Speaker: Dr. Anne Cutler (Western Sydney)
Time: Nov 5, Friday 12:10 – 13:10 pm
Title: Pragmatic Processing in Speech Perception: Prosody, Speaker Variation
Registration: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1JGMhKoXyLskA6LqMUlxpXvRxw9w8m5Xh_ervZAnDgHI/edit
Abstract: Some aspects of speech perception remain a mystery to researchers, for instance why the prosody of speech attracts so (comparatively) little attention in native speakers’ accounts of the structure of their language, and, presumably in consequence, receives little attention from second-language learners and teachers either. Nonetheless, there is growth in studies of how prosodic structure is used by listeners, across languages that differ phonologically, and the results can help us towards an explanation of these issues. This talk will discuss some recent results from studies of prosodic processing at both the lexical level and the sentence level, as well as studies of how listeners deal with speaker-specific variation, which suggest that there is an underlying common thread in how these sources of variation in speech are processed.