Lieke van MaastrichtRadboud University | RU · Centre for Language Studies
Lieke van Maastricht
Doctor of Philosophy
Doing research on the interplay between gesture and prosody in human (foreign) language production and perception.
About
23
Publications
5,515
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Introduction
I currently work at the Department of Communication and Information Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen. As part of the Centre for Language Studies, my research is focussed on the use of gestures and prosody in Second Language Acquisition.
Additional affiliations
April 2017 - present
Position
- Professor (Assistant)
Description
- At the Department of Communication and Information Studies, my research is focussed on the use of gestures in the acquisition of the prosodic features of a foreign language.
September 2012 - September 2017
Publications
Publications (23)
In our multilingual society, communicating in foreign languages (L2) is increasingly important but complicated by a lack of existing methods for L2 prosody training. While L2 learners often practice individual L2 segments in class, they barely receive instruction on the form or function of the prosodic features of their L2 (e.g., the use of pitch a...
The prosody of a second language (L2) is notoriously difficult to acquire. It requires the mastery of a range of nested multimodal systems, including articulatory but also gestural signals, as hand gestures are produced in close synchrony with spoken prosody. It remains unclear how easily the articulatory and gestural systems acquire new prosodic p...
Most language learners have difficulties acquiring the phonemes of a second language (L2). Unfortunately, they are often judged on their L2 pronunciation, and segmental inaccuracies contribute to miscommunication. Therefore, we aim to determine how to facilitate phoneme acquisition. Given the close relationship between speech and co-speech gesture,...
This study investigates the relative contribution of L2 intonation, rhythm, and speech rate to L1 perceptions of accentedness and comprehensibility. The intonation, rhythm, and speech rate of an L1 speaker of Dutch was transferred onto the segmental string of four Spanish learners of Dutch, resulting in eight conditions that reflect all possible co...
This paper aims to study whether training with gestures benefits L2 phoneme acquisition from both a production and perception perspective. In the production study, Dutch learners of Spanish received pronunciation training for the phonemes /u/ and /θ/ in one of four conditions: audio-only, audiovisual , audiovisual with pointing gestures, or audiovi...
Given that co-speech gestures affect language perception in both the L1 and L2, this paper aims to determine whether they can also lead to improved L2 production. To this end, 51 native speakers of Dutch received training focused on the target-like pronunciation of the Spanish phonemes /θ/ and /u/, which are typically difficult to acquire for nativ...
The close relationship between speech and gesture has led to a range of studies focusing on the role of gesture in L1 and L2 language acquisition. However, few studies focused specifically on the acquisition of prosodic aspects of speech, and those that did, did not compare the possible effect of different types of gestures. Thus, this paper aims t...
Given that co-speech gestures affect language perception in both the L1 and L2, this paper aims to determine whether they can also lead to improved L2 production. To this end, 51 native speakers of Dutch received training focused on the target-like pronunciation of the Spanish phonemes /θ/ and /u/, which are typically difficult to acquire for nativ...
This study examines the acquisition process of speech rhythm in Dutch learners of Spanish (DLS) and Spanish learners of Dutch (SLD) at different proficiency levels to determine whether learning direction affects the success of rhythm acquisition in a foreign language (L2). Analyses of lengthening effects showed that the two learner groups followed...
Successful L2 acquisition depends on many factors, learning direction being a relatively under-investigated, yet intuitively relevant one. Prior work showed that transfer from the L1 to the L2 occurs in all linguistic areas, but often speakers with different L1s, but the same L2 are compared or transfer is only investigated in one learning directio...
In my dissertation, I studied the production and perception of L2 intonation and rhythm by Dutch learners of Spanish and Spanish learners of Dutch. In contrast to most prior work, I did not only examine how the L2 prosody of these two learner groups differs from the L1 norm but also tried to explain this deviance by including additional factors in...
This research investigates how deviance in focus marking by means of pitch accent distributions by native and non-native speakers affects native speaker perceptions. It shows that non-native speech is rated as less nativelike, more foreign accented and more difficult to understand than native speech, with speakers’ proficiency as a modulating facto...
This research describes the production of prosodic cues to mark information structure in Spanish and Dutch. It compares speech by native (L1) and second language (L2) speakers and investigates prosodic transfer from the L1 to the L2, L2 proficiency as a factor in transfer effects, and transfer from the L2 to the L1. The results confirm that Spanish...
This paper describes the effect of deviance in focus marking by means of pitch accent distributions in Dutch on L1 perceptions of accentedness, nativeness and comprehensibility in L1 and L2 speech. On a rating task Dutch natives demonstrate that they have unambiguous intuitions concerning L2 speech by Spanish learners of Dutch by categorically rati...
The importance of intonation in communication cannot be denied (Gussenhoven, 2004; Ladd, 2008). Since the goal of most foreign language learners is to successfully communicate in a language other than their mother tongue, more research on the way they are perceived by native speakers and the role of intonation in these interactions in highly releva...
Available on http://irs.ub.rug.nl/dbi/4ef4a3ba6932c
In this thesis, the syntactic and semantic properties of comment and reporting clauses in Germanic (Dutch, English and German) and Romance (French and Spanish) languages are investigated by means of two questionnaires. It is shown that Romance and Germanic comment and reporting clauses share many of their more general properties, such as the abilit...
Questions
Question (1)
For an upcoming study, I am in search of a quick Spanish placement test that can be made by L2 learners (preferably online) to determine their L2 Spanish proficiency level.
Ideally, the test would not be longer than 10 minutes and can be used for free, but please also contact me with recommendations for longer or paid tests. These could still be a useful starting point for us.
Thank you in advance!
Lieke
Projects
Projects (4)
The close relationship between speech and gesture has led to a range of studies focusing on the role of gesture in L1 and L2 language acquisition. However, few studies focused specifically on the acquisition of prosodic aspects of speech, and those that did, did not compare the possible effect of different types of gestures. Thus, this paper aims to determine whether seeing beat or metaphoric gestures during training facilitates L2 lexical stress acquisition as compared to seeing no gestures during training.
Given that co-speech gestures affect language perception in both the L1 and L2, this project aims to determine whether they can also lead to improved L2 production. To this end, Dutch learners of Spanish received training focused on the target-like pronunciation of the Spanish phonemes /θ/ and /u/, which are typically difficult to acquire for native speakers of Dutch.
In this project, my colleague Marieke Hoetjes and I, together with our students, investigate whether seeing and producing gestures during L2 pronunciation training benefits L2 learners' production of L2 segments and prosody, as well as the way L1 listeners perceive their L2 speech with respect to accentedness, comprehensibility, and intelligibility.
