Mutsumi Imai - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Mutsumi Imai

This research investigated how German-speaking children learn color words, both in terms of centr... more This research investigated how German-speaking children learn color words, both in terms of centroid mappings and boundary delineation, and how they construct the color lexicon as a connected system. The results were compared to those of Japanese children to draw insights on general mechanisms that underlie the acquisition of words in the color lexicon. For both languages, input frequency and category size contributed to the ease of learning. In contrast, in both language groups, naming (in)consistency in adults predicted the adult-like boundary delineation.

Proceedings of the International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, 2008

Verbs are the centerpiece of the sentence, and understanding of verb meanings is essential for la... more Verbs are the centerpiece of the sentence, and understanding of verb meanings is essential for language acquisition. Yet verb learning is said to be more challenging than noun learning for young children for several reasons. First, while nouns tend to denote concrete objects, which are perceptually stable over time, verbs tend to refer to action events, which are temporally ephemeral, and the beginning and the end of the action referred to by the verb are not clearly specified. Second, a verb takes nouns as arguments, and the meaning of a verb is determined as the relation between the arguments. To infer the meaning of a verb, children need to attend to the relation between the objects in the event rather than the objects themselves. In so doing, children make use of a variety of cues such as argument structure, meta-knowledge of the lexicon, and extra-linguistic contextual cues. In this paper, I present two lines of my recent research concerning young children's novel verb lear...

Scientific Reports, 2019

Sound symbolism, which is the systematic and non-arbitrary link between a word and its meaning, h... more Sound symbolism, which is the systematic and non-arbitrary link between a word and its meaning, has been suggested to bootstrap language acquisition in infants. However, it is unclear how sound symbolism is processed in the infants’ brain. To address this issue, we investigated the cortical response in 11-month-old infants in relation to sound-symbolic correspondences using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). Two types of stimuli were presented: a novel visual stimulus (e.g., a round shape) followed by a novel auditory stimulus that either sound-symbolically matched (moma) or mismatched (kipi) the shape. We found a significant hemodynamic increase in the right temporal area, when the sound and the referent sound were symbolically matched, but this effect was limited to the moma stimulus. The anatomical locus corresponds to the right posterior superior temporal sulcus (rSTS), which is thought to process sound symbolism in adults. These findings suggest that prelinguistic infants have ...

Do classifier categories structure our concepts

Origins of Universality and Linguistic Diversity in Naming Human Gait

Grammatical gender is independent of biological sex for the majority of animal names (e.g., a mal... more Grammatical gender is independent of biological sex for the majority of animal names (e.g., a male giraffe is grammatically treated as feminine). However, there is apparent semantic motivation for grammatical gender classes, especially in mapping human terms to gender classes. This research investigated whether this apparent motivation in mapping between grammar and biological sex affects deductive inference in German speakers. We identified two contexts in which speakers unconsciously over-generalize the grammar-semantics mapping to make inappropriate deductive inferences about sex-specific biological properties. They tended to erroneously accept deductions when the sex in the premise and the grammatical gender of the target animal agreed. The sex-gender agreement affected the inference even when the sex of the target was explicitly indicated (e.g., die[FEM] männliche (male) Giraffe). Experiment 2 further suggested that these effects occur only when the gendermarking article accomp...

Gesture in language: How sound symbolic words are processed in the brain

In traditional linguistics, it has been assumed that the sounds of words are not related to their... more In traditional linguistics, it has been assumed that the sounds of words are not related to their semantic contents, and that meanings of words are not directly linked to sensory systems. Nevertheless, many languages have a word class in which the sound and meaning of words are systematically related. In this study, by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we scanned brain activity in adult Japanese-speakers while they were seeing locomotion videos together with sound symbolic mimetic words, non-sound symbolic adverbs or verbs. Mimetic words were neurally processed differently from non-sound symbolic adverbs and verbs: We identified extensive bi-hemispheric activations in the regions typically associated with nonverbal cognitive processes for mimetic words but not for non-symbolic verbs or adverbs. The results suggest that mimetic words, by their direct sound-meaning link, have dual neural status both as linguistic symbols and non-linguistic iconic symbols that are dir...

The Japanese Journal of Educational Psychology, 1996

The Japanese Journal of Educational Psychology, 1993

The Handbook of East Asian Psycholinguistics

Scope of linguistic influence: Does a classifier system alter object concepts?

