Language Production

This functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study investigated how facial cues influence second language (L2) shadowing among 42 Japanese learners of English. Participants completed four conditions that varied by task type (listening vs. shadowing) and visual input (face vs. mosaic). Behaviorally, shadowing reproduction accuracy was higher when the speaker's face was visible. Neuroimaging revealed greater activation in the left posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG), right ventral pallidum, and left hippocampus during shadowing in the Face condition, reflecting enhanced audiovisual integration, engagement, and memory-related processing. Learners with higher oral proficiency exhibited increased activation in speech-integration areas, such as the posterior superior temporal gyrus, and those with higher listening proficiency showed reduced cerebellar engagement, suggesting proficiency-dependent neural strategies for integrating facial cues during shadowing. These findings support embodied, multisensory, and socially grounded accounts of L2 learning, emphasizing the pedagogical importance of visible facial cues. Incorporating face-based shadowing into L2 learning may help bridge perception and production and prepare learners for interaction-oriented communication.

This study aimed to explore the impact of code-switching on linguistic and cognitive processing speed among bilingual university students. The primary objective was to investigate how the frequency and context of codeswitching affected students' cognitive processing speed and their linguistic proficiency. The research hypothesized that a higher frequency of code-switching would correlate with improved cognitive processing speed, particularly in bilinguals, while also influencing their ability to switch between languages efficiently. The population for this study consisted of bilingual university students from a range of academic disciplines at a public university. A sample of 150 participants was selected using stratified random sampling to ensure diversity in terms of language proficiency and academic background. This was a quantitative study employing a survey study design. The study used a cross-sectional approach to collect data through a structured questionnaire, which included both self-reported frequency of code-switching and cognitive processing tasks designed to measure linguistic and cognitive speed. The data collection tools included a custom-designed survey for code-switching frequency, alongside cognitive tasks that measured reaction times and processing efficiency when switching between languages. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, paired sample t-tests, and regression analysis to examine the relationship between the frequency of code-switching and cognitive processing speed. The findings were expected to provide insights into how code-switching functioned as a linguistic strategy that might enhance cognitive flexibility, with potential implications for language acquisition theories and bilingual education practices. This study contributed to the growing body of research in bilingualism and cognitive psychology, highlighting the cognitive benefits of bilingual language practices in academic settings.

This study examines the relationship between monetary stakes, decision type, and speech
disfluency in high-stakes interaction, using the final round of the British television game show
Golden Balls as a naturalistic testbed. Drawing on psycholinguistic research on hesitation
phenomena and evolutionary models of cooperation, it investigates whether increasing monetary
value affects hesitation behaviour and whether such effects differ between cooperative (Split) and
non-cooperative (Steal) decisions. Speech from 71 final-round episodes was manually annotated
for multiple disfluency types, including filled pauses, repetitions, restarts, self-corrections, and
lexicalised hesitation markers, with all counts normalised per 50 words.
The results show that higher jackpot values are associated with increased hesitation overall, but
this effect is driven primarily by contestants who choose to split. As stakes rise, cooperative
decisions become increasingly marked by disfluency, whereas hesitation among stealers remains
stable or decreases at the highest jackpot levels. These findings partially support the hypothesis
that monetary pressure amplifies hesitation, while challenging the assumption that deceptive
choices are inherently more disfluent. Instead, the results suggest an asymmetry in the cognitive
and interactional costs of cooperation and defection: under high stakes, cooperation appears
psychologically effortful, whereas defection becomes a more resolved and fluent strategy.

This article reports an experiment examining the extent to which younger and older speakers engage in audience design, the process of adapting one's speech for particular addressees. Through an initial card-matching task, pairs of younger adults and pairs of older adults established common ground for sets of picture cards. Subsequently, the same individuals worked separately on a computer-based picturedescription task that involved a novel partner-cuing paradigm. Younger speakers' descriptions to the familiar partner were shorter and were initiated more quickly than were descriptions to an unfamiliar partner. In addition, younger speakers' descriptions to the familiar partner exhibited a higher proportion of lexical overlap with previous descriptions than did descriptions to an unfamiliar partner. Older speakers showed no equivalent evidence for audience design, which may reflect difficulties with retrieving partner-specific information from memory during conversation.

