
Niels O. SchillerCity University of Hong Kong | CityU · Department of Linguistics and Translation
Niels O. Schiller
MA, PhD
working on the representation and processing of syntactic features, i.e. gender, classifiers, etc. in psycholinguistics
About
358
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Introduction
My research areas are psycho- and neurolinguistics, in particular syntactic, morphological, and phonological processes in language production and reading aloud. Furthermore, I am interested in articulatory-motor processes during speech production, language processing in neurologically impaired patients, and forensic phonetics.
Additional affiliations
June 2006 - January 2024
December 2012 - December 2012
January 2010 - January 2010
Publications
Publications (358)
The present study investigated morphological priming in Dutch and its time course in overt speech production using a long-lag priming paradigm. Prime words were compounds that were morphologically related to a picture name (e.g. the word jaszak, 'coat pocket' was used for a picture of a coat; Dutch jas) or form-related monomorphemic words (e.g. jas...
In this study, we investigated grammatical feature selection during noun phrase production in German and Dutch. More specifically, we studied the conditions under which different grammatical genders select either the same or dif-ferent determiners or suffixes. Pictures of one or two objects paired with a gender-congruent or a gender-incongruent dis...
To investigate the role of the syllable in Dutch speech production, five experiments were carried out to examine the effect of visually masked syllable primes on the naming latencies for written words and pictures. Targets had clear syllable boundaries and began with a CV syllable (e.g.,ka.no) or a CVC syllable (e.g.,kak.tus), or had ambiguous syll...
This study addressed how bilingual speakers switch between their first and second language when speaking. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and naming latencies were measured while unbalanced German (L1)–Dutch (L2) speakers performed a picture-naming task. Participants named pictures either in their L1 or in their L2 (blocked language condition...
This volume offers an overview of current research on grammatical number in language. The chapters Part i of the handbook present foundational notions in the study of grammatical number covering the semantic analyses of plurality, the mass–count distinction, the relationship between number and quantity expressions and the mental representation of n...
Why is it that some people seem to learn new languages faster and more easily than others? The present study investigates the neuroanatomical basis of language learning aptitude, with a focus on the multiplication pattern of the transverse temporal gyrus/gyri (TTG/TTGs) of the auditory cortex. The size and multiplication pattern of the first TTG (i...
The question whether compound words are stored in our mental lexicon in a decomposed or full-listing way prompted Janssen and colleagues (2008) to investigate the representation of compounds using word and morpheme frequencies manipulations. Our study replicated their study using a new set of stimuli from a spoken corpus and incorporating EEG data...
This study investigates the role of morphology during speech planning in Mandarin Chinese. In a long-lag priming experiment, thirty-two Mandarin Chinese native speakers were asked to name target pictures (e.g., “山” /shan1/ "mountain"). The design involved pictures referring to morpheme-related compound words (e.g., “山羊” /shan1yang2/ "goat") sharing...
According to Levelt’s language production model, in order to name an object, speakers must first conceptualize and lexicalize the object before its name can be articulated. Conceptualization is conducted through the semantic network that exists at the conceptual level, with the highly activated concept(s) activating lexical items at the lemma-level...
There is evidence from both behavior and brain activity that the way information is structured, through the use of focus, can up-regulate processing of focused constituents, likely to give prominence to the relevant aspects of the input. This is hypothesized to be universal, regardless of the different ways in which languages encode focus. In order...
This study aims to examine the influence of dialectal experience on logographic visual word recognition. Two groups of Chinese monolectals and three groups of Chinese bi-dialectals performed Stroop color-naming in Standard Chinese (SC), and two of the bi-dialectal groups also in their regional dialects. The participant groups differed in dialectal...
Professor Albert Costa (1972-2018) was one of the most influential scholars in the fields of psycholinguistics and bilingualism. This book provides a faithful look at the most relevant lines of research in which he worked during his academic career. Written by some of his close collaborators and friends, the book presents a coherent summary of the...
It has been suggested that individual variation in vowel compactness of the native language (L1) and the distance between L1 vowels and vowels in the second language (L2) predict successful L2 vowel acquisition. Moreover, general articulatory skills have been proposed to account for variation in vowel compactness. In the present work, we conceptual...
It has been proposed that the order in which words are prepared for production depends on the speaker’s language. When producing the translation equivalent of the small cat, speakers of German or Dutch select the gender-marked determiner at a relatively early stage of production. Speakers of French or Italian postpone the encoding of a determiner o...
Grammatical gender as a lexico-syntactic feature has been well explored, and the gender congruency effect has been observed in many languages (e.g., Dutch, German, Croatian, Czech, etc.). Yet, so far, this effect has not been found in Romance languages such as Italian, French, and Spanish. It has been argued that the absence of the effect in Romanc...
The inferior parietal cortex (IPC) is a complex brain region with the rostral, the middle and the caudal clusters, and functionally connected to several other cortical areas. Various cognitive functions are suggested to be governed by the IPC, however, due to ignoring the tripartite structure of this part of the brain, inconsistencies abound. Here,...
According to the correlated transmitter-receptor based structure of the inferior parietal cortex (IPC), this brain area is divided into three clusters, namely, the caudal, the middle and the rostral. Nevertheless, in associating different cognitive functions to the IPC, previous studies considered this part of the cortex as a whole and thus inconsi...
Editorial: From individual minds to language co-evolution: Psychological mechanisms for the evolution of cross-cultural and cross-species communication systems
According to the correlated transmitter-receptor based organization of the inferior parietal cortex (IPC), this brain area is parcellated into the rostral, the middle and the caudal clusters. However, in associating different cognitive functions to the IPC, previous studies considered this part of the cortex as a whole and thus inconsistent results...
Both inhibitory control and typological similarity between two languages feature frequently in current research on multilingual cognitive processing mechanisms. Yet, the modulatory effect of speaking two typologically highly similar languages on inhibitory control performance remains largely unexplored. However, this is a critical issue because it...
Cross-linguistic influence (CLI) and typological similarity are key features in multilingual language processing. Here, we study whether CLI effects in language production are more pronounced in typologically similar vs. dissimilar languages in late language learners. In a picture-naming task, we manipulated gender congruency and cognate status as...
The cytoarchitectonically tripartite organization of the inferior parietal cortex (IPC) into the rostral, the middle and the caudal clusters has been generally ignored when associating different functions to this part of the cortex, resulting in inconsistencies about how IPC is understood. In this study, we investigated the patterns of functional c...
Does the way a word is written influence its spoken production? Previous studies suggest that orthography is involved only when the orthographic representation is highly relevant during speaking (e.g., in reading-aloud tasks). To address this issue, we carried out two experiments using the blocked cyclic picture-naming paradigm. In both experiments...
In tonal languages such as Mandarin, both lexical tone and sentence intonation are primarily signaled by F0. Their F0 encodings are sometimes in conflict and sometimes in congruency. The present study investigated how tone and intonation, with F0 encodings in conflict or in congruency, are processed and how semantic context may affect their process...
The cytoarchitectonically tripartite organization of the inferior parietal cortex (IPC) into the rostral, the middle and the caudal clusters has been generally ignored when associating different functions to this part of the cortex, resulting in inconsistencies about how IPC is understood. In this study, we investigated the patterns of functional c...
The cytoarchitectonically tripartite organization of the inferior parietal cortex (IPC) into the rostral, the middle and the caudal clusters has been generally ignored when associating different functions to this part of the cortex, resulting in inconsistencies about how IPC is understood. In this study, we investigated the patterns of functional c...
The goal of this chapter is to show that the mental lexicon has different facets: different levels of representation of lexical entries, i.e. semantic, syntactic, morphological and phonological, as well as different representation formats of information depending on the processes that use these representations, i.e. language comprehension vs. produ...
This study investigated cross-linguistic interference in German low-proficient late learners of Spanish. We examined the modulating influence of gender congruency and cognate status using a syntactic violation paradigm. Behavioural results demonstrated that participants were more sensitive to similarities at the syntactic level (gender congruency)...
