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In this article, we present the Brazilian Portuguese Lexicon, a new word-based corpus for psycholinguistic and computational linguistic research in Brazilian Portuguese. We describe the corpus development, the specific characteristics on the internet site and database for user access. We also perform distributional analyses of the corpus and comparisons to other current databases. Our main objective was to provide a large, reliable, and useful word-based corpus with a dynamic, easy-to-use, and intuitive interface with free internet access for word and word-criteria searches. We used the Núcleo Interinstitucional de Linguística Computacional’s corpus as the basic data source and developed the Brazilian Portuguese Lexicon by deriving and adding metalinguistic and psycholinguistic information about Brazilian Portuguese words. We obtained a final corpus with more than 30 million word tokens, 215 thousand word types and 25 categories of information about each word. This corpus was made available on the internet via a free-access site with two search engines: a simple search and a complex search. The simple engine basically searches for a list of words, while the complex engine accepts all types of criteria in the corpus categories. The output result presents all entries found in the corpus with the criteria specified in the input search and can be downloaded as a.csv file. We created a module in the results that delivers basic statistics about each search. The Brazilian Portuguese Lexicon also provides a pseudoword engine and specific tools for linguistic and statistical analysis. Therefore, the Brazilian Portuguese Lexicon is a convenient instrument for stimulus search, selection, control, and manipulation in psycholinguistic experiments, as also it is a powerful database for computational linguistics research and language modeling related to lexicon distribution, functioning, and behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to characterize the linguistic interference that occurs during speech-in-speech comprehension by combining offline and online measures, which included an intelligibility task (at a −5 dB Signal-to-Noise Ratio) and 2 lexical decision tasks (at a −5 dB and 0 dB SNR) that were performed with French spoken target words. In these 3 experiments we always compared the masking effects of speech backgrounds (i.e., 4-talker babble) that were produced in the same language as the target language (i.e., French) or in unknown foreign languages (i.e., Irish and Italian) to the masking effects of corresponding non-speech backgrounds (i.e., speech-derived fluctuating noise). The fluctuating noise contained similar spectro-temporal information as babble but lacked linguistic information. At −5 dB SNR, both tasks revealed significantly divergent results between the unknown languages (i.e., Irish and Italian) with Italian and French hindering French target word identification to a similar extent, whereas Irish led to significantly better performances on these tasks. By comparing the performances obtained with speech and fluctuating noise backgrounds, we were able to evaluate the effect of each language. The intelligibility task showed a significant difference between babble and fluctuating noise for French, Irish and Italian, suggesting acoustic and linguistic effects for each language. However, the lexical decision task, which reduces the effect of post-lexical interference, appeared to be more accurate, as it only revealed a linguistic effect for French. Thus, although French and Italian had equivalent masking effects on French word identification, the nature of their interference was different. This finding suggests that the differences observed between the masking effects of Italian and Irish can be explained at an acoustic level but not at a linguistic level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the concrete effects that the theoretical findings on the formulaic nature of language have had in instructed second language acquisition (SLA). The introductory section includes some terminological comments and a general discussion on the validity of adopting a formulaic approach in second or foreign language teaching. The second section discusses various points in time when instructional intervention is possible and presents the rationale adopted in the article to trace elements of formulaicity in instructed SLA. The next three sections each center on one aspect of foreign language teaching, namely, input, classroom activities, and feedback. The discussion broaches pedagogical choices, teaching materials, types of activities, and tools currently available to teachers and learners. The results show that the increasingly refined understanding of the formulaic nature of language has clearly impacted second language teaching but that a number of questions still remain unanswered. These questions pertain to the types of formulas that deserve teaching time and to the assessment of the actual learning outcomes of using a formulaic approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated the use of language-specific intonational cues to word segmentation in French. Participants listened to phonemically identical sequences such as /selafij/, C'est la fiche/l'affiche 'It's the sheet/poster.' We modified the f0 of the first vowel /a/ of the natural consonant-initial production la fiche, so that it was equal to that of the natural vowel-initial production l'affiche (resynth-consonant-equal condition), higher (resynthconsonant-higher condition), or lower (resynth-consonant-lower condition). In a two-alternative forced choice task (Experiment 1), increasing the f 0 in the /a/ of la fiche increased the percentage of vowel-initial ( affiche) responses. In Experiment 2, participants made visual lexical decisions to vowel-initial targets ( affiche) following both the natural consonant-initial production ( la fiche) and the resynth-consonant-equal version. Facilitation was found only for the resynth-consonant-equal condition, suggesting that raising the f 0 allowed online activation of vowel-initial targets. The recognition system seems to exploit intonational information to guide segmentation toward the beginning of content words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Morphological operations cost of processing in hierarchical structures. • Morphology as a window for the understanding of language and thought. • Processing of the verbal inflectional suffixes besides the stem activation. • Morphemes as the atomic representations for linguistic processing and structure. • Single-route model processing for regular and irregular inflected words. In this article, we examined how complex words are recognized as being mediated by their morphological operations and structure. French verbal inflection is a system where the stems provide the lexical meaning and the inflectional suffixes activate the functional information by the morphosyntactic features. We investigated the morphological decomposition and inflectional suffixes processing through visual lexical decision tasks. Experiment 1 accessed general differences in the number of morphological operations regarding low and high frequencies, and regular and irregular verbal forms (e.g., jou-ent/jou-ai-ent 'they play/played', prend-s/pren-ai-s 'you sg take/took'). Experiment 2 tested specific differences in the tense and agreement inflectional suffixes (e.g., jou-ons/jou-i-ons/jou-ez/jou-i-ez 'we/you pl play/played'). Our hypothesis is that words are automatically decomposed early for morphological processing and that morphemes are later hierarchically recombined for word recognition. We found significant differences between the number of morphological operations in regular and irregular verbs in low and high frequencies; we also found significant differences in tense and agreement suffix processing with longer responses for the past tense and first plural agreement verbal forms, suggesting additive effects. Our results are supported by single-mechanism pre-lexical decompositional models; we propose a model where stems and inflectional suffixes are processed differently for lexical access and word recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The French language has a grammatical gender system in which all nouns are assigned either a masculine or a feminine gender. Nouns provide two types of gender cues that can potentially guide gender attribution: morphophonological cues carried by endings and semantic cues (natural gender). The first goal of this study was to describe the acquisition of the probabilistic system based on phonological oppositions on word endings by French-speaking children. The second goal was to explore the extent to which this system affects categorization. In the study, 3- to 9-year-olds assigned gender categorization to invented nouns whose endings were typically masculine, typically feminine, or neutral. Two response conditions were used. In the determiner condition, children indicated the gender class by orally providing the determiner un or une marked for gender. In the picture condition, responses were given by pointing to the picture of a Martian-like female or male person that would be best called by each spoken pseudoword. Results indicated that as young as 3years, children associated the determiner corresponding to the ending bias at greater than chance levels. Ending-consistent performance increased from 3 to 9years of age. Moreover, from 4years of age onward, sensitivity to endings affected categorization. Starting at that age, pictures were selected according to endings at greater than chance levels. This effect also increased with age. The discussion deals with the mechanisms of language acquisition and the relation between language and cognition. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]