TY - JOUR A1 - Zerbian, Sabine T1 - Prosodic marking of narrow focus across varieties of South African English JF - English world-wide : a journal of varieties of English N2 - This paper reports on an elicited production study which investigates prosodic marking of narrow focus in modified noun phrases in varieties of South African English. The acoustic analysis of fundamental frequency, intensity, and duration in narrow focus is presented and discussed. The results suggest that these three acoustic parameters are manipulated differently in narrow focus in the varieties of English as a Second Language as compared to General South African English. The article compares the results to what is known about prosodic marking of information structure in other varieties of English as a Second Language and underlines the necessity of carefully controlled data in the investigation of phonological and phonetic variation in varieties of English. KW - South African English KW - Black South African English KW - English as a Second Language (ESL) KW - prosody KW - focus KW - fundamental frequency KW - intensity KW - duration KW - contact variety Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1075/eww.34.1.02zer SN - 0172-8865 VL - 34 IS - 1 SP - 26 EP - 47 PB - Benjamins CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - THES A1 - Wierzba, Marta T1 - Revisiting prosodic reconstruction T1 - Prosodische Rekonstruktion neu betrachtet BT - an interface-based approach to partial focus and topic fronting in German BT - eine schnittstellenbasierte Analyse partieller Fokus- und Topikvoranstellung im Deutschen N2 - In this thesis, I develop a theoretical implementation of prosodic reconstruction and apply it to the empirical domain of German sentences in which part of a focus or contrastive topic is fronted. Prosodic reconstruction refers to the idea that sentences involving syntactic movement show prosodic parallels with corresponding simpler structures without movement. I propose to model this recurrent observation by ordering syntax-prosody mapping before copy deletion. In order to account for the partial fronting data, the idea is extended to the mapping between prosody and information structure. This assumption helps to explain why object-initial sentences containing a broad focus or broad contrastive topic show similar prosodic and interpretative restrictions as sentences with canonical word order. The empirical adequacy of the model is tested against a set of gradient acceptability judgments. N2 - In dieser Dissertation wird ein theoretisches Modell prosodischer Rekonstruktion entwickelt und auf den empirischen Bereich deutscher Sätze mit teilweiser Voranstellung eines Fokus oder eines kontrastiven Topiks angewendet. Mit prosodischer Rekonstruktion ist die Idee gemeint, dass Sätze, die syntaktische Bewegung enthalten, prosodische Parallelen mit einfacheren Konstruktionen ohne Bewegung aufweisen. Es wird vorgeschlagen, diese Beobachtung dadurch zu modellieren, dass die Abbildungsoperation zwischen Syntax und Prosodie der Löschung von Kopien vorangeht. Auf diese Weise ist die Ausgangsposition bewegter Konstituenten noch zugänglich, wenn die prosodische Struktur bestimmt wird, und kann somit die Akzentverteilung beeinflussen. Um die Daten zu partieller Voranstellung mitzuerfassen, wird das Modell auf die Abbildung zwischen Prosodie und Informationsstruktur ausgeweitet. Diese Annahme trägt dazu bei zu erklären, wieso objektinitiale Sätze, die einen weiten Fokus oder ein weites kontrastives Topik enthalten, ähnliche prosodische und interpretative Beschränkungen aufweisen wie Sätze mit kanonischer Wortfolge. Die empirische Adäquatheit des Modells wird anhand eines neuen Datensatzes gradienter Akzeptabilitätsurteile getestet. KW - prosody KW - syntax KW - interface KW - focus KW - contrastive topic KW - Prosodie KW - Syntax KW - Schnittstelle KW - Fokus KW - kontrastives Topik Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-403152 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 - JOUR A1 - Simik, Radek A1 - Wierzba, Marta T1 - EXPRESSION OF INFORMATION STRUCTURE IN WEST SLAVIC: MODELING THE IMPACT OF PROSODIC AND WORD-ORDER FACTORS JF - Language : journal of the Linguistic Society of America N2 - The received wisdom is that word-order alternations in Slavic languages arise as a direct consequence of word-order-related information-structure constraints such