Doctoral Dissertation Research: Linguistic Accommodation to Southern Speech

先前的语言学研究表明，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。目前还不清楚说话者是否也通过使用他们基于社会线索从对话者那里期望的语言形式来适应，即使这些形式在输入中不存在。本论文的研究对象是一个南方变体-单元音/ay/-其中ride的元音听起来更像rod。“该项目研究了说话者在与从不使用/ay/元音的南方谈话者交谈时是否会发出更多的单元音/ay/，以及负责这种行为的认知机制。了解社会语言学的期望是如何形成的，并在期望驱动的住宿访问有助于社会刻板印象的形成，心理上的代表，并utilized.The项目采用了一种新的单词命名游戏范式，旨在引起令牌的/ay/从参与者，同时将他们暴露给南方的讲话，包含没有/ay/令牌的一般理解。在暴露于南方或米德兰（对照）谈话者之前和之后，比较参与者/ay/token的声学特性，以确定是否发生调节。实验1研究是否仅基于期望的调节发生。实验2通过操纵社会线索（方言标签）和结构线索（语言变体）来检验预期驱动的调节是否具有社会或结构根源。实验3使用了一个联合的知觉生产任务，以确定是否参与者表现出/ay/-类别边界的变化，以及这种知觉的变化是否预测的行为。这项任务试图找出必须发生的适应知觉的变化，以及理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配对，以衡量社会，认知和态度的措施在行为的影响。研究结果有助于科学地理解感知和语言产出之间的关系，以及社会知识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标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.