Vikki Janke

University of Kent | KENT · Department of English Language & Linguistics

In this article we focus on ‘false cognates’, lexical items that have overlapping orthographic/phonological properties but little or no semantic overlap. False-cognate pairs were created from French (second language or L2) and English (first language or L1) items by manipulating the levels of morphological correspondence between them. Our aim was t...

This study contributes original results to the topical issue of the degree to which grammar is intact in high-functioning children with autism (HFA). We examine the comprehension of binding and obligatory control in 26 HFA children, mean age = 12;02, compared with two groups of younger typically developing (TD) children: one matched on non-verbal m...

An ongoing issue of interest in second language research concerns what transfers from a speaker’s first language to their second. For learners of a sign language, gesture is a potential substrate for transfer. Our study provides a novel test of gestural production by eliciting silent gesture from novices in a controlled environment. We focus on spa...

Most research reporting that bilingual children exhibit enhanced cognitive skills and social awareness relative to their monolingual peers focuses on children raised and educated bilingually, making it difficult to pinpoint the degree of second language exposure necessary for such advantages to materialise. The current study measures the social and...

When a paediatrician establishes a trusting relationship with their patient, the chance of a positive outcome multiplies. A calm child, who participates fully in the communicative exchange is more receptive to the clini-cian's requests and reports weaker sensations of pain. This experience stays with the child, shaping how they approach their healt...

Adults can extract phonological regularities from just several minutes' exposure to natural-istic input of an unknown spoken language (Gullberg et al., 2010). We examined whether such implicit statistical learning mechanisms also operate in the sign language modality. The input materials consisted of a continuous sign stream in the form of a weathe...

This study explored how non-signers exploit their gestural repertoire during a process of handshape conventionalisation. We examined how communicative context, interaction, and time affect the transition from iconically motivated representations to linguistically organised, generalised forms. One hundred non-signers undertook a silent gesture-elici...

We investigated whether sign-naïve learners can infer and learn the meaning of signs after minimal exposure to continuous, naturalistic input in the form of a weather forecast in Swedish Sign Language. Participants were L1-English adults. Two experimental groups watched the forecast once (n = 40) or twice (n = 42); a control group did not (n = 42)....

Our longitudinal study examined the cognitive and linguistic development of bilingually-educated, yet monolingually-raised, Spanish children, exploring (a) whether bilingual education procured a bilingual advantage, (b) whether greater L2 exposure was key to producing it, and (c) how development proceeded over time. We compared three groups of chi...

A key challenge when learning language in naturalistic circumstances is to extract linguistic information from a continuous stream of speech. This study investigates the predictors of such implicit learning among adults exposed to a new language in a new modality (a sign language). Sign-naïve participants (N = 93; British English speakers) were sho...

The question of whether child bilingualism enhances development continues to be debated. Although there is a large body of research pointing to advantages for bilingual children in certain executive functions (Bialystok & Martin, 2004; Costa et al., 2009; Hernández et al., 2013) and social skills (Fan et al., 2015; Han, 2010; Sun et al., 2018), oth...

The reference of understood subjects (ecs) in complement control (John persuaded Peteri eci to read the book) and temporal adjunct control (Johni tapped Peter while eci reading the book) has long been described as restricted to the object and subject of the main clause respectively. These restrictions have shaped the grammatical targets proposed fo...

Non-obligatory control constructions (NOC) are sentences which contain a non-finite clause with a null subject whose reference is determined pragmatically. Little is known about how children assign reference to these subjects yet this is important as our current understanding of reference-resolution development is limited to less complex sentences...

In this chapter, we have focused on an example of advanced syntax and an example of primary pragmatics (obligatory control [OC] and nonobligatory control [NOC]) to compare reference assignment in two language domains. We first showed that the performance of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) on OC was flawless. This affirmative result sub...

This study examined discourse effects on obligatory and non-obligatory control interpretations. 70 participants undertook three online forced-choice surveys, which monitored preferred interpretations in complement control, verbal-gerund-subject control, long-distance control and final temporal adjunct control. Survey 1 ascertained their baseline in...

This study examines two complex syntactic dependencies (complement control and sentence-final temporal adjunct control) and one pragmatic dependency (controlled verbal gerund subjects) in children with ASD. Sixteen high-functioning (HFA) children (aged 6–16) with a diagnosis of autism and no language impairment, matched on age, gender and non-verba...

In this chapter, we have focused on an example of advanced syntax and an example of primary pragmatics (obligatory control [OC] and nonobligatory control [NOC]) to compare reference assignment in two language domains. We first showed that the performance of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) on OC was flawless. This affirmative result sub...

This study was a preliminary investigation into children’s attention to pragmatic leads when assigning reference to null subjects in three different sub-types of control. The sentences included were object control (Ron persuaded Hermione ec to kick the ball), controlled verbal gerund subjects (ec Pouring the water quickly made Harry wet) and tempor...

A project sponsored by the British Academy at the University of Kent demonstrates key areas of language at which individuals with autism spectrum disorder excel. Vikki Janke explains aspects of grammatical and contextual skills that are right on target and why this is good news.

Doctoral Thesis: University College London

Three profoundly deaf individuals undertook a low-frequency backward lexical translation task (French/English), where morphological structure was manipulated and orthographic distance between test items was measured. Conditions included monomorphemic items (simplex), polymorphemic items (complex), items whose French morphological structure exceeded...

In this study, we test 12 high-functioning children with autism (HFA), aged 12-16, on a picture-selection task assessing comprehension of binding and compare their performance on this construction with that on an already conducted, similarly designed task testing comprehension of obligatory control (Janke and Perovic (submitted)). We compare the ch...

This third volume of the Interfaces in Language series brings together a collection of papers which were presented at the University of Kent's Interfaces in Language 3 conference of May 2011. In line with the conference's title, applications which held true to the interface theme were invited, yet no restrictions were placed on the way in which 'in...

We argue that English allows both rightward-descending VP shell structures and more traditional rightward-ascending VPs. The choice between these depends on case theory and economy. Case theory triggers VP shell formation whenever the verb is merged with a DP object after it has been merged with some other category. The reason is that VP shell form...

The aim of this paper is to develop a representation of control that does not require a PRO-subject. I first analyse obligatory control using a de-compositional analysis of θ-roles, according to which θ-roles are divided into two selectional requirements. The resulting theory makes the same predictions as one based on PRO, yet avoids dependence on...

In this paper we argue that English allows both traditional left-branching VPs and right-branching VP-shell structures (as first proposed in Larson 1988a, 1990). The choice between these depends on case theory and economy. Case theory triggers VP- shell formation whenever the verb is merged with a DP-object after it has been merged with some oth...

In this paper I present a theory of obligatory control which is PRO free. The account is binding -based, but grounded in minimalist principles, in that it assumes an encoding of syntactic properties that satisfies Inclusiveness. The control relation is expressed in terms of how lexical semantic properties of a predicate are mapped onto lexical synt...