Name:

Prof Ineke Mennen

Position:

Chair of Bilingualism

Email:

i.mennen@bangor.ac.uk

Location:

111 Bilingualism Centre

Phone:

+44 (0)1248 388702

Research interests

My research focuses on the acquisition of speech by bilingual speakers (encompassing both sequential and consecutive bilinguals) with a view to enhancing understanding of the mutual interaction between two or more phonetic systems and its implications for phonetic and phonological theory. I am particularly interested in the mutual interaction of intonational systems of bilingual speakers, and whether they result from realisational or systemic differences between the languages. While I have studied intonation mostly in adult bilinguals, my research has also focused on acquisition of intonation in child speech as well as in disordered speech (e.g. in individuals with Parkinson's Disease, dysarthria, Asperger's Syndrome).

Other research interests relate to speech and language therapy provision to bilingual clients and clients from ethnic and linguistic minorities.

Research projects

- I am currently working with Robert Mayr on a British Academy funded research project entitled " Sociophonetic variation in a language contact situation: The case of Welsh and Welsh English".

- I have completed an ESRC funded research project in collaboration with Aoju Chen (then at Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, now at the University of Utrecht), entitled "The Ups and Downs of Learner Intonation: A Cross-Language and Longitudinal Investigation of the Intonation Systems of L2 Learners". See here for more information.

- Sonja Schaeffler, James Scobbie, and I have completed an ESRC funded research project entitled "Open Mouthed or Stiff Upper Lip? Exploring language-Specific Settings in English German Bilinguals". See here for more information.

- Together with Gerard Docherty and Felix Schaeffler, we have worked on another ESRC funded project "Cross-language differences in pitch range". Information, including publications arising from this grant can be found here.

- I have recently completed a British Academy funded project with Christiane Ulbrich entitled “Dissociation of segments and intonation in the production of second language speech”.

Publications

Please visit the publications page of Professor Ineke Mennen to view recent publications.

Other information

PhD supervision

I currently supervise the following PhD students: Kelly Ann Webb and Sarah Cooper. My former PhD students are Olga Gordeeva, Esther de Leeuw, and Ioulia Grichkovtsova