@misc{GrubicWierzba2021, author = {Grubic, Mira and Wierzba, Marta}, title = {The German additive particle noch}, series = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, number = {709}, issn = {1866-8364}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-51004}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-510049}, pages = {29}, year = {2021}, abstract = {The particle noch ('still') can have an additive reading similar to auch ('also'). We argue that both particles indicate that a previously partially answered QUD is re-opened to add a further answer. The particles differ in that the QUD, in the case of auch, can be re-opened with respect to the same topic situation, whereas noch indicates that the QUD is re-opened with respect to a new topic situation. This account predicts a difference in the accommodation behavior of the two particles. We present an experiment whose results are in line with this prediction.}, language = {en} } @article{GrubicWierzba2019, author = {Grubic, Mira and Wierzba, Marta}, title = {Presupposition Accommodation of the German Additive Particle auch (= "too")}, series = {Frontiers in Communication}, volume = {4}, journal = {Frontiers in Communication}, publisher = {Frontiers Media}, address = {Lausanne}, issn = {2297-900X}, doi = {10.3389/fcomm.2019.00015}, pages = {18}, year = {2019}, abstract = {Presupposition triggers differ with respect to whether their presupposition is easily accommodatable. The presupposition of focus-sensitive additive particles like also or too is often classified as hard to accommodate, i.e., these triggers are infelicitous if their presupposition is not entailed by the immediate linguistic or non-linguistic context. We tested two competing accounts for the German additive particle auch concerning this requirement: First, that it requires a focus alternative to the whole proposition to be salient, and second, that it merely requires an alternative to the focused constituent (e.g., an individual) to be salient. We conducted two experiments involving felicity judgments as well as questions asking for the truth of the presupposition to be accommodated. Our results suggest that the latter account is too weak: mere previous mention of a potential alternative to the focused constituent is not enough to license the use of auch. However, our results also suggest that the former account is too strong: when an alternative of the focused constituent is prementioned and certain other accommodation-enhancing factors are present, the context does not have to entail the presupposed proposition. We tested the following two potentially accommodation-enhancing factors: First, whether the discourse can be construed to be from the perspective of the individual that the presupposition is about, and second, whether the presupposition is needed to establish coherence between the host sentence of the additive particle and the preceding context. The factor coherence was found to play a significant role. Our results thus corroborate the results of other researchers showing that discourse participants go to great lengths in order to identify a potential presupposition to accommodate, and we contribute to these results by showing that coherence is one of the factors that enhance accommodation.}, language = {en} } @misc{GrubicWierzba2019, author = {Grubic, Mira and Wierzba, Marta}, title = {Presupposition Accommodation of the German Additive Particle auch (= "too")}, series = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, number = {547}, issn = {1866-8364}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-42800}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-428003}, year = {2019}, abstract = {Presupposition triggers differ with respect to whether their presupposition is easily accommodatable. The presupposition of focus-sensitive additive particles like also or too is often classified as hard to accommodate, i.e., these triggers are infelicitous if their presupposition is not entailed by the immediate linguistic or non-linguistic context. We tested two competing accounts for the German additive particle auch concerning this requirement: First, that it requires a focus alternative to the whole proposition to be salient, and second, that it merely requires an alternative to the focused constituent (e.g., an individual) to be salient. We conducted two experiments involving felicity judgments as well as questions asking for the truth of the presupposition to be accommodated. Our results suggest that the