Mirjam Ernestus (born 1969) is professor of

psycholinguistics Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the interrelation between linguistic factors and psychological aspects. The discipline is mainly concerned with the mechanisms by which language is processed and represented in the mind ...

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 ...

in the Netherlands.

Biography

Ernestus studied at the

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam The (abbreviated as ''VU Amsterdam'' or simply ''VU'' when in context) is a public university, public research university in Amsterdam, Netherlands, founded in 1880. The VU Amsterdam is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in ...

from 1987 to 2000, initially for a year in French

linguistics 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 ...

and

literature Literature is any collection of Writing, written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, Play (theatre), plays, and poetry, poems. It includes both print and Electroni ...

, then for a year in

chemistry Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a physical science within the natural sciences that studies the chemical elements that make up matter and chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules a ...

and

pharmaceutical sciences Pharmacy is the science and practice of discovering, producing, preparing, dispensing, reviewing and monitoring medications, aiming to ensure the safe, effective, and affordable use of medicines. It is a miscellaneous science as it links healt ...

, before graduating cum laude with a BA/MA in general linguistics in 1994. Her PhD was awarded in 2000. Subsequently, Ernestus worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the

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 ...

Nijmegen Nijmegen ( , ; Nijmeegs: ) is the largest city in the Dutch province of Gelderland and the ninth largest of the Netherlands as a whole. Located on the Waal River close to the German border, Nijmegen is one of the oldest cities in the ...

from 2000 to 2006. In 2007 she was appointed associate professor of psycholinguistics at the Radboud University, and in 2012 she was promoted to full professor. From 2017 to 2022 she was also the scientific director of the university's Centre for Language Studies. In addition, she acted as editor of the journal Laboratory Phonology from 2015 to 2021, and since 2021 she has been chair of the editorial board of Radboud University Press. Ernestus has been the recipient of significant honours and awards, including membership of 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 ...

(since 2015) and the

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of humanities, letters, law, and sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europe ...

(since 2022). In 2006 she was awarded a European Young Investigator Award for her project ''Acoustic Reduction in European languages'', while in 2011 she was awarded an ERC Starting Grant with the title ''The challenge of reduced pronunciation variants in conversational speech for foreign language listeners: experimental research and computational modeling'' as well as a vici grant from the Dutch Research Council for the project ''Learning Pronunciation Variants for Words in a Foreign Language: Towards an Ecologically Valid Theory Based on Experimental Research and Computational Modelling.'' In 2022, she received a Radboud University medal, in recognition of her special contribution to Radboud University.

Research

Ernestus's work is in the fields of laboratory phonology,

and

phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds or, in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians ...

, with the production and perception of informal, spontaneous conversational speech – including in

second language acquisition Second-language acquisition (SLA), sometimes called second-language learning—otherwise referred to as L2 (language 2) acquisition, is the process of learning a language other than one's native language (L1). SLA research examines how learners ...

– forming the main focus of her research. She also works on the processing of

morphology Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to: Disciplines *Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts *Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies, ...

. As part of her research projects, she has created several corpora of casual speech and experimental databases.

Selected publications

* Ernestus, Mirjam. 2000. Voice assimilation and segment reduction in casual Dutch, a corpus-based study of the phonology-phonetics interface. Ph.D. dissertation, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. * Ernestus, Mirjam, R. Harald Baayen, and Rob Schreuder. 2002. The recognition of reduced word forms. ''Brain and Language'' 81 (1–3), 162–173. * Ernestus, Mirjam, and R. Harald Baayen. 2003. Predicting the unpredictable: Interpreting neutralized segments in Dutch. ''Language'' 79 (1), 5–38. * M. Ernestus, H. Kouwenhoven, & M. van Mulken (2017). The direct and indirect effects of the phonotactic constraints in the listener's native language on the comprehension of reduced and unreduced word pronunciation variants in a foreign language. ''Journal of Phonetics'' 62, 50-64. * L. ten Bosch, L. Boves, & M. Ernestus (2022). DIANA, a Process-Oriented Model of Human Auditory Word Recognition. ''Brain Sciences'' 12.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ernestus, Mirjam 1969 births Women linguists Psycholinguists Phonologists Speech perception researchers Speech production researchers Living people Academic staff of Radboud University Nijmegen Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam alumni Members of Academia Europaea Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences