37.1681, Reviews: The activation and selection of lexico-syntactic features in speech production: Shaoyu Wang (2025)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-1681. Tue May 05 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.1681, Reviews: The activation and selection of lexico-syntactic features in speech production: Shaoyu Wang (2025)

Moderator: Steven Moran (linguist at linguistlist.org)
Managing Editor: Valeriia Vyshnevetska
Team: Helen Aristar-Dry, Mara Baccaro, Daniel Swanson
Jobs: jobs at linguistlist.org | Conferences: callconf at linguistlist.org | Pubs: pubs at linguistlist.org

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

Editor for this issue: Helen Aristar-Dry <hdry at linguistlist.org>

================================================================


Date: 05-May-2026
From: Mariam Olugbodi [mariam.gobir at kwasu.edu.ng]
Subject: Psycholinguistics: Shaoyu Wang (2025)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/36-1397

Title: The activation and selection of lexico-syntactic features in
speech production
Subtitle: Behavioural and electrophysiological evidence from L1 and L2
speakers
Series Title: LOT Dissertation Series
Publication Year: 2025

Publisher: Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics / Landelijke
(LOT)
           http://www.lotpublications.nl/
Book URL: https://dx.medra.org/10.48273/LOT0689

Author(s): Shaoyu Wang

Reviewer: Mariam Olugbodi

SUMMARY
The fundamental goal of Shaoyu Wang’s monograph, entitled: “The
activation and selection of lexico-syntactic features in speech
production: Behavioural and electrophysiological evidence from L1 and
L2 speakers”, is to holistically account for the behavioural and
neural mechanisms that necessitate accurate word production by L1 and
L2 speakers in day-to-day conversations. The book particularly focuses
on the production of gender and classifiers as lexico-syntactic
components of a noun phrase by second language learners of Chinese and
Dutch. In the book, the author emphasises the concepts of gender
congruent nouns/gender incongruent nouns as nouns with
similar/distinct gender categories within a language, and describes
the concepts of classifier congruent nouns/classifier incongruent
nouns in relation to their manner of processing. Leveraging the fact
that classifiers are comparable to gender in psycholinguistic research
but with limited research attention on L2 learners, the author
compares the gender congruency effect in Dutch and classifier
congruency in Chinese as both are morphological simple languages (pp.
9-99).
Apart from gender and classifier effects, in the book, the semantic
interference effect is also explored with the aim of evaluating the
possibility of learners’ activation and selection of
semantically-related nodes in L2 production. This is coupled with the
assessment of the existence of comparable lexico-syntactic attributes
in gender/classifier processing between Chinese learners of Dutch, and
English learners of Dutch, at the behavioural and neural levels (pp.
121-145). The author employs electroencephalography (EGG) for the
measurement of accuracy, naming latencies and electrophysiological
activities as behavioural data, to track two components of event
related potentials (ERPs), the N400 and P600. The book adopts the
web-based approach for conducting experiments on L2 speech production,
administering questionnaires for participants’ background information
and tests for listening and speaking proficiency ; this approach was
caused by the emergence of the pandemic, and based on existing
scholarly evidence on the feasibility of online audio data collection
and experiment (pp. 161-184).
Shaoyu Wang presents his monograph in six chapters, with the
introductory and concluding chapters, 1 and 6, entitled: “general
introduction” and “general discussion”, detailing the synopsis, thesis
statement, research scope and methodology, as well as the discussion
of the results, in alignment with the thesis statement, and
implications of the study for future research and limitations. Each of
Chapters 2 to 5 presents an essay on different phases of larger
research, thereby giving the book an outlook of a string of laboratory
studies combined. Each chapter presents a study detailing the
introduction, literature review, theoretical accounts, methods,
results, discussion, conclusion and appendix.  While this structure is
typical of Chapters Two to Five, the topics explored in the individual
chapters are different. Chapter Two specifically explores how
classifiers are processed in the production of noun phrases and
compares the behavioural and electrophysiological data from
Dutch-Mandarin Chinese L2 speakers and the Mandarin Chinese native
speakers.
The third chapter evaluates behavioural and event related potential
