Language specific constraints on conversation: Evidence from Danish and Norwegian

Abstract

Establishing and maintaining mutual understanding in everyday conversations is crucial. To do so people employ a variety of conversational devices, such as backchannels, repair and linguistic entrainment. Here we explore whether speakers of different languages use conversational devices in the same way, or whether their use might be modulated by differences in properties of the languages. We compare two unusually well-matched languages (Danish and Norwegian) differing in their sound structure: Danish is more opaque due to, e.g., phonetic reduction in pronunciation. Across systematically manipulated conversational contexts, we find that processes supporting mutual understanding in conversations vary with external constraints: across different contexts, and, crucially, across languages. According to our predictions, linguistic entrainment was overall higher in Danish than Norwegian, while backchannels and repairs presented a more nuanced pattern. These findings suggest that native speakers of Danish compensate for the opaque sound structure by adopting a top-down strategy of building more conversational redundancy through entrainment, which also reduces the need for repairs. By creating a context in which linguistic items and structures are continuously repeated, native speakers of Danish might be bypassing the challenges posed by their pronounced phonetic reduction. These results suggest that linguistic differences might give rise to systematic changes in language processing and use and pave the way for larger cross-linguistic investigations. The findings are highly relevant for the study of conversational exchanges in many applied domains, from the design of language-based human-computer interfaces to the development of measures of social functioning in neuropsychiatric conditions.

Quantifying the interplay of conversational devices in building mutual understanding.

“…We elicited conversations from 40 pairs (80 Danish individuals). Each pair produced four conversations: 2 affiliative conversations and 2 task-oriented conversations (for dataset see https://doi.org/gqw3, Dideriksen, Christiansen, et al, 2019). Prior to the conversations, participants filled out a questionnaire reporting their age (mean age = 23.2, SD = 3.5), gender (58% female participants), and education (5 participants had finished a high school degree, whereas the remaining 75 were students at Aarhus University).…”

“…For example, Danish is known for its strong consonantal reduction compared with Norwegian (Trecca et al, 2021). It is conceivable that the properties of specific languages, like Danish, might impact conversational behaviors in idiosyncratic ways (Dideriksen et al, 2022). It will therefore be important to study conversational devices across a typologically broad set of languages and across a wider spectrum of participants (cf.…”

The Dynamic Interplay of Kinetic and Linguistic Coordination in Danish and Norwegian Conversation

“…This study assessed how interpersonal entrainment is dynamically coordinated across linguistic and kinetic modalities. We were specifically interested in whether interpersonal entrainment spreads across different linguistic levels (e.g., lexical, syntactic, and semantic) and modalities (i.e., speech and kinetic), as predicted by interpersonal synchrony/alignment accounts (Garrod & Pickering, 2009;Ireland & Henderson, 2014;Pickering & Garrod, 2004), or whether there is a divergence (or complementarity) of entrainment levels, as would be predicted by interpersonal synergy accounts (Dale et al, 2013;Dideriksen, Christiansen, Tylén et al, 2022;Fusaroli et al, 2014;Riley, Richardson, Shockley, & Ramenzoni, 2011). To more fully contextualize these findings, we assessed whether this multimodal entrainment would generalize across contextual constraints and-crosslinguistically-across matched Danish and Norwegian conversations.…”

“…Previous research has shown that interpersonal coordination occurs across communicative modalities. This may include linguistic entrainment, such as in the reuse of one's interlocutor's lexical and syntactic structure (Dideriksen, Christiansen, Tylén et al., 2022; Pickering & Garrod, 2004), as well as kinetic entrainment, such as synchronization of body and head movements, and the use of similar gestures (Louwerse, Dale, Bard, & Jeuniaux, 2012; Paxton & Dale, 2017; Ramseyer & Tschacher, 2011; Rasenberg, Dingemanse, & Özyürek, 2020; Rasenberg, Özyürek, Bögels, & Dingemanse, 2022; Tsuchiya et al., 2020). However, despite multimodality being the natural context of human language—with gestures, nods, and ever‐changing facial expressions accompanying speech—coordination through entrainment is typically not studied across modalities.…”

Communicative Feedback in language acquisition

“…Indeed, many aspects of conversational dynamics have been shown to vary depending on the conversational partners, contexts, and languages. For example, child-child conversations are on average shorter and less coherent than child-caregiver conversations (Barton & Tomasello, 1994;Dunn & Kendrick, 1982), and the use of certain CF signals varies between affiliative and task-oriented conversations (Dideriksen et al, 2020) as well as between languages even in culturally similar communities (Dideriksen et al, 2022). More research studying how CF plays out in a wider range of contexts (including with various conversational partners, such as peers) is needed to shed light on possibly universal mechanisms supporting the acquisition of language.…”