Interdisciplinary Colloquium
Prof. Daphna Heller, University of Toronto
As part of the department’s weekly research colloquium,
held every Thursday from 16:15 to 17:45 in the Webb Building (Room 103),
the following lecture by Prof. Daphna Heller from University of Toronto will take place:
Speaking with Context in Mind: What past objects, social partners, and aging tell us about mechanisms of language production
Abstract:
Speakers tailor referring expressions not only to the current, visible context, but also to elements that are no longer present. In the first part of this talk, I discuss two language production experiments that examine the extent of this phenomenon. Examining different cases of this behaviour is theoretically interesting because it allows us to investigate the mechanisms that underlie language production: whether referential forms can be modelled as dependent on earlier forms alone, or whether this requires a representation of discourse history, a non-linguistic situation model.
The remaining studies examine how broader contextual factors modulate these mechanisms. First, partner familiarity influences referential design: speakers are more sensitive to discourse history and less disfluent when communicating with friends compared to strangers, an effect that is rather surprising when labelling everyday objects such as umbrellas and chairs. Second, we ask about the role of memory by considering the behaviour of older adults: to our surprise, aging does not diminish this sensitivity, but reduced memory capacity nonetheless provides insight about language planning. Together, these results highlight flexible, context dependent mechanisms for language production that draw on prior experience, social context, and lifelong expertise.
All are welcome!
