Anne Cutler's guest appearances

Anne Cutler

New Books in Language

New Books Network

New Books in Sound Studies

CoEDL Public Lectures

Phillipa Chong

Kathryn Conrad

Matt Cook

Palgrave Macmillan

Leslie M. Harris

J. Neuhaus

Alberto Cairo

Karmen MacKendrick

Peter Lang

K. Linder

Nina Kraus

McKenzie Wark

Brian Greene

Lewis Glinert

Thomas Dunne

OwlTail

Two people who hear exactly the same speech sounds will process them differently depending on what their own native language prepares them to expect.This means that greater importance may be attached to some kinds of cues, while others are ignored. Thus, for example, cues to stress can be exactly the same in two languages, but in one language it is possible to get away with ignoring most of them, while in the other listeners need to use all the cues.Each language trains its listeners in particular ways. Understanding how our own languages prompt us to listen for certain cues may allow us to predict problems as well as opportunities in second-language acquisition. Biography: Professor Anne Cutler is a Chief Investigator of the Language Processing program of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language. She studied languages and psychology at the Universities of Melbourne, Berlin and Bonn, taught German at Monash University, but embraced psycholinguistics as soon as it emerged as an independent sub-discipline, taking a PhD in the subject at the University of Texas. Postdoctoral fellowships at MIT and Sussex University followed, and from 1982 to 1993 a staff position at the Medical Research Council Applied Psychology Unit in Cambridge. In 1993 she became a director at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, a post she held till 2013. She was also professor of comparative psycholinguistics at the Radboud University Nijmegen from 1995 to 2013, and, from 2006 to 2013, part-time Research Professor in MARCS Auditory Laboratories. In 2013 she took up a full-time position at the MARCS Institute.

Two people who hear exactly the same speech sounds will process them differently depending on what their own native language prepares them to expect. This means that greater importance may be attached to some kinds of cues, while others are ignored. Thus, for example, cues to stress can be exactly the same in two languages, but in one language it is possible to get away with ignoring most of them, while in the other listeners need to use all the cues. Each language trains its listeners in particular ways. Understanding how our own languages prompt us to listen for certain cues may allow us to predict problems as well as opportunities in second-language acquisition. Biography: Professor Anne Cutler is a Chief Investigator of the Language Processing program of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language. She studied languages and psychology at the Universities of Melbourne, Berlin and Bonn, taught German at Monash University, but embraced psycholinguistics as soon as it emerged as an independent sub-discipline, taking a PhD in the subject at the University of Texas. Postdoctoral fellowships at MIT and Sussex University followed, and from 1982 to 1993 a staff position at the Medical Research Council Applied Psychology Unit in Cambridge. In 1993 she became a director at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, a post she held till 2013. She was also professor of comparative psycholinguistics at the Radboud University Nijmegen from 1995 to 2013, and, from 2006 to 2013, part-time Research Professor in MARCS Auditory Laboratories. In 2013 she took up a full-time position at the MARCS Institute.

How the language we speak guides the way we listen - Anne Cutler

One of the risks of a telephone interview is that the sound quality can be less than ideal, and sometimes there’s no way around this and we just have to try to press on with it. Under those conditions, although I get used to it, I can’t help wondering whether the result will make sense to an outside listener.I mention this now because Anne Cutler‘s book, Native Listening: Language Experience and the Recognition of Spoken Words (MIT Press, 2012), is an eloquent and compelling justification of my worrying about precisely this issue. In particular, she builds the case that our experience with our native language fundamentally shapes the way in which we approach the task of listening to a stream of speech – unconsciously, we attend to the cues that are useful in our native language, and use the rules that apply in that language, even when this is counterproductive in the language that we’re actually dealing with. This explains how native speakers can typically process an imperfect speech signal, and why this sometimes fails when we’re listening to a non-native language. (But I hope this isn’t going to be one of those times for anyone.)In this interview, we explore some of the manifestations of the tendency to use native-language experience in parsing, and the implications of this for the rest of the language system. We see why attending to phonologically ‘possible words’ is useful in most, but not quite all, languages, and how this helps us solve the problem of embedded words (indeed, so effectively that we don’t even notice that the problem exists). We consider how the acquisition of language-specific preferences might cohere with the idea of a ‘critical period’ for second-language learning. And we get some insights into the process of very early language acquisition – even before birth – which turns out to have access to richer input data than we might imagine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

One of the risks of a telephone interview is that the sound quality can be less than ideal, and sometimes there’s no way around this and we just have to try to press on with it. Under those conditions, although I get used to it, I can’t help wondering whether the result will make sense to an outside listener. I mention this now because <a href="http://www.mpi.nl/people/cutler-anne" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Anne Cutler</a>‘s book, <a href="http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/native-listening" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Native Listening: Language Experience and the Recognition of Spoken Words</a> (MIT Press, 2012), is an eloquent and compelling justification of my worrying about precisely this issue. In particular, she builds the case that our experience with our native language fundamentally shapes the way in which we approach the task of listening to a stream of speech – unconsciously, we attend to the cues that are useful in our native language, and use the rules that apply in that language, even when this is counterproductive in the language that we’re actually dealing with. This explains how native speakers can typically process an imperfect speech signal, and why this sometimes fails when we’re listening to a non-native language. (But I hope this isn’t going to be one of those times for anyone.) In this interview, we explore some of the manifestations of the tendency to use native-language experience in parsing, and the implications of this for the rest of the language system. We see why attending to phonologically ‘possible words’ is useful in most, but not quite all, languages, and how this helps us solve the problem of embedded words (indeed, so effectively that we don’t even notice that the problem exists). We consider how the acquisition of language-specific preferences might cohere with the idea of a ‘critical period’ for second-language learning. And we get some insights into the process of very early language acquisition – even before birth – which turns out to have access to richer input data than we might imagine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a>Support our show by becoming a premium member! <a href="https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language</a>

Anne Cutler, “Native Listening: Language Experience and the Recognition of Spoken Words” (MIT Press, 2012)

One of the risks of a telephone interview is that the sound quality can be less than ideal, and sometimes there’s no way around this and we just have to try to press on with it. Under those conditions, although I get used to it, I can’t help wondering whether... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sound-studies

One of the risks of a telephone interview is that the sound quality can be less than ideal, and sometimes there’s no way around this and we just have to try to press on with it. Under those conditions, although I get used to it, I can’t help wondering whether... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://megaphone.fm/adchoices" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">megaphone.fm/adchoices</a>Support our show by becoming a premium member! <a href="https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sound-studies" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sound-studies</a>