@article{vanOmmenBollAvetisyanLarrazaetal.2020, author = {van Ommen, Sandrien and Boll-Avetisyan, Natalie and Larraza, Saioa and Wellmann, Caroline and Bijeljac-Babic, Ranka and H{\"o}hle, Barbara and Nazzi, Thierry}, title = {Language-specific prosodic acquisition}, series = {Journal of memory and language: JML}, volume = {112}, journal = {Journal of memory and language: JML}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {0749-596X}, doi = {10.1016/j.jml.2020.104108}, pages = {16}, year = {2020}, abstract = {This study compares the development of prosodic processing in French- and German-learning infants. The emergence of language-specific perception of phrase boundaries was directly tested using the same stimuli across these two languages. French-learning (Experiment 1, 2) and German-learning 6- and 8-month-olds (Experiment 3) listened to the same French noun sequences with or without major prosodic boundaries ([Loulou et Manou] [et Nina]; [Loulou et Manou et Nina], respectively). The boundaries were either naturally cued (Experiment 1), or cued exclusively by pitch and duration (Experiment 2, 3). French-learning 6- and 8-month-olds both perceived the natural boundary, but neither perceived the boundary when only two cues were present. In contrast, German-learning infants develop from not perceiving the two-cue boundary at 6 months to perceiving it at 8 months, just like German-learning 8-month-olds listening to German (Wellmann, Holzgrefe, Truckenbrodt, Wartenburger, \& Hohle, 2012). In a control experiment (Experiment 4), we found little difference between German and French adult listeners, suggesting that later, French listeners catch up with German listeners. Taken together, these cross-linguistic differences in the perception of identical stimuli provide direct evidence for language-specific development of prosodic boundary perception.}, language = {en} } @article{PfeifferWeiss2022, author = {Pfeiffer, Martin and Weiss, Clarissa}, title = {Reenactments during tellings}, series = {Journal of pragmatics : an interdisciplinary journal of language studies}, volume = {189}, journal = {Journal of pragmatics : an interdisciplinary journal of language studies}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {0378-2166}, doi = {10.1016/j.pragma.2021.11.017}, pages = {92 -- 113}, year = {2022}, abstract = {In this paper, we draw on German dyadic face-to-face conversations among friends in order to examine the interactional functions of gaze in reenactments, i.e. "re-presentations or depictions" (Sidnell, 2006: 377) of previously experienced or imagined events. Firstly, we show that reenactors use several different gaze patterns depending on whether the depicted original event is dialogic or non-dialogic. Secondly, we compare the use of different resources for initiating reenactments and switching roles during reenactments with regard to the interactional function of the different alternatives. Specifically, we describe a multimodal practice for switching characters during reenactments that are designed to invite laughter. In sum, the findings add to our knowledge about the various communicative functions of gaze in social interaction.}, language = {en} } @article{MarimonTarterHoehleLangus2022, author = {Marimon Tarter, Mireia and H{\"o}hle, Barbara and Langus, Alan}, title = {Pupillary entrainment reveals individual differences in cue weighting in 9-month-old German-learning infants}, series = {Cognition : international journal of cognitive science}, volume = {224}, journal = {Cognition : international journal of cognitive science}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {0010-0277}, doi = {10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105054}, pages = {15}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Young infants can segment continuous speech with statistical as well as prosodic cues. Understanding how these cues interact can be informative about how infants solve the segmentation problem. Here we investigate how German-speaking adults and 9-month-old German-learning infants weigh statistical and prosodic cues when segmenting continuous speech. We measured participants' pupil size while they were familiarized with a continuous speech stream where prosodic cues were pitted off against transitional probabilities. Adult participants' changes in pupil size synchronized with the occurrence of prosodic words during the familiarization and the temporal alignment of these pupillary changes was predictive of adult participants' performance at test. Further, 9-month-olds as a group failed to consistently segment the familiarization stream with prosodic or statistical cues. However, the variability in temporal alignment of the pupillary changes at word frequency showed that prosodic and statistical cues compete for dominance when segmenting continuous speech. A followup language development questionnaire at 40 months of age suggested that infants who entrained to prosodic words performed better on a vocabulary task and those infants who relied more on statistical cues performed better on grammatical tasks. Together these results suggest that statistics and prosody may serve different roles in speech segmentation in infancy.