Oral Approach Avoidance

Abstract. Words whose articulation resembles ingestion movements are preferred to words mimicking expectoration movements. This so-called in-out effect, suggesting that the oral movements caused by consonantal articulation automatically activate concordant motivational states, was already replicated in languages belonging to Germanic (e.g., German and English) and Italic (e.g., Portuguese) branches of the Indo-European family. However, it remains unknown whether such preference extends to the Indo-European branches whose writing system is based on the Cyrillic rather than Latin alphabet (e.g., Ukrainian), or whether it occurs in languages not belonging to the Indo-European family (e.g., Turkish). We replicated the in-out effect in two high-powered experiments ( N = 274), with Ukrainian and Turkish native speakers, further supporting an embodied explanation for this intriguing preference.

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Functional Neuroanatomy of Contextual Acquisition of Concrete and Abstract Words

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn.2008.21171 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 21 (11) ◽

pp. 2154-2171 ◽

Cited By ~ 33

Author(s):

Anna Mestres-Missé ◽

Thomas F. Münte ◽

Antoni Rodriguez-Fornells

Keyword(s):

Native Speakers ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Functional Neuroanatomy ◽

Linguistic Context ◽

Abstract Concepts ◽

New Words ◽

Simulation Paradigm ◽

Abstract Words ◽

The Brain ◽

Concrete Words

The meaning of a novel word can be acquired by extracting it from linguistic context. Here we simulated word learning of new words associated to concrete and abstract concepts in a variant of the human simulation paradigm that provided linguistic context information in order to characterize the brain systems involved. Native speakers of Spanish read pairs of sentences in order to derive the meaning of a new word that appeared in the terminal position of the sentences. fMRI revealed that learning the meaning associated to concrete and abstract new words was qualitatively different and recruited similar brain regions as the processing of real concrete and abstract words. In particular, learning of new concrete words selectively boosted the activation of the ventral anterior fusiform gyrus, a region driven by imageability, which has previously been implicated in the processing of concrete words.

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Minimal conditions of motor inductions of approach-avoidance states: The case of oral movements.

Journal of Experimental Psychology General ◽

10.1037/xge0000217 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 145 (12) ◽

pp. 1589-1603 ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

Sascha Topolinski ◽

Lea Boecker

Keyword(s):

Oral Movements ◽

Approach Avoidance

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Czech spoken in Bohemia and Moravia

Journal of the International Phonetic Association ◽

10.1017/s0025100312000102 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 42 (2) ◽

pp. 225-232 ◽

Cited By ~ 18

Author(s):

Šárka Šimáčková ◽

Václav Jonáš Podlipský ◽

Kateřina Chládková

Keyword(s):

Czech Republic ◽

Native Speakers ◽

Native Language ◽

Foreign Affairs ◽

Slavic Language ◽

The Czech Republic ◽

The Usa ◽

The Uk ◽

European Family

As a western Slavic language of the Indo-European family, Czech is closest to Slovak and Polish. It is spoken as a native language by nearly 10 million people in the Czech Republic (Czech Statistical Office n.d.). About two million people living abroad, mostly in the USA, Canada, Austria, Germany, Slovakia, and the UK, claim Czech heritage (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic 2009). However, it is not known how many of them are native speakers of Czech.

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Another Hmong Messianic Script and Its Texts

Written Language & Literacy ◽

10.1075/wll.1.1.05sma ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

pp. 103-128 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

William Smalley ◽

Nina Wimuttikosol

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Native Speakers ◽

The United States ◽

Mekong River ◽

Writing System ◽

Writing Systems ◽

Secondary Interest ◽

Hmong Language

Among several writing systems devised by native speakers of Hmong, the Sayaboury script is of interest because it is the only one in which a body of apparently original mythic religio-political text material has been recorded. It also has an unusually ingenious, elegant, and economical set of vowel symbols, and a convention of doubling all initial consonant symbols in formal writing. Of secondary interest is the fact that this system was produced (and revealed to one of the authors) west of the Mekong River — not in the more focal Hmong areas which funneled refugees through Ban Vinai, Thailand, into the United States. The authors present here their limited joint knowledge about these texts and the system with which they are written, describing how they became known, their messianic nature, the structure of the writing system, its possible origins, and the fit between the writing and the Hmong language.

