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SUMMARY:Dr. Zach Maher (Psychology, Penn State)
DESCRIPTION:“Do They Know Who Speak This Way? Knowledge and Processing o
f Morphosyntactic Variation in African American Language and Mainstream
American English”\n\nZachary Maher\, Ph.D.\n\nPostdoctoral Fellow\, Penn
State\, Department of Psychology\n\nFriday\, September 8\, 9:00–10:30 a
.m. EDT\, Foster Auditorium\, 102 Paterno Library\n\nAs people from diff
erent social groups come into contact\, they must accommodate difference
s in morphosyntax (e.g.\, They was happy vs. They were happy) to success
fully represent and comprehend their interlocutor’s speech. In this talk
\, Zachary Maher presents evidence indicating that listeners know about
dialect variation in subject-verb agreement and\n\ndeploy this knowledge
in real-time language processing\, comparing bidialectal speakers of Af
rican American Language (AAL) and Mainstream American English (MAE) to m
onodialectal speakers of MAE. He uses a variety of tasks\, including eye
-tracking in the visual world paradigm\, a sentence transcription task\,
and a novel sociolinguistic sentence rating task. Across tasks\, result
s suggest that most speakers of American English have some knowledge of
morphosyntactic differences between AAL and MAE\, but those who speak AA
L are broadly more likely to consider the possibility that their interlo
cutor will use a form that differs from\n\nMAE. These findings indicate
that listeners have mental models of morphosyntactic variation\, and fut
ure research can delve into the details of these models and the dynamics
of switching as listeners adjust to different language varieties.\n\nFo
r more details: https://events.la.psu.edu/event/dr-zach-myer-psych/
X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:“Do They Know Who Speak This Way? Knowledge and Proc
essing of Morphosyntactic Variation in African American Language and Mai
nstream American English”
Zachary Maher, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow, Penn
State, Department of Psychology
Friday, September 8, 9:00–10:30 a.m. EDT, Foster Auditorium,
102 Paterno Library
As people from different social group
s come into contact, they must accommodate differences in morphosyntax (
e.g., They was happy vs. They were happy) to successfully represent and
comprehend their interlocutor’s speech. In this talk, Zachary Maher pres
ents evidence indicating that listeners know about dialect variation in
subject-verb agreement and
deploy this knowledge in real-time langu
age processing, comparing bidialectal speakers of African American Langu
age (AAL) and Mainstream American English (MAE) to monodialectal speaker
s of MAE. He uses a variety of tasks, including eye-tracking in the visu
al world paradigm, a sentence transcription task, and a novel sociolingu
istic sentence rating task. Across tasks, results suggest that most spea
kers of American English have some knowledge of morphosyntactic differen
ces between AAL and MAE, but those who speak AAL are broadly more likely
to consider the possibility that their interlocutor will use a form tha
t differs from
MAE. These findings indicate that listeners have men
tal models of morphosyntactic variation, and future research can delve i
nto the details of these models and the dynamics of switching as listene
rs adjust to different language varieties.
For more details: https://events.
la.psu.edu/event/dr-zach-myer-psych/
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