MTS is the department’s Mind, Technology, and Society speaker series. It is hosted by a different faculty member each semester. Founded by a generous gift from Professors Robert Glushko and Pamela Samuelson, MTS brings researchers and industry professionals from across the globe to present a variety of interdisciplinary work in cognitive science. See our UCMerced CogSci youtube channel for videos of past MTS talks!
CIS graduate students, faculty, and staff, and all who are interested are invited! Members of other departments at UC Merced as well as the general public are encouraged to attend. (Note: current CIS Ph.D. students are required to attend MTS each semester in residence, to fulfill their COGS 250 course requirement).
Dr. Ferreira's talk will be 3-4:30pm in COB 265, presenting on "Rethinking the Prosody-Syntax Relationship".
Abstract:
Traditional theories of language processing, syntax, and prosody often stem from written language conventions, but spontaneous speech differs substantially in its frequent corrections, simpler syntactic structures, and shorter utterances. Recent advances in data analysis enable large-scale examination of unrehearsed speech, revealing that syntactic and prosodic boundaries only moderately align—indeed, nearly half of the words analyzed show mismatches between prosody and syntax in boundary strength. Furthermore, prosodic boundaries exhibit a continuous range of strengths, with strong boundaries being rare, indicating that constraints such as working memory and the need to plan shape how speakers naturally organize their utterances. These findings challenge categorical, competence-based theories of prosody and instead support an ecologically valid, resource-based perspective, wherein prosodic features fluctuate dynamically as speech unfolds.
For more information or to sign up for email announcements, please contact the talk series organizer: cis-mts-lead@lists.ucmerced.edu.
