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School of Linguistics & English Language

Staff Profile of Professor Ineke Mennen

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Name:

Prof Ineke Mennen

Position:

Professor of Bilingualism

Email:

Location:

Phone:

8702

Biography

I have been at Bangor University since 2008 after having worked at Queen Margaret University, and before that at Newcastle University and Edinburgh University. I first completed an undergraduate degree in Speech and Language Therapy in The Netherlands, after which I worked as a speech and language therapist in various settings in Greece and The Netherlands. I then changed career and was an undergraduate at the University of Amsterdam (Modern Greek Language and Literature), after which I completed my PhD in 1999 at Edinburgh University (Linguistics). My thesis was on second language acquisition of intonation.

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 prosodic and intonational systems of bilingual speakers, and whether they result from realisational or systemic differences between the languages. While I have studied prosody and intonation mostly in adult bilinguals, my research has also focused on acquisition of prosody and 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.

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