SUMMARY Bridges is a heuristic search tool that uses short word matches to rapidly identify local similarities between sequences. It consists of three stages: filtering input sequences, identifying local similarities and post-processing local similarities. As input sequence data are released from memory after the filtering stage, genome-scale datasets can be efficiently compared in a single run...

Simulations of physicists for the competition between adult languages since 2003 are reviewed. How many languages are spoken by how many people? How many languages are contained in various language families? How do language similarities decay with geographical distance, and what effects do natural boundaries have? New simulations of bilinguality are given in an appendix.

In this paper we explore the similarities between a mathematical model of language evolution and several A-life simulations. We argue that the mathematical model makes some problematic simplifications, but that a combination with computational models can help to adapt and extend existing language evolution scenario’s.

We introduce the thematic collection by noting some striking similarities in the cognitive abilities of human infants and nonhuman primates. What are the implications of these similarities for our comprehension of human infant cognition? After providing a brief historical and conceptual background on comparative behavioral research, we discuss how nonhuman primate research has impacted theories...

Stone tool-making is an ancient and prototypically human skill characterized by multiple levels of intentional organization. In a formal sense, it displays surprising similarities to the multi-level organization of human language. Recent functional brain imaging studies of stone tool-making similarly demonstrate overlap with neural circuits involved in language processing. These observations co...

Background: It is a well-documented finding that phonemic speech errors in aphasia reflect certain characteristics of their intended targets. However, only few studies have investigated spontaneous speech productions of jargon-aphasic patients, in which lexical targets may be completely unrecognisable (abstruse phonemic neologisms). There is some evidence that these neologisms correspond to the...

This flow can be quantified and compared by analyzing the text using natural language processing techniques. This study uses word embedding models to generate time series for novels and then compare the resulting series using dynamic time warping to find similarities. Considering time series analysis rather than a pure statistical one can capture the flow of the works and thus the similarities ...

UNLABELLED Two-year-olds with normally developing language (NL) and older children with specific language impairment (SLI) omit initial weak syllables from words (e.g., "banana" approximately "nana"). Previous research revealed a phonetic "trace" of syllables omitted by children with NL (Carter, 1999; Carter & Gerken, submitted for publication). The present study asked whether similar evidence ...

AIM The aim of this study is to evaluate the relationship between clinical and neuropsychological measures of language disorders as well as characteristics of the mental condition of patients diagnosed as having schizophrenic disorders. METHOD There were 45 persons with schizophrenic disorder (acc. ICD-10) examined with The Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), the side effect rating ...

Linguists and psychologists have long been studying cross-linguistic transfer, the influence of native language properties on linguistic performance in a foreign language. In this work we provide empirical evidence for this process in the form of a strong correlation between language similarities derived from structural features in English as Second Language (ESL) texts and equivalent similarit...