@phdthesis{Rubertus2024,
  author    = {Rubertus, Elina},
  title     = {Coarticulatory changes across childhood},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-63012},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-630123},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {X, 131},
  year      = {2024},
  abstract  = {The present dissertation investigates changes in lingual coarticulation across childhood in German-speaking children from three to nine years of age and adults. Coarticulation refers to the mismatch between the abstract phonological units and their seemingly commingled realization in continuous speech. Being a process at the intersection of phonology and phonetics, addressing its changes across childhood allows for insights in speech motor as well as phonological developments. Because specific predictions for changes in coarticulation across childhood can be derived from existing speech production models, investigating children's coarticulatory patterns can help us model human speech production. While coarticulatory changes may shed light on some of the central questions of speech production development, previous studies on the topic were sparse and presented a puzzling picture of conflicting findings. One of the reasons for this lack is the difficulty in articulatory data acquisition in a young population. Within the research program this dissertation is embedded in, we accepted this challenge and successfully set up the hitherto largest corpus of articulatory data from children using ultrasound tongue imaging. In contrast to earlier studies, a high number of participants in tight age cohorts across a wide age range and a thoroughly controlled set of pseudowords allowed for statistically powerful investigations of a process known as variable and complicated to track. The specific focus of my studies is on lingual vocalic coarticulation as measured in the horizontal position of the highest point of the tongue dorsum. Based on three studies on a) anticipatory coarticulation towards the left, b) carryover coarticulation towards the right side of the utterance, and c) anticipatory coarticulatory extent in repeated versus read aloud speech, I deduct the following main theses: 1. Maturing speech motor control is responsible for some developmental changes in coarticulation. 2. Coarticulation can be modeled as the coproduction of articulatory gestures. 3. The developmental change in coarticulation results from a decrease of vocalic activation width.},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Grimm2007,
  author    = {Grimm, Angela},
  title     = {The development of word-prosodic structure in child German : simplex words and compounds},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-43194},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2007},
  abstract  = {Die Dissertation untersucht die Entwicklung der prosodischen Struktur von Simplizia und Komposita im Deutschen. Ausgewertet werden langzeitlich erhobene Produktionsdaten von vier monolingualen Kindern im Alter von 12 bis 26 Monaten. Es werden vier Entwicklungsstufen angenommen, in denen jedoch keine einheitlichen Outputs produziert werden. Die Asymmetrien zwischen den verschiedenen W{\"o}rtern werden systematisch auf die Struktur des Zielwortes zur{\"u}ckgef{\"u}hrt. In einer optimalit{\"a}tstheoretischen Analyse wird gezeigt, dass sich die Entwicklungsstufen aus der Umordnung von Constraints ergeben und dass dasselbe Ranking die Variation zwischen den Worttypen zu einer bestimmten Entwicklungsstufe vorhersagt.},
  language  = {de}
}