Characterising the time course of non-native language production is critical in understanding the mechanisms behind successful communication. Yet, little is known about the modulating role of cross-linguistic influence (CLI) on the temporal unfolding of non-native production and the locus of target language selection. In this study, we explored CLI...
The objective of this paper was to study the cognitive processes underlying cross-dialectal novel word borrowing and loanword establishment in a Standard-Chinese-to-Shanghainese (SC-SH) auditory lexical learning and borrowing experiment. To investigate these underlying cognitive processes, SC-SH bi-dialectals were compared with SC monolectals as we...
How do production and comprehension processes interact in the bilingual brain during language interaction? Most experimental and theoretical research in psycholinguistics to date has focused on investigating the mechanisms that underlie language production and language comprehension separately. Only recently have researchers started emphasizing the...
In Chinese, when objects are named with their quantity, a numeral classifier must be inserted between the quantifier and the noun to produce a grammatically correct quantifier + classifier + noun phrase. In this study, we adopted the picture-word interference paradigm to examine participants’ naming latencies for multiple objects and their electroe...
Most psycholinguistic models of speech production agree on an earlier semantic processing stage and a later word-form encoding stage. Using a logographic language, Mandarin Chinese, Zhang and Weekes (2009) reported an early effect of orthography in a picture-word-interference study and suggested that orthography can affect speech production via a l...
The inferior parietal cortex (IPC) is involved in different cognitive functions including language. In line with the correlated transmitter receptor-based organization of the IPC, this part of the brain is parcellated into the rostral, the middle and the caudal clusters; however, the tripartite organization of the IPC has not been addressed in stud...
Resting state functional connectivity can be leveraged to investigate bilingual individual differences in cognitive control of language; however, thus far no report is provided on how the connectivity profiles of brain functional networks at rest point to different language control behavior in bilinguals. In order to address this gap in state-of-th...
This study examines the effect of foreign-accented speech on the predictive ability of our brain. Listeners actively anticipate upcoming linguistic information in the speech signal so as to facilitate and reduce processing load. However, it is unclear whether or not listeners also do this when they are exposed to speech from non-native speakers. In...
This study examines the effect of foreign-accented speech on the predictive ability of our brain. Listeners actively anticipate upcoming linguistic information in the speech signal so as to facilitate and reduce processing load. However, it is unclear whether or not listeners also do this when they are exposed to speech from non-native speakers. In...
Neurolinguistic approaches to morphology include the main theories of morphological representation and processing in the human mind, such as full-listing, full-parsing and hybrid dual-route models, and how the experimental evidence that has been acquired to support these theories using different neurolinguistic paradigms (visual and auditory primin...
One long-neglected fact in linguistic research on Standard Chinese (SC) is that most speakers of SC also speak a local dialect, which may share phonological features with SC. Tonal information can be a determinant of the phonological similarities or differences between some Chinese dialects and SC, yet relatively little empirical research has been...
Phonological similarity affects bilingual lexical access of etymologically-related translation equivalents (ETEs). Jinan Mandarin (JM) and Standard Chinese (SC) are closely related and share many ETEs, which are usually orthographically and segmentally identical but vary in tonal similarity. Using an auditory lexical decision experiment and General...
In Papiamento-Dutch bilingual speech, the nominal construction is a potential 'conflict site' if there is an adjective from one language and a noun from the other. Adjective position is pre-nominal in Dutch (cf. rode wijn 'red wine') but post-nominal in Papiamento (cf. biña kòrá 'wine red'). We test predictions concerning the mechanisms underpinnin...
In this commentary, I would like to support Goad and White’s (2019, henceforth G&W) claim that the morphosyntactic feature system in the L2 does not have to be defective due to certain syntactic features not being activated in the L1. I will base my point on the example of grammatical gender. Moreover, I would like to stress the importance of devel...
Wh-in-situ questions are typical of sentences which contain temporary syntactic ambiguity. The current research adopted the gating paradigm to investigate when distinctive prosodic cues of the pre-wh part enable identification of wh-in-situ questions in standard Persian. A forced-choice sentence identification task was designed in which 40 pairs of...