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2007

Advances in Culture and Psychology, 2013

Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, Jan 19, 2014

Sound symbolism is a non-arbitrary relationship between speech sounds and meaning. We review evid... more Sound symbolism is a non-arbitrary relationship between speech sounds and meaning. We review evidence that, contrary to the traditional view in linguistics, sound symbolism is an important design feature of language, which affects online processing of language, and most importantly, language acquisition. We propose the sound symbolism bootstrapping hypothesis, claiming that (i) pre-verbal infants are sensitive to sound symbolism, due to a biologically endowed ability to map and integrate multi-modal input, (ii) sound symbolism helps infants gain referential insight for speech sounds, (iii) sound symbolism helps infants and toddlers associate speech sounds with their referents to establish a lexical representation and (iv) sound symbolism helps toddlers learn words by allowing them to focus on referents embedded in a complex scene, alleviating Quine's problem. We further explore the possibility that sound symbolism is deeply related to language evolution, drawing the parallel bet...

Sound symbolism scaffolds language development in preverbal infants

Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior, 2015

A fundamental question in language development is how infants start to assign meaning to words. H... more A fundamental question in language development is how infants start to assign meaning to words. Here, using three Electroencephalogram (EEG)-based measures of brain activity, we establish that preverbal 11-month-old infants are sensitive to the non-arbitrary correspondences between language sounds and concepts, that is, to sound symbolism. In each trial, infant participants were presented with a visual stimulus (e.g., a round shape) followed by a novel spoken word that either sound-symbolically matched ("moma") or mismatched ("kipi") the shape. Amplitude increase in the gamma band showed perceptual integration of visual and auditory stimuli in the match condition within 300 msec of word onset. Furthermore, phase synchronization between electrodes at around 400 msec revealed intensified large-scale, left-hemispheric communication between brain regions in the mismatch condition as compared to the match condition, indicating heightened processing effort when integra...

Sound symbolism facilitates word learning in 14-month-olds

PloS one, 2015

Sound symbolism, or the nonarbitrary link between linguistic sound and meaning, has often been di... more Sound symbolism, or the nonarbitrary link between linguistic sound and meaning, has often been discussed in connection with language evolution, where the oral imitation of external events links phonetic forms with their referents (e.g., Ramachandran & Hubbard, 2001). In this research, we explore whether sound symbolism may also facilitate synchronic language learning in human infants. Sound symbolism may be a useful cue particularly at the earliest developmental stages of word learning, because it potentially provides a way of bootstrapping word meaning from perceptual information. Using an associative word learning paradigm, we demonstrated that 14-month-old infants could detect Köhler-type (1947) shape-sound symbolism, and could use this sensitivity in their effort to establish a word-referent association.

How Sound Symbolism Is Processed in the Brain: A Study on Japanese Mimetic Words

PLoS ONE, 2014

The role of object labels and familiarity in Japanese children's verb learning

Language and Cognitive Processes, 2002

Temporal language is often couched in spatial metaphors. English has been claimed to have two spa... more Temporal language is often couched in spatial metaphors. English has been claimed to have two space!time metaphoric systems: the ego-moving metaphor, wherein the observer's context progresses along the time-line towards the future, and the time-moving metaphor, wherein time is conceived of as a river or conveyor belt on which events are moving from the future to the past. In three experiments, we investigated the psychological status of these metaphors by asking subjects to carry out temporal inferences stated in terms of spatial metaphors. In Experiment 1, we found that subjects were slowed in their processing when the assertions shifted from one spatial metaphoric system to the other. In Experiment 2, we determined that this cost of shifting could not be attributed to local lexical factors. In Experiment 3, we again found this metaphor consistency effect in a naturalistic version of the study in which we asked commonsense time questions of passengers at an airport. The results of the three studies provide converging evidence that people use spatial metaphors in temporal reasoning. Implications for the status of metaphoric systems are discussed.

Language and Cognitive Processes, 2012

This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or sy... more This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution , reselling , loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

Frontier in Psychology, 2010

This paper explores the effect of classifiers on young children's conceptual structures. For this... more This paper explores the effect of classifiers on young children's conceptual structures. For this purpose we studied Mandarin Chinese-and German-speaking 3-and 5-year-olds on non-lexical classification, novel-noun label extension, and inductive inference of novel properties. Some effect of the classifier system was found in Chinese children, but this effect was observed only in a non-lexical categorization task. In the label extension and property generalization tasks, children of the two language groups show strikingly similar behavior. The implications of the results for theories of the relation between language and thought as well as cultural influence on thought are discussed.