The goal of this study was to determine if typically developing children could form grammatical categories from distributional information alone. Twenty-seven children aged six to nine listened to an artificial grammar which contained strategic gaps in its distribution. At test, we compared how children rated novel sentences that fit the grammar to sentences that were ungrammatical. Sentences could be distinguished only through the formation of categories of words with shared distributional properties. Children's ratings revealed that they could discriminate grammatical and ungrammatical sentences. These data lend support to the hypothesis that distributional learning is a potential mechanism for learning grammatical categories in a first language.

This study investigates the degree to which native-English-speaking learners of Spanish can generate expectations for information likely to occur in upcoming portions of an unfolding linguistic signal. We examine Spanish clitic left dislocation, a long-distance dependency between a topicalized object and an agreeing clitic, whose felicity depends on the discourse. Using a self-paced reading task, we tested the predictions of the shallow structure hypothesis (Clahsen & Felser, 2006a, 2006b) and the reduced ability to generate expectations hypothesis (Grüter, Rohde, & Schafer, 2014). Learners successfully demonstrated sensitivity to the violation of expectations set up by the syntactic and discourse context. In addition, the behavior of the second language (L2) learners was dependent on proficiency: the higher their proficiency, the more their behavior mirrored native-speaker processing. These results support a view of SLA in which knowledge of L2 discourse-grammatical relationships is acquired slowly over the course of L2 learning.

We propose, following Clark, that generative models also play a central role in the perception and interpretation of linguistic signals. The data explanation approach provides a rationale for the role of prediction in language processing and unifies a number of phenomena, including multiple-cue integration, adaptation effects, and cortical responses to violations of linguistic expectations.

This paper presents measured results for two-stage and three-stage high-voltage/high-power (HiVP) amplifiers implemented in a commercial 0.12 μm silicon germanium (SiGe) heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) bipolar Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (BiCMOS) process at millimeter wave. The HiVP configuration provides a new tool for millimeter-wave silicon designers to achieve large output voltage swings, high output power density, customizable bias, and a way to minimize, if not eliminate, matching circuitry at millimeter-wave frequencies. The two-stage amplifier has achieved a PSAT = 5.41 dBm with a power added efficiency (PAE) of 8.06% at center frequency 30 GHz. The three-stage amplifier has achieved a PSAT = 8.85 dBm with a PAE of 11.35% with a total chip area of 0.068 mm2 at center frequency 30 GHz. Simulation, layout, fabrication, and measurement results are presented in this paper.

Synchrotron x-ray fluorescence microscopy has been used to study multi-metal oxide ceramics that have been designed to sequester radioactive actinide elements for long-term storage and disposal. X-ray fluorescent lines for the various elements have been used for lateral elemental mapping of the materials, and the heterogeneity of the samples is discussed with respect to the elements in the crystallographic phases that have previously been documented by other means of structural and chemical analyses.