@phdthesis{Rubertus2024,
  author    = {Rubertus, Elina},
  title     = {Coarticulatory changes across childhood},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-63012},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-630123},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {X, 131},
  year      = {2024},
  abstract  = {The present dissertation investigates changes in lingual coarticulation across childhood in German-speaking children from three to nine years of age and adults. Coarticulation refers to the mismatch between the abstract phonological units and their seemingly commingled realization in continuous speech. Being a process at the intersection of phonology and phonetics, addressing its changes across childhood allows for insights in speech motor as well as phonological developments. Because specific predictions for changes in coarticulation across childhood can be derived from existing speech production models, investigating children's coarticulatory patterns can help us model human speech production. While coarticulatory changes may shed light on some of the central questions of speech production development, previous studies on the topic were sparse and presented a puzzling picture of conflicting findings. One of the reasons for this lack is the difficulty in articulatory data acquisition in a young population. Within the research program this dissertation is embedded in, we accepted this challenge and successfully set up the hitherto largest corpus of articulatory data from children using ultrasound tongue imaging. In contrast to earlier studies, a high number of participants in tight age cohorts across a wide age range and a thoroughly controlled set of pseudowords allowed for statistically powerful investigations of a process known as variable and complicated to track. The specific focus of my studies is on lingual vocalic coarticulation as measured in the horizontal position of the highest point of the tongue dorsum. Based on three studies on a) anticipatory coarticulation towards the left, b) carryover coarticulation towards the right side of the utterance, and c) anticipatory coarticulatory extent in repeated versus read aloud speech, I deduct the following main theses: 1. Maturing speech motor control is responsible for some developmental changes in coarticulation. 2. Coarticulation can be modeled as the coproduction of articulatory gestures. 3. The developmental change in coarticulation results from a decrease of vocalic activation width.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{BarthWeingartenKuettnerRaymond2021,
  author    = {Barth-Weingarten, Dagmar and K{\"u}ttner, Uwe-Alexander and Raymond, Chase Wesley},
  title     = {Pivots revisited},
  series = {Open linguistics},
  volume    = {7},
  journal   = {Open linguistics},
  number    = {1},
  publisher = {de Gruyter},
  address   = {Warsaw},
  issn      = {2300-9969},
  doi       = {10.1515/opli-2020-0152},
  pages     = {613 -- 637},
  year      = {2021},
  abstract  = {The term "pivot" usually refers to two overlapping syntactic units such that the completion of the first unit simultaneously launches the second. In addition, pivots are generally said to be characterized by the smooth prosodic integration of their syntactic parts. This prosodic integration is typically achieved by prosodic-phonetic matching of the pivot components. As research on such turns in a range of languages has illustrated, speakers routinely deploy pivots so as to be able to continue past a point of possible turn completion, in the service of implementing some additional or revised action. This article seeks to build on, and complement, earlier research by exploring two issues in more detail as follows: (1) what exactly do pivotal turn extensions accomplish on the action dimension, and (2) what role does prosodic-phonetic packaging play in this? We will show that pivot constructions not only exhibit various degrees of prosodic-phonetic (non-)integration, i.e., differently strong cesuras, but that they can be ordered on a continuum, and that this cline maps onto the relationship of the actions accomplished by the components of the pivot construction. While tighter prosodic-phonetic integration, i.e., weak(er) cesuring, co-occurs with post-pivot actions whose relationship to that of the pre-pivot tends to be rather retrospective in character, looser prosodic-phonetic integration, i.e., strong(er) cesuring, is associated with a more prospective orientation of the post-pivot's action. These observations also raise more general questions with regard to the analysis of action.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{FargierBuerkiFoschiniPinetetal.2017,
  author    = {Fargier, Raphael and B{\"u}rki-Foschini, Audrey Damaris and Pinet, Svetlana and Alario, F. -Xavier and Laganaro, Marina},
  title     = {Word onset phonetic properties and motor artifacts in speech production EEG recordings},
  series = {Psychophysiology : journal of the Society for Psychophysiological Research},
  volume    = {55},
  journal   = {Psychophysiology : journal of the Society for Psychophysiological Research},
  number    = {2},
  publisher = {Wiley},
  address   = {Hoboken},
  issn      = {0048-5772},
  doi       = {10.1111/psyp.12982},
  pages     = {10},
  year      = {2017},
  abstract  = {Electrophysiological research using verbal response paradigms faces the problem of muscle artifacts that occur during speech production or in the period preceding articulation. In this context, this paper has two related aims. The first is to show how the nature of the first phoneme influences the alignment of the ERPs. The second is to further characterize the EEG signal around the onset of articulation, both in temporal and frequency domains. Participants were asked to name aloud pictures of common objects. We applied microstate analyses and time-frequency transformations of ERPs locked to vocal onset to compare the EEG signal between voiced and unvoiced labial plosive word onset consonants. We found a delay of about 40 ms in the set of stable topographic patterns for /b/ relative to /p/ onset words. A similar shift was observed in the power increase of gamma oscillations (30-50 Hz), which had an earlier onset for /p/ trials (similar to 150 ms before vocal onset). This 40-ms shift is consistent with the length of the voiced proportion of the acoustic signal prior to the release of the closure in the vocal responses. These results demonstrate that phonetic features are an important parameter affecting response-locked ERPs, and hence that the onset of the acoustic energy may not be an optimal trigger for synchronizing the EEG activity to the response in vocal paradigms. The indexes explored in this study provide a step forward in the characterization of muscle-related artifacts in electrophysiological studies of speech and language production.},
  language  = {en}
}
@misc{BarthWeingartenOgden2021,
  author    = {Barth-Weingarten, Dagmar and Ogden, Richard},
  title     = {"Chunking" spoken language},
  series = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Philosophische Reihe},
  journal   = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Philosophische Reihe},
  publisher = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  address   = {Potsdam},
  issn      = {1866-8380},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-53625},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-536259},
  pages     = {531 -- 548},
  year      = {2021},
  abstract  = {In this introductory paper to the special issue on "Weak cesuras in talk-in-interaction", we aim to guide the reader into current work on the "chunking" of naturally occurring talk. It is conducted in the methodological frameworks of Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics - two approaches that consider the interactional aspect of humans talking with each other to be a crucial starting point for its analysis. In doing so, we will (1) lay out the background of this special issue (what is problematic about "chunking" talk-in-interaction, the characteristics of the methodological approach chosen by the contributors, the cesura model), (2) highlight what can be gained from such a revised understanding of "chunking" in talk-in-interaction by referring to previous work with this model as well as the findings of the contributions to this special issue, and (3) indicate further directions such work could take starting from papers in this special issue. We hope to induce a fruitful exchange on the phenomena discussed, across methodological divides.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{BarthWeingartenOgden2021,
  author    = {Barth-Weingarten, Dagmar and Ogden, Richard},
  title     = {"Chunking" spoken language},
  series = {Open linguistics},
  volume    = {7},
  journal   = {Open linguistics},
  number    = {1},
  publisher = {De Gruyter},
  address   = {Berlin},
  issn      = {2300-9969},
  doi       = {10.1515/opli-2020-0173},
  pages     = {531 -- 548},
  year      = {2021},
  abstract  = {In this introductory paper to the special issue on "Weak cesuras in talk-in-interaction", we aim to guide the reader into current work on the "chunking" of naturally occurring talk. It is conducted in the methodological frameworks of Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics - two approaches that consider the interactional aspect of humans talking with each other to be a crucial starting point for its analysis. In doing so, we will (1) lay out the background of this special issue (what is problematic about "chunking" talk-in-interaction, the characteristics of the methodological approach chosen by the contributors, the cesura model), (2) highlight what can be gained from such a revised understanding of "chunking" in talk-in-interaction by referring to previous work with this model as well as the findings of the contributions to this special issue, and (3) indicate further directions such work could take starting from papers in this special issue. We hope to induce a fruitful exchange on the phenomena discussed, across methodological divides.},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Genzel2013,
  author    = {Genzel, Susanne},
  title     = {Lexical and post-lexical tones in Akan},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-77969},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {vi, 260},
  year      = {2013},
  abstract  = {This dissertation is about factors that contribute to the surface forms of tones in connected speech in Akan. Akan is an African tone language, which is spoken in Ghana. It has two level tones (low and high), automatic and non-automatic downstep. Downstep is the major factor that influences the surface forms of tones. The thesis shows that downstep is caused by declination. It is argued that declination is an intonational property of Akan, which serves to signal coherence. A phonological representation using a high and a low register tone, associating to the left and right edge of an intonational phrase (IP), respectively, is proposed. Declination/downstep is modelled using a (phonetic) pitch implementation algorithm (Liberman \& Pierrehumbert, 1984). An innovative application of the algorithm is presented, which naturally captures the relation between declination and downstep in Akan. Another important factor is the prosodic manifestation of sentence level pragmatic meanings, such as sentence mode and focus. Regarding the former, the thesis shows that a post-lexical low tone, which associates with the right edge of an IP, signals interrogativity. Additionally, lexical tones in Yes - No questions are realized in a higher pitch register, which does not lead to a reduction of declination. It is claimed that the higher register is not part of the phonological representation in Akan, but that it emerges at the phonetic level to compensate for the 'unnatural' form of the question morpheme and to satisfy the Frequency code (Gussenhoven, 2002; 2004). An extension of Rialland's (2007) typology in terms of a new category called "low tense" question prosody is proposed. Concerning focus marking, it is argued that the use of the morpho-syntactic focus marking strategy is related to extra grammatical factors, such as hearer expectation, discourse expectability (Zimmermann, 2007) and emphasis (Hartmann, 2008). If a speaker of Akan wants to highlight a particular element in a sentence, in-situ, i.e. by means of prosody, the default prosodic structure is modified in such a way that the focused element forms its own phonological phrase (pP). If it is already contained in a pP, the boundary deliminating the focused element is enhanced (F{\´e}ry, 2012). This restructuring/enhancement is accompanied by an interruption of the otherwise continuous melody due to insertion of a pause and/or a glottal stop. Beside declination and intonation, raising of H tones applies in Akan. H raising is analyzed as a local anticipatory planning effect, employed at the phonetic level, which enhances the perceptual distance between low and high tones. Low tones are raised, if they are wedged between two high tones. L raising is argued to be a local carryover effect (co-articulation). Further, it is demonstrated that global anticipatory raising takes place. It is shown that Akan speakers anticipate the length of an IP. Preplanning (anticipatory raising) is argued to be an important process at the level of pitch implementation. It serves to ensure that declination can be maintained throughout the IP, which prevents pitch resetting. The melody of an Akan sentence is largely determined by the choice of words. The inventory of post-lexical tones is small. It consists of post-lexical register tones, which trigger declination and post-lexical intonational tones, which signal sentence type. The overall melodic shape is falling. At the local level, H raising and L raising occur. At the global level, initial low and high tones are realized higher if they occur in a long and/or complex sentence. This dissertation shows that many factors, which emerge at different levels of the tone production process, contribute to the surface form of tones in Akan.},
  language  = {en}
}