Evaluating creativity of verbal responses or texts is a challenging task due to psychometric issues associated with subjective ratings and the peculiarities of textual data. We explore an approach to objectively assess the creativity of responses in a sentence generation task to (1) better understand what language-related aspects are valued by…

The present paper addresses the study of non-arbitrariness in language within a deep learning framework. We present a set of experiments aimed at assessing the pervasiveness of different forms of non-arbitrary phonological patterns across a set of typologically distant languages. Different sequence-processing neural networks are trained in a set…

The present research aims to discuss the phonological patterns in Quranic verse-final pauses ("fawa?il") in order to provide an insight into the phonetic network governing the symmetrical and the asymmetrical pauses ("fawa?il") in terms of concordance ("al-nasaq al-?awti"). The data are collected from different parts…

Among the many ways in which sounds alternate in the world's languages, changes in the order of sounds (metathesis) are relatively rare. Mutsun, a Southern Costanoan language of California which was documented extensively before the death of its last speaker in 1930, displays three patterns of synchronic consonant-vowel (CV) metathesis. Two of…

The goal of this study was to investigate the effects of prosodic stress patterns and semantic depth on word learning. Twelve preschool-aged children with typically developing speech and language skills participated in a word learning task. Novel words with either a trochaic or iambic prosodic pattern were embedded in one of two learning…

A study of the utterances of young children, aged 7 to 22 months, is described. These utterances, varying in length from one to 17 syllables, contain only suprasegmental information because the verbal content was incomprehensible to hearers who were not acquainted with the child and the situation in which the utterances occured. In the corpus,…

A type of sound symbolism that has influenced the composition of modern Spanish vocabulary is discussed. Rates of lexical retention and loss are attributed to the degree to which verbs fit the developing morphophonemic and semantic patterns. (EJS)

Supports the theory that phonic units cannot be delimited without reference to conceptual units, and that there must be a mutual dependence of sound and meaning in language. (DS)

Following a review of related work on intonation, both phonetic and phonemic descriptions of intonation in Italian are presented. Using recordings of radio broadcasts as data, a system of assigning pitch levels to syllables was devised, based on four pitches. The close relationship between stress placement and pitch level was considered. In order…

This paper examines the status of surface structure in transformational grammar, and the way that surface structure mediates the contacts between the phonological and semantic components of the grammar. Surface structure refers not to a single but to at least four distinct notions that do not necessarily define a homogeneous level of…

A psychological basis for belief in human monsters is provided by the possibility of human aberrations, instinctive human fear and fascination for such prodigies, and the existence of barbaric tales ridiculing foreigners. The role of language as a cause for such belief is investigated, specifically in terms of folk etymologies for more or less…

This report is one in a regular series on the status and progress of speech research. The 11 manuscript topics are: towards a theoretical reassessment of the role of proprioception in the perception and control of human movement, interarticulator programing in stop production, the beginnings of speech, proofreading errors on the word "the," the…

This book reports the proceedings of the conference on the role of speech in language, the fifth conference in the "Communicating by Language" Series, sponsored by the Growth and Development Branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The focus of the first group of papers is on the development of speech in man and…

Phonetic symbolism implies that there are intrinsic relationships between sounds employed in words and the meanings of the words. Research in phonetic symbolism and how it operates has implications for foreign language learning. Such research seeks to determine whether one's capacity for correctly guessing the meanings of words in another language…

This book attempts to provide a broad and not too highly technical coverage of linguistic theory, both historically and in its current status. Although no particular viewpoint is espoused, a penchant for transformation generative grammar is apparent. The text discusses language as a means of communication, the physiology of articulation,…