@phdthesis{Kohler2003,
  author    = {Kohler, Kaja},
  title     = {Erwerb der fr{\"u}hen Verbmorphologie im Estnischen},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-0001288},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2003},
  abstract  = {Die Studie untersucht den Erwerb der fr{\"u}hen Verbmorphologie im Estnischen. Als Datengrundlage der Arbeit dienen Spontansprachaufnahmen von 10 estnischsprachigen Kindern im Alter zwischen 10 und 32 Monaten. Die Studie versucht eine detaillierte Analyse des Erwerbs des estnischsprachigen Verbmorphologie vorzunehmen. Dabei werden die aufeinander folgenden Entwicklungsstadien, ihre ungef{\"a}hren Altersgrenzen, sowie Erwerbsreihenfolge dargestellt und mit typologisch unterschiedlichen Sprachen verglichen.},
  language  = {de}
}
@phdthesis{Pelzer2007,
  author    = {Pelzer, Lydia},
  title     = {Die Rolle von Konkordanzmarkierungen f{\"u}r die Segmentierung von Phrasen aus dem Sprachstrom : Untersuchungen bei S{\"a}uglingen und Erwachsenen},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-16687},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2007},
  abstract  = {Diese Arbeit besch{\"a}ftigt sich mit der Rolle von Konkordanzmarkierungen innerhalb einer Phrase f{\"u}r die Segmentierung eines fremden Sprachstroms. Das Merkmal der Konkordanz tritt auf, wenn alle Bestandteile einer Phrase gleichermaßen durch eine identische Markierung gekennzeichnet sind (z. B. los muchachos ricosSpanisch = die reichen M{\"a}nner). Da diese wiederkehrenden Markierungen zumeist aus Affixen bestehen, kann Konkordanz als ein Sonderfall der Flexionsmorphologie betrachtet werden. Es wurde untersucht, ob die formale Korrespondenz zwischen den Bestandteilen konkordanter Phrasen als Hinweis auf die Grenzen der linguistisch relevanten Einheit Phrase im Spracherwerb fungieren kann. Zus{\"a}tzlich wird auf das Zusammenspiel einzelner Hinweisreize untereinander eingegangen. Mit Kindern im Alter von zehn Monaten wurden vier Experimente mit dem Headturn Preference Paradigma (Jusczyk \& Aslin, 1995) durchgef{\"u}hrt. Es wurde zun{\"a}chst bei deutschen und englischen Kleinkindern untersucht, ob sie sensibel f{\"u}r gleich bleibende Suffixe innerhalb einer Phrase sind und diese f{\"u}r die Segmentierung nutzen k{\"o}nnen. Außerdem wurde das Zusammenspiel der Hinweise Konkordanz und Prosodie bei der Auffindung von Phrasengrenzen betrachtet. Es zeigte sich, dass deutsche Kinder in besonderer Weise auf konkordante Markierungen reagieren. Neben einer Sensitivit{\"a}t f{\"u}r Konkordanzmarkierungen zeigte das Ergebnis der deutschen Kinder auch, dass sie Flexionssuffixe im Deutschen bereits im Sprachstrom bemerken k{\"o}nnen. Ein solches Ergebnismuster ließ sich bei den Englisch lernenden Kindern nicht beobachten. Verschiedene Erkl{\"a}rungsm{\"o}glichkeiten f{\"u}r diesen Unterschied werden erl{\"a}utert. Insgesamt weisen die Daten aus den Kindersprachexperimenten darauf hin, dass bereits im Alter von zehn Monaten bei Kindern eine Sensibilit{\"a}t f{\"u}r wiederholt in {\"a}hnlicher / gleicher Form auftretende sprachliche Elemente innerhalb der Dom{\"a}ne der Phrase vorhanden ist. Außerdem lassen die Resultate darauf schließen, dass Konkordanzmarkierungen bereits fr{\"u}h zur Segmentierung von kontinuierlicher Sprache verwendet werden. Diese Leistung steht in Zusammenhang mit der Beachtung von statistischen Regularit{\"a}ten im Sprachstrom. Untersuchungen dazu zeigen, dass m. H. statistischer Lernmechanismen wiederkehrende Elemente im Sprachstrom erkannt werden k{\"o}nnen (Bonatti, Pe{\~n}a, Nespor, \& Mehler, 2005; Newport \& Aslin, 2004; Saffran, 2001; Saffran, Aslin \& Newport, 1996). Anscheinend ist das Auftreten identischer Segmente innerhalb einer relativ kleinen Dom{\"a}ne im Sprachstrom f{\"u}r Lerner ein hervorstechendes Merkmal, das dazu beitr{\"a}gt, diese Dom{\"a}ne aus dem Signal hervorzuheben und somit die Segmentierung des Sprachstroms in kleinere Anteile zu unterst{\"u}tzen. Neben den Untersuchungen mit den Kleinkindern wurden zus{\"a}tzlich drei Reaktionszeitexperimente mit deutschen und englischen Erwachsenen zur Rolle von Konkordanzmarkierungen bei der Verarbeitung der Fremdsprachen Spanisch, Suaheli und (f{\"u}r die englischen Probanden) Deutsch durchgef{\"u}hrt. Das erste Experiment befasste sich mit der Stimulussprache Spanisch, in der es bei Konkordanz zum mehrfachen Auftreten von identischen Suffixen mit Vollvokalen kommt. Dabei war zu beobachten, dass deutsche und englische Muttersprachler die zu erinnernden Phrasen besser in einem kontinuierlichen spanischen Sprachstrom wieder erkannten, wenn die kritischen Phrasen konkordant waren, als wenn sie nicht konkordant waren. Das zweite Experiment verwendete die Stimulussprache Suaheli (konkordante vs. nicht konkordante Pr{\"a}fixe). Dabei zeigte sich ein solches Muster ausschließlich bei den englischen Muttersprachlern. Das dritte Experiment untersuchte englische Muttersprachler mit deutschem Stimulusmaterial, wobei Konkordanz durch Suffixe markiert wird, die aus einer Schwa-Silbe bestehen. Hier ergab sich kein Hinweis f{\"u}r eine Nutzung konkordanter Markierungen bei der Erkennung von Phrasen. Als Grund daf{\"u}r wird die reduzierte Vokalqualit{\"a}t angenommen, die Schwa-Silben u.U. schwerer wahrnehmbar macht als Vollvokalsilben (z.B. Widera \& Portele, 1999; Gom{\´e}z Lacabex, Garc{\´i}a Lecumberri, \& Cooke, 2005). Es werden weitere Erkl{\"a}rungshypothesen bzgl. der Ergebnisunterschiede bei deutschen und englischen Muttersprachlern beschrieben, die auch auf den Unterschied zwischen der Verarbeitung von konkordanten Suffixen vs. Pr{\"a}fixen eingehen. Zus{\"a}tzlich erfolgt eine Diskussion der Ergebnisse vor dem Hintergrund von Annahmen {\"u}ber Arten von (nicht-)sprachlichen {\"A}hnlichkeiten und ihren Einfluss auf die Wahrnehmung von {\"a}hnlichen Elementen. Die vorliegenden Daten st{\"u}tzen die Annahme von Morgan (1986), dass der Input f{\"u}r einen Sprachlerner bereits zahlreiche Hinweise {\"u}ber die Struktur der jeweiligen Sprache enth{\"a}lt. Sowohl Kleinkinder als auch erwachsene Sprachlerner scheinen f{\"u}r einen beachtlichen Teil dieser Hinweisreize sensibel zu sein. Die bislang kaum beachteten konkordante Markierungen innerhalb von Phrasen scheinen zumindest einen Teil dieser Hinweisreize auszumachen.},
  language  = {de}
}
@phdthesis{Grimm2007,
  author    = {Grimm, Angela},
  title     = {The development of word-prosodic structure in child German : simplex words and compounds},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-43194},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2007},
  abstract  = {Die Dissertation untersucht die Entwicklung der prosodischen Struktur von Simplizia und Komposita im Deutschen. Ausgewertet werden langzeitlich erhobene Produktionsdaten von vier monolingualen Kindern im Alter von 12 bis 26 Monaten. Es werden vier Entwicklungsstufen angenommen, in denen jedoch keine einheitlichen Outputs produziert werden. Die Asymmetrien zwischen den verschiedenen W{\"o}rtern werden systematisch auf die Struktur des Zielwortes zur{\"u}ckgef{\"u}hrt. In einer optimalit{\"a}tstheoretischen Analyse wird gezeigt, dass sich die Entwicklungsstufen aus der Umordnung von Constraints ergeben und dass dasselbe Ranking die Variation zwischen den Worttypen zu einer bestimmten Entwicklungsstufe vorhersagt.},
