TY - JOUR A1 - Verhoeven, Elisabeth A1 - Kügler, Frank T1 - Accentual preferences and predictability: An acceptability study on split intransitivity in German JF - Lingua : international review of general linguistics N2 - The difference in the default prosodic realization of simple sentences with unergative vs. unaccusative/passive verbs (assigning early nuclear accent with unaccusative/passive verbs but late nuclear accent with unergative verbs) is often related to the syntactic distinction of their nominative arguments as starting off in different hierarchical positions. Alternative accounts try to trace this prosodic variation back to asymmetries in the semantic or pragmatic contribution of the verb to an utterance. The present article investigates the interaction of the assignment of default nuclear accent with the predictability of the verb. In an experimental study testing the acceptability of nuclear accent assignment, we confirmed that the predictability of the verb influences accentual preferences (such that highly predictable verbs are preferably not accented). However, the experiment also reveals that the unaccusativity distinction cannot be accounted for by means of pragmatic phenomena of this type: the two verb classes are associated with distinct accentual patterns in the baseline condition, that is, without the predictability manipulation. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. KW - Nuclear accent KW - Prosodic phrasing KW - Unaccusativity KW - Unergative verbs KW - Predictability KW - Information structure Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2014.09.013 SN - 0024-3841 SN - 1872-6135 VL - 165 SP - 298 EP - 315 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kügler, Frank T1 - Do we know the answer? BT - variation in yes-no-question intonation JF - Linguistics in Potsdam N2 - Content: 1. Introduction 2. The corpus 2.1 Subjects 2.2 Recordings 2.3 Data processing 2.4 Materials 3. Intonation in Upper Saxon German yes-no-questions 4. Intonational variation and information structure 5. Conclusions and discussion Y1 - 2003 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-32424 SN - 1616-7392 SN - 1864-1857 IS - 21 SP - 9 EP - 29 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Pfeil, Simone A1 - Genzel, Susanne A1 - Kügler, Frank T1 - Empirical investigation of focus and exhaustivity in Akan JF - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 N2 - It has been observed for many African languages that focussed subjects have to appear outside of their syntactic base position, as opposed to focussed objects, which can remain in-situ. This is known as subjectobject asymmetry of focus marking, which Fiedler et al. (2010) claim to hold also for Akan. Genzel (2013), on the other hand, argues that Akan does not exhibit a subject-object focus asymmetry. A questionnaire study and a production experiment were carried out to investigate whether focussed subjects may indeed be realized in-situ in Akan. The results suggest that (i) focussed subjects do not have to be obligatorily realized ex-situ, and that (ii) the syntactic preference for the realization of a focussed subject highly depends on exhaustivity. KW - Akan KW - focus KW - subjects KW - exhaustivity KW - in-situ Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-83774 SN - 1614-4708 SN - 1866-4725 IS - 19 SP - 87 EP - 109 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kügler, Frank A1 - Skopeteas, Stavros A1 - Verhoeven, Elisabeth T1 - Encoding information structure in Yucatec Maya BT - on the interplay of prosody and syntax N2 - The aim of this paper is to outline the means for encoding information structure in Yucatec Maya. Yucatec Maya is a tone language, displaying a three-fold opposition in the tonal realization of syllables. From the morpho-syntactic point of view, the grammar of Yucatec Maya contains morphological (topic affixes, morphological marking of out-of-focus predicates) and syntactic (designated positions) means to uniquely specify syntactic constructions for their information structure. After a descriptive overview of these phenomena, we present experimental evidence which reveals the impact of the nonavailability of prosodic alternatives on the choice of syntactic constructions in language production. KW - cleft constructions KW - lexical tone KW - topic affixes KW - verb-initial cleft constructions KW - verb-initial Y1 - 2007 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19469 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kügler, Frank A1 - Skopeteas, Stavros A1 - Verhoeven, Elisabeth T1 - Encoding Information structure in Yucatec Maya: on the Interplay of Prosody and Syntax Y1 - 2007 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Patil, Umesh A1 - Kentner, Gerrit A1 - Gollrad, Anja A1 - Kügler, Frank A1 - Féry, Caroline A1 - Vasishth, Shravan T1 - Focus, word order and intonation in Hindi N2 - A production study is presented that investigates the effects of word order and information structural context on the prosodic realization of declarative sentences in Hindi. Previous work on Hindi intonation has shown that: (i) non-final content words bear rising pitch accents (Moore 1965, Dyrud 2001, Nair 1999); (ii) focused constituents show greater pitch excursion and longer duration and that post-focal material undergoes pitch range reduction (Moore 1965, Harnsberger 1994, Harnsberger and Judge 1996); and (iii) focused constituents may be followed by a phrase break (Moore 1965). By means of a controlled experiment, we investigated the effect of focus in relation to word order variation using 1200 utterances produced by 20 speakers. Fundamental frequency (F0) and duration of constituents were measured in Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) and Object-Subject-Verb (OSV) sentences in different information structural conditions (wide focus, subject focus and object focus). The analyses indicate that (i) regardless of word order and focus, the constituents are in a strict downstep relationship; (ii) focus is mainly characterized by post-focal pitch range reduction rather than pitch raising of the element in focus; (iii) given expressions that occur pre-focally appear to undergo no reduction; (iv) pitch excursion and duration of the constituents is higher in OSV compared to SOV sentences. A phonological analysis suggests that focus affects pitch scaling and that word order influences prosodic phrasing of the constituents. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - paper 201 Y1 - 2008 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-46118 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Genzel, Susanne A1 - Kügler, Frank T1 - How to elicit semi-spontaneous focus realizations with specific tonal patterns JF - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 N2 - This article presents a situation description production experiment investigating the interaction between syntax and information structure in Akan, a tone language that belongs to the Kwa branch of the Niger- Congo family spoken in Ghana. Information structure was elicited via context questions that put the object in narrow informational focus or narrow corrective focus while controlling for the tonal structure of the target word. Contrary to the prediction that corrective focus is marked by fronting and morphological marking of the focused constituent the data suggest that the in-situ strategy is the preferred one. KW - Akan KW - information structure KW - syntax Y1 - 2011 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-49749 SN - 1614-4708 SN - 1866-4725 IS - 13 SP - 77 EP - 102 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zerbian, Sabine A1 - Downing, Laura A1 - Kügler, Frank T1 - Introduction : tone and intonation from a typological perspective Y1 - 2009 UR - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00243841 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2007.10.024 SN - 0024-3841 ER - TY - BOOK A1 - Grubic, Mira A1 - Genzel, Susanne A1 - Kügler, Frank T1 - Linguistic Fieldnotes I: Information Structure in different African Languages N2 - This is the 13th issue of the working paper series Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure (ISIS) of the Sonderforschungsbereich (SFB) 632. It is the first part of a series of Linguistic Fieldnote issues which present data collected by members of different projects of the SFB during fieldwork on various languages or dialects spoken worldwide. This part of the Fieldnote Series is dedicated to data from African languages. It contains contributions by Mira Grubic (A5) on Ngizim, and Susanne Genzel & Frank Kügler (D5) on Akan. The papers allow insights into various aspects of the elicitation of formal correlates of focus and related phenomena in different African languages investigated by the SFB in the second funding phase, especially in the period between 2007 and 2010. T3 - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 - 13 KW - Ngizim KW - Akan KW - information structure KW - syntax Y1 - 2010 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-49684 ER - TY - BOOK A1 - Duah, Reginald Akuoko A1 - Fominyam, Henry Z. A1 - Klose, Claudius A1 - Pfeil, Simone A1 - Genzel, Susanne A1 - Kügler, Frank A1 - Valle, Daniel ED - Grubic, Mira ED - Bildhauer, Felix T1 - Mood, Exhaustivity & Focus Marking in non-European Languages N2 - This is the 19th — and final — issue of the working paper series Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure (ISIS) of the Collaborative Research Center 632. In this issue, we present cross-linguistic work on Mood, Exhaustivity, and Focus Marking, on African languages and American languages. T3 - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 - 19 Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-81200 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER -