CogSci 2025

August 02, 2025

San Francisco, United States

Would you like to see your presentation here, made available to a global audience of researchers?
Add your own presentation or have us affordably record your next conference.

keywords:

dynamic systems modeling

language production

computational modeling

phonology

linguistics

Short-term phonetic accommodation is a fundamental driver behind accent change, but how does real-time input from another speaker's voice shape the speech planning representations of an interlocutor? We advance a computational model of change in speech planning representations during phonetic accommodation, grounded in dynamic neural field equations for movement planning and memory dynamics. A dual-layer planning/memory field predicts that convergence to a model talker on one trial can trigger divergence on subsequent trials, due to a delayed inhibitory effect in the more slowly evolving memory field. The model's predictions are compared with empirical patterns of accommodation from an experimental pilot study. We show that observed empirical phenomena may correspond to variation in the magnitude of inhibitory memory dynamics, which could reflect resistance to accommodation due to phonological and/or sociolinguistic pressures. We discuss the implications of these results for the relations between short-term phonetic accommodation and sound change.

Downloads

Paper

Next from CogSci 2025

Parents and Children Create Semantic Regularities During Naturalistic Toy Play
poster

Parents and Children Create Semantic Regularities During Naturalistic Toy Play

CogSci 2025

Melina Knabe and 1 other author

02 August 2025