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Brussels is an officially French-Dutch bilingual city, yet in reality, it is profoundly and increasingly multilingual. Earlier research on the linguistic situation in Brussels has predominantly focused on the competing dominant languages, resulting in very limited scholarly attention to smaller language communities. This paper addresses this blind spot by exploring the language repertoires, proficiencies and practices of members of the Chinese communities. Linking insights from language ecology to the study of language maintenance and shift, and informed by the questionnaire data, we discuss how the changing sociodemographic backgrounds of the participants affect the language maintenance and shift of the whole Chinese communities. Our results do not reveal a traditional pattern of shift toward the dominant majority languages, but rather hint at a community-level shift toward more complex multilingual repertoires with an increased role for English and Mandarin, in tune with Brussels’ increasingly international and multilingual context at large.

Juliane House hat zahlreiche grundlegende Arbeiten über das Übersetzen geschrieben. Später hat sie zudem viel über Fremdsprachenunterricht geschrieben und in den letzten Jahren einiges über Übersetzen im Fremdsprachenunterricht. Dabei geht es ihr vor allem um die Text- oder Diskursebene. Sie hat über interkulturelle Unterschiede geforscht, besonders in Bezug auf das Englische und das Deutsche (z.B. House 1998). Mit anregenden Beispielen hat sie gezeigt, wie man die Übersetzung zur Bewusstmachung solcher kulturellen Unterschiede im Unterricht einsetzen kann (z.B. House 2001). Im Folgenden geht es ebenfalls um Übersetzung und Fremdsprachen, doch in einem anderen Sinne. Es geht um einzelne Wörter, nicht um Texte oder Diskurse, es geht um die unteren Ebenen der Sprachverwendung und es geht um das Sprachwissen im Gedächtnis, nicht um das Weltwissen. In einem Text zum Thema Wortschatzerwerb schlägt House (1995) eine ganze Reihe von Forschungsfragen vor. Dazu gehören einige Fragen, auf die im Folgenden näher eingegangen wird, wie die Struktur des mentalen Lexikons oder die Art der „Verbindung zwischen lexikalischen Einheiten in L1 und L2“ (House 1995: 94). Lange wurde der Wortschatzerwerb in der Fremdsprachenerwerbsforschung vernachlässigt (House 1995: 92). Inzwischen hat sich die Lage zwar gebessert, doch es fehlt ein „führendes Theoriemodell“ (Schmidt 2002: 336). Im Falle der Mehrsprachigkeit sind unterschiedliche Beziehungen zwischen Wortform(en) und -bedeutung(en) möglich, wobei die Art des Spracherwerbs und des Einsatzes der Sprachkenntnisse vermutlich eine Rolle spielt. Auch bestimmte Worteigenschaften scheinen die Art der Wortrepräsentation zu beeinflussen. Darüber sind in der kognitionspsychologischen Literatur einige Daten gesammelt worden, die für die Rolle der Wortübersetzung beim Fremdsprachenerwerb aufschlussreich sein dürften. Zu dieser Rolle wurden auch DaF-Lernende befragt. Nach der Besprechung experimenteller Daten und Beobachtungen zum Verhältnis Ausgangssprache (L1)/Zielsprache (L2) auf der Ebene der Wortrepräsentationen wird die Befragung kurz vorgestellt. Sowohl bei den Daten aus der kognitionspsychologischen Literatur wie bei der Befragung geht es um Erwachsene.

International audience; Nearly 20 y ago, Jared Diamond and Peter Bellwood reviewed the evidence for the associated spread of farming and large language families by the demographic expansions of farmers. Since then, advances in obtaining and analyzing genomic data from modern and ancient populations have transformed our knowledge of human dispersals during the Holocene. Here, we provide an overview of Holocene dispersals in the light of genomic evidence and conclude that they have a complex history. Even when there is a demonstrated connection between a demographic expansion of people, the spread of agriculture, and the spread of a particular language family, the outcome in the results of contact between expanding and resident groups is highly variable. Further research is needed to identify the factors and social circumstances that have influenced this variation and complex history.

International audience; Alcohol intoxication is known to affect many aspects of human behavior and cognition; one of such affected systems is articulation during speech production. Although much research has revealed that alcohol negatively impacts pronunciation in a first language (L1), there is only initial evidence suggesting a potential beneficial effect of inebriation on articulation in a non-native language (L2). The aim of this study was thus to compare the effect of alcohol consumption on pronunciation in an L1 and an L2. Participants who had ingested different amounts of alcohol provided speech samples in their L1 (Dutch) and L2 (English), and native speakers of each language subsequently rated the pronunciation of these samples on their intelligibility (for the L1) and accent nativelikeness (for the L2). These data were analyzed with generalized additive mixed modeling. Participants’ blood alcohol concentration indeed negatively affected pronunciation in L1, but it produced no significant effect on the L2 accent ratings. The expected negative impact of alcohol on L1 articulation can be explained by reduction in fine motor control. We present two hypotheses to account for the absence of any effects of intoxication on L2 pronunciation: (1) there may be a reduction in L1 interference on L2 speech due to decreased motor control or (2) alcohol may produce a differential effect on each of the two linguistic subsystems.

Objective:This paper reports on an experiment conducted with 174 Flemish children in three age groups, namely first, third and fifth year of primary school, aiming to assess the social meaning children associate with English-sourced lexemes in Belgian Dutch.Method:The children were presented with 2 versions of a cartoon hero developed specifically for this study: Sterrenman, who only uses Dutch words, and Starman, who uses English alternatives for 17 content words in the cartoon’s script. Relying on extensive pretesting, we adapted standard designs and instrumentation from social psychology (the matched guise technique) and language acquisition research to gauge the children’s appreciation of the two heroes, their understanding of the English and Dutch vocabulary used in the script, and their level of language awareness.Findings:The key findings are: rather than an incremental increase in favorable social meaning for English from the first to the third age group under scrutiny, we see a decline of the prestige of Dutch in the oldest age group; the children’s level of language awareness, receptive vocabulary knowledge and age seem associated with their overall appreciation of Sterrenman and Starman; working with children from various age groups inevitably entails methodological risks.Originality:This is a first and hence exploratory study on the acquisition of the social meaning of English lexemes by EL2 children and their ensuing progressing bilingualism.Implications:Overall, the study helps us contribute to both the recent socio-pragmatic turn in anglicism research and to the upcoming field of developmental sociolinguistics, revealing the transition points in children’s acquisition of the social meaning of contact-induced variation and change.

The adaptive control hypothesis predicts adaptation of control mechanisms as a response to intensive language use in bilinguals. The present study aims to investigate this hypothesis in two memory experiments with professional and student interpreters. In experiment 1, we compared a group of interpreting students to translation students using a reading span task to test working memory (WM) and a digit span task to test short-term memory (STM). In experiment 2, we added a group of professional interpreters and compared them with the participants in experiment 1. Training-related improvement was found for WM but not for STM, with no differences between both student groups. Professional interpreters with over 20 years of interpreting experience showed better performance than translation students but not than interpreting students both on WM and STM. The results are discussed in light of the framework of interpreting as a type of extreme bilingualism.

Government and market are the two main factors that drive the practices of the Chinese media system and influence the news construction process. A dramatic, socially disruptive event like the 2014 Kunming terrorist attack has the potential both to damage the government image and to attract readers. Analyzing how different types of media, more specifically the state-sponsored and the market-oriented press, construct a terrorist attack may therefore reveal essential characteristics of the Chinese media system and its relationship with both government and market. In doing so, the present study makes a contribution in terms of methodology, resources, and empirical description. From a methodological perspective, drawing on a dataset of 275 news articles about the Kunming attack that was collected from 16 mainstream Chinese newspapers, we explore the possibilities of combining computer-assisted techniques (i.e. part-of-speech tagging, sentiment analysis, collocation, and concordance) and Discursive News Values Analysis (DNVA), based on which we identified 699 Chinese lexical indicators distributed across ten news values. The open-source wordlist produced by this procedure will facilitate future quantitative DNVA, but also fills a resource gap in non-English news values studies. After calculating the mean normalized frequency of indicators under each news value on a more empirical level, we found that the state-sponsored and the market-oriented press converge in foregrounding the news values of Eliteness and Personalization, in line with public expectations, while at the same time diverging in their use of the news values of Positivity, Negativity, and Superlativeness, which we can relate to the different aims and responsibilities of these two types of newspapers.

Cerebellar mutism can be considered the hallmark feature of the cerebellar mutism syndrome (CMS), previously also frequently termed the posterior fossa syndrome (PFS). The syndrome consists of specific linguistic, cognitive, behavioral, and affective symptoms following acute posterior fossa damage in children and adults. Although the symptoms have been exceptionally associated with non-tumoral etiologies, CMS usually develops after a brief period of relatively normal functioning in the immediate postoperative phase following posterior fossa tumor surgery. The incidence of CMS in the pediatric population is estimated to range between 7% and 50%. Although similar symptoms have been occasionally reported in adults, CMS is typically viewed as a clinical condition affecting children. An international consensus as to the definition of CMS was recently reached. However, this accepted definition specifically addresses the pediatric variant of the syndrome associated with posterior fossa surgery (postoperative pediatric CMS, POPCMS). In this chapter, the more general term CMS (instead of POPCMS) will be used to denote similar symptoms also occurring in adults, and with non-tumoral etiologies. Although the semiology of CMS has extensively been described, the underlying pathophysiological mechanisms still remain largely unclear. This chapter presents a brief overview of the intriguing semiological combination of transient cerebellar mutism and cognitive, behavioral, and affective alterations following acute posterior fossa lesions. Furthermore, the most important pathophysiological hypotheses and the proposed therapeutic interventions will be briefly discussed.

This paper pressure tests the claim that professional speakers who use the standard language are perceived as more competent, by (1) unpacking ‘competence’; (2) disentangling the discursive complexity of ‘professional speech context’; (3) accounting for respondents' language socialization background. In our experiment, Belgian Dutch speech therapy students (N = 77) and a control group (N = 54) evaluate a speech therapist who does (not) use standard language in relational and transactional professional discourse. Results reveal (1) a more conservative versus a more dynamic conception of ‘competence’; (2) penalization of standard language use in informal speech; (3) slightly higher sociolinguistic sensitivity for speech therapy respondents. The perceived tolerance towards non-standard speech in high standard expectancy contexts begs a reconsideration of language ideology in professional communication.

Language standardization ‘from above’ occurs in situations in which language authorities seek to disseminate a standardized variety across a speech and writing community. Hence, the crucial aspect of language standardization ‘from above’ is implementation, in Haugen’s terminology. In the history of many European languages, standardization ‘from above’ is a Late Modern phenomenon, closely tied to the rise of standard language ideology in the eighteenth century. In this chapter, we first define language standardization ‘from above’, situating it in the sociohistorical context of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Arguing that the sociolinguistic situation at the time can be described as diaglossic, we claim that language standardization ‘from above’ is a top-down effort to reorganize the sociolinguistic condition in terms of standard and non-standard. We then discuss various instruments of implementation, encompassing both private and official language planning activities such as usage guides, language academies, professorships in ‘national’ languages, language laws and educational reforms. Finally, we zoom in on the effects of implementation, distinguishing between discursive and linguistic effects (i.e. changing patterns of language use under the influence of standardization ‘from above’). Our examples are mainly taken from the Dutch situation, while also incorporating examples from English, German, French and Spanish.

Recent research has revealed that the cerebellum plays a critical role in social reasoning and in particular in understanding false beliefs and making trait attributions. One hypothesis is that the cerebellum is responsible for the understanding of sequences of motions and actions, which may be a prerequisite for social understanding. To investigate the role of action sequencing in mentalizing, we tested patients with generalized cerebellar degenerative lesions on tests of social understanding and compared their performance with matched healthy volunteers. The tests involved understanding violations of social norms making trait and causal attributions on the basis of short behavioral sentences and generating the correct chronological order of social actions depicted in cartoons (picture sequencing task). Cerebellar patients showed clear deficits only on the picture sequencing task when generating the correct order of cartoons depicting false belief stories and showed at or close to normal performance for mechanical stories and overlearned social scripts. In addition, they performed marginally worse on trait attributions inferred from verbal behavioral descriptions. We conclude that inferring the mental state of others through understanding the correct sequences of their actions requires the support of the cerebellum., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

In this article, the first results of a large-scale survey on the use of technological bridging instruments in contexts of multilingual service provision will be presented. We will focus on answers given by respondents working as public service interpreters and translators, abbreviated as PSITs (N=188). No restriction was set on specific domains of public service in this study (e.g. education, health, etc.). The article focuses on the question how forms of prior training of PSITs relate to the frequency of use of technological tools in their professional practice, such as computer-assisted translation (CAT) technology, machine translation (MT) systems, Instant Messaging (IM) technology, video conferencing technology (VC), termbase management systems (TB), and combinations thereof., En este artículo, presentaremos los resultados preliminares de un estudio a gran escala sobre el uso de instrumentos tecnológicos utilizados para facilitar la comunicación para la provisión de servicios en entornos multilingües. Nos centraremos en las respuestas proporcionadas por sujetos que trabajan como traductores e intérpretes en los servicios públicos (PSITs, por sus siglas en inglés, N=188). No se realizó ninguna distinción entre los distintos dominios de los servicios públicos para este estudio (por ejemplo, educación, salud, etc.) Pretendemos averiguar la influencia del tipo de formación que los traductores e intérpretes han recibido sobre el uso de herramientas tecnológicas, como traducción asistida por ordenador, traducción automática, mensajería instantánea, videoconferencia y programas de gestión terminológica.

The field of NLP has made substantial progress in building meaning representations. However, an important aspect of linguistic meaning, social meaning, has been largely overlooked. We introduce the concept of social meaning to NLP and discuss how insights from sociolinguistics can inform work on representation learning in NLP. We also identify key challenges for this new line of research.

Background and objectives: We provide a case analysis for a 28-year-old, native Dutch-speaking lady who developed Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS), a few weeks after falling down the staircase. In addition to FAS, which gave the impression she spoke with a German accent, German(-like) words and structures occurred. Speech symptoms were aggravated by increased stress, fatigue or emotional pressure, and this triggered jargon speech. It was hypothesized her FAS and jargon developed on a functional basis.Methods: In-depth analyses of the patient's medical background, neuropsychological and neurolinguistic tests and psychodiagnostic exams were done. The patient participated in an fMRI experiment. In a syllable repetition paradigm, motor speech activations were compared to those of healthy individuals, to see whether they were altered, which would be expected in case of a neurological etiology.Results: Medical history disclosed prior traumatic experiences for which she sought help, but no neurological incidents. Repeated neuropsychological and neurolinguistic tests showed deficits in recent memory and executive functioning. The patient demonstrated great difficulties with picture naming. Clinically, language switching and mixing as well as recurring jargon speech was found. Formal psychodiagnostic tests did not identify a clear disorder, but psychodiagnostic interviews were consistent with a DSM-5 conversion disorder. The fMRI study demonstrated that speech network activations corresponded to those found in healthy participants.Conclusion: The clinical neurolinguistic characteristics, outcome of the fMRI experiment, together with the clinical psychodiagnostic findings were strongly indicative for an underlying functional etiology for the FAS and jargon speech, presenting as symptoms of conversion disorder. (C) 2020 Asociacion Universitaria de Zaragoza para el Progreso de la Psiquiatria y la Salud Mental. Published by Elsevier Espana, S.L.U. All rights reserved.

This paper contains the experimental design of an empirical study that aims to assess the relative effectiveness of a number of pedagogical approaches designed to boost the comprehension of new L2 Spanish idioms and foster their retention. Building on a previous study (Ureña Tormo 2019), we suggest testing three pedagogical treatments, with two of them encouraging the participants to guess the meaning of the target idioms, before or after receiving information on their semantic motivation, and the other one focusing on meaning inference from context. The target units are 15 Spanish idioms related to a range of topics and the participants are 90 English speaking learners of Spanish. The results that we obtain will allow for the assessment of the effectiveness of each pedagogical proposal, and will be compared to the ones obtained in Ureña Tormo (2019). Este artículo presenta el diseño experimental de un estudio empírico para facilitar la comprensión de locuciones españolas nuevas y favorecer su retención. Con el objetivo de mejorar y ampliar el alcance de un estudio previo (Ureña Tormo 2019), proponemos evaluar tres tratamientos pedagógicos distintos: dos de ellos invitan a los participantes a que adivinen el significado de las locuciones, antes o después de recibir información sobre su motivación semántica, y el otro se centra en inferir el significado a partir del contexto. Las unidades objeto de aprendizaje son 15 locuciones españolas y los participantes se corresponden con 90 estudiantes de español cuya lengua materna es el inglés. Los resultados que se obtengan de este experimento permitirán evaluar la efectividad de cada propuesta didáctica y podrán compararse con los obtenidos en Ureña Tormo (2019).

This study focuses on the production of subject&ndash, verb (SV) agreement in number in L2 French and investigates the role of cross-linguistic influence (CLI) in this particular morphosyntactic domain. CLI is a well-known phenomenon in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research but it has rarely been investigated systematically in relation to SV agreement in French. The participants of the study are 114 learners with Italian, German, Dutch and Swedish as L1. The source languages are all inflectional languages but they vary in terms of morphological richness in the verb paradigm, ranging from very poor (Swedish) to very rich (Italian). The participants performed an oral narrative task contrasting singular and plural contexts of SV agreement. Results indicate a significant difference between L1 groups in terms of correct SV agreement but they also show that the overall presence of rich verb morphology in the L1 does not, on its own, result in a more correct SV agreement. It is when comparing learners at two different proficiency levels that we observe differences in the rate of L2 development, which may be explained as an effect of CLI. Overall, results indicate a complex interplay of different factors, where the role of CLI must be further investigated in future studies in relation to L2 French.

The bouba/kiki effect—the association of the nonce word bouba with a roundshape and kiki with a spiky shape—is a type of correspondence betweenspeech sounds and visual properties with potentially deep implicationsfor the evolution of spoken language. However, there is debate over therobustness of the effect across cultures and the influence of orthography.We report an online experiment that tested the bouba/kiki effect acrossspeakers of 25 languages representing nine language families and 10 writing systems. Overall, we found strong evidence for the effect acrosslanguages, with bouba eliciting more congruent responses than kiki. Participants who spoke languages with Roman scripts were only marginallymore likely to show the effect, and analysis of the orthographic shape ofthe words in different scripts showed that the effect was no stronger forscripts that use rounder forms for bouba and spikier forms for kiki. Theseresults confirm that the bouba/kiki phenomenon is rooted in crossmodal correspondence between aspects of the voice and visual shape, largelyindependent of orthography. They provide the strongest demonstrationto date that the bouba/kiki effect is robust across cultures and writingsystems.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Voice modulation: from origin andmechanism to social impact (Part II)’. The bouba/kiki effect - the association of the nonce word bouba with a round shape and kiki with a spiky shape - is a type of correspondence between speech sounds and visual properties with potentially deep implications for the evolution of spoken language. However, there is debate over the robustness of the effect across cultures and the influence of orthography. We report an online experiment that tested the bouba/kiki effect across speakers of 25 languages representing nine language families and 10 writing systems. Overall, we found strong evidence for the effect across languages, with bouba eliciting more congruent responses than kiki. Participants who spoke languages with Roman scripts were only marginally more likely to show the effect, and analysis of the orthographic shape of the words in different scripts showed that the effect was no stronger for scripts that use rounder forms for bouba and spikier forms for kiki. These results confirm that the bouba/kiki phenomenon is rooted in crossmodal correspondence between aspects of the voice and visual shape, largely independent of orthography. They provide the strongest demonstration to date that the bouba/kiki effect is robust across cultures and writing systems. This article is part of the theme issue 'Voice modulation: from origin and mechanism to social impact (Part II)'.

This special issue brings together a collection of papers that highlight recent advances in the field of lectometry. Lectometric research measures distances between various types of language varieties, such as dialects or sociolects. In addition to briefly sketching the development of the field, this introductory paper surveys the theoretical, methodological, and practical contributions a lectometric approach to language has to offer. We furthermore identify blind spots within the current scope of lectometric work and lay out suggestions for future avenues the field could go down. The paper concludes by introducing the various contributions to this special issue of “Zeitschrift fur Dialektologie und Linguistik” and by outlining how each of those papers contributes to extending the scope of lectometry.

This special issue brings together a collection of papers that highlight recent advances in the field of lectometry. Lectometric research measures distances between various types of language varieties, such as dialects or sociolects. In addition to briefly sketching the development of the field, this introductory paper surveys the theoretical, methodological, and practical contributions a lectometric approach to language has to offer. We furthermore identify blind spots within the current scope of lectometric work and lay out suggestions for future avenues the field could go down. The paper concludes by introducing the various contributions to this special issue of “Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik” and by outlining how each of those papers contributes to extending the scope of lectometry.

Individual Variation and the Bilingual Advantage—Factors that Modulate the Effect of Bilingualism on Cognitive Control and Cognitive Reserve

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to describe experiences of childhood brain tumor survivors (CBTS) and key figures in their environment after returning to school, using the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health - Children and Youth framework.Methods: We conducted semi-structured interviews with five children, nine parents, 28 teachers, and 14 health professionals at three predetermined times over a two-year period. A qualitative content analysis was performed by linking meaningful units from transcribed interviews to ICF codes.Results: Children experienced diverse body dysfunctions that could impede school participation, mostly related to knowledge acquisition and application, executive functioning and social life. Support at school and professional aftercare were essential to alleviate the child's difficulties. The teacher's attitude, parental involvement, and practices of collaboration belonging to the child's supportive network further influenced the reintegration process. Also, child-specific factors including emotional reactions to illness, age, and balance between school life and leisure time were considered to affect school readjustment.Conclusions: The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health framework is a useful instrument to systematically describe experiences of CBTS and key figures regarding school life, providing a common language to communicate for stakeholders in education and healthcare following the child's return.IMPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATIONThe International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health - Children and Youth framework is a useful instrument to describe experiences regarding school life of childhood brain tumor survivors (CBTS) and key figures in their environment.The ICF-CY model can be combined with a standardized assessment of neurocognition or performance to achieve a comprehensive view of the child's participation at school, by exploring both personal and environmental factors.Childhood brain tumor survivors mostly show impairments in acquiring and applying knowledge, executive functioning and social life, which may require increased support at school and professional aftercare.A positive attitude of school staff, high parental involvement in school life and adequate collaboration between parents, education and healthcare are important to prioritize in the context of reintegration into school of CBTS.

This paper reports on an ongoing research project investigating the language use of Chinese immigrants as heritage language users in Antwerp and Brussels. Specifically, we study the linguistic landscape of three ethnic Chinese neighborhoods, comparing these areas in terms of the different languages and dialects used, and their visual presence in the public space. We map out the geographical spread of different languages in each locale and focus on language dominance, mutual translation in multilingual signs, and the use of different scripts and transliteration systems. By comparing the three ethnic Chinese neighborhoods and by thus relating their different linguistic landscapes to their distinct migration histories and demographic profiles, we attempt to show how a linguistic landscape study can be used as a way of gaining insight into the linguistic practices of relatively small minority groups, such as the Chinese community in Belgium, who often remain invisible in larger-scale sociolinguistic surveys., Este artículo informa del proyecto de investigación en curso en el que se estudia el uso de la lengua de los inmigrantes chinos como usuarios de su lengua heredada en Amberes y Bruselas. Específicamente, estudiamos el paisaje lingüístico de tres barrios étnicos chinos, comparando estas áreas en términos de los diferentes idiomas y dialectos utilizados, y su presencia visual en el espacio público. Mapeamos la propagación geográfica de los diferentes idiomas en cada localidad y nos centramos en el dominio del idioma, la traducción mutua en signos multilingües, y el uso de diferentes escrituras y sistemas de transliteración. Comparando los tres barrios y relacionando así sus diferentes paisajes lingüísticos con sus distintas historias de migración y perfiles demográficos, intentamos mostrar cómo un estudio del paisaje lingüístico puede ser utilizado como una forma de conocer las prácticas lingüísticas de grupos minoritarios relativamente pequeños, como la comunidad china en Bélgica, que a menudo permanecen invisibles en encuestas sociolingüísticas a gran escala

The aim of this systematic literature review was to answer the question of which executive function is most affected by interpreter training and experience. We used the ‘unity and diversity’ framework of executive functions to distinguish between three executive components: Response and Distractor Inhibition, Shifting, and Updating. Among the seventeen studies included in the review, we only found evidence for an interpreter advantage on Shifting and Updating, but with a different pattern for each of these. With regard to Updating, groups of interpreters scored better than comparison groups, but general trend in longitudinal studies did not show an improvement for interpreter trainees. In contrast, for Shifting, scores improved as a result of interpreting training. Our systematic review stresses the importance of understanding the diversity of executive processes when investigating the relationship between interpreting and cognitive performance.

Objectives: To translate the Sarcopenia Quality of Life (SarQoL®) questionnaire into Dutch and to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Dutch version of this questionnaire. Methods: The translation was carried out using a 5-step process, with 2 initial translations, a merging of these 2 translations, 2 backwards translations, an expert committee review and a pretest of the questionnaire. Sarcopenia was diagnosed with the EWGSOP algorithm. The validation consisted of an examination of the discriminative power, internal consistency, construct validity, test-retest reliability and floor and ceiling effects. Results: No significant problems were encountered during the translation process. A total of 92 subjects were included in the validation part of this study, 30 of which were sarcopenic. Discriminative power between sarcopenic and non-sarcopenic subjects was found for all domains and the Overall score (median overall QoL score: 67.15 vs 79.72; p=0.003). High internal consistency was found (Cronbach’s alpha=0.883), as well as good construct validity with 75% of hypotheses confirmed. Test-retest reliability was excellent (ICC=0.976; 95% CI=0.947-0.989) and no floor or ceiling effects were observed. Conclusion: The Dutch version of the SarQoL® questionnaire is ready for use in clinical and research applications.

BackgroundThe diagnostic work-up of Alzheimer Disease (AD) is complex, time-consuming, expensive, and quite demanding for the patients. Therefore, there is a growing need for simple non-invasive tools that add to the diagnostic work-up of patients. ObjectivesThis paper investigates a new method for monitoring motor functions in AD using everyday interactions related to writing with a computer, i.c. executing a copy task. MethodsAn experimental exploratory study was set up in which a carefully designed copy task was presented to three groups of participants: young adults (n=20), cognitively healthy elderly (n=20) and age-matched elderly with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or mild dementia due to AD (n=12). The task consisted of ten different sub-tasks in which specific bigram characteristics were manipulated. The participants' typing behavior was monitored with keystroke logging. ResultsThe three groups differed significantly from each other in performing the copy task. Typing speed gradually decreased with age. Moreover, the cognitively impaired age-matched adults performed slower on all subtasks expressed in longer interkey intervals within the targeted bigrams. Integrative multilevel modelling showed that all the manipulated bigram characteristics contributed significantly to the model. ConclusionThis explorative study shows the potential relevance of using a typing copy task in the diagnostic work-up of patients with neurodegenerative brain disorders. It relates to a natural task, is non-invasive and easy to automatize. In comparison to other motor tasks it allows for fine-grained measurements at an individual level and combines different aspects of complex and fine motor activities in one task. A carefully constructed typing copy task is proposed.A copy task is a useful instrument in the diagnostic work-up of dementia patients.A copy task allows for fine-grained measurements at an individual level.A copy task combines different aspects of complex and fine motor activities.

As the Vrije Universiteit Brussel switched from an in-house built CRIS to Pure, a large number of data quality issues were discovered. In order to solve these, a large-scale data quality assessment and improvement program was started. The assessment sought to find data quality issues and prioritize cleaning tasks along different dimensions, such as reusability and complexity, while taking into account compliance and stakeholder happiness. Moreover, in doing these assessments, an attempt was made to isolate relatively easy to clean parts of the data in order to make them more feasible for people with less domain-knowledge. Finally, some of these data quality improvement operations turned out to be straightforward enough to fully automate them.

This multi-study analysis (6 fMRI studies; 142 participants) explores the functional activation and connectivity of the cerebellum with the cerebrum during repeated behavioral information uptake informing about personality traits of different persons. The results suggest that trait repetition recruits activity in areas belonging to the mentalizing and executive control networks in the cerebrum, and the executive control areas in the cerebellum. Cerebral activation was observed in the executive control network including the posterior medial frontal cortex (pmFC), the bilateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) and bilateral inferior parietal cortex (IPC), in the mentalizing network including the bilateral middle temporal cortex (MTC) extending to the right superior temporal cortex (STC), as well as in the visual network including the left cuneus (Cun) and the left inferior occipital cortex. Moreover, cerebellar activation was found bilaterally in lobules VI and VII belonging to the executive control network. Importantly, significant patterns of functional connectivity were found linking these cerebellar executive areas with cerebral executive areas in the medial pmFC, the left PFC and the left IPC, and mentalizing areas in the left MTC. In addition, connectivity was found between the cerebral areas in the left hemisphere involved in the executive and mentalizing networks, as well as with their homolog areas in the right hemisphere. The discussion centers on the role of these cerebello-cerebral connections in matching internal predictions generated by the cerebellum with external information from the cerebrum, presumably involving the sequencing of behaviors.

In an fMRI experiment language aptitude, a specific talent for learning languages measurable by tests, has been used as an independent variable and brain activity elicited by a semantic categorization task has been measured. Significant differences in brain functionality have been observed between groups in two comparisons.

This fMRI study aims to compare simultaneous- and sequential Dutch-French bilinguals with respect to their dominant language. Although simultaneous bilinguals have acquired two languages from birth, it is assumed that one of both is more dominant. Three language tasks (a verbal fluency task, a grammatical judgement task and a semantic categorization task) are utilized to indicate the differences between both groups, as well as within each group (i.e. Dutch versus French). Significant differences in favor of the dominant language hypothesis were found for Dutch versus French in simultaneous bilinguals for GJT-Dutch (p = 0.042), SCT-accuracy (p = 0.012) and reaction times (p = 0.004).

It has been observed that bilinguals have an advantage on tests of cognitive control, such as the Simon task (Bialystok et al. 2004). This advantage has been attributed to the bilingual's need to constantly manage two competing languages. However, the neural correlates of this effect have not been fully understood. Although many of the networks in the brain used for cognitive control are also used for language control, it has been argued (Frühholz et al. 2010) that different types of conflicts rely on distinct neural mechanisms of conflict processing. The present study sought to explore potential overlaps in the brain circuits involved in cognitive language and control in order to provide a tentative basis for the bilingual cognitive advantage.

In many societies, single-sex education is embedded in a culture that maintains women subordination with possible ramifications to their language performance and role in society. This paper seeks to explain the cultural grounds for Palestinian female direct refusals in their L1 culture and the consequences for their linguistic behaviour in multicultural educational contexts. For data collection, the study employed a self-reporting survey followed by interviews with 10 Palestinian female study abroad students. Results showed that fear of gossip-mongering, reputation and family, and inter-group anxiety constricted the females’ refusals pushing them to terminate communication at an earlier stage in their home educational context. However, in a western study abroad context, the students were more responsive to the culturally diverse context. They conceived their home culture as constraining their refusal performance at home, becoming more self-sovereign and their reactions were more engaging, elaborated and less direct in the foreign educational context.

The present study analyses the impact of a bilingual Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) programme vis-à-vis a regular monolingual programme on the development of different aspects of L2 learners’ linguistic (syntactic, morphological and lexical) complexity. Five pupils enrolled in a Dutch–English CLIL programme in a secondary school in the Netherlands are compared with five peers following the mainstream programme with English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teaching. The longitudinal development of these ten pupils’ linguistic complexity in L2-English is investigated by means of six complexity measures calculated for each of eleven writing tasks collected over a period spanning their first nineteen months of secondary education. Linear mixed models are used to estimate the effects of time and programme type on the pupils’ L2 complexity. The results indicate that both groups of learners significantly increase the complexity of their L2 writing over the course of the study. Surprisingly, only limited effects of programme type (CLIL vs non-CLIL) are found, despite considerable differences in the quantity and quality of instructional exposure to the target language, suggesting that for these pupils increased and more varied instructional exposure to the L2 in the CLIL programme did not lead to significantly different L2 productions in terms of linguistic complexity. Several possible explanations for these findings are considered and the implications for CLIL research are discussed.

Bilingual language control has previously been tested separately in tasks of language comprehension and language production. Whereas these studies have suggested that local control processes are selectively recruited during mixed-language production, the present study investigated whether measures of global control show the same dependence on modality, or are shared across modalities. Thirty-eight Dutch-French bilingual young adults participated by completing two tasks of bilingual language control in both modalities. Global accuracy on mixed-language comprehension was related to mixing costs on bilingual verbal fluency, but only when compared to the L2-baseline. Global performance on mixed-language production was related to forward (L1-to-L2) switch costs. Finally, a significant correlation was found between the mixing cost on verbal fluency and forward switch costs on the comprehension task. The results are interpreted as evidence for the involvement of monitoring processes in bilingual language control across modality. The results also highlight the relevance of language switch directionality.

Dieser Beitrag berichtet von einigen früheren und aktuellen Forschungsprojekten im Bereich der historischen Soziolinguistik in (West-)Flandern und der niederländischen Provinz Zeeland. Vor allem der Forschungsansatz der language history from below, der den Sprachgebrauch einfacher Leute in den Mittelpunkt stellt, kommt explizit zur Sprache. Die Sichtweise ‚von unten‘ kann die traditionelle Sprachgeschichte, die vor allem auf formellen und literarischen Quellen beruht – häufig aus der Hand von bekannten Autoren – erweitern. Seit den 1990er Jahren werden an der Vrije Universiteit Brussel Studien zu den unteren sozialen Schichten und deren Sprache in Flandern durchgeführt. Der Schwerpunkt liegt dabei auf dem 19. Jahrhundert. Sprachliche Entwicklungen sind zuerst in Brügge und später auch in anderen flämischen Städten untersucht worden. Das laufende Projekt Forgotten Voices from Below, das hier näher vorgestellt wird, hat seinen Ursprung in diesen früheren Untersuchungen. Es handelt sich um eine Untersuchung von Sprachvariation und Sprachwandel in Briefen, die von Soldaten und bedürftigen Bittstellern verfasst wurden. Wir schließen mit einer Diskussion über Armut und Armenpflege in Flandern, die als Hintergrundkontext für das laufende Projekt dient, und diskutieren das entscheidende, aber problematische Konzept der sozialen Schichten.

When we feel sad or depressed, our face invariably “drops”. Conversely, when we try to cheer someone up, we might tell them “keep your smile up”, so presupposing that modifying the configuration of their facial muscles will enhance their mood. A crucial assumption that underpins this hypothesis is that mental states are shaped by information originating from the peripheral neuromotor system — a view operationalised as the Facial Feedback Hypothesis. We used botulinum toxin (BoNT-A) injected over the frown area to temporarily paralyse muscles necessary to express anger. Using a pre-post treatment design, we presented participants with gradually changing videos of a face morphing from neutral to full-blown expressions of either anger or happiness and asked them to press a button as soon as they had detected any change in the display. Results indicate that while all participants (control and BoNT-A) improved their reaction times from pre-test to post-test, the BoNT-A group did not when detecting anger in the post-test. We surmise that frown paralysis disadvantaged participants in their ability to improve the detection of anger. Our finding suggests that facial feedback causally affects perceptual awareness of changes in emotion, as well as people’s ability to use perceptual information to learn.

This multiple case study investigated perspectives of childhood brain tumor survivors on reintegration into school over a 2-year period. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 5 children at 3 times to obtain an extensive view of their overall school experience. Thematic analysis of data resulted in 4 themes: “school life and participation,” “peer relations and friendships,” “performance and difficulties,” and “support and follow-up.” Childhood brain tumor survivors consider school attendance as part of a normal disease-free life. Social contact and friendships represent their main motivating factors for returning to school. Attitudes and feelings regarding performance, difficulties, and support vary among survivors and change over time. In conclusion, continuity in learning and social contact established before the return facilitate the reintegration process. A comprehensive assessment of their academic and psychosocial functioning should be organized on reentry. Systematic follow-up by parents, school staff, and health professionals throughout the child’s school career is required., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

This article introduces the newJournal of Historical Sociolinguisticsby situating it in the developing field of historical sociolinguistics. The landmark paper of Weinreich et al. (1968), which paid increased attention to extralinguistic factors in the explanation of language variation and change, served as an important basis for the gradual development and expansion of historical sociolinguistics as a separate (sub)field of inquiry, notably since the influential work of Romaine (1982). This article traces the development of the field of historical sociolinguistics and considers some of its basic principles and assumptions, including the uniformitarian principle and the so-called bad data problem. Also, an overview is provided of some of the directions recent research has taken, both in terms of the different types of data used, and in terms of important approaches, themes and topics that are relevant to many studies within the field. The article concludes with considerations of the necessarily multidisciplinary nature of historical sociolinguistics, and invites authors from various research traditions to submit original research articles to the journal, and thus help to further the development of the fascinating field of historical sociolinguistics.

This special issue brings together research that reflects on the status and role of different types of language attitudes, and the methods required to study them. Many linguists distinguish between explicit and implicit attitudes towards language, but more often than not it remains unclear how these constructs are defined, and what their potential significance is for the study of language variation and change. The contributions to this issue address this question by critically reflecting on theory and methodology, by highlighting (and clarifying) the terminological confusion, and by showcasing new methods and tools. It is hoped that this special issue can inspire theoretical and methodological convergence in a notoriously fragmented field, so that attitude researchers can identify the underlying structure of language attitudes, and the theoretical significance of language evaluation to processes of language variation and change. ispartof: Linguistics Vanguard vol:5 issue:s1 pages:1-6 status: Published online