}, 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} } @article{ChenSzendroiCrainetal.2018, author = {Chen, Hui-Ching and Szendroi, Krizsta and Crain, Stephen and H{\"o}hle, Barbara}, title = {Understanding Prosodic Focus Marking in Mandarin Chinese}, series = {Journal of Psycholinguistic Research}, volume = {48}, journal = {Journal of Psycholinguistic Research}, number = {1}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {New York}, issn = {0090-6905}, doi = {10.1007/s10936-018-9580-9}, pages = {19 -- 32}, year = {2018}, abstract = {This study investigated whether Mandarin speakers interpret prosodic information as focus markers in a sentence-picture verification task. Previous production studies have shown that both Mandarin-speaking adults and Mandarin-speaking children mark focus by prosodic information (Ouyang and Kaiser in Lang Cogn Neurosc 30(1-2):57-72, 2014; Yang and Chen in Prosodic focus marking in Chinese four-and eight-year-olds, 2014). However, while prosodic focus marking did not seem to affect sentence comprehension in adults Mandarin-speaking children showed enhanced sentence comprehension when the sentence focus was marked by prosodic information in a previous study (Chen in Appl Psycholinguist 19(4):553-582, 1998). The present study revisited this difference between Mandarin speaking adults and children by applying a newly designed task that tested the use of prosodic information to identify the sentence focus. No evidence was obtained that Mandarin-speaking children (as young as 3years of age) adhered more strongly to prosodic information than adults but that word order was the strongest cue for their focus interpretation. Our findings support the view that children attune to the specific means of information structure marking in their ambient language at an early age.}, language = {en} } @article{GenzelIshiharaSuranyi2015, author = {Genzel, Susanne and Ishihara, Shinichiro and Suranyi, Balazs}, title = {The prosodic expression of focus, contrast and givenness: A production study of Hungarian}, series = {Lingua : international review of general linguistics}, volume = {165}, journal = {Lingua : international review of general linguistics}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {0024-3841}, doi = {10.1016/j.lingua.2014.07.010}, pages = {183 -- 204}, year = {2015}, abstract = {This paper reports the results of a production experiment that explores the prosodic realization of focus in Hungarian, a language that is characterized by obligatory syntactic focus marking. Our study investigates narrow focus in sentences in which focus is unambiguously marked by syntactic means, comparing it to broad focus sentences. Potential independent effects of the salience (textual givenness) of the background of the narrow focus and the contrastiveness of the focus are controlled for and are also examined. The results show that both continuous phonetic measures and categorical factors such as the distribution of contour types are affected by the focus-related factors, despite the presence of syntactic focus marking. The phonetic effects found are mostly parallel to those of typical prosodic focus marking languages like English. The prosodic prominence required of focus is realized through changes to the scaling and slope of F0 targets and contours. The asymmetric prominence relation between the focus and the background can be expressed not only by the phonetic marking of the prominence of the focused element, but also by the phonetic marking of the reduced prominence of the background. Furthermore, contrastiveness of focus and (textual) givenness of the background show independent phonetic effects, both of them affecting the realization of the background. These results are argued to shed light on alternative approaches to the information structural notion of contrastive focus and the relation between the notions of focus and givenness. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.}, language = {en} } @article{WardVegaBaumann2012, author = {Ward, Nigel G. and Vega, Alejandro and Baumann, Timo}, title = {Prosodic and temporal features for language modeling for dialog}, series = {Speech communication}, volume = {54}, journal = {Speech communication}, number = {2}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {0167-6393}, doi = {10.1016/j.specom.2011.07.009}, pages = {161 -- 174}, year = {2012}, abstract = {If we can model the cognitive and communicative processes underlying speech, we should be able to better predict what a speaker will do. With this idea as inspiration, we examine a number of prosodic and timing features as potential sources of information on what words the speaker is likely to say next. In spontaneous dialog we find that word probabilities do vary with such features. Using perplexity as the metric, the most informative of these included recent speaking rate, volume, and pitch, and time until end of utterance. Using simple combinations of such features to augment trigram language models gave up to a 8.4\% perplexity benefit on the Switchboard corpus, and up to a 1.0\% relative reduction in word error rate (0.3\% absolute) on the Verbmobil II corpus.