  language  = {de}
}
@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{KlannDeliusKauschkeGluecketal.2008,
  author    = {Klann-Delius, Gisela and Kauschke, Christina and Gl{\"u}ck, Christian W. and Schr{\"o}der, Astrid and Lorenz, Antje and Domahs, Frank and Grande, Marion and Domahs, Ulrike and Frankenberg, Jenny v. and Wahl, Michael and De Kok, D{\"o}rte and Stadie, Nicole and Machleb, Franziska and Manz, Katrin and Frank, Ulrike and Sperlich, Kathrin and Vauth, Friederike and Hampel, Pamela and M{\"a}der, Mark and Sticher, Heike and Bethmann, Anja and Fischenich, Andrea and Scheich, Henning and Brechmann, Andr{\´e} and Peschke, Claudia and Ziegler, Wolfram and Kappes, Juliane and Baumg{\"a}rtner, Annette and Sonntag, Kristin and Bartels, Luise and Heide, Judith and Meinunger, Andr{\´e} and Burchert, Frank and Bohn, Christiane and Kliegl, Reinhold and Gottal, Stephanie and Berendes, Karin and Grabherr, Britta and Schneeberg, Jennifer and Wittler, Marion and Ptok, Martin and Sallat, Stephan},
  title     = {Spektrum Patholinguistik = Schwerpunktthema: der Erwerb von Lexikon und Semantik: Meilensteine, St{\"o}rungen und Therapie ; Tagungsband zum 1. Herbsttreffen Patholinguistik, 24. November 2007},
  number    = {1},
  editor    = {Wahl, Michael and Michael, Judith and Hanne, Sandra},
  publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam},
  address   = {Potsdam},
  organization    = {Verband f{\"u}r Patholinguistik e. V. (vpl)},
  issn      = {1869-3822},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-1719},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-18688},
  year      = {2008},
  abstract  = {Der vorliegende Tagungsband enth{\"a}lt alle Beitr{\"a}ge des 1. Herbsttreffens Patholinguistik, das am 24.11.2007 an der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam stattgefunden hat. Sowohl die drei Hauptvortr{\"a}ge zum Thema „Der Erwerb von Lexikon und Semantik - Meilensteine, St{\"o}rungen und Therapie" als auch die Kurzvortr{\"a}ge promovierter Patholinguisten sind ausf{\"u}hrlich dokumentiert. Außerdem enth{\"a}lt der Tagungsband die Abstracts der pr{\"a}sentierten Poster.},
  language  = {de}
}
@misc{BaerHenney2009,
  type      = {Master Thesis},
  author    = {Baer-Henney, Dinah},
  title     = {On natural and probabilisic effects during acquisition of morphophonemic alternations},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-36819},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2009},
  abstract  = {The acquisition of phonological alternations consists of many aspects as discussions in the relevant literature show. There are contrary findings about the role of naturalness. A natural process is grounded in phonetics; they are easy to learn, even in second language acquisition when adults have to learn certain processes that do not occur in their native language. There is also evidence that unnatural - arbitrary - rules can be learned. Current work on the acquisition of morphophonemic alternations suggests that their probability of occurrence is a crucial factor in acquisition. I have conducted an experiment to investigate the effects of naturalness as well as of probability of occurrence with 80 adult native speakers of German. It uses the Artificial Grammar paradigm: Two artificial languages were constructed, each with a particular alternation. In one language the alternation is natural (vowel harmony); in the other language the alternation is arbitrary (a vowel alternation depends on the sonorancy of the first consonant of the stem). The participants were divided in two groups, one group listened to the natural alternation and the other group listened to the unnatural alternation. Each group was divided into two subgroups. One subgroup then was presented with material in which the alternation occurred frequently and the other subgroup was presented with material in which the alternation occurred infrequently. After this exposure phase every participant was asked to produce new words during the test phase. Knowledge about the language-specific alternation pattern was needed to produce the forms correctly as the phonological contexts demanded certain alternants. The group performances have been compared with respect to the effects of naturalness and probability of occurrence. The natural rule was learned more easily than the unnatural one. Frequently presented rules were not learned more easily than the ones that were presented less frequently. Moreover, participants did not learn the unnatural rule at all, whether this rule was presented frequently or infrequently did not matter. There was a tendency that the natural rule was learned more easily if presented frequently than if presented infrequently, but it was not significant due to variability across participants.},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Mueller2010,
  author    = {M{\"u}ller, Anja},
  title     = {Wie interpretieren Kinder nur? : Experimentelle Untersuchungen zum Erwerb von Informationsstruktur},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-57767},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2010},
  abstract  = {Im Zentrum der Arbeit steht die Frage, wie sechsj{\"a}hrige monolingual deutsche Kinder S{\"a}tze mit der Fokuspartikel nur interpretieren. In 5 Experimenten wurde untersucht, welchen Einfluss die Oberfl{\"a}chenposition der Fokuspartikel auf das Satzverst{\"a}ndnis hat und ob die kontextuelle Einbettung der nur-S{\"a}tze zu einer zielsprachlichen Interpretation f{\"u}hrt. Im Gegensatz zu den Ergebnissen bisheriger Studien (u.a. Crain, et al. 1994; Paterson et al. 2003) zeigen die Daten der Arbeit, dass die getesteten Kinder die pr{\"a}sentierten nur-S{\"a}tze zielsprachlich interpretierten, wenn diese in einen ad{\"a}quaten Kontext eingebettet waren. Es zeigte sich weiterhin, dass die Kinder mehr Fehler bei der Interpretation von S{\"a}tzen mit nur vor dem Subjekt (Nur die Maus hat einen Ball.) als mit nur vor dem Objekt (Die Maus hat nur einen Ball.) machten. Entgegen dem syntaktisch basierten Ansatz von Crain et al. (1994) und dem semantisch-pragmatisch basierten Ansatz von Paterson et al. (2003) werden in der Arbeit informationsstrukturelle Eigenschaften bzw. Unterschiede der nur-S{\"a}tze f{\"u}r die beobachteten Leistungen verantwortlich gemacht. Der in der Arbeit postulierte Topik-Default Ansatz nimmt an, dass die Kinder das Subjekt eines Satzes immer als Topik analysieren. Dies f{\"u}hrt im Fall der S{\"a}tze mit nur vor dem Subjekt zu einer falschen informationsstrukturellen Repr{\"a}sentation des Satzes. Basierend auf den Ergebnissen der Arbeit und dem postulierten Topik-Default Ansatz wird in der Arbeit abschließend ein Erwerbsmodell f{\"u}r das Verstehen von S{\"a}tzen mit der Fokuspartikel nur entworfen und diskutiert.},
  language  = {de}
}
@misc{Meinhardt2010,
  type      = {Master Thesis},
  author    = {Meinhardt, Miriam},
  title     = {Der Einfluss der Informationsstruktur auf das Verst{\"a}ndnis von Aktiv- und Passivs{\"a}tzen im ungest{\"o}rten Spracherwerb},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-59563},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2010},
