Table 1
Characteristics of the seven participating languages
|
LINGUISTIC FEATURES |
English |
German |
Italian & Spanish |
Bulgarian |
Hungarian |
Chinese |
|
Indo-European |
yes |
yes |
yes |
yes |
no |
no |
|
Language Family |
Germanic (strong influence of Romance) |
Germanic |
Romance |
Slavic |
Uralic (Finno-Ugric) |
Sino-Tibetan |
|
Word Order Variations1 |
Low |
Medium |
High |
High |
Medium |
Medium |
|
Inflectional Morphology |
Sparse |
Rich |
Rich |
Rich |
Rich |
None |
|
Omission of constituents in free-standing sentences |
Not permitted |
Not permitted |
Subject can be omitted |
Subject can be omitted |
Subject can be omitted |
Subject and object can be omitted |
|
Use of Compounding2 |
High |
High |
Low |
Medium |
Medium |
High |
|
Lexical ambiguity for words out of context |
High, especially for nouns & verbs |
Moderate, especially for nouns & verbs |
Low for all categories, due to inflectional marking |
Low for all categories, due to inflectional marking |
Low for all categories, due to inflectional marking |
High for nouns, verbs & function words |
|
Morphological regularity |
One regular and multiple irregular forms for plural and past tense |
Multiple regular, irregular and "in-between", (partially productive) forms |
Multiple regular, irregular and "in-between", (partially productive) forms |
Multiple regular, irregular and "in-between", (partially productive) forms |
Multiple regular, irregular and "in-between", (partially productive) forms |
Lexical regularity only: degrees of productivity in compound formation |
|
Grammatical cues to word identity3 |
Form class |
Form class; gender; case |
Form class; gender |
Form class; gender |
Form class; case |
Form class; nominal classifiers |
|
Prosodic cues to word identity |
Stress |
Stress |
Stress |
Stress |
Stress; vowel harmony |
Lexical tone |
|
Orthography & orthographic regularity |
Alphabetic; highly opaque/irregular |
Alphabetic; some irregularities |
Alphabetic; highly transparent/regular |
Alphabetic; highly transparent/regular |
Alphabetic; highly transparent/regular |
Logographic; one syllable maps to many characters |
1 Refers to the number of different orders of Subject, Verb and Object that are possible in the spoken language
2 Refers to words that are composed of other free-standing words (content words and/or function words)
3 Among grammatical cues to word identity, "form class cues" refer to words or phrases that reliably distinguish between nouns, verbs and other grammatical classes, as in the difference between "I went to the dance" vs. "I want to dance". Studies have shown that such form class cues, like gender, case and nominal classifiers, can "prime" (facilitate or inhibit) retrieval of words from different grammatical classes.