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Rivka Levitan
Research
"Are their heads off?" shouted the Queen.
"Their heads are gone, if it please your Majesty!" the soldiers shouted in reply.
"That's right!" shouted the Queen. "Can you play croquet?"
"Yes!" shouted Alice.
"Come on, then!" roared the Queen, and Alice joined the procession, wondering very much what would happen next.
"Their heads are gone, if it please your Majesty!" the soldiers shouted in reply.
"That's right!" shouted the Queen. "Can you play croquet?"
"Yes!" shouted Alice.
"Come on, then!" roared the Queen, and Alice joined the procession, wondering very much what would happen next.
--Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
In conversation, a person's speech becomes more similar to that of her partner. The Queen shouts, so Alice shouts too. The Queen's style is exclamatory, and so is Alice's.
Research shows that this phenomenon, known as entrainment, is prevalent in dialogue in many acoustic, prosodic, lexical and nonverbal dimensions and is crucial to perceived dialogue quality. Among other topics, I am interested in the identification of the features on which speakers entrain, at what point conversational partners entrain, and what entrainment can add to our understanding of dialogue acts such as turn taking.