In this commentary, I would like to support Goad and White’s (2019) claim that the morphosyntactic feature system in the L2 does not have to be defective due to certain syntactic features not being activated in the L1.
The role of prediction in processing speech is investigated as well as the role of prosody in predicting the eventual syntactic structure of ambiguous sentences, such as wh-in-situ questions that display a temporary syntactic ambiguity in Persian
To produce a word, a speaker needs to retrieve the semantic representation of the word and encode the phonological form for articulation. It is not precisely known yet if a word’s syntactic features (e.g. number, grammatical gender, etc.) are automatically activated and selected in single noun production. Using the picture-word interference paradig...
Self-perceived word-finding difficulties are common in aging individuals as well as in Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Language deficits are difficult to objectify with neuropsychological assessments. We therefore aimed to investigate whether amyloid, an early AD pathological hallmark, is associated with speech-derived semantic complexity. We included 63...
Previous work suggests that infant cry perception is supported by an evolutionary old neural network consisting of the auditory system, the thalamocingulate circuit, the frontoinsular system, the reward pathway and the medial prefrontal cortex. Furthermore, gender and parenthood have been proposed to modulate processing of infant cries. The present...
The Oxford Handbook of Neurolinguistics provides concise overviews of this rapidly growing eld, and engages a broad audience with an interest in the neurobiology of language. The chapters do not attempt to provide exhaustive coverage, but rather present discussions of prominent questions posed by given topics. The volume opens with essential method...
Grammatical gender agreement has been well addressed in language comprehension but less so in language production. The present article discusses the arguments derived from the most prominent language production models on the representation and processing of the grammatical gender of nouns in language production and then reviews recent empirical stu...
In this chapter, we describe neurolinguistic aspects of morphology, morphological theory and especially morphological processing. We start by introducing the term 'neurolinguistics' to the reader and define it according to how we understand and use the term. Then we introduce the section on neurolinguistic aspects of morphological processing. First...
Purpose
Relative to normally hearing (NH) peers, the speech of children with cochlear implants (CIs) has been found to have deviations such as a high fundamental frequency, elevated jitter and shimmer, and inadequate intonation. However, two important dimensions of prosody (temporal and spectral) have not been systematically investigated. Given tha...
The perception and production of emotional and linguistic (focus) prosody were compared in children with cochlear implants (CI) and normally hearing (NH) peers. Thirteen CI and thirteen hearing-age-matched school-aged NH children were tested, as baseline, on non-verbal emotion understanding, non-word repetition, and stimulus identification and nami...
Previous literature demonstrated the influential role of prediction in processing speech (Brazil, 1981; Grosjean, 1983, 1996a; Snedeker & Trueswell et al., 2003), and of prosody in predicting the eventual syntactic structure of ambiguous sentences (e.g. Snedeker & Trueswell, 2003). Wh-in-situ questions contain temporary syntactic ambiguity. One of...
Adult native Dutch speakers tend to have difficulty learning the English /æ/-/ɛ/ contrast because both English vowels can be assimilated to Dutch /ε/. Two experiments examined how this contrast is acquired by Dutch adults and the relationship between perception and production in this process. In Experiment 1, a four-day perceptual training protocol...
In two experiments, we examined the functional locus of plural dominance in the French spoken word production system, where singulars and plurals share the same phonological word form. The materials included singular-dominant (singular more frequent than plural) and plural-dominant nouns (plural more frequent than singular). In Experiment 1, partic...
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Our project investigates first language acquisition as a result of parent-child interaction: the model consists of a parent- and a child-entity that are both interacting language producing and analyzing computer programs/automata. The adult language model, the parent entity, is based on an existing parser and generator of the target language while...
Speaking involves turning thoughts into controlled movements of the jaws, the lips and the tongue. That is, speakers start with an abstract, amorphous idea – not yet in the form of a lexical item – that is converted into something pretty concrete such as an acoustic signal. This process is fascinating but also complex. The current paper will focus...