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Devising an Orthography for the Cak Language by Using the Cak Script

The GLOCAL in Asia 2019 ◽

10.47298/cala2019.16-4 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Huziwara Keisuke ◽

Keyword(s):

21St Century ◽

Fundamental System ◽

Native Speakers ◽

Writing System ◽

High Tone ◽

Chittagong Hill Tracts ◽

Loan Words

Cak (ISO 639-3 ckh) represents a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh. The language is known as Sak in Rakhaing State, Burma. The total number of native speakers of the language is estimated at approximately 3,000 in Bangladesh and 1,000 in Burma (Simons and Fennig eds. 2017). Although Cak and Sak are mutually understandable where native words are concerned, comprehensibility becomes arduous with Bangla loan words in Cak, and with Arakanese/Burmese loan words in Sak. Until recently, Cak/Sak did not have a script of its own. However, by the beginning of the 21st century, the Cak script was developed and finally published as Ong Khyaing Cak (2013), in which its fundamental system is described. Although well designed overall, the current Cak writing system found in Ong Khyaing Cak (2013) has several shortcomings. Huziwara (2015) discusses the following five instances: (a) No independent letter for /v/, (b) unnecessary letters for the non-phonemic elements such as the voiced aspirated stops and the retroflexes, (c) the arbitrary use of short and long vowel signs, (d) a frequent omission of high tone marks in checked syllables, and (e) multiple ways to denote coda consonants. In this paper, Huziwara (2015) will first be reviewed. Then, the basic phonetic correspondences between Cak in Bangladesh and Sak in Burma will be examined. Finally, based on these two discussions, an orthography to be employed in the forthcoming Cak-English-Bangla-Burmese dictionary, a revised version of Huziwara (2016), will be demonstrated.

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The effects of language typology on L2 lexical availability and spelling accuracy

International Journal of English Studies ◽

10.6018/ijes/2017/2/256411 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 17 (2) ◽

pp. 63 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

María Martínez-Adrián ◽

Francisco Gallardo-del-Puerto

Keyword(s):

Deleterious Effect ◽

Native Speakers ◽

Positive Influence ◽

Spanish Speakers ◽

Writing System ◽

Language Typology ◽

Chinese Speakers ◽

Semantic Categories

<p>This paper explores whether language typology plays any role in lexical availability and spelling accuracy in L2 English. Two groups of adult speakers were compared: a group of native speakers of a language typologically distant from English with a logographic writing system (Chinese; n=13) vs. a group of native speakers of a language typologically closer to English with an alphabetic system (Spanish; n=14). All participants performed a lexical availability task (Carcedo González, 1998a) which was later on analyzed in terms of the ‘total number of words’ and the ‘total number of words containing spelling mistakes’ per each of the 15 semantic categories included. Spanish speakers displayed larger available lexica and fewer spelling mistakes than Chinese speakers, an outcome which would confirm the positive influence of L1-L2 proximity on L2 lexical availability and the deleterious effect of having a non-alphabetic L1 writing system on L2 spelling accuracy. </p>

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Somatic and visceral effects of word valence, arousal and concreteness in a continuum lexical space

Scientific Reports ◽

10.1038/s41598-019-56382-2 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 9 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Alessandra Vergallito ◽

Marco Alessandro Petilli ◽

Luigi Cattaneo ◽

Marco Marelli

Keyword(s):

Word Processing ◽

Native Speakers ◽

Muscular Activity ◽

Abstract Concepts ◽

Corrugator Supercilii ◽

Electrophysiological Signals ◽

Levator Labii Superioris ◽

Abstract Words ◽

The Impact ◽

Variable Impact

AbstractAlthough affective and semantic word properties are known to independently influence our sensorimotor system, less is known about their interaction. We investigated this issue applying a data-driven mixed-effects regression approach, evaluating the impact of lexical-semantic properties on electrophysiological parameters, namely facial muscles activity (left corrugator supercilii, zygomaticus major, levator labii superioris) and heartbeat, during word processing. 500 Italian words were acoustically presented to 20 native-speakers, while electrophysiological signals were continuously recorded. Stimuli varied for affective properties, namely valence (the degree of word positivity), arousal (the amount of emotional activation brought by the word), and semantic ones, namely concreteness. Results showed that the three variables interacted in predicting both heartbeat and muscular activity. Specifically, valence influenced activation for lower levels of arousal. This pattern was further modulated by concreteness: the lower the word concreteness, the larger affective-variable impact. Taken together, our results provide evidence for bodily responses during word comprehension. Crucially, such responses were found not only for voluntary muscles, but also for the heartbeat, providing evidence to the idea of a common emotional motor system. The higher impact of affective properties for abstract words supports proposals suggesting that emotions play a central role in the grounding of abstract concepts.

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