Tomorrow: Kenneth Konopka comes to UICTiL
Tomorrow, February 5th, we will have another session of UIC Talks in Linguistics (UICTiL) from 3pm to 5pm in 1750 University Hall (601 S. Morgan Street 60607). This week we will have a talk from Kenneth Konopka of Northwestern University. As always, light refreshments will be served. The talk is entitled, “Vowels of Mexican Heritage English: Beyond the static” (See Abstract below). Continue reading this entry »
Generative SLA Workshop, January 29th
On January 29th, 2010 UIC will be hosting a Generative Second Language Workshop featuring:
Tania Ionin, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
“Production and interpretation of articles in second language acquisition”
Silvina Montrul, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
“Morphological Errors in L2 Learners and Heritage Language Learners: Missing Surface Inflection or simply experience?”
Roumyana Slabakova, University of Illinois
“The Bottleneck Hypothesis: what is easy and what is hard to acquire in a second language”
The workshop will take place from 3pm to 6pm in Grant Hall 207 (703 South Morgan Street, 60607). Abstracts below. Continue reading this entry »
UICTiL: Marina Teroukafi
Join us this Friday, January 22nd for TiL’s first talk of the semester: a talk by Marina Terkourafi from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her talk is entitled, “What is said from different points of view” and will take place in 1750 University Hall (601 South Morgan Street 60607) at 3pm.
Abstract:
What is said’ as a theoretical notion was first proposed by Paul Grice in his William James lectures as a way of drawing the line between what a hearer would know upon hearing an utterance based on her knowledge of the language, and what she could further infer based on the fact that an utterance had been uttered in context. Understood as a distinction between truth-conditional and non truth-conditional content, the distinction between ‘what is said’ and ‘what is implicated’ has met with increasing skepticism over the years and with reactions ranging from reformulation (Bach 2001, Camp 2006) to rejection (Carston 1999, Jaszczolt 2005). In this talk, I go over theoretical and empirical arguments that support the need for a neo-Gricean, minimal notion of ‘what is said’.
UICTiL: Brad Hoot & Álvaro Recio
Tomorrow we will have a student session of TiL featuring our own Brad Hoot (UIC Ph.D. student) and visiting student Álvaro Recio (University of Salamanca Ph.D. student). Brad Hoot will present “An Optimality Theoretic Analysis of Focus in Spanish and English”. His presentation will be conducted in English. Álvaro Recio will present “Las propiedades argumentales de los complementos del nombre en español” (see abstract below), and his presentation will be given in Spanish.
As always the talk will be at 3 in 1750 University Hall with light refreshments provided.
Álvaro Recio (University of Salamanca) UIC TiL Fall 2009
Abstract
Las propiedades argumentales de los complementos del nombre en español
Son muchos los autores que en las últimas décadas han puesto de relieve el paralelismo existente entre la estructura interna del sintagma nominal y del sintagma verbal. No todos los modificadores realizan la misma aportación al significado de un sintagma, ni tienen idénticas propiedades formales ni gozan del mismo estatuto sintáctico. Continue reading this entry »
Babies cry in their first language: Tränen, tears, o lágrimas?:
In the newest edition of the journal, Current Biology, an interesting article was published about the language in which babies cry.
Apparently infants have already begun acquiring phonology at such an early stage that long before they can speak, they already cry in their native language. In fact, the authors suggest that fetuses can ”memorize auditory stimuli from the external world by the last trimester of pregnancy, with a particular sensitivity to melody contour in both music and language.” It is not surprising then that their first sounds be somewhat language-specific. French infants, for example, were found to prefer rising intonations in their cries and German infants preferred falling tones. Further, the suggested effect is that “adult-like processing of pitch intervals allows newborns to appreciate musical melodies and emotional and linguistic prosody.”
“Newborns’ cry melody is shaped by their native language”. Birgit Mampe, Angela D. Friederici, Anne Christophe, Kathleen Wermke. Current Biology 2009, Nov 5, doi 10.1016/j.cub.2009.09.064
Other publications have begun taking notice as well. The University of Würzburg has a discussion of the implications in German:
http://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/sonstiges/meldungen/single/artikel/sprache-be/
and English:
http://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/en/sonstiges/meldungen/detail/artikel/sprache-be/
And Uruguay’s LR21 has posted an article in Spanish:
http://www.larepublica.com.uy/comunidad/388084-afirman-que-los-bebes-lloran-en-el-mismo-idioma-de-su-madre
Xuehua Xiang at UIC
Tomorrow, October 30th, we’re having another UIC Talk in Linguistics. This week we have the privilege of presenting another of UIC’s own linguistics, Xuehua Xiang. The talk, entitled “Linguistic Representation of ‘Self’ and Narrative Co-Construction: A Comparative Discourse Analysis of Celebrity Interviews in American English and Mandarin Chinese” will take place in 1750 University Hall from 3 to 5, with light refreshments provided.
Abstract:
Drawing on 600-minutes of TV/radio interviews featuring celebrity guests, broadcast in Mandarin Chinese in China and American English in the U.S., respectively, this paper is a comparative discourse analysis of the interview as a form of narrative co-construction, as situated within the two cultures.
A preliminary analysis of six Mandarin interviews and six English interviews suggests that English speakers assume a parallel “you” vs.”I” dynamic in co-constructing the interviewee’s personal narrative; English interviewers tend to propel the narrative through mechanisms of A-Event and B-Event (Labov, 1972), i.e., the interviewer shares personal experience and/or reveals personal knowledge about the interviewee, which in effect elicits the interviewee’s autobiographical account. In contrast, the Mandarin interviews manifest a triangular structure whereby the interviewer assumes a mediating role between public consciousness and the
interviewee (cf. Xiang, 2003), i.e., the interviewer highlights the general public’s knowledge gaps, and frames the interviewee’s upcoming narration as being different from, and corrective of, public knowledge. Particularly, both the interviewer and interviewee in the Chinese data highlight the conflict between the interviewee as a social individual (e.g. wo ‘I’, ni ‘you’) and the interviewee as “private” self (e.g. wo/ni ziji “I myself” “you yourself”‘). This duality in the linguistic construction of “self” is not obvious in the English data. Continue reading this entry »
Natascha Müller E-Interview Part 3: Testable Assumptions
In the final segment of our e-interview with Natascha Müller she presents some testable assumptions, which she has corroborated in her own research.
“The two assumptions for delay effects are testable, since they make different predictions. In my research I have argued against Serratrice, Sorace & Paoli (2004) and I have assumed that the presence and direction of the influence is not a question of MORE-or-LESS constraints, but a question of whether pragmatics decides on syntactic options or not. The invasive function of pragmatics is complex (Italian, Spanish), non-invasiveness is derivationally neutral (English, German, French). If delay is not due to a default strategy (processing load in one language) but motivated by cross-linguistic influence where the linguistically more complex analysis of language A is avoided in favor of the less complex analysis of language B, we can make the following predictions which have been corroborated in the child data we have analyzed:
a) The effect should only be observable in bilingual children with particular language combinations, i.e. it is not due to the fact that the children acquire two languages, one with more, the other with less constraints, generally speaking. Only an approach to delay effects which takes into account the structure of the two languages involved will be able to account for Continue reading this entry »
Natascha Müller: Delay Effects in Bilingualism
Continuing with our e-interview, Natascha Müller talks about delay effects in childhood bilingualism:
“Meanwhile, there is ample evidence for delay effects of early child bilingualism. Bilingualism can slow down the acquisition process with respect to age of acquisition and MLU; in other words, for some grammatical properties, bilingual children reach the adult norm later (age and/or MLU) than monolingual peers. There is also evidence which shows that delay effects are observable in balanced as well as in unbalanced children (Müller & Patuto 2009), which means that an uneven development of the two languages is not a prerequisite for delay. Furthermore, although unbalanced language development can slow down acquisition with respect to age, it does not necessarily lead to differences between bilinguals and monolinguals with respect to MLU in the weakly developed language (Müller & Pillunat 2008). It looks as if delay is related to complexity in the following sense: Language A and B exhibit different degrees of complexity for a particular grammatical property. In Hulk & Müller (2000) and Müller & Hulk (2001), complexity is defined as the coordination of information from different modules, pragmatics and syntax for example. Delay is indicative of target-deviant grammatical representations which, during the course of acquisition, have to be “corrected”. The child will use the less complex analysis of language A in relation to grammatical property X when using language A and language B. Müller & Patuto (2009) further refine the scenario for delay effects of cross-linguistic influence and conclude that in addition to complexity defined as the coordination of information from different modules, the surface strings of the two languages A and B have to be analyzable in terms of the syntactic derivation of language A (which is less complex). This prerequisite looks trivial at first sight, but it excludes the possibility that children come up with analyses for the more complex language B which are not also “supported” by the evidence from language B. Also, it makes the interesting prediction that if the more complex language B is acquired together with a language which encodes the respective grammatical property in such a radically different way than in language A (the less complex language), the derivation of language A would not be “supported” by the evidence of language B when used by the child while speaking language B. Continue reading this entry »
Natascha Müller: Two approaches to bilingualism
Along with our series on blogs around the world we are also featuring e-interviews with researchers in the field of bilingualism. We have the privledge this week to present the thoughts of Natascha Müller of the Bergische Universität Wuppertal. We asked her why the study of bilingualism in children is relevant:
The Wuppertal research group on bilingual first language acquisition, funded by the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, German Science Foundation)
Row 1: Veronika Jansen, Natascha Müller, Elisa Turano, Mayte Jiménez Lopez, Laia Arnaus Gil
Row 2: Dunja Stachelhaus, Annette Pötzsch, Nadine Eichler, Vanessa Colado Miguel, Alban Beysson, Tobias Stallknecht, Marisa Patuto.
