Doctoral Dissertation Research: Linguistic Accommodation to Southern Speech

博士论文研究：南方语言的语言适应

基本信息

批准号：
1917900
负责人：
Meredith Tamminga
金额：
$ 1.71万
依托单位：
University of Pennsylvania
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
Standard Grant
财政年份：
2019
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2019-07-01 至 2021-06-30
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1917900&HistoricalAwards=false
关键词：
Doctoral Dissertation Research Linguistic Accommodation

项目摘要

Previous linguistic research has shown that speakers accommodate by imitating the same linguistic forms they observe an interlocutor using. It is not known whether speakers also accommodate by using linguistic forms they expect from an interlocutor based on social cues, even if the forms are absent from the input. The dissertation targets a Southern variant---monophthongal /ay/---where the vowel in 'ride' sounds more like 'rod.' The project examines whether speakers produce more monophthongal /ay/ when conversing with a Southern talker who never uses the /ay/ vowel, as well as the cognitive mechanisms responsible for this behavior. Understanding how sociolinguistic expectations are formed and accessed during expectation-driven accommodation contributes to a general understanding of how social stereotypes are formed, mentally represented, and utilized.The project employs a novel word-naming game paradigm designed to elicit tokens of /ay/ from participants while exposing them to Southern speech that contains no /ay/ tokens. Acoustic properties of participants' /ay/ tokens are compared before and after exposure to a Southern or Midland (control) talker to determine whether accommodation occurs. Experiment 1 investigates whether accommodation based on expectations alone occurs. Experiment 2 tests whether expectation-driven accommodation is socially or structurally rooted by manipulating social cues (dialect labels) and structural cues (linguistic variants). Experiment 3 uses a joint perception-production task to determine whether participants exhibit /ay/-category boundary shifts, and whether such perceptual shifts predict accommodative behavior. This task attempts to pinpoint the perceptual changes that must take place for accommodation to occur, as well as understand the role of social information in both early perceptual changes and subsequent production behaviors. Self-reported surveys are paired with all three experiment to gauge the influence of social, cognitive, and attitudinal measures in accommodative behavior. Results contribute to scientific understanding of the relationship between perception and linguistic production, as well as the mental relationships between social and linguistic knowledge.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

先前的语言研究表明，说话者通过模仿他们观察到的对话者使用的相同语言形式来适应。目前尚不清楚说话者是否也会根据社交线索使用他们期望从对话者那里得到的语言形式来进行适应，即使这些形式在输入中不存在。这篇论文针对的是南方变体——单音/ay/——其中“ride”中的元音听起来更像“rod”。该项目研究了与从未使用/ay/元音的南方说话者交谈时，说话者是否会产生更多的单音/ay/，以及造成这种行为的认知机制。了解在期望驱动的适应过程中社会语言期望是如何形成和获取的，有助于总体理解社会刻板印象是如何形成、心理表征和利用的。该项目采用了一种新颖的单词命名游戏范式，旨在从参与者同时让他们接触不包含/ay/标记的南方语言。比较参与者的 /ay/ 标记在暴露于南方或米德兰（对照）说话者之前和之后的声学特性，以确定是否发生调节。实验 1 研究是否仅发生基于期望的适应。实验2通过操纵社会线索（方言标签）和结构线索（语言变体）来测试期望驱动的适应是否具有社会或结构根源。实验3使用联合感知-生产任务来确定参与者是否表现出/ay/-类别边界转变，以及这种感知转变是否预示着适应性行为。这项任务试图查明适应发生所必须发生的知觉变化，并了解社会信息在早期知觉变化和随后的生产行为中的作用。自我报告的调查与所有三个实验相结合，以衡量社会、认知和态度措施对适应行为的影响。结果有助于科学理解感知与语言产生之间的关系，以及社会和语言知识之间的心理关系。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查进行评估，被认为值得支持标准。