This project aims to investigate how listeners grow accustomed to non-native varieties of their native language.
While most extant research on adaptation to regional and non-native varieties focuses on pronunciation, our focus is on listeners’ adaptation to non-native morphosyntax. Specifically, we will investigate if and how listeners pick up on the fact that a morphosyntactic cue for interpreting sentences as Subject-Verb-Object or Object-Verb-Subject (viz., German case-marking) is or is not as reliable in non-native speech as in native speech.
Additionally, we will investigate whether any adaptation to the non-native morphosyntax of a handful of talkers is specific to those talkers or whether listeners assume that what they have learnt about these talkers also applies to other talkers.