Please join us via zoom for the next MMM & MAC. Starting with Fullbright Scholar Emily Tan on Word Segmentation in 6.5-7.5 month old Infants. Followed by Professor Victoria Marrero on Speech Production and Perception. NOTE: Both sessions will take place via Zoom ID 986 9057 6845.
PROGRAM
12pm - MARCS Monday Meeting Topic: Word Segmentation from Speech & Song in 6.5-7.5 Month Old Infants  Speaker: Emily Tan
Abstract: Many infants are exposed to music from their very first moments, as parents universally sing to soothe, engage, or communicate with their children. But what role does music play in infants’ language development? While it is well documented that by 7.5 months infants are able to identify individual words from a stream of fluent speech, questions remain about infants’ capacity to do so from musical contexts. During my time as a Fulbright fellow at MARCS, I compared infants’ word segmentation performances from both speech and song input. The findings indicate that melodies may facilitate the building blocks of vocabulary acquisition.
1pm – MARCS Afternoon Colloquium
Topic: Interplay between speech production and perception: constancy versus variability 
Speaker: Professor Victoria Marrero, Visiting Professor from Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia
Abstract: This presentation will deal with the relationships between the systems of production and perception of speech as a way to obtain constancy from the variability that characterizes linguistic communication. Specifically, we will compare the view of these relationships offered by some of the most commonly cited models or frameworks to language acquisition (Perceptual Assimilation Model, Second Language Linguistic Perception, RAF or Merge model) and the proposal of Carré, Divenyi & Mrayati (2017), Speech as a Dynamic Process. The first are characterized by an in-depth analysis of the mechanisms of language perception (both, in L1 and L2), and the second is an phono-articulatory model based on a simulation of an 18-cm long tube (the average male human resonator), deformed at specific distinctive regions, that integrates the time axis into a dynamic vision of human language. Coincidences, divergences and possibilities of mutual enrichment will be explored.
Biography: Victoria Marrero has a PhD in Linguistics from the Complutense University of Madrid, and is a Professor of Linguistics and Spanish Language at the National Distance Education University (UNED) in Spain. She is currently Vice-President of the Spanish Society of Linguistics. Her main areas of interest are Phonetics, Speech Perception, Clinical Linguistics, Language Acquisition and Spanish as a Second Language for Immigrants.
Professor Marrero’s recent visit to MARCS, in collaboration with Professor Paola Escudero was part of the Salvador de Madariaga program for senior researchers of the Ministry of Science (Spain). MARCS staff and students are reminded that all meetings and workshops have an important role in building and maintaining the sense of community which is central to the success of MARCS as a cooperative and energetic research institute. Your attendance is both welcomed and expected. The zoom ID is: 986 9057 6845 . Link to zoom https://uws.zoom.us/j/98690576845 |