ABSTRACTWe examine the role of language production mechanisms in sentence repetition, a task widely used as a diagnostic tool in developmental disorders. We investigate sentence repetition in 5- to 8-year-old native speakers of Kannada, an inflectionally rich language of India. The inflectional characteristics of the language make it an ideal testing ground for exploring the engagement of grammatical and phonological encoding processes. We presented active, passive, and embedded sentences and, in a subset of the material, we also manipulated sentence length. Using accuracy and speech error analyses at the sentence, word, and affix levels, we provide evidence that individual differences in task performance are influenced by the linguistic properties of the material. These findings clarify the role of key language production mechanisms involved in sentence repetition. We propose that it is the versatility to develop a profile across several language production mechanisms that makes se...

We test whether structural priming is syntactically constrained in first language (L1) and second language (L2) speakers. In a written production task, 68 L1 English speakers and 144 L2 English learners described transfer-of-possession events shown in pictures by using double-object (DO) datives ('The artist sells the sailor the knife') or prepositional-object (PO) datives ('The artist sells the knife to the sailor'). The preceding prime sentences were either DO or PO datives, syntactically related locatives ('The boy carries the cake to the soldier') or syntactically unrelated infinitivals ('The monk brings the cake to share'). Additionally, verbs between prime and target sentences either overlapped or were different. L1 speakers showed structural priming of datives from datives and locatives, yet not from infinitivals. Higher-proficiency L2 learners showed priming only within datives; yet, lower-proficiency learners demonstrated dative priming from datives, locatives and infinitivals. Lexical overlap in verbs contributed to priming within datives, yet not from infinitivals to datives. The results show that structural priming in L1 speakers and in higher-proficiency L2 learners does not cross syntactic boundaries. In L2 development, lexical surface overlap ('to')

We present an algebraic framework for analyzing mutation processes by encoding elementary operations as total maps on a finite set and organizing them into a semigroup. Central to our approach is the study of low-rank behavior: we characterize the existence of constant and small-rank elements in the mutation semigroup, linking them to synchronizing words in the associated deterministic automaton. Structural insights are obtained via Green's relations, image and kernel characterizations, and rank considerations. On the computational side, we employ the pair-graph method to test efficiently for constant maps and a breadth-first search on the power-set automaton to detect elements of bounded rank. A worked example on a three-element set illustrates these techniques and demonstrates the explicit discovery of ranktwo and rank-one maps. Practical heuristics, such as the contraction of image sets, are also discussed to enhance efficiency in larger systems. The integration of algebraic, structural, and computational perspectives thus provides a coherent toolkit for identifying and understanding low-rank phenomena in mutation semigroups, and lays the groundwork for further characterization of generators that enforce such behavior. Finally, we extend the finite theory to parameterized and infinite families of mutations, drawing connections with quasispecies models in biology and interpreting image contractions as mechanisms of error suppression and genomic stability. By combining algebraic definitions, structural theorems, and algorithmic analyses, we provide a refined toolkit for understanding mutation collapse and its theoretical and biomedical implications.

We argue for an extension of the proposal that grammars are in part shaped by processing systems. Hawkins (2014) and others who have advanced this idea focus primarily on parsing. Our extension focuses on production, and we use that to explore explanations for certain subject/object asymmetries in extraction structures. The phenomenon we examine, which we term the mirror asymmetry, runs in opposite directions for within-clause and across-clause (long-distance) extraction, showing a preference for subject extraction in the former and for object extraction in the latter. We review several types of evidence suggesting that the mirror asymmetry and related phenomena are best explained by an account of the formation of grammars that assigns an important role to properties of sentence planning in production.*

Introduction: Verbal fluency tests have seen exponential growth in research and clinical practice in recent years, yet little is known about the distribution of grammatical categories spontaneously produced in phonemic fluency tasks. This study examined the distribution of nouns, verbs, and adjectives in phonemic fluency performance in a large Greek sample from the general population and explored their associations with age and education. Greek is particularly suited to this investigation because it has distinct word forms for nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Method: The phonemic fluency productions of 427 persons aged 16 to 87 years without known pathology, representing a wide range of educational backgrounds, were classified as nouns, verbs, adjectives, or other. Verb-noun and adjective-noun ratios were computed and compared to ratios derived from corpus data. Nonparametric analyses examined differences in the two ratios across age and education groups. Two-step cluster analyses were conducted to identify potential subgroups. Results: Across the entire sample, the verb-noun ratio (mean = 0.13) and adjective-noun ratio (mean = 0.12) were substantially lower than the ratios derived from corpus data (0.46 and 0.35 respectively, ps ≤ .001). Age, education, and total number of words produced were significantly associated with both ratios but with small to medium effect sizes and large variability. Cluster analyses identified three subgroups for the verb-noun ratio but yielded two highly unequal subgroups for the adjective-noun ratio. Conclusion: The two ratios derived from fluency tasks are not directly comparable to those derived from corpora. The small-to-medium effect sizes of the variables studied and the subgroup patterns observed for the verb-noun ratio suggest that additional, as yet unexplored, factors contribute to grammatical category production in phonemic fluency. This study provides novel quantitative data regarding content word distributions in phonemic fluency and their demographic correlates. Future research should examine the potential clinical relevance of these ratios.

