@article{WierzbaFanselow2020,
  author    = {Wierzba, Marta and Fanselow, Gisbert},
  title     = {Factors influencing the acceptability of object fronting in German},
  series = {The journal of comparative Germanic linguistics},
  volume    = {23},
  journal   = {The journal of comparative Germanic linguistics},
  number    = {1},
  publisher = {Springer},
  address   = {New York},
  issn      = {1383-4924},
  doi       = {10.1007/s10828-020-09113-1},
  pages     = {77 -- 124},
  year      = {2020},
  abstract  = {In this paper, we address some controversially debated empirical questions concerning object fronting in German by a series of acceptability rating studies. We investigated three kinds of factors: (i) properties of the subject (given/new, pronoun/full DP), (ii) emphasis, (iii) register. The first factor is predicted to play a crucial role by models in which object fronting possibilities are limited by prosodic properties. Two experiments provide converging evidence for a systematic effect of this factor: we find that the relative acceptability of object fronting across subjects that require an accent (new DPs) is lower than across deaccentable subjects (pronouns and given DPs). Other models predict object fronting across full phrases (but not across pronouns) to be limited to an emphatic interpretation. This prediction is also borne out, suggesting that both types of models capture an empirically valid generalization and can be seen as complementing each other rather than competing with each other. Finally, we find support for the view that informal register facilitates object fronting. In sum, our experiments contribute to clarifying the empirical basis concerning a phenomenon influenced by a range of interacting factors. This, in turn, informs theoretical approaches to the prefield position and helps to identify factors that need to be carefully controlled in this field of research.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{WestphalVockKretschmann2021,
  author    = {Westphal, Andrea and Vock, Miriam and Kretschmann, Julia},
  title     = {Unravelling the relationship between teacher-assigned grades, student personality, and standardized test scores},
  series = {Frontiers in psychology / Frontiers Research Foundation},
  journal   = {Frontiers in psychology / Frontiers Research Foundation},
  number    = {12},
  publisher = {Frontiers Research Foundation},
  address   = {Lausanne},
  issn      = {1664-1078},
  doi       = {10.3389/fpsyg.2021.627440},
  pages     = {11},
  year      = {2021},
  abstract  = {The Big Five personality traits play a major role in student achievement. As such, there is consistent evidence that students that are more conscientious receive better teacher-assigned grades in secondary school. However, research often does not support the claim that students that are more conscientious similarly achieve higher scores in domain-specific standardized achievement tests. Based on the Invest-and-Accrue Model, we argue that conscientiousness explains to some extent why certain students receive better grades despite similar academic accomplishments (i.e., achieving similar scores in domain-specific standardized achievement tests). Therefore, the present study examines to what extent the relationship between student personality and teacher-assigned grades consists of direct as opposed to indirect associations (via subject-specific standardized test scores). We used a representative sample of 14,710 ninth-grade students to estimate these direct and indirect pathways in mathematics and German. Structural equation models showed that test scores explained between 8 and 11\% of the variance in teacher-assigned grades in mathematics and German. The Big Five personality traits in students additionally explained between 8 and 10\% of the variance in grades. Finally, the personality-grade relationship consisted of direct (0.02 | β| ≤ 0.27) and indirect associations via test scores (0.01 | β| ≤ 0.07). Conscientiousness explained discrepancies between teacher-assigned grades and students' scores in domain-specific standardized tests to a greater extent than any of the other Big Five personality traits. Our findings suggest that students that are more conscientious may invest more effort to accomplish classroom goals, but fall short of mastery.},
  language  = {en}
}
@misc{WestphalVockKretschmann2021,
  author    = {Westphal, Andrea and Vock, Miriam and Kretschmann, Julia},
  title     = {Unravelling the relationship between teacher-assigned grades, student personality, and standardized test scores},
  series = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe},
  journal   = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe},
  number    = {12},
  issn      = {1866-8364},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-52302},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-523024},