“Research in bilingual first language acquisition has been guided by two main approaches: Either it has been argued that bilingual children are not able to separate their two languages from early on since the two languages influence each other (Volterra & Taeschner 1978) or it has been shown that separation is possible from early on and that there is no evidence for cross-linguistic influence (Meisel 1989, Genesee 1989, Genesee, Nicoladis & Paradis 1995). Put differently, separation and cross-linguistic influence have been considered as being mutually exclusive in describing early child bilingualism. The main reason for the assumption of mutual exclusiveness is that most research has conceptualized separation and influence as involving whole language systems (or languages). Among the first to question this view were Gawlitzek-Maiwald & Tracy (1996). The main observation is that some grammatical domains develop separately in early child bilingualism while the bilingual child uses language A to bootstrap aspects of the syntactic system of language B for others.
What does ‘bootstrap’ in this context mean? Gawlitzek-Maiwald & Tracy analyze the monolingual (containing only elements of the context language) and the mixed utterances of Hannah, a bilingual English-German child. On the basis of the respective monolingual utterances, they find that German is much more advanced than English with respect to lexical and syntactic aspects of temporal and modal auxiliary verbs. In order to ‘help herself out’ when speaking English, Hannah produces mixed utterances of the following type:
(1) Kannst du move a bit (Hannah, 2;4-2;9, Gawlitzek-Maiwald
Can you move a bit & Tracy 1996:915)
In example (1), the left periphery comes from German, while the lexical verb and the adverb are in English. Until the English system of modal and temporal auxiliaries has been fully acquired by the child, she will fill in lexical material from German, a strategy which may also help the child to instantiate the English system: “Something that has been acquired in language A fulfils a booster function for language B.” (Gawlitzek-Maiwald & Tracy 1996: 903) The situation can be reversed for other grammatical phenomena
(Click to Read More and Stay Tuned for parts 2 and 3 with Nascha Müller)
Susan Goldman at UICTiL
Tomorrow we’re having UIC’s own Susan Goldman at TiL. Her talk, “Inquiry Using Multiple Sources of Information,” will take place at the usual time (3pm to 5pm) in the usual place (1750 University Hall–601 South Morgan Street, Chicago IL 60607). Hope to see you there!
Inquiry Using Multiple Sources of Information
Susan R. Goldman
Departments of Psychology and Curriculum & Instruction (UIC)
Learning Sciences Research Institute
Contemporary society has been dubbed the “knowledge society” largely due to the increased availability and accessibility of information in both professional and personal life contexts. This situation exacerbates the need to understand how people use information from multiple sources to accomplish their goals. Many of those goals involve solving some problem, answering some question, or conducting some type of inquiry. The analysis and synthesis of information from multiple sources is a complex comprehension skill often requires bringing a critical lens to the
sense-making process. The presentation will focus on efforts to unpack the construct “multiple source comprehension” and construct a process model of it as well as empirical investigations of the efforts of young adolescents to use multiple text sources of information to address an inquiry question in the history domain. These efforts involve specifying the content structure of the sources, the relevance of information to the argument structure of the inquiry question.