This paper examines how a classroom culture developsadvanced strategies and procedures for handling complexdigital tools. We report from a vocational Mediaand Communication course at an Upper SecondarySchool in Oslo, Norway. Our analysis reveals how aprocedure called practical assignments has developedhistorically at the school, and how this procedure iscarried out in the classroom. Theoretically, our studyis informed by Activity Theory, which affords us toolsto analyze how social institutions and learning trajectoriesevolve over time, and how longitudinal dimensionsemerge in situ. Our findings show how teachers andlearners create a space for solving context-specific problemsinvolving sophisticated technology. A historicalanalysis is here crucial not only in understanding whydigital technologies are used in specific ways, but alsohow they evolve into classroom conventions.

The development of the idea of seeing parts of the world as 'related objects' or the 'systemic view' and its relation to conventional science is briefly described. Concepts in the systemic view regarded as fundamental and their expression as linguistic and mathematical models which would turn this view into 'systems science', are introduced. Products are represented as sets and linguistic networks of ordered pairs. Semantic diagrams describe the dynamics of change. A case study to illustrate the basic notions and models is given.

The development of the idea of seeing parts of the world as 'related objects' or the 'systemic view' and its relation to conventional science is briefly described. Concepts in the systemic view regarded as fundamental and their expression as linguistic and mathematical models which would turn this view into 'systems science', are introduced. Products are represented as sets and linguistic networks of ordered pairs. Semantic diagrams describe the dynamics of change. A case study to illustrate the basic notions and models is given.

A regular semigroup S is locally inverse if each local submonoid eSe, e an idempotent, is an inverse semigroup. It is shown that every locally inverse semigroup is an image of a regular Rees matrix semigroup, over an inverse semigroup, by a homomorphism 0 which is one-to-one on each local submonoid; such a homomorphism is called a local isomorphism. Regular semigroups which are locally isomorphic images of regular Rees matrix semigroups over semilattices are also characterized.

This paper studies the reliability and validity of naturalistic speech errors as a tool for language production research. Possible biases when collecting naturalistic speech errors are identified and specific predictions derived. These patterns are then contrasted with published reports from Germanic languages (English, German and Dutch) and one Romance language (Spanish). Unlike findings in the Germanic languages, Spanish speech errors show many patterns which run contrary to those expected from bias: (1) more phonological errors occur between words than within word; (2) word-initial consonants are less likely to participate in errors than wordmedial consonants, (3) errors are equally likely in stressed and in unstressed syllables, (4) perseverations are more frequent than anticipations, and (5) there is no trace of a lexical bias. We present a new corpus of Spanish speech errors collected by many theoretically naïve observers (whereas the only corpus available so far was collected by two highly trained theoretically informed observers), give a general overview of it, and use it to replicate previous reports. In spite of the different susceptibility of these methods to bias, results were remarkably similar in both corpora and again contrary to predictions from bias. As a result, collecting speech errors "in the wild" seems to be free of bias to a reasonable extent even when using a multiple-collector method. The observed contrasting patterns between Spanish and Germanic languages arise as true cross-linguistic differences.

Research on understanding the effects of language experiences upon executive control processes has turned away from static measures of language use to using more continuous measures such as proficiency, language switching and exposure. The present work utilizes language entropy, a measure that indexes the social and linguistic diversity of daily-life contexts (e.g., a classroom, cafeteria, home) of language use, to delineate the mechanisms through which contextual and social effects influence executive control. Results from existing studies utilizing entropy primarily examine bilingual contexts; however, this study focuses on multilingual university students in Ahmedabad, India. Participants (N = 56) provided entropy data from the Language History and Background Questionnaire and executive control measures from the AX-CP Task for proactive control and the n-back Task for working memory. Entropy measures proved very predictive for participants' current language use patterns, but did not significantly predict any aspect of AX-CPT or n-back Task performance. Implications for context-specific stimulus categorization and the adaptive control hypothesis are discussed.

