Heike Tappe

Pictorial representations of routes: chunking route segments during comprehension

Route directions are usually conveyed either by graphical means, i.e. by illustrating the route in a map or drawing a sketch-maps or, linguistically by giving spoken or written route instructions, or by combining both kinds of external representations. In most cases route directions are given in advance, i.e. prior to the actual traveling. But they may also be communicated quasi-simultaneously to the movement along the route, for example, in the case of in-car navigation systems. We dub this latter kind accompanying route directions. Accompanying route direction may be communicated in a dialogue, i.e. with hearer feedback, or, in a monologue, i.e. without hearer feedback. In this article we focus on accompanying route directions without hearer feedback. We start with theoretical considerations from spatial cognition research about the interaction between internal and external representations interconnecting linguistic aspects of verbal route directions with findings from cognitive psychology on route knowledge. In particular we are interested in whether speakers merge elementary route segments into higher order chunks in accompanying route directions. This process, which we identify as spatial chunking, is subsequently investigated in a case study. We have speakers produce accompanying route directions without hearer feedback on the basis of a route that is presented in a spatially veridical map. We vary presentation mode of the route: In the static mode the route in presented as a discrete line, in the dynamic mode, it is presented as a moving dot. Similarities across presentation modes suggest overall organization principles for route directions, which are both independent of the type of route direction-in advance versus accompanying-and of presentation mode-static versus dynamic. We conclude that spatial chunking is a robust and efficient conceptual process that is partly independent of preplanning.

Wayfinding choremes-a language for modeling conceptual route knowledge

The emergent interest in ontological and conceptual approaches to modeling route information results from new information technologies as well as from a multidisciplinary interest in spatial cognition. Linguistics investigates verbal route directions; cartography carries out research on route maps and on the information needs of map users; and computer science develops formal representations of routes with the aim to build new wayfinding applications. In concert with geomatics, ontologies of spatial domain knowledge are assembled while sensing technologies for location-aware wayfinding aids are developed simultaneously (e.g. cell phones, GPS-enabled devices or PDAs). These joint multidisciplinary efforts have enhanced cognitive approaches for route directions. In this article, we propose an interdisciplinary approach to modeling route information, the wayfinding choreme theory. Wayfinding choremes are mental conceptualizations of functional wayfinding and route direction elements. With the wayfinding choreme theory, we propose a formal treatment of (mental) conceptual route knowledge that is based on qualitative calculi and refined by behavioral experimental research. This contribution has three parts: First, we introduce the theory of wayfinding choremes. Second, we present term rewriting rules that are grounded in cognitive principles and can tailor route directions to different user requirements. Third, we exemplify various application scenarios for our approach.

Processes of segmentation and linearization in describing events

Natural language production is widely considered from an information processing point of view: In producing an utterance, mental representations of perceived or conceived states of affairs are first transferred to an intermediate level of propositional representations and are subsequently transformed into grammatical structures. The latter serve as input structures for phonological encoding, which results in the acoustic realization of utterances. This description of the production process follows Levelt’s model, which is outlined in Levelt (1989). Within this model, which compiles a multitude of earlier research (e.g. Fromkin, 1971; Garrett, 1980; Butterworth, 1980; Shattuck-Hufnagel, 1986), three major components interact, that are each responsible for well-defined phases within the global process of speech production. The conceptualizer draws on different knowledge sources that provide representations in multimodal formats and generates propositional conceptual structures, so-called preverbal messages, which represent the content the speaker intends to verbalize. These non-linguistic preverbal messages are transferred to the formulator Within the formulator, language specific encoding takes place; the end results of this process serve as input for the articulator. The latter is the component that carries out the phonological processing and the acoustic realization of an utterance (cf. also the description of the language production model in Glatz, Klabunde & Porzel, this volume).

Mediating between concepts and grammar

Researchers with backgrounds in theoretical linguistics, computational linguistics, psycholinguistics, and psychology have contributed to the interdisciplinary discussion of the interface between conceptual representations and linguistic structures. This book fills a critical gap in cognitive science. The study implements the objective of determining the impact that adjoining non-linguistic cognitive systems have on linguistic encoding, the mapping between representations, and the requirements of language processing. In this setting event conceptualization and verbalization is treated as one central phenomenon from the different interdisciplinary viewpoints. Theoretical analyses are confronted with psycholinguistic findings about the processing of event representations. Further empirical issues like the influence of visual perception on speech become apparent since we are primarily concerned with the overall architecture of the language processing system as an integral part of the cognitive endowment. Here, the lexicon is recognized as a mediator between linguistic and non-linguistic, semantic and syntactic components. The volume constitutes a major contribution to knowledge in the field and will be of value to an interdisciplinary audience.

Incremental Event Conceptualization and Natural Language Generation in Monitoring Enviroments

In this paper we present a psycholinguistically motivated architecture and its prototypical implementation for an incremental conceptualizer, which monitors dynamic changes in the world and simultaneously generates warnings for (possibly) safety-critical developments. It does so by conceptualizing events and building up a hierarchical knowledge representation of the perceived states of affairs. If it detects a safety problem, it selects suitable elements from the representation for a warning, brings them into an appropriate order, and generates incremental preverbal messages (propositional structures) from them, which can be taken by a subsequent component to encode them linguistically.

Language specific narrative text structure elements in multilingual children

The investigation of narrative skills in children is significant in many respects; amongst other things, narratives can yield information about a child’s use of decontextualised, literate language features (Curenton and Justice 2004) while simultaneously providing access to the child’s level of competence concerning narrative - speci fic aspects. Narrative abilities have been linked to literacy development and academic achievement (Dic kinson and Tabors 2001) and are often used to predict language progress (Botting, Faragher, Simkin, Knox and Conti Ramsden 2001). Moreover, narrative skills constitute an area of verbal language development in which delays are difficult to compensate (Giro lametto, Wiigs, Smyth, Weitzman and Pearce 2001 , Manhardt and Rescorla 2002). However, in multilingual settings the assessment of narrative skills cannot be restricted to language proficiency measurements in each of a child’s languages. Rather, this assess ment needs to include “linguistic descriptions of ethno - linguistic discourse patterns (contrastive rhetoric)” (Barnitz 1986:95) in order to assess the roles which cultural knowledge and language - specific narrative text structure elements play in the develo pment of narrative skills in multilingual children. Th is article discusses the necessity to identify such language - specific elements of story structures. E mpirical findings are presented which illustrate that 10 - to 12 - year - old children from Malawi exhibit narrative practi c es while they retell visually and aurally presented stories. It appears that these narrative practices are influenced by African folktales . The children’s retellings in both Chichewa and English cannot simply be measured by canonical narr ative text structure s commonly used in academic setting s . The global significance of such a discussion is reflected by a growing concern that academic success may be compromised by a misalignment between the narrative practices in a child’s primary languag e(s) and the narrative practices in a respective language of teaching and learning (e.g. Makoe and McKinney 2009 , Souto - Manning 2013).

Dialogue interpreting : data and analysis

Up to the development of the VERBMOBIL-prototype mainly two types of speech data within the domain of appointment scheduling are recorded: 1. German-German dialogues serving as test and training data, 2. Wizard-of-Oz-dialogues and some authentic German-English and German-Japanese dialogues with human interpreter. Most of the dialogues of type 2 are recorded by the VERBMOBIL Subproject 13 in Hamburg and are stored in a special database (DiaBoLiC, Dialogue Interpreting: Analysis Base of Linguistic Corpora). In this paper, we describe characteristic features of the data of type 2, existing analysis and the structure of DiaBoLic, and we present new results of data analysis (extension of the list of dialogue acts for the domain TRAVEL PLANNING, analysis of translation strategies) . As dialogues of type 2 are regarded as relevant for the VERBMOBIL application, the data have been analyzed with reference to key-words in the realization of dialogue acts ([2]). A list of key-words for dialogue acts as well as a list of tested scenarios is attached to this paper.

The Taxonomic Representation of Common Events: A Research Report

Resumen en: Shared cognitive representations have been shown in different conceptual domains. An experiment is presented here that extends this line of research to ...

Coherence in Spoken Discourse

This paper explores the possibilities and limits of a discourse grammar applied to spontaneous speech. Most discourse grammars (e.g. SDRT, Asher, 1993; RST, Mann & Thompson, 1988) tend to be descriptive theories of written discourse which presuppose a coherent structure. This structure is the outcome of a goal directed planning process on the part of the producer. In order to obtain a better understanding of the planning process we analyse spoken discourse elicited in an experimental setting. Subjects describe the pixel-per-pixel development of sketch-maps on a computer screen. This forces the speakers to conceptualise the perceived state of affairs, plan their discourse, and produce a description of the drawing at the same time. Thus we find evidence for the planning process in the recorded data and can show that the discourse structures are less globally coherent than those underlying written text. In our paper we discuss to what extent a flexible discourse grammar based on a Tree Description Grammar (TDG) (Schilder, 1997) can handle such data.