latter account is too weak: mere previous mention of a potential alternative to the focused constituent is not enough to license the use of auch. However, our results also suggest that the former account is too strong: when an alternative of the focused constituent is prementioned and certain other accommodation-enhancing factors are present, the context does not have to entail the presupposed proposition. We tested the following two potentially accommodation-enhancing factors: First, whether the discourse can be construed to be from the perspective of the individual that the presupposition is about, and second, whether the presupposition is needed to establish coherence between the host sentence of the additive particle and the preceding context. The factor coherence was found to play a significant role. Our results thus corroborate the results of other researchers showing that discourse participants go to great lengths in order to identify a potential presupposition to accommodate, and we contribute to these results by showing that coherence is one of the factors that enhance accommodation.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Gollrad2013, author = {Gollrad, Anja}, title = {Prosodic cue weighting in sentence comprehension}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-81954}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {148}, year = {2013}, abstract = {Gegenstand der Dissertation ist die Untersuchung der Gewichtung prosodischer Korrelate der Phrasierung im Deutschen, insbesondere der Dauer- und Grundfrequenzeigenschaften auf der Ebene der phonologischen Phrase (φ) und der Intonationsphrase (ι). F{\"u}r die prosodische Dom{\"a}ne der phonologischen Phrase und der Intonationsphrase gilt als belegt, dass sie h{\"a}upts{\"a}chlich durch phonetische Parameter der pr{\"a}finalen Dehnung (Lehiste, 1973; Klatt, 1976; Price et al., 1991; Turk \& White, 1999), der Pausendauer (Fant \& Kruckenberg, 1996) und der Ver{\"a}nderung der Grundfrequenz (Pierrehumbert, 1980) ausgedr{\"u}ckt werden, wobei die phonetischen grenzmarkierenden Eigenschaften eher quantitativer als qualitativer Natur sind. Ebenfalls ist bekannt, dass auf der anderen Seite H{\"o}rer diese phonetischen Eigenschaften der Sprecher nutzen, um die prosodische Struktur einer {\"A}ußerung zu ermitteln (Snedeker \& Trueswell, 2003; Kraljic \& Brennan, 2005). Perzeptuelle Evidenz aus dem Englischen und Niederl{\"a}ndischen deuten allerdings darauf hin, dass sich Sprachen hinsichtlich der entscheidenden Korrelate, die f{\"u}r die Perzeption der Dom{\"a}nen konsultiert werden, unterscheiden (Aasland \& Baum, 2003; Sanderman \& Collier, 1997; Scott, 1982; Streeter, 1978). Die grenzmarkierenden phonetischen Korrelate der Dom{\"a}nen werden in der Perzeption unterschiedlich stark gewichtet, was sich im Konzept eines sprachspezifischen prosodischen cue weightings ausdr{\"u}ckt. F{\"u}r das Deutsche ist allerdings nicht hinreichend bekannt, welche dieser drei phonetischen Parameter die wichtigste Rolle f{\"u}r die Perzeption der phonologischen Phrasengrenze und der Intonationsphrasengrenze spielt. Ziel der Dissertation war es, diejenigen phonetischen Merkmale zu identifizieren, die f{\"u}r die Perzeption der phonologischen Phrasengrenze und der Intonationsphrasengrenze entscheidend sind und sich somit f{\"u}r die Bildung der jeweiligen prosodischen Phrasengrenze als notwendig herausstellen. Die Identifikation und Gewichtung eines phonetischen Merkmals erfolgte in der vorliegenden Arbeit durch die Effekte prosodischer Manipulation der phonetischen Korrelate an phonologischen Phrasengrenzen und Intonationsphrasengrenzen auf die Disambiguierung lokaler syntaktischer Ambiguit{\"a}ten in der Perzeption. Der Einfluss einzelner phonetischer Merkmale wurde in einem forced-choice Experiment evaluiert, bei dem H{\"o}rern syntaktisch ambige Satzfragmente auditiv pr{\"a}sentiert wurden und ihnen anschließend die Aufgabe zukam, aus einer Auswahl an disambiguierenden Satzvervollst{\"a}ndigung zu w{\"a}hlen. Die Anzahl der ausgew{\"a}hlten Satzvervollst{\"a}ndigungen pro Satzbedingung {\"a}nderte sich in Abh{\"a}ngigkeit der prosodischen Manipulation der pr{\"a}finalen Dehnung, der Pausendauer und der Grundfrequenz, wodurch der Einfluss eines einzelnen phonetischen Merkmals auf den Disambiguierungsprozess sichtbar wurde. Ein phonetischer Parameter wurde genau dann als notwendig klassifiziert, wenn sich durch seine Manipulation die F{\"a}higkeit zur Disambiguierung der syntaktischen Strukturen signifikant reduzierte, oder g{\"a}nzlich scheiterte, und somit die Wahrnehmung prosodischer Kategorien beinflusst wurde (Heldner, 2001). Hat sich in der Perzeption ein phonetisches Merkmal als notwendig herausgestellt, wurde nachfolgend eine optimalit{\"a}tstheoretische Modellierung vorgeschlagen, die die phonetischen Eigenschaften auf eine (abstrakte) phonologische Strukturerstellung beschreibt. Dieser Verarbeitungsschritt entspricht dem Teilbereich des Perzeptionsprozesses, der in Boersma \& Hamann (2009), Escudero (2009) und F{\´e}ry et al. (2009) unter anderen als Phonetik-Phonologie-Mapping beschrieben wird. Die Dissertation hat folgende Hauptergebnisse hervorgebracht: (1) F{\"u}r die Perzeption phonologischer Phrasengrenzen und Intonationsphrasengrenzen werden nicht alle messbaren phonetischen Grenzmarkierungen gleichermaßen stark genutzt. Das phonetische Merkmal der pr{\"a}finalen Dehnung ist auf der Ebene der kleineren prosodischen Dom{\"a}ne, der phonologischen Phrase, notwendig. Die Information der Grundfrequenz in der Form von Grenzt{\"o}nen ist in der gr{\"o}ßeren Dom{\"a}ne der Intonationsphrase notwendig und damit ausschlaggebend f{\"u}r die Perzeption der prosodischen Phrasengrenze. (2) Auf der Ebene der φ-Phrase werden phonetische Eigenschaften der segmentalen Dauer in Form pr{\"a}finalen Dehnung zur Bildung abstrakter phonologischer Repr{\"a}sentationen herangezogen werden. L{\"a}ngenconstraints schreiben syntaktische Konstituenten aufgrund ihrer Inputdauern einer prosodischen Kategorie zu. Inputdauern der ersten Nominalphrase von 500ms und mehr signalisieren Finalit{\"a}t und sind durch eine φ- Grenze am rechten Rand markiert. Inputdauern von 400ms und weniger signalisieren Kontinuit{\"a}t und werden durch das Ausbleiben einer φ-Grenze am rechten Rand der ersten Nominalphrase markiert. Inputdauern, die zwischen den kritischen L{\"a}ngen von 400ms und 500ms variieren sind bez{\"u}glich der Bildung von φ- Grenzen ambig und k{\"o}nnen in der Perzeption nicht eindeutig disambiguiert werden. (3) Auf der Ebene der ι-Phrase wird die Bildung einer prosodischen Struktur durch die reine tonale Kontur (steigend oder fallend) an der ersten Nominalphrase gelenkt. Eine fallende Grundfrequenzkontur an der ersten Nominalphrase signalisiert Finalit{\"a}t und wird durch eine ι-Grenze am rechten Rand markiert. Eine steigende Kontur an der ersten Nominalphrase signalisiert phrasale Kontinuit{\"a}t und ist bei den vorliegenden S{\"a}tzen der Genitivbedingung gerade durch das Ausbleiben einer ι-Grenze auf der phonologischen Repr{\"a}sentationseben gekennzeichnet.}, language = {en} } @article{GerthOttoFelseretal.2017, author = {Gerth, Sabrina and Otto, Constanze and Felser, Claudia and Nam, Yunju}, title = {Strength of garden-path effects in native and non-native speakers' processing of object-subject ambiguities}, series = {International journal of bilingualism : cross-disciplinary, cross-linguistic studies of language behavior}, volume = {21}, journal = {International journal of bilingualism : cross-disciplinary, cross-linguistic studies of language behavior}, publisher = {Sage Publ.}, address = {London}, issn = {1367-0069}, doi = {10.1177/1367006915604401}, pages = {125 -- 144}, year = {2017}, abstract = {Aims and objectives: Our study addresses the following research questions: To what extent is L2 comprehenders' online sensitivity to morphosyntactic disambiguation cues affected by L1 background? Does noticing the error signal trigger successful reanalysis in both L1 and L2 comprehension? Can previous findings suggesting that case is a better reanalysis cue than agreement be replicated and extended to L2 processing when using closely matched materials? Design/methodology/approach: We carried out a self-paced reading study using temporarily ambiguous object-initial sentences in German. These were disambiguated either by number marking on the verb or by nominative case marking on the subject. End-of-trial comprehension questions probed whether or not our participants ultimately succeeded in computing the correct interpretation. Data and analysis: We tested a total of 121 participants (25 Italian, 32 Russian, 32 Korean and 32 native German speakers), measuring their word-by-word reading times and comprehension accuracy. The data were analysed using linear mixed-effects and logistic regression modelling. Findings/conclusions: All three learner groups showed online sensitivity to both case and agreement disambiguation cues. Noticing case disambiguations did not necessarily lead to a correct interpretation, whereas noticing agreement disambiguations did. We conclude that intermediate to advanced learners are sensitive to morphosyntactic interpretation cues during online processing regardless of whether or not corresponding grammatical distinctions exist in their L1. Our results also suggest that case is not generally a better reanalysis cue than agreement. Significance/implications: L1 influence on L2 processing is more limited than might be expected. Contra previous findings, even intermediate learners show sensitivity to both agreement and case information during processing.}, language = {en} } @article{FelserJessen2021, author = {Felser, Claudia and Jessen, Anna}, title = {Correlative coordination and variable subject-verb agreement in German}, series = {Languages : open access journal}, volume = {6}, journal = {Languages : open access journal}, number = {2}, publisher = {MDPI}, address = {Basel}, issn = {2226-471X}, doi = {10.3390/languages6020067}, pages = {20}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Coordinated subjects often show variable number agreement with the finite verb, but linguistic approaches to this phenomenon have rarely been informed by systematically collected data. We report the results from three experiments investigating German speakers' agreement preferences with complex subjects joined by the correlative conjunctions sowohl horizontal ellipsis als auch ('both horizontal ellipsis and'), weder horizontal ellipsis noch ('neither horizontal ellipsis nor') or entweder horizontal ellipsis oder ('either horizontal ellipsis or'). We examine to what extent conjunction type and a conjunct's relative proximity to the verb affect the acceptability and processibility of singular vs. plural agreement. Experiment 1 was an untimed acceptability rating task, Experiment 2 a timed sentence completion task, and Experiment 3 was a self-paced reading task. Taken together, our results show that number agreement with correlative coordination in German is primarily determined by a default constraint triggering plural agreement, which interacts with linear order and semantic factors. Semantic differences between conjunctions only affected speakers' agreement preferences in the absence of processing pressure but not their initial agreement computation. The combined results from our offline and online experimental measures of German speakers' agreement preferences suggest that the constraints under investigation do not only differ in their relative weighting but also in their relative timing during agreement computation.}, language = {en} } @article{FelserDrummer2016, author = {Felser, Claudia and Drummer, Janna-Deborah}, title = {Sensitivity to Crossover Constraints During Native and Non-native Pronoun Resolution}, series = {Journal of psycholinguistic research}, volume = {46}, journal = {Journal of psycholinguistic research}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {New York}, issn = {0090-6905}, doi = {10.1007/s10936-016-9465-8}, pages = {771 -- 789}, year = {2016}, abstract = {We report the results from two experiments examining native and non-native German speakers' sensitivity to crossover constraints on pronoun resolution. Our critical stimuli sentences contained personal pronouns in either strong (SCO) or weak crossover (WCO) configurations. Using eye-movement monitoring during reading and a gender-mismatch paradigm, Experiment 1 investigated whether a fronted wh-phrase would be considered as a potential antecedent for a pronoun intervening between the wh-phrase and its canonical position. Both native and non-native readers initially attempted coreference in WCO but not in SCO configurations, as evidenced by early gender-mismatch effects in our WCO conditions. Experiment 2 was an offline antecedent judgement task whose results mirrored the SCO/WCO asymmetry observed in our reading-time data. Taken together, our results show that the SCO constraint immediately restricts pronoun interpretation in both native and non-native comprehension, and further suggest that SCO and WCO constraints derive from different sources.}, language = {en} } @article{FelserDrummer2022, author = {Felser, Claudia and Drummer, Janna-Deborah}, title = {Binding out of relative clauses in native and non-native sentence comprehension}, series = {Journal of psycholinguistic research}, volume = {51}, journal = {Journal of psycholinguistic research}, number = {4}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {New York}, issn = {0090-6905}, doi = {10.1007/s10936-022-09845-z}, pages = {763 -- 788}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Pronouns can sometimes covary with a non c-commanding quantifier phrase (QP). To obtain such 'telescoping' readings, a semantic representation must be computed in which the QP's semantic scope extends beyond its surface scope. Non-native speakers have been claimed to have more difficulty than native speakers deriving such non-isomorphic syntax-semantics mappings, but evidence from processing studies is scarce. We report the results from an eye-movement monitoring experiment and an offline questionnaire investigating whether native and non-native speakers of German can link personal pronouns to non c-commanding QPs inside relative clauses. Our results show that both participant groups were able to obtain telescoping readings offline, but only the native speakers showed evidence of forming telescoping dependencies during incremental parsing. During processing the non-native speakers focused on a discourse-prominent, non-quantified alternative antecedent instead. The observed group differences indicate that non-native comprehenders have more difficulty than native comprehenders computing scope-shifted representations in real time.}, language = {en} } @article{FanselowZimmermannPhilipp2022, author = {Fanselow, Gisbert and Zimmermann, Malte and Philipp, Mareike}, title = {Assessing the availability of inverse scope in German in the covered box paradigm}, series = {Glossa : a journal of general linguistics}, volume = {7}, journal = {Glossa : a journal of general linguistics}, number = {1}, publisher = {Open Library of Humanities}, address = {London}, issn = {2397-1835}, doi = {10.16995/glossa.5766}, pages = {1 -- 24}, year = {2022}, abstract = {This paper presents the results of a novel experimental approach to relative quantifier scope in German that elicits data in an indirect manner. Applying the covered-box method (Huang et al. 2013) to scope phenomena, we show that inverse scope is available to some extent in the free constituent order language German, thereby validating earlier findings on other syntactic configurations in German (Rado \& Bott 2018) and empirical claims on other free constituent order languages (Japanese, Russian, Hindi), as well as recent corpus findings in Webelhuth (2020). Moreover, the results of the indirect covered-box experiment replicate findings from an earlier direct-query experiment with comparable target items, in which participants were asked directly about the availability of surface scope and inverse scope readings. The configuration of interest consisted of canonical transitive clauses with deaccented existential subject and universal object QPs, in which the restriction of the universal QP was controlled for by the context.}, language = {en} } @misc{FanselowLenertova2010, author = {Fanselow, Gisbert and Lenertov{\´a}, Denisa}, title = {Left peripheral focus}, series = {Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, number = {596}, issn = {1866-8364}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-42819}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-428198}, pages = {43}, year = {2010}, abstract = {In Czech, German, and many other languages, part of the semantic focus of the utterance can be moved to the left periphery of the clause. The main generalization is that only the leftmost accented part of the semantic focus can be moved. We propose that movement to the left periphery is generally triggered by an unspecific edge feature of C (Chomsky 2008) and its restrictions can be attributed to requirements of cyclic linearization, modifying the theory of cyclic linearization developed by Fox and Pesetsky (2005). The crucial assumption is that structural accent is a direct consequence of being linearized at merge, thus it is indirectly relevant for (locality restrictions on) movement. The absence of structural accent correlates with given-ness. Given elements may later receive (topic or contrastive) accents, which accounts for fronting in multiple focus/contrastive topic constructions. Without any additional assumptions, the model can account for movement of pragmatically unmarked elements to the left periphery ('formal fronting', Frey 2005). Crucially, the analysis makes no reference at all to concepts of information structure in the syntax, in line with the claim of Chomsky (2008) that UG specifies no direct link between syntax and information structure.}, language = {en} }