  abstract  = {Kinder erwerben Passivstrukturen sp{\"a}ter als die meisten anderen syntaktischen Strukturen. Die vorliegende Studie besch{\"a}ftigt sich mit der Frage, ob dies auf informationsstrukturelle Faktoren zur{\"u}ckzuf{\"u}hren sein k{\"o}nnte. Probleme beim Erwerb von Passivs{\"a}tzen wurden in vorhergehenden Studien unter anderem auf ihre geringe Inputfrequenz oder bestimmte syntaktische Charakteristika von Passivs{\"a}tzen zur{\"u}ckgef{\"u}hrt. Jedoch konnte bisher keiner dieser Ans{\"a}tze ihr sp{\"a}tes Erwerbsalter umfassend erkl{\"a}ren. W{\"a}hrend Aktivs{\"a}tze, die kanonische, unmarkierte Satzstruktur im Deutschen, in jeglichem Diskurskontext verwendet werden k{\"o}nnen, werden Passivs{\"a}tze fast ausschließlich dann verwendet, wenn der Patiens der beschriebenen Handlung schon vorerw{\"a}hnt war und/ oder als Topik eines Satzes fungieren soll. Passivs{\"a}tze sind also nicht in jedem Kontext informationsstrukturell ad{\"a}quat. Kinder haben im Gegensatz zu Erwachsenen aufgrund ihrer geringeren syntaktischen F{\"a}higkeiten Probleme, S{\"a}tze zu verarbeiten, die nicht in einem ad{\"a}quaten Kontext stehen. Der Einfluss dieser Kontextbedingungen auf das Satzverst{\"a}ndnis wurde in der vorliegenden Studie bei deutschsprachigen Kindern untersucht. Kindern zwischen 3;0 und 4;11 Jahren wurden Aktiv- oder Passivs{\"a}tze pr{\"a}sentiert, denen informationsstrukturell ad{\"a}quate, inad{\"a}quate oder neutrale Kontexts{\"a}tze vorangingen. Wie erwartet verstanden die Kinder Aktivs{\"a}tze besser als Passivs{\"a}tze und 4-j{\"a}hrige Kinder zeigten bessere Leistungen als 3-j{\"a}hrige. Es gab Tendenzen, dass die 3-j{\"a}hrigen Kinder Passivs{\"a}tze besser, aber Aktivs{\"a}tze schlechter verstanden, wenn ihr Subjekt vorerw{\"a}hnt wurde. Statistisch signifikante Kontexteffekte fanden sich jedoch im Gegensatz zu einer vergleichbaren Studie mit englischsprachigen Kindern (Gourley und Catlin, 1978) in keiner Testbedingung. Außerdem zeigte sich, dass die Kinder Passivs{\"a}tze insgesamt besser und Aktivs{\"a}tze insgesamt schlechter verstanden als englischsprachige Kinder in anderen Studien. Die Ergebnisse werden mit dem Competition Modell (Mac Whinney und Bates, 1987) und einer Sprachverarbeitungstheorie von Stromswold (2002) erkl{\"a}rt. Außerdem wird diskutiert, warum die deutschsprachigen Kinder in der vorliegenden Studie andere Sprachverst{\"a}ndnisleistungen zeigten als englischsprachige Kinder.},
  language  = {de}
}
@phdthesis{Kuehnast2010,
  author    = {Kuehnast, Milena},
  title     = {Processing negative imperatives in Bulgarian : evidence from normal, aphasic and child language},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-45826},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2010},
  abstract  = {The incremental nature of sentence processing raises questions about the way the information of incoming functional elements is accessed and subsequently employed in building the syntactic structure which sustains interpretation processes. The present work approaches these questions by investigating the negative particle ne used for sentential negation in Bulgarian and its impact on the overt realisation and the interpretation of imperative inflexion, bound aspectual morphemes and clitic pronouns in child, adult and aphasic language. In contrast to other Slavic languages, Bulgarian negative imperatives (NI) are grammatical only with imperfective verbs. We argue that NI are instantiations of overt aspectual coercion induced by the presence of negation as a temporally sensitive sentential operator. The scope relation between imperative mood, negation, and aspect yields the configuration of the imperfective present which in Bulgarian has to be overtly expressed and prompts the imperfective marking of the predicate. The regular and transparent application of the imperfectivising mechanism relates to the organisation of the TAM categories in Bulgarian which not only promotes the representation of fine perspective shifts but also provides for their distinct morphological expression. Using an elicitation task with NI, we investigated the way 3- and 4-year-old children represent negation in deontic contexts as reflected in their use of aspectually appropriate predicates. Our findings suggest that children are sensitive to the imperfectivity requirement in NI from early on. The imperfectivisation strategies reveal some differences from the target morphological realisation. The relatively low production of target imperfectivised prefixed verbs cannot be explained with morphological processing deficits, but rather indicates that up to the age of five children experience difficulties to apply a progressive view point to accomplishments. Two self-paced reading studies present evidence that neurologically unimpaired Bulgarian speakers profit from the syntactic and prosodic properties of negation during online sentence comprehension. The imperfectivity requirement negation imposes on the predicate speeds up lexical access to imperfective verbs. Similarly, clitic pronouns are more accessible after negation due to the phono-syntactic properties of clitic clusters. As the experimental stimuli do not provide external discourse referents, personal pronouns are parsed as object agreement markers. Without subsequent resolution, personal pronouns appear to be less resource demanding than reflexive clitics. This finding is indicative of the syntax-driven co-reference establishment processes triggered through the lexical specification of reflexive clitics. The results obtained from Bulgarian Broca's aphasics show that they exhibit processing patterns similar to those of the control group. Notwithstanding their slow processing speed, the agrammatic group showed no impairment of negation as reflected by their sensitivity to the aspectual requirements of NI, and to the prosodic constraints on clitic placement. The aphasics were able to parse the structural dependency between mood, negation and aspect as functional categories and to represent it morphologically. The prolonged reaction times (RT) elicited by prefixed verbs indicate increasing processing costs due to the semantic integration of prefixes as perfectivity markers into an overall imperfective construal. This inference is supported by the slower RT to reflexive clitics, which undergo a structurally triggered resolution. Evaluated against cross-linguistic findings, the obtained result strongly suggests that aphasic performance with pronouns depends on the interpretation efforts associated with co-reference establishment and varies due to availability of discourse referents. The investigation of normal and agrammatic processing of Bulgarian NI presents support for the hypothesis that the comprehension deficits in Broca's aphasia result from a slowed-down implementation of syntactic operations. The protracted structure building consumes processing resources and causes temporal mismatches with other processes sustaining sentence comprehension. The investigation of the way Bulgarian children and aphasic speakers process NI reveals that both groups are highly sensitive to the imperfective constraint on the aspectual construal imposed by the presence of negation. The imperfective interpretation requires access to morphologically complex verb forms which contain aspectual morphemes with conflicting semantic information - perfective prefixes and imperfective suffixes. Across modalities, both populations exhibit difficulties in processing prefixed imperfectivised verbs which as predicates of negative imperative sentences reflect the inner perspective the speaker and the addressee need to take towards a potentially bounded situation description.},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Herold2011,
  author    = {Herold, Birgit},
  title     = {Prosodische Verarbeitung und lexikalische Entwicklung sehr untergewichtiger Fr{\"u}hgeborener w{\"a}hrend des ersten Lebensjahres},
  publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam},
  address   = {Potsdam},
  isbn      = {978-3-86956-107-3},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-48517},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {xv, 244},
  year      = {2011},
  abstract  = {Die vorliegende Arbeit besch{\"a}ftigt sich mit der Fragestellung, ob die Fr{\"u}hgeburtlichkeit eine Auswirkung auf den Spracherwerb im ersten Lebensjahr hat. Insbesondere wurde der Frage nachgegangen, ob sich die Verarbeitung der rhythmisch-prosodischen Eigenschaften von Sprache im ersten Lebensjahr und deren weitere Ausnutzung f{\"u}r die Entwicklung des Lexikons bei sehr untergewichtigen Deutsch lernenden Fr{\"u}hgeborenen im Vergleich zu Reifgeborenen unterscheidet. Die besondere Spracherwerbssituation Fr{\"u}hgeborener liefert weitere Erkenntnisse bez{\"u}glich der Frage, inwieweit der fr{\"u}he Spracherwerb durch pr{\"a}determinierte reifungsbedingte Mechanismen und Abl{\"a}ufe bestimmt wird und inwieweit dessen Verlauf und die relevanten Erwerbsmechanismen durch individuelle erfahrungsabh{\"a}ngige Faktoren beeinflusst werden. Damit liefern die Ergebnisse auch einen weiteren Beitrag zur Nature-Nurture-Diskussion.},
  language  = {de}
}
@phdthesis{Ott2012,
  author    = {Ott, Susan},
  title     = {Feld - f{\"a}llt - fehlt : Untersuchungen zur Phonologie-Morphosyntax-Schnittstelle bei Kindern und Erwachsenen},
  publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam},
  address   = {Potsdam},
  isbn      = {978-3-86956-161-5},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-57798},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {379},
  year      = {2012},
  abstract  = {Neben der Frequenz eines cues ist es dessen Zuverl{\"a}ssigkeit, die Kindern hilft, die an sie gerichtete Sprache zu segmentieren, Worteinheiten zu erkennen sowie diese syntaktisch zu kategorisieren. Im Deutschen weist die Subsilbe „Langvokal+Konsonant+/t/" (z.B. in fehlt, wohnt) zuverl{\"a}ssig auf eine -t-flektierte Verbform hin. Die in kindgerichteter Sprache h{\"o}her frequente Subsilbe „Kurzvokal+Konsonant+/t/" (z.B. in Feld, Hemd, f{\"a}llt, rund) gibt hingegen keinen derartig eindeutigen Hinweis. Es wurde der Frage nachgegangen, inwiefern diese unterschiedlichen Zuverl{\"a}ssigkeiten und Frequenzen der Subsilben auf die Nomen-, Verb- und Verbflexionsverarbeitung einwirken. Drei Altersgruppen wurden untersucht: achtzehn Monate alte Kinder, drei- bis f{\"u}nfj{\"a}hrige sprachunauff{\"a}llige und -auff{\"a}llige Kinder sowie erwachsene Sprecher. Einfl{\"u}sse der unterschiedlichen Zuverl{\"a}ssigkeiten und Frequenzen der ausgew{\"a}hlten Subsilben konnten f{\"u}r alle Probandengruppen gefunden werden. Die Subsilbe stellt damit eine linguistische Gr{\"o}ße dar, die in der fr{\"u}hen Sprachwahrnehmung als cue dienen sowie die Sprachverarbeitung Erwachsener lenken kann und auch f{\"u}r die Sprachdiagnostik und -therapie sprachauff{\"a}lliger Kinder ber{\"u}cksichtigt werden sollte.},
  language  = {de}
}
@phdthesis{Herrmann2013,
  author    = {Herrmann, Heike},
  title     = {Zum Erwerb syntaktischer Aspekte von positiven und negativen W-Fragen im unauff{\"a}lligen und auff{\"a}lligen Spracherwerb des Deutschen},
  publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam},
  address   = {Potsdam},
  isbn      = {978-3-86956-293-3},
  issn      = {1869-3830},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-70606},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {362},
  year      = {2013},
  abstract  = {Der W-Fragen-Erwerb stellt einen Teilbereich der kindlichen Syntaxentwicklung dar, die sich maßgeblich innerhalb der ersten drei Lebensjahre eines Kindes vollzieht. Eine wesentliche Rolle spielen dabei zwei Bewegungsoperationen, die sich auf die Position des Interrogativpronomens an die erste Stelle der W-Frage sowie die Position des Verbs an die zweite Stelle beziehen. In drei Studien wurde einerseits untersucht, ob deutschsprachige Kinder, die noch keine W-Fragen produzieren k{\"o}nnen, in der Lage sind, grammatische von ungrammatischen W-Fragen zu unterscheiden und andererseits, welche Leistungen sprachunauff{\"a}llige und sprachauff{\"a}llige deutschsprachige Kinder beim Verstehen und Korrigieren unterschiedlich komplexer W-Fragen (positive und negative W-Fragen) zeigen. Die Ergebnisse deuten auf ein fr{\"u}hes syntaktisches Wissen {\"u}ber W-Fragen im Spracherwerb hin und st{\"u}tzen damit die Annahme einer Kontinuit{\"a}t der kindlichen Grammatik zur Standardsprache. Auch scheinen sprachauff{\"a}llige Kinder sich beim Erwerb von W-Fragen nicht qualitativ von sprachgesunden Kindern zu unterscheiden, sondern W-Fragen lediglich sp{\"a}ter korrekt umzusetzen. In beiden Populationen konnte ein syntaktischer {\"O}konomieeffekt beobachtet werden, der f{\"u}r eine sp{\"a}tere Umsetzung der Verbbewegung im Vergleich zur Bewegung des W-Elementes spricht.},
  language  = {de}
}
@phdthesis{BrandtKobele2014,
  author    = {Brandt-Kobele, Oda-Christina},
  title     = {Comprehension of verb inflection in German-speaking children},
  publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam},
  address   = {Potsdam},
  isbn      = {978-3-86956-216-2},
  issn      = {1869-3822},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-62046},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {xx, 325},
  year      = {2014},
  abstract  = {Previous studies on the acquisition of verb inflection in normally developing children have revealed an astonishing pattern: children use correctly inflected verbs in their own speech but fail to make use of verb inflections when comprehending sentences uttered by others. Thus, a three-year old might well be able to say something like 'The cat sleeps on the bed', but fails to understand that the same sentence, when uttered by another person, refers to only one sleeping cat but not more than one. The previous studies that have examined children's comprehension of verb inflections have employed a variant of a picture selection task in which the child was asked to explicitly indicate (via pointing) what semantic meaning she had inferred from the test sentence. Recent research on other linguistic structures, such as pronouns or focus particles, has indicated that earlier comprehension abilities can be found when methods are used that do not require an explicit reaction, like preferential looking tasks. This dissertation aimed to examine whether children are truly not able to understand the connection the the verb form and the meaning of the sentence subject until the age of five