@phdthesis{Shipova2024,
  author    = {Shipova, Evgeniya},
  title     = {Formal analysis of {\`e}to-clefts in Russian: syntax and semantics},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-63014},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-630149},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {219},
  year      = {2024},
  abstract  = {{\`E}to-clefts are Russian focus constructions with the demonstrative pronoun {\`e}to 'this' at the beginning: "{\`E}to Mark vyigral gonku" ("It was Mark who won the race"). They are often being compared with English it-clefts, German es-clefts, as well as the corresponding focus-background structures in other languages. In terms of semantics, {\`e}to-clefts have two important properties which are cross-linguistically typical for clefts: existence presupposition ("Someone won the race") and exhaustivity ("Nobody except Mark won the race"). However, the exhaustivity effects are not as strong as exhaustivity effects in structures with the exclusive only and require more research. At the same time, the question if the syntactic structure of {\`e}to-clefts matches the biclausal structure of English and German clefts, remains open. There are arguments in favor of biclausality, as well as monoclausality. Besides, there is no consistency regarding the status of {\`e}to itself. Finally, the information structure of {\`e}to-clefts has remained underexplored in the existing literature. This research investigates the information-structural, syntactic, and semantic properties of Russian clefts, both theoretically (supported by examples from Russian text corpora and judgments from native speakers) and experimentally. It is determined which desired changes in the information structure motivate native speakers to choose an {\`e}to-cleft and not the canonical structure or other focus realization tools. Novel syntactic tests are conducted to find evidence for bi-/monoclausality of {\`e}to-clefts, as well as for base-generation or movement of the cleft pivot. It is hypothesized that {\`e}to has a certain important function in clefts, and its status is investigated. Finally, new experiments on the nature of exhaustivity in {\`e}to-clefts are conducted. They allow for direct cross-linguistic comparison, using an incremental-information paradigm with truth-value judgments. In terms of information structure, this research makes a new proposal that presents {\`e}to-clefts as structures with an inherent focus-background bipartitioning. Even though {\`e}to-clefts are used in typical focus contexts, evidence was found that {\`e}to-clefts (as well as Russian thetic clefts) allow for both new information focus and contrastive focus. {\`E}to-clefts are pragmatically acceptable when a singleton answer to the implied question is expected (e.g. "It was Mark who won the race" but not "It was Mark who came to the party"). Importantly, {\`e}to in Russian clefts is neither dummy, nor redundant, but is a topic expression; conveys familiarity which triggers existence presupposition; refers to an instantiated event, or a known/perceivable situation; finally, {\`e}to plays an important role in the spoken language as a tool for speech coherency and a focus marker. In terms of syntax, this research makes a new monoclausal proposal and shows evidence that the cleft pivot undergoes movement to the left peripheral position. {\`E}to is proposed to be TopP. Finally, in terms of semantics, a novel cross-linguistic evaluation of Russian clefts is made. Experiments show that the exhaustivity inference in {\`e}to-clefts is not robust. Participants used different strategies in resolving exhaustivity, falling into 2 groups: one group considered {\`e}to-clefts exhaustive, while another group considered them non-exhaustive. Hence, there is evidence for the pragmatic nature of exhaustivity in {\`e}to-clefts. The experimental results for {\`e}to-clefts are similar to the experimental results for clefts in German, French and Akan. It is concluded that speakers use different tools available in their languages to produce structures with similar interpretive properties.},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Atasoy2022,
  author    = {Atasoy, Atilla},
  title     = {Production, perception, and processing of focus in Turkish},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-54815},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-548156},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {xxiii, 267},
  year      = {2022},
  abstract  = {The main goal of this dissertation is to experimentally investigate how focus is realised, perceived, and processed by native Turkish speakers, independent of preconceived notions of positional restrictions. Crucially, there are various issues and scientific debates surrounding focus in the Turkish language in the existing literature (chapter 1). It is argued in this dissertation that two factors led to the stagnant literature on focus in Turkish: the lack of clearly defined, modern understandings of information structure and its fundamental notion of focus, and the ongoing and ill-defined debate surrounding the question of whether there is an immediately preverbal focus position in Turkish. These issues gave rise to specific research questions addressed across this dissertation. Specifically, we were interested in how the focus dimensions such as focus size (comparing narrow constituent and broad sentence focus), focus target (comparing narrow subject and narrow object focus), and focus type (comparing new-information and contrastive focus) affect Turkish focus realisation and, in turn, focus comprehension when speakers are provided syntactic freedom to position focus as they see fit. To provide data on these core goals, we presented three behavioural experiments based on a systematic framework of information structure and its notions (chapter 2): (i) a production task with trigger wh-questions and contextual animations manipulated to elicit the focus dimensions of interest (chapter 3), (ii) a timed acceptability judgment task in listening to the recorded answers in our production task (chapter 4), and (iii) a self-paced reading task to gather on-line processing data (chapter 5). Based on the results of the conducted experiments, multiple conclusions are made in this dissertation (chapter 6). Firstly, this dissertation demonstrated empirically that there is no focus position in Turkish, neither in the sense of a strict focus position language nor as a focally loaded position facilitating focus perception and/or processing. While focus is, in fact, syntactically variable in the Turkish preverbal area, this is a consequence of movement triggered by other IS aspects like topicalisation and backgrounding, and the observational markedness of narrow subject focus compared to narrow object focus. As for focus type in Turkish, this dimension is not associated with word order in production, perception, or processing. Significant acoustic correlates of focus size (broad sentence focus vs narrow constituent focus) and focus target (narrow subject focus vs narrow object focus) were observed in fundamental frequency and intensity, representing focal boost, (postfocal) deaccentuation, and the presence or absence of a phrase-final rise in the prenucleus, while the perceivability of these effects remains to be investigated. In contrast, no acoustic correlates of focus type in simple, three-word transitive structures were observed, with focus types being interchangeable in mismatched question-answer pairs. Overall, the findings of this dissertation highlight the need for experimental investigations regarding focus in Turkish, as theoretical predictions do not necessarily align with experimental data. As such, the fallacy of implying causation from correlation should be strictly kept in mind, especially when constructions coincide with canonical structures, such as the immediately preverbal position in narrow object foci. Finally, numerous open questions remain to be explored, especially as focus and word order in Turkish are multifaceted. As shown, givenness is a confounding factor when investigating focus types, while thematic role assignment potentially confounds word order preferences. Further research based on established, modern information structure frameworks is needed, with chapter 5 concluding with specific recommendations for such future research.},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Burmester2019,
  author    = {Burmester, Juliane},
  title     = {Linguistic and visual salience in sentence comprehension},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-44315},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-443155},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {XI, 165},
  year      = {2019},
  abstract  = {Interlocutors typically link their utterances to the discourse environment and enrich communication by linguistic (e.g., information packaging) and extra-linguistic (e.g., eye gaze, gestures) means to optimize information transfer. Psycholinguistic studies underline that ‒for meaning computation‒ listeners profit from linguistic and visual cues that draw their focus of attention to salient information. This dissertation is the first work that examines how linguistic compared to visual salience cues influence sentence comprehension using the very same experimental paradigms and materials, that is, German subject-before-object (SO) and object-before-subject (OS) sentences, across the two cue modalities. Linguistic salience was induced by indicating a referent as the aboutness topic. Visual salience was induced by implicit (i.e., unconscious) or explicit (i.e., shared) manipulations of listeners' attention to a depicted referent. In Study 1, a selective, facilitative impact of linguistic salience on the context-sensitive OS word order was found using offline comprehensibility judgments. More precisely, during online sentence processing, this impact was characterized by a reduced sentence-initial Late positivity which reflects reduced processing costs for updating the current mental representation of discourse. This facilitative impact of linguistic