Language Universals Engage Broca's Area

Berent, Iris; Zhao, Xu; Peng, Hong; Epstein, Jennifer A.; Stern, Emily

doi:10.1037/e505772014-037

Cited by 4 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…However, people remained fully sensitive to hierarchy even when the lip motor area in the brain was disrupted using transcranial magnetic stimulation (Berent et al, 2015). Similarly, an fMRI experiment showed that ill-formed syllables did not increase activation in motor areas, but they did engage the posterior part of Broca's area-a classical language region (Berent et al, 2014).…”

Section: Phonological Universals In the Brains Of Individual Speakersmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Origins of Phonology

Berent

2017

Curr Dir Psychol Sci

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Many species rely on vocal patterns of communication, and as in human phonology, their structure is often constrained. Just as humans favor dra over rda, swamp sparrows from the New York area generate I_VI syllables (where I and VI are two notes, and _ stands for any note) but not VI_I sequences (Balaban, 1988). Faced with the restrictions on swamp sparrow songs, one immediately wonders whether these patterns are the product of a specialized biological system. "Specialized," here, refers to a system designed for vocal communication, specifically. It shapes not bird intelligence generally nor motor dexterity or auditory acuity. Rather, this birdsong system has specifically evolved to constrain the structure of song (in mature animals) and guide its acquisition (in development). Those innate constraints, in turn, are universally active in all members of the species, and possibly unique to them alone. Unlike vocal patterns in nonhumans, for which domainspecific constraints are typically invoked, when it comes to vocal patterns in our own species, this possibility is usually dismissed outright. When asked, "Why dra, but not rda?", the answer would seem trivial. First, many English words begin with dr, but none with rd. Second, sequences such as dra are easier for the sensory and motor channel to process. Linguistic sound patterns, then, are molded by linguistic experience and sensorimotor 688891C DPXXX10.

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Section: Phonological Universals In the Brains Of Individual Speakersmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Origins of Phonology

Berent

2017

Curr Dir Psychol Sci

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“…Experiment 3 consisted of an interrogation of an existing data set (26) to address the role of the lip motor area in performing the syllable count task. The materials consisted of a subset of the materials from experiment 1, and the task was identical to experiment 1, but experiment 3 was administered to another group of participants, distinct from the one in experiments 1 and 2 (n = 14, M = 22.57 y, 10 females, right-handed native English speakers).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Role of the motor system in language knowledge

Berent

Brem

Zhao

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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All spoken languages express words by sound patterns, and certain patterns (e.g., blog) are systematically preferred to others (e.g., lbog). What principles account for such preferences: does the language system encode abstract rules banning syllables like lbog, or does their dislike reflect the increased motor demands associated with speech production? More generally, we ask whether linguistic knowledge is fully embodied or whether some linguistic principles could potentially be abstract. To address this question, here we gauge the sensitivity of English speakers to the putative universal syllable hierarchy (e.g., blif≻bnif≻bdif≻lbif) while undergoing transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over the cortical motor representation of the left orbicularis oris muscle. If syllable preferences reflect motor simulation, then worse-formed syllables (e.g., lbif) should (i) elicit more errors; (ii) engage more strongly motor brain areas; and (iii) elicit stronger effects of TMS on these motor regions. In line with the motor account, we found that repetitive TMS pulses impaired participants' global sensitivity to the number of syllables, and functional MRI confirmed that the cortical stimulation site was sensitive to the syllable hierarchy. Contrary to the motor account, however, ill-formed syllables were least likely to engage the lip sensorimotor area and they were least impaired by TMS. Results suggest that speech perception automatically triggers motor action, but this effect is not causally linked to the computation of linguistic structure. We conclude that the language and motor systems are intimately linked, yet distinct. Language is designed to optimize motor action, but its knowledge includes principles that are disembodied and potentially abstract.any animal species communicate using vocal patterns, and humans are no exception. Every hearing human community preferentially expresses words by oral patterns (1). Speech sounds, such as d,o,g give rise to contrasting patterns (e.g., dog vs. god), and certain speech patterns are systematically preferred to others. Syllables like blog, for instance, are more frequent across languages than lbog (2). Behavioral experiments further demonstrate similar preferences among individual speakers despite no experience with either syllable type (3)(4)(5)(6).Although such facts demonstrate that the sound patterns of language are systematically constrained, the nature of such constraints remains unknown. One explanation invokes universal linguistic constraints on the sound structure of language (7). However, in an alternative account, these patterns are thought to reflect motor, rather than linguistic, constraints caused by their embodiment in the motor system of speech (8-11). Indeed, the speech patterns that are attested across spoken languages are not arbitrary, and frequent patterns tend to optimize speech production (12). Such observations open up the possibility that the so-called "language universals" are action based. In this view, the encoding of a speech stimulus engages ...

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“…An impressive volume of publications devoted to this question can be found in the works of Iris Berent and her colleagues, starting with Berent et al. (2007), and followed by many subsequent studies (e.g., Berent, 2017; Berent et al., 2008, 2012, 2014; Gómez, 2014). Berent et al.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The following examples also include neurological data: Berent et al. (2014); Gómez (2014); Berent et al. (2015).…”

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Modeling Sonority in Terms of Pitch Intelligibility With the Nucleus Attraction Principle

Albert¹,

Nicenboim

2022

Cognitive Science

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Sonority is a fundamental notion in phonetics and phonology, central to many descriptions of the syllable and various useful predictions in phonotactics. Although widely accepted, sonority lacks a clear basis in speech articulation or perception, given that traditional formal principles in linguistic theory are often exclusively based on discrete units in symbolic representation and are typically not designed to be compatible with auditory perception, sensorimotor control, or general cognitive capacities. In addition, traditional sonority principles also exhibit systematic gaps in empirical coverage. Against this backdrop, we propose the incorporation of symbol‐based and signal‐based models to adequately account for sonority in a complementary manner. We claim that sonority is primarily a perceptual phenomenon related to pitch, driving the optimization of syllables as pitch‐bearing units in all language systems. We suggest a measurable acoustic correlate for sonority in terms of periodic energy, and we provide a novel principle that can account for syllabic well‐formedness, the nucleus attraction principle (NAP). We present perception experiments that test our two NAP‐based models against four traditional sonority models, and we use a Bayesian data analysis approach to test and compare them. Our symbolic NAP model outperforms all the other models we test, while our continuous bottom‐up NAP model is at second place, along with the best performing traditional models. We interpret the results as providing strong support for our proposals: (i) the designation of periodic energy as the acoustic correlate of sonority; (ii) the incorporation of continuous entities in phonological models of perception; and (iii) the dual‐model strategy that separately analyzes symbol‐based top‐down processes and signal‐based bottom‐up processes in speech perception.

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Language Universals Engage Broca's Area

Cited by 4 publications

References 31 publications

On the Origins of Phonology

On the Origins of Phonology

Role of the motor system in language knowledge

Modeling Sonority in Terms of Pitch Intelligibility With the Nucleus Attraction Principle

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