@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{BacskaiAtkari2014, author = {Bacskai-Atkari, Julia}, title = {The syntax of comparative constructions : operators, ellipsis phenomena and functional left peripheries}, publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam}, address = {Potsdam}, isbn = {978-3-86956-301-5}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-71255}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {xiii, 310}, year = {2014}, abstract = {Adopting a minimalist framework, the dissertation provides an analysis for the syntactic structure of comparatives, with special attention paid to the derivation of the subclause. The proposed account explains how the comparative subclause is connected to the matrix clause, how the subclause is formed in the syntax and what additional processes contribute to its final structure. In addition, it casts light upon these problems in cross-linguistic terms and provides a model that allows for synchronic and diachronic differences. This also enables one to give a more adequate explanation for the phenomena found in English comparatives since the properties of English structures can then be linked to general settings of the language and hence need no longer be considered as idiosyncratic features of the grammar of English. First, the dissertation provides a unified analysis of degree expressions, relating the structure of comparatives to that of other degrees. It is shown that gradable adjectives are located within a degree phrase (DegP), which in turn projects a quantifier phrase (QP) and that these two functional layers are always present, irrespectively of whether there is a phonologically visible element in these layers. Second, the dissertation presents a novel analysis of Comparative Deletion by reducing it to an overtness constraint holding on operators: in this way, it is reduced to morphological differences and cross-linguistic variation is not conditioned by way of postulating an arbitrary parameter. Cross-linguistic differences are ultimately dependent on whether a language has overt operators equipped with the relevant - [+compr] and [+rel] - features. Third, the dissertation provides an adequate explanation for the phenomenon of Attributive Comparative Deletion, as attested in English, by way of relating it to the regular mechanism of Comparative Deletion. I assume that Attributive Comparative Deletion is not a universal phenomenon, and its presence in English can be conditioned by independent, more general rules, while the absence of such restrictions leads to its absence in other languages. Fourth, the dissertation accounts for certain phenomena related to diachronic changes, examining how the changes in the status of comparative operators led to changes in whether Comparative Deletion is attested in a given language: I argue that only operators without a lexical XP can be grammaticalised. The underlying mechanisms underlying are essentially general economy principles and hence the processes are not language-specific or exceptional. Fifth, the dissertation accounts for optional ellipsis processes that play a crucial role in the derivation of typical comparative subclauses. These processes are not directly related to the structure of degree expressions and hence the elimination of the quantified expression from the subclause; nevertheless, they are shown to be in interaction with the mechanisms underlying Comparative Deletion or the absence thereof.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Bethmann2012, author = {Bethmann, Anja}, title = {Die supramodale Verarbeitung individueller Konzepte am Beispiel menschlicher Stimmen und visuell pr{\"a}sentierter Comicfiguren : eine fMRT-Studie der Temporallappen}, publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam}, address = {Potsdam}, isbn = {978-3-86956-206-3}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-59856}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {xvi, 291}, year = {2012}, abstract = {Ausgehend von den prim{\"a}rsensorischen Arealen verlaufen Verarbeitungswege nach anterior durch die Temporallappen, die der Objekterkennung dienen. Besonders die vorderste Spitze der Temporallappen, der anteriore Temporalkortex, wird mit Funktionen der Objektidentifizierung assoziiert. Es existieren jedoch mehrere Vermutungen, welcher Art die Objekte sind, die in dieser Region verarbeitet werden. Es gibt Annahmen {\"u}ber die Verarbeitung von Sprache, von menschlichen Stimmen, semantischen Informationen oder individuellen Konzepten. Um zwischen diesen Theorien zu differenzieren, wurden vier ereigniskorrelierte fMRT-Messungen an jungen gesunden Erwachsenen durchgef{\"u}hrt. Die Probanden h{\"o}rten in drei Experimenten die Stimmen ber{\"u}hmter und unbekannter Personen und in einem der Experimente zus{\"a}tzlich Ger{\"a}usche von Tieren und Musikinstrumenten. Im vierten Experiment wurden Zeichnungen von Comicfiguren gezeigt sowie von Tieren und Obst- und Gem{\"u}sesorten. Die neuronale Aktivit{\"a}t bei der Verarbeitung dieser Reize im Vergleich zu Zeiten ohne Stimulation wurde mit Hilfe von Interesseregionen untersucht, die nahezu die gesamten Temporallappen abdeckten und diese in jeweils zw{\"o}lf Areale untergliederten. In den anterioren Temporallappen waren sowohl mit auditiven als auch mit visuellen Stimuli deutliche Aktivierungsunterschiede in Abh{\"a}ngigkeit von der semantischen Kategorie festzustellen. Individuelle Konzepte (menschliche Stimmen und Zeichentrickfiguren) riefen eine signifikant st{\"a}rkere Aktivierung hervor als kategoriale Konzepte (Tiere, Musikinstrumente, Obst- und Gem{\"u}se). Außerdem war das Signal, dass durch die Stimmen der bekannten Personen ausgel{\"o}st wurde, deutlich st{\"a}rker als das Signal der unbekannten Stimmen. Damit sind die Daten am ehesten kompatibel mit der Annahme, dass die anterioren Temporallappen, bekannte individuelle Konzepte verarbeiten. Da die beschriebenen Signalunterschiede zwischen den verschiedenen Bedingungen ausgehend von den transversalen Temporalgyri nach anterior zum Temporalpol zunahmen, unterst{\"u}tzen die Ergebnisse zudem die Theorie von einem ventralen Verarbeitungsweg, der die Temporallappen nach anterior durchquert und zur Objekterkennung beitr{\"a}gt. In {\"U}bereinstimmung mit den Annahmen der Konvergenzzonentheorie von A. R. Damasio scheint die spezifische Funktion dieses rostral gerichteten Verarbeitungsweges aus der sukzessiven Kombination immer mehr sensomotorischer Merkmale von Objekten zu bestehen. Da bekannte individuelle Konzepte eine besonders hohe Anzahl von Merkmalen aufweisen, ist eine weiter nach anterior verlaufende Verarbeitung zu beobachten als bei unbekannten oder kategorialen Konzepten.}, language = {de} } @phdthesis{Boila2024, author = {Boila, Chiara}, title = {The processing of OVS and passive sentences in German monolingual and German-Italian simultaneous bilingual children}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-62972}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-629723}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {xv, 223}, year = {2024}, abstract = {It is a common finding that preschoolers have difficulties in identifying who is doing what to whom in non-canonical sentences, such as (object-verb-subject) OVS and passive sentences in German. This dissertation investigates how German monolingual and German-Italian simultaneous bilingual children process German OVS sentences in Study 1 and German passives in Study 2. Offline data (i.e., accuracy data) and online data (i.e., eye-gaze and pupillometry data) were analyzed to explore whether children can assign thematic roles during sentence comprehension and processing. Executive functions, language-internal and -external factors were investigated as potential predictors for children's sentence comprehension and processing. Throughout the literature, there are contradicting findings on the relation between language and executive functions. While some results show a bilingual cognitive advantage over monolingual speakers, others suggest there is no relationship between bilingualism and executive functions. If bilingual children possess more advanced executive function abilities than monolingual children, then this might also be reflected in a better performance on linguistic tasks. In the current studies monolingual and bilingual children were tested by means of two executive function tasks: the Flanker task and the task-switching paradigm. However, these findings showed no bilingual cognitive advantages and no better performance by bilingual children in the linguistic tasks. The performance was rather comparable between bilingual and monolingual children, or even better for the monolingual group. This may be due to cross-linguistic influences and language experience (i.e., language input and output). Italian was used because it does not syntactically overlap with the structure of German OVS sentences, and it only overlapped with one of the two types of sentence condition used for the passive study - considering the subject-(finite)verb alignment. The findings showed a better performance of bilingual children in the passive sentence structure that syntactically overlapped in the two languages, providing evidence for cross-linguistic influences. Further factors for children's sentence comprehension were considered. The parents' education, the number of older siblings and language experience variables were derived from a language background questionnaire completed by parents. Scores of receptive vocabulary and grammar, visual and short-term memory and reasoning ability were measured by means of standardized tests. It was shown that higher German language experience by bilinguals correlates with better accuracy in German OVS sentences but not in passive sentences. Memory capacity had a positive effect on the comprehension of OVS and passive sentences in the bilingual group. Additionally, a role was played by executive function abilities in the comprehension of OVS sentences and not of passive sentences. It is suggested that executive function abilities might help children in the sentence comprehension task when the linguistic structures are not yet fully mastered. Altogether, these findings show that bilinguals' poorer performance in the comprehension and processing of German OVS is mainly due to reduced language experience in German, and that the different performance of bilingual children with the two types of passives is mainly due to cross-linguistic influences.}, language = {en} } @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} } @phdthesis{BreakellFernandez2016, author = {Breakell Fernandez, Leigh}, title = {Investigating word order processing using pupillometry and event-related potentials}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-91438}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {x, 122}, year = {2016}, abstract = {In this thesis sentence processing was investigated using a psychophysiological measure known as pupillometry as well as Event-Related Potentials (ERP). The scope of the the- sis was broad, investigating the processing of several different movement constructions with native speakers of English and second language learners of English, as well as word order and case marking in German speaking adults and children. Pupillometry and ERP allowed us to test competing linguistic theories and use novel methodologies to investigate the processing of word order. In doing so we also aimed to establish pupillometry as an effective way to investigate the processing of word order thus broadening the methodological spectrum.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{BrehmJurish2005, author = {Brehm-Jurish, Eva Ute}, title = {Connective ties in discourse : three ERP-studies on causal, temporal and concessive connective ties and their influence on language processing}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-6780}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, year = {2005}, abstract = {Connective ties in discourse: Three ERP studies on causal, temporal and concessive connective ties and their influence on language processing. Questions In four experiments the influence of lexical connectives such as " darum", therefore, " danach", afterwards, and " trotzdem", nevertheless, on the processing of short two-sentence discourses was examined and compared to the processing of deictical sentential adverbs such as " gestern", yesterday, and " lieber", rather. These latter words do not have the property of signaling a certain discourse relation between two sentences, as connective ties do. Three questions were central to the work: * Do the processing contrasts found between connective and non-connective elements extend to connective ties and deictical sentential adverbs (experiments 2 and 3)? * Does the semantic content of the connective ties play the primary role, i.e is the major distinction to be made indeed between connective and non-connective or instead between causal, temporal and concessive? * When precisely is the information provided by connective ties used? There is some evidence that connective ties can have an immediate influence on the integration of subsequent elements, but the end of the second sentences appears to play an important role as well: experiments 2, 3, and 4. Conclusions First of all, the theoretical distinction between connective and non-connective elements does indeed have " cognitive reality" . This has already been shown in previous studies. The present studies do however show, that there is also a difference between one-place discourse elements (deictical sentential adverbs) and two-place discourse elements, namely connective ties, since all experiments examining this contrast found evidence for qualitatively and quantitatively different processing (experiments 1, 2, and 3). Secondly, the semantic type of the connective ties also plays a role. This was not shown for the LAN, found for all connective ties when compared to non-connective elements, and consequently interpreted as a more abstract reflection of the integration of connective ties. There was also no difference between causal and temporal connective ties before the end of the discourses in experiment 3. However, the N400 found for incoherent discourses in experiment 2, larger for connective incoherent than non-connective incoherent discourses, as well as the P3b found for concessive connective ties in the comparison between causal and concessive connective ties gave reason to assume that the semantic content of connective ties is made use of in incremental processing, and that the relation signaled by the connective tie is the one that readers attempt to construct. Concerning when the information provided by connective ties is used, it appears as if connectivity is generally and obligatorily taken at face value. As long as the meaning of a connective tie did not conflict with a preferred canonical discourse relation, there were no differences found for varying connective discourses (experiment 3). However, the fact that concessive connective ties announce the need for a more complex text representation was recognized and made use of immediately (experiment 4). Additionally, a violation of the discourse relation resulted in more difficult semantic integration if a connective tie was present (experiment 2). It is therefore concluded here that connective ties influence processing immediately. This claim has to be modified somewhat, since the sentence-final elements suggested that connective ties trigger different integration processes than non-connective elements. It seems as if the answer to the question of when connective ties are processed is neither exclusively immediately nor exclusively afterwards, but that both viewpoints are correct. It is suggested here that before the end of a discourse economy plays a central role in that a canonical relation is assumed unless there is evidence to the contrary. A connective tie could have the function of reducing the dimensions evaluated in a discourse to the one signaled by the connective tie. At the end of the discourse the representation is evaluated and verified, and an integrated situation model constructed. Here, the complexity of the different discourse relations that connective ties can signal, is expressed.}, subject = {Sprachverarbeitung }, 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} } @phdthesis{Ciaccio2020, author = {Ciaccio, Laura Anna}, title = {Prefixed words in morphological processing and morphological impairments}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-48465}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-484651}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {x, 276}, year = {2020}, abstract = {In recent years, a substantial number of psycholinguistic studies and of studies on acquired language impairments have investigated the case of morphologically complex words. These have provided evidence for what is known as 'morphological decomposition', i.e. a mechanism that decomposes complex words into their constituent morphemes during online processing. This is believed to be a fundamental, possibly universal mechanism of morphological processing, operating irrespective of a word's specific properties. However, current accounts of morphological decomposition are mostly based on evidence from suffixed words and compound words, while prefixed words have been comparably neglected. At the same time, it has been consistently observed that, across languages, prefixed words are less widespread than suffixed words. This cross-linguistic preference for suffixing morphology has been claimed to be grounded in language processing and language learning mechanisms. This would predict differences in how prefixed words are processed and therefore also affected in language impairments, challenging the predictions of the major accounts of morphological decomposition. Against this background, the present thesis aims at reducing the gap between the accounts of morphological decomposition and the accounts of the suffixing preference, by providing a thorough empirical investigation of prefixed words. Prefixed words are examined in three different domains: (i) visual word processing in native speakers; (ii) visual word processing in non-native speakers; (iii) acquired morphological impairments. The processing studies employ the masked priming paradigm, tapping into early stages of visual word recognition. Instead, the studies on morphological impairments investigate the errors produced in reading aloud tasks. As for native processing, the present work first focuses on derivation (Publication I), specifically investigating whether German prefixed derived words, both lexically restricted (e.g. inaktiv 'inactive') and unrestricted (e.g. unsauber 'unclean') can be efficiently decomposed. I then present a second study (Publication II) on a Bantu language, Setswana, which offers the unique opportunity of testing inflectional prefixes, and directly comparing priming with prefixed inflected primes (e.g. dikgeleke 'experts') to priming with prefixed derived primes (e.g. bokgeleke 'talent'). With regard to non-native processing (Publication I), the priming effects obtained from the lexically restricted and unrestricted prefixed derivations in native speakers are additionally compared to the priming effects obtained in a group of non-native speakers of German. Finally, in the two studies on acquired morphological impairments, the thesis investigates whether prefixed derived words yield different error patterns than suffixed derived words (Publication III and IV). For native speakers, the results show evidence for morphological decomposition of both types of prefixed words, i.e. lexically unrestricted and restricted derivations, as well as of prefixed inflected words. Furthermore, non-native speakers are also found to efficiently decompose prefixed derived words, with parallel results to the group of native speakers. I therefore conclude that, for the early stages of visual word recognition, the relative position of stem and affix in prefixed versus suffixed words does not affect how efficiently complex words are decomposed, either in native or in non-native processing. In the studies on acquired language impairments, instead, prefixes are consistently found to be more impaired than suffixes. This is explained in terms of a learnability disadvantage for prefixed words, which may cause weaker representations of the information encoded in affixes when these precede the stem (prefixes) as compared to when they follow it (suffixes). Based on the impairment profiles of the individual participants and on the nature of the task, this dissociation is assumed to emerge from later processing stages than those that are tapped into by masked priming. I therefore conclude that the different characteristics of prefixed and suffixed words do come into play at later processing stages, during which the lexical-semantic information contained in the different constituent morphemes is processed. The findings presented in the four manuscripts significantly contribute to our current understanding of the mechanisms involved in processing prefixed words. Crucially, the thesis constrains the processing disadvantage for prefixed words to later processing stages, thereby suggesting that theories trying to establish links between language universals and processing mechanisms should more carefully consider the different stages involved in language processing and what factors are relevant for each specific stage.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{DeVeaughGeiss2020, author = {De Veaugh-Geiss, Joseph P.}, title = {Cleft exhaustivity}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-44642}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-446421}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {viii, 243}, year = {2020}, abstract = {In this dissertation a series of experimental studies are presented which demonstrate that the exhaustive inference of focus-background it-clefts in English and their cross-linguistic counterparts in Akan, French, and German is neither robust nor systematic. The inter-speaker and cross-linguistic variability is accounted for with a discourse-pragmatic approach to cleft exhaustivity, in which -- following Pollard \& Yasavul 2016 -- the exhaustive inference is derived from an interaction with another layer of meaning, namely, the existence presupposition encoded in clefts.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Domahs2006, author = {Domahs, Frank}, title = {Semantische Repr{\"a}sentation, obligatorische Aktivierung und verbale Produktion arithmetischer Fakten}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-12506}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, year = {2006}, abstract = {Die vorliegende Arbeit widmet sich der Repr{\"a}sentation und Verarbeitung arithmetischer Fakten. Dieser Bereich semantischen Wissens eignet sich unter anderem deshalb besonders gut als Forschungsgegenstand, weil nicht nur seine einzelne Bestandteile, sondern auch die Beziehungen dieser Bestandteile untereinander außergew{\"o}hnlich gut definierbar sind. Kognitive Modelle k{\"o}nnen also mit einem Grad an Pr{\"a}zision entwickelt werden, der in anderen Bereichen kaum je zu erreichen sein wird. Die meisten aktuellen Modelle stimmen darin {\"u}berein, die Repr{\"a}sentation arithmetischer Fakten als eine assoziative, netzwerkartig organisierte Struktur im deklarativen Ged{\"a}chtnis zu beschreiben. Trotz dieser grunds{\"a}tzlichen {\"U}bereinstimmung bleibt eine Reihe von Fragen offen. In den hier vorgestellten Untersuchungen werden solche offene Fragen in Hinsicht auf drei verschiedene Themenbereiche angegangen: 1) die neuroanatomischen Korrelate 2) Nachbarschaftskonsistenzeffekte bei der verbalen Produktion sowie 3) die automatische Aktivierung arithmetischer Fakten. In einer kombinierten fMRT- und Verhaltensstudie wurde beispielsweise der Frage nachgegangen, welche neurofunktionalen Entsprechungen es f{\"u}r den Erwerb arithmetischer Fakten bei Erwachsenen gibt. Den Ausgangspunkt f{\"u}r diese Untersuchung bildete das Triple-Code-Modell von Dehaene und Cohen, da es als einziges auch Aussagen {\"u}ber neuroanatomische Korrelate numerischer Leistungen macht. Das Triple-Code-Modell geht davon aus, dass zum Abruf arithmetischer Fakten eine „perisylvische" Region der linken Hemisph{\"a}re unter Einbeziehung der Stammganglien sowie des Gyrus angularis n{\"o}tig ist (Dehaene \& Cohen, 1995; Dehaene \& Cohen, 1997; Dehaene, Piazza, Pinel, \& Cohen, 2003). In der aktuellen Studie sollten gesunde Erwachsene komplexe Multiplikationsaufgaben etwa eine Woche lang intensiv {\"u}ben, so dass ihre Beantwortung immer mehr automatisiert erfolgt. Die L{\"o}sung dieser ge{\"u}bten Aufgaben sollte somit - im Gegensatz zu vergleichbaren unge{\"u}bten Aufgaben - immer st{\"a}rker auf Faktenabruf als auf der Anwendung von Prozeduren und Strategien beruhen. Hingegen sollten unge{\"u}bte Aufgaben im Vergleich zu ge{\"u}bten h{\"o}here Anforderungen an exekutive Funktionen einschließlich des Arbeitsged{\"a}chtnisses stellen. Nach dem Training konnten die Teilnehmer - wie erwartet - ge{\"u}bte Aufgaben deutlich schneller und sicherer beantworten als unge{\"u}bte. Zus{\"a}tzlich wurden sie auch im Magnetresonanztomografen untersucht. Dabei konnte zun{\"a}chst best{\"a}tigt werden, dass das L{\"o}sen von Multiplikationsaufgaben allgemein von einem vorwiegend linkshemisph{\"a}rischen Netzwerk frontaler und parietaler Areale unterst{\"u}tzt wird. Das wohl wichtigste Ergebnis ist jedoch eine Verschiebung der Hirnaktivierungen von eher frontalen Aktivierungsmustern zu einer eher parietalen Aktivierung und innerhalb des Parietallappens vom Sulcus intraparietalis zum Gyrus angularis bei den ge{\"u}bten im Vergleich zu den unge{\"u}bten Aufgaben. So wurde die zentrale Bedeutung von Arbeitsged{\"a}chtnis- und Planungsleistungen f{\"u}r komplexe unge{\"u}bte Rechenaufgaben erneut herausgestellt. Im Sinne des Triple-Code-Modells k{\"o}nnte die Verschiebung innerhalb des Parietallappens auf einen Wechsel von quantit{\"a}tsbasierten Rechenleistungen (Sulcus intraparietalis) zu automatisiertem Faktenabruf (linker Gyrus angularis) hindeuten. Gibt es bei der verbalen Produktion arithmetischer Fakten Nachbarschaftskonsistenzeffekte {\"a}hnlich zu denen, wie sie auch in der Sprachverarbeitung beschrieben werden? Solche Effekte sind nach dem aktuellen „Dreiecksmodell" von Verguts \& Fias (2004) zur Repr{\"a}sentation von Multiplikationsfakten erwartbar. Demzufolge sollten richtige Antworten leichter gegeben werden k{\"o}nnen, wenn sie Ziffern mit m{\"o}glichst vielen semantisch nahen falschen Antworten gemeinsam haben. M{\"o}glicherweise sollten demnach aber auch falsche Antworten dann mit gr{\"o}ßerer Wahrscheinlichkeit produziert werden, wenn sie eine Ziffer mit der richtigen Antwort teilen. Nach dem Dreiecksmodell w{\"a}re dar{\"u}ber hinaus sogar der klassische Aufgabengr{\"o}ßeneffekt bei einfachen Multiplikationsaufgaben (Zbrodoff \& Logan, 2004) auf die Konsistenzverh{\"a}ltnisse der richtigen Antwort mit semantisch benachbarten falschen Antworten zur{\"u}ckzuf{\"u}hren. In einer Reanalyse der Fehlerdaten von gesunden Probanden (Campbell, 1997) und einem Patienten (Domahs, Bartha, \& Delazer, 2003) wurden tats{\"a}chlich Belege f{\"u}r das Vorhandensein von Zehnerkonsistenzeffekten beim L{\"o}sen einfacher Multiplikationsaufgaben gefunden. Die Versuchspersonen bzw. der Patient hatten solche falschen Antworten signifikant h{\"a}ufiger produziert, welche die gleiche Zehnerziffer wie das richtigen Ergebnisses aufwiesen, als ansonsten vergleichbare andere Fehler. Damit wird die Annahme unterst{\"u}tzt, dass die Zehner- und die Einerziffern zweistelliger Zahlen separate Repr{\"a}sentationen aufweisen - bei der Multiplikation (Verguts \& Fias, 2004) wie auch allgemein bei numerischer Verarbeitung (Nuerk, Weger, \& Willmes, 2001; Nuerk \& Willmes, 2005). Zus{\"a}tzlich dazu wurde in einer Regressionsanalyse {\"u}ber die Fehlerzahlen auch erstmalig empirische Evidenz f{\"u}r die Hypothese vorgelegt, dass der klassische Aufgabengr{\"o}ßeneffekt beim Abruf von Multiplikationsfakten auf Zehnerkonsistenzeffekte zur{\"u}ckf{\"u}hrbar ist: Obwohl die Aufgabengr{\"o}ße als erster Pr{\"a}diktor in das Modell einging, wurde diese Variable wieder verworfen, sobald ein Maß f{\"u}r die Nachbarschaftskonsistenz der richtigen Antwort in das Modell aufgenommen wurde. Schließlich wurde in einer weiteren Studie die automatische Aktivierung von Multiplikationsfakten bei gesunden Probanden mit einer Zahlenidentifikationsaufgabe (Galfano, Rusconi, \& Umilta, 2003; Lefevre, Bisanz, \& Mrkonjic, 1988; Thibodeau, Lefevre, \& Bisanz, 1996) untersucht. Dabei sollte erstmals die Frage beantwortet werden, wie sich die automatische Aktivierung der eigentlichen Multiplikationsergebnisse (Thibodeau et al., 1996) zur Aktivierung benachbarter falscher Antworten (Galfano et al., 2003) verh{\"a}lt. Ferner sollte durch die Pr{\"a}sentation mit verschiedenen SOAs der zeitliche Verlauf dieser Aktivierungen aufgekl{\"a}rt werden. Die Ergebnisse dieser Studie k{\"o}nnen insgesamt als Evidenz f{\"u}r das Vorhandensein und die automatische, obligatorische Aktivierung eines Netzwerkes arithmetischer Fakten bei gesunden, gebildeten Erwachsenen gewertet werden, in dem die richtigen Produkte st{\"a}rker mit den Faktoren assoziiert sind als benachbarte Produkte (Operandenfehler). Dabei f{\"u}hren Produkte kleiner Aufgaben zu einer st{\"a}rkeren Interferenz als Produkte großer Aufgaben und Operandenfehler großer Aufgaben zu einer st{\"a}rkeren Interferenz als Operandenfehler kleiner Aufgaben. Ein solches Aktivierungsmuster passt gut zu den Vorhersagen des Assoziationsverteilungsmodells von Siegler (Lemaire \& Siegler, 1995; Siegler, 1988), bei dem kleine Aufgaben eine schmalgipflige Verteilung der Assoziationen um das richtige Ergebnis herum aufweisen, große Aufgaben jedoch eine breitgipflige Verteilung. Somit sollte die vorliegende Arbeit etwas mehr Licht in bislang weitgehend vernachl{\"a}ssigte Aspekte der Repr{\"a}sentation und des Abrufs arithmetischer Fakten gebracht haben: Die neuronalen Korrelate ihres Erwerbs, die Konsequenzen ihrer Einbindung in das Stellenwertsystem mit der Basis 10 sowie die spezifischen Auswirkungen ihrer assoziativen semantischen Repr{\"a}sentation auf ihre automatische Aktivierbarkeit. Literatur Campbell, J. I. (1997). On the relation between skilled performance of simple division and multiplication. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 23, 1140-1159. Dehaene, S. \& Cohen, L. (1995). Towards an anatomical and functional model of number processing. Mathematical Cognition, 1, 83-120. Dehaene, S. \& Cohen, L. (1997). Cerebral pathways for calculation: double dissociation between rote verbal and quantitative knowledge of arithmetic. Cortex, 33, 219-250. Dehaene, S., Piazza, M., Pinel, P., \& Cohen, L. (2003). Three parietal circuits for number processing. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 20, 487-506. Domahs, F., Bartha, L., \& Delazer, M. (2003). Rehabilitation of arithmetic abilities: Different intervention strategies for multiplication. Brain and Language, 87, 165-166. Galfano, G., Rusconi, E., \& Umilta, C. (2003). Automatic activation of multiplication facts: evidence from the nodes adjacent to the product. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology A, 56, 31-61. Lefevre, J. A., Bisanz, J., \& Mrkonjic, L. (1988). Cognitive arithmetic: evidence for obligatory activation of arithmetic facts. Memory and Cognition, 16, 45-53. Lemaire, P. \& Siegler, R. S. (1995). Four aspects of strategic change: contributions to children's learning of multiplication. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 124, 83-97. Nuerk, H. C., Weger, U., \& Willmes, K. (2001). Decade breaks in the mental number line? Putting the tens and units back in different bins. Cognition, 82, B25-B33. Nuerk, H. C. \& Willmes, K. (2005). On the magnitude representations of two-digit numbers. Psychology Science, 47, 52-72. Siegler, R. S. (1988). Strategy choice procedures and the development of multiplication skill. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 117, 258-275. Thibodeau, M. H., Lefevre, J. A., \& Bisanz, J. (1996). The extension of the interference effect to multiplication. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 50, 393-396. Verguts, T. \& Fias, W. (2004). Neighborhood Effects in Mental Arithmetic. Psychology Science. Zbrodoff, N. J. \& Logan, G. D. (2004). What everyone finds: The problem-size effect. In J. I. D. Campbell (Hrsg.), Handbook of Mathematical Cognition (pp.331-345). New York, NY: Psychology Press.}, language = {de} } @phdthesis{Elin2018, author = {Elin, Kirill}, title = {Morphological processing in older adults}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-418605}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {217}, year = {2018}, abstract = {Over the last decades mechanisms of recognition of morphologically complex words have been extensively examined in order to determine whether all word forms are stored and retrieved from the mental lexicon as wholes or whether they are decomposed into their morphological constituents such as stems and affixes. Most of the research in this domain focusses on English. Several factors have been argued to affect morphological processing including, for instance, morphological structure of a word (e.g., existence of allomorphic stem alternations) and its linguistic nature (e.g., whether it is a derived word or an inflected word form). It is not clear, however, whether processing accounts based on experimental evidence from English would hold for other languages. Furthermore, there is evidence that processing mechanisms may differ across various populations including children, adult native speakers and language learners. Recent studies claim that processing mechanisms could also differ between older and younger adults (Clahsen \& Reifegerste, 2017; Reifegerste, Meyer, \& Zwitserlood, 2017). The present thesis examined how properties of the morphological structure, types of linguistic operations involved (i.e., the linguistic contrast between inflection and derivation) and characteristics of the particular population such as older adults (e.g., potential effects of ageing as a result of the cognitive decline or greater experience and exposure of older adults) affect initial, supposedly automatic stages of morphological processing in Russian and German. To this end, a series of masked priming experiments was conducted. In experiments on Russian, the processing of derived -ost' nouns (e.g., glupost' 'stupidity') and of inflected forms with and without allomorphic stem alternations in 1P.Sg.Pr. (e.g., igraju - igrat' 'to play' vs. košu - kosit' 'to mow') was examined. The first experiment on German examined and directly compared processing of derived -ung nouns (e.g., Gr{\"u}ndung 'foundation') and inflected -t past participles (e.g., gegr{\"u}ndet 'founded'), whereas the second one investigated the processing of regular and irregular plural forms (-s forms such as Autos 'cars' and -er forms such as Kinder 'children', respectively). The experiments on both languages have shown robust and comparable facilitation effects for derived words and regularly inflected forms without stem changes (-t participles in German, forms of -aj verbs in Russian). Observed morphological priming effects could be clearly distinguished from purely semantic or orthographic relatedness between words. At the same time, we found a contrast between forms with and without allomorphic stem alternations in Russian and regular and irregular forms in German, with significantly more priming for unmarked stems (relative to alternated ones) and significantly more priming for regular (compared) word forms. These findings indicate the relevance of morphological properties of a word for initial stages of processing, contrary to claims made in the literature holding that priming effects are determined by surface form and meaning overlap only. Instead, our findings are more consistent with approaches positing a contrast between combinatorial, rule-based and lexically-stored forms (Clahsen, Sonnenstuhl, \& Blevins, 2003). The doctoral dissertation also addressed the role of ageing and age-related cognitive changes on morphological processing. The results obtained on this research issue are twofold. On the one hand, the data demonstrate effects of ageing on general measures of language performance, i.e., overall longer reaction times and/or higher accuracy rates in older than younger individuals. These findings replicate results from previous studies, which have been linked to the general slowing of processing speed at older age and to the larger vocabularies of older adults. One the other hand, we found that more specific aspects of language processing appear to be largely intact in older adults as revealed by largely similar morphological priming effects for older and younger adults. These latter results indicate that initial stages of morphological processing investigated here by means of the masked priming paradigm persist in older age. One caveat should, however, be noted. Achieving the same performance as a younger individual in a behavioral task may not necessarily mean that the same neural processes are involved. Older people may have to recruit a wider brain network than younger individuals, for example. To address this and related possibilities, future studies should examine older people's neural representations and mechanisms involved in morphological processing.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Engelmann2016, author = {Engelmann, Felix}, title = {Toward an integrated model of sentence processing in reading}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-100864}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {xiii, 143}, year = {2016}, abstract = {In experiments investigating sentence processing, eye movement measures such as fixation durations and regression proportions while reading are commonly used to draw conclusions about processing difficulties. However, these measures are the result of an interaction of multiple cognitive levels and processing strategies and thus are only indirect indicators of processing difficulty. In order to properly interpret an eye movement response, one has to understand the underlying principles of adaptive processing such as trade-off mechanisms between reading speed and depth of comprehension that interact with task demands and individual differences. Therefore, it is necessary to establish explicit models of the respective mechanisms as well as their causal relationship with observable behavior. There are models of lexical processing and eye movement control on the one side and models on sentence parsing and memory processes on the other. However, no model so far combines both sides with explicitly defined linking assumptions. In this thesis, a model is developed that integrates oculomotor control with a parsing mechanism and a theory of cue-based memory retrieval. On the basis of previous empirical findings and independently motivated principles, adaptive, resource-preserving mechanisms of underspecification are proposed both on the level of memory access and on the level of syntactic parsing. The thesis first investigates the model of cue-based retrieval in sentence comprehension of Lewis \& Vasishth (2005) with a comprehensive literature review and computational modeling of retrieval interference in dependency processing. The results reveal a great variability in the data that is not explained by the theory. Therefore, two principles, 'distractor prominence' and 'cue confusion', are proposed as an extension to the theory, thus providing a more adequate description of systematic variance in empirical results as a consequence of experimental design, linguistic environment, and individual differences. In the remainder of the thesis, four interfaces between parsing and eye movement control are defined: Time Out, Reanalysis, Underspecification, and Subvocalization. By comparing computationally derived predictions with experimental results from the literature, it is investigated to what extent these four interfaces constitute an appropriate elementary set of assumptions for explaining specific eye movement patterns during sentence processing. Through simulations, it is shown how this system of in itself simple assumptions results in predictions of complex, adaptive behavior. In conclusion, it is argued that, on all levels, the sentence comprehension mechanism seeks a balance between necessary processing effort and reading speed on the basis of experience, task demands, and resource limitations. Theories of linguistic processing therefore need to be explicitly defined and implemented, in particular with respect to linking assumptions between observable behavior and underlying cognitive processes. The comprehensive model developed here integrates multiple levels of sentence processing that hitherto have only been studied in isolation. The model is made publicly available as an expandable framework for future studies of the interactions between parsing, memory access, and eye movement control.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Engels2004, author = {Engels, Eva}, title = {Adverb placement : an optimality theoretic approach}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-2453}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, year = {2004}, abstract = {Adverb positioning is guided by syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic considerations and is subject to cross-linguistic as well as language-specific variation. The goal of the thesis is to identify the factors that determine adverb placement in general (Part I) as well as in constructions in which the adverb's sister constituent is deprived of its phonetic material by movement or ellipsis (gap constructions, Part II) and to provide an Optimality Theoretic approach to the contrasts in the effects of these factors on the distribution of adverbs in English, French, and German. In Optimality Theory (Prince \& Smolensky 1993), grammaticality is defined as optimal satisfaction of a hierarchy of violable constraints: for a given input, a set of output candidates are produced out of which that candidate is selected as grammatical output which optimally satisfies the constraint hierarchy. Since grammaticality crucially relies on the hierarchic relations of the constraints, cross-linguistic variation can be traced back to differences in the language-specific constraint rankings. Part I shows how diverse phenomena of adverb placement can be captured by corresponding constraints and their relative rankings: - contrasts in the linearization of adverbs and verbs/auxiliaries in English and French - verb placement in German and the filling of the prefield position - placement of focus-sensitive adverbs - fronting of topical arguments and adverbs Part II extends the analysis to a particular phenomenon of adverb positioning: the avoidance of adverb attachment to a phonetically empty constituent (gap). English and French are similar in that the acceptability of pre-gap adverb placement depends on the type of adverb, its scope, and the syntactic construction (English: wh-movement vs. topicalization / VP Fronting / VP Ellipsis, inverted vs. non-inverted clauses; French: CLLD vs. Cleft, simple vs. periphrastic tense). Yet, the two languages differ in which strategies a specific type of adverb may pursue to escape placement in front of a certain type of gap. In contrast to English and French, placement of an adverb in front of a gap never gives rise to ungrammaticality in German. Rather, word ordering has to obey the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic principles discussed in Part I; whether or not it results in adverb attachment to a phonetically empty constituent seems to be irrelevant: though constraints are active in every language, the emergence of a visible effect of their requirements in a given language depends on their relative ranking. The complex interaction of the diverse factors as well as their divergent effects on adverb placement in the various languages are accounted for by the universal constraints and their language-specific hierarchic relations in the OT framework.}, subject = {Adverb}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Fleischhauer2013, author = {Fleischhauer, Elisabeth}, title = {Morphological processing in children : an experimental study of German past participles}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-70581}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, year = {2013}, abstract = {An important strand of research has investigated the question of how children acquire a morphological system using offline data from spontaneous or elicited child language. Most of these studies have found dissociations in how children apply regular and irregular inflection (Marcus et al. 1992, Weyerts \& Clahsen 1994, Rothweiler \& Clahsen 1993). These studies have considerably deepened our understanding of how linguistic knowledge is acquired and organised in the human mind. Their methodological procedures, however, do not involve measurements of how children process morphologically complex forms in real time. To date, little is known about how children process inflected word forms. The aim of this study is to investigate children's processing of inflected words in a series of on-line reaction time experiments. We used a cross-modal priming experiment to test for decompositional effects on the central level. We used a speeded production task and a lexical decision task to test for frequency effects on access level in production and recognition. Children's behaviour was compared to adults' behaviour towards three participle types (-t participles, e.g. getanzt 'danced' vs. -n participles with stem change, e.g. gebrochen 'broken' vs.-n participles without stem change, e.g. geschlafen 'slept'). For the central level, results indicate that -t participles but not -n participles have decomposed representations. For the access level, results indicate that -t participles are represented according to their morphemes and additionally as full forms, at least from the age of nine years onwards (Pinker 1999 and Clahsen et al. 2004). Further evidence suggested that -n participles are represented as full-form entries on access level and that -n participles without stem change may encode morphological structure (cf. Clahsen et al. 2003). Out data also suggests that processing strategies for -t participles are differently applied in recognition and production. These results provide evidence that children (within the age range tested) employ the same mechanisms for processing participles as adults. The child lexicon grows as children form additional full-form representations for -t participles on access level and elaborate their full-form lexical representations of -n participles on central level. These results are consistent with processing as explained in dual-system theories.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Fominyam2021, author = {Fominyam, Henry Zamchang}, title = {Aspects of Awing grammar and information structure}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-51806}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-518068}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {xi, 391}, year = {2021}, abstract = {This project describes the nominal, verbal and 'truncation' systems of Awing and explains the syntactic and semantic functions of the multifunctional l<-><-> (LE) morpheme in copular and wh-focused constructions. Awing is a Bantu Grassfields language spoken in the North West region of Cameroon. The work begins with morphological processes viz. deverbals, compounding, reduplication, borrowing and a thorough presentation of the pronominal system and takes on verbal categories viz. tense, aspect, mood, verbal extensions, negation, adverbs and triggers of a homorganic N(asal)-prefix that attaches to the verb and other verbal categories. Awing grammar also has a very unusual phenomenon whereby nouns and verbs take long and short forms. A chapter entitled truncation is dedicated to the phenomenon. It is observed that the truncation process does not apply to bare singular NPs, proper names and nouns derived via morphological processes. On the other hand, with the exception of the 1st person non-emphatic possessive determiner and the class 7 noun prefix, nouns generally take the truncated form with modifiers (i.e., articles, demonstratives and other possessives). It is concluded that nominal truncation depicts movement within the DP system (Abney 1987). Truncation of the verb occurs in three contexts: a mass/plurality conspiracy (or lattice structuring in terms of Link 1983) between the verb and its internal argument (i.e., direct object); a means to align (exhaustive) focus (in terms of Fery's 2013), and a means to form polar questions. The second part of the work focuses on the role of the LE morpheme in copular and wh-focused clauses. Firstly, the syntax of the Awing copular clause is presented and it is shown that copular clauses in Awing have 'subject-focus' vs 'topic-focus' partitions and that the LE morpheme indirectly relates such functions. Semantically, it is shown that LE does not express contrast or exhaustivity in copular clauses. Turning to wh-constructions, the work adheres to Hamblin's (1973) idea that the meaning of a question is the set of its possible answers and based on Rooth's (1985) underspecified semantic notion of alternative focus, concludes that the LE morpheme is not a Focus Marker (FM) in Awing: LE does not generate or indicate the presence of alternatives (Krifka 2007); The LE morpheme can associate with wh-elements as a focus-sensitive operator with semantic import that operates on the focus alternatives by presupposing an exhaustive answer, among other notions. With focalized categories, the project further substantiates the claim in Fominyam \& Šim{\´i}k (2017), namely that exhaustivity is part of the semantics of the LE morpheme and not derived via contextual implicature, via a number of diagnostics. Hence, unlike in copular clauses, the LE morpheme with wh-focused categories is analysed as a morphological exponent of a functional head Exh corresponding to Horvath's (2010) EI (Exhaustive Identification). The work ends with the syntax of verb focus and negation and modifies the idea in Fominyam \& Šim{\´i}k (2017), namely that the focalized verb that associates with the exhaustive (LE) particle is a lower copy of the finite verb that has been moved to Agr. It is argued that the LE-focused verb 'cluster' is an instantiation of adjunction. The conclusion is that verb doubling with verb focus in Awing is neither a realization of two copies of one and the same verb (Fominyam and Šim{\´i}k 2017), nor a result of a copy triggered by a focus marker (Aboh and Dyakonova 2009). Rather, the focalized copy is said to be merged directly as the complement of LE forming a type of adjoining cluster.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Frank2008, author = {Frank, Ulrike}, title = {Die Behandlung tracheotomierter Patienten mit schwerer Dysphagie : eine explorative Studie zur Evaluation eines interdisziplin{\"a}ren Interventionsansatzes}, publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam}, address = {Potsdam}, isbn = {978-3-940793-55-3}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-2451}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-20164}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {232}, year = {2008}, abstract = {In der neurologischen Rehabilitation werden in zunehmendem Maße tracheotomierte Patienten mit schweren Dysphagien behandelt. Daher sollte den hierzu bisher entwickelten Interventionsverfahren eine evidenzbasierte Grundlage gegeben werden. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird ein multidisziplin{\"a}rer Behandlungsansatz zur Trachealkan{\"u}lenentw{\"o}hung und Dekan{\"u}lierung vorgestellt, der auf der Grundlage der relevanten Forschungsliteratur und klinischen Beobachtungen entwickelt wurde. Des Weiteren wird erstmals eine systematische Evaluation eines multidisziplin{\"a}ren Trachealkan{\"u}lenmangements vorgenommen und es werden explorative Daten zum Rehabilitationsverlauf dargestellt. In einem retrospektiven Vergleich wurden hierzu die Dekan{\"u}lierungs- und Komplikationsraten sowie die Dauer der Trachealkan{\"u}lenentw{\"o}hnung zweier Patientengruppen gegen{\"u}bergestellt, die vor bzw. nach Einf{\"u}hrung des beschriebenen multidisziplin{\"a}ren Trachealkan{\"u}lenmanagements im REHAB Basel, Schweiz, behandelt wurden. Der rehabilitative Verlauf der multidisziplin{\"a}r behandelten Gruppe wurde mittels der Messinstrumente FIM (Functional Independence Measure) und EFA (Early Functional Abilities) untersucht. Der Vergleich der Dekan{\"u}lierungs- und Komplikationsraten ergab eine vergleichbare Effektivit{\"a}t der beiden Behandlungsans{\"a}tze. Dar{\"u}ber hinaus zeigte sich eine signifikante Verk{\"u}rzung der Kan{\"u}lenentw{\"o}hnungsphase bei Anwendung des multidisziplin{\"a}ren Vorgehens, so dass dieses als effizenter zu beurteilen ist. Die Verlaufsanalyse der multidisziplin{\"a}r behandelten Patienten ergab erst nach der Dekan{\"u}lierung einen signifikanten Zuwachs der funktionellen Selbst{\"a}ndigkeit in Alltagsaktivit{\"a}ten. Bei der Mehrzahl der Patienten konnte ein vollst{\"a}ndiger oraler Kostaufbau nach der Dekan{\"u}lierung erreicht werden.}, language = {de} } @phdthesis{Galetzka2022, author = {Galetzka, Fabian}, title = {Investigating and improving background context consistency in neural conversation models}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-58463}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-584637}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {viii, 173}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Neural conversation models aim to predict appropriate contributions to a (given) conversation by using neural networks trained on dialogue data. A specific strand focuses on non-goal driven dialogues, first proposed by Ritter et al. (2011): They investigated the task of transforming an utterance into an appropriate reply. Then, this strand evolved into dialogue system approaches using long dialogue histories and additional background context. Contributing meaningful and appropriate to a conversation is a complex task, and therefore research in this area has been very diverse: Serban et al. (2016), for example, looked into utilizing variable length dialogue histories, Zhang et al. (2018) added additional context to the dialogue history, Wolf et al. (2019) proposed a model based on pre-trained Self-Attention neural networks (Vasvani et al., 2017), and Dinan et al. (2021) investigated safety issues of these approaches. This trend can be seen as a transformation from trying to somehow carry on a conversation to generating appropriate replies in a controlled and reliable way. In this thesis, we first elaborate the meaning of appropriateness in the context of neural conversation models by drawing inspiration from the Cooperative Principle (Grice, 1975). We first define what an appropriate contribution has to be by operationalizing these maxims as demands on conversation models: being fluent, informative, consistent towards given context, coherent and following a social norm. Then, we identify different targets (or intervention points) to achieve the conversational appropriateness by investigating recent research in that field. In this thesis, we investigate the aspect of consistency towards context in greater detail, being one aspect of our interpretation of appropriateness. During the research, we developed a new context-based dialogue dataset (KOMODIS) that combines factual and opinionated context to dialogues. The KOMODIS dataset is publicly available and we use the data in this thesis to gather new insights in context-augmented dialogue generation. We further introduced a new way of encoding context within Self-Attention based neural networks. For that, we elaborate the issue of space complexity from knowledge graphs, and propose a concise encoding strategy for structured context inspired from graph neural networks (Gilmer et al., 2017) to reduce the space complexity of the additional context. We discuss limitations of context-augmentation for neural conversation models, explore the characteristics of knowledge graphs, and explain how we create and augment knowledge graphs for our experiments. Lastly, we analyzed the potential of reinforcement and transfer learning to improve context-consistency for neural conversation models. We find that current reward functions need to be more precise to enable the potential of reinforcement learning, and that sequential transfer learning can improve the subjective quality of generated dialogues.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Garcia2018, author = {Garcia, Rowena}, title = {Thematic role assignment and word order preferences in the child language acquisition of Tagalog}, address = {Potsdam}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-421742}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {xvii, 201}, year = {2018}, abstract = {A critical task in daily communications is identifying who did what to whom in an utterance, or assigning the thematic roles agent and patient in a sentence. This dissertation is concerned with Tagalog-speaking children's use of word order and morphosyntactic markers for thematic role assignment. It aims to explain children's difficulties in interpreting sentences with a non-canonical order of arguments (i.e., patient-before-agent) by testing the predictions of the following accounts: the frequency account (Demuth, 1989), the Competition model (MacWhinney \& Bates, 1989), and the incremental processing account (Trueswell \& Gleitman, 2004). Moreover, the experiments in this dissertation test the influence of a word order strategy in a language like Tagalog, where the thematic roles are always unambiguous in a sentence, due to its verb-initial order and its voice-marking system. In Tagalog's voice-marking system, the inflection on the verb indicates the thematic role of the noun marked by 'ang.' First, the possible basis for a word order strategy in Tagalog was established using a sentence completion experiment given to adults and 5- and 7-year-old children (Chapter 2) and a child-directed speech corpus analysis (Chapter 3). In general, adults and children showed an agent-before-patient preference, although adults' preference was also affected by sentence voice. Children's comprehension was then examined through a self-paced listening and picture verification task (Chapter 3) and an eye-tracking and picture selection task (Chapter 4), where word order (agent-initial or patient-initial) and voice (agent voice or patient voice) were manipulated. Offline (i.e., accuracy) and online (i.e., listening times, looks to the target) measures revealed that 5- and 7-year-old Tagalog-speaking children had a bias to interpret the first noun as the agent. Additionally, the use of word order and morphosyntactic markers was found to be modulated by voice. In the agent voice, children relied more on a word order strategy; while in the patient voice, they relied on the morphosyntactic markers. These results are only partially explained by the accounts being tested in this dissertation. Instead, the findings support computational accounts of incremental word prediction and learning such as Chang, Dell, \& Bock's (2006) model.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Garoufi2013, author = {Garoufi, Konstantina}, title = {Interactive generation of effective discourse in situated context : a planning-based approach}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-69108}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, year = {2013}, abstract = {As our modern-built structures are becoming increasingly complex, carrying out basic tasks such as identifying points or objects of interest in our surroundings can consume considerable time and cognitive resources. In this thesis, we present a computational approach to converting contextual information about a person's physical environment into natural language, with the aim of helping this person identify given task-related entities in their environment. Using efficient methods from automated planning - the field of artificial intelligence concerned with finding courses of action that can achieve a goal -, we generate discourse that interactively guides a hearer through completing their task. Our approach addresses the challenges of controlling, adapting to, and monitoring the situated context. To this end, we develop a natural language generation system that plans how to manipulate the non-linguistic context of a scene in order to make it more favorable for references to task-related objects. This strategy distributes a hearer's cognitive load of interpreting a reference over multiple utterances rather than one long referring expression. Further, to optimize the system's linguistic choices in a given context, we learn how to distinguish speaker behavior according to its helpfulness to hearers in a certain situation, and we model the behavior of human speakers that has been proven helpful. The resulting system combines symbolic with statistical reasoning, and tackles the problem of making non-trivial referential choices in rich context. Finally, we complement our approach with a mechanism for preventing potential misunderstandings after a reference has been generated. Employing remote eye-tracking technology, we monitor the hearer's gaze and find that it provides a reliable index of online referential understanding, even in dynamically changing scenes. We thus present a system that exploits hearer gaze to generate rapid feedback on a per-utterance basis, further enhancing its effectiveness. Though we evaluate our approach in virtual environments, the efficiency of our planning-based model suggests that this work could be a step towards effective conversational human-computer interaction situated in the real world.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Genzel2013, author = {Genzel, Susanne}, title = {Lexical and post-lexical tones in Akan}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-77969}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {vi, 260}, year = {2013}, abstract = {This dissertation is about factors that contribute to the surface forms of tones in connected speech in Akan. Akan is an African tone language, which is spoken in Ghana. It has two level tones (low and high), automatic and non-automatic downstep. Downstep is the major factor that influences the surface forms of tones. The thesis shows that downstep is caused by declination. It is argued that declination is an intonational property of Akan, which serves to signal coherence. A phonological representation using a high and a low register tone, associating to the left and right edge of an intonational phrase (IP), respectively, is proposed. Declination/downstep is modelled using a (phonetic) pitch implementation algorithm (Liberman \& Pierrehumbert, 1984). An innovative application of the algorithm is presented, which naturally captures the relation between declination and downstep in Akan. Another important factor is the prosodic manifestation of sentence level pragmatic meanings, such as sentence mode and focus. Regarding the former, the thesis shows that a post-lexical low tone, which associates with the right edge of an IP, signals interrogativity. Additionally, lexical tones in Yes - No questions are realized in a higher pitch register, which does not lead to a reduction of declination. It is claimed that the higher register is not part of the phonological representation in Akan, but that it emerges at the phonetic level to compensate for the 'unnatural' form of the question morpheme and to satisfy the Frequency code (Gussenhoven, 2002; 2004). An extension of Rialland's (2007) typology in terms of a new category called "low tense" question prosody is proposed. Concerning focus marking, it is argued that the use of the morpho-syntactic focus marking strategy is related to extra grammatical factors, such as hearer expectation, discourse expectability (Zimmermann, 2007) and emphasis (Hartmann, 2008). If a speaker of Akan wants to highlight a particular element in a sentence, in-situ, i.e. by means of prosody, the default prosodic structure is modified in such a way that the focused element forms its own phonological phrase (pP). If it is already contained in a pP, the boundary deliminating the focused element is enhanced (F{\´e}ry, 2012). This restructuring/enhancement is accompanied by an interruption of the otherwise continuous melody due to insertion of a pause and/or a glottal stop. Beside declination and intonation, raising of H tones applies in Akan. H raising is analyzed as a local anticipatory planning effect, employed at the phonetic level, which enhances the perceptual distance between low and high tones. Low tones are raised, if they are wedged between two high tones. L raising is argued to be a local carryover effect (co-articulation). Further, it is demonstrated that global anticipatory raising takes place. It is shown that Akan speakers anticipate the length of an IP. Preplanning (anticipatory raising) is argued to be an important process at the level of pitch implementation. It serves to ensure that declination can be maintained throughout the IP, which prevents pitch resetting. The melody of an Akan sentence is largely determined by the choice of words. The inventory of post-lexical tones is small. It consists of post-lexical register tones, which trigger declination and post-lexical intonational tones, which signal sentence type. The overall melodic shape is falling. At the local level, H raising and L raising occur. At the global level, initial low and high tones are realized higher if they occur in a long and/or complex sentence. This dissertation shows that many factors, which emerge at different levels of the tone production process, contribute to the surface form of tones in Akan.