TY - JOUR A1 - Fuchs, Susanne A1 - Koenig, Laura L. A1 - Gerstenberg, Annette T1 - A longitudinal study of speech acoustics in older French females BT - analysis of the filler particle euh across utterance positions JF - Languages : open access journal N2 - Aging in speech production is a multidimensional process. Biological, cognitive, social, and communicative factors can change over time, stay relatively stable, or may even compensate for each other. In this longitudinal work, we focus on stability and change at the laryngeal and supralaryngeal levels in the discourse particle euh produced by 10 older French-speaking females at two times, 10 years apart. Recognizing the multiple discourse roles of euh, we divided out occurrences according to utterance position. We quantified the frequency of euh, and evaluated acoustic changes in formants, fundamental frequency, and voice quality across time and utterance position. Results showed that euh frequency was stable with age. The only acoustic measure that revealed an age effect was harmonics-to-noise ratio, showing less noise at older ages. Other measures mostly varied with utterance position, sometimes in interaction with age. Some voice quality changes could reflect laryngeal adjustments that provide for airflow conservation utterance-finally. The data suggest that aging effects may be evident in some prosodic positions (e.g., utterance-final position), but not others (utterance-initial position). Thus, it is essential to consider the interactions among these factors in future work and not assume that vocal aging is evident throughout the signal. KW - aging KW - prosody KW - voice quality KW - fundamental frequency KW - formants KW - filler KW - particles Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3390/languages6040211 SN - 2226-471X VL - 6 IS - 4 PB - MDPI CY - Basel ER - TY - GEN A1 - Abboub, Nawal A1 - Boll-Avetisyan, Natalie A1 - Bhatara, Anjali A1 - Höhle, Barbara A1 - Nazzi, Thierry T1 - An exploration of rhythmic grouping of speech sequences by french- and german-learning infants T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Rhythm in music and speech can be characterized by a constellation of several acoustic cues. Individually, these cues have different effects on rhythmic perception: sequences of sounds alternating in duration are perceived as short-long pairs (weak-strong/iambicpattern), whereas sequences of sounds alternating in intensity or pitch are perceived as loud-soft, or high-low pairs (strong-weak/trochaic pattern). This perceptual bias-called the lambic-Trochaic Law (ITL) has been claimed to be an universal property of the auditory system applying in both the music and the language domains. Recent studies have shown that language experience can modulate the effects of the ITL on rhythmic perception of both speech and non-speech sequences in adults, and of non-speech sequences in 7.5-month-old infants. The goal of the present study was to explore whether language experience also modulates infants' grouping of speech. To do so, we presented sequences of syllables to monolingual French- and German-learning 7.5-month-olds. Using the Headturn Preference Procedure (HPP), we examined whether they were able to perceive a rhythmic structure in sequences of syllables that alternated in duration, pitch, or intensity. Our findings show that both French- and German-learning infants perceived a rhythmic structure when it was cued by duration or pitch but not intensity. Our findings also show differences in how these infants use duration and pitch cues to group syllable sequences, suggesting that pitch cues were the easier ones to use. Moreover, performance did not differ across languages, failing to reveal early language effects on rhythmic perception. These results contribute to our understanding of the origin of rhythmic perception and perceptual mechanisms shared across music and speech, which may bootstrap language acquisition. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 427 KW - language acquisition KW - prosody KW - grouping KW - iambic-trochaic law KW - perceptual biases KW - french-learning infants KW - german-learning infants Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-407201 IS - 427 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Abboub, Nawal A1 - Boll-Avetisyan, Natalie A1 - Bhatara, Anjali A1 - Höhle, Barbara A1 - Nazzi, Thierry T1 - An Exploration of Rhythmic Grouping of Speech Sequences by French- and German-Learning Infants JF - Frontiers in human neuroscienc N2 - Rhythm in music and speech can be characterized by a constellation of several acoustic cues. Individually, these cues have different effects on rhythmic perception: sequences of sounds alternating in duration are perceived as short-long pairs (weak-strong/iambic pattern), whereas sequences of sounds alternating in intensity or pitch are perceived as loud-soft, or high-low pairs (strong-weak/trochaic pattern). This perceptual bias—called the Iambic-Trochaic Law (ITL)–has been