Jacques Mehler's early psycholinguistic days in Paris.

This article first describes Jacques Mehler's initial efforts to make psycholinguistics and, more generally, the cognitive sciences better known during his first years in Paris. Two lines of research on sentence perception, that we conducted in collaboration with Jacques, are then presented to illustrate his focus. In the Seventies, sentence perception was a central topic in psycholinguistics, with contrasting proposals of syntactic autonomy and interactivity being confronted. A first series of experiments aimed at defining the role of syntax in lexical selection process as revealed by the rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) of the words in a sentence. The second series, using the phoneme monitoring technique, examined the clause as a processing unit during the auditory perception of sentences. These results confirm the fundamental role played by syntax in language processing.

How much does orthography influence the processing of reduced word forms? Evidence from novel-word learning about French schwa deletion.

This study examines the influence of orthography on the processing of reduced word forms. For this purpose, we compared the impact of phonological variation with the impact of spelling-sound consistency on the processing of words that may be produced with or without the vowel schwa. Participants learnt novel French words in which the vowel schwa was present or absent in the first syllable. In Experiment 1, the words were consistently produced without schwa or produced in a variable manner (i.e., sometimes produced with and sometimes produced without schwa). In Experiment 2, words were always produced in a consistent manner, but an orthographic exposure phase was included in which words that were produced without schwa were either spelled with or without the letter . Results from naming and eye-tracking tasks suggest that both phonological variation and spelling-sound consistency influence the processing of spoken novel words. However, the influence of phonological variation outweighs the effect of spelling-sound consistency. Our findings therefore suggest that the influence of orthography on the processing of reduced word forms is relatively small.

On the resolution of phonological constraints in spoken production: Acoustic and response time evidence.

This study examines the production of words the pronunciation of which depends on the phonological context. Participants produced adjective-noun phrases starting with the French determiner un. The pronunciation of this determiner requires a liaison consonant before vowels. Naming latencies and determiner acoustic durations were shorter when the adjective and the noun both started with vowels or both with consonants, than when they had different onsets. These results suggest that the liaison process is not governed by the application of a local contextual phonological rule; they rather favor the hypothesis that pronunciation variants with and without the liaison consonant are stored in memory.

Functional and time-course changes in single word production from childhood to adulthood.

Picture naming tasks are widely used both in children and adults to investigate language production for research and for assessment purposes. The main theoretical models of single word production based on the investigation of picture naming in adults provide a detailed account of the principal mental operations involved in the transformation of an abstract concept into articulated speech and their temporal dynamics. These models and in particular their time-course do not apply directly to children who display much longer production latencies than adults. Here we investigate the functional processes and the temporal dynamics of word encoding in school-age children and adults. ERPs were analysed from picture onset to the onset of articulation in 32 children and 32 adults performing the same overt picture naming task. Waveform analyses were not informative since differences appeared throughout the entire period, due to an early shift of waveform morphology and to larger amplitudes in children. However, when the sequences of periods of topographic stability were considered, different patterns of electric fields at scalp only appeared in approximately the first third of the analysed period, corresponding to the P1-N1 complex. From about 200 ms in adults and from 300 ms in children to articulation onset similar patterns of global topography were observed across groups but with a different time distribution. These results indicate qualitative changes in an early time-window, likely corresponding to pre-linguistic processes, and only quantitative changes in later time-windows, suggesting similar mental operations underlying lexical processes between age-school children and adults, with temporal dynamic changes during development.

On the effects of L2 perception and of individual differences in L1 production on L2 pronunciation.

The speech of late second language (L2) learners is generally marked by an accent. The dominant theoretical perspective attributes accents to deficient L2 perception arising from a transfer of L1 phonology, which is thought to influence L2 perception and production. In this study we evaluate the explanatory role of L2 perception in L2 production and explore alternative explanations arising from the L1 phonological system, such as for example, the role of L1 production. Specifically we examine the role of an individual's L1 productions in the production of L2 vowel contrasts. Fourteen Spanish adolescents studying French at school were assessed on their perception and production of the mid-close/mid-open contrasts, /ø-œ/ and /e-ε/, which are, respectively, acoustically distinct from Spanish sounds, or similar to them. The participants' native productions were explored to assess (1) the variability in the production of native vowels (i.e., the compactness of vowel categories in F1/F2 acoustic space), and (2) the position of the vowels in the acoustic space. The results revealed that although poorly perceived contrasts were generally produced poorly, there was no correlation between individual performance in perception and production, and no effect of L2 perception on L2 production in mixed-effects regression analyses. This result is consistent with a growing body of psycholinguistic and neuroimaging research that suggest partial dissociations between L2 perception and production. In contrast, individual differences in the compactness and position of native vowels predicted L2 production accuracy. These results point to existence of surface transfer of individual L1 phonetic realizations to L2 space and demonstrate that pre-existing features of the native space in production partly determine how new sounds can be accommodated in that space.

