Ariëlle Reitsema is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Linguistics. In the NWO-funded project "Who’s next?" she researches the role of speech melody - with a focus on utterance-final boundary tones - in the turn-taking system of Dutch. Intonation is one of the cues that we can use in conversation to coordinate when it is (or is not) okay to take the floor.

More information about Ariëlle Reitsema

Fields of interest

• Phonetics
• Prosody
• Second language acquisition
• Boundary tones
• Turn-taking
• Dutch
• Afrikaans
• Korean

Research

In a conversation, how do we know when the other person is done talking, so that we can respond at exactly the right moment? More specifically, (how) do we use intonation to coordinate who can take the floor when? My PhD-research tries to answer this question by investigating the role of speech melody - in particular utterance-final boundary tones - in the turn-taking system of Dutch. This NWO-funded project with the title "Who's next?" is spearheaded by Johanneke Caspers, and further supervised by Matthijs Westera and Yiya Chen.
My previous research is similarly concentrated in the field of phonetics, and has investigated inter alia perceptual learning in Mandarin Chinese lexical tone, tonogenetic sound change in Afrikaans (and how this is reflected in heritage speakers' pronunciation), and the effect of digital tools in second language acquisition of the Korean laryngeal contrast. Data-driven, quantitative approaches to speech analysis excite me, and suprasegmental aspects of speech have been a common thread in my linguistic research so far.
Another strand of my research is situated in the field of Korean Studies and mainly concerns North Korean overseas labour, in relation to the effectiveness of UN sanctions as well as human rights.

Curriculum vitae