@phdthesis{Jaeger2015, author = {J{\"a}ger, Lena Ann}, title = {Working memory and prediction in human sentence parsing}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-82517}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {xi, 144}, year = {2015}, abstract = {This dissertation investigates the working memory mechanism subserving human sentence processing and its relative contribution to processing difficulty as compared to syntactic prediction. Within the last decades, evidence for a content-addressable memory system underlying human cognition in general has accumulated (e.g., Anderson et al., 2004). In sentence processing research, it has been proposed that this general content-addressable architecture is also used for language processing (e.g., McElree, 2000). Although there is a growing body of evidence from various kinds of linguistic dependencies that is consistent with a general content-addressable memory subserving sentence processing (e.g., McElree et al., 2003; VanDyke2006), the case of reflexive-antecedent dependencies has challenged this view. It has been proposed that in the processing of reflexive-antecedent dependencies, a syntactic-structure based memory access is used rather than cue-based retrieval within a content-addressable framework (e.g., Sturt, 2003). Two eye-tracking experiments on Chinese reflexives were designed to tease apart accounts assuming a syntactic-structure based memory access mechanism from cue-based retrieval (implemented in ACT-R as proposed by Lewis and Vasishth (2005). In both experiments, interference effects were observed from noun phrases which syntactically do not qualify as the reflexive's antecedent but match the animacy requirement the reflexive imposes on its antecedent. These results are interpreted as evidence against a purely syntactic-structure based memory access. However, the exact pattern of effects observed in the data is only partially compatible with the Lewis and Vasishth cue-based parsing model. Therefore, an extension of the Lewis and Vasishth model is proposed. Two principles are added to the original model, namely 'cue confusion' and 'distractor prominence'. Although interference effects are generally interpreted in favor of a content-addressable memory architecture, an alternative explanation for interference effects in reflexive processing has been proposed which, crucially, might reconcile interference effects with a structure-based account. It has been argued that interference effects do not necessarily reflect cue-based retrieval interference in a content-addressable memory but might equally well be accounted for by interference effects which have already occurred at the moment of encoding the antecedent in memory (Dillon, 2011). Three experiments (eye-tracking and self-paced reading) on German reflexives and Swedish possessives were designed to tease apart cue-based retrieval interference from encoding interference. The results of all three experiments suggest that there is no evidence that encoding interference affects the retrieval of a reflexive's antecedent. Taken together, these findings suggest that the processing of reflexives can be explained with the same cue-based retrieval mechanism that has been invoked to explain syntactic dependency resolution in a range of other structures. This supports the view that the language processing system is located within a general cognitive architecture, with a general-purpose content-addressable working memory system operating on linguistic expressions. Finally, two experiments (self-paced reading and eye-tracking) using Chinese relative clauses were conducted to determine the relative contribution to sentence processing difficulty of working-memory processes as compared to syntactic prediction during incremental parsing. Chinese has the cross-linguistically rare property of being a language with subject-verb-object word order and pre-nominal relative clauses. This property leads to opposing predictions of expectation-based accounts and memory-based accounts with respect to the relative processing difficulty of subject vs. object relatives. Previous studies showed contradictory results, which has been attributed to different kinds local ambiguities confounding the materials (Lin and Bever, 2011). The two experiments presented are the first to compare Chinese relatives clauses in syntactically unambiguous contexts. The results of both experiments were consistent with the predictions of the expectation-based account of sentence processing but not with the memory-based account. From these findings, I conclude that any theory of human sentence processing needs to take into account the power of predictive processes unfolding in the human mind.}, language = {en} } @misc{SauermannHoehle2018, author = {Sauermann, Antje and H{\"o}hle, Barbara}, title = {Word order in German child language and child-directed speech}, series = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, number = {687}, issn = {1866-8364}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-47017}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-470174}, pages = {34}, 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} } @misc{NicenboimLogacevGatteietal.2016, author = {Nicenboim, Bruno and Logacev, Pavel and Gattei, Carolina and Vasishth, Shravan}, title = {When High-Capacity Readers Slow Down and Low-Capacity Readers Speed Up}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-90663}, pages = {1 -- 24}, year = {2016}, abstract = {We examined the effects of argument-head distance in SVO and SOV languages (Spanish and German), while taking into account readers' working memory capacity and controlling for expectation (Levy, 2008) and other factors. We predicted only locality effects, that is, a slowdown produced by increased dependency distance (Gibson, 2000; Lewis and Vasishth, 2005). Furthermore, we expected stronger locality effects for readers with low working memory capacity. Contrary to our predictions, low-capacity readers showed faster reading with increased distance, while high-capacity readers showed locality effects. We suggest that while the locality effects are compatible with memory-based explanations, the speedup of low-capacity readers can be explained by an increased probability of retrieval failure. We present a computational model based on ACT-R built under the previous assumptions, which is able to give a qualitative account for the present data and can be tested in future research. Our results suggest that in some cases, interpreting longer RTs as indexing increased processing difficulty and shorter RTs as facilitation may be too simplistic: The same increase in processing difficulty may lead to slowdowns in high-capacity readers and speedups in low-capacity ones. Ignoring individual level capacity differences when investigating locality effects may lead to misleading conclusions.}, 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} } @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} } @misc{AdaniStegenwallnerSchuetzNiesel2017, author = {Adani, Flavia and Stegenwallner-Sch{\"u}tz, Maja Henny Katherine and Niesel, Talea}, title = {The Peaceful Co-existence of Input Frequency and Structural Intervention Effects on the Comprehension of Complex Sentences in German-Speaking Children}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-403672}, pages = {11}, year = {2017}, abstract = {The predictions of two contrasting approaches to the acquisition of transitive relative clauses were tested within the same groups of German-speaking participants aged from 3 to 5 years old. The input frequency approach predicts that object relative clauses with inanimate heads (e.g., the pullover that the man is scratching) are comprehended earlier and more accurately than those with an animate head (e.g., the man that the boy is scratching). In contrast, the structural intervention approach predicts that object relative clauses with two full NP arguments mismatching in number (e.g., the man that the boys are scratching) are comprehended earlier and more accurately than those with number-matching NPs (e.g., the man that the boy is scratching). These approaches were tested in two steps. First, we ran a corpus analysis to ensure that object relative clauses with number-mismatching NPs are not more frequent than object relative clauses with number-matching NPs in child directed speech. Next, the comprehension of these structures was tested experimentally in 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds respectively by means of a color naming task. By comparing the predictions of the two approaches within the same participant groups, we were able to uncover that the effects predicted by the input frequency and by the structural intervention approaches co-exist and that they both influence the performance of children on transitive relative clauses, but in a manner that is modulated by age. These results reveal a sensitivity to animacy mismatch already being demonstrated by 3-year-olds and show that animacy is initially deployed more reliably than number to interpret relative clauses correctly. In all age groups, the animacy mismatch appears to explain the performance of children, thus, showing that the comprehension of frequent object relative clauses is enhanced compared to the other conditions. Starting with 4-year-olds but especially in 5-year-olds, the number mismatch supported comprehension—a facilitation that is unlikely to be driven by input frequency. Once children fine-tune their sensitivity to verb agreement information around the age of four, they are also able to deploy number marking to overcome the intervention effects. This study highlights the importance of testing experimentally contrasting theoretical approaches in order to characterize the multifaceted, developmental nature of language acquisition.}, language = {en} } @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} } @misc{JaegerBenzRoeseretal.2015, author = {J{\"a}ger, Lena Ann and Benz, Lena and Roeser, Jens and Dillon, Brian W. and Vasishth, Shravan}, title = {Teasing apart Retrieval and Encoding Interference in the Processing of Anaphors}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-78714}, year = {2015}, abstract = {Two classes of account have been proposed to explain the memory processes subserving the processing of reflexive-antecedent dependencies. Structure-based accounts assume that the retrieval of the antecedent is guided by syntactic tree-configurational information without considering other kinds of information such as gender marking in the case of English reflexives. By contrast, unconstrained cue-based retrieval assumes that all available information is used for retrieving the antecedent. Similarity-based interference effects from structurally illicit distractors which match a non-structural retrieval cue have been interpreted as evidence favoring the unconstrained cue-based retrieval account since cue-based retrieval interference from structurally illicit distractors is incompatible with the structure-based account. However, it has been argued that the observed effects do not necessarily reflect interference occurring at the moment of retrieval but might equally well be accounted for by interference occurring already at the stage of encoding or maintaining the antecedent in memory, in which case they cannot be taken as evidence against the structure-based account. We present three experiments (self-paced reading and eye-tracking) on German reflexives and Swedish reflexive and pronominal possessives in which we pit the predictions of encoding interference and cue-based retrieval interference against each other. We could not find any indication that encoding interference affects the processing ease of the reflexive-antecedent dependency formation. Thus, there is no evidence that encoding interference might be the explanation for the interference effects observed in previous work. We therefore conclude that invoking encoding interference may not be a plausible way to reconcile interference effects with a structure-based account of reflexive processing.}, language = {en} } @article{Peters2012, author = {Peters, Friedrich Ernst}, title = {Redensarten schlagen die Augen auf}, series = {Digitale Edition: Friedrich Ernst Peters}, journal = {Digitale Edition: Friedrich Ernst Peters}, publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam}, address = {Potsdam}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-59626}, year = {2012}, abstract = {In diesem durch Erlebnisse aus der Zeit seiner Kriegsgefangenschaft in Frankreich (1914-1920) inspirierten Text erl{\"a}utert Peters die urspr{\"u}ngliche Bedeutung der plattdeutschen Redensart „to Stock doon" und der hochdeutschen Redensart „etwas auf dem Kerbholz haben".}, language = {de} } @misc{KlassertBormannFestmanetal.2018, author = {Klassert, Annegret and Bormann, Sarah and Festman, Julia and Gerth, Sabrina}, title = {Rechtschreibung von Konsonantenclustern und morphologische Bewusstheit bei Grundsch{\"u}ler_innen}, series = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, number = {610}, issn = {1866-8364}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-43415}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-434156}, pages = {115 -- 125}, year = {2018}, abstract = {Die vorliegenden Studien untersuchen die Entwicklung der Rechtschreibf{\"a}higkeit f{\"u}r finale Konsonantencluster im Deutschen und die ihr zugrundeliegenden Strategien bei Erst- bis Drittkl{\"a}ssler_innen (N = 209). Dazu wurde der Einfluss der morphologischen Komplexit{\"a}t (poly- vs. monomorphematische Cluster) auf die Rechtschreibung qualitativ und quantitativ analysiert, sowie mit einer Messung zur morphologischen Bewusstheit korreliert. Von der ersten Klasse an zeigt sich eine hohe Korrektheit in der Schreibung und somit eine sprachspezifisch schnelle Entwicklung der alphabetischen Rechtschreibstrategie f{\"u}r finale Konsonantencluster. Der Einfluss morphologischer Verarbeitungsprozesse wurde allerdings erst f{\"u}r die Drittkl{\"a}ssler_innen gefunden. Obwohl bereits die Erstkl{\"a}ssler_innen gut entwickelte morphologische Bewusstheit zeigten, scheinen sie noch nicht in der Lage zu sein, diese bei der Rechtschreibung anzuwenden. Die Ergebnisse werden im Kontrast zu den umfangreicher vorliegenden Befunden f{\"u}r die englische Sprache diskutiert.}, language = {de} } @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} } @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} } @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} } @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{Elin2018, author = {Elin, Kirill}, title = {Morphological processing in older adults}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-418605}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {217}, year = {2018}, abstract = {Over the last decades mechanisms of recognition of morphologically complex words have been extensively examined in order to determine whether all word forms are stored and retrieved from the mental lexicon as wholes or whether they are decomposed into their morphological constituents such as stems and affixes. Most of the research in this domain focusses on English. Several factors have been argued to affect morphological processing including, for instance, morphological structure of a word (e.g., existence of allomorphic stem alternations) and its linguistic nature (e.g., whether it is a derived word or an inflected word form). It is not clear, however, whether processing accounts based on experimental evidence from English would hold for other languages. Furthermore, there is evidence that processing mechanisms may differ across various populations including children, adult native speakers and language learners. Recent studies claim that processing mechanisms could also differ between older and younger adults (Clahsen \& Reifegerste, 2017; Reifegerste, Meyer, \& Zwitserlood, 2017). The present thesis examined how properties of the morphological structure, types of linguistic operations involved (i.e., the linguistic contrast between inflection and derivation) and characteristics of the particular population such as older adults (e.g., potential effects of ageing as a result of the cognitive decline or greater experience and exposure of older adults) affect initial, supposedly automatic stages of morphological processing in Russian and German. To this end, a series of masked priming experiments was conducted. In experiments on Russian, the processing of derived -ost' nouns (e.g., glupost' 'stupidity') and of inflected forms with and without allomorphic stem alternations in 1P.Sg.Pr. (e.g., igraju - igrat' 'to play' vs. košu - kosit' 'to mow') was examined. The first experiment on German examined and directly compared processing of derived -ung nouns (e.g., Gr{\"u}ndung 'foundation') and inflected -t past participles (e.g., gegr{\"u}ndet 'founded'), whereas the second one investigated the processing of regular and irregular plural forms (-s forms such as Autos 'cars' and -er forms such as Kinder 'children', respectively). The experiments on both languages have shown robust and comparable facilitation effects for derived words and regularly inflected forms without stem changes (-t participles in German, forms of -aj verbs in Russian). Observed morphological priming effects could be clearly distinguished from purely semantic or orthographic relatedness between words. At the same time, we found a contrast between forms with and without allomorphic stem alternations in Russian and regular and irregular forms in German, with significantly more priming for unmarked stems (relative to alternated ones) and significantly more priming for regular (compared) word forms. These findings indicate the relevance of morphological properties of a word for initial stages of processing, contrary to claims made in the literature holding that priming effects are determined by surface form and meaning overlap only. Instead, our findings are more consistent with approaches positing a contrast between combinatorial, rule-based and lexically-stored forms (Clahsen, Sonnenstuhl, \& Blevins, 2003). The doctoral dissertation also addressed the role of ageing and age-related cognitive changes on morphological processing. The results obtained on this research issue are twofold. On the one hand, the data demonstrate effects of ageing on general measures of language performance, i.e., overall longer reaction times and/or higher accuracy rates in older than younger individuals. These findings replicate results from previous studies, which have been linked to the general slowing of processing speed at older age and to the larger vocabularies of older adults. One the other hand, we found that more specific aspects of language processing appear to be largely intact in older adults as revealed by largely similar morphological priming effects for older and younger adults. These latter results indicate that initial stages of morphological processing investigated here by means of the masked priming paradigm persist in older age. One caveat should, however, be noted. Achieving the same performance as a younger individual in a behavioral task may not necessarily mean that the same neural processes are involved. Older people may have to recruit a wider brain network than younger individuals, for example. To address this and related possibilities, future studies should examine older people's neural representations and mechanisms involved in morphological processing.}, language = {en} } @misc{PaapeVasishth2016, author = {Paape, Dario L. J. F. and Vasishth, Shravan}, title = {Local coherence and preemptive digging-in effects in German}, series = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, number = {417}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-405337}, pages = {17}, year = {2016}, abstract = {SOPARSE predicts so-called local coherence effects: locally plausible but globally impossible parses of substrings can exert a distracting influence during sentence processing. Additionally, it predicts digging-in effects: the longer the parser stays committed to a particular analysis, the harder it becomes to inhibit that analysis. We investigated the interaction of these two predictions using German sentences. Results from a self-paced reading study show that the processing difficulty caused by a local coherence can be reduced by first allowing the globally correct parse to become entrenched, which supports SOPARSE's assumptions.}, language = {en} } @techreport{BommesOlfertŞimşeketal.2020, author = {Bommes, Michael and Olfert, Helena and Şim{\c{s}}ek, Yazg{\"u}l and Mehlem, Ulrich and Boneß, Anja and Ayan, M{\"u}ge and Ko{\c{c}}ba{\c{s}}, Dilara}, title = {Literacy acquisition in schools in the context of migration and multilingualism}, editor = {Schroeder, Christoph and S{\"u}rig, Inken}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-47179}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-471793}, pages = {579}, year = {2020}, abstract = {Literacy acquisition is one of the primary goals of school education, and usually it takes place in the national language of the respective country. At the same time, schools accommodate pupils with different home languages who might or might not be fluent in the national language and who start from other linguistic backgrounds in their acquisition of literacy. While it is safe to say that schools with a monolingual policy are not prepared to deal with the factual multilingualism in their classrooms in a systematic way, bilingual pupils have to deal with it nonetheless. The interdisciplinary and comparative research project "Literacy Acquisition in Schools in the Context of Migration and Multilingualism" (LAS) investigated the practical processes of literacy acquisition in two countries, Germany and Turkey, where the monolingual orientation of schools is as much a reality as are the multilingual backgrounds of many of their pupils. The basic assumption was that pupils cope with the ways they are engaged by the school - both socially and academically - based on their cultural and linguistic repertoires acquired biographically, providing them with more or less productive options regarding the acquisition of literary skills. By comparing the literary development of bilingual children with that of their monolingual classmates throughout one school year in the first and the seventh grade in Germany and Turkey, respectively, we found out that the restricting potential of multilingualism is located rather on the part of the schools than on the part of the pupils. While the individual bilingual pupil almost naturally uses his/her home language as a resource for literacy acquisition in the school language, schools still tend to regard the multilingual backgrounds of their pupils as irrelevant or even as an impediment to adequate schooling. We argue that by ignoring or even suppressing the specific linguistic potentials of bilingualism, bilingual pupils are put at a structural disadvantage. This research report is the slightly revised but full version of the final study project report from 2011 that was until now not available as a quotable publication. While several years have passed since the primary research was finalized, the addressed issues have lost none of their relevance. The report is accompanied by numerous publications in the frame of the LAS project, as well as by a web page (https://www.uni-potsdam.de/de/daf/projekte/las), which also contains the presentations from the final LAS-Conference, including valuable discussions of the report from renowed experts in the field.}, 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} } @article{Peters2012, author = {Peters, Friedrich Ernst}, title = {Jochen Pahl un de Subrekter}, series = {Digitale Edition : Friedrich Ernst Peters}, journal = {Digitale Edition : Friedrich Ernst Peters}, publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam}, address = {Potsdam}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-59637}, year = {2012}, abstract = {Humorvolle kleine Geschichte um einen naiven Bauern, der sich in der Stadt ein bisschen wichtig machen, „dick doon" will und den sein Plattdeutsch dazu verleitet, den Begriff „Subrektor" falsch zu verstehen.}, language = {de} } @misc{Paape2016, author = {Paape, Dario L. J. F.}, title = {Filling the Silence}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-90480}, year = {2016}, abstract = {In a self-paced reading experiment, we investigated the processing of sluicing constructions ("sluices") whose antecedent contained a known garden-path structure in German. Results showed decreased processing times for sluices with garden-path antecedents as well as a disadvantage for antecedents with non-canonical word order downstream from the ellipsis site. A post-hoc analysis showed the garden-path advantage also to be present in the region right before the ellipsis site. While no existing account of ellipsis processing explicitly predicted the results, we argue that they are best captured by combining a local antecedent mismatch effect with memory trace reactivation through reanalysis.}, language = {en} } @misc{AdaniStegenwallnerSchuetzHaendleretal.2016, author = {Adani, Flavia and Stegenwallner-Sch{\"u}tz, Maja Henny Katherine and Haendler, Yair and Zukowski, Andrea}, title = {Elicited production of relative clauses in German}, series = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, number = {409}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-405149}, pages = {25}, year = {2016}, abstract = {We elicited the production of various types of relative clauses in a group of German-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typically developing controls in order to test the movement optionality account of grammatical difficulty in SLI. The results show that German-speaking children with SLI are impaired in relative clause production compared to typically developing children. The alternative structures that they produce consist of simple main clauses, as well as nominal and prepositional phrases produced in isolation, sometimes contextually appropriate, and sometimes not. Crucially for evaluating the movement optionality account, children with SLI produce very few instances of embedded clauses where the relative clause head noun is pronounced in situ; in fact, such responses are more common among the typically developing child controls. These results underscore the difficulty German-speaking children with SLI have with structures involving movement, but provide no specific support for the movement optionality account.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{DeVeaughGeiss2020, author = {De Veaugh-Geiss, Joseph P.}, title = {Cleft exhaustivity}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-44642}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-446421}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {viii, 243}, year = {2020}, abstract = {In this dissertation a series of experimental studies are presented which demonstrate that the exhaustive inference of focus-background it-clefts in English and their cross-linguistic counterparts in Akan, French, and German is neither robust nor systematic. The inter-speaker and cross-linguistic variability is accounted for with a discourse-pragmatic approach to cleft exhaustivity, in which -- following Pollard \& Yasavul 2016 -- the exhaustive inference is derived from an interaction with another layer of meaning, namely, the existence presupposition encoded in clefts.}, language = {en} } @misc{HaeusslerBader2015, author = {H{\"a}ussler, Jana and Bader, Markus}, title = {An interference account of the missing-VP effect}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-78673}, year = {2015}, abstract = {Sentences with doubly center-embedded relative clauses in which a verb phrase (VP) is missing are sometimes perceived as grammatical, thus giving rise to an illusion of grammaticality. In this paper, we provide a new account of why missing-VP sentences, which are both complex and ungrammatical, lead to an illusion of grammaticality, the so-called missing-VP effect. We propose that the missing-VP effect in particular, and processing difficulties with multiply center-embedded clauses more generally, are best understood as resulting from interference during cue-based retrieval. When processing a sentence with double center-embedding, a retrieval error due to interference can cause the verb of an embedded clause to be erroneously attached into a higher clause. This can lead to an illusion of grammaticality in the case of missing-VP sentences and to processing complexity in the case of complete sentences with double center-embedding. Evidence for an interference account of the missing-VP effect comes from experiments that have investigated the missing-VP effect in German using a speeded grammaticality judgments procedure. We review this evidence and then present two new experiments that show that the missing-VP effect can be found in German also with less restricting procedures. One experiment was a questionnaire study which required grammaticality judgments from participants without imposing any time constraints. The second experiment used a self-paced reading procedure and did not require any judgments. Both experiments confirm the prior findings of missing-VP effects in German and also show that the missing-VP effect is subject to a primacy effect as known from the memory literature. Based on this evidence, we argue that an account of missing-VP effects in terms of interference during cue-based retrieval is superior to accounts in terms of limited memory resources or in terms of experience with embedded structures.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Chen2022, author = {Chen, Hui Ching}, title = {Acquisition of focus - in a cross-linguistic perspective}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-55345}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-553458}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {xiii, 130}, year = {2022}, abstract = {In dieser Dissertation untersuchen wir, wie chinesischen Muttersprachler und deutschen Muttersprachler, sowohl die Erwachsenen als auch die Kinder, verschiedene linguistische Mittel, wie z. B. Wortstellungsinformationen, prosodische und lexikalische Mittel im Sprachverst{\"a}ndnis korrekt interpretieren.}, language = {en} } @misc{ClausenScheffler2020, author = {Clausen, Yulia and Scheffler, Tatjana}, title = {A corpus-based analysis of meaning variations in German tag questions evidence from spoken and written conversational corpora}, series = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, number = {706}, issn = {1866-8364}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-46788}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-467882}, pages = {33}, year = {2020}, abstract = {This paper addresses semantic/pragmatic variability of tag questions in German and makes three main contributions. First, we document the prevalence and variety of question tags in German across three different types of conversational corpora. Second, by annotating question tags according to their syntactic and semantic context, discourse function, and pragmatic effect, we demonstrate the existing overlap and differences between the individual tag variants. Finally, we distinguish several groups of question tags by identifying the factors that influence the speakers' choices of tags in the conversational context, such as clause type, function, speaker/hearer knowledge, as well as conversation type and medium. These factors provide the limits of variability by constraining certain question tags in German against occurring in specific contexts or with individual functions.}, language = {en} }