Publications

Displaying 201 - 208 of 208
  • Van Heugten, M., Bergmann, C., & Cristia, A. (2015). The Effects of Talker Voice and Accent on Young Children's Speech Perception. In S. Fuchs, D. Pape, C. Petrone, & P. Perrier (Eds.), Individual Differences in Speech Production and Perception (pp. 57-88). Bern: Peter Lang.

    Abstract

    Within the first few years of life, children acquire many of the building blocks of their native language. This not only involves knowledge about the linguistic structure of spoken language, but also knowledge about the way in which this linguistic structure surfaces in their speech input. In this chapter, we review how infants and toddlers cope with differences between speakers and accents. Within the context of milestones in early speech perception, we examine how voice and accent characteristics are integrated during language processing, looking closely at the advantages and disadvantages of speaker and accent familiarity, surface-level deviation between two utterances, variability in the input, and prior speaker exposure. We conclude that although deviation from the child’s standard can complicate speech perception early in life, young listeners can overcome these additional challenges. This suggests that early spoken language processing is flexible and adaptive to the listening situation at hand.
  • Van Berkum, J. J. A. (2004). Sentence comprehension in a wider discourse: Can we use ERPs to keep track of things? In M. Carreiras, Jr., & C. Clifton (Eds.), The on-line study of sentence comprehension: eyetracking, ERPs and beyond (pp. 229-270). New York: Psychology Press.
  • Verdonschot, R. G., & Tamaoka, K. (Eds.). (2015). The production of speech sounds across languages [Special Issue]. Japanese Psychological Research, 57(1).
  • Vernes, S. C., Janik, V. M., Fitch, W. T., & Slater, P. J. B. (Eds.). (2021). Vocal learning in animals and humans [Special Issue]. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B: Biological Sciences, 376.
  • Von Stutterheim, C., & Klein, W. (2004). Die Gesetze des Geistes sind metrisch: Hölderlin und die Sprachproduktion. In H. Schwarz (Ed.), Fenster zur Welt: Deutsch als Fremdsprachenphilologie (pp. 439-460). München: Iudicium.
  • Weissenborn, J. (1988). Von der demonstratio ad oculos zur Deixis am Phantasma. Die Entwicklung der lokalen Referenz bei Kindern. In Karl Bühler's Theory of Language. Proceedings of the Conference held at Kirchberg, August 26, 1984 and Essen, November 21–24, 1984 (pp. 257-276). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
  • Willems, R. M. (2015). Cognitive neuroscience of natural language use: Introduction. In Cognitive neuroscience of natural language use (pp. 1-7). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Zinken, J., Rossi, G., & Reddy, V. (2020). Doing more than expected: Thanking recognizes another's agency in providing assistance. In C. Taleghani-Nikazm, E. Betz, & P. Golato (Eds.), Mobilizing others: Grammar and lexis within larger activities (pp. 253-278). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Abstract

    In informal interaction, speakers rarely thank a person who has complied with a request. Examining data from British English, German, Italian, Polish, and Telugu, we ask when speakers do thank after compliance. The results show that thanking treats the other’s assistance as going beyond what could be taken for granted in the circumstances. Coupled with the rareness of thanking after requests, this suggests that cooperation is to a great extent governed by expectations of helpfulness, which can be long-standing, or built over the course of a particular interaction. The higher frequency of thanking in some languages (such as English or Italian) suggests that cultures differ in the importance they place on recognizing the other’s agency in doing as requested.

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