scholarly journals Cortical maps recovered from language statistics

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fritz Guenther ◽  
Luca Rinaldi
Keyword(s):  
Cortical Area ◽  
Conceptual Knowledge ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Body Part ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Statistical Structure ◽  
The World ◽  
Language Statistics ◽  
The Brain

Large-scale linguistic data is nowadays available in abundance. Here, we demonstrate that the surface-level statistical structure of language alone opens a window into how our brain represents the world. To this end, we examine the statistical occurrence of words referring to body parts in very different languages, covering nearly 4 billions of native speakers. Our findings indicate that the human body as extracted from language resembles the distorted human-like figure known as the sensory homunculus, whose form depicts the amount of cortical area dedicated to somatosensory functions of each body part. This links the way conceptual knowledge is represented and communicated in language to how the brain processes information from the sensory systems.

scholarly journals Wrist and finger motor representations embedded in the cerebral and cerebellar resting-state activation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toshiki Kusano ◽  
Hiroki Kurashige ◽  
Isao Nambu ◽  
Yoshiya Moriguchi ◽  
Takashi Hanakawa ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Resting State ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Body Part ◽  
Resting State Fmri ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Finger Movements ◽  
Multiple Components ◽  
Brain Activity Pattern ◽  
Motor Representations ◽  
The Brain

AbstractSeveral functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have demonstrated that resting-state brain activity consists of multiple components, each corresponding to the spatial pattern of brain activity induced by performing a task. Especially in a movement task, such components have been shown to correspond to the brain activity pattern of the relevant anatomical region, meaning that the voxels of pattern that are cooperatively activated while using a body part (e.g., foot, hand, and tongue) also behave cooperatively in the resting state. However, it is unclear whether the components involved in resting-state brain activity correspond to those induced by the movement of discrete body parts. To address this issue, in the present study, we focused on wrist and finger movements in the hand, and a cross-decoding technique trained to discriminate between the multi-voxel patterns induced by wrist and finger movement was applied to the resting-state fMRI. We found that the multi-voxel pattern in resting-state brain activity corresponds to either wrist or finger movements in the motor-related areas of each hemisphere of the cerebrum and cerebellum. These results suggest that resting-state brain activity in the motor-related areas consists of the components corresponding to the elementary movements of individual body parts. Therefore, the resting-state brain activity possibly has a finer structure than considered previously.

Semantics of Hawrami Body Part Terms

2012 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 319-335
Author(s):  
Bistoon Abasi ◽  
Amer Gheitury
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Body Part ◽  
Field Work ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Semantic Properties ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Internal Body

Human body as a universal possession of human beings constitutes an interesting domain where questions regarding semantic categorisations might be sought crosslinguistically. In the following, we will attempt to describe the terms used to refer to the body in Hawrami, an Iranian language spoken in Paveh, a small township in the western province of Kermanshah near Iraqi borders. Due to the scarcity of written material, the inventory of 202 terms referring to external and internal body parts were obtained through a field work, which took a long time, and techniques, such as the “colouring task”, observation and recording the terms as used in ordinary conversations and informal interviews with native speakers. The semantic properties of the terms and the way they are related in a partonymy or locative relationship were also investigated. As far as universals of body part terms are concerned, while conforming to ‘depth principle’ concerning the number of levels each partonomy may consist of, Hawrami violates an important feature of this principle by not allowing transitive relations between different levels of partonomic hierarchies. In addition, Hawrami lacks a term for labelling the ‘whole’.

scholarly journals Which words do English non-native speakers know? New supernational levels based on yes/no decision

2020 ◽  
pp. 026765832093452
Author(s):  
Marc Brysbaert ◽  
Emmanuel Keuleers ◽  
Paweł Mandera
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Vocabulary Test ◽  
Word Families ◽  
The World

To have more information about the English words known by second language (L2) speakers, we ran a large-scale crowdsourcing vocabulary test, which yielded 17 million useful responses. It provided us with a list of 445 words known to nearly all participants. The list was compared to various existing lists of words advised to include in the first stages of English L2 teaching. The data also provided us with a ranking of 61,000 words in terms of degree and speed of word recognition in English L2 speakers, which correlated r = .85 with a similar ranking based on native English speakers. The L2 speakers in our study were relatively better at academic words (which are often cognates in their mother tongue) and words related to experiences English L2 students are likely to have. They were worse at words related to childhood and family life. Finally, a new list of 20 levels of 1,000 word families is presented, which will be of use to English L2 teachers, as the levels represent the order in which English vocabulary seems to be acquired by L2 learners across the world.

