Abstract
Conversation partners tend to copy elements of each other’s utterances during a spoken interaction. This article investigates possible asymmetries in this adaptive process. We study game-based dialogues between Flemish and Dutch speakers, who officially speak the same language, but who can differ in their default use of words and in their pronunciation. Our general hypothesis, mainly based on previous studies that focused on long-term forms of adaptation and on previous studies on exchanges between categorical and variable language users, is that Flemish speakers adapt more in interactions towards Dutch speakers, than vice versa. The article describes two experiments using variants of the same experimental paradigm. Experiment 1 investigates lexical adaptation and tests whether Flemish speakers indeed adapt more to Dutch ones than the other way around. Experiment 2 looks at how adaptation of lexical forms relates to adaptation in terms of pronunciation. Both experiments bring to light that Flemish speakers indeed converge more to Dutch ones, than vice versa, especially in terms of choice of lexical forms.
Highlights
Linguistic AdaptationDuring a spoken interaction, it sometimes happens that one person, when uttering a specific sentence, takes over linguistic forms that his or her dialogue partner had produced in a prior turn
If we look at the distribution of the different kinds of adaptation, we observe a marked difference between Belgian Dutch (BD) and Netherlandic Dutch (ND) speakers: in a large majority of the cases, the BD speakers opt for complete adaptation, i.e., by no longer using the word they had chosen before the experiment started, but replacing it with the word of the game partner; the ND speakers, do not have such a strong preference for this most drastic form of adaptation
Our experiment shows clear cases of lexical adaptation, and reveals clear asymmetries in that respect, as, in line with our expectations, BD speakers more often adapt to their ND partner, than vice versa
Summary
Linguistic AdaptationDuring a spoken interaction, it sometimes happens that one person, when uttering a specific sentence, takes over linguistic forms that his or her dialogue partner had produced in a prior turn. A speaker of English may initially feel inclined to use the word “mountain” to refer to a peak in the landscape, but switches to “hill” after having noticed that the other conversant is using the latter word to indicate that piece of land that is higher than its surroundings. Such forms of adaptation generally appear to proceed smoothly: speakers tend not to explicitly negotiate about the choice of words, but spontaneously and implicitly come to a lexical agreement. The current paper focuses on the convergence between speaking partners in terms of lexical forms and pronunciation, and on the possible asymmetries in levels of adaptation during interactions between native speakers of Dutch from the Flemish part of Belgium and from the Netherlands
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