Dirk Speelman

The organisation of the bilingual lexicon: a PET study

Abstract In the literature on bilingualism, cognate relatedness has been shown to interact with proficiency in the foreign language such that cognate items are a measure of higher mastery than non-cognate ones. Systematic variation of these items in an activation study thus allows inter-subject control of different proficiency levels in the same bilingual subject. A positron emission tomography (PET) experiment was conducted with 11 Belgian subjects who were native speakers of Flemish/Dutch and had good proficiency in French. The experimental task consisted of internally naming pictures of objects in French and Dutch. For each language, there were two conditions. In one condition, the picture names were cognate across both languages, i.e. the translation equivalents shared phonological/orthographic similarity. In a second condition, picture names were non-cognate items without phonological/orthographic similarity in the French-Dutch translation equivalents. The items in both subsets were matched for visual complexity, object familiarity and familiarity of the French word. The results of our PET experiment on bilingual production showed hardly any difference between L2 cognates, L1 cognates and L1 non-cognates. The few significant differences of activation between L1 and L2 were almost exclusively due to increased activation for French non-cognate items in left inferior frontal and temporo-parietal areas. Thus, non-cognate foreign language naming recruited additional brain regions compared to native language non-cognate and native as well as foreign language cognate items. In our study, these areas of additional activation in L2 non-cognates were restricted to left hemispheric inferior frontal and temporal structures in or at the periphery of the known language areas. In conclusion, the bilingual production study presented here supports an important role of proficiency in activation differences between L1 and L2. The results suggest a relation between activation in left BA 20, BA 44 and BA 47 and effortful lexical retrieval. Our results are not in line with the hypothesis of entirely distinct neural substrates for the different languages of a bilingual individual.

A statistical method for the identification and aggregation of regional linguistic variation

This paper introduces a method for the analysis of regional linguistic variation. The method identifies individual and common patterns of spatial clustering in a set of linguistic variables measured over a set of locations based on a combination of three statistical techniques: spatial autocorrelation, factor analysis, and cluster analysis. To demonstrate how to apply this method, it is used to analyze regional variation in the values of 40 continuously measured, high-frequency lexical alternation variables in a 26-million-word corpus of letters to the editor representing 206 cities from across the United States.

The automatic identification of lexical variation between language varieties

Languages are not uniform. Speakers of different language varieties use certain words differently – more or less frequently, or with different meanings. We argue that distributional semantics is the ideal framework for the investigation of such lexical variation. We address two research questions and present our analysis of the lexical variation between Belgian Dutch and Netherlandic Dutch. The first question involves a classic application of distributional models: the automatic retrieval of synonyms. We use corpora of two different language varieties to identify the Netherlandic Dutch synonyms for a set of typically Belgian words. Second, we address the problem of automatically identifying words that are typical of a given lect, either because of their high frequency or because of their divergent meaning. Overall, we show that distributional models are able to identify more lectal markers than traditional keyword methods. Distributional models also have a bias towards a different type of variation. In summary, our results demonstrate how distributional semantics can help research in variational linguistics, with possible future applications in lexicography or terminology extraction.

Mutual Intelligibility of Standard and Regional Dutch Language Varieties

In this experimental study, we aim to arrive at a global picture of the mutual intelligibility of various Dutch language varieties by carrying out a computer-controlled lexical decision task in which ten target varieties are evaluated – the Belgian and Netherlandic Dutch standard language as well as four regional varieties of both countries. We auditorily presented real as well as pseudo-words in various varieties of Dutch to Netherlandic and Belgian test subjects, who were asked to decide as quickly as possible whether the items were existing Dutch words or not. The experiments working assumption is that the faster the subjects react, the better the intelligibility of (the language variety of) the word concerned.

A variationist account of constituent ordering in presentative sentences in Belgian Dutch

Abstract This paper reports on a corpus-based analysis of constituent ordering in presentative er-constructions in Belgian Dutch. Whereas in the majority of these sentences, the locative typically follows the indefinite subject (cf. Er ligt een bompakket op de zesde verdieping ‘There is a bomb on the sixth floor’), in a small number the locative precedes the subject, as in Er zijn in Brussel geen gettos ‘There are in Brussels no ghettoes’. In order to account for this hitherto unnoticed variation, we extracted 360 er-initial sentences with one locative adjunct (either in final or penultimate position) from a corpus of written and spoken Dutch, and coded them for eight semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic variables. A stepwise logistic regression confirmed our hypothesis that ers inaccessibility marking function (Grondelaers, Brysbaert, Speelman and Geeraerts 2002) is a factor which determines word order variation. At the same time, however, the regression analysis demonstrated that there is a more significant ordering motivation, viz. informational prominence. The finding that it is the more prominent constituent which tends to be sentence-final throws new light on the givenbefore-new principle (Gundel 1988), and rules out any analysis which restricts the constructional meaning of presentative sentences to “introducing an indefinite subject”.

The Role of Concept Characteristics in Lexical Dialectometry

In this paper the role of concept characteristics in lexical dialectometric research is examined in three consecutive logical steps. First, a regression analysis of data taken from a large lexical database of Limburgish dialects in Belgium and The Netherlands is conducted to illustrate that concept characteristics such as concept salience, concept vagueness and negative affect contribute to the lexical heterogeneity in the dialect data. Next, it is shown that the relationship between concept characteristics and lexical heterogeneity influences the results of conventional lexical dialectometric measurements. Finally, a dialectometric procedure is proposed which downplays this undesired influence, thus making it possible to obtain a clearer picture of the ‘truly’ regional variation. More specifically, a lexical dialectometric method is proposed in which concept characteristics form the basis of a weighting schema that determines to which extent concept specific dissimilarities can contribute to the aggregat...