(ERP) evidence for gender processing in noun phrase production and
compares Mandarin Chinese-Dutch L2 speakers and Dutch native speakers.
In Chapter Four, the possible impact(s) of native language on
grammatical gender processing is examined through the analysis of ERP
signatures of lexico-syntactic feature similarity in non-native
production. The English-Dutch and Chinese-Dutch speakers are used as
the case study. By contrast, in Chapter Five, the report of a
web-based experiment of L2 noun phrase production by English-Chinese
speakers is presented. An observable difference in the set of studies
contained in the book is that each chapter presents a study of a
different participant group in terms of demography and number. The
number of participants in Chapters 2 to 4 are twenty-five,
twenty-three and twenty, but Chapter 5 has five hundred and ten
participants. This reflects a remarkable difference, which could be
associated with the method/nature of experimentation. As against the
differences in the participant groups that characterise each of
Chapters Two to Five, Shaoyu Wang presents an appendix for all the
chapters, detailing the linguistic profile of participants (pp. 48,
102, 147), model parameters of accuracy and naming latencies (pp.
49-54, 103-108, 148-151, 186), permutation test outcome (pp. 55-56,
109-110, 152) and model parameters for electroencephalography (EGG)
results ( pp. 57-64, 111-119, 153-159).
EVALUATION
The centrality of speech production to human existence is linked to
its all-important function as a means of maintaining day-to-day
interactional, transactional and cultural connections. The ability of
humans to express thoughts through speech production critically rests
on the integrity of the motor cortex, which pedals the voluntary motor
control of the voice. The complexity of speech production rests in the
underlying mechanisms of the neuro-physiological systems, as well as
the social systems (Shaykhah et al., 2023).  The social features of
speech are shown in various forms, including the connection between
sound and meaning, national and local characteristics, and the
categorisation of speech. The study of the various features of speech
production by L1 and L2 speakers has become important because of its
significance which include: the provision of insights into the
underlying mechanisms of language production, as well as an
understanding of how more effective language learning strategies can
be developed.
Research on the linguistic features of speech production by L1 and L2
speakers is also significant to the improvement of the accuracy of
speech production in non-native contexts. It contributes to the
understanding of language acquisition and the cognitive processes
involved in language learning. Therefore, any research which explores
the linguistic characteristics of speech production by L1 and L2
speakers like Shaoyu Wang’s book does, is socially relevant.
Comparing Wang’s evaluation of the lexico-syntactic features in speech
production with emphasis on the study of behavioural and
electrophysiological evidence from L1 and L2 learners of Chinese and
Dutch, with Dobrego et al. (2021), Cai (2020), Hwang (2025) and a host
of others, has shown that the book is a timely venture and a step
towards the right direction. While Dobrego et al. (2021) examined
continuous speech segmentation by L1 and L2 speakers of English at the
prosodic level and Cai (2020) studied the importance of construct
representation in academic English listening, Wang’s set of studies
presented in the book explores Chinese and Dutch languages in addition
to the English language and tests the efficacy of lexico-syntactic
speech production among L1 and L2 speakers/learners of those
languages. Even though Hwang (2025) studied speech production at the
lexical and syntactic levels, the scope of Wang’s book is wider, as it
covers noun and classifier congruencies and measures behavioural and
electrophysiological evidence, not the complexity, accuracy, and
fluency in spoken production.
Despite the significance of the volume in terms of scope, a notable
gap is that the research question is only mentioned in the concluding
chapter; it is not categorically stated in the preliminary chapter of
the book. At the level of methods, even though justification is
provided for the choice of the web-based approach, the author has not
reported possible inadequacies recorded or the possibility of a post
pandemic evaluation of the phenomenon using the lab-based approach, to
test the accuracy of results using a few participants. Also notable is
the author’s presentation of the limitations of the study outside the
methodological assessment. Issues highlighted as limitations cutting
across the choice of two languages, Dutch and Chinese, among other
numerous languages, the focus on one classifier system, infelicities