Understanding whether conceptual representation during language comprehension and production relies on perceptual simulation remains a central debate in cognitive science. Grounded cognition theories propose that linguistic meaning is constructed through modality‑specific simulations, whereas symbolic accounts argue for amodal, language‑specific processing. This study examined whether perceptual simulations systematically drive conceptual representation by relating spontaneous non‑visual eye movements to the processing of motion events. Forty‑two participants completed two blank‑screen eye‑tracking experiments: a comprehension task using environmental sounds and spoken event descriptions, and a production task eliciting verbal descriptions of environmental sounds. Critical stimuli depicted horizontal or vertical motion events, allowing tests of whether gaze dynamics reflect the spatial properties of simulated motion. Across both experiments, participants showed greater overall gaze dispersion when processing motion events compared to non‑motion controls, suggesting that perceptual simulation of spatial event structure contributed to meaning construction in both comprehension and production. However, axis‑specific effects predicted by strong simulation accounts did not emerge. Linguistic processing demands modulated oculomotor behavior: verbal comprehension and speech‑planning phases elicited higher saccade rates and reduced travel distance, consistent with a shift of cognitive resources toward linguistic representations at the expense of simulation. Individual differences in visual imagery ability further shaped gaze behavior, indicating variability in reliance on perceptual simulation. These findings challenge claims that sensorimotor activation is automatic or necessary for conceptual processing, while demonstrating that perceptual simulation remains a flexible, context‑dependent resource. The study advances methodological approaches to non‑visual gaze analysis and refines theoretical accounts of how linguistic and non‑linguistic representations interact during meaning construction.

Dependencies First: Eye Tracking Evidence from Sentence Production in Tagalog Sebastian Sauppe ([email protected]) Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Wundtlaan 1, 6525XD Nijmegen, Netherlands; International Max Planck Research School for Language Sciences, Wundtlaan 1, 6525XD Nijmegen, Netherlands Elisabeth Norcliffe ([email protected]) Agnieszka E. Konopka ([email protected]) Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Wundtlaan 1, 6525XD Nijmegen, Netherlands Robert D. Van Valin, Jr ([email protected]) Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Wundtlaan 1, 6525XD Nijmegen, Netherlands; Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf, Universitatsstr. 1, 40225 Dusseldorf, Germany; University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260, USA Stephen C. Levinson ([email protected]) Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Wundtlaan 1, 6525XD Nijmegen, Netherlands; Radboud University Nijmegen, Erasmus...

The explanatory potential of language processing for linguistic typology has been advocated by functionalist typologists and psycholinguists alike [1,2,3,4]. Building precise, testable theories of the relationship between real-time language use and typological patterns is, however, hampered by a lack of empirical research on language processing in the vast majority of the world’s languages [5]. As a small step towards expanding the typological scope of processing research, we investigate the processes underlying simple sentence production in two verb- initial languages, Tzeltal (Mayan) and Tagalog (Austronesian), using a picture-description/eye tracking task. Our goal was to determine to what extent the time-course of sentence production is affected by differences in basic word order and verbal morphology. In Tagalog, the verb agrees in semantic role with the “privileged syntactic argument” (PSA), which may be either the agent or patient. In Tzeltal, finite verbs obligatorily cross-...

In transforming thoughts into speech, speakers must encode a pre-verbal message linguistically. We investigated this process in the Philippine language Tagalog, which, unlike most European languages, has a verb-initial basic word order. The Tagalog verb agrees in semantic role with the “privileged syntactic argument” (simplified: “subject”). Either the semantic agent or the semantic patient may be the “subject” (e.g., [1]); in either case the sentence remains transitive (unlike English where promoting the patient to the subject requires passivization). The subject can occur sentence-finally (VOS: [chase_patient.voice woman chicken_subject] – ‘the woman chases the chicken’) or sentence-medially (VSO: [chase_patient.voice chicken_subject woman] – ‘the woman chases the chicken’), but in both cases, sentence-initial verb position requires selection of appropriate subject–verb agreement marking. We examined the time course of sentence formulation for descriptions of transitive events [2,...

The study provides a comprehensive review of Willem Levelt’s Speech
Production Model, a foundational framework that explains the stages of
speech production. Levelt’s model, consisting of conceptualization,
formulation, articulation, and self-monitoring, describes how speakers
systematically generate spoken language. This paper explores the model’s
theoretical foundations, its applications in language processing, and its
implications for understanding speech disorders such as aphasia, stuttering,
and dysarthria. Furthermore, the study examines recent advancements in
neuroimaging and bilingual speech production, highlighting modifications
and critiques of the model, particularly regarding its linearity and feedback
mechanisms. The review underscores the model’s significance in cognitive
science, linguistics, and language learning while addressing its limitations
and potential future developments. By integrating empirical findings and
theoretical discussions, this study offers insights into the continued
evolution of speech production models in response to contemporary
research challenges.

Speech planning involves different steps in order to transform a conceptual message into speech. These include establishing structural relations among constituents (i.e., relational information), and selecting the appropriate lexical items to convey the intended message (non-relational elements). However, the precise way relational and non-relational information are computed when undertaking linguistic encoding is not clear. This paper explores how the pre-linguistic message undergoes linguistic encoding, and what kind of information (relational or non-relational) is prioritized in doing so. We analyze the production planning of Relative Clauses in Spanish (a head-initial language) and Japanese (a head-final language) by monolingual speakers, by means of the eye-tracking method while participants described colored pictures. Although in both Spanish and Japanese the structure under study is the same (with the same syntactic configuration), word order is entirely opposite between both...

This paper presents research of the possibilities of application deep neural networks in semantic analysis. This paper presents the current situation in this area and the prospects for application an artificial intelligence in se-mantic analysis and trend and tendencies of this science area. For better un-derstanding future tendencies of researches in semantical area we present detailed review of the studies in semantic analysis with using artificial intelligence, studies about a human brain. Keywords—Semantic Analysis, Deep Neural Networks, Forecasting, Processing of Nat-ural Language.

Previous studies have shown that emotional content modulates the activity of several components of the event-related potentials during word comprehension. However, little is known about the impact of affective information on the different processing stages involved in word production. In the present study we aimed to investigate the influence of positive and negative emotions in phonological encoding, a process that have been shown to take place between 300 and 450 ms in previous studies. Participants performed letter searching in a picture naming task. It was found that grapheme monitoring in positive and negative picture names was associated with slower reaction times and enhanced amplitudes of a positive component around 400 ms as compared to monitoring letters in neutral picture names. We propose that this modulation reflects a disruption in phonological encoding processes as a consequence of the capture of attention by affective content. Grapheme monitoring in positive picture names also elicited higher amplitudes than letter searching in neutral image names in a positive component around 100 ms. This amplitude enhancement might be interpreted as a manifestation of the 'positive offset' during conceptual preparation processes. The results of a control experiment with a passive viewing task showed that both effects cannot be simply attributed to the processing of the emotional images per se. Overall, it seems that emotion modulates word production at several processing stages.

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The goal of this paper is to explore extensions to electronic dictionaries. Adding certain functions could considerably extend the range of tasks for which they could provide support. Putting the needed information at the distance of a mouse click would allow for active ...

Strong" and "weak" phonological patterns, such as fortitions and lenitions, are widely observed across languages. Despite their prevalence, there is currently no unified account for these patterns. A key reason is that they seem to form a heterogeneous set, defined by disparate factors such as their position in a word, their phonological context, and/or their lexical class. Our goal in this paper is to provide such a unified account. Specifically, we propose that strong/weak patterns are in large part the result of biases towards efficient message transmission-in particular, a preference to invest resources where it is more effective in facilitating successful message transmission. While we are not the first to recognize that phonological systems are shaped by their use in communication, traditionally, such accounts have viewed phonological change as driven by the transmission of phonological units (phonological units-as-message). Based on theoretical and empirical advances, we argue that biases on message transmission relevant to strong/weak patterns instead primarily operate on larger units of meaning (meaning-as-message) rather than on the phonological units that comprise them; in other words, phonologies do not appear to care that a listener understands that a sound is /p/ versus /b/, but rather that a word is pat versus bat. Integrating concepts from information theory and Bayesian inference with the existing body of phonological research, we show that this important elaboration of existing approaches provides a unifying explanation for "strong" and "weak" patterns and possibly other phonological phenomena. The whole problem of efficient and error-free communication turns out to be that of removing from messages the somewhat inefficient redundancy which they have and then adding redundancy of the right sort in order to allow correction of errors made in transmission.