Event
Lacey Wade will be defending her
dissertation proposal on Tuesday, December 18th at 10am in
the Linguistics Department Seminar Room (Room 326, 3401-C
Walnut Street, Suite 300, C Wing).
The proposal can be found here
<http://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/afb247_e90646150c434081ade0ea2ea52e5f71.pdf>,
and the abstract can be found below.
________________
(Working) Title: The Social and the Linguistic
Intertwined: Accommodation to Southern Speech
Advisor: Meredith Tamminga
Proposal Committee: Don Ringe, David Embick, Gareth Roberts
Five decades ago, William Labov objected to the term
“sociolinguistics,” on the grounds that there is no way to
truly study language without taking social dimensions into
account. Since then sociolinguists have continued to find
that social and linguistic information are inextricably
linked. Linguistic features have been shown to index various
social meanings (e.g., Campbell-Kibler 2009, 2011; Eckert
2000; Mendoza-Denton 2008). Conversely, individuals have
been shown to possess implicit social knowledge that can
influence the way language is perceived (e.g., Niedzielski
1999; Hay & Drager, 2006). I propose a set of experiments to
test the relationships between linguistic and social
information in both speech perception and production, using
accommodation to the Southern dialect as a test case. I
distinguish between the more commonly discussed input-driven
accommodation, which involves a linguistic target triggered
by the same linguistic form observed in real-time, and
knowledge-driven accommodation, which entails accommodating
toward a previously stored and then recalled target that is
not locally observed. The goal of the dissertation is to
determine whether input-driven and knowledge-driven
accommodation are governed by the same cognitive mechanisms
and/or are similarly influenced by social information.
Experiment 1 finds evidence for knowledge-driven
accommodation; participants converge toward an in-
terlocutor’s Southern dialect by producing more
monophthongal (i.e., more Southern) tokens of /ay/ after
listening to a Southern-accented talker who never produces
the /ay/ vowel. I use a Word Naming Game designed to elicit
tokens of /ay/ and other vowels subject to the Southern
shift; participants’ productions are compared before and
after exposure to a Southern or Midland (control) talker.
Experiment 2 tests whether the mechanism that allows for the
type of generalization observed in Experiment 1 is socially
or structurally rooted. I use the same design as in
Experiment 1, but also manipulate the social labels/dialects
of the talk- ers (with/without labels and matched/mismatched
labels). This experiment will help to tease apart three
possible explanations knowledge-driven convergence: social
priming, associative co-occurrence, or structural
extrapolation. Experiment 3 pinpoints the perceptual changes
that must take place in order for accommodation to occur, as
well as the role of social information in both early
perceptual changes and more controlled productive behaviors.
I ultimately investigate whether input-driven and
knowledge-driven accommodation are determined by the same
perceptual mechanisms and similarly influenced by social
information. This experiment consists of a joint
perception-production task to see whether participants’ /ay/
category boundary shifts with exposure to either
monophthongal /ay/ (Experiment 3a) or other Southern vowels
(Experiment 3b). Surveys will be included to gauge the
influence of social and attitudinal information.
In addition to shedding light on the mental representations
and mechanisms involved in processing linguistic and social
information, results are expected to provide new insights
into the relationships between linguistic perception and
production, have implications for the role of perceptual
flexibility and accommodative behaviors in sound change, and
illuminate the importance of considering social dimensions
in theories of linguistic representation and processing.
dissertation proposal on Tuesday, December 18th at 10am in
the Linguistics Department Seminar Room (Room 326, 3401-C
Walnut Street, Suite 300, C Wing).
The proposal can be found here
<http://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/afb247_e90646150c434081ade0ea2ea52e5f71.pdf>,
and the abstract can be found below.
________________
(Working) Title: The Social and the Linguistic
Intertwined: Accommodation to Southern Speech
Advisor: Meredith Tamminga
Proposal Committee: Don Ringe, David Embick, Gareth Roberts
Five decades ago, William Labov objected to the term
“sociolinguistics,” on the grounds that there is no way to
truly study language without taking social dimensions into
account. Since then sociolinguists have continued to find
that social and linguistic information are inextricably
linked. Linguistic features have been shown to index various
social meanings (e.g., Campbell-Kibler 2009, 2011; Eckert
2000; Mendoza-Denton 2008). Conversely, individuals have
been shown to possess implicit social knowledge that can
influence the way language is perceived (e.g., Niedzielski
1999; Hay & Drager, 2006). I propose a set of experiments to
test the relationships between linguistic and social
information in both speech perception and production, using
accommodation to the Southern dialect as a test case. I
distinguish between the more commonly discussed input-driven
accommodation, which involves a linguistic target triggered
by the same linguistic form observed in real-time, and
knowledge-driven accommodation, which entails accommodating
toward a previously stored and then recalled target that is
not locally observed. The goal of the dissertation is to
determine whether input-driven and knowledge-driven
accommodation are governed by the same cognitive mechanisms
and/or are similarly influenced by social information.
Experiment 1 finds evidence for knowledge-driven
accommodation; participants converge toward an in-
terlocutor’s Southern dialect by producing more
monophthongal (i.e., more Southern) tokens of /ay/ after
listening to a Southern-accented talker who never produces
the /ay/ vowel. I use a Word Naming Game designed to elicit
tokens of /ay/ and other vowels subject to the Southern
shift; participants’ productions are compared before and
after exposure to a Southern or Midland (control) talker.
Experiment 2 tests whether the mechanism that allows for the
type of generalization observed in Experiment 1 is socially
or structurally rooted. I use the same design as in
Experiment 1, but also manipulate the social labels/dialects
of the talk- ers (with/without labels and matched/mismatched
labels). This experiment will help to tease apart three
possible explanations knowledge-driven convergence: social
priming, associative co-occurrence, or structural
extrapolation. Experiment 3 pinpoints the perceptual changes
that must take place in order for accommodation to occur, as
well as the role of social information in both early
perceptual changes and more controlled productive behaviors.
I ultimately investigate whether input-driven and
knowledge-driven accommodation are determined by the same
perceptual mechanisms and similarly influenced by social
information. This experiment consists of a joint
perception-production task to see whether participants’ /ay/
category boundary shifts with exposure to either
monophthongal /ay/ (Experiment 3a) or other Southern vowels
(Experiment 3b). Surveys will be included to gauge the
influence of social and attitudinal information.
In addition to shedding light on the mental representations
and mechanisms involved in processing linguistic and social
information, results are expected to provide new insights
into the relationships between linguistic perception and
production, have implications for the role of perceptual
flexibility and accommodative behaviors in sound change, and
illuminate the importance of considering social dimensions
in theories of linguistic representation and processing.