  pages     = {13},
  year      = {2021},
  abstract  = {The Big Five personality traits play a major role in student achievement. As such, there is consistent evidence that students that are more conscientious receive better teacher-assigned grades in secondary school. However, research often does not support the claim that students that are more conscientious similarly achieve higher scores in domain-specific standardized achievement tests. Based on the Invest-and-Accrue Model, we argue that conscientiousness explains to some extent why certain students receive better grades despite similar academic accomplishments (i.e., achieving similar scores in domain-specific standardized achievement tests). Therefore, the present study examines to what extent the relationship between student personality and teacher-assigned grades consists of direct as opposed to indirect associations (via subject-specific standardized test scores). We used a representative sample of 14,710 ninth-grade students to estimate these direct and indirect pathways in mathematics and German. Structural equation models showed that test scores explained between 8 and 11\% of the variance in teacher-assigned grades in mathematics and German. The Big Five personality traits in students additionally explained between 8 and 10\% of the variance in grades. Finally, the personality-grade relationship consisted of direct (0.02 | β| ≤ 0.27) and indirect associations via test scores (0.01 | β| ≤ 0.07). Conscientiousness explained discrepancies between teacher-assigned grades and students' scores in domain-specific standardized tests to a greater extent than any of the other Big Five personality traits. Our findings suggest that students that are more conscientious may invest more effort to accomplish classroom goals, but fall short of mastery.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{SzagunSchramm2018,
  author    = {Szagun, Gisela and Schramm, Satyam Antonio},
  title     = {Lexically driven or early structure building?},
  series = {First language},
  volume    = {39},
  journal   = {First language},
  number    = {1},
  publisher = {Sage Publ.},
  address   = {London},
  issn      = {0142-7237},
  doi       = {10.1177/0142723718761414},
  pages     = {61 -- 79},
  year      = {2018},
  abstract  = {This study examines the role of the lexicon and grammatical structure building in early grammar. Parent-report data in CDI format from a sample of 1151 German-speaking children between 1;6 and 2;6 and longitudinal spontaneous speech data from 22 children between 1;8 and 2;5 were used. Regression analysis of the parent-report data indicates that grammatical words have a stronger influence on concurrent syntactic complexity than lexical words. Time-lagged correlations using the spontaneous speech data showed that lexical words at 1;8 predict subsequent MLU at 2;1 significantly; grammatical words do not. MLU at 2;5 is significantly predicted by grammatical words and no longer by lexical words. The influence of different grammatical subcategories on subsequent MLU varies. Use of articles and the copula at 2;1 most strongly predicts MLU at 2;5. Children use both types of articles and multiple determiners before a noun to the same extent as adults. The present results are suggestive of early grammatical structure building.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{StoneVerissimoSchadetal.2021,
  author    = {Stone, Kate and Verissimo, Joao and Schad, Daniel J. and Oltrogge, Elise and Vasishth, Shravan and Lago, Sol},
  title     = {The interaction of grammatically distinct agreement dependencies in predictive processing},
  series = {Language, cognition and neuroscience},
  volume    = {36},
  journal   = {Language, cognition and neuroscience},
  number    = {9},
  publisher = {Routledge, Taylor \& Francis Group},
  address   = {Abingdon},
  issn      = {2327-3798},
  doi       = {10.1080/23273798.2021.1921816},
  pages     = {1159 -- 1179},
  year      = {2021},
  abstract  = {Previous research has found that comprehenders sometimes predict information that is grammatically unlicensed by sentence constraints. An open question is why such grammatically unlicensed predictions occur. We examined the possibility that unlicensed predictions arise in situations of information conflict, for instance when comprehenders try to predict upcoming words while simultaneously building dependencies with previously encountered elements in memory. German possessive pronouns are a good testing ground for this hypothesis because they encode two grammatically distinct agreement dependencies: a retrospective one between the possessive and its previously mentioned referent, and a prospective one between the possessive and its following nominal head. In two visual world eye-tracking experiments, we estimated the onset of predictive effects in participants' fixations. The results showed that the retrospective dependency affected resolution of the prospective dependency by shifting the onset of predictive effects. We attribute this effect to an interaction between predictive and memory retrieval processes.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{SperlichSchadLaubrock2015,
  author    = {Sperlich, Anja and Schad, Daniel and Laubrock, Jochen},
  title     = {When preview information starts to matter},
  series = {Journal of cognitive psychology},
  volume    = {27},
  journal   = {Journal of cognitive psychology},
  number    = {5},
  publisher = {Routledge, Taylor \& Francis Group},
  address   = {Abingdon},
  issn      = {2044-5911},
  doi       = {10.1080/20445911.2014.993990},
  pages     = {511 -- 530},
  year      = {2015},
  abstract  = {How is reading development reflected in eye-movement measures? How does the perceptual span change during the initial years of reading instruction? Does parafoveal processing require competence in basic word-decoding processes? We report data from the first cross-sectional measurement of the perceptual span of German beginning readers (n = 139), collected in the context of the large longitudinal PIER (Potsdamer Intrapersonale Entwicklungsrisiken/Potsdam study of intra-personal developmental risk factors) study of intrapersonal developmental risk factors. Using the moving-window paradigm, eye movements of three groups of students (Grades 1-3) were measured with gaze-contingent presentation of a variable amount of text around fixation. Reading rate increased from Grades 1-3, with smaller increases for higher grades. Perceptual-span results showed the expected main effects of grade and window size: fixation durations and refixation probability decreased with grade and window size, whereas reading rate and saccade length increased. Critically, for reading rate, first-fixation duration, saccade length and refixation probability, there were significant interactions of grade and window size that were mainly based on the contrast between Grades 3 and 2 rather than Grades 2 and 1. Taken together, development of the perceptual span only really takes off between Grades 2 and 3, suggesting that efficient parafoveal processing presupposes that basic processes of reading have been mastered.},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Schunack2017,
  author    = {Schunack, Silke},
  title     = {Processing of non-canonical word orders in an L2},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-103750},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {xvii, 443 Seiten},
  year      = {2017},
  abstract  = {This thesis investigates the processing of non-canonical word orders and whether non-canonical orders involving object topicalizations, midfield scrambling and particle verbs are treated the same by native (L1) and non-native (L2) speakers. The two languages investigated are Norwegian and German. 32 L1 Norwegian and 32 L1 German advanced learners of Norwegian were tested in two experiments on object topicalization in Norwegian. The results from the online self-paced reading task and the offline agent identification task show that both groups are able to identify the non-canonical word order and show a facilitatory effect of animate subjects in their reanalysis. Similarly high error rates in the agent identification task suggest that globally unambiguous object topicalizations are a challenging structure for L1 and L2 speakers alike. The same participants were also tested in two experiments on particle placement in Norwegian, again using a self-paced reading task, this time combined with an acceptability rating task. In the acceptability rating L1 and L2 speakers show the same preference for the verb-adjacent placement of the particle over the non-adjacent placement after the direct object. However, this preference for adjacency is only found in the L1 group during online processing, whereas the L2 group shows no preference for either order. Another set of experiments tested 33 L1 German and 39 L1 Slavic advanced learners of German on object scrambling in ditransitive clauses in German. Non-native speakers accept both object orders and show neither a preference for either order nor a processing advantage for the canonical order. The L1 group, in contrast, shows a small, but significant preference for the canonical dative-first order in the judgment and the reading task. The same participants were also tested in two experiments on the application of the split rule in German particle verbs. Advanced L2 speakers of German are able to identify particle verbs and can apply the split rule in V2 contexts in an acceptability judgment task in the same way as L1 speakers. However, unlike the L1 group, the L2 group is not sensitive to the grammaticality manipulation during online processing. They seem to be sensitive to the additional lexical information provided by the particle, but are unable to relate the split particle to the preceding verb and recognize the ungrammaticality in non-V2 contexts. Taken together, my findings suggest that non-canonical word orders are not per se more difficult to identify for L2 speakers than L1 speakers and can trigger the same reanalysis processes as in L1 speakers. I argue that L2 speakers' ability to identify a non-canonical word order depends on how the non-canonicity is signaled (case marking vs. surface word order), on the constituents involved (identical vs. different word types), and on the impact of the word order change on sentence meaning. Non-canonical word orders that are signaled by morphological case marking and cause no change to the sentence's content are hard to detect for L2 speakers.},
  language  = {en}
}
@book{SchroederSchellhardtAkincietal.2015,
  author    = {Schroeder, Christoph and Schellhardt, Christin and Akinci, Mehmet-Ali and Dollnick, Meral and Dux, Ginesa and G{\"u}lbeyaz, Esin I{\c{s}}{\i}l and J{\"a}hnert, Anne and Ko{\c{c}}-G{\"u}lt{\"u}rk, Ceren and K{\"u}hmstedt, Patrick and Kuhn, Florian and Mezger, Verena and Pfaff, Carol and {\"U}rkmez, Bet{\"u}l Sena},
  title     = {MULTILIT},
  editor    = {Schroeder, Christoph and Schellhardt, Christin},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-80390},
  publisher      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2015},
  abstract  = {This paper presents an overview of the linguistic analyses developed in the MULTILIT project and the processing of the oral and written texts collected. The project investigates the language abilities of multilingual children and adolescents, in particular, those who have Turkish and/or Kurdish as a mother tongue. A further aim of the project is to examine from a psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic perspective the extent to which competence in academic registers is achieved on the basis of the languages spoken by the children, including the language(s) spoken at the home, the language of the country of residence and the first foreign language. To be able to examine these questions using corpus linguistic parameters, we created categories of analysis in MULTILIT. The data collection comprises texts from bilingual and monolingual children and adolescents in Germany in their first language Turkish, their second language German und their foreign language English. Pupils aged between nine and twenty years of age produced monologue oral and written texts in the two genres of narrative and discursive. On the basis of these samples, we examine linguistic features such as lexical expression (lexical density, lexical diversity), syntactic complexity (syntactic and discursive packaging) as well as phonology in the oral texts and orthography in the written texts, with the aim of investigating the pupils' growing mastery of these features in academic and informal registers. To this end the raw data have been transcribed by the use of transcription conventions developed especially for the needs of the MULTILIT data. They are based on the commonly used HIAT and GAT transcription conventions and supplemented with conventions that provide additional information such as features at the graphic level. The categories of analysis comprise a large number of linguistic categories such as word classes, syntax, noun phrase complexity, complex verbal morphology, direct speech and text structures. We also annotate errors and norm deviations at a wide range of levels (orthographic, morphological, lexical, syntactic and textual). In view of the different language systems, these criteria are considered separately for all languages investigated in the project.},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Schmitz2008,
  author    = {Schmitz, Michaela},
  title     = {The perception of clauses in 6- and 8-month-old German-learning infants : influence of pause duration and the natural pause hierarchy},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-29078},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2008},
  abstract  = {The present dissertation focuses on the question whether and under which conditions infants recognise clauses in fluent speech and the role a prosodic marker such as a pause may have in the segmentation process. In the speech signal, syntactic clauses often coincide with intonational phrases (IPhs) (Nespor \& Vogel, 1986, p. 190), the boundaries of which are marked by changes in fundamental frequency (e.g., Price, Ostendorf, Shattuck-Hufnagel \& Fong, 1991), lengthening of the final syllable (e.g., Cooper \& Paccia-Cooper, 1980) and the occurrence of a pause (Nespor \& Vogel, 1986, p. 188). Thus, IPhs seem to be reliably marked in the speech stream and infants may use these cues to recognise them. Furthermore, corpus studies on the occurrence and distribution of pauses have revealed that there is a strong correlation between the duration of a pause and the type of boundary it marks (e.g., Butcher, 1981, for German). Pauses between words are either non-existent or short, pauses between phrases are a bit longer, and pauses between clauses and at sentence boundaries further increase in duration. This suggests the existence of a natural pause hierarchy that complements the prosodic hierarchy described by Nespor and Vogel (1986). These hierarchies on the side of the speech signal correspond to the syntactic hierarchy of a language. In the present study, five experiments using the Headturn preference paradigm (Hirsh-Pasek, Kemler Nelson, Jusczyk, Cassidy, Druss \& Kennedy, 1987) were conducted to investigate German-learning 6- and 8-month-olds' use of pauses to recognise clauses in the signal and their sensitivity to the natural pause hierarchy. Previous studies on English-learning infants' recognition of clauses (Hirsh-Pasek et al., 1987; Nazzi, Kemler Nelson, Jusczyk \& Jusczyk, 2000) have found that infants as young as 6 months recognise clauses in fluent speech. Recently, Seidl and colleagues have begun to investigate the status the pause may have in this process (Seidl, 2007; Johnson \& Seidl, 2008; Seidl \& Cristi{\`a}, 2008). However, none of these studies investigated infants' sensitivity to the natural pause hierarchy and especially the sensitivity to the correlation between pause durations and the respective within-sentence clause boundaries / sentence boundaries. To address these questions highly controlled stimuli were used. In all five experiments the stimuli were sentences consisting of two IPhs which each coincided with a syntactic clause. In the first three experiments pauses were inserted either at clause and sentence boundaries or within the first clause and the sentence boundaries. The duration of the pauses varied between the experiments. The results show that German-learning 6-month-olds recognise clauses in the speech stream, but only in a condition in which the duration of the pauses conforms to the mean duration of pauses found at the respective boundaries in German. Experiments 4 and 5 explicitly addressed the question of infants' sensitivity to the natural pause hierarchy by inserting pauses at the clause and sentence boundaries only. Their durations were either conforming to the natural pause hierarchy or were being reversed. The results of these experiments provide evidence that 8-, but not 6-month-olds seem to be sensitive to the correlation of the duration of pauses and the type of boundary they demarcate. The present study provides first evidence that infants not only use pauses to recognise clause and sentence boundaries, but are sensitive to the duration and distribution of pauses in their native language as reflected in the natural pause hierarchy.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{SauermannHoehle2018,
  author    = {Sauermann, Antje and H{\"o}hle, Barbara},
  title     = {Word order in German child language and child-directed speech},
  series = {Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics},
  volume    = {3},
  journal   = {Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics},
  number    = {1},
  publisher = {Ubiquity Press LTD},
  address   = {London},
  issn      = {2397-1835},
  doi       = {10.5334/gjgl.281},
  pages     = {32},
  year      = {2018},
  abstract  = {We report two corpus analyses to examine the impact of animacy, definiteness, givenness and type of referring expression on the ordering of double objects in the spontaneous speech of German-speaking two- to four-year-old children and the child-directed speech of their mothers. The first corpus analysis revealed that definiteness, givenness and type of referring expression influenced word order variation in child language and child-directed speech when the type of referring expression distinguished between pronouns and lexical noun phrases. These results correspond to previous child language studies in English (e.g., de Marneffe et al. 2012). Extending the scope of previous studies, our second corpus analysis examined the role of different pronoun types on word order. It revealed that word order in child language and child-directed speech was predictable from the types of pronouns used. Different types of pronouns were associated with different sentence positions but also showed a strong correlation to givenness and definiteness. Yet, the distinction between pronoun types diminished the effects of givenness so that givenness had an independent impact on word order only in child-directed speech but not in child language. Our results support a multi-factorial approach to word order in German. Moreover, they underline the strong impact of the type of referring expression on word order and suggest that it plays a crucial role in the acquisition of the factors influencing word order variation.},
  language  = {en}
}