Mark Dingemanse (
Middelburg, Zeeland
Middelburg () is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the south-western Netherlands serving as the Capital (political), capital of the Provinces of the Netherlands, ...
, the Netherlands, 1983) is a
Dutch
Dutch or Nederlands commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
** Dutch people as an ethnic group ()
** Dutch nationality law, history and regulations of Dutch citizenship ()
** Dutch language ()
* In specific terms, i ...
linguist
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...
. He is an
associate professor
Associate professor is an academic title with two principal meanings: in the North American system and that of the ''Commonwealth system''.
In the ''North American system'', used in the United States and many other countries, it is a position ...
in Language and Communication at the Centre for Language Studies of
Radboud University Nijmegen
Radboud University (abbreviated as RU, , formerly ) is a public university, public research university located in Nijmegen, Netherlands. RU has seven faculties and more than 24,000 students.
Established in 1923, Radboud University has consistentl ...
.
He is also a Senior Investigator in the Multimodal Language and Cognition research group at the Nijmegen
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (German: ''Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik''; Dutch: ''Max Planck Instituut voor Psycholinguïstiek'') is a research institute located on the campus of Radboud University Nijmegen in Nijm ...
.
Life
Dingemanse obtained a
MA degree in
African Languages
The number of languages natively spoken in Africa is variously estimated (depending on the delineation of language vs. dialect) at between 1,250 and 2,100, and by some counts at over 3,000. Nigeria alone has over 500 languages (according to SI ...
and Cultures at
Leiden University
Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; ) is a Public university, public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. Established in 1575 by William the Silent, William, Prince of Orange as a Protestantism, Protestant institution, it holds the d ...
in 2006, and a
PhD
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...
degree in arts in 2011 at Radboud University Nijmegen. He performed linguistic
fieldwork
Field research, field studies, or fieldwork is the collection of raw data outside a laboratory, library, or workplace setting. The approaches and methods used in field research vary across disciplines. For example, biologists who conduct f ...
in eastern
Ghana
Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It is situated along the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, and shares borders with Côte d’Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, and Togo to t ...
and did
comparative research
Comparative research is a research methodology in the social sciences exemplified in cross-cultural or comparative studies that aims to make comparisons across different countries or cultures. A major problem in comparative research is that the da ...
on various languages.
He is
principal investigator of a research program on Elementary Particles of Conversation, on the small words in everyday language. He and several other researchers were awarded an
Ig Nobel Prize
The Ig Nobel Prize () is a satirical prize awarded annually since 1991 to promote public engagement with scientific research. Its aim is to "honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think." The name of the award is a ...
for their work on the presence of the word "huh" in all human languages.
Publications
Dingemanse's scholarly papers include:
* ''The meaning and use of
ideophone
An ideophone (also known as a mimetic or expressive) is a member of the word class of words that depict sensory imagery or sensations, evoking ideas of action, sound, movement, color, or shape. The class of ideophones is the least common syntac ...
s in
Siwu'', PhD thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, 24 October 2011.
* with Francisco Torreira, and N. J. Enfield: Is "Huh?" a Universal Word? Conversational Infrastructure and the Convergent Evolution of Linguistic Items, ''
PLOS One'', 2013.
* with Liesenfeld, A.: From text to talk: Harnessing conversational corpora for humane and diversity-aware language technology, in ''Proceedings of the 60th Annual Meeting of the
Association for Computational Linguistics
The Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) is a scientific and professional organization for people working on natural language processing. Its namesake conference is one of the primary high impact conferences for natural language proce ...
(Volume 1: Long Papers)'', 5614–5633, 2022, doi: 10.18653/v1/2022.acl-long.385.
* with Heesen, R., et al.: Coordinating social action: A primer for the cross-species investigation of communicative repair, ''
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences'', 377(1859), 2022. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2021.0110.
Recognitions
* Dingemanse ''et al.'' were awarded an
Ig Nobel Prize
The Ig Nobel Prize () is a satirical prize awarded annually since 1991 to promote public engagement with scientific research. Its aim is to "honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think." The name of the award is a ...
for their work on the presence of the word "huh" in all human languages.
* The
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (, KNAW) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands. The academy is housed in the Trippenhuis in Amsterdam.
In addition to various advisory a ...
awarded Dingemanse a Heineken Young Scientists Award in 2020.
References
Further reading
* Allison Parshall, "Pain Language: The sound of 'ow' transcends borders", ''
Scientific American
''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it, with more than 150 Nobel Pri ...
'', vol. 332, no. 2 (February 2025), pp. 16–18. "Many
language
Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...
s have an
interjection
An interjection is a word or expression that occurs as an utterance on its own and expresses a spontaneous feeling, situation or reaction. It is a diverse category, with many different types, such as exclamations ''(ouch!'', ''wow!''), curses (''da ...
word for expressing pain.
atarzyna Pisanski ''et al.'', writing in the ''Journal of the Acoustical Society of America'', have">Journal of the Acoustical Society of America">atarzyna Pisanski ''et al.'', writing in the ''Journal of the Acoustical Society of America'', havefound that pain interjections tend to contain the vowel sound 'ah' (written as [a] in the International Phonetic Alphabet) and letter combinations that incorporate it, such as 'ow' and 'ai.' These patterns may point back to the origins of human language itself." (p. 16.) "Researchers are continually discovering cases of
symbolism
Symbolism or symbolist may refer to:
*Symbol, any object or sign that represents an idea
Arts
*Artistic symbol, an element of a literary, visual, or other work of art that represents an idea
** Color symbolism, the use of colors within various c ...
, or sound
iconicity
In functional- cognitive linguistics, as well as in semiotics, iconicity is the conceived similarity or analogy between the form of a sign (linguistic or otherwise) and its meaning, as opposed to arbitrariness (which is typically assumed i ...
, in which a word's intrinsic nature has some connection to its meaning. These cases run counter to decades of
linguistic theory
Theoretical linguistics is a term in linguistics that, like the related term general linguistics, can be understood in different ways. Both can be taken as a reference to the theory of language, or the branch of linguistics that inquires into the ...
, which had regarded language as fundamentally arbitrary...
onomatopoeically imitate a sound. Also">onomatopoeia.html" ;"title="any words onomatopoeia">onomatopoeically imitate a sound. Alsothere's the Bouba/kiki effect">'bouba-kiki' effect, whereby people from varying cultures are more likely to associate the nonsense word 'bouba' with a rounded shape and 'kiki' with a spiked one.... [S]omehow we all have a ''feeling'' about this,' says Aleksandra Ćwiek... [She and her colleagues have] show[n] that people associate the Trill consonant, trilled 'R' sound with roughness and the 'L' sound with smoothness. Mark Dingemanse... in 2013 found
hat
A hat is a Headgear, head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorpor ...
the conversational 'Huh?' and similar words in other languages may be universal." (p. 18.)
External links
* . Video by Huh?. Duration 20s.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dingemanse, Mark
1983 births
Dutch Africanists
Leiden University alumni
Ig Nobel laureates
Linguists from the Netherlands
Linguists of Yoruba
Living people
People from Middelburg, Zeeland
Psycholinguists
Radboud University Nijmegen alumni
Academic staff of Radboud University Nijmegen