Colloquia and Talks
Spring Semester Reading Groups
Conferences and Calls for Papers
Fall 2010 Department Newsletter

(LingLunch) Historical nativization of source-faithful patterns in the accentuation of Japanese loanwords

In contact situations between communities speaking different languages, words are often borrowed to express novel or foreign concepts. These =91loanwords=92 are adapted to fit the sound system of the borrowing language, resulting in pronunciations that can be unfaithful to the source language (e.g., English "Christmas" > Japanese [ku-ri-su-ma-su]; Japanese "karaoke" > English [ke-ri-o-ki]). Moreover, this process of "loanword adaptation" is not restricted to consonants and vowels since the placement of stress or accent can also be altered (e.g. English [toMAto] > Japanese [TOmato]; Japanese [tsunami] (no accent) > English [tsuNAmi]). What precisely causes these unfaithful adaptation patterns has been the topic of much debate in the past decade (Peperkamp 2005; LaCharite and Paradis 2005; Kubozono 2006). Most studies, however, are based entirely on data from modern languages; only recently have researchers begun to examine how adaptation patterns can change over time (Ito and Mester 2006; Smith 2006/2009). In particular, no data are yet available on historical changes in the adaptation of stress or accent. The present study fills this gap by presenting new data from the oldest dictionary of modern Japanese marking accent information: the "Nihon Daijisho," edited by the novelist Yamada Bimyo and published in 1892. All loanwords contained in this dictionary were compiled into a database and systematically compared both to their equivalents in modern Japanese as well as to their correspondents in the various source languages. Results suggest that, in fact, relatively little change is observed overall in the words=92 accentuation patterns, in part because the two relevant forces in determining accent location (antepenultimacy and source-faithfulness) coincide in 70% of cases. In cases where these two forces diverged, however, a process of "nativization" was observed, moving away from foreign norms, a trend that may be the product of evolving Japanese-Western relations over the past century.

(French and Italian Student Conference) The Science behind the Myth of Standard French

This talk is part of the French and Italian Student Conference, which includes contributions from the Linguistics and Spanish and Portuguese Departments.

(Linguistics Colloquium Series) Spring Series

The IULC Colloquium Series meets selected Fridays at 4pm in Ballantine Hall (BH) - room 228. Speakers and dates scheduled for this semester are the following, with more to be added as soon as details are finalized. The Colloquium Series is a good way to keep up with current research being done in a variety of linguistic subfields. All are encouraged to attend!

Date	Speaker
4 February	Vicki Anderson
11 February	Evguenia Malaia
4 March	Mitsuaki Yoneyama
9 March	Carole Paradis*
1 April	Nola Stephens
8 April	Grant Goodall

*This talk is sponsored by the Department of French and Italian

(Cognitive Science Colloquium Series) Computational Psychiatry: When Good Decisions Go Bad

ABSTRACT: Substantial efforts across the fields of statistics, operations research, economics, computer science and control theory have provided us with a psychologically- and neurobiologically-grounded account of how humans and other animals learn to predict rewards and punishments, and choose actions to maximize the former and minimize the latter. It becomes an obvious idea to try and relate disruptions of these models to the discontents of decision-making, as seen in neurological and psychiatric disease. I will describe the reinforcement learning model of neural decision making, together with our early attempts to look at aspects of depression through the lenses of: (a) an infelicitous prior distribution over decision-making environments which indicates their lack of controllability; and (b) the failure of a serotonergically-mediated crutch which normally inhibits potentially unfortunate choices. This is joint work with Quentin Huys.

The Cognitive Science Colloquium Series meets selected Mondays at 4pm in Psychology (PY) - room 101. Scheduled talks for the Spring Semester are as follows:

Date	Speaker	Title
14 February	Ken McRae	Semantic and Associative Relations: Examining a Tenuous Dichotomy
21 March	Lawrence Barsalou	TBA
4 April	Susan Goldin-Meadow	TBA
11 April	Jordan Green	TBA
18 April	John O'Doherty	TBA
25 April	Russell Epstein	TBA

(Second Language Studies Colloquium) Individual differences in acquisition of L2 phonology

ABSTRACT:Individual differences in acquisition of the second language (L2) phonological system are striking. Research has identified factors that constrain L2-learners' global performance, but little progress has been made in identifying the sources of individual differences as they relate to phonological acquisition in particular. Thus, we set out to define an individual profile of "phonological acquisition". To explore potential sources of individual differences, we compared it to individual learners' profile of cognitive functions.

To quantify L2 phonological acquisition, we examined phonological processing using L2 production (word and sentence reading) and three L2 perception tasks: (1) A categorization task (ABX, e.g. Højen and Flege, 2006) measuring acquisition of L2 phonetic categories that are not contrastive in the participants' L1; (2) a sequence repetition task (Dupoux et al., 2008) measuring acquisition of L2 word stress; and (3) a speeded lexical decision task measuring the encoding of L2 syllable structure (clusters) in lexical representations (Dupoux et al., 2001). All tasks were shown to reflect inter-individual differences in processing of phonological elements.

We measured cognitive abilities as follows: for L1 and L2, working memory (WM) capacity was assessed for simple span, complex span (Daneman and Carpenter, 1980), and quality of temporary storage (through a paired-associates learning task). We also examined L1 and L2 vocabulary size and naming speed, selective attention (L2 only) and processing speed (L1 only).