years or whether earlier comprehension can be found when a different measure, preferential looking, is used. Additionally, children's processing of subject-verb agreement violations was examined. The three experiments of this thesis that examined children's comprehension of verb inflections revealed the following: German-speaking three- to four-year old children looked more to a picture showing one actor when hearing a sentence with a singular inflected verb but only when their eye gaze was tracked and they did not have to perform a picture selection task. When they were asked to point to the matching picture, they performed at chance-level. This pattern indicates asymmetries in children's language performance even within the receptive modality. The fourth experiment examined sensitivity to subject-verb agreement violations and did not reveal evidence for sensitivity toward agreement violations in three- and four-year old children, but only found that children's looking patterns were influenced by the grammatical violations at the age of five. The results from these experiments are discussed in relation to the existence of a production-comprehension asymmetry in the use of verb inflections and children's underlying grammatical knowledge.},
  language  = {en}
}
@misc{Fengler2015,
  author    = {Fengler, Anja},
  title     = {How the brain attunes to sentence processing},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-85820},
  pages     = {XVI, 208},
  year      = {2015},
  abstract  = {While children acquire new words and simple sentence structures extremely fast and without much effort, the ability to process complex sentences develops rather late in life. Although the conjoint occurrence between brain-structural and brain-functional changes, the decrease of plasticity, and changes in cognitive abilities suggests a certain causality between these processes, concrete evidence for the relation between brain development, language processing, and language performance is rare. Therefore, the current dissertation investigates the tripartite relationship between behavior (in the form of language performance and cognitive maturation as prerequisite for language processing), brain structure (in the form of gray matter maturation), and brain function (in the form of brain activation evoked by complex sentence processing). Previous developmental studies indicate a missing increase of activation in accordance to sentence complexity (functional selectivity) in language-relevant brain areas in children. To determine the factors contributing to the functional development of language-relevant brain areas, different methodologies and data acquisition techniques were used to investigate the processing of center-embedded sentences in 5- and 6-year-old children, 7- and 8-year-old children, and adults. Behavioral results indicate that children between 5 and 8 years show difficulties in processing double embedded sentences and that their performance for these type of sentences is positively correlated with digit span. In 7- and 8-year-old children, it was found that especially the processing of long-distance relations between the initial phrase and its corresponding verb appears to be associated with the subject's verbal working memory capacity. In contrast, children's performance for double embedded sentences in the younger age group positively correlated with their performance in a standardized sentence comprehension test. This finding supports the hypothesis that processing difficulties in this age group may be mainly attributed to difficulties in processing case marking information. These findings are discussed with respect to current accounts of language and working memory development. A second study aimed at investigating the structural maturation of brain areas involved in sentence comprehension. To do this, whole-brain magnetic resonance images from 59 children between 5 and 8 years were collected and children's gray matter was analyzed by using voxel-based morphometry. Children's grammatical proficiency was assessed by a standardized sentence comprehension test. A confirmatory factory analysis corroborated a grammar-relevant and a verbal working memory-relevant factor underlying the measured performance. While children's ability to assign thematic roles is positively correlated with gray matter probability (GMP) in the left inferior temporal gyrus and the left inferior frontal gyrus, verbal working memory-related performance is positively correlated with GMP in the left parietal operculum extending into the posterior superior temporal gyrus. These areas have been previously shown to be differentially engaged in adults' complex sentence processing. Thus, the findings of the second study suggest a specific correspondence between children's GMP in language-relevant brain regions and differential cognitive abilities which underlie complex sentence comprehension. In a third study, functional brain activity during the processing of center-embedded sentences was investigated in three different age groups (5-6 years, 7-8 years, and adults). Although all age groups engage a qualitatively comparable network of the left pars opercularis (PO), the left inferior parietal lobe extending into the posterior superior temporal gyrus (IPL/pSTG), the supplementary motor area (SMA) and the cerebellum, functional selectivity of these regions was only observable in adults. However, functional activation of the language-related regions (PO and IPL/pSTG) predicted sentence comprehension performance for all age groups. To solve the question of the complex interplay between different maturational factors, a fourth study analyzed the predictive power of gray matter probability, verbal working memory capacity, and behavioral differences in performance for simple and complex sentence for the functional selectivity of each activated region. These analyses revealed that the establishment of the adult-like functional selectivity for complex sentences is predicted by a reduction of the left PO's gray matter probability across age groups while that of the IPL/pSTG is additionally predicted by verbal working memory capacity. Taken all findings together, the current thesis provides evidence that both structural brain maturation and verbal working memory expansion provide the basis for the emergence of functional selectivity in language-related brain regions leading to more efficient sentence processing during development.},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Sauermann2016,
  author    = {Sauermann, Antje},
  title     = {Impact of the type of referring expression on the acquisition of word order variation},
  publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam},
  address   = {Potsdam},
  isbn      = {978-3-86956-330-5},
  issn      = {1869-3822},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-89409},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2016},
  abstract  = {This dissertation examines the impact of the type of referring expression on the acquisition of word order variation in German-speaking preschoolers. A puzzle in the area of language acquisition concerns the production-comprehension asymmetry for non-canonical sentences like "Den Affen f{\"a}ngt die Kuh." ("The monkey, the cow chases."), that is, preschoolers usually have difficulties in accurately understanding non-canonical sentences approximately until age six (e.g., Dittmar et al., 2008) although they produce non-canonical sentences already around age three (e.g., Poeppel \& Wexler, 1993; Weissenborn, 1990). This dissertation investigated the production and comprehension of non-canonical sentences to address this issue. Three corpus analyses were conducted to investigate the impact of givenness, topic status and the type of referring expression on word order in the spontaneous speech of two- to four-year-olds and the child-directed speech produced by their mothers. The positioning of the direct object in ditransitive sentences was examined; in particular, sentences in which the direct object occurred before or after the indirect object in the sentence-medial positions and sentences in which it occurred in the sentence-initial position. The results reveal similar ordering patterns for children and adults. Word order variation was to a large extent predictable from the type of referring expression, especially with respect to the word order involving the sentence-medial positions. Information structure (e.g., topic status) had an additional impact only on word order variation that involved the sentence-initial position. Two comprehension experiments were conducted to investigate whether the type of referring expression and topic status influences the comprehension of non-canonical transitive sentences in four- and five-year-olds. In the first experiment, the topic status of the one of the sentential arguments was established via a preceding context sentence, and in the second experiment, the type of referring expression for the sentential arguments was additionally manipulated by using either a full lexical noun phrase (NP) or a personal pronoun. The results demonstrate that children's comprehension of non-canonical sentences improved when the topic argument was realized as a personal pronoun and this improvement was independent of the grammatical role of the arguments. However, children's comprehension was not improved when the topic argument was realized as a lexical NP. In sum, the results of both production and comprehension studies support the view that referring expressions may be seen as a sentence-level cue to word order and to the information status of the sentential arguments. The results highlight the important role of the type of referring expression on the acquisition of word order variation and indicate that the production-comprehension asymmetry is reduced when the type of referring expression is considered.},
  language  = {en}
}
@misc{SchroederGrimmSchulzetal.2017,
  author    = {Schr{\"o}der, Astrid and Grimm, Angela and Schulz, Petra and Heide, Judith and Frank, Ulrike and Wahl, Michael and Lampe, Leonie and Fieder, Nora and Krajenbrink, Trudy and Nickels, Lyndsey and Bykova, Ksenia and Wilzek, Alexa and van den Engl-Hoek, Lenie and Huckabee, Maggie-Lee and Balzer, Julia and Ebert, Susanne and Kaps, Hella and Matteschk, Maria and Tzsch{\"o}ckel, Katharina Andrea and Dressel, Katharina and Kr{\"o}ger, Bernd J. and Diwoky, Laura Cassandra and Breitenstein, Sarah and Bruno, Giulia and Lassotta, Romy and Adani, Flavia and Ferchland, Lisa and Baatz, Charlotte and Netzebandt, Jonka and Heyde, Cornelia J. and Cleland, Joanne and Scobbie, James M. and Roxburgh, Zoe and Schmidt, Jessica},
  title     = {Spektrum Patholinguistik Band 10. Schwerpunktthema: Panorama Patholinguistik: Sprachwissenschaft trifft Sprachtherapie},
  number    = {10},
  editor    = {Adelt, Anne and Yetim, {\"O}zlem and Otto, Constanze and Fritzsche, Tom},
  publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam},
  address   = {Potsdam},
  organization    = {Verband f{\"u}r Patholinguistik e. V. (vpl)},
  isbn      = {978-3-86956-404-3},
  issn      = {1866-9085},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-39701},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-397019},
  pages     = {vii, 225 S.},
  year      = {2017},
  abstract  = {Das 10. Herbsttreffen Patholinguistik mit dem Schwerpunktthema »Panorama Patholinguistik: Sprachwissenschaft trifft Sprachtherapie« fand am 19.11.2016 in Potsdam statt. Das Herbsttreffen wird seit 2007 j{\"a}hrlich vom Verband f{\"u}r Patholinguistik e.V. (vpl) durchgef{\"u}hrt. Der vorliegende Tagungsband beinhaltet die vier Hauptvortr{\"a}ge zum Schwerpunktthema sowie Beitr{\"a}ge zu den Kurzvortr{\"a}gen »Patholinguistik im Fokus« und der Posterpr{\"a}sentationen zu weiteren Themen aus der sprachtherapeutischen Forschung und Praxis.},
  language  = {de}
}
@phdthesis{HolzgrefeLang2017,
  author    = {Holzgrefe-Lang, Julia},
  title     = {Prosodic phrase boundary perception in adults and infants},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-405943},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {VIII, 141},
  year      = {2017},
  abstract  = {Prosody is a rich source of information that heavily supports spoken language comprehension. In particular, prosodic phrase boundaries divide the continuous speech stream into chunks reflecting the semantic and syntactic structure of an utterance. This chunking or prosodic phrasing plays a critical role in both spoken language processing and language acquisition. Aiming at a better understanding of the underlying processing mechanisms and their acquisition, the present work investigates factors that influence prosodic phrase boundary perception in adults and infants. Using the event-related potential (ERP) technique, three experimental studies examined the role of prosodic context (i.e., phrase length) in German phrase boundary perception and of the main prosodic boundary cues, namely pitch change, final lengthening, and pause. With regard to the boundary cues, the dissertation focused on the questions which cues or cue combination are essential for the perception of a prosodic boundary and on whether and how this cue weighting develops during infancy. Using ERPs is advantageous because the technique captures the immediate impact of (linguistic) information during on-line processing. Moreover, as it can be applied independently of specific task demands or an overt response performance, it can be used with both infants and adults. ERPs are particularly suitable to study the time course and underlying mechanisms of boundary perception, because a specific ERP component, the Closure Positive Shift (CPS) is well established as neuro-physiological indicator of prosodic boundary perception in adults. The results of the three experimental studies first underpin that the prosodic context plays an immediate role in the processing of prosodic boundary information. Moreover, the second study reveals that adult listeners perceive a prosodic boundary also on the basis of a sub-set of the boundary cues available in the speech signal. Both ERP and simultaneously collected behavioral data (i.e., prosodic judgements) suggest that the combination of pitch change and final lengthening triggers boundary perception; however, when presented as single cues, neither pitch change nor final lengthening were sufficient. Finally, testing six- and eight-month-old infants shows that the early sensitivity for prosodic information is reflected in a brain response resembling the adult CPS. For both age groups, brain responses to prosodic boundaries cued by pitch change and final lengthening revealed a positivity that can be interpreted as a CPS-like infant ERP component. In contrast, but comparable to the adults' response pattern, pitch change as a single cue does not provoke an infant CPS. These results show that infant phrase boundary perception is not exclusively based on pause detection and hint at an early ability to exploit subtle, relational prosodic cues in speech perception.},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Trautwein2019,