}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{Stavropoulou2013, author = {Stavropoulou, Pepi}, title = {On the status of contrast : evidence from the prosodic domain}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-66066}, year = {2013}, abstract = {Recent models of Information Structure (IS) identify a low level contrast feature that functions within the topic and focus of the utterance. This study investigates the exact nature of this feature based on empirical evidence from a controlled read speech experiment on the prosodic realization of different levels of contrast in Modern Greek. Results indicate that only correction is truly contrastive, and that it is similarly realized in both topic and focus, suggesting that contrast is an independent IS dimension. Non default focus position is further identified as a parameter that triggers a prosodically marked rendition, similar to correction.}, language = {en} } @article{FeryDrenhaus2008, author = {F{\´e}ry, Caroline and Drenhaus, Heiner}, title = {Single prosodic phrase sentences}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19371}, year = {2008}, abstract = {A series of production and perception experiments investigating the prosody and well-formedness of special sentences, called Wide Focus Partial Fronting (WFPF), which consist of only one prosodic phrase and a unique initial accented argument, are reported on here. The results help us to decide between different models of German prosody. The absence of pitch height difference on the accent of the sentence speaks in favor of a relative model of prosody, in which accents are scaled relative to each other, and against models in which pitch accents are scaled in an absolute way. The results also speak for a model in which syntax, but not information structure, influences the prosodic phrasing. Finally, perception experiments show that the prosodic structure of sentences with a marked word order needs to be presented for grammaticality judgments. Presentation of written material only is not enough, and falsifies the results.}, language = {en} } @article{AsherReese2007, author = {Asher, Nicholas and Reese, Brian}, title = {Intonation and discourse}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19399}, year = {2007}, abstract = {This paper surveys a range of constructions in which prosody affects discourse function and discourse structure.We discuss English tag questions, negative polar questions, and what we call "focus" questions. We postulate that these question types are complex speech acts and outline an analysis in Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT) to account for the interactions between prosody and discourse.}, language = {en} } @article{FeryHerbst2004, author = {F{\´e}ry, Caroline and Herbst, Laura}, title = {German sentence accent revisited}, series = {Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632}, journal = {Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632}, number = {1}, editor = {Ishihara, Shinichiro and Schmitz, Michaela and Schwarz, Anne}, issn = {1614-4708}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-8273}, pages = {43 -- 75}, year = {2004}, abstract = {Results of a production experiment on the placement of sentence accent in German are reported. The hypothesis that German fulfills some of the most widely accepted rules of accent assignment— predicting focus domain integration—was only partly confirmed. Adjacency between argument and verb induces a single accent on the argument, as recognized in the literature, but interruption of this sequence by a modifier often induces remodeling of the accent pattern with a single accent on the modifier. The verb is rarely stressed. All models based on linear alignment or adjacency between elements belonging to a single accent domain fail to account for this result. A cyclic analysis of prosodic domain formation is proposed in an optimality-theoretic framework that can explain the accent pattern. Japanese wh-questions always exhibit focus intonation (FI). Furthermore, the domain of FI exhibits a correspondence to the wh-scope. I propose that this phonology-semantics correspondence is a result of the cyclic computation of FI, which is explained under the notion of Multiple Spell-Out in the recent Minimalist framework. The proposed analysis makes two predictions: (1) embedding of an FI into another is possible; (2) (overt) movement of a wh-phrase to a phase edge position causes a mismatch between FI and wh-scope. Both predictions are tested experimentally, and shown to be borne out.}, language = {en} }