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Gerth2015, author = {Gerth, Sabrina}, title = {Memory limitations in sentence comprehension}, isbn = {978-3-86956-321-3}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-71554}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {xviii, 157}, year = {2015}, abstract = {This dissertation addresses the question of how linguistic structures can be represented in working memory. We propose a memory-based computational model that derives offline and online complexity profiles in terms of a top-down parser for minimalist grammars (Stabler, 2011). The complexity metric reflects the amount of time an item is stored in memory. The presented architecture links grammatical representations stored in memory directly to the cognitive behavior by deriving predictions about sentence processing difficulty. Results from five different sentence comprehension experiments were used to evaluate the model's assumptions about memory limitations. The predictions of the complexity metric were compared to the locality (integration and storage) cost metric of Dependency Locality Theory (Gibson, 2000). Both metrics make comparable offline and online predictions for four of the five phenomena. The key difference between the two metrics is that the proposed complexity metric accounts for the structural complexity of intervening material. In contrast, DLT's integration cost metric considers the number of discourse referents, not the syntactic structural complexity. We conclude that the syntactic analysis plays a significant role in memory requirements of parsing. An incremental top-down parser based on a grammar formalism easily computes offline and online complexity profiles, which can be used to derive predictions about sentence processing difficulty.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Gollrad2013, author = {Gollrad, Anja}, title = {Prosodic cue weighting in sentence comprehension}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-81954}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {148}, year = {2013}, abstract = {Gegenstand der Dissertation ist die Untersuchung der Gewichtung prosodischer Korrelate der Phrasierung im Deutschen, insbesondere der Dauer- und Grundfrequenzeigenschaften auf der Ebene der phonologischen Phrase (φ) und der Intonationsphrase (ι). F{\"u}r die prosodische Dom{\"a}ne der phonologischen Phrase und der Intonationsphrase gilt als belegt, dass sie h{\"a}upts{\"a}chlich durch phonetische Parameter der pr{\"a}finalen Dehnung (Lehiste, 1973; Klatt, 1976; Price et al., 1991; Turk \& White, 1999), der Pausendauer (Fant \& Kruckenberg, 1996) und der Ver{\"a}nderung der Grundfrequenz (Pierrehumbert, 1980) ausgedr{\"u}ckt werden, wobei die phonetischen grenzmarkierenden Eigenschaften eher quantitativer als qualitativer Natur sind. Ebenfalls ist bekannt, dass auf der anderen Seite H{\"o}rer diese phonetischen Eigenschaften der Sprecher nutzen, um die prosodische Struktur einer {\"A}ußerung zu ermitteln (Snedeker \& Trueswell, 2003; Kraljic \& Brennan, 2005). Perzeptuelle Evidenz aus dem Englischen und Niederl{\"a}ndischen deuten allerdings darauf hin, dass sich Sprachen hinsichtlich der entscheidenden Korrelate, die f{\"u}r die Perzeption der Dom{\"a}nen konsultiert werden, unterscheiden (Aasland \& Baum, 2003; Sanderman \& Collier, 1997; Scott, 1982; Streeter, 1978). Die grenzmarkierenden phonetischen Korrelate der Dom{\"a}nen werden in der Perzeption unterschiedlich stark gewichtet, was sich im Konzept eines sprachspezifischen prosodischen cue weightings ausdr{\"u}ckt. F{\"u}r das Deutsche ist allerdings nicht hinreichend bekannt, welche dieser drei phonetischen Parameter die wichtigste Rolle f{\"u}r die Perzeption der phonologischen Phrasengrenze und der Intonationsphrasengrenze spielt. Ziel der Dissertation war es, diejenigen phonetischen Merkmale zu identifizieren, die f{\"u}r die Perzeption der phonologischen Phrasengrenze und der Intonationsphrasengrenze entscheidend sind und sich somit f{\"u}r die Bildung der jeweiligen prosodischen Phrasengrenze als notwendig herausstellen. Die Identifikation und Gewichtung eines phonetischen Merkmals erfolgte in der vorliegenden Arbeit durch die Effekte prosodischer Manipulation der phonetischen Korrelate an phonologischen Phrasengrenzen und Intonationsphrasengrenzen auf die Disambiguierung lokaler syntaktischer Ambiguit{\"a}ten in der Perzeption. Der Einfluss einzelner phonetischer Merkmale wurde in einem forced-choice Experiment evaluiert, bei dem H{\"o}rern syntaktisch ambige Satzfragmente auditiv pr{\"a}sentiert wurden und ihnen anschließend die Aufgabe zukam, aus einer Auswahl an disambiguierenden Satzvervollst{\"a}ndigung zu w{\"a}hlen. Die Anzahl der ausgew{\"a}hlten Satzvervollst{\"a}ndigungen pro Satzbedingung {\"a}nderte sich in Abh{\"a}ngigkeit der prosodischen Manipulation der pr{\"a}finalen Dehnung, der Pausendauer und der Grundfrequenz, wodurch der Einfluss eines einzelnen phonetischen Merkmals auf den Disambiguierungsprozess sichtbar wurde. Ein phonetischer Parameter wurde genau dann als notwendig klassifiziert, wenn sich durch seine Manipulation die F{\"a}higkeit zur Disambiguierung der syntaktischen Strukturen signifikant reduzierte, oder g{\"a}nzlich scheiterte, und somit die Wahrnehmung prosodischer Kategorien beinflusst wurde (Heldner, 2001). Hat sich in der Perzeption ein phonetisches Merkmal als notwendig herausgestellt, wurde nachfolgend eine optimalit{\"a}tstheoretische Modellierung vorgeschlagen, die die phonetischen Eigenschaften auf eine (abstrakte) phonologische Strukturerstellung beschreibt. Dieser Verarbeitungsschritt entspricht dem Teilbereich des Perzeptionsprozesses, der in Boersma \& Hamann (2009), Escudero (2009) und F{\´e}ry et al. (2009) unter anderen als Phonetik-Phonologie-Mapping beschrieben wird. Die Dissertation hat folgende Hauptergebnisse hervorgebracht: (1) F{\"u}r die Perzeption phonologischer Phrasengrenzen und Intonationsphrasengrenzen werden nicht alle messbaren phonetischen Grenzmarkierungen gleichermaßen stark genutzt. Das phonetische Merkmal der pr{\"a}finalen Dehnung ist auf der Ebene der kleineren prosodischen Dom{\"a}ne, der phonologischen Phrase, notwendig. Die Information der Grundfrequenz in der Form von Grenzt{\"o}nen ist in der gr{\"o}ßeren Dom{\"a}ne der Intonationsphrase notwendig und damit ausschlaggebend f{\"u}r die Perzeption der prosodischen Phrasengrenze. (2) Auf der Ebene der φ-Phrase werden phonetische Eigenschaften der segmentalen Dauer in Form pr{\"a}finalen Dehnung zur Bildung abstrakter phonologischer Repr{\"a}sentationen herangezogen werden. L{\"a}ngenconstraints schreiben syntaktische Konstituenten aufgrund ihrer Inputdauern einer prosodischen Kategorie zu. Inputdauern der ersten Nominalphrase von 500ms und mehr signalisieren Finalit{\"a}t und sind durch eine φ- Grenze am rechten Rand markiert. Inputdauern von 400ms und weniger signalisieren Kontinuit{\"a}t und werden durch das Ausbleiben einer φ-Grenze am rechten Rand der ersten Nominalphrase markiert. Inputdauern, die zwischen den kritischen L{\"a}ngen von 400ms und 500ms variieren sind bez{\"u}glich der Bildung von φ- Grenzen ambig und k{\"o}nnen in der Perzeption nicht eindeutig disambiguiert werden. (3) Auf der Ebene der ι-Phrase wird die Bildung einer prosodischen Struktur durch die reine tonale Kontur (steigend oder fallend) an der ersten Nominalphrase gelenkt. Eine fallende Grundfrequenzkontur an der ersten Nominalphrase signalisiert Finalit{\"a}t und wird durch eine ι-Grenze am rechten Rand markiert. Eine steigende Kontur an der ersten Nominalphrase signalisiert phrasale Kontinuit{\"a}t und ist bei den vorliegenden S{\"a}tzen der Genitivbedingung gerade durch das Ausbleiben einer ι-Grenze auf der phonologischen Repr{\"a}sentationseben gekennzeichnet.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{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{Grishina2019, author = {Grishina, Yulia}, title = {Assessing the applicability of annotation projection methods for coreference relations}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-42537}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-425378}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {viii, 198}, year = {2019}, abstract = {The main goal of this thesis is to explore the feasibility of using cross-lingual annotation projection as a method of alleviating the task of manual coreference annotation. To reach our goal, we build a first trilingual parallel coreference corpus that encompasses multiple genres. For the annotation of the corpus, we develop common coreference annotation guidelines that are applicable to three languages (English, German, Russian) and include a novel domain-independent typology of bridging relations as well as state-of-the-art near-identity categories. Thereafter, we design and perform several annotation projection experiments. In the first experiment, we implement a direct projection method with only one source language. Our results indicate that, already in a knowledge-lean scenario, our projection approach is superior to the most closely related work of Postolache et al. (2006). Since the quality of the resulting annotations is to a high degree dependent on the word alignment, we demonstrate how using limited syntactic information helps to further improve mention extraction on the target side. As a next step, in our second experiment, we show how exploiting two source languages helps to improve the quality of target annotations for both language pairs by concatenating annotations projected from two source languages. Finally, we assess the projection quality in a fully automatic scenario (using automatically produced source annotations), and propose a pilot experiment on manual projection of bridging pairs. For each of the experiments, we carry out an in-depth error analysis, and we conclude that noisy word alignments, translation divergences and morphological and syntactic differences between languages are responsible for projection errors. We systematically compare and evaluate our projection methods, and we investigate the errors both qualitatively and quantitatively in order to identify problematic cases. Finally, we discuss the applicability of our method to coreference annotations and propose several avenues of future research.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Grubic2015, author = {Grubic, Mira}, title = {Focus and alternative sensitivity in Ngamo (West-Chadic)}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-81666}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, year = {2015}, abstract = {The main research question of this thesis concerns the relation between focus interpretation, focus realization, and association with focus in the West Chadic language Ngamo. Concerning the relation between focus realization and interpretation, this thesis contributes to the question, cross-linguistically, what factors influence a marked realization of the focus/background distinction. There is background-marking rather than focus-marking in Ngamo, and the background marker is related to the definite determiner in the language. Using original fieldwork data as a basis, a formal semantic analysis of the background marker as a definite determiner of situations is proposed. Concerning the relation between focus and association with focus, the thesis adds to the growing body of crosslinguistic evidence that not all so-called focus-sensitive operators always associate with focus. The thesis shows that while the exclusive particle yak('i) (= "only") in Ngamo conventionally associates with focus, the particles har('i) (= "even, as far as, until, already"), and ke('e) (= "also, and") do not. The thesis provides an analysis of these phenomena in a situation semantic framework.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Goetz2021, author = {G{\"o}tz, Antonia}, title = {Patterns of perceptual reorganization in infancy}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-53618}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-536185}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {154}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Previous behavioral studies showed that perceptual changes in infancy can be observed in multiple patterns, namely decline (e.g., Mattock et al., 2008; Yeung et al., 2013), maintenance (e.g., Chen \& Kager, 2016) and U-shaped development (Liu \& Kager, 2014). This dissertation contributes further to the understanding of the developmental trajectory of phonological acquisition in infancy. The dissertation addresses the questions of how the perceptual sensitivity of lexical tones and vowels changes in infancy and how different experimental procedures contribute to our understanding. We used three experimental procedures to investigate German-learning infants' discrimination abilities. In Studies 1 and 3 (Chapters 5 and 7) we used behavioral methods (habituation and familiarization procedures) and in Study 2 (Chapter 6) we measured neural correlates. Study 1 showed a U-shaped developmental pattern: 6- and 18-month-olds discriminated a lexical tone contrast, but not the 9-month-olds. In addition, we found an effect of experimental procedure: infants discriminated the tone contrast at 6 months in a habituation but not in a familiarization procedure. In Study 2, we observed mismatch responses (MMR) to a non-native tone contrast and a native-like vowel in 6- and 9-month-olds. In 6-month-olds, both contrasts elicited positive MMRs. At 9 months, the vowel contrast elicited an adult-like negative MMR, while the tone contrast elicited a positive MMR. Study 3 demonstrated a change in perceptual sensitivity to a vowel contrast between 6 and 9 months. In contrast to the 6-month-old infants, the 9-month-old infants discriminated the tested vowel contrast asymmetrically. We suggest that the shifts in perceptual sensitivity between 6 and 9 months are functional rather than perceptual. In the case of lexical tone discrimination, infants may have already learned by 9 months of age that pitch is not relevant at the lexical level in German, since the infants in Study 1 showed no perceptual sensitivity to the contrast tested. Nevertheless, the brain responded to the contrast, especially since pitch differences are also part of the German intonation system (Gussenhoven, 2004). The role of the intonation system in pitch discrimination could be supported by the recovery of behavioral discrimination at 18 months of age, as well as behavioral and neural discrimination in German-speaking adults.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Haendler2016, author = {Haendler, Yair}, title = {Effects of embedded pronouns on relative clause processing}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-396883}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {xvi, 186}, year = {2016}, abstract = {Difficulties with object relative clauses (ORC), as compared to subject relative clauses (SR), are widely attested across different languages, both in adults and in children. This SR-ORC asymmetry is reduced, or even eliminated, when the embedded constituent in the ORC is a pronoun, rather than a lexical noun phrase. The studies included in this thesis were designed to explore under what circumstances the pronoun facilitation occurs; whether all pronouns have the same effect; whether SRs are also affected by embedded pronouns; whether children perform like adults on such structures; and whether performance is related to cognitive abilities such as memory or grammatical knowledge. Several theoretical approaches that explain the pronoun facilitation in relative clauses are evaluated. The experimental data have been collected in three languages-German, Italian and Hebrew-stemming from both children and adults. In the German study (Chapter 2), ORCs with embedded 1st- or 3rd-person pronouns are compared to ORCs with an embedded lexical noun phrase. Eye-movement data from 5-year-old children show that the 1st-person pronoun facilitates processing, but not the 3rd-person pronoun. Moreover, children's performance is modulated by additive effects of their memory and grammatical skills. In the Italian study (Chapter 3), the 1st-person pronoun advantage over the 3rd-person pronoun is tested in ORCs and SRs that display a similar word order. Eye-movement data from 5-year-olds and adult controls and reading times data from adults are pitted against the outcome of a corpus analysis, showing that the 1st-/3rd-person pronoun asymmetry emerges in the two relative clause types to an equal extent. In the Hebrew study (Chapter 4), the goal is to test the effect of a special kind of pronoun-a non-referential arbitrary subject pronoun-on ORC comprehension, in the light of potential confounds in previous studies that used this pronoun. Data from a referent-identification task with 4- to 5-year-olds indicate that, when the experimental material is controlled, the non-referential pronoun does not necessarily facilitate ORC comprehension. Importantly, however, children have even more difficulties when the embedded constituent is a referential pronoun. The non-referentiality / referentiality asymmetry is emphasized by the relation between children's performance on the experimental task and their memory skills. Together, the data presented in this thesis indicate that sentence processing is not only driven by structural (or syntactic) factors, but also by discourse-related ones, like pronouns' referential properties or their discourse accessibility mechanism, which is defined as the level of ease or difficulty with which referents of pronouns are identified and retrieved from the discourse model. Although independent in essence, these structural and discourse factors can in some cases interact in a way that affects sentence processing. Moreover, both types of factors appear to be strongly related to memory. The data also support the idea that, from early on, children are sensitive to the same factors that affect adults' sentence processing, and that the processing strategies of both populations are qualitatively similar. In sum, this thesis suggests that a comprehensive theory of human sentence processing needs to account for effects that are due to both structural and discourse-related factors, which operate as a function of memory capacity.