as ‘Place given expressions before new ones’. In this article, we compare the word-order hypothesis with a competing one, according to which word-order alternations arise as a consequence of a prosodic constraint: ‘Avoid stress on given expressions’. Based on novel experimental and modeling data, we conclude that the prosodic hypothesis is more adequate than the word-order hypothesis. Yet we also show that combining the strengths of both hypotheses provides the best fit for the data. Methodologically, our article is based on gradient acceptability judgments and multiple regression, which allows us to evaluate whether violations of generalizations like ‘Given precedes new’ or ‘Given lacks stress’ lead to a consistent decrease in acceptability and to quantify the size of their respective effects. Focusing on the empirical adequacy of such generalizations rather than on specific theoretical implementations also makes it possible to bridge the gap between different linguistic traditions and to directly compare predictions emerging from formal and functional approaches. KW - information structure KW - givenness KW - word order KW - prosody KW - acceptability-judgment experiments KW - modeling KW - multiple regression KW - Slavic Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2017.0040 SN - 0097-8507 SN - 1535-0665 VL - 93 SP - 671 EP - 709 PB - Linguistic Society of America CY - Washington ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Simik, Radek A1 - Wierzba, Marta T1 - The role of givenness, presupposition, and prosody in Czech word order: An experimental study JF - Semantics and pragmatics KW - givenness KW - presupposition KW - prosody KW - Czech KW - scrambling KW - acceptability judgments KW - experiments Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.8.3 SN - 1937-8912 VL - 8 PB - Linguistic Society of America CY - Washington 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 - CHAP A1 - Röhr, Christine Tanja T1 - Information status and prosody : production and perception in German0F* N2 - In a production experiment and two follow-up perception experiments on read German we investigated the (de-)coding of discourse-new, inferentially and textually accessible and given discourse referents by prosodic means. Results reveal that a decrease in the referent’s level of givenness is reflected by an increase in its prosodic prominence (expressed by differences in the status and type of accent used) providing evidence for the relevance of different intermediate types of information status between the poles given and new. Furthermore, perception data indicate that the degree of prosodic prominence can serve as the decisive cue for decoding a referent’s level of givenness. KW - prosody KW - information status KW - discourse referent KW - degree of givenness KW - cognitive activation KW - prominence KW - pitch accent KW - perception Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-66116 ER - TY - THES A1 - Marimon Tarter, Mireia T1 - Word segmentation in German-learning infants and German-speaking adults T1 - Wortsegmentierung bei deutschsprachigen Kindern und Erwachsenen BT - prosodic and statistical cues BT - prosodische und statitistische Hinweisreize N2 - 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. N2 - Es gibt Beweise, dass Babys im Alter um 7.5 Monate anfangen, Wörter aus flüssiger Sprache zu extrahieren (z.B., Jusczyk & Aslin, 1995), dabei werden mindestens zwei Mechanismen angewandt, um Wörter aus dem Sprachfluss zu segmentieren: prosodische Information (z.B. Jusczyk, Cutler & Redanz, 1993) und statistische Information (z.B., Saffran, Aslin & Newport, 1996). Aber wie diese zwei Mechanismen zusammenwirken und ob sie sich während der Entwicklung verändern, wurde noch nicht vollständig geklärt. Das Hauptziel dieser Dissertation ist es zu verstehen, inwiefern sich Kleinkinder die verschiedenen Hinweisreize für die Segmentierung von Wörtern erschließen, wenn sie die Sprache ihres Umfelds lernen, sowie ob diese Fähigkeit in Verbindung mit späteren Sprachfähigkeiten steht. In Kapitel 3 wurde die Zuverlässigkeit der in dieser Dissertation benutzten Methode (the Headturn Preference Procedure) eruiert, sowie die Korrelationen und individuellen Differenzen zwischen den Ergebnissen einzelner Babys und späteren Sprachfähigkeiten untersucht. Im Kapitel 4 wurde untersucht, wie deutschsprachige Erwachsene auf statistische und prosodische Informationen für Wortsegmentierung reagieren. Wir haben Erwachsene mit einer akustischen Sequenz familiarisiert, bei der die statistischen und prosodischen Informationen verschiedene Wortgrenzen anzeigen, und Verhaltens- und Pupillometriedaten erhoben. Anschließend haben wir weitere Experimente durchgeführt, um zu verstehen, wie verschiedene Hinweisreize von 9-Monate (Kapitel 5) und 6-Monate alten deutschsprachigen Säuglingen (Kapitel 6) aufgenommen werden. Außerdem haben wir nach den Versuchen mit Fragebögen Daten über die Sprachfähigkeiten in späteren Entwicklungsstadien gesammelt. Unsere Ergebnisse lassen darauf schließen, dass (1) deutschsprachige Erwachsene eine hohe Gewichtung der prosodischen Hinweisreize zeigen, zumindest bei dem für die Studie genutzten akustischen Material, und dass (2) bei deutschsprachigen Babys in Abhängigkeit von Alter und/oder Spracherfahrung diese zwei Hinweisreize unterschiedlich gewichtet werden. Wir stellen fest, dass sich 6-Monate alte deutschsprachige Babys stärker auf die prosodichen Hinweisreize verlassen haben als die englischsprachigen Babys. Neun Monate alte Babys haben bei der Wortsegmentierung der Audiosequenz gescheitert und haben keine Vorliebe für einen der beiden Hinweisreize gezeigt. Mit den momentanen Ergebnissen bleibt weiterhin unklar, ob die Fähigkeit, prosodische Hinweisreize für die Wortsegmentierung zu nutzen, in Verbindung mit der späteren Weiterentwicklung des Wortschatzes steht. Wir vermuten, dass Prosodie den Babys einen ersten Einblick in die spezifischen akustischen Regelmäßigkeiten des Signals verschafft, was ihnen dabei hilft, das Betonungsmuster der deutsche Sprache schnell zu erlernen. Unsere Ergebnisse sind ein weiterer Schritt vorwärts was das Verständnis eines frühen Einflusses von muttersprachlicher Prosodie im Vergleich zu statistischem Erlernen in der frühen Wortsegmentierung betrifft. KW - word segmentation KW - prosody KW - statistical learning KW - Wortsegmentierung KW - Prosodie Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-437400 ER - TY - THES A1 - Kühn, Jane T1 - Functionally-driven language change T1 - Funktional gesteuerter Sprachwandel BT - prosodic focus and sentence type marking in German-Turkish bilingual yes/no questions BT - prosodische Fokus-und Satztypmarkierung in Deutsch-Türkischen Ja/ Nein Fragen N2 - Since the 1960ies, Germany has been host to a large Turkish immigrant community. While migrant communities often shift to the majority language over the course of time, Turkish is a very vital minority language in Germany and bilingualism in this community is an obvious fact which has been subject to several studies. The main focus usually is on German, the second language (L2) of these speakers (e.g. Hinnenkamp 2000, Keim 2001, Auer 2003, Cindark & Aslan (2004), Kern & Selting 2006, Selting 2009, Kern 2013). Research on the Turkish spoken by Turkish bilinguals has also attracted attention although to a lesser extend mainly in the framework of so called heritage language research (cf. Polinski 2011). Bilingual Turkish has been investigated under the perspective of code-switching and codemixing (e.g. Kallmeyer & Keim 2003, Keim 2003, 2004, Keim & Cindark 2003, Hinnenkamp 2003, 2005, 2008, Dirim & Auer 2004), and with respect to changes in the morphologic, the syntactic and the orthographic system (e.g. Rehbein & Karakoç 2004, Schroeder 2007). Attention to the changes in the prosodic system of bilingual Turkish on the other side has been exceptional so far (Queen 2001, 2006). With the present dissertation, I provide a study on contact induced linguistic changes on the prosodic level in the Turkish heritage language of adult early German-Turkish bilinguals. It describes structural changes in the L1 Turkish intonation of yes/no questions of a representative sample of bilingual Turkish speakers. All speakers share a similar sociolinguistic background. All acquired Turkish as their first language from their families and the majority language German as an early L2 at latest in the kinder garden by the age of 3. A study of changes in bilingual varieties requires a previous cross-linguistic comparison of both of the involved languages in language contact in order to draw conclusions on the contact-induced language change in delimitation to language-internal development. While German is one of the best investigated languages with respect to its prosodic system, research on Turkish intonational phonology is not as progressed. To this effect, the analysis of bilingual Turkish, as elicited for the present dissertation, is preceded by an experimental study on monolingual Turkish. In this regard an additional experiment with 11 monolingual university students of non-linguistic subjects was conducted at the Ege University in Izmir in 2013. On these grounds the present dissertation additionally contributes new insights with respect to Turkish intonational phonology and typology. The results of the contrastive analysis of German and Turkish bring to light that the prosodic systems of both languages differ with respect to the use of prosodic cues in the marking of information structure (IS) and sentence type. Whereas German distinguishes in the prosodic marking between explicit categories for focus and givenness, Turkish uses only one prosodic cue to mark IS. Furthermore it is shown that Turkish in contrast to German does not use a prosodic correlate to mark yes/no questions, but a morphological question marker. To elicit Turkish yes/no questions in a bilingual context which differ with respect to their information structure in a further step the methodology of Xu (1999) to elicit in-situ focus on different constituents was adapted in the experimental study. A data set of 400 Turkish yes/no questions of 20 bilingual Turkish speakers was compiled at the Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS) in Berlin and at the University of Potsdam in 2013. The prosodic structure of the yes/no questions was phonologically and phonetically analyzed with respect to changes in the f0 contour according to IS modifications and the use of prosodic cues to indicate sentence type. The results of the analyses contribute surprising observations to the research of bilingual prosody. Studies on bilingual language change and language acquisition have repeatedly shown that the use of prosodic features that are considered as marked by means of lower and implicational use across and within a language cause difficulties in language contact and second language acquisition. Especially, they are not expected to pass from one language to another through language contact. However, this structurally determined expectation on language development is refuted by the results of the present study. Functionally related prosody, such as the cues to indicate IS, are transferred from German L2 to the Turkish L1 of German-Turkish bilingual speakers. This astonishing observation provides the base for an approach to language change centered on functional motivation. Based on Matras’ (2007, 2010) assumption of functionality in language change, Paradis’ (1993, 2004, 2008) approach of Language Activation and the Subsystem Theory and the Theory of Language as a Dynamic System (Heredina & Jessner 2002), it will be shown that prosodic features which are absent in one of the languages of bilingual speech communities are transferred from the respective language to the other when they contribute to the contextualization of a pragmatic concept which is not expressed by other linguistic means in the target language. To this effect language interaction is based on language activation and inhibition mechanisms dealing with differences in the implicit pragmatic knowledge between bilinguals and monolinguals. The motivator for this process of language change is the contextualization of the message itself and not the structure of the respective feature on the surface. It is shown that structural consideration may influence language change but that bilingual language change does not depend on structural restrictions nor does the structure cause a change. The conclusions drawn on the basis of empirical facts can especially contribute to a better understanding of the processes of bilingual language development as it combines methodologies and theoretical aspects of different linguistic subfields. N2 - Seit den 1960er Jahren und der damit einhergehenden Arbeitsmigration ist Deutschland eines der europäischen Länder mit der größten türkischstämmigen Einwanderergesellschaft, die sich auf etwa 2.8 Millionen Personen beläuft (Woellert et al. 2009). Obwohl Sprachminderheiten im Laufe der Generationen gewöhnlich zur Mehrheitssprache wechseln, ist das Türkische in Deutschland zweifelsohne eine lebendige Sprache. Die Zweisprachigkeit der türkischen Gemeinschaft in Deutschland ist eