Iconicity, the resemblance between the form of a word and its meaning, has effects on behavior in both communicative symbol development and language learning experiments. These results have invited speculation about iconicity being a key feature of the origins of language, yet the presence of iconicity in natural languages seems limited. In a diachronic study of language change, we investigated the extent to which iconicity is a stable property of vocabulary, alongside previously investigated psycholinguistic predictors of change. Analyzing 784 English (...) words with data on their historical forms, we found that stable words are higher in iconicity, longer in length, and earlier acquired during development, but that the role of frequency and grammatical category may be less important than previously suggested. Iconicity is revealed as a feature of ultra-conserved words and potentially also as a property of vocabulary early in the history of language origins. (shrink)

Invoking key concepts from the philosophical writings of Gilles Deleuze and Giorgio Agamben, The Dark Interval examines an iconography of radical passivity and temporal rupture that recurs in film noir, while examining the emergence of a specific cinematic figure - the 'intervallic' noir protagonist exposed to the redemptive force of his or her own passion.

The debate over news ombudsmen remains at a seemingly irreconcilable impasse, and less relevant as journalism shifts away from print and traditional newsroom structures in the new-media age. There are fewer than 30 ombudsmen at U.S. media outlets today, according to the Organization of News Ombudsmen (Ombudsmen, 2010). We argue that the greatest failure of ombudsmanship is that it does not go far enough in giving voice and visibility to the ombudsman's work, including interacting with community. Media news outlets can (...) best serve the public trust by fulfilling the journalistic mission of civic transformation through empowerment advocated by Christians, Ferre, and Fackler (1993). As the vanguard of the communitarian approach of ?person-in-community,? the ideal ombudsman would be just that: a person in the community. The ethical goal of ombudsmanship should be not to promote an apologist from within the ranks but rather to facilitate a community conversation. We propose integrating the ideal ombudsman (which we redefine and rename as the ethics examiner) with the best practices of successful news councils (hereafter called media councils in a return to their original name and to encompass a broader universe of information outlets). (shrink)

There is substantial variation in language experience, yet there is surprising similarity in the language structure acquired. Constraints on language structure may be external modulators that result in this canalization of language structure, or else they may derive from the broader, communicative environment in which language is acquired. In this paper, the latter perspective is tested for its adequacy in explaining robustness of language learning to environmental variation. A computational model of word learning from cross-situational, multimodal information was constructed and (...) tested. Key to the model's robustness was the presence of multiple, individually unreliable information sources to support learning. This “degeneracy” in the language system has a detrimental effect on learning, compared to a noise-free environment, but has a critically important effect on acquisition of a canalized system that is resistant to environmental noise in communication. (shrink)

Learning to map words onto their referents is difficult, because there are multiple possibilities for forming these mappings. Cross-situational learning studies have shown that word-object mappings can be learned across multiple situations, as can verbs when presented in a syntactic context. However, these previous studies have presented either nouns or verbs in ambiguous contexts and thus bypass much of the complexity of multiple grammatical categories in speech. We show that noun word learning in adults is robust when objects are moving, (...) and that verbs can also be learned from similar scenes without additional syntactic information. Furthermore, we show that both nouns and verbs can be acquired simultaneously, thus resolving category-level as well as individual word-level ambiguity. However, nouns were learned more quickly than verbs, and we discuss this in light of previous studies investigating the noun advantage in word learning. (shrink)

There is substantial variation in language experience, yet there is surprising similarity in the language structure acquired. Constraints on language structure may be external modulators that result in this canalization of language structure, or else they may derive from the broader, communicative environment in which language is acquired. In this paper, the latter perspective is tested for its adequacy in explaining robustness of language learning to environmental variation. A computational model of word learning from cross-situational, multimodal information was constructed and (...) tested. Key to the model's robustness was the presence of multiple, individually unreliable information sources to support learning. This “degeneracy” in the language system has a detrimental effect on learning, compared to a noise-free environment, but has a critically important effect on acquisition of a canalized system that is resistant to environmental noise in communication. (shrink)

Studies of AGL have frequently used training and test stimuli that might provide multiple cues for learning, raising the question what subjects have actually learned. Using a selected subset of studies on humans and non‐human animals, Trotter et al. demonstrate how a meta‐analysis can be used to identify relevant experimental variables, providing a first step in asssessing the relative contribution of design features of grammars as well as of species‐specific effects on AGL.

This article focuses on the implicit statistical learning of words and syntax. Monaghan, Schoetensack and Rebuschat introduce a novel paradigm that combines theoretical and methodological insights from the two research traditions, implicit learning and statistical learning. Their cross‐situational learning paradigm has been used in the statistical learning literature, while their measures of awareness have widely been used in implicit learning research. They illustrate how the two literatures can be conjoined in a single paradigm to explore implicit statistical learning.

Drawing on a rich pragmatist tradition, this book offers an account of the different kinds of ‘oughts’, or varieties of normativity, that we are subject to contends that there is no conflict between normativity and the world as science describes it. The authors argue that normative claims aim to evaluate, to urge us to do or not do something, and to tell us how a state of affairs ought to be. These claims articulate forms of action-guidance that are different in (...) kind from descriptive claims, with a wholly distinct practical and expressive character. This account suggests that there are no normative facts, and so nothing that needs any troublesome shoehorning into a scientific account of the world. This work explains that nevertheless, normative claims are constrained by the world, and answerable to reason and argumentation, in a way that makes them truth-apt and objective. (shrink)

Natural language contains many examples of sound-symbolism, where the form of the word carries information about its meaning. Such systematicity is more prevalent in the words children acquire first, but arbitrariness dominates during later vocabulary development. Furthermore, systematicity appears to promote learning category distinctions, which may become more important as the vocabulary grows. In this study, we tested the relative costs and benefits of sound-symbolism for word learning as vocabulary size varies. Participants learned form-meaning mappings for words which were either (...) congruent or incongruent with regard to sound-symbolic relations. For the smaller vocabulary, sound-symbolism facilitated learning individual words, whereas for larger vocabularies sound-symbolism supported learning category distinctions. The changing properties of form-meaning mappings according to vocabulary size may reflect the different ways in which language is learned at different stages of development. (shrink)

In their editors’ introduction, Rebuschat and Monaghan provide the background to the special issue. They outline the rationale for bringing together, in a single volume, leading researchers from two distinct, yet related research strands, implicit learning and statistical learning. The editors then introduce the new contributions solicited for this special issue and provide their perspective on the agenda setting that results from combining these two approaches.

My dissertation is concerned with natural kind terms; its most basic goal is to provide a semantic account of the role these play in scientific discourse. Since my broad semantic approach follows Sellars and Brandom in looking to the pragmatically articulated inferential role of sentences rather than their relation to the world, I manage to set aside metaphysical questions regarding the nature of kinds. I begin with an account of the central role played by natural kind terms in theoretical explanation. (...) I show how natural kind terms are essential to the explanatory function of scientific laws as inference licenses of a certain sort. I turn then to the curious fact that natural kind terms occur in multiple grammatical positions: as parts of attributive predicates and as apparently singular referents . This latter role is at times one that seems to involve a quantificational attribution to all members of the kind, but at other times is more robust . My account demonstrates the utility of just such ambiguity to the role played by kind terms in explanation. I go on to account for a number of other puzzling features of natural kind term usage and to explain the distinction between natural kind terms and other sortals on grounds of their distinctive pragmatic significances. I conclude by laying out how my view can be extended to give a semantics for other sorts of kind terms . This allows us to draw a substantial distinction between gerrymandered kind terms and those that our theories should genuinely commit us to, while acknowledging that the entire natural/social divide among the kind terms stands or falls with our ability to show that there is an important fundamental distinction between different sorts of theories. (shrink)

Psychologists have used experimental methods to study language for more than a century. However, only with the recent availability of large-scale linguistic databases has a more complete picture begun to emerge of how language is actually used, and what information is available as input to language acquisition. Analyses of such “big data” have resulted in reappraisals of key assumptions about the nature of language. As an example, we focus on corpus-based research that has shed new light on the arbitrariness of (...) the sign: the longstanding assumption that the relationship between the sound of a word and its meaning is arbitrary. The results reveal a systematic relationship between the sound of a word and its meaning, which is stronger for early acquired words. Moreover, the analyses further uncover a systematic relationship between words and their lexical categories—nouns and verbs sound differently from each other—affecting how we learn new words and use them in sentences. Together, these results point to a division of labor between arbitrariness and systematicity in sound-meaning mappings. We conclude by arguing in favor of including “big data” analyses into the language scientist's methodological toolbox. (shrink)

The biology of early life adversity explores how social experiences early in life affect physical and psychological health and well-being throughout the life course. In our previous work, we argued that narratives emerging from and about this research field tend to focus on harm and lasting damage with little discussion of reversibility and resilience. However, as the Science and Technology Studies literature has demonstrated, scientific research can be actively taken up and transformed as it moves through social worlds. Drawing on (...) fieldwork with actors in education and juvenile corrections in the US Pacific Northwest, we found that they employed the biology of early life adversity not only to promote prevention but also to argue for changes within their own institutions that would allow them to better serve children and youth who have experienced adversity and trauma. Our study shows that biosocial narratives are neither inherently liberatory nor inherently oppressive but that the situated narrative choreographies in which they are enrolled are essential for their political effects. In our case, we show how these biosocial narratives have been articulated with knowledge and practices from restorative justice and trauma-informed care to reimagine the social meaning of the biology of early life adversity. (shrink)

Platonism has played a central role in Christianity and is essential to a deep understanding of the Christian theological tradition. At times, Platonism has constituted an essential philosophical and theological resource, furnishing Christianity with an intellectual framework that has played a key role in its early development, and in subsequent periods of renewal. Alternatively, it has been considered a compromising influence, conflicting with the faith's revelatory foundations and distorting its inherent message. In both cases the fundamental importance of Platonism, as (...) a force which Christianity defined itself by and against, is clear. Written by an international team of scholars, this landmark volume examines the history of Christian Platonism from antiquity to the present day, covers key concepts, and engages issues such as the environment, natural science and materialism. (shrink)

Negative campaigning is a central component of political campaigns in the United States. Yet, until now, most evidence has suggested that negative campaigning has little effect on voters. How can we reconcile the findings of a plethora of empirical studies with the methods of political elites? This book cuts through to the central issue: how such advertising influences voters' attitudes and their actions during campaigns. Focusing on U.S. senatorial campaigns, Kim Fridkin and Patrick Kenney draw from surveys, experiments, facial (...) expression emotion tests, content analyses, and focus groups. They develop the "tolerance and tactics theory of negativity" and demonstrate the divergent effects of tone and content on voter outcomes. Using their new framework, they find that harsh messages seen as relevant to the opponent's ability to govern are indeed likely to be noticed and acted upon. (shrink)

Pulvermüller's account of lexical representation has implications for visual word recognition, given the claim we make that a foveally presented word is precisely split and contralaterally projected to the two hemispheres, and that this splitting conditions the whole process of visual word recognition. This elaboration of Pulvermüller's account raises issues of hemispheric differences and collaboration.

This article examines the ethical dilemmas that can occur due to university and industry cooperative arrangements. The values that Conant (1952) and Merton (1942) ascribed to university science are used as a measure of the evolving university-industry relations in the 1980s. Examples of the types of relations being forged are discussed and possible conflicts of interest are explored. The author argues that the goals of the university are and must remain different from those of industry for the good of the (...) entire society. The transformation of the university into a research institution for industry could result in the university not adequately training the scientists of tomorrow, and simultaneously, not discharging its duty to do basic research as it focuses on the more applied research that industry desires and funds. (shrink)

The third book of Lucretius' great poem on the workings of the universe is devoted entirely to expounding the implications of Epicurus' dictum that death does not matter, 'is nothing to us'. The soul is not immortal: it no more exists after the dissolution of the body than it had done before its birth. Only if this fact is accepted can men rid themselves of irrational fears and achieve the state of ataraxia, freedom from mental disturbance, on which the Epicurean (...) definition of pleasure was based. To present this case Lucretius deploys the full range of poetic and rhetorical registers, soberly prohibitive, artfully decorative or passionately emotive as best suits his argument, reinforcing it with vivid and compelling imagery. This new edition has been completely revised, with a considerably enlarged Commentary and a new supplementary introduction taking account of the great amount of new scholarship of the last forty years. (shrink)

This article argues that afirm and consistent editorial focus on a poilitician's public virtue would serve well as the essence of journalistic communication about piitical character. Public virtue is defined as the ethical character traits attributed to a politician by an editorialist, based on direct obsemation, of the politician's words and deeds, broadly construed. After presenting the theoretical foundation of this definition, via qualitative case-study methodology, this essay analyzes the editorial claims made in the Atlanta newspapers about Gov. Bill Clinton's (...) political character during the 1992 presidential campaign. The Atlanta case demonstrates how a clear focus on public virtue can operate in practice. The conclusion discusses expectations that readers, opinion columnists, and newspaper editors should keep in mind as character issue is broughtforth in the press. (shrink)

Subjects exhibiting logical competence choices, for example, in Wason's selection task, are exhibiting an important skill. We take issue with the idea that this skill is individualistic and must be selected for at some different level than System 1 skills. Our case redraws System 1/2 boundaries, and reconsiders the relationship of competence model to skill.

Research in the Unites States concerning the relative access of women and men to financial resources has focused on the influence of women's increasing market work but has largely overlooked the also critical issue of what happens to money after it enters couple households. To fill this gap, this article employs a typology of household allocative systems developed in Great Britain to analyze money management and control in a sample of U.S. couples drawn from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing (...) Study. I find that the use of these systems varies substantially across socioeconomic, racial, ethnic, and relationship status groups, as well as by partners' relative household contributions. The patterns suggest that many women, already disadvantaged in earnings, either absolutely or relative to their partners, are in couples in which men's control over or withholding of income may reproduce or exacerbate their earnings disadvantage. (shrink)

This study explores Augustine's developing understanding of contemplation, beginning with his earliest accounts written before his baptism and ending with the Confessions. The arc of Augustine's thought through these years of transition leads into the Confessions, giving a vantage point to survey its classical Christian theology of contemplation.