Journal

Volume 7, Issue 2 (July 31, 2006)

4 articles

• Prior intentions: evidence in favour of a motor theory
  by Cristina Becchio & Cesare Bertone
  J. CS. 2006, 7(2), 103-113;
  Abstract Empirical studies on intention have so far focused on intention-in-action. Much less work has been done on prior intention. In this paper, we focus on the relation between prior intention and action and the mechanisms underlying the representations of prior intention in the brain. The conventional v... [Read more].
  Abstract Empirical studies on intention have so far focused on intention-in-action. Much less work has been done on prior intention. In this paper, we focus on the relation between prior intention and action and the mechanisms underlying the representations of prior intention in the brain. The conventional view separates prior intention from action, assuming that the very same action may serve different prior intentions. Here, in contrast with this view, we discuss recent findings suggesting an involvement of the motor system in representing and understanding prior intentions. Bridging the gap between prior intentions and actions, these findings help us to understand how from the observation of another person’s actions we can trace back to her prior intention. [Collapse]
• On the Influence of Prosody in Processing Relative Clauses in Japanese
  by Satoru Muraoka, Toshio Matsuura, & Tsutomu Sakamoto
  J. CS. 2006, 7(2), 115-137;
  Abstract The present study investigates the effects of prosodic information when processing relative clauses in Japanese. We focused on Accent Reduction and Initial Lowering as prosodic cues, and conducted two decision-making experiments with auditory stimuli to verify how the above cues affect the processin... [Read more].
  Abstract The present study investigates the effects of prosodic information when processing relative clauses in Japanese. We focused on Accent Reduction and Initial Lowering as prosodic cues, and conducted two decision-making experiments with auditory stimuli to verify how the above cues affect the processing of relative clauses. Results from the experiments indicated that both Accent Reduction and Initial Lowering influence syntactic processing in Japanese. In addition, the results show that not only accented words but also unaccented words play a role in detecting left clause boundary. These findings might suggest that prosodic influences may be observed in unaccented word sequences even in silent readings. [Collapse]
• Linguistic Cues of Writing according to Attitude Consistency
  by Chang H. Lee, Young-sook Chong, & Misung Shin
  J. CS. 2006, 7(2), 139-147;
  Abstract This study provides descriptive data on uses of language in attitude-consistent and attitude-inconsistent writing. The language analysis program KLIWC (Korean Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count) analyzes the attitude-consistent and attitude-inconsistent writings. When a person expresses agreement wit... [Read more].
  Abstract This study provides descriptive data on uses of language in attitude-consistent and attitude-inconsistent writing. The language analysis program KLIWC (Korean Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count) analyzes the attitude-consistent and attitude-inconsistent writings. When a person expresses agreement with regard to a social issue(i.e., death penalty), his or her attitude-consistent writing reflects more complicated language structures and less usage of the first-personplural- pronoun than did his/her attitude-inconsistent writings. [Collapse]
• Intrasentential Codeswitching as Conceptual Projection of Lemmas in the Bilingual Mental Lexicon
  by Longxing Wei
  J. CS. 2006, 7(2), 149-178;
  Abstract This paper explores the bilingual speech containing intrasentential codeswitching (ICS) in relation to the nature and activity of the bilingual mental lexicon. ICS is defined as the use of two or more linguistic varieties within the sentence boundaries in the same discourse. It explains the phenomen... [Read more].
  Abstract This paper explores the bilingual speech containing intrasentential codeswitching (ICS) in relation to the nature and activity of the bilingual mental lexicon. ICS is defined as the use of two or more linguistic varieties within the sentence boundaries in the same discourse. It explains the phenomenon of ICS in terms of the abstract notions of ‘lemmas’ and ‘lemma activation.’ Lemmas are abstract entries in the mental lexicon which contain semantic, pragmatic, syntactic, morphological, and phonological information about actual lexemes. However, lemmas in the bilingual mental lexicon are tagged for specific languages. In this paper ICS is regarded as conceptual projection of languagespecific lemmas in the bilingual mental lexicon. What occurs in ICS leads to hypotheses about principles structuring and governing the bilingual mental lexicon and speech production process. The research findings based on ICS involving language pairs such as Chinese/English and Japanese/English indicate that ICS cannot be accounted for at the surface level of investigation. Rather, any ICS phenomenon depends on bilingual cognitively based operations of an abstract nature. The findings provide evidence that language-specific lemmas in the bilingual mental lexicon are not equally activated during the process of ICS: Some are conceptually activated, but others are not. It is only conceptually activated lemmas of the Embedded Language (EL) (i.e., the guest language) which can be switched into the sentential frame of the Matrix Language (ML) (i.e., the base or host language). The naturally occurring ICS instances discussed in this paper also provide evidence that there is differential activation of participating languages in ICS in terms of language-specific lemma activation for content morphemes, and language-specific lemma activation for morphosyntactic procedures. However, activated EL lemmas must be sufficiently congruent with ML counterparts at several levels for possible ICS realizations. This paper proposes a bilingual lemma activation model of ICS. [Collapse]