Research

 

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Auditory perception

The Estonian Research Council project PSG902 “Native Language Experience and the Brain’s Perception and Learning of a Foreign Language” (2024–2028) asks how the phonetic systems in different languages affect the brain’s auditory perception ability differently.

Whereas Mandarin Chinese is a tonal language where pitch is dominantly used to discriminate word meanings, English is a non-tonal language. Estonian is a “partially tonal” language where pitch is important but secondary to duration. Pitch has different statuses in the three languages. How the difference in the phonetic systems affects their native speakers’ brains’ perception and learning of a foreign language is what we are currently investigating.

Representative work:

• Lyu, S., Põldver, N., Kask, L., Wang, L., & Kreegipuu, K. (2024). Native language background affects the perception of duration and pitch. Brain and Language. 256, 105460.
• Lyu, S., Põldver, N., Kask, L., Wang, L., & Kreegipuu, K. (2024). Effect of musical expertise on the perception of duration and pitch in language: A cross-linguistic study. Acta Psychologica, 244, 104195.

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Language and social psychology

Human beings communicate through language. In this line of research, we examine how a variety of social and psychological factors affect verbal communication in different social contexts.

(1) When we utter a sentence, we deliver a message through it. However, quite often, we say things implicitly. Implicity makes it challenging for the hearer to correctly understand what message the speaker wants to deliver and leaves room for the speaker to deny what he/she has said. We combine pragmatics theory and psychological research methods to understand how people (as message receivers) interpret implicit expressions and how the interpretation is affected by linguistic and non-linguistic factors.

Representative work:

• Lyu, S., & Yuan, W. (2023). Perception of implicit promise in face-threatening contexts. Journal of Pragmatics, 208, 53–71.

• Yuan, W., & Lyu, S. (2022). Speech act matters: Commitment to what’s said or what’s implicated differs in the case of assertion and promise. Journal of Pragmatics, 191, 128–142.

(2) Culture affects the use of language. Under the framework of cross-cultural psychology, we view culture as an independent variable and examine how it affects human language behavior. We compare the Estonian and Chinese cultures, which differ from each other in terms of power distance and collectivism in Hofstede’s (2011) cultural dimension, and investigate how their native speakers’ use of language is affected by the culture they are born and raised in.

Representative work:

• How culture affects the language of communicating one’s positive performance. (in preparation)
• Power distance affects the language to refuse and promise: Comparing Chinese and Estonian cultures. (in preparation)

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Sentence and discourse processing

We investigate how the brain builds complex discourse relations (e.g., causal and concessive) in a fast manner. We measure eye movements or non-invasively brain electric signals millisecond by millisecond as people read or listen to texts. We aim to understand how people make use of linguistic (e.g., sentence structures, discourse connectives) and non-linguisitc (e.g., world knowledge) cues to comprehenn the language they are processing.

Representative work:

• Lyu, S., Tu, J.-Y., & Lin, C.-J. C. (2024). Structural position affects topic transition: An eye-tracking study. Language and Linguistics, 25(1), 56–79. 
• Lyu, S., & Wang, L. (2022). Implicit causality and pronoun resolution in intersubjective discourse relations. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 866103. 
• Lyu, S., Tu, J.-Y., & Lin, C.-J. C. (2020). Processing plausibility in concessive and causal relations: Evidence from self-paced reading and eye-tracking. Discourse Processes, 57(4), 320–342.