claimed to be an universal property of the auditory system applying in both the music and the language domains. Recent studies have shown that language experience can modulate the effects of the ITL on rhythmic perception of both speech and non-speech sequences in adults, and of non-speech sequences in 7.5-month-old infants. The goal of the present study was to explore whether language experience also modulates infants’ grouping of speech. To do so, we presented sequences of syllables to monolingual French- and German-learning 7.5-month-olds. Using the Headturn Preference Procedure (HPP), we examined whether they were able to perceive a rhythmic structure in sequences of syllables that alternated in duration, pitch, or intensity. Our findings show that both French- and German-learning infants perceived a rhythmic structure when it was cued by duration or pitch but not intensity. Our findings also show differences in how these infants use duration and pitch cues to group syllable sequences, suggesting that pitch cues were the easier ones to use. Moreover, performance did not differ across languages, failing to reveal early language effects on rhythmic perception. These results contribute to our understanding of the origin of rhythmic perception and perceptual mechanisms shared across music and speech, which may bootstrap language acquisition. KW - language acquisition KW - prosody KW - grouping KW - iambic-trochaic law KW - perceptual biases KW - french-learning infants KW - german-learning infants Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00292 SN - 1662-5161 VL - 10 SP - 6707 EP - 6712 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Holzgrefe-Lang, Julia A1 - Wellmann, Caroline A1 - Petrone, Caterina A1 - Truckenbrodt, Hubert A1 - Höhle, Barbara A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell T1 - Brain response to prosodic boundary cues depends on boundary position JF - Frontiers in psychology N2 - Prosodic information is crucial for spoken language comprehension and especially for syntactic parsing, because prosodic cues guide the hearer's syntactic analysis. The time course and mechanisms of this interplay of prosody and syntax are not yet well-understood. In particular, there is an ongoing debate whether local prosodic cues are taken into account automatically or whether they are processed in relation to the global prosodic context in which they appear. The present study explores whether the perception of a prosodic boundary is affected by its position within an utterance. In an event-related potential (PRP) study we tested if the brain response evoked by the prosodic boundary differs when the boundary occurs early in a list of three names connected by conjunctions (i.e., after the first name) as compared to later in the utterance (i.e., after the second name). A closure positive shift (CPS)-marking the processing of a prosodic phrase boundary-was elicited for stimuli with a late boundary, but not for stimuli with an early boundary. This result is further evidence for an immediate integration of prosodic information into the parsing of an utterance. In addition, it shows that the processing of prosodic boundary cues depends on the previously processed information from the preceding prosodic context. KW - prosodic boundaries KW - event-related potentials KW - closure positive shift KW - speech perception KW - prosody Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00421 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 4 IS - 28 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Selkirk, Elisabeth T1 - Contrastive focus, givenness and the unmarked status of “Discourse-New” N2 - New evidence is provided for a grammatical principle that singles out contrastive focus (Rooth 1996; Truckenbrodt 1995) and distinguishes it from discourse-new “informational” focus. Since the prosody of discourse-given constituents may also be distinguished from discourse-new, a three-way distinction in representation is motivated. It is assumed that an F-feature marks just contrastive focus (Jackendoff 1972, Rooth 1992), and that a G-feature marks discoursegiven constituents (Féry and Samek-Lodovici 2006), while discoursenew is unmarked. A crucial argument for G-marking comes from second occurrence focus (SOF) prosody, which arguably derives from a syntactic representation where SOF is both F-marked and G-marked. This analysis relies on a new G-Marking Condition specifying that a contrastive focus may be G-marked only if the focus semantic value of its scope is discourse-given, i.e. only if the contrast itself is given. KW - contrastive focus KW - givenness KW - second occurrence focus KW - F-marking KW - G-marking KW - prosody Y1 - 2007 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19670 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Jasinskaja, Ekaterina A1 - Mayer, Jörg A1 - Schlangen, David T1 - Discourse structure and information structure BT - interfaces and prosodic realization JF - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 