salience was not replicated by means of an implicit visual cue (Study 2) shown to modulate word order preferences during sentence production. However, a gaze shift to a depicted referent as an indicator of shared attention eased sentence-initial processing similar to linguistic salience as revealed by reduced reading times (Study 3). Yet, this cue did not modulate the strong subject-antecedent preference during later pronoun resolution like linguistic salience. Taken together, these findings suggest a significant impact of linguistic and visual salience cues on sentence comprehension, which substantiates that both the information delivered via language and via the visual environment is integrated into the mental representation of the discourse; but, the way how salience is induced is crucial to its impact.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{Staudacher2019,
  author    = {Staudacher, Peter},
  title     = {Plato on nature (φύσις) and convention (συνθήκη)},
  series = {Of trees and birds. A Festschrift for Gisbert Fanselow},
  journal   = {Of trees and birds. A Festschrift for Gisbert Fanselow},
  publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam},
  address   = {Potsdam},
  isbn      = {978-3-86956-457-9},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-43319},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-433193},
  pages     = {395 -- 411},
  year      = {2019},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{Gafos2019,
  author    = {Gafos, Adamantios I.},
  title     = {Multistability in speech and other activities},
  series = {Of trees and birds. A Festschrift for Gisbert Fanselow},
  journal   = {Of trees and birds. A Festschrift for Gisbert Fanselow},
  publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam},
  address   = {Potsdam},
  isbn      = {978-3-86956-457-9},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-43258},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-432580},
  pages     = {343 -- 360},
  year      = {2019},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{Stede2019,
  author    = {Stede, Manfred},
  title     = {Noch kindlich oder schon jugendlich? Oder gar erwachsen?},
  series = {Of trees and birds. A Festschrift for Gisbert Fanselow},
  journal   = {Of trees and birds. A Festschrift for Gisbert Fanselow},
  publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam},
  address   = {Potsdam},
  isbn      = {978-3-86956-457-9},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-43256},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-432569},
  pages     = {323 -- 334},
  year      = {2019},
  language  = {de}
}
@article{HaeusslerMuchaSchmidtetal.2019,
  author    = {H{\"a}ussler, Jana and Mucha, Anna and Schmidt, Andreas and Weskott, Thomas and Wierzba, Marta},
  title     = {Experimenting with Lurchi},
  series = {Of trees and birds. A Festschrift for Gisbert Fanselow},
  journal   = {Of trees and birds. A Festschrift for Gisbert Fanselow},
  publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam},
  address   = {Potsdam},
  isbn      = {978-3-86956-457-9},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-43255},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-432553},
  pages     = {307 -- 321},
  year      = {2019},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{Zimmermann2019,
  author    = {Zimmermann, Malte},
  title     = {Im Korpus gibt's keine V{\"o}gel nicht},
  series = {Of trees and birds. A Festschrift for Gisbert Fanselow},
  journal   = {Of trees and birds. A Festschrift for Gisbert Fanselow},
  publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam},
  address   = {Potsdam},
  isbn      = {978-3-86956-457-9},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-43254},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-432541},
  pages     = {287 -- 306},
  year      = {2019},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{FominyamTran2019,
  author    = {Fominyam, Henry and Tran, Thuan},
  title     = {Beware of 'discourse markers'},
  series = {Of trees and birds. A Festschrift for Gisbert Fanselow},
  journal   = {Of trees and birds. A Festschrift for Gisbert Fanselow},
  publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam},
  address   = {Potsdam},
  isbn      = {978-3-86956-457-9},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-43252},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-432524},
  pages     = {257 -- 272},
  year      = {2019},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{Thiersch2019,
  author    = {Thiersch, Craig},
  title     = {A note on apparent sluicing in Malagasy},
  series = {Of trees and birds. A Festschrift for Gisbert Fanselow},
  journal   = {Of trees and birds. A Festschrift for Gisbert Fanselow},
  publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam},
  address   = {Potsdam},
  isbn      = {978-3-86956-457-9},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-43234},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-432341},
  pages     = {185 -- 209},
  year      = {2019},
  language  = {en}
}