scholarly journals Ownership of an artificial limb induced by electrical brain stimulation

2016 ◽  
Vol 114 (1) ◽  
pp. 166-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly L. Collins ◽  
Arvid Guterstam ◽  
Jeneva Cronin ◽  
Jared D. Olson ◽  
H. Henrik Ehrsson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Electrical Stimulation ◽  
Brain Stimulation ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
Body Part ◽  
Multisensory Perception ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Electrical Brain Stimulation ◽  
Artificial Limb ◽  
Somatosensory Stimulation ◽  
The Brain

Replacing the function of a missing or paralyzed limb with a prosthetic device that acts and feels like one’s own limb is a major goal in applied neuroscience. Recent studies in nonhuman primates have shown that motor control and sensory feedback can be achieved by connecting sensors in a robotic arm to electrodes implanted in the brain. However, it remains unknown whether electrical brain stimulation can be used to create a sense of ownership of an artificial limb. In this study on two human subjects, we show that ownership of an artificial hand can be induced via the electrical stimulation of the hand section of the somatosensory (SI) cortex in synchrony with touches applied to a rubber hand. Importantly, the illusion was not elicited when the electrical stimulation was delivered asynchronously or to a portion of the SI cortex representing a body part other than the hand, suggesting that multisensory integration according to basic spatial and temporal congruence rules is the underlying mechanism of the illusion. These findings show that the brain is capable of integrating “natural” visual input and direct cortical-somatosensory stimulation to create the multisensory perception that an artificial limb belongs to one’s own body. Thus, they serve as a proof of concept that electrical brain stimulation can be used to “bypass” the peripheral nervous system to induce multisensory illusions and ownership of artificial body parts, which has important implications for patients who lack peripheral sensory input due to spinal cord or nerve lesions.

scholarly journals BODY PART NOUN GROUPS WITH SPATIAL MEANINGS IN LINGUISTIC WORLD PICTURE

2021 ◽  
pp. 31-36
Author(s):  
Т.Е. Чаплыгина
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Spatial Relations ◽  
Body Part ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
World Picture ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Russian Language

В статье рассматриваются особенности выражения пространственных отношений именными локативными группами с названиями частей тела. Анализ показал, что выбор предлогов в или на при выражении пространственных отношений существительными, называющими части тела, в большой степени обусловлен особенностями восприятия мира носителями русского языка. The article touches upon the subject of spatial relations expressed by means of body part names in Russian language. The research demonstrated, that the choice of prepositions v (in) or na (on) when expressing spatial relations with body part names is largely due to the peculiarities of the perception of the world by native speakers of the Russian language.

scholarly journals Somatisms in the Structure of the Paremiological Means of the Kyrgyz Language

2021 ◽  
pp. 35-39
Author(s):  
Sabira Zhamalbekovna Zhancharbekova
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Cultural Value ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Abstract Concepts ◽  
Group Status ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Cultural Concepts ◽  
The People ◽  
The World

This article provides a semantic analysis of somatisms in the proverbs of Kyrgyz folklore, examines the ability of somatic units to metaphorize and convey in an allegorical form the cultural and everyday features of the life of the people. Proverbs from Kyrgyz folklore containing a somatic component were selected for analysis. The purpose of the study is to carry out a semantic analysis of somatisms and determine their role in the linguistic picture of the world of native speakers of the Kyrgyz language. It is shown that the most significant somatic concepts reflect the cultural, value and worldview guidelines of the people, their centuries-old history and everyday life. In the analysis, special attention is paid to the ability of somatisms to metaphorize complex everyday, historical, and cultural concepts. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the fact that the systematic analysis of various somatic groups in the proverbs of Kyrgyz folklore (communicative, denoting the senses, etc.) has been led for the first time. As a result, it was revealed that the image of "corporeality" is widely represented in the linguistic picture of the world of Kyrgyz speakers, somaticisms are an effective way of conceptualizing objects and phenomena of the surrounding world, as well as abstract concepts. It is concluded that the communicative function is often conveyed in Kyrgyz proverbs using the somatism “language”; somatism “head” replaces concepts similar in meaning (“mind”, “intellect”). The functional and external characteristics of body parts are used in folklore to denote a person's role in a social group, status, age, etc. Somatisms reveal complex folk images and metaphors that make up the linguistic picture of the world of native speakers of the Kyrgyz language.

