@phdthesis{Ritz2013,
  author    = {Ritz, Julia},
  title     = {Discourse-givenness of noun phrases : theoretical and computational models},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-70818},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2013},
  abstract  = {This thesis gives formal definitions of discourse-givenness, coreference and reference, and reports on experiments with computational models of discourse-givenness of noun phrases for English and German. Definitions are based on Bach's (1987) work on reference, Kibble and van Deemter's (2000) work on coreference, and Kamp and Reyle's Discourse Representation Theory (1993). For the experiments, the following corpora with coreference annotation were used: MUC-7, OntoNotes and ARRAU for Englisch, and TueBa-D/Z for German. As for classification algorithms, they cover J48 decision trees, the rule based learner Ripper, and linear support vector machines. New features are suggested, representing the noun phrase's specificity as well as its context, which lead to a significant improvement of classification quality.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{DipperGoetzeStedeetal.2004,
  author    = {Dipper, Stefanie and G{\"o}tze, Michael and Stede, Manfred and Wegst, Tillmann},
  title     = {ANNIS},
  series = {Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632},
  journal   = {Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632},
  number    = {1},
  issn      = {1866-4725},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-8432},
  pages     = {245 -- 279},
  year      = {2004},
  abstract  = {In this paper, we discuss the design and implementation of our first version of the database "ANNIS" ("ANNotation of Information Structure"). For research based on empirical data, ANNIS provides a uniform environment for storing this data together with its linguistic annotations. A central database promotes standardized annotation, which facilitates interpretation and comparison of the data. ANNIS is used through a standard web browser and offers tier-based visualization of data and annotations, as well as search facilities that allow for cross-level and cross-sentential queries. The paper motivates the design of the system, characterizes its user interface, and provides an initial technical evaluation of ANNIS with respect to data size and query processing.},
  language  = {en}
}
@incollection{HartmannZimmermann2006,
  author    = {Hartmann, Katharina and Zimmermann, Malte},
  title     = {Morphological focus marking in G{\`u}r{\`u}nt{\`u}m (West Chadic)},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19525},
  publisher      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2006},
  abstract  = {The paper presents an in-depth study of focus marking in G{\`u}r{\`u}nt{\`u}m, a West Chadic language spoken in Bauchi Province of Northern Nigeria. Focus in G{\`u}r{\`u}nt{\`u}m is marked morphologically by means of a focus marker a, which typically precedes the focus constituent. Even though the morphological focus-marking system of G{\`u}r{\`u}nt{\`u}m allows for a lot of fine-grained distinctions in information structure (IS) in principle, the language is not entirely free of focus ambiguities that arise as the result of conflicting IS- and syntactic requirements that govern the placement of focus markers. We show that morphological focus marking with a applies across different types of focus, such as newinformation, contrastive, selective and corrective focus, and that a does not have a second function as a perfectivity marker, as is assumed in the literature. In contrast, we show at the end of the paper that a can also function as a foregrounding device at the level of discourse structure.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{Kitagawa2007,
  author    = {Kitagawa, Yoshihisa},
  title     = {When we fail to question in Japanese},
  series = {Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632},
  volume    = {9},
  journal   = {Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632},
  editor    = {Ishihara, Shinichiro and Petrova, Svetlana and Schwarz, Anne},
  publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam},
  address   = {Potsdam},
  issn      = {1866-4725},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-24481},
  pages     = {29 -- 64},
  year      = {2007},
  abstract  = {When we pay close attention to the prosody of Wh-questions in Japanese, we discover many novel and interesting empirical puzzles that would require us to devise a much finer syntactic component of grammar. This paper addresses the issues that pose some problems to such an elaborated grammar, and offers solutions, making an appeal to the information structure and sentence processing involved in the interpretation of interrogative and focus constructions.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{Ishihara2007,
  author    = {Ishihara, Shinichiro},
  title     = {Intonation of sentences with an NPI},
  series = {Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632},
  volume    = {9},
  journal   = {Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632},
  editor    = {Ishihara, Shinichiro and Petrova, Svetlana and Schwarz, Anne},
  publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam},
  address   = {Potsdam},
  issn      = {1866-4725},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-24497},
  pages     = {65 -- 96},
  year      = {2007},
  abstract  = {This paper presents the results of a production experiment on the intonation of sentences containing a negative polarity item (NPI) in Tokyo Japanese. The results show that NPI sentences exhibit a focus intonation: the F₀-peak of the word to which an NPI is attached is raised, while the pitch contour after the NPI-attached word is compressed until the negation. This intonation pattern is parallel to that of wh-question, in which the F₀ of the wh-phrase is raised while the post-wh-contour is compressed until the question particle.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{Gussenhoven2007,
  author    = {Gussenhoven, Carlos},
  title     = {Notions and subnotions in information structure},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19704},
  year      = {2007},
  abstract  = {Three dimensions can be distinguished in a cross-linguistic account of information structure. First, there is the definition of the focus constituent, the part of the linguistic expression which is subject to some focus meaning. Second and third, there are the focus meanings and the array of structural devices that encode them. In a given language, the expression of focus is facilitated as well as constrained by the grammar within which the focus devices operate. The prevalence of focus ambiguity, the structural inability to make focus distinctions, will thus vary across languages, and within a language, across focus meanings.},
  language  = {en}
}
@misc{HoehleWeissenbornKieferetal.2004,
  author    = {H{\"o}hle, Barbara and Weissenborn, J{\"u}rgen and Kiefer, Dorothea and Schulz, Antje and Schmitz, Michaela},
  title     = {Functional elements in infants' speech processing : the role of determiners in the syntactic categorization of lexical elements},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-16285},
  year      = {2004},
  abstract  = {How do children determine the syntactic category of novel words? In this article we present the results of 2 experiments that investigated whether German children between 12 and 16 months of age can use distributional knowledge that determiners precede nouns and subject pronouns precede verbs to syntactically categorize adjacent novel words. Evidence from the head-turn preference paradigm shows that, although 12- to 13-month-olds cannot do this, 14- to 16-month-olds are able to use a determiner to categorize a following novel word as a noun. In contrast, no categorization effect was found for a novel word following a subject pronoun. To understand this difference we analyzed adult child-directed speech. This analysis showed that there are in fact stronger co-occurrence relations between determiners and nouns than between subject pronouns and verbs. Thus, in German determiners may be more reliable cues to the syntactic category of an adjacent novel word than are subject pronouns. We propose that the capacity to syntactically categorize novel words, demonstrated here for the first time in children this young, mediates between the recognition of the specific morphosyntactic frame in which a novel word appears and the word-to-world mapping that is needed to build up a semantic representation for the novel word.},
  language  = {en}
}
@misc{HoehleSchmitzMuelleretal.2006,
  author    = {H{\"o}hle, Barbara and Schmitz, Michaela and M{\"u}ller, Anja and Weissenborn, J{\"u}rgen},
  title     = {The recognition of discontinuous verbal dependencies by German 19-month-olds : evidence for lexical and structural influences on children's early processing capacities},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-16297},
  year      = {2006},
  abstract  = {Recent work has shown that English-learning 18-month-olds can detect the relationship between discontinuous morphemes such as is and -ing in Grandma is always running (Gomez, 2002; Santelmann \& Jusczyk, 1998) but only at a maximum of 3 intervening syllables. In this article we examine the tracking of discontinuous dependencies in children acquiring German. Due to freer word order, German allows for greater distances between dependent elements and a greater syntactic variety of the intervening elements than English does. The aim of this study was to investigate whether factors other than distance may influence the child's capacity to recognize discontinuous elements. Our findings provide evidence that children's recognition capacities are affected not only by distance but also by their ability to linguistically analyze the material intervening between the dependent elements. We speculate that this result supports the existence of processing mechanisms that reduce a discontinuous relation to a local one based on subcategorization relations.},
  language  = {en}
}
@misc{HoehlevandeVijverWeissenborn2006,
  author    = {H{\"o}hle, Barbara and van de Vijver, Ruben and Weissenborn, J{\"u}rgen},
  title     = {Word processing at 19 months and its relation to language performance at 30 months : a retrospective analysis of data from German learning children},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-16302},
  year      = {2006},
  abstract  = {Recent research has shown that the early lexical representations children establish in their second year of life already seem to be phonologically detailed enough to allow differentiation from very similar forms. In contrast to these findings children with specific language impairment show problems in discriminating phonologically similar word forms up to school age. In our study we investigated the question whether there would be differences in the processing of phonological details in normally developing and in children with low language performance in the second year of life. This was done by a retrospective study in which in the processing of phonological details was tested by a preferential looking experiment when the children were 19 months old. At the age of 30 months children were tested with a standardized German test of language comprehension and production (SETK2). The preferential looking data at 19 months revealed an opposite reaction pattern for the two groups: while the children scoring normally in the SETK2 increase their fixations of a pictured object only when it was named with the correct word, children with later low language performance did so only when presented with a phonologically slightly deviant mispronunciation. We suggest that this pattern does not point to a specific deficit in processing phonological information in these children but might be related to an instability of early phonological representations, and/or a generalized problem of information processing as compared to typically developing children.},
  language  = {en}
}
@misc{OttvandeVijverHoehle2006,
  author    = {Ott, Susan and van de Vijver, Ruben and H{\"o}hle, Barbara},
  title     = {The effect of phonotactic constraints in German-speaking children with delayed phonological acquisition : evidence from production of word-initial consonant clusters},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-16316},
  year      = {2006},
  abstract  = {In this study the effect of phonotactic constraints concerning word-initial consonant clusters in children with delayed phonological acquisition was explored. Twelve German-speaking children took part (mean age 5;1). The spontaneous speech of all children was characterized by the regular appearance of the error patterns fronting, e.g., Kuh (cow) → /tu:/, or stopping, e.g., Schaf (sheep) → /ta:f/, which were inappropriate for their chronological age. The children were asked to produce words (picture naming task, word repetition task) with initial consonant clusters, in which the application of the error patterns would violate phonotactic sequence constraints. For instance, if fronting would apply in /kl-/, e.g., Kleid (dress), it would be realized as the phontactically illegal consonant cluster /tl-/. The results indicate that phonotactic constraints affect word production in children with delayed phonological developments. Surprisingly, we found that children with fronting produced the critical consonants correctly significantly more often in word-initial consonant clusters than in words in which they appeared as singleton onsets. In addition, the results provide evidence for a similar developmental trajectory of acquisition in children with typical development and in children with delayed phonological acquisition. Keywords: Children with delayed phonological acquisition, phonotactic constraints, word-initial consonant clusters, fronting, stopping.},
  language  = {en}
}