associated with the language proficiency test materials and the
unreliability of the information collected on language backgrounds of
the study participants, are associated themes of the instrument and
experimentation procedures. A proper positioning of the limitation in
the book will enhance the understanding of the methodological
pitfalls.
In addition to this is lack of justification of the differences in the
methods adopted in each of the sets of studies, especially the
variance in  number of participants and how this has affected the
findings. The manner of presentation of the first and last chapter is
also monotonous, thereby affecting the coherence of the discussion of
the key research components. Relatively, while Wang’s discussion of
the results in Chapter 6 takes the chapter-by-chapter form to
correspond with the preliminary discussion in Chapter 1, the main
findings of the thesis, “whether and how lexico-syntactic features of
words are processed during non-native language speech production” (p.
187), are not categorically stated. This is a major lapse of the
presentation of the results.
Be that as it may, Shaoyu Wang’s exploration of lexico-syntactic
features of speech production across languages and speakers of
different demography is of immeasurable value. The book is designed
for a diverse audience, including psycholinguists, psychologists,
cognitive neuroscientists, psychiatrists, and practitioners from
various medical fields. The book is a valuable resource for studies in
behavioural neurology and neuropsychology, as it offers a wide-ranging
outline of key issues and practical applications on how multilingual
learners process native and non-native languages while speaking.
REFERENCES
Cai, Hongwen. 2020 Relating Lexical and Syntactic Knowledge to
Academic English Listening: The          Importance of Construct
Representation. Frontiers in Psychology, 11:494.
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00494.
Dobrego, Aleksandra, Konina, Alena, & Mauranen, Anna. 2023. Continuous
speech segmentation  by L1 and L2 speakers of English: the role of
syntactic and prosodic cues. Language         Awareness, 32(3),
487–507. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658416.2022.2131801.
Hwang, Haerim. 2025. Growth of lexical and syntactic complexity,
accuracy, and fluency in spoken production of first language and
second language children. System, 132.
Shaoyu, Wang. 2024. The activation and selection of lexico-syntactic
features in speech   production: Behavioural and electrophysiological
evidence from L1 and L2 speakers. The         Netherlands: LOT.
Shaykhah A. Almaghrabi, Scott R. Clark, Mathias Baumert. 2023.
Bio-acoustic features of  depression: A review. Biomedical Signal
Processing and Control, 85.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bspc.2023.105020.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Mariam Olugbodi is a tenured Scholar of Phonetics and
Psycholinguistics at Kwara State University, Nigeria, teaching L2
speech variation as well as speech comprehension and production, at
the Department of English and Linguistics, and Communications in
English at the Centre for General Studies. She obtained a PhD in
Phonetics 2024 from the University of Ilorin focusing on Occupational
and Geographical Variations in English Language Accents in Nigeria.



------------------------------------------------------------------------------

********************** LINGUIST List Support ***********************
Please consider donating to the Linguist List, a U.S. 501(c)(3) not for profit organization:

https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=87C2AXTVC4PP8

LINGUIST List is supported by the following publishers:

Bloomsbury Publishing http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/

Cambridge University Press http://www.cambridge.org/linguistics

Cascadilla Press http://www.cascadilla.com/

De Gruyter Brill https://www.degruyterbrill.com/?changeLang=en

Edinburgh University Press http://www.edinburghuniversitypress.com

European Language Resources Association (ELRA) http://www.elra.info

John Benjamins http://www.benjamins.com/

Language Science Press http://langsci-press.org

Lincom GmbH https://lincom-shop.eu/

MDPI Languages https://www.mdpi.com/journal/languages

MIT Press http://mitpress.mit.edu/

Multilingual Matters http://www.multilingual-matters.com/

Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG http://www.narr.de/

Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics / Landelijke (LOT) http://www.lotpublications.nl/

Peter Lang AG http://www.peterlang.com

SIL International Publications http://www.sil.org/resources/publications


----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-37-1681
----------------------------------------------------------