The present study will examine whether individual variation in ERP components during L2 perception predicts subsequent L2 pronunciation proficiency. We will investigate this by examining perception and production of L2 while measuring ERPs, once in the beginning of the first academic year (T1) of Dutch students' classes in English, and once at the...
This poster offers an overview of my current research project and it's results so far. Since we've only been able to analyze a small portion of the entire dataset, the findings in this poster should be considered as preliminary.
This poster offers an overview of my current research project and it's process so far. Since only a small portion of the entire dataset has been analyzed, the data reported in this poster should be considered preliminary.
In morphological priming, morphologically complex words (e.g. honeymoon), prime their constituent parts (moon). Morphological priming, unlike phonological or semantic priming, can survive intervening lags of at least eight words. It has been argued not to originate from any form or meaning overlap, but from heightened activations at the morpheme le...
The blocked cyclic naming paradigm has been increasingly employed to investigate the mechanisms underlying spoken word production. Semantic homogeneity typically elicits longer naming latencies than heterogeneity; however, it is debated whether competitive lexical selection or incremental learning underlies this effect. The current study manipulate...
It has been shown that prosody contributes to the contrast between declarativity and interrogativity, notably in interrogative utterances lacking lexico-syntactic features of interrogativity. Accordingly, it may be proposed that prosody plays a role in marking wh-in-situ questions in which the interrogativity feature (the wh-phrase) does not m...
It has been shown that prosody contributes to the contrast between declarativity and interrogativity, notably in interrogative utterances lacking lexico-syntactic features of interrogativity (e.g. Van Heuven & Haan, 2000). Accordingly, it may be proposed that prosody plays a role in marking wh-in-situ questions in which the interrogativity feature...
The present study applied functional partition to investigate disyllabic lexical tonal-pattern categories in an under-resourced Chinese dialect, Jinan Mandarin. A Two-Stage partitioning procedure was introduced to process a multi-speaker corpus that contains irregular lexical variants in a semi-automatic way. In the first stage, a program provides...
Following Opitz and Friederici (2003) suggesting interactions of the hippocampal system and the prefrontal cortex as the neural mechanism underlying novel grammar learning, the present fMRI study investigated functional connectivity of bilateral BA 44/45 and the hippocampus during an artificial grammar learning (AGL) task. Our results, contrary to...
Does orthography contribute to spoken word production? Previous studies suggest that orthography is only involved in spoken word production when the orthographic representation is highly relevant, for instance, in reading aloud tasks. Using an adapted blocked cyclic naming paradigm, participants were asked to overtly name pictures that were present...
Aiming at exploring the brain’s structural organisation underlying successful second language (L2) learning,
we investigate the anatomy of the perisylvian language network in a group of healthy adults, consisting of participants with high (N = 22) and average (N = 20) language analytical abilities. The two groups were recruited on the basis of a la...
Previous behavioral studies showed that clause-type (question or declarative) is prosodically marked and listeners can identify clause-type based on prosody. Nonetheless, little is known about how exactly prosody infl uences the clause-type identifi cation and how early prosody plays a role in processing. We fi ll this gap by conducting an auditory...
The goal of the present study was to investigate the initial phases of novel grammar learning on a neural level, concentrating on mechanisms responsible for individual variability between learners. Two groups of participants, one with high and one with average language analytical abilities, performed an Artificial Grammar Learning (AGL) task consis...
The goal of the present study was to investigate the initial phases of novel grammar learning on a neural level, concentrating on mechanisms responsible for individual variability between learners. Two groups of participants, one with high and one with average language analytical abilities, performed an Artificial Grammar Learning (AGL) task consis...
Aiming at exploring the brain’s structural organisation underlying successful second language learning, we investigate the anatomy of the perisylvian language network in a group of healthy adults, consisting of participants with high (N = 22) and average (N = 20) language analytical abilities. The two groups were recruited on the basis of a languag...
It has been reported that prosody contributes to the identification of utterances which lack lexico-syntactic indicators of interrogativity but do have characteristic prosodic correlates (e.g. Vion & Colas, 2006). In Persian wh-in-situ questions, the interrogativity device (the wh-phrase) does not move to the sentence-initial position, and the pre-...