Facilitatory and interfering effects of neighbourhood density on speech production: evidence from aphasic errors.

In a system where tens of thousands of words are made up of a limited number of phonemes, many words are bound to sound alike. This similarity of the words in the lexicon as characterized by phonological neighbourhood density (PhND) has been shown to affect speed and accuracy of word comprehension and production. Whereas there is a consensus about the interfering nature of neighbourhood effects in comprehension, the language production literature offers a more contradictory picture with mainly facilitatory but also interfering effects reported on word production. Here we report both of these two types of effects in the same study. Multiple regression mixed models analyses were conducted on PhND effects on errors produced in a naming task by a group of 21 participants with aphasia. These participants produced more formal errors (interfering effect) for words in dense phonological neighbourhoods, but produced fewer nonwords and semantic errors (a facilitatory effect) with increasing density. In order to investigate the nature of these opposite effects of PhND, we further analysed a subset of formal errors and nonword errors by distinguishing errors differing on a single phoneme from the target (corresponding to the definition of phonological neighbours) from those differing on two or more phonemes. This analysis confirmed that only formal errors that were phonological neighbours of the target increased in dense neighbourhoods, while all other errors decreased. Based on additional observations favouring a lexical origin of these formal errors (they exceeded the probability of producing a real-word error by chance, were of a higher frequency, and preserved the grammatical category of the targets), we suggest that the interfering effect of PhND is due to competition between lexical neighbours and target words in dense neighbourhoods.

Tracking the time course of word-frequency effects in auditory word recognition with event-related potentials.

Although the word-frequency effect is one of the most established findings in spoken-word recognition, the precise processing locus of this effect is still a topic of debate. In this study, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to track the time course of the word-frequency effect. In addition, the neighborhood density effect, which is known to reflect mechanisms involved in word identification, was also examined. The ERP data showed a clear frequency effect as early as 350 ms from word onset on the P350, followed by a later effect at word offset on the late N400. A neighborhood density effect was also found at an early stage of spoken-word processing on the PMN, and at word offset on the late N400. Overall, our ERP differences for word frequency suggest that frequency affects the core processes of word identification starting from the initial phase of lexical activation and including target word selection. They thus rule out any interpretation of the word frequency effect that is limited to a purely decisional locus after word identification has been completed.

Producing and recognizing words with two pronunciation variants: evidence from novel schwa words.

This study examined the lexical representations and psycholinguistic mechanisms underlying the production and recognition of novel words with two pronunciation variants in French. Participants first learned novel schwa words (e.g., /ʃənyk/), which varied in their alternating status (i.e., whether these words were learned with one or two variants) and, for alternating words, in the frequency of their variants. They were then tested in picture-naming (free or induced) and recognition memory tasks (i.e., deciding whether spoken items were learned during the experiment or not). Results for free naming show an influence of variant frequency on responses, more frequent variants being produced more often. Moreover, our data show an effect of the alternating status of the novel words on naming latencies, with longer latencies for alternating than for nonalternating novel words. These induced naming results suggest that both variants are stored as lexical entries and compete during the lexeme selection process. Results for recognition show an effect of variant frequency on reaction times and no effect of variant type (i.e., schwa versus reduced variant). Taken together, our findings suggest that participants both comprehend and produce novel French schwa words using two lexical representations, one for each variant.

Phonological Specificity in 12- and 17-Month-Old French-Speaking Infants.

The literature reports some contradictory results on the degree of phonological specificity of infants' early lexical representations in the Romance language, French, and Germanic languages. It is not clear whether these discrepancies are because of differences in method, in language characteristics, or in participants' age. In this study, we examined whether 12- and 17-month-old French-speaking infants are able to distinguish well-pronounced from mispronounced words (one or two features of their initial consonant). To this end, 46 infants participated in a preferential looking experiment in which they were presented with pairs of pictures together with a spoken word well pronounced or mispronounced. The results show that both 12- and 17-month-old infants look longer at the pictures corresponding to well-pronounced words than to mispronounced words, but show no difference between the two mispronunciation types. These results suggest that, as early as 12 months, French-speaking infants, like those exposed to Germanic languages, already possess detailed phonological representations of familiar words.

Mismatch negativity: a tool for studying morphosyntactic processing?

OBJECTIVE: Mismatch negativity (MMN) was originally shown in a passive auditory oddball paradigm to be generated by any acoustical change. More recently, it has been applied to the study of higher order linguistic levels including the morphosyntactic level in spoken language comprehension. In this study, we present two MMN experiments to determine whether morphosyntactic features are involved in the representations underlying the morphosyntactic processing. METHODS: We reported two MMN experiments in passive auditory oddball paradigm with pairs of French words, a pronoun and a verb, differing in agreement grammaticality. These two experiments differed in the number of morphosyntactic features producing agreement violations, i.e. either of person and number features or of person feature. RESULTS: We observed no effect of grammaticality on the MMN response for these two experiments. CONCLUSIONS: Our studies highlight the difficulties encountered in studying morphosyntactic level with the passive auditory oddball paradigm. SIGNIFICANCE: The reasons for our inability to replicate previous studies are presented, and methodological changes in the passive auditory oddball paradigm are proposed to better tap into the morphosyntactic level.

Phonological neighbourhood effects in French spoken-word recognition.

According to activation-based models of spoken-word recognition, words with many and high-frequency phonological neighbours are processed more slowly than words with few and low-frequency phonological neighbours. Although considerable empirical support for inhibitory neighbourhood density effects has accumulated, especially in English, little or nothing is known about the effects of neighbourhood frequency and its interaction with neighbourhood density. In this study we examine both effects first separately and then simultaneously in French lexical decision experiments. As in English, we found that words in dense neighbourhoods are recognized more slowly than words in sparse neighbourhoods. Moreover, we showed that words with higher frequency neighbours are processed more slowly than words with no higher frequency neighbours, but only for words occurring in sparse neighbourhoods. Implications of these results for spoken-word recognition models are discussed.

Phonological regularities and grammatical gender retrieval in spoken word recognition and word production.

Two experiments investigate whether native speakers of French can use a noun's phonological ending to retrieve its gender and that of a gender-marked element. In Experiment 1, participants performed a gender decision task on the noun's gender-marked determiner for auditorily presented nouns. Noun endings with high predictive values were selected. The noun stimuli could either belong to the gender class predicted by their ending (congruent) or they could belong to the gender class that was different from the predicted gender (incongruent). Gender decisions were made significantly faster for congruent nouns than for incongruent nouns, relative to a (lexical decision) baseline task. In Experiment 2, participants named pictures of the same materials as used in Experiment 1 with noun phrases consisting of a gender-marked determiner, a gender-marked adjective and a noun. In this Experiment, no effect of congruency, relative to a (bare noun naming) baseline task, was observed. Thus, the results show an effect of phonological information on the retrieval of gender-marked elements in spoken word recognition, but not in word production.

Vowel aperture and syllable segmentation in French.

The theories of Pulgram (1970) suggest that if the vowel of a French syllable is open then it will induce syllable segmentation responses that result in the syllable being closed, and vice versa. After the empirical verification that our target French-speaking population was capable of distinguishing between mid-vowel aperture, we examined the relationship between vowel and syllable aperture in two segmentation experiments. Initial findings from a metalinguistic repetition task supported the hypothesis, revealing significant segmentation differences due to vowel aperture across a range of bi-syllabic stimuli. These findings were also supported in an additional online experiment, in which a fragment detection task revealed a syllabic cross-over interaction due to vowel aperture. Evidence from these experiments suggest that multiple, independent cues are used in French syllable segmentation, including vowel aperture.

Early and automatic syntactic processing of person agreement.

Mismatch negativity, an index of automatic cerebral activity in response to novel stimuli, was used to determine the onset of morphosyntactic processing in French. Stimuli were four two-word sentences made up of a pronoun (first or second person) and a verb (first or second person). Verb forms differed only in the inflectional suffix, which made the sentences either syntactically correct or incorrect. The mismatch negativity response was found to be modulated by the grammaticality of the agreement relation at 50-140 ms after inflection onset, corroborating the previous finding that morphosyntactic processing occurs early and out of the focus of attention. The role of the pronoun-suffix association probabilities in determining the observed timing of morphosyntactic processing is discussed.

Agreement and movement: a syntactic analysis of attraction.

This paper links experimental psycholinguistics and theoretical syntax in the study of subject-verb agreement. Three experiments of elicited spoken production making use of specific characteristics of Italian and French are presented. They manipulate and examine its impact on the occurrence of 'attraction' errors (i.e. incorrect agreement with a word that is not the subject of the sentence). Experiment 1 (in Italian) shows that subject modifiers do not trigger attraction errors in free inverted VS (Verb Subject) structures, although attraction was found in VS interrogatives in English (Vigliocco, G., & Nicol, J. (1998). Separating hierarchical relations and word order in language production. Is proximity concord syntactic or linear? Cognition, 13-29) In Experiment 2 (in French), we report stronger attraction with preverbal clitic object pronouns than with subject modifiers. Experiment 3 (in French) shows that displaced direct objects in the cleft construction trigger attraction effects, in spite of the fact that the object does not intervene between the subject and the verb in the surface word order (OSV). Moreover, attraction is stronger in structures with subject-verb inversion (...). These observations are shown to be naturally interpretable through the tools of formal syntax, as elaborated within the Principles and Parameters/Minimalist tradition. Three important constructs are discussed: (1) the hierarchical representation of the sentence during syntactic construction, and the role of intermediate positions by which words transit when they move; (2) the role of specific hierarchical (c-command) but also linear (precedence) relations; and (3) the possibility that agreement involves two functionally distinct components. A gradient of computational complexity in agreement is presented which relates empirical evidence to these theoretical constructs.