Kevin B Mcgowan
Biographic Data
| ID | 751114 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kevin B Mcgowan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kevin B |
| FAMILY NAME | Mcgowan |
| SIGNATURE | MCGOWAN K B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Kentucky |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8214-1901 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 78 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Finding our Role: How and why to reframe essentialist approaches to language
Introduction to the Thematic Issue
The topics of awareness and control have been investigated for decades in sociolinguistics, but they have been approached in different ways, both theoretically and methodologically, in different corners of the subdiscipline. This has resulted in confusing and sometimes contradictory terminology, as well as divergent theoretical perspectives on what, exactly, is meant by these terms. As our understanding of the relationships between various social…
Removing the Disguise: The Matched Guise Technique, Incongruity, and Listener Awareness
Sociophonetic perception is often studied using versions of the matched guise technique (MGT). Linguists using this technique appear united in the methodological assumptions that participants believe the manipulation and that this belief influences perception below the level of introspective awareness. We report an audiovisual matched guise experiment with a novel "unhidden" instruction condition. The basic task is a replication of the Strand eff…
Ceiling Effects on Weight in Heavy NP Shift
This squib tests theories of heavy NP shift that link constituent order to parsing. Our results indicate that increasing the weight of an object NP cannot make a heavy NP shift construction more acceptable than a comparison sentence in the canonical order, contra parsing-based theories. In addition, we examine acceptability as it relates to verb disposition. We find no significant differences between different subcategorizations, contrary to the …
Perception ofnon-nativespeech
For nearly 25 years, researchers have recognized the rich and numerous facets of native perception of non-native speech, driving a large, and growing, body of work that has shed light on how native listeners understand non-native speech. The bulk of this work, however, has focused on the talker. That is, most researchers have asked what perception of non-native speech tells us about the non-native speaker, or when interacting with non-native spea…
Perceiving isn't believing: Divergence in levels of sociolinguistic awareness
The influence of social knowledge on speech perception is a question of interest to a range of disciplines of language research. This study combines experimental and qualitative approaches to investigate whether the various methodological and disciplinary threads of research on this topic are truly investigating the same phenomenon to provide converging evidence in our understanding of social listening. This study investigates listeners' percepti…
The time course of individuals’ perception of coarticulatory information is linked to their production: Implications for sound change: Supplemental Material
Author(s): Beddor, Patrice Speeter; Coetzee, Andries W; Styler, Will; McGowan, Kevin B; Boland, Julie E
The time course of individuals' perception of coarticulatory information is linked to their production: Implications for sound change
Understanding the relation between speech production and perception is foundational to phonetic theory, and is similarly central to theories of the phonetics of sound change. For sound changes that are arguably perceptually motivated, it is particularly important to establish that an individual listener's selective attention—for example, to the redundant information afforded by coarticulation—is reflected in that individual's own productions. Thi…
Social Expectation Improves Speech Perception in Noise
Listeners’ use of social information during speech perception was investigated by measuring transcription accuracy of Chinese-accented speech in noise while listeners were presented with a congruent Chinese face, an incongruent Caucasian face, or an uninformative silhouette. When listeners were presented with a Chinese face they transcribed more accurately than when presented with the Caucasian face. This difference existed both for listeners wit…
The socially weighted encoding of spoken words: A dual-route approach to speech perception
Spoken words are highly variable. A single word may never be uttered the same way twice. As listeners, we regularly encounter speakers of different ages, genders, and accents, increasing the amount of variation we face. How listeners understand spoken words as quickly and adeptly as they do despite this variation remains an issue central to linguistic theory. We propose that learned acoustic patterns are mapped simultaneously to linguistic repres…
Social Expectation Improves Speech Perception in Noise
Listeners’ use of social information during speech perception was investigated by measuring transcription accuracy of Chinese-accented speech in noise while listeners were presented with a congruent Chinese face, an incongruent Caucasian face, or an uninformative silhouette. When listeners were presented with a Chinese face they transcribed more accurately than when presented with the Caucasian face. This difference existed both for listeners wit…
The time course of individuals' perception of coarticulatory information is linked to their production: Implications for sound change
Understanding the relation between speech production and perception is foundational to phonetic theory, and is similarly central to theories of the phonetics of sound change. For sound changes that are arguably perceptually motivated, it is particularly important to establish that an individual listener's selective attention—for example, to the redundant information afforded by coarticulation—is reflected in that individual's own productions. Thi…
Perceiving isn't believing: Divergence in levels of sociolinguistic awareness
The influence of social knowledge on speech perception is a question of interest to a range of disciplines of language research. This study combines experimental and qualitative approaches to investigate whether the various methodological and disciplinary threads of research on this topic are truly investigating the same phenomenon to provide converging evidence in our understanding of social listening. This study investigates listeners' percepti…
Perception ofnon-nativespeech
For nearly 25 years, researchers have recognized the rich and numerous facets of native perception of non-native speech, driving a large, and growing, body of work that has shed light on how native listeners understand non-native speech. The bulk of this work, however, has focused on the talker. That is, most researchers have asked what perception of non-native speech tells us about the non-native speaker, or when interacting with non-native spea…
Introduction to the Thematic Issue
The topics of awareness and control have been investigated for decades in sociolinguistics, but they have been approached in different ways, both theoretically and methodologically, in different corners of the subdiscipline. This has resulted in confusing and sometimes contradictory terminology, as well as divergent theoretical perspectives on what, exactly, is meant by these terms. As our understanding of the relationships between various social…
Removing the Disguise: The Matched Guise Technique, Incongruity, and Listener Awareness
Sociophonetic perception is often studied using versions of the matched guise technique (MGT). Linguists using this technique appear united in the methodological assumptions that participants believe the manipulation and that this belief influences perception below the level of introspective awareness. We report an audiovisual matched guise experiment with a novel "unhidden" instruction condition. The basic task is a replication of the Strand eff…
The socially weighted encoding of spoken words: A dual-route approach to speech perception
Spoken words are highly variable. A single word may never be uttered the same way twice. As listeners, we regularly encounter speakers of different ages, genders, and accents, increasing the amount of variation we face. How listeners understand spoken words as quickly and adeptly as they do despite this variation remains an issue central to linguistic theory. We propose that learned acoustic patterns are mapped simultaneously to linguistic repres…
Social Expectation Improves Speech Perception in Noise
Listeners’ use of social information during speech perception was investigated by measuring transcription accuracy of Chinese-accented speech in noise while listeners were presented with a congruent Chinese face, an incongruent Caucasian face, or an uninformative silhouette. When listeners were presented with a Chinese face they transcribed more accurately than when presented with the Caucasian face. This difference existed both for listeners wit…
The time course of individuals’ perception of coarticulatory information is linked to their production: Implications for sound change: Supplemental Material
Author(s): Beddor, Patrice Speeter; Coetzee, Andries W; Styler, Will; McGowan, Kevin B; Boland, Julie E
The time course of individuals' perception of coarticulatory information is linked to their production: Implications for sound change
Understanding the relation between speech production and perception is foundational to phonetic theory, and is similarly central to theories of the phonetics of sound change. For sound changes that are arguably perceptually motivated, it is particularly important to establish that an individual listener's selective attention—for example, to the redundant information afforded by coarticulation—is reflected in that individual's own productions. Thi…
Perception ofnon-nativespeech
For nearly 25 years, researchers have recognized the rich and numerous facets of native perception of non-native speech, driving a large, and growing, body of work that has shed light on how native listeners understand non-native speech. The bulk of this work, however, has focused on the talker. That is, most researchers have asked what perception of non-native speech tells us about the non-native speaker, or when interacting with non-native spea…
Perceiving isn't believing: Divergence in levels of sociolinguistic awareness
The influence of social knowledge on speech perception is a question of interest to a range of disciplines of language research. This study combines experimental and qualitative approaches to investigate whether the various methodological and disciplinary threads of research on this topic are truly investigating the same phenomenon to provide converging evidence in our understanding of social listening. This study investigates listeners' percepti…
Ceiling Effects on Weight in Heavy NP Shift
This squib tests theories of heavy NP shift that link constituent order to parsing. Our results indicate that increasing the weight of an object NP cannot make a heavy NP shift construction more acceptable than a comparison sentence in the canonical order, contra parsing-based theories. In addition, we examine acceptability as it relates to verb disposition. We find no significant differences between different subcategorizations, contrary to the …
Introduction to the Thematic Issue
The topics of awareness and control have been investigated for decades in sociolinguistics, but they have been approached in different ways, both theoretically and methodologically, in different corners of the subdiscipline. This has resulted in confusing and sometimes contradictory terminology, as well as divergent theoretical perspectives on what, exactly, is meant by these terms. As our understanding of the relationships between various social…
Removing the Disguise: The Matched Guise Technique, Incongruity, and Listener Awareness
Sociophonetic perception is often studied using versions of the matched guise technique (MGT). Linguists using this technique appear united in the methodological assumptions that participants believe the manipulation and that this belief influences perception below the level of introspective awareness. We report an audiovisual matched guise experiment with a novel "unhidden" instruction condition. The basic task is a replication of the Strand eff…
Finding our Role: How and why to reframe essentialist approaches to language
Linguistics (9 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (8 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Perception (6 works) · Phonetics and Phonology Research (6 works) · Cognitive psychology (5 works) · Communication (4 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Philosophy (4 works) · Sociology (4 works)