Samir Karmakar

This paper attempts to conceptualize the sprachbund “linguistic area” as a metric space corresponding to the Federation of Indian languages belonging to the new Indo-Aryan language family. Synchronically, a linguistic area embodies the traces of ongoing convergences and diffusions which are quantifiable. Organizing those quantifiable convergences and diffusions, as attested in linguistic items, is central to our conceptualization of the metric space. Linguistic items for one such universally shared concept are compared to measure their relative distances and differences while interpreting the concept of sprachbund anew.

This study presents an in-depth investigation into the recognition of speech acts as orders or requests in Bengali, emphasizing the role of intonation. Behavioral and EEG experiments were conducted with native Bengali speakers to examine how intonational cues influence speech act recognition in the absence of lexical context. In the behavioral experiments, participants demonstrated a higher accuracy in recognizing orders over requests, with an average response rating of 4.5 for orders and 4.4 for requests (out of 5). The findings suggested a complexity gradient between these speech acts, with orders being more straightforward and less cognitively demanding than requests. The EEG experiment provided further insights, revealing distinct neural oscillation patterns corresponding to the recognition of orders and requests. Significant differences were observed in the theta (4–7 Hz), alpha (8–12 Hz), and gamma (30–50 Hz) frequency bands. Participants showed longer reaction times in recognizing requests (average 2.4 s) compared to orders (average 1.9 s), indicating higher cognitive load for requests. Alpha and theta bands were more activated and synchronized during the processing of request acts, while the gamma frequency showed increased activation for order act processing. Overall, the study underscores the critical role of intonation in speech act recognition and its neural correlates. The distinct neural patterns associated with different speech acts, as observed in the EEG data, highlight the intricate link between linguistic cues and brain activity in speech comprehension. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying speech act recognition and the significant impact of prosodic features on linguistic interpretation.

The neuro-cognitive appraisal of different linguistic constructions is an ongoing global research agenda, being pursued in different disciplines of linguistics, including cognitive, psycho-neuro as well as in formal linguistics. In this study, we focus on the acoustic and neuro-cognitive features of a special type of linguistic constructions, which are very much predominant in languages of Southeast Asian families. Here, multi-verb constructions are broadly classified into two categories, namely, complex predicate constructions (CPC) and serial verb constructions (SVC). In this study, we try to quantify how the different natures of events—given by CPC and SVC—are acoustically different from one another and also how they are construed neuro-cognitively by the native speakers of the language that exhibit this phenomenon. For this, we take the help of a host of new tools and techniques that have emerged and evolved over the course of the past couple of decades for neuro-psychological human response analysis and biosensors like EEG analysis, etc. The techniques used in this study involve conventional linear spectral analysis techniques coupled with robust nonlinear analysis which provides us with in-depth information about how the processing of event construals occurs in the human brain and also the time scale of processing. For the present study, we chose to work on complex predicate and serial verb constructions in Bengali. A corpus of 100 utterances (50 CPCs and 50 SVCs) was prepared with recordings taken from 10 native Bengali speakers. An EEG study coupled with a human response survey was conducted on 5 participants with the multi-verbs being presented in the form of a visual stimulus. The visual stimulus included word level and sentential layer multi-verbs being presented to the participants randomly. EEG spectral power was extracted from the eight electrodes chosen for our study and a comparative analysis was carried out for the two types of multi-verb constructions. In this context, a robust nonlinear technique called Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (DFA) was also applied to find the neural signal complexity associated with the processing of words and sentences belonging to the two classes of multi-verbs. The study presents first-of-its-kind human response and EEG data corresponding to two types of multi-verb processing in the Bengali language.

Preparing a multi-purpose lexicon requires a systematic analysis of inter-conceptual relations. These relations are of two types, namely (i) syntactic and (ii) semantic, which can further be decomposed to capture the greater explanatory adequacy. But the exploration of the lexical structure becomes intricate because of the hidden dynamics of the context; since traditionally, language has been viewed as a totality of lexicon and computation system, and major emphasis has been given to the designing of the computational system, considering the designing of the lexicon internal domain ontology as a mere metaphysical game, when in reality it is a serious epistemic concern, because of having the capacity of licensing inferences. Therefore a lexical level representation should have enough scope to incorporate the contextual information. Designing domain ontology is important since it tells us about the conceptual constellation within the coherent whole of which the related terms are meaningful. Isolating a term from the corresponding constellation will results into the evaporation of meaning. Furthermore it provides the basis, upon which the entire linguistic structure rests. If so, then how is it possible to construct a lexicon, by divorcing the ontological issues? And at the same time, ontology by itself is not enough, again because of the reason that the higher order typifications of those (grounded) concepts and their corresponding interrelations among the types ultimately results into the consequent super-ordinating levels, containing the syntactic information pertinent to a symbol manipulating system. In this paper I would show that the representation of a lexical structure, should include both kind of information which are pertinent to the closed class and as well as the open class semantics, on the basis of examples, cited from English and Bengali.