N2 - In this paper we review the current state of research on the issue of discourse structure (DS)/information structure (IS) interface. This field has received a lot of attention from discourse semanticists and pragmatists, and has made substantial progress in recent years. In this paper we summarize the relevant studies. In addition, we look at the issue of DS/ISinteraction at a different level - that of phonetics. It is known that both information structure and discourse structure can be realized prosodically, but the issue of phonetic interaction between the prosodic devices they employ has hardly ever been discussed in this context. We think that a proper consideration of this aspect of DS/IS-interaction would enrich our understanding of the phenomenon, and hence we formulate some related research-programmatic positions. KW - discourse structure KW - information structure KW - prosody Y1 - 2004 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-8414 SN - 1866-4725 SN - 1614-4708 IS - 1 SP - 151 EP - 206 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Bijeljac-Babic, Ranka A1 - Höhle, Barbara A1 - Nazzi, Thierry T1 - Early prosodic acquisition in bilingual infants BT - the case of the perceptual trochaic bias T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Infants start learning the prosodic properties of their native language before 12 months, as shown by the emergence of a trochaic bias in English-learning infants between 6 and 9 months (Jusczyk et al., 1993), and in German-learning infants between 4 and 6 months (Huhle et al., 2009, 2014), while French-learning infants do not show a bias at 6 months (Hohle et al., 2009). This language-specific emergence of a trochaic bias is supported by the fact that English and German are languages with trochaic predominance in their lexicons, while French is a language with phrase-final lengthening but lacking lexical stress. We explored the emergence of a trochaic bias in bilingual French/German infants, to study whether the developmental trajectory would be similar to monolingual infants and whether amount of relative exposure to the two languages has an impact on the emergence of the bias. Accordingly, we replicated Hohle et al. (2009) with 24 bilingual 6-month-olds learning French and German simultaneously. All infants had been exposed to both languages for 30 to 70% of the time from birth. Using the Head Preference Procedure, infants were presented with two lists of stimuli, one made up of several occurrences of the pseudoword /GAba/ with word-initial stress (trochaic pattern), the second one made up of several occurrences of the pseudoword /gaBA/ with word-final stress (iambic pattern). The stimuli were recorded by a native German female speaker. Results revealed that these French/German bilingual 6-month olds have a trochaic bias (as evidenced by a preference to listen to the trochaic pattern). Hence, their listening preference is comparable to that of monolingual German-learning 6-month-olds, but differs from that of monolingual French-learning 6-month-olds who did not show any preference (Noble et al., 2009). Moreover, the size of the trochaic bias in the bilingual infants was not correlated with their amount of exposure to German. The present results thus establish that the development of a trochaic bias in simultaneous bilinguals is not delayed compared to monolingual German-learning infants (Hohle et al., 2009) and is rather independent of the amount of exposure to German relative to French. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 435 KW - bilinguals KW - infants KW - language KW - prosody KW - lexical stress KW - dominance effects Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-407225 IS - 435 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bijeljac-Babic, Ranka A1 - Höhle, Barbara A1 - Nazzi, Thierry T1 - Early Prosodic Acquisition in Bilingual Infants: The Case of the Perceptual Trochaic Bias JF - Frontiers in psychology N2 - Infants start learning the prosodic properties of their native language before 12 months, as shown by the emergence of a trochaic bias in English-learning infants between 6 and 9 months (Jusczyk et al., 1993), and in German-learning infants between 4 and 6 months (Huhle et al., 2009, 2014), while French-learning infants do not show a bias at 6 months (Hohle et al., 2009). This language-specific emergence of a trochaic bias is supported by the fact that English and German are languages with trochaic predominance in their lexicons, while French is a language with phrase-final lengthening but lacking lexical stress. We explored the emergence of a trochaic bias in bilingual French/German infants, to study whether the developmental trajectory would be similar to monolingual infants and whether amount of relative exposure to the two languages has an impact on the emergence of the bias. Accordingly, we replicated Hohle et al. (2009) with 24 bilingual 6-month-olds learning French and German simultaneously. All infants had been exposed to both languages for 30 to 70% of the time from birth. Using the Head Preference Procedure, infants were presented with two lists of stimuli, one made up of several occurrences of the pseudoword /GAba/ with word-initial stress (trochaic pattern), the second one made up of several occurrences of the pseudoword /gaBA/ with word-final stress (iambic pattern). The stimuli were recorded by a native German female speaker. Results revealed that these French/German bilingual 6-month olds have a trochaic bias (as evidenced by a preference to listen to the trochaic pattern). Hence, their listening preference is comparable to that of monolingual German-learning 6-month-olds, but differs from that of monolingual French-learning 6-month-olds who did not show any preference (Noble et al., 2009). Moreover, the size of the trochaic bias in the bilingual infants was not correlated with their amount of exposure to German. The present results thus establish that the development of a trochaic bias in simultaneous bilinguals is not delayed compared to monolingual German-learning infants (Hohle et al., 2009) and is rather independent of the amount of exposure to German relative to French. KW - bilinguals KW - infants KW - language KW - prosody KW - lexical stress KW - dominance effects Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00210 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 7 SP - 1753 EP - 1802 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - THES A1 - Wellmann, Caroline T1 - Early sensitivity to prosodic phrase boundary cues: Behavioral evidence from German-learning infants T1 - Frühkindliche Wahrnehmung prosodischer Grenzmarkierungen: Behaviorale Untersuchungen mit Deutsch lernenden Säuglingen N2 - This dissertation seeks to shed light on the relation of phrasal prosody and developmental speech perception in German-learning infants. Three independent empirical studies explore the role of acoustic correlates of major prosodic boundaries, specifically pitch change, final lengthening, and pause, in infant boundary perception. Moreover, it was examined whether the sensitivity to prosodic phrase boundary markings changes during the first year of life as a result of perceptual attunement to the ambient language (Aslin & Pisoni, 1980). Using the headturn preference procedure six- and eight-month-old monolingual German-learning infants were tested on their discrimination of two different prosodic groupings of the same list of coordinated names either with or without an internal IPB after the second name, that is, [Moni und Lilli] [und Manu] or [Moni und Lilli und Manu]. The boundary marking was systematically varied with respect to single prosodic cues or specific cue combinations. Results revealed that six- and eight-month-old German-learning infants successfully detect the internal prosodic boundary when it is signaled by all the three main boundary cues pitch change, final lengthening, and pause. For eight-, but not for six-month-olds, the combination of pitch change and final lengthening, without the occurrence of a pause, is sufficient. This mirrors an adult-like perception by eight-months (Holzgrefe-Lang et al., 2016). Six-month-olds detect a prosodic phrase boundary signaled by final lengthening and pause. The findings suggest a developmental change in German prosodic boundary cue perception from a strong reliance on the pause cue at six months to a differentiated sensitivity to the more subtle cues pitch change and final lengthening at eight months. Neither for six- nor for eight-month-olds the occurrence of pitch change or final lengthening as single cues is sufficient, similar to what has been observed for adult speakers of German (Holzgrefe-Lang et al., 2016). The present dissertation provides new scientific knowledge on infants’ sensitivity to individual prosodic phrase boundary cues in the first year of life. Methodologically, the studies are pathbreaking since they used exactly the same stimulus materials – phonologically thoroughly controlled lists of names – that have also been used with adults (Holzgrefe-Lang et al., 2016) and with infants in a neurophysiological paradigm (Holzgrefe-Lang, Wellmann, Höhle, & Wartenburger, 2018), allowing for comparisons across age (six/ eight months and adults) and method (behavioral vs. neurophysiological methods). Moreover, materials are suited to be transferred to other languages allowing for a crosslinguistic comparison. Taken together with a study with similar French materials (van Ommen et al., 2020) the observed change in sensitivity in German-learning infants can be interpreted as a language-specific one, from an initial language-general processing mechanism that primarily focuses on the presence of pauses to a language-specific processing that takes into account prosodic properties available in the ambient language. The developmental pattern is discussed as an interplay of acoustic salience, prosodic typology (prosodic regularity) and cue reliability. N2 - Die Dissertation befasst sich mit der Bedeutung individueller prosodischer Hinweise für die Wahrnehmung einer prosodischen Phrasengrenze bei deutschsprachig aufwachsenden Säuglingen. In drei Studien wurde mit behavioralen Untersuchungen der Frage nachgegangen, welche Bedeutung die akustischen Merkmale Tonhöhenveränderung, finale Dehnung und das Auftreten von Pausen für die Erkennung einer prosodischen Grenze haben. Zudem wurde hinterfragt, ob sich die Sensitivität für diese prosodischen Grenzmarkierungen im ersten Lebensjahr verändert und einer perzeptuellen Reorganisation, also einer Anpassung an die Muttersprache (Attunement Theorie, Aslin & Pisoni, 1980), unterliegt. Mithilfe der Headturn Preference Procedure wurde getestet, ob 6 und 8 Monate alte Deutsch lernende Säuglinge zwei verschiedene prosodische Gruppierungen einer Aufzählung von Namen diskriminieren können (mit oder ohne eine interne prosodische Grenze, [Moni und Lilli] [und Manu] vs. [Moni und Lilli und Manu]). Die Grenze wurde bezüglich des Auftretens einzelner prosodischer Hinweise oder Kombinationen von Hinweisen systematisch variiert. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass sowohl 6 als auch 8 Monate alte Deutsch lernende Säuglinge die interne prosodische Grenze in der Aufzählung erkennen, wenn sie durch alle drei Hinweise – Tonhöhenveränderung, finale Dehnung und das Auftreten einer Pause – markiert ist. Darüber hinaus zeigte sich, dass für 8, aber nicht für 6, Monate alte Säuglinge die Kombination aus Tonhöhe und finaler Dehnung ohne Pause ausreichend ist. 6 Monate alte Säuglinge erkennen eine Grenze, wenn sie durch eine Pause und finale Dehnung markiert ist. Damit zeigt sich eine Entwicklung der Sensitivität für prosodische Grenzmarkierungen von 6 zu 8 Monaten – weg von der Notwendigkeit der Pause hin zu einer differenzierten Wahrnehmung subtiler Hinweise wie Tonhöhe und finale Dehnung. Weder für 6 noch für 8 Monate alte Säuglinge ist die Markierung durch einen einzelnen Hinweis (Tonhöhe oder finale Dehnung) ausreichend. Dies deckt sich mit dem Verhaltensmuster erwachsener deutschsprachiger Hörer in einer Aufgabe zur prosodischen Strukturierung (Holzgrefe-Lang et al., 2016). Die vorgelegte Dissertation beleuchtet erstmalig für den frühen Erwerb des Deutschen die Bedeutung einzelner prosodischer Hinweise an Phrasengrenzen. Hierbei ist die Art der verwendeten Stimuli neu: phonologisch sorgfältig kontrollierte Aufzählungen von Namen, in denen einzelne prosodische Hinweise fein akustisch manipuliert werden können. Zudem kann dieses Material ideal in Untersuchungen mit anderen Methoden (z.B. EEG) eingesetzt werden und auf weitere Altersgruppen (Erwachsene) und andere Sprachen transferiert werden. Dies ermöglicht den direkten Vergleich der Ergebnisse zu denen anderer Studien mit ähnlichem Stimulusmaterial (Holzgrefe-Lang et al., 2016, 2018; van Ommen et al., 2020) und erlaubt die Interpretation einer sprachspezifischen Entwicklung. Das beobachtete Entwicklungsmuster wird als Produkt eines Wechselspiels von akustischer Salienz, prosodischer Typologie (prosodische Regularität) und Zuverlässigkeit eines prosodischen Hinweises (cue reliability) diskutiert. KW - prosody KW - language acquisition KW - infants KW - prosodic boundary cues KW - prosodic phrase boundary KW - perceptual attunement KW - Prosodie KW - Spracherwerb KW - Säuglinge KW - prosodische Grenzmarkierungen KW - prosodische Phrasengrenze KW - perzeptuelle Reorganisation Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-573937 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Boll-Avetisyan, Natalie A1 - Bhatara, Anjali A1 - Unger, Annika A1 - Nazzi, Thierry A1 - Höhle, Barbara T1 - Effects of experience with L2 and music on rhythmic grouping by French listeners T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Rhythm perception is assumed to be guided by a domain-general auditory principle, the Iambic/Trochaic Law, stating that sounds varying in intensity are grouped as strong-weak, and sounds varying in duration are grouped as weak-strong. Recently, Bhatara et al. (2013) showed that rhythmic grouping is influenced by native language experience, French listeners having weaker grouping preferences than German listeners. This study explores whether L2 knowledge and musical experience also affect rhythmic grouping. In a grouping task, French late learners of German listened to sequences of coarticulated syllables varying in either intensity or duration. Data on their language and musical experience were obtained by a questionnaire. Mixed-effect model comparisons showed influences of musical experience as well as L2 input quality and quantity on grouping preferences. These results imply that adult French listeners' sensitivity to rhythm can be enhanced through L2 and musical experience. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 450 KW - rhythmic grouping KW - second language acquisition KW - prosody KW - musicality KW - Iambic KW - Trochaic Law Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-413786 IS - 450 ER -