methods to investigate both the comprehension and production of abstract concepts, while also focusing on individual differences in conceptual representations. Overall, we argue that abstract concepts should be studied in a more nuanced way that takes into account their complexity and diversity, which should permit us a fuller, more holistic understanding of abstract cognition.

Linguistic Relativity in Cross-Cultural Context: Converging Evidence From Neuroanthropology

Kemmerer's discussion of links between semantic typology and embodied cognition is welcome, especially his survey of available evidence. Focusing on mechanisms of embodied enculturation, however, we must understand that language is just one part of developmental assemblies that shape cognition, alongside other cultural elements such as sensory learning, behavior patterns, social interactions, and emotional experience. We believe that a source of this problem is an obsolete definition of "culture" as shared mental information that is inconsistent with models of embodied cognition and yet pervasive in human and cognitive sciences. We point to microethnographies of cognitive ecologies as a tractable remedy.

Speech disturbances in schizophrenia: Assessing cross-linguistic generalizability of NLP automated measures of coherence

INTRODUCTION

Language disorders - disorganized and incoherent speech in particular - are distinctive features of schizophrenia. Natural language processing (NLP) offers automated measures of incoherent speech as promising markers for schizophrenia. However, the scientific and clinical impact of NLP markers depends on their generalizability across contexts, samples, and languages, which we systematically assessed in the present study relying on a large, novel, cross-linguistic corpus.

METHODS

We collected a Danish (DK), German (GE), and Chinese (CH) cross-linguistic dataset involving transcripts from 187 participants with schizophrenia (111DK, 25GE, 51CH) and 200 matched controls (129DK, 29GE, 42CH) performing the Animated Triangles Task. Fourteen previously published NLP coherence measures were calculated, and between-groups differences and association with symptoms were tested for cross-linguistic generalizability.

RESULTS

One coherence measure, i.e. second-order coherence, robustly generalized across samples and languages. We found several language-specific effects, some of which partially replicated previous findings (lower coherence in German and Chinese patients), while others did not (higher coherence in Danish patients). We found several associations between symptoms and measures of coherence, but the effects were generally inconsistent across languages and rating scales.

CONCLUSIONS

Using a cumulative approach, we have shown that NLP findings of reduced semantic coherence in schizophrenia have limited generalizability across different languages, samples, and measures. We argue that several factors such as sociodemographic and clinical heterogeneity, cross-linguistic variation, and the different NLP measures reflecting different clinical aspects may be responsible for this variability. Future studies should take this variability into account in order to develop effective clinical applications targeting different patient populations.

Gaps in the Lexicon Restrict Communication

Across languages, words carve up the world of experience in different ways. For example, English lacks an equivalent to the Chinese superordinate noun tiáowèipǐn, which is loosely translated as "ingredients used to season food while cooking." Do such differences matter? A conventional label may offer a uniquely effective way of communicating. On the other hand, lexical gaps may be easily bridged by the compositional power of language. After all, most of the ideas we want to express do not map onto simple lexical forms. We conducted a referential Director/Matcher communication task with adult speakers of Chinese and English. Directors provided a clue that Matchers used to select words from a word grid. The three target words corresponded to a superordinate term (e.g., beverages) in either Chinese or English but not both. We found that Matchers were more accurate at choosing the target words when their language lexicalized the target category. This advantage was driven entirely by the Directors' use/non-use of the intended superordinate term. The presence of a conventional superordinate had no measurable effect on speakers' within- or between-category similarity ratings. These results show that the ability to rely on a conventional term is surprisingly important despite the flexibility languages offer to communicate about non-lexicalized categories.

Topological properties and organizing principles of semantic networks

Interpreting natural language is an increasingly important task in computer algorithms due to the growing availability of unstructured textual data. Natural Language Processing (NLP) applications rely on semantic networks for structured knowledge representation. The fundamental properties of semantic networks must be taken into account when designing NLP algorithms, yet they remain to be structurally investigated. We study the properties of semantic networks from ConceptNet, defined by 7 semantic relations from 11 different languages. We find that semantic networks have universal basic properties: they are sparse, highly clustered, and many exhibit power-law degree distributions. Our findings show that the majority of the considered networks are scale-free. Some networks exhibit language-specific properties determined by grammatical rules, for example networks from highly inflected languages, such as e.g. Latin, German, French and Spanish, show peaks in the degree distribution that deviate from a power law. We find that depending on the semantic relation type and the language, the link formation in semantic networks is guided by different principles. In some networks the connections are similarity-based, while in others the connections are more complementarity-based. Finally, we demonstrate how knowledge of similarity and complementarity in semantic networks can improve NLP algorithms in missing link inference.

Understanding language processing in variable populations on their own terms: Towards a functionalist psycholinguistics of individual differences, development, and disorders

Classic psycholinguistics seeks universal language mechanisms for all people, emphasing the "modal" listener: hearing, neurotypical, monolingual, young adults. Applied psycholinguistics then characterizes differences in terms of their deviation from modal. This mirrors naturalist philosophies of health which presume a normal function, with illness as a deviation. In contrast, normative positions argue that illness is partially culturally derived. It occurs when a person cannot meet socio-culturally defined goals, separating differences in biology (disease) from socio-cultural function (illness). We synthesize this with mechanistic functionalist views in which language emerges from diverse lower level mechanisms with no one-to-one mapping to function (termed the functional mechanistic normative approach). This challenges primarily psychometric approaches-which are culturally defined-suggesting a process-based approach may yield more insight. We illustrate this with work on word recognition across multiple domains: cochlear implant users, children, language disorders, L2 learners, and aging. This work investigates each group's solutions to the problem of word recognition as interesting in its own right. Variation in process is value-neutral, and psychometric measures complement this, reflecting fit with cultural expectations (disease vs. illness). By examining variation in processing across people with a variety of skills and goals, we arrive at deeper insight into fundamental principles.

Acquisition of demonstratives in cross-linguistic perspective

This paper examines the acquisition of demonstratives (e.g., that, there) from a cross-linguistic perspective. Although demonstratives are often said to play a crucial role in L1 acquisition, there is little systematic research on this topic. Using extensive corpus data of spontaneous child speech, the paper investigates the emergence and development of demonstratives in three European (English, French, Spanish) and four non-European languages (Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew, Indonesian) between age 1;0 and 6;0. The data show that, across languages, demonstratives are among the earliest and most frequent child words, but their frequency decreases with age and MLU. As children grow older, they tend to use other types of referring terms (e.g., anaphoric pronouns) and other types of spatial expressions (e.g., adpositions). Considering these results, we hypothesize that children shift from using a body-oriented strategy of deictic communication to more abstract and disembodied strategies of encoding reference and space during the preschool years.

Embodying measurement

Measuring with body parts is a handy and persistent cross-cultural phenomenon.

Kinbank: A global database of kinship terminology

For a single species, human kinship organization is both remarkably diverse and strikingly organized. Kinship terminology is the structured vocabulary used to classify, refer to, and address relatives and family. Diversity in kinship terminology has been analyzed by anthropologists for over 150 years, although recurrent patterning across cultures remains incompletely explained. Despite the wealth of kinship data in the anthropological record, comparative studies of kinship terminology are hindered by data accessibility. Here we present Kinbank, a new database of 210,903 kinterms from a global sample of 1,229 spoken languages. Using open-access and transparent data provenance, Kinbank offers an extensible resource for kinship terminology, enabling researchers to explore the rich diversity of human family organization and to test longstanding hypotheses about the origins and drivers of recurrent patterns. We illustrate our contribution with two examples. We demonstrate strong gender bias in the phonological structure of parent terms across 1,022 languages, and we show that there is no evidence for a coevolutionary relationship between cross-cousin marriage and bifurcate-merging terminology in Bantu languages. Analysing kinship data is notoriously challenging; Kinbank aims to eliminate data accessibility issues from that challenge and provide a platform to build an interdisciplinary understanding of kinship.

Gesture, spatial cognition and the evolution of language

Human communication displays a striking contrast between the diversity of languages and the universality of the principles underlying their use in conversation. Despite the importance of this interactional base, it is not obvious that it heavily imprints the structure of languages. However, a deep-time perspective suggests that early hominin communication was gestural, in line with all the other Hominidae. This gestural phase of early language development seems to have left its traces in the way in which spatial concepts, implemented in the hippocampus, provide organizing principles at the heart of grammar. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Face2face: advancing the science of social interaction'.

Native language differences in the structural connectome of the human brain

Is the neuroanatomy of the language structural connectome modulated by the life-long experience of speaking a specific language? The current study compared the brain white matter connections of the language and speech production network in a large cohort of 94 native speakers of two very different languages: an Indo-European morphosyntactically complex language (German) and a Semitic root-based language (Arabic). Using high-resolution diffusion-weighted MRI and tractography-based network statistics of the language connectome, we demonstrated that German native speakers exhibited stronger connectivity in an intra-hemispheric frontal to parietal/temporal dorsal language network, known to be associated with complex syntax processing. In comparison, Arabic native speakers showed stronger connectivity in the connections between semantic language regions, including the left temporo-parietal network, and stronger inter-hemispheric connections via the posterior corpus callosum connecting bilateral superior temporal and inferior parietal regions. The current study suggests that the structural language connectome develops and is modulated by environmental factors such as the characteristic processing demands of the native language.

Cross-clause planning in Nungon (Papua New Guinea): Eye-tracking evidence

Hundreds of languages worldwide use a sentence structure known as the "clause chain," in which 20 or more clauses can be stacked to form a sentence. The Papuan language Nungon is among a subset of clause chaining languages that require "switch-reference" suffixes on nonfinal verbs in chains. These suffixes announce whether the subject of each upcoming clause will differ from the subject of the previous clause. We examine two major issues in psycholinguistics: predictive processing in comprehension, and advance planning in production. Whereas previous work on other languages has demonstrated that sentence planning can be incremental, switch-reference marking would seem to prohibit strictly incremental planning, as it requires speakers to plan the next clause before they can finish producing the current one. This suggests an intriguing possibility: planning strategies may be fundamentally different in Nungon. We used a mobile eye-tracker and solar-powered laptops in a remote village in Papua, New Guinea, to track Nungon speakers' gaze in two experiments: comprehension and production. Curiously, during comprehension, fixation data failed to find evidence that switch-reference marking is used for predictive processing. However, during production, we found evidence for advance planning of switch-reference markers, and, by extension, the subjects they presage. We propose that this degree of advance syntactic planning pushes the boundaries of what is known about sentence planning, drawing on data from a novel morpheme type in an understudied language.