Macro and micro perspectives on the distribution of English in Dutch: A quantitative usage-based analysis of job ads

Abstract The world-wide spread of English is one of the most visible symptoms of globalization. In weak contact settings such as Western Europe, where contact with English is usually indirect, remote and asymmetrical, the English language started diffusing at a hitherto unknown rate in the second half of the twentieth century. Crucially, this diffusion happens at two different levels. First, on the macro-level, English is more and more used as a language of (international) communication. Second, on the micro-level, English is intruding in local languages, most notably by means of lexical borrowing. So far, the macro- and micro-level of linguistic influence are hardly ever linked or simultaneously studied. Nevertheless, as will be shown in this paper, it is interesting to investigate whether a connection between both levels exists. Specifically, we present a quantitative multivariate comparison of the features underlying the choice for English at both levels of analyses, using a diachronic corpus of over 16 000 job ads published in two Dutch job ad magazines. On the macro-level, we verify what communicative and situational parameters (e.g., branch of industry of the recruiter) determine the choice for and distribution of ads written entirely in English. On the micro-level, we verify the impact of the same set of parameters on the choice for inserting English elements in ads where Dutch is the matrix language. Using two multiple logistic regression models, we can verify to which extent the mechanisms underlying language choice at both levels are different. Results show that a large difference exists in the basic proportion of English at both levels, but that quite some similarities in the distribution of English are found when zooming in on the specific parameters underlying language choice. As such, this paper advocates to perceive of the different manifestations of the spread of English as part of a continuum, rather than as isolated phenomena. Hence, we hope to provide a first step in bridging the theoretical and methodological gap between the ELF paradigm and anglicism research.

A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Borrowing in Weak Contact Situations: English Loanwords and Phrases in Expressive Utterances in a Dutch Reality TV Show

This paper presents a quantitative corpus-based variationist analysis of the English insertions used by Belgian Dutch and Netherlandic Dutch participants to the reality TV show ‘Expeditie Robinson’. The data consist of manual transcriptions of 35 hours of recordings for 46 speakers from 3 seasons of the show. Focusing on the expressive utterances in the corpus, we present a mixed-effect logistic regression analysis to pattern which of a variety of speaker-related and context-related features can help explain the occurrence of English insertions in Dutch. The results show a strong impact of typical variationist variables such as gender, age and location; but features that are more situational, such as emotional charge and topic of the conversation, also prove relevant. Overall, in its combined focus on (a) oral corpora of spontaneous language use, (b) social patterns in the use of English and (c) inferential statistical modeling, this paper presents new perspectives on the study of Anglicisms in weak contact settings.

Mapping constructional spaces: A contrastive analysis of English and Dutch analytic causatives

Abstract The paper demonstrates how verb and noun classes can be used as a common interface in contrastive Construction Grammar. It presents an innovative approach to the contrastive analysis of constructional spaces (sets of constructions covering a certain semantic domain). We compare English and Dutch analytic causatives by using the statistical technique of multiple correspondence analysis applied to data from large monolingual corpora. The method allows us to explore the common conceptual space of the constructions, in particular the salient semantic dimensions and causation types, which emerge on the basis of co-occurring semantic classes of the nominal and verbal slot fillers in constructional exemplars. The formal patterns of the constructions at different levels of specificity are projected onto this space. Our analyses show that an average Dutch analytic causative refers to more indirect and abstract causation with fewer animate than its English counterpart. We have also found that the languages “cut” the common conceptual space in unique ways, although the semantic areas of many English and Dutch constructions overlap substantially. Nevertheless, the form-meaning mapping in the two languages displays commonalities. Both English and Dutch constructions with prepositionally marked or implicit causees are strongly associated with animate causees. We have also observed a correlation between the directness of causation and the crosslinguistic hierarchy of affectedness marking proposed by Kemmer and Verhagen (1994).

Visualizing onomasiological change: Diachronic variation in metonymic patterns for WOMAN in Chinese

Abstract This paper introduces an innovative method to aid the study of conceptual onomasiological research, with a specific emphasis on diachronic variation in the metonymic patterns with which a target concept is expressed. We illustrate how the method is applied to explore and visualize such diachronic changes by means of a case study on the metonymic patterns for woman in the history of Chinese. Visualization is done with the help of a Multidimensional Scaling solution based on the profile-based distance calculation (Geeraerts et al. 1999; Speelman et al. 2003) and by drawing diachronic trajectories in a set of MDS maps, corresponding to different metonymic targets. This method proves to be effective and feasible in detecting changes in the distribution of metonymic patterns in authentic historical corpus data. On the basis of this method, we can show that different targets exhibit different degrees of diachronic variation in their metonymic patterns. We find diachronically more stable targets (e.g. imperial woman), targets with a dominant trend in diachronic variation (e.g. a woman), and targets with highly fluctuating historical variation (e.g. beautiful woman). Importantly, we can identify the cultural and social changes that may lie behind some of these changes. Examining the results uncovered by the method offers us a better understanding of the dynamicity of metonymic conceptualizations.