}, 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{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{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{Huebner2007, author = {H{\"u}bner, Sebastian Valentin}, title = {Wissensbasierte Modellierung von Audio-Signal-Klassifikatoren : zur Bioakustik von Tursiops truncatus. - 2., {\"u}berarb. Aufl.}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-16631}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, year = {2007}, abstract = {Die vorliegende Arbeit befasst sich mit der wissensbasierten Modellierung von Audio-Signal-Klassifikatoren (ASK) f{\"u}r die Bioakustik. Sie behandelt ein interdisziplin{\"a}res Problem, das viele Facetten umfasst. Zu diesen geh{\"o}ren artspezifische bioakustische Fragen, mathematisch-algorithmische Details und Probleme der Repr{\"a}sentation von Expertenwissen. Es wird eine universelle praktisch anwendbare Methode zur wissensbasierten Modellierung bioakustischer ASK dargestellt und evaluiert. Das Problem der Modellierung von ASK wird dabei durchg{\"a}ngig aus KDD-Perspektive (Knowledge Discovery in Databases) betrachtet. Der grundlegende Ansatz besteht darin, mit Hilfe von modifizierten KDD-Methoden und Data-Mining-Verfahren die Modellierung von ASK wesentlich zu erleichtern. Das etablierte KDD-Paradigma wird mit Hilfe eines detaillierten formalen Modells auf den Bereich der Modellierung von ASK {\"u}bertragen. Neunzehn elementare KDD-Verfahren bilden die Grundlage eines umfassenden Systems zur wissensbasierten Modellierung von ASK. Methode und Algorithmen werden evaluiert, indem eine sehr umfangreiche Sammlung akustischer Signale des Großen T{\"u}mmlers mit ihrer Hilfe untersucht wird. Die Sammlung wurde speziell f{\"u}r diese Arbeit in Eilat (Israel) angefertigt. Insgesamt werden auf Grundlage dieses Audiomaterials vier empirische Einzelstudien durchgef{\"u}hrt: - Auf der Basis von oszillographischen und spektrographischen Darstellungen wird ein ph{\"a}nomenologisches Klassifikationssystem f{\"u}r die vielf{\"a}ltigen Laute des Großen T{\"u}mmlers dargestellt. - Mit Hilfe eines Korpus halbsynthetischer Audiodaten werden verschiedene grundlegende Verfahren zur Modellierung und Anwendung von ASK in Hinblick auf ihre Genauigkeit und Robustheit untersucht. - Mit einem speziell entwickelten Clustering-Verfahren werden mehrere Tausend nat{\"u}rliche Pfifflaute des Großen T{\"u}mmlers untersucht. Die Ergebnisse werden visualisiert und diskutiert. - Durch maschinelles mustererkennungsbasiertes akustisches Monitoring wird die Emissionsdynamik verschiedener Lauttypen im Verlaufe von vier Wochen untersucht. Etwa 2.5 Millionen Klicklaute werden im Anschluss auf ihre spektralen Charakteristika hin untersucht. Die beschriebene Methode und die dargestellten Algorithmen sind in vielf{\"a}ltiger Hinsicht erweiterbar, ohne dass an ihrer grundlegenden Architektur etwas ge{\"a}ndert werden muss. Sie lassen sich leicht in dem gesamten Gebiet der Bioakustik einsetzen. Hiermit besitzen sie auch f{\"u}r angrenzende Disziplinen ein hohes Potential, denn exaktes Wissen {\"u}ber die akustischen Kommunikations- und Sonarsysteme der Tiere wird in der theoretischen Biologie, in den Kognitionswissenschaften, aber auch im praktischen Naturschutz, in Zukunft eine wichtige Rolle spielen.}, language = {de} } @phdthesis{Huemmer2007, author = {H{\"u}mmer, Christiane}, title = {Synonymie bei phraseologischen Einheiten : eine korpusbasierte Untersuchung}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-51052}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, year = {2007}, abstract = {Die vorliegende Dissertation widmet sich dem Thema Synonymie im besonderen Fall der phraseologischen Einheiten. Es handelt sich um eine korpusbasierte, empirische Untersuchung, die sich insbesondere mit der Frage besch{\"a}ftigt, ob und inwiefern es m{\"o}glich ist, sich typisch semantischen Kategorien wie Bedeutung, Idiomatizit{\"a}t, Bildlichkeit etc. {\"u}ber die Untersuchung typischer Verwendungsmuster zu n{\"a}hern. Diese Themenstellung motiviert sich aus bisher in der linguistischen Literatur strittigen grunds{\"a}tzlichen Aspekten der Diskussion um Bedeutung und Synonymie: Sie ist zum einen als Beitrag zum besseren Verst{\"a}ndnis des Verh{\"a}ltnisses zwischen Verwendungsdaten und Bedeutung sowie zum Status traditioneller w{\"o}rterbuch{\"a}hnlicher Bedeutungsangaben innerhalb einer gebrauchsbasierten Semantik gedacht: Zum anderen geht es darum, detaillierte Erkenntnisse {\"u}ber die {\"U}bertragbarkeit des Konzepts Synonymie von Einzellexemen auf phraseologische Einheiten zu gewinnen. Unter der Annahme, dass menschliches Lernen bzw. Erschließen von Bedeutung prim{\"a}r empirisch funktioniert, ist die Analyse der Breite der Varianz des tats{\"a}chlichen kontextuellen Verhaltens phraseologischer Einheiten bei gleicher oder {\"a}hnlicher Bedeutung dazu geeignet, detaillierte Erkenntnisse {\"u}ber die Korrelation zwischen Bedeutungs- und Verwendungsaspekten sowie {\"u}ber den Einfluss phraseologiespezifischer Eigenschaften zu gewinnen. Ausgangspunkt der Untersuchung ist eine Gruppe phraseologischer Einheiten, die in W{\"o}rterb{\"u}chern als bedeutungs{\"a}hnlich bzw. synonym klassifiziert werden. Unter diesen phraseologischen Einheiten finden sich Ausdr{\"u}cke unterschiedlicher Bildlichkeit, Idiomatizit{\"a}t und morphosyntaktischer Struktur, von denen einige aus mehreren Inhaltsw{\"o}rtern bestehen, wie etwa jmd. sch{\"u}ttelt etw. aus dem {\"A}rmel, jmd. hat etw. mit der Muttermilch eingesogen und jmd. weiß Bescheid, w{\"a}hrend andere lediglich Verbindungen eines Inhaltswortes mit einem oder mehreren Funktionsw{\"o}rtern und dem Verb haben oder sein darstellen. Zur letzteren Gruppe geh{\"o}ren unter anderem Ausdr{\"u}cke wie jmd. hat das Zeug zu etw., jmd. ist auf Zack und jmd. ist vom Fach. Diese Heterogenit{\"a}t der zu untersuchenden Ausdr{\"u}cke bez{\"u}glich ihres phraseologischen Status macht sie zu einem geeigneten Gegenstand der differenzierten Betrachtung der Rolle phraseologiespezifischer Eigenschaften f{\"u}r die Beschreibung von Bedeutung und Synonymie. Die Untersuchung besteht im ersten Schritt in einer detaillierten Annotation aller Vorkommenskontexte der phraseologischen Einheiten im Korpus des DWDS (Berlin-Brandeburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, www.dwds.de) auf Basis einer Reihe vordefinierter Analysekriterien. Aus dieser Annotation wird in einem zweiten Schritt eine Beschreibung der typischen Verwendungsmerkmale jeder einzelnen lexikalischen Einheit gewonnen. Gleichzeitig enstehen nach einer festgelegten Methode Bedeutungsbeschreibungen in Form von Paraphrasen, die auf elementare Bedeutungsbestandteile reduziert werden. Diese Bedeutungs- und Verwendungsbeschreibungen der untersuchten phraseologschen Einheiten bilden die Basis f{\"u}r den dritten Teil der Arbeit, in der die beiden Beschreibungsebenen aufeinander bezogen werden. Im Ergebnis zeigt die Arbeit, dass a) Zwischen Verwendung und Bedeutung lexikalischer (phraseologischer) Einheiten identifizierbare systematische Korrelationen bestehen, die einen datenzentrierten Zugang zur Untersuchung und Beschreibung lexikalischer Semantik erm{\"o}glichen. b) Innerhalb einer Gruppe von Synonymen so wie auch innerhalb einer erweiterten Menge quasisynonymer Ausdr{\"u}cke jedem einzelnen Element ein eigener Platz zukommt, der dieses Element von allen anderen Elementen unterscheidet. c) Die Verwendungsdaten einer phraseologischen Einheit positive Evidenz f{\"u}r den individuellen Grad der Relevanz der Merkmale Festigkeit, Idiomatizit{\"a}t und Motiviertheit einer phraseologischen Einheit liefern.}, language = {de} } @phdthesis{Jovanovic2018, author = {Jovanovic, Nenad}, title = {The comprehension of the passive voice by different populations and the effects of structural priming on this process}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-47590}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-475900}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {viii, 164}, year = {2018}, abstract = {This thesis investigates the comprehension of the passive voice in three distinct populations. First, the comprehension of passives by adult German speakers was studied, followed by an examination of how German-speaking children comprehend the structure. Finally, bilingual Mandarin-English speakers were tested on their comprehension of the passive voice in English, which is their L2. An integral part of testing the comprehension in all three populations is the use of structural priming. In each of the three distinct parts of the research, structural priming was used for a specific reason. In the study involving adult German speakers, productive and receptive structural priming was directly compared. The goal was to see the effect the two priming modalities have on language comprehension. In the study on German-acquiring children, structural priming was an important tool in answering the question regarding the delayed acquisition of the passive voice. Finally, in the study on the bilingual population, cross-linguistic priming was used to investigate the importance of word order in the priming effect, since Mandarin and English have different word orders in passive voice sentences.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Jurish2011, author = {Jurish, Bryan}, title = {Finite-state canonicalization techniques for historical German}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-55789}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, year = {2011}, abstract = {This work addresses issues in the automatic preprocessing of historical German input text for use by conventional natural language processing techniques. Conventional techniques cannot adequately account for historical input text due to conventional tools' reliance on a fixed application-specific lexicon keyed by contemporary orthographic surface form on the one hand, and the lack of consistent orthographic conventions in historical input text on the other. Historical spelling variation is treated here as an error-correction problem or "canonicalization" task: an attempt to automatically assign each (historical) input word a unique extant canonical cognate, thus allowing direct application-specific processing (tagging, parsing, etc.) of the returned canonical forms without need for any additional application-specific modifications. In the course of the work, various methods for automatic canonicalization are investigated and empirically evaluated, including conflation by phonetic identity, conflation by lemma instantiation heuristics, canonicalization by weighted finite-state rewrite cascade, and token-wise disambiguation by a dynamic Hidden Markov Model.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Knospe2018, author = {Knospe, Gloria-Mona}, title = {Processing of pronouns and reflexives in Turkish-German bilinguals}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-43644}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-436442}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {xxii, 410}, year = {2018}, abstract = {Previous studies on native language (L1) anaphor resolution have found that monolingual native speakers are sensitive to syntactic, pragmatic, and semantic constraints on pronouns and reflexive resolution. However, most studies have focused on English and other Germanic languages, and little is currently known about the online (i.e., real-time) processing of anaphors in languages with syntactically less restricted anaphors, such as Turkish. We also know relatively little about how 'non-standard' populations such as non-native (L2) speakers and heritage speakers (HSs) resolve anaphors. This thesis investigates the interpretation and real-time processing of anaphors in German and in a typologically different and as yet understudied language, Turkish. It compares hypotheses about differences between native speakers' (L1ers) and L2 speakers' (L2ers) sentence processing, looking into differences in processing mechanisms as well as the possibility of cross-linguistic influence. To help fill the current research gap regarding HS sentence comprehension, it compares findings for this group with those for L2ers. To investigate the representation and processing of anaphors in these three populations, I carried out a series of offline questionnaires and Visual-World eye-tracking experiments on the resolution of reflexives and pronouns in both German and Turkish. In the German experiments, native German speakers as well as L2ers of German were tested, while in the Turkish experiments, non-bilingual native Turkish speakers as well as HSs of Turkish with L2 German were tested. This allowed me to observe both cross-linguistic differences as well as population differences between monolinguals' and different types of bilinguals' resolution of anaphors. Regarding the comprehension of Turkish anaphors by L1ers, contrary to what has been previously assumed, I found that Turkish has no reflexive that follows Condition A of Binding theory (Chomsky, 1981). Furthermore, I propose more general cross-linguistic differences between Turkish and German, in the form of a stronger reliance on pragmatic information in anaphor resolution overall in Turkish compared to German. As for the processing differences between L1ers and L2ers of a language, I found evidence in support of hypotheses which propose that L2ers of German rely more strongly on non-syntactic information compared to L1ers (Clahsen \& Felser, 2006, 2017; Cunnings, 2016, 2017) independent of a potential influence of their L1. HSs, on the other hand, showed a tendency to overemphasize interpretational contrasts between different Turkish anaphors compared to monolingual native speakers. However, lower-proficiency HSs were likely to merge different forms for simplified representation and processing. Overall, L2ers and HSs showed differences from monolingual native speakers both in their final interpretation of anaphors and during online processing. However, these differences were not parallel between the two types of bilingual and thus do not support a unified model of L2 and HS processing (cf. Montrul, 2012). The findings of this thesis contribute to the field of anaphor resolution by providing data from a previously unexplored language, Turkish, as well as contributing to research on native and non-native processing differences. My results also illustrate the importance of considering individual differences in the acquisition process when studying bilingual language comprehension. Factors such as age of acquisition, language proficiency and the type of input a language learner receives may influence the processing mechanisms they develop and employ, both between and within different bilingual populations.}, language = {en} } @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{Kuberski2019, author = {Kuberski, Stephan R.}, title = {Fundamental motor laws and dynamics of speech}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-43771}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-437714}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {97}, year = {2019}, abstract = {The present work is a compilation of three original research articles submitted (or already published) in international peer-reviewed venues of the field of speech science. These three articles address the topics of fundamental motor laws in speech and dynamics of corresponding speech movements: 1. Kuberski, Stephan R. and Adamantios I. Gafos (2019). "The speed-curvature power law in tongue movements of repetitive speech". PLOS ONE 14(3). Public Library of Science. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0213851. 2. Kuberski, Stephan R. and Adamantios I. Gafos (In press). "Fitts' law in tongue movements of repetitive speech". Phonetica: International Journal of Phonetic Science. Karger Publishers. doi: 10.1159/000501644 3. Kuberski, Stephan R. and Adamantios I. Gafos (submitted). "Distinct phase space topologies of identical phonemic sequences". Language. Linguistic Society of America. The present work introduces a metronome-driven speech elicitation paradigm in which participants were asked to utter repetitive sequences of elementary consonant-vowel syllables. This paradigm, explicitly designed to cover speech rates from a substantially wider range than has been explored so far in previous work, is demonstrated to satisfy the important prerequisites for assessing so far difficult to access aspects of speech. Specifically, the paradigm's extensive speech rate manipulation enabled elicitation of a great range of movement speeds as well as movement durations and excursions of the relevant effectors. The presence of such variation is a prerequisite to assessing whether invariant relations between these and other parameters exist and thus provides the foundation for a rigorous evaluation of the two laws examined in the first two contributions of this work. In the data resulting from this paradigm, it is shown that speech movements obey the same fundamental laws as movements from other domains of motor control do. In particular, it is demonstrated that speech strongly adheres to the power law relation between speed and curvature of movement with a clear speech rate dependency of the power law's exponent. The often-sought or reported exponent of one third in the statement of the law is unique to a subclass of movements which corresponds to the range of faster rates under which a particular utterance is produced. For slower rates, significantly larger values than one third are observed. Furthermore, for the first time in speech this work uncovers evidence for the presence of Fitts' law. It is shown that, beyond a speaker-specific speech rate, speech movements of the tongue clearly obey Fitts' law by emergence of its characteristic linear relation between movement time and index of difficulty. For slower speech rates (when temporal pressure is small), no such relation is observed. The methods and datasets obtained in the two assessment above provide a rigorous foundation both for addressing implications for theories and models of speech as well as for better understanding the status of speech movements in the context of human movements in general. All modern theories of language rely on a fundamental segmental hypothesis according to which the phonological message of an utterance is represented by a sequence of segments or phonemes. It is commonly assumed that each of these phonemes can be mapped to some unit of speech motor action, a so-called speech gesture. For the first time here, it is demonstrated that the relation between the phonological description of simple utterances and the corresponding speech motor action is non-unique. Specifically, by the extensive speech rate manipulation in the herein used experimental paradigm it is demonstrated that speech exhibits clearly distinct dynamical organizations underlying the production of simple utterances. At slower speech rates, the dynamical organization underlying the repetitive production of elementary /CV/ syllables can be described by successive concatenations of closing and opening gestures, each with its own equilibrium point. As speech rate increases, the equilibria of opening and closing gestures are not equally stable yielding qualitatively different modes of organization with either a single equilibrium point of a combined opening-closing gesture or a periodic attractor unleashed by the disappearance of both equilibria. This observation, the non-uniqueness of the dynamical organization underlying what on the surface appear to be identical phonemic sequences, is an entirely new result in the domain of speech. Beyond that, the demonstration of periodic attractors in speech reveals that dynamical equilibrium point models do not account for all possible modes of speech motor behavior.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Linnik2016, author = {Linnik, Anastasia}, title = {Coherence and structure in aphasic and non-aphasic spoken discourse}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-42320}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-423202}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {xii, 106}, year = {2016}, abstract = {Discourse production is crucial for communicative success and is in the core of aphasia assessment and treatment. Coherence differentiates discourse from a series of utterances/sentences; it is internal unity and connectedness, and, as such, perhaps the most inherent property of discourse. It is unclear whether people with aphasia, who experience various language production difficulties, preserve the ability to produce coherent discourse. A more general question of how coherence is established and represented linguistically has been addressed in the literature, yet remains unanswered. This dissertation presents an investigation of discourse production in aphasia and the linguistic mechanisms of establishing coherence.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Logačev2014, author = {Logačev, Pavel}, title = {Underspecification and parallel processing in sentence comprehension}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-82047}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, year = {2014}, abstract = {The aim of the present thesis is to answer the question to what degree the processes involved in sentence comprehension are sensitive to task demands. A central phenomenon in this regard is the so-called ambiguity advantage, which is the finding that ambiguous sentences can be easier to process than unambiguous sentences. This finding may appear counterintuitive, because more meanings should be associated with a higher computational effort. Currently, two theories exist that can explain this finding. The Unrestricted Race Model (URM) by van Gompel et al. (2001) assumes that several sentence interpretations are computed in parallel, whenever possible, and that the first interpretation to be computed is assigned to the sentence. Because the duration of each structure-building process varies from trial to trial, the parallelism in structure-building predicts that ambiguous sentences should be processed faster. This is because when two structures are permissible, the chances that some interpretation will be computed quickly are higher than when only one specific structure is permissible. Importantly, the URM is not sensitive to task demands such as the type of comprehension questions being asked. A radically different proposal is the strategic underspecification model by Swets et al. (2008). It assumes that readers do not attempt to resolve ambiguities unless it is absolutely necessary. In other words, they underspecify. According the strategic underspecification hypothesis, all attested replications of the ambiguity advantage are due to the fact that in those experiments, readers were not required to fully understand the sentence. In this thesis, these two models of the parser's actions at choice-points in the sentence are presented and evaluated. First, it is argued that the Swets et al.'s (2008) evidence against the URM and in favor of underspecification is inconclusive. Next, the precise predictions of the URM as well as the underspecification model are refined. Subsequently, a self-paced reading experiment involving the attachment of pre-nominal relative clauses in Turkish is presented, which provides evidence against strategical underspecification. A further experiment is presented which investigated relative clause attachment in German using the speed-accuracy tradeoff (SAT) paradigm. The experiment provides evidence against strategic underspecification and in favor of the URM. Furthermore the results of the experiment are used to argue that human sentence comprehension is fallible, and that theories of parsing should be able to account for that fact. Finally, a third experiment is presented, which provides evidence for the sensitivity to task demands in the treatment of ambiguities. Because this finding is incompatible with the URM, and because the strategic underspecification model has been ruled out, a new model of ambiguity resolution is proposed: the stochastic multiple-channel model of ambiguity resolution (SMCM). It is further shown that the quantitative predictions of the SMCM are in agreement with experimental data. In conclusion, it is argued that the human sentence comprehension system is parallel and fallible, and that it is sensitive to task-demands.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Lorenz2004, author = {Lorenz, Antje}, title = {Die Behandlung von Wortabrufst{\"o}rungen bei Aphasie : eine methodenvergleichende Studie zum Bildbenennen}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-0001747}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, year = {2004}, abstract = {In einer multiplen Einzelfallstudie mit zehn aphasischen Patienten wurde die Wirksamkeit eines semantischen und eines phonologischen Therapieansatzes zur Behandlung von Wortabrufst{\"o}rungen verglichen. Detaillierte Einzelfalluntersuchungen erm{\"o}glichten die Diagnose der zugrundeliegenden funktionalen St{\"o}rungen bei jedem Patienten. Auf diese Weise konnten die erzielten Therapieeffekte auf die individuellen kognitiv-neurolinguistischen St{\"o}rungsmuster bezogen werden. Im Vordergrund der Therapie stand in beiden Ans{\"a}tzen das m{\"u}ndliche Benennen von Objektabbildungen mit unterschiedlichen Arten von Hilfen. W{\"a}hrend in der semantischen Therapie Teilaspekte des semantischen Zielkonzepts als Benennhilfen eingesetzt wurden, handelte es sich bei den phonologischen Hilfen um Teilinformationen der Zielwortform. Bei der Erhebung von spezifischen Therapieeffekten wurde zwischen itemspezifischen und item{\"u}bergreifenden Verbesserungen sowie kurz- und langfristigen Effekten auf die m{\"u}ndlichen Benennleistungen unterschieden. Dabei wurden neben den quantitativen Verbesserungen (\% korrekt) auch die qualitativen Effekte (Fehlertypen) der beiden Ans{\"a}tze ber{\"u}cksichtigt, und es wurden Transfereffekte in die Spontansprache der Patienten untersucht. Zus{\"a}tzlich wurden auch die Soforteffekte der verschiedenen Benennhilfen in den Therapiesitzungen erhoben. Im Methodenvergleich zeigte sich, dass die phonologische Therapiephase kurzfristig bei der Mehrzahl der Patienten signifikante Verbesserungen beim Bildbenennen bewirkte, diese Effekte haben sich jedoch {\"u}berwiegend als nicht stabil erwiesen. Im Gegensatz dazu erwies sich die semantische Therapiephase auch als langfristig effektiv. Im Unterschied dazu erwiesen sich die phonologischen Benennhilfen bei fast allen Patienten als unmittelbar effektiver als die semantischen Benennhilfen. Somit waren die Soforteffekte der Hilfetypen in den Therapiesitzungen kein sicherer Indikator f{\"u}r die Dauer der Gesamteffekte einer Therapiephase. Außerdem zeigte sich nicht bei allen Patienten ein direkter Zusammenhang zwischen der Art ihrer zugrundeliegenden funktionalen St{\"o}rung und den erzielten Therapieeffekten. Einerseits profitierten Patienten mit erhaltenen semantischen Verarbeitungsleistungen von der semantischen Therapie, andererseits zeigten sich signifikante phonologische Therapieeffekte bei Patienten mit zentral-semantischen St{\"o}rungen. Die Wirkmechanismen der beiden Therapieans{\"a}tze werden unter Ber{\"u}cksichtigung unterschiedlicher kognitiv-neurolinguistischer Theorien zum m{\"u}ndlichen Wortabrufprozess beim Bildbenennen interpretiert.}, language = {de} } @phdthesis{LopezGambino2023, author = {L{\´o}pez Gambino, Maria Soledad}, title = {Time Buying in Task-Oriented Spoken Dialogue Systems}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-59280}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-592806}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {148}, year = {2023}, abstract = {This dissertation focuses on the handling of time in dialogue. Specifically, it investigates how humans bridge time, or "buy time", when they are expected to convey information that is not yet available to them (e.g. a travel agent searching for a flight in a long list while the customer is on the line, waiting). It also explores the feasibility of modeling such time-bridging behavior in spoken dialogue systems, and it examines how endowing such systems with more human-like time-bridging capabilities may affect humans' perception of them. The relevance of time-bridging in human-human dialogue seems to stem largely from a need to avoid lengthy pauses, as these may cause both confusion and discomfort among the participants of a conversation (Levinson, 1983; Lundholm Fors, 2015). However, this avoidance of prolonged silence is at odds with the incremental nature of speech production in dialogue (Schlangen and Skantze, 2011): Speakers often start to verbalize their contribution before it is fully formulated, and sometimes even before they possess the information they need to provide, which may result in them running out of content mid-turn. In this work, we elicit conversational data from humans, to learn how they avoid being silent while they search for information to convey to their interlocutor. We identify commonalities in the types of resources employed by different speakers, and we propose a classification scheme. We explore ways of modeling human time-buying behavior computationally, and we evaluate the effect on human listeners of embedding this behavior in a spoken dialogue system. Our results suggest that a system using conversational speech to bridge time while searching for information to convey (as humans do) can provide a better experience in several respects than one which remains silent for a long period of time. However, not all speech serves this purpose equally: Our experiments also show that a system whose time-buying behavior is more varied (i.e. which exploits several categories from the classification scheme we developed and samples them based on information from human data) can prevent overestimation of waiting time when compared, for example, with a system that repeatedly asks the interlocutor to wait (even if these requests for waiting are phrased differently each time). Finally, this research shows that it is possible to model human time-buying behavior on a relatively small corpus, and that a system using such a model can be preferred by participants over one employing a simpler strategy, such as randomly choosing utterances to produce during the wait —even when the utterances used by both strategies are the same.