  author    = {Trautwein, Jutta},
  title     = {The Mental lexicon in acquisition},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-43431},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-434314},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {IV, 177},
  year      = {2019},
  abstract  = {The individual's mental lexicon comprises all known words as well related infor-mation on semantics, orthography and phonology. Moreover, entries connect due to simi-larities in these language domains building a large network structure. The access to lexical information is crucial for processing of words and sentences. Thus, a lack of information in-hibits the retrieval and can cause language processing difficulties. Hence, the composition of the mental lexicon is essential for language skills and its assessment is a central topic of lin-guistic and educational research. In early childhood, measurement of the mental lexicon is uncomplicated, for example through parental questionnaires or the analysis of speech samples. However, with growing content the measurement becomes more challenging: With more and more words in the mental lexicon, the inclusion of all possible known words into a test or questionnaire be-comes impossible. That is why there is a lack of methods to assess the mental lexicon for school children and adults. For the same reason, there are only few findings on the courses of lexical development during school years as well as its specific effect on other language skills. This dissertation is supposed to close this gap by pursuing two major goals: First, I wanted to develop a method to assess lexical features, namely lexicon size and lexical struc-ture, for children of different age groups. Second, I aimed to describe the results of this method in terms of lexical development of size and structure. Findings were intended to help understanding mechanisms of lexical acquisition and inform theories on vocabulary growth. The approach is based on the dictionary method where a sample of words out of a dictionary is tested and results are projected on the whole dictionary to determine an indi-vidual's lexicon size. In the present study, the childLex corpus, a written language corpus for children in German, served as the basis for lexicon size estimation. The corpus is assumed to comprise all words children attending primary school could know. Testing a sample of words out of the corpus enables projection of the results on the whole corpus. For this purpose, a vocabulary test based on the corpus was developed. Afterwards, test performance of virtual participants was simulated by drawing different lexicon sizes from the corpus and comparing whether the test items were included in the lexicon or not. This allowed determination of the relation between test performance and total lexicon size and thus could be transferred to a sample of real participants. Besides lexicon size, lexical content could be approximated with this approach and analyzed in terms of lexical structure. To pursue the presented aims and establish the sampling method, I conducted three consecutive studies. Study 1 includes the development of a vocabulary test based on the childLex corpus. The testing was based on the yes/no format and included three versions for different age groups. The validation grounded on the Rasch Model shows that it is a valid instrument to measure vocabulary for primary school children in German. In Study 2, I estab-lished the method to estimate lexicon sizes and present results on lexical development dur-ing primary school. Plausible results demonstrate that lexical growth follows a quadratic function starting with about 6,000 words at the beginning of school and about 73,000 words on average for young adults. Moreover, the study revealed large interindividual differences. Study 3 focused on the analysis of network structures and their development in the mental lexicon due to orthographic similarities. It demonstrates that networks possess small-word characteristics and decrease in interconnectivity with age. Taken together, this dissertation provides an innovative approach for the assessment and description of the development of the mental lexicon from primary school onwards. The studies determine recent results on lexical acquisition in different age groups that were miss-ing before. They impressively show the importance of this period and display the existence of extensive interindividual differences in lexical development. One central aim of future research needs to address the causes and prevention of these differences. In addition, the application of the method for further research (e.g. the adaptation for other target groups) and teaching purposes (e.g. adaptation of texts for different target groups) appears to be promising.},
  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}
}
@phdthesis{Unger2023,
  author    = {Unger, Annika},
  title     = {Fr{\"u}he Wortsegmentierung im monolingualen und bilingualen Spracherwerb},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-58297},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-582970},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {VIII, 132},
  year      = {2023},
  abstract  = {Die vorgelegte Dissertation befasst sich mit der fr{\"u}hen Wortsegmentierung im monolingualen und bilingualen Spracherwerb. Die Wortsegmentierung stellt eine der wesentlichen Herausforderungen f{\"u}r S{\"a}uglinge im Spracherwerb dar, da gesprochene Sprache kontinuierlich ist und Wortgrenzen nicht zuverl{\"a}ssig durch akustische Pausen markiert werden. Zahlreiche Studien konnten f{\"u}r mehrere Sprachen zeigen, dass sich Segmentierungsf{\"a}higkeiten von monolingualen S{\"a}uglingen zwischen dem 6. und 12. Lebensmonat herausbilden (z. B. Englisch: Jusczyk, Houston \& Newsome, 1999; Franz{\"o}sisch: Nazzi, Mersad, Sundara, Iakimova \& Polka, 2014; Deutsch: H{\"o}hle \& Weissenborn, 2003; Bartels, Darcy \& H{\"o}hle, 2009). Fr{\"u}he Wortsegmentierungsf{\"a}higkeiten sind sprachspezifisch (Polka \& Sundara, 2012). Crosslinguistische Studien zeigten, dass eine sprach{\"u}bergreifende Segmentierung f{\"u}r einsprachig aufwachsende S{\"a}uglinge nur erfolgreich bew{\"a}ltigt wird, wenn die nicht-native Sprache rhythmische Eigenschaften mit ihrer Muttersprache teilt (Houston, Jusczyk, Kuijpers, Coolen \& Cutler, 2000; H{\"o}hle, 2002; Polka \& Sundara, 2012). In vier Studien dieser Dissertation wurden mit behavioralen (Headturn Preference Paradigma) und elektrophysiologischen Untersuchungen (Elektroenzephalografie) monolingual Deutsch aufwachsende und bilingual Deutsch-Franz{\"o}sisch aufwachsende S{\"a}uglinge im Alter von 9 Monaten untersucht. Dabei wurde der Frage nachgegangen, ob monolingual Deutsch aufwachsende S{\"a}uglinge im Alter von 9 Monaten in der Lage sind, ihre Muttersprache Deutsch und die rhythmisch un{\"a}hnliche Sprache Franz{\"o}sisch zu segmentieren. Mit anderen Worten: K{\"o}nnen monolinguale S{\"a}uglinge im Alter von 9 Monaten ihre Segmentierungsprozeduren modifizieren bzw. von ihrer bevorzugten Segmentierung abweichen, um auch nicht-muttersprachlichen Input erfolgreich zu segmentieren? Bezogen auf die bilingualen Sprachlerner wurde der Frage nachgegangen, ob zweisprachig aufwachsende S{\"a}uglinge vergleichbare Segmentierungsf{\"a}higkeiten wie monolingual aufwachsende S{\"a}uglinge aufweisen und ob sich zudem ein Einfluss der Sprachdominanz auf die Entwicklung der Wortsegmentierungsf{\"a}higkeiten in einer bilingualen Population zeigt. Durch die gew{\"a}hlten Methoden konnten sowohl Verhaltenskorrelate als auch elektrophysiologische Korrelate zur Beantwortung der Fragestellungen herangezogen werden. Dar{\"u}ber hinaus erm{\"o}glichte das EEG durch ereigniskorrelierte Potenziale (EKPs) einen Einblick in Lern- und Verarbeitungsprozesse, die mit Verhaltensmethoden nicht erfassbar waren. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass monolingual Deutsch aufwachsende S{\"a}uglinge im Alter von 9 Monaten sowohl ihre Muttersprache als auch die nicht-native Sprache Franz{\"o}sisch erfolgreich segmentieren. Die F{\"a}higkeit zur Segmentierung der nicht-nativen Sprache Franz{\"o}sisch wird jedoch beeinflusst von der Muttersprache: monolinguale S{\"a}uglinge, die mit Franz{\"o}sisch zuerst getestet wurden, segmentierten sowohl das Franz{\"o}sische als auch das im Anschluss pr{\"a}sentierte deutsche Sprachmaterial. Monolinguale S{\"a}uglinge die zuerst mit Deutsch und anschließend mit Franz{\"o}sisch getestet wurden, segmentierten die deutschen Stimuli, jedoch nicht das franz{\"o}sische Sprachmaterial. Bilingual Deutsch-Franz{\"o}sisch aufwachsende S{\"a}uglinge segmentieren im Alter von 9 Monaten beide Muttersprachen erfolgreich. Die Ergebnisse deuten zudem auf einen Einfluss der Sprachdominanz auf die Wortsegmentierungsf{\"a}higkeiten von zweisprachig aufwachsenden S{\"a}uglingen. Die balancierten Bilingualen segmentieren beide Muttersprachen erfolgreich, die unbalancierten Bilingualen zeigen nur f{\"u}r die jeweils dominante Sprache eine erfolgreiche Segmentierung. Zusammenfassend liefert diese Arbeit erstmals Evidenz f{\"u}r eine erfolgreiche sprach{\"u}bergreifende Segmentierung in prosodisch differenten Sprachen unterschiedlicher Rhythmusklassen in einer monolingualen Population. Dar{\"u}ber hinaus liefern die Studien dieser Arbeit Evidenz daf{\"u}r, dass bilingual aufwachsende S{\"a}uglinge bezogen auf die Wortsegmentierungsf{\"a}higkeiten eine vergleichbare Entwicklung wie einsprachig aufwachsende Sprachlerner zeigen. Dieses Ergebnis erweitert die Datenlage bisheriger Studien, die f{\"u}r verschiedene Entwicklungsschritte im Spracherwerb keine Verz{\"o}gerung, sondern eine zu monolingual aufwachsenden S{\"a}uglingen vergleichbare Entwicklung innerhalb einer bilingualen Population nachweisen konnten (Sprachdiskrimination: Byers-Heinlein, Burns \& Werker, 2010; Bosch \& Sebastian-Galles, 1997; Phonemdiskrimination: Albareda-Castellot, Pons \& Sebasti{\´a}n-Gall{\´e}s, 2011; Wahrnehmung rhythmischer Eigenschaften: Bijeljac-Babic, H{\"o}hle \& Nazzi, 2016).},
  language  = {de}
}
@phdthesis{Wellmann2023,
  author    = {Wellmann, Caroline},
  title     = {Early sensitivity to prosodic phrase boundary cues: Behavioral evidence from German-learning infants},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-57393},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-573937},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {xii, 136},
  year      = {2023},
  abstract  = {This dissertation seeks to shed light on the relation of phrasal prosody and developmental speech perception in German-learning infants. Three independent empirical studies explore the role of acoustic correlates of major prosodic boundaries, specifically pitch change, final lengthening, and pause, in infant boundary perception. Moreover, it was examined whether the sensitivity to prosodic phrase boundary markings changes during the first year of life as a result of perceptual attunement to the ambient language (Aslin \& Pisoni, 1980). Using the headturn preference procedure six- and eight-month-old monolingual German-learning infants were tested on their discrimination of two different prosodic groupings of the same list of coordinated names either with or without an internal IPB after the second name, that is, [Moni und Lilli] [und Manu] or [Moni und Lilli und Manu]. The boundary marking was systematically varied with respect to single prosodic cues or specific cue combinations. Results revealed that six- and eight-month-old German-learning infants successfully detect the internal prosodic boundary when it is signaled by all the three main boundary cues pitch change, final lengthening, and pause. For eight-, but not for six-month-olds, the combination of pitch change and final lengthening, without the occurrence of a pause, is sufficient. This mirrors an adult-like perception by eight-months (Holzgrefe-Lang et al., 2016). Six-month-olds detect a prosodic phrase boundary signaled by final lengthening and pause. The findings suggest a developmental change in German prosodic boundary cue perception from a strong reliance on the pause cue at six months to a differentiated sensitivity to the more subtle cues pitch change and final lengthening at eight months. Neither for six- nor for eight-month-olds the occurrence of pitch change or final lengthening as single cues is sufficient, similar to what has been observed for adult speakers of German (Holzgrefe-Lang et al., 2016). The present dissertation provides new scientific knowledge on infants' sensitivity to individual prosodic phrase boundary cues in the first year of life. Methodologically, the studies are pathbreaking since they used exactly the same stimulus materials - phonologically thoroughly controlled lists of names - that have also been used with adults (Holzgrefe-Lang et al., 2016) and with infants in a neurophysiological paradigm (Holzgrefe-Lang, Wellmann, H{\"o}hle, \& Wartenburger, 2018), allowing for comparisons across age (six/ eight months and adults) and method (behavioral vs. neurophysiological methods). Moreover, materials are suited to be transferred to other languages allowing for a crosslinguistic comparison. Taken together with a study with similar French materials (van Ommen et al., 2020) the observed change in sensitivity in German-learning infants can be interpreted as a language-specific one, from an initial language-general processing mechanism that primarily focuses on the presence of pauses to a language-specific processing that takes into account prosodic properties available in the ambient language. The developmental pattern is discussed as an interplay of acoustic salience, prosodic typology (prosodic regularity) and cue reliability.},
  language  = {en}
}
@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}
}