Figurative and non-figurative use of body-part words in descriptions of emotions in Dalabon (Northern Australia)

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maïa Ponsonnet
Keyword(s):  
Body Part ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Northern Australia ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Semantic Associations ◽  
Visible Body ◽  
Internal Body ◽  
Figurative Expressions

This article examines the status and functions of body-part words with respect to linguistic descriptions of emotions in Dalabon (Northern Australia). As in many languages in the world, words denoting invisible (internal) body-parts occur in figurative expressions. These expressions instantiate metaphors and metonymies inspired by non-observable somatic responses to emotions. In addition to this figurative pattern of usage, many more words for visible body-parts occur in expressions where they serve to produce more detailed descriptions of emotional behaviors — specifying which body-part is involved in a given emotional manifestation. The relatively widespread use of body-part words in such descriptions of emotions fosters semantic extensions, where some body-part nouns gain emotional connotations. The article analyzes these descriptive functions of body-part nouns in Dalabon, and examines how they reinforce semantic associations between body-parts and emotions.

scholarly journals Language structure is influenced by the number of speakers but seemingly not by the proportion of non-native speakers

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 181274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Koplenig
Keyword(s):  
Adult Learners ◽  
Negative Selection ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Relative Proportion ◽  
Statistical Structure ◽  
Information Theoretic ◽  
Language Structure ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Impact

Large-scale empirical evidence indicates a fascinating statistical relationship between the estimated number of language users and its linguistic and statistical structure. In this context, the linguistic niche hypothesis argues that this relationship reflects a negative selection against morphological paradigms that are hard to learn for adults, because languages with a large number of speakers are assumed to be typically spoken and learned by greater proportions of adults. In this paper, this conjecture is tested empirically for more than 2000 languages. The results question the idea of the impact of non-native speakers on the grammatical and statistical structure of languages, as it is demonstrated that the relative proportion of non-native speakers does not significantly correlate with either morphological or information-theoretic complexity. While it thus seems that large numbers of adult learners/speakers do not affect the (grammatical or statistical) structure of a language, the results suggest that there is indeed a relationship between the number of speakers and (especially) information-theoretic complexity, i.e. entropy rates. A potential explanation for the observed relationship is discussed.

scholarly journals Which words do English non-native speakers know? New supernational levels based on yes/no decision

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Brysbaert
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Vocabulary Test ◽  
Word Families ◽  
The World

To have more information about the English words known by L2 speakers, we ran a large-scale crowdsourcing vocabulary test, which yielded 17 million useful responses. It provided us with a list of 445 words known to nearly all participants. The list was compared to various existing lists of words advised to include in the first stages of English L2 teaching. The data also provided us with a ranking of 61 thousand words in terms of degree and speed of word recognition in English L2 speakers, which correlated r = .85 with a similar ranking based on native English speakers. The L2 speakers in our study were relatively better at academic words (which are often cognates in their mother tongue) and words related to experiences English L2 students are likely to have. They were worse at words related to childhood and family life. Finally, a new list of 20 levels of 1000 word families is presented, which will be of use to English L2 teachers, as the levels represent the order in which English vocabulary seems to be acquired by L2 learners across the world.

scholarly journals Tuning to Real-Life Language Statistics: Online Processing of Multiword Sequences in Native and Non-Native Speakers Across Language Registers

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elma Kerz ◽  
Daniel Wiechmann ◽  
Felicity Frinsel ◽  
Morten H. Christiansen
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Learning Mechanisms ◽  
Online Processing ◽  
Real Language ◽  
Language Statistics ◽  
Language Input

A large body of research over the past two decades has demonstrated that children and adults are equipped with statistical learning mechanisms that facilitate their language processing and boost their acquisition. However, this research has been conducted primarily using artificial languages that are highly simplified relative to real language input. Here, we aimed to determine to what extent adult native and non-native speakers show sensitivity to real-life language statistics obtained from large-scale analyses of authentic language use. Through a within-subject design, we conducted a series of behavioral experiments geared towards assessing the sensitivity to two types of distributional statistics (frequency and entropy) during online processing of multiword sequences across four registers of English (spoken, fiction, news and academic language). Our results show that both native and non-native speakers are able to `tune to' multiple distributional statistics inherent in different types of real language input.

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