We tested two groups of 10 Korean learners of English, differing in length of exposure to spoken English (short vs. long length of residence (LOR) in the US; p<.001), along with 10 native speakers of American English as controls. Both learner groups were matched in chronological age, L2 use, age of arrival, and motivation (all p>.05). Normal hearing was established.

In all perception tasks (except control conditions where all groups were equal), the native speakers performed best, and the long-LOR learners performed better than short-LOR learners, confirming that our measures are sensitive to differences between groups, and thus reflect "acquisition". Preliminary analysis of vowel productions (word-list reading for 11 English vowels) showed mixed results. We measured vowel duration, and Euclidean distance calculated from normalized native F1/F2 values. The short-LOR learners revealed a larger average distance to the native values than the long-LOR learners (p<.03); however, both groups implemented duration differences (long vs. short vowels) equally inconsistently (all p>.1).

We observed large individual differences within each group. Composite perception scores for each learner, calculated through averaging the individual accuracy performance of each learner across the three perception tasks, significantly correlated with several cognitive measures: most WM measures (notably L1 and L2 digit span, r=.73, r=.66, respectively), processing speed (r=.61) and L2 vocabulary size (r=.70). Individual perception scores, however, did not correlate with individual production scores (i.e., average Euclidean distance), which did correlate only with cognitive measures involving production (naming speed). Specific perception tasks also correlated independently with specific cognitive measures, suggesting that a balanced mix of cognitive abilities can be the key to better phonological acquisition. Results also suggest that acquisition in perception and production may be dissociated.

The Second Language Studies Colloquium Series meets selected Fridays at 2:30pm in Ballantine Hall (BH) - room 205. Scheduled talks for the Spring Semester are as follows:

Date	Speaker	Title
25 February*	Laurent Dekydtspotter and Kelly Farmer	TBA
25 February*	Amandine Lorente-Lapole	TBA
4 March	Ilmari Ivaska	Key-Structure Analysis in the Study of Syntactical Changes in Learner Finnish
11 March	Doreen Ewert and Sun-Young Shin	What accounts for integrated reading-writing task scores?
1 April	Phil Lesourd	The Syntax of Second Position in Western Abenaki
8 April	Marda Rose	Opening up the "open" role-play: An analysis of L2 suggestions
15 April	Linda Abe and Sun-Young Shin	Measuring oral fluency development of international undergraduates
22 April	Sun-Young Shin	Do Monologue and Dialogue Formats of Speaking Tests Measure the Same Thing?
29 April	Sun-Young Shin (with co-authors)	IEP Program Evaluation using Utilization-Focused Evaluation Framework

*The two talks scheduled for 25 February are conference practice talks.

Syntax Reading Group

NEXT MEETING: Discussion will center around chapters 2 and 3 of Phil Brannigan's Provocative Syntax.

Syntax Reading Group meets select Mondays from 4-5pm in MM317a. For the first part of the semester, discussion will center around Phil Brannigan's recently-released Provocative Syntax, an entry in the Linguistic Inquiry Monographs series. From there until spring break, the group will meet irregularly for discussion of Shigeru Miyagawa's 2009 book Why Agree? Why Move? Unifying Agreement-Based and Discourse Configurational Languages (LI Monographs Series 54) intended to supplement the in-class discussion of the same book in Yoshihisa Kitagawa's L714 Syntax seminar. After spring break, discussion will center around the writings of Ray Jackendoff in preparation for a sponsored lecture series that he will be giving at IU in the fall.

A tentative schedule for the first part of the semester is as follows:

Date	Reading	Discussion Leader
31 January	Ch. 2-3 Brannigan	TBA
7 February	Ch. 4 Brannigan	Joshua Herring
14 February	Ch. 4 Brannigan	Joshua Herring
21 February	Ch. 5 Brannigan	TBA

People interested in participating should contact Steven Franks.

CLingDing

NEXT MEETING: Sandra Kübler will speak on current research.

CLingDing is an almost-weekly gathering of people working in Natural Language Processing at Indiana University to discuss their latest research. Typically a professor or graduate student gives a short presentation on a work in progress followed by brief discussion period for questions and feedback. Meetings also sometimes feature guest speakers from other schools and tutorial sessions on technology useful to Computational Linguistics researchers.

The schedule for the Spring Semester is as follows:

Date	Speaker	Topic
1 February	Sandra Kübler	TBA
8 February	Shahab Khan	TBA
15 February	Markus Dickinson and Joshua Herring	Introduction to LaTeX
22 February	Markus Dickinson and Joshua Herring	Introduction to LaTeX
1 March	Daniel Bishop	TBA
8 March	Ning Yu	TBA
22 March	Joshua Herring	Parsing in the Minimalist Program
29 March	Scott Ledbetter	TBA
5 April	Muhammad Abdul-Mageed	TBA

Anyone requiring more information or interested in presenting research of their own should contact Markus Dickinson. Open slots for presentations include January 25, and April 12, 19 and 26. The two slots currently scheduled for the LaTeX tutorial can also moved or dropped in favor of presentations on research.

Conferences of Interest

Many conferences of interest to IU Linguists can be found on the Linguist List Calls and Conferences page. Our own page for such announcements is undergoing revisions and will be linked shortly.

The Fall 2010 edition of the Linguistics Department's newsletter has been released. It is available in PDF format for download.