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Mallien2011, author = {Mallien, Grit}, title = {Explorative multizentrische Querschnittsstudie zur Diagnostik der Dysarthrie bei Progressiver Supranukle{\"a}rer Blickparese - PSP}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-58045}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, year = {2011}, abstract = {Die Progressive Supranukle{\"a}re Blickparese (PSP) ist eine sporadisch auftretende neurodegenerative Erkrankung im Rahmen der atypischen Parkinson-Syndrome (APS), die im fr{\"u}hen Verlauf h{\"a}ufig mit dem Idiopathischen Parkinson-Syndrom (IPS) verwechselt wird. Dabei ist die Dysarthrie als eine erworbene, zentral bedingte sprechmotorische St{\"o}rung ein h{\"a}ufiges und fr{\"u}h auftretendes Symptom bei PSP. Bislang spricht man von einer eher unspezifischen „gemischten" Dysarthrie aus hypokinetischen, spastischen und auch ataktischen Komponenten. Im Rahmen einer explorativen Querschnittsstudie am „Fachkrankenhaus f{\"u}r Bewegungsst{\"o}rungen und Parkinson" Beelitz-Heilst{\"a}tten in Kooperation mit der „Entwicklungsgruppe Klinische Neuropsychologie" M{\"u}nchen (EKN) sowie der „Interdisziplin{\"a}ren Ambulanz f{\"u}r Bewegungsst{\"o}rungen" am Klinikum M{\"u}nchen-Großhadern wurden 50 Patienten dahingehend untersucht, ob sich f{\"u}r die Progressive Supranukle{\"a}re Blickparese (PSP) eine spezielle, fr{\"u}hzeitig zu diagnostizierende und differentialdiagnostisch relevante Dysarthrie beschreiben ließe. In diesem Zusammenhang soll gekl{\"a}rt werden, ob es sich um ph{\"a}notypische Auspr{\"a}gungen im Rahmen eines St{\"o}rungsspektrums handelt oder ob sich differenzierbare Subtypen der Krankheit, insbesondere ein „klassischer" PSP-Typ (PSP-RS) und ein „atypischer" PSP-Typ (PSP-P), auch im Bereich der Dysarthrie zeigen. Im Rahmen der Untersuchungen wurde der Schweregrad der Erkrankung mittels der „PSP-sensitiven Ratingskala (PSPRS)" gemessen. Die Dysarthriediagnostik erfolgte anhand der „Bogenhausener Dysarthrieskalen (BoDyS)" zur Beschreibung der Art und Auspr{\"a}gung der Dysarthrie bei PSP. Die Verst{\"a}ndlichkeit wurde mithilfe des „M{\"u}nchner Verst{\"a}ndlichkeits-Profils (MVP)" sowie eines weiteren Transkriptionsverfahrens ermittelt, wobei Ausschnitte aus den Tests zum Lesen und Nachsprechen der BoDyS zugrunde lagen. Weiterhin erfolgte eine Einsch{\"a}tzung der Nat{\"u}rlichkeit des Sprechens. Die Ergebnisse hinsichtlich des Einflusses von Nat{\"u}rlichkeit und Verst{\"a}ndlichkeit des Sprechens auf den Schweregrad der Dysarthrie zeigten, dass dieser modalit{\"a}ten{\"u}bergreifend mit beiden Schweregradaspekten korreliert, wenngleich es offenbar die Nat{\"u}rlichkeit des Sprechens ist, die bei PSP bereits fr{\"u}hzeitig beeintr{\"a}chtigt ist und somit als das entscheidende differentialdiagnostische Kriterium zur Differenzierung zwischen beiden PSP-Subtypen zu beurteilen ist, m{\"o}glicherweise auch gegen{\"u}ber anderen Parkinson-Syndromen. Anhand statistisch valider Ergebnisse konnten spezifische St{\"o}rungsmerkmale der Dysarthrie extrahiert werden, die eine signifikante Trennung von PSP-RS und PSP-P erm{\"o}glichen: eine leise und behaucht-heisere Stimme sowie ein verlangsamtes Sprechtempo und Hypernasalit{\"a}t. Damit k{\"o}nnen f{\"u}r die hier fokussierten Subtypen der PSP zwei unterschiedliche Dysarthrietypen postuliert werden. Danach wird dem Subtyp PSP-RS eine spastisch betonte Dysarthrie mit ausgepr{\"a}gter Verlangsamung des Sprechtempos zugeordnet, dem Subtyp PSP-P hingegen eine hypokinetische Dysarthrie mit behaucht-heiserer Hypophonie. Desweiteren konnte ein „Dysarthrie-Schwellenwert" als Zusatzkriterium f{\"u}r eine zeitliche Differenzierung beider PSP-Subtypen ermittelt werden. Anhand der Daten zeigte sich die Dysarthrie bei dem Subtyp PSP-RS gleich zu Beginn der Erkrankung, jedoch sp{\"a}testens 24 Monate danach. Hingegen konnte die Dysarthrie beim Subtyp PSP-P fr{\"u}hestens 24 Monate nach Erkrankungsbeginn festgestellt werden. Die Daten dieser Studie verdeutlichen, dass der Frage nach einer subtypenspezifischen Auspr{\"a}gung der Dysarthrie bei PSP eine L{\"a}ngsschnittsstudie folgen sollte, um die ermittelten Ergebnisse zu konsolidieren.}, language = {de} } @phdthesis{MarimonTarter2019, author = {Marimon Tarter, Mireia}, title = {Word segmentation in German-learning infants and German-speaking adults}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-43740}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-437400}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {132}, year = {2019}, abstract = {There is evidence that infants start extracting words from fluent speech around 7.5 months of age (e.g., Jusczyk \& Aslin, 1995) and that they use at least two mechanisms to segment words forms from fluent speech: prosodic information (e.g., Jusczyk, Cutler \& Redanz, 1993) and statistical information (e.g., Saffran, Aslin \& Newport, 1996). However, how these two mechanisms interact and whether they change during development is still not fully understood. The main aim of the present work is to understand in what way different cues to word segmentation are exploited by infants when learning the language in their environment, as well as to explore whether this ability is related to later language skills. In Chapter 3 we pursued to determine the reliability of the method used in most of the experiments in the present thesis (the Headturn Preference Procedure), as well as to examine correlations and individual differences between infants' performance and later language outcomes. In Chapter 4 we investigated how German-speaking adults weigh statistical and prosodic information for word segmentation. We familiarized adults with an auditory string in which statistical and prosodic information indicated different word boundaries and obtained both behavioral and pupillometry responses. Then, we conducted further experiments to understand in what way different cues to word segmentation are exploited by 9-month-old German-learning infants (Chapter 5) and by 6-month-old German-learning infants (Chapter 6). In addition, we conducted follow-up questionnaires with the infants and obtained language outcomes at later stages of development. Our findings from this thesis revealed that (1) German-speaking adults show a strong weight of prosodic cues, at least for the materials used in this study and that (2) German-learning infants weight these two kind of cues differently depending on age and/or language experience. We observed that, unlike English-learning infants, 6-month-old infants relied more strongly on prosodic cues. Nine-month-olds do not show any preference for either of the cues in the word segmentation task. From the present results it remains unclear whether the ability to use prosodic cues to word segmentation relates to later language vocabulary. We speculate that prosody provides infants with their first window into the specific acoustic regularities in the signal, which enables them to master the specific stress pattern of German rapidly. Our findings are a step forwards in the understanding of an early impact of the native prosody compared to statistical learning in early word segmentation.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Mertzen2022, author = {Mertzen, Daniela}, title = {A cross-linguistic investigation of similarity-based interference in sentence comprehension}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-55668}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-556685}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {xvii, 129}, year = {2022}, abstract = {The aim of this dissertation was to conduct a larger-scale cross-linguistic empirical investigation of similarity-based interference effects in sentence comprehension. Interference studies can offer valuable insights into the mechanisms that are involved in long-distance dependency completion. Many studies have investigated similarity-based interference effects, showing that syntactic and semantic information are employed during long-distance dependency formation (e.g., Arnett \& Wagers, 2017; Cunnings \& Sturt, 2018; Van Dyke, 2007, Van Dyke \& Lewis, 2003; Van Dyke \& McElree, 2011). Nevertheless, there are some important open questions in the interference literature that are critical to our understanding of the constraints involved in dependency resolution. The first research question concerns the relative timing of syntactic and semantic interference in online sentence comprehension. Only few interference studies have investigated this question, and, to date, there is not enough data to draw conclusions with regard to their time course (Van Dyke, 2007; Van Dyke \& McElree, 2011). Our first cross-linguistic study explores the relative timing of syntactic and semantic interference in two eye-tracking reading experiments that implement the study design used in Van Dyke (2007). The first experiment tests English sentences. The second, larger-sample experiment investigates the two interference types in German. Overall, the data suggest that syntactic and semantic interference can arise simultaneously during retrieval. The second research question concerns a special case of semantic interference: We investigate whether cue-based retrieval interference can be caused by semantically similar items which are not embedded in a syntactic structure. This second interference study builds on a landmark study by Van Dyke \& McElree (2006). The study design used in their study is unique in that it is able to pin down the source of interference as a consequence of cue overload during retrieval, when semantic retrieval cues do not uniquely match the retrieval target. Unlike most other interference studies, this design is able to rule out encoding interference as an alternative explanation. Encoding accounts postulate that it is not cue overload at the retrieval site but the erroneous encoding of similar linguistic items in memory that leads to interference (Lewandowsky et al., 2008; Oberauer \& Kliegl, 2006). While Van Dyke \& McElree (2006) reported cue-based retrieval interference from sentence-external distractors, the evidence for this effect was weak. A subsequent study did not show interference of this type (Van Dyke et al., 2014). Given these inconclusive findings, further research is necessary to investigate semantic cue-based retrieval interference. The second study in this dissertation provides a larger-scale cross-linguistic investigation of cue-based retrieval interference from sentence-external items. Three larger-sample eye-tracking studies in English, German, and Russian tested cue-based interference in the online processing of filler-gap dependencies. This study further extends the previous research by investigating interference in each language under varying task demands (Logačev \& Vasishth, 2016; Swets et al., 2008). Overall, we see some very modest support for proactive cue-based retrieval interference in English. Unexpectedly, this was observed only under a low task demand. In German and Russian, there is some evidence against the interference effect. It is possible that interference is attenuated in languages with richer case marking. In sum, the cross-linguistic experiments on the time course of syntactic and semantic interference from sentence-internal distractors support existing evidence of syntactic and semantic interference during sentence comprehension. Our data further show that both types of interference effects can arise simultaneously. Our cross-linguistic experiments investigating semantic cue-based retrieval interference from sentence-external distractors suggest that this type of interference may arise only in specific linguistic contexts.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Mosca2017, author = {Mosca, Michela}, title = {Multilinguals' language control}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-398912}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {V, 189}, year = {2017}, abstract = {For several decades, researchers have tried to explain how speakers of more than one language (multilinguals) manage to keep their languages separate and to switch from one language to the other depending on the context. This ability of multilingual speakers to use the intended language, while avoiding interference from the other language(s) has recently been termed "language control". A multitude of studies showed that when bilinguals process one language, the other language is also activated and might compete for selection. According to the most influential model of language control developed over the last two decades, competition from the non-intended language is solved via inhibition. In particular, the Inhibitory Control (IC) model proposed by Green (1998) puts forward that the amount of inhibition applied to the non-relevant language depends on its dominance, in that the stronger the language the greater the strength of inhibition applied to it. Within this account, the cost required to reactivate a previously inhibited language depends on the amount of inhibition previously exerted on it, that is, reactivation costs are greater for a stronger compared to a weaker language. In a nutshell, according to the IC model, language control is determined by language dominance. The goal of the present dissertation is to investigate the extent to which language control in multilinguals is affected by language dominance and whether and how other factors might influence this process. Three main factors are considered in this work: (i) the time speakers have to prepare for a certain language or PREPARATION TIME, (ii) the type of languages involved in the interactional context or LANGUAGE TYPOLOGY, and (iii) the PROCESSING MODALITY, that is, whether the way languages are controlled differs between reception and production. The results obtained in the four manuscripts, either published or in revision, indicate that language dominance alone does not suffice to explain language switching patterns. In particular, the present thesis shows that language control is profoundly affected by each of the three variables described above. More generally, the findings obtained in the present dissertation indicate that language control in multilingual speakers is a much more dynamic system than previously believed and is not exclusively determined by language dominance, as predicted by the IC model (Green, 1998).}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Mucha2015, author = {Mucha, Anne}, title = {Temporal interpretation and cross-linguistic variation}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-85935}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {x, 249}, year = {2015}, abstract = {This thesis investigates temporal and aspectual reference in the typologically unrelated African languages Hausa (Chadic, Afro-Asiatic) and Medumba (Grassfields Bantu). It argues that Hausa is a genuinely tenseless language and compares the interpretation of temporally unmarked sentences in Hausa to that of morphologically tenseless sentences in Medumba, where tense marking is optional and graded. The empirical behavior of the optional temporal morphemes in Medumba motivates an analysis as existential quantifiers over times and thus provides new evidence suggesting that languages vary in whether their (past) tense is pronominal or quantificational (see also Sharvit 2014). The thesis proposes for both Hausa and Medumba that the alleged future tense marker is a modal element that obligatorily combines with a prospective future shifter (which is covert in Medumba). Cross-linguistic variation in whether or not a future marker is compatible with non-future interpretation is proposed to be predictable from the aspectual architecture of the given language.}, 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} } @phdthesis{Nimz2015, author = {Nimz, Katharina}, title = {Sound perception and production in a foreign language}, publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam}, address = {Potsdam}, isbn = {978-3-86956-361-9}, issn = {2190-4545}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-88794}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {xix, 236}, year = {2015}, abstract = {The present study addresses the question of how German vowels are perceived and produced by Polish learners of German as a Foreign Language. It comprises three main experiments: a discrimination experiment, a production experiment, and an identification experiment. With the exception of the discrimination task, the experiments further investigated the influence of orthographic marking on the perception and production of German vowel length. It was assumed that explicit markings such as the Dehnungs-h ("lengthening h") could help Polish GFL learners in perceiving and producing German words more correctly. The discrimination experiment with manipulated nonce words showed that Polish GFL learners detect pure length differences in German vowels less accurately than German native speakers, while this was not the case for pure quality differences. The results of the identification experiment contrast with the results of the discrimination task in that Polish GFL learners were better at judging incorrect vowel length than incorrect vowel quality in manipulated real words. However, orthographic marking did not turn out to be the driving factor and it is suggested that metalinguistic awareness can explain the asymmetry between the two perception experiments. The production experiment supported the results of the identification task in that lengthening h did not help Polish learners in producing German vowel length more correctly. Yet, as far as vowel quality productions are concerned, it is argued that orthography does influence L2 sound productions because Polish learners seem to be negatively influenced by their native grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences. It is concluded that it is important to differentiate between the influence of the L1 and L2 orthographic system. On the one hand, the investigation of the influence of orthographic vowel length markers in German suggests that Polish GFL learners do not make use of length information provided by the L2 orthographic system. On the other hand, the vowel quality data suggest that the L1 orthographic system plays a crucial role in the acquisition of a foreign language. It is therefore proposed that orthography influences the acquisition of foreign sounds, but not in the way it was originally assumed.}, language = {en} } @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} }