ESRC Centre for Research on Bilingualism in Theory & Practice

Name:

Prof Ineke Mennen

Position:

Professor of Bilingualism

Email:

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 working on another ESRC funded research project in collaboration with Aoju Chen (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics), 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 are working on 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.

- I have recently completed, together with Gerard Docherty and Felix Schaeffler, an 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 Jessica Henrich. My former PhD students are Olga Gordeeva, Esther de Leeuw, and Ioulia Grichkovtsova