Are there individual tendencies in convergence, such that some speakers consistently converge more than others? Similarly, are there natural “leaders,” speakers with whom others converge more? Are such tendencies consistent across different linguistic characteristics? We use the Switchboard Corpus to perform a large‐scale convergence study of speakers in multiple conversations with different interlocutors, across six linguistic characteristics. Because each speaker participated in several conversations, it is possible to look for individual differences in speakers' likelihood of converging and interlocutors' likelihood of eliciting convergence. We only find evidence for individual differences by interlocutor, not by speaker: There are natural leaders of convergence, who elicit more convergence than others across characteristics and across conversations. The lack of similar evidence for speakers who converge more than others suggests that social factors have a stronger effect in mediating convergence than putative individual tendencies in producing convergence, or that such tendencies are characteristic‐specific.

中文翻译：

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天生的领导者：一些对话者在对话和特征之间引起更大的融合

是否存在个人趋同的趋势，以至于某些说话者始终比其他人更趋同？同样，是否有天生的“领导者”，即与他人更接近的演讲者？这种倾向在不同的语言特征中是否一致？我们使用 Switchboard 语料库对与不同对话者的多个对话中的说话者进行大规模收敛研究，跨越六种语言特征。因为每个说话者都参与了多次对话，所以可以在说话者收敛的可能性和对话者引发收敛的可能性中寻找个体差异。我们只通过对话者而不是说话者找到个体差异的证据：有自然的趋同领导者，谁比其他人在特征和对话中引起更多的融合。对于比其他人更趋同的说话者缺乏类似的证据表明，在产生趋同方面，社会因素比推定的个人倾向在调节趋同方面具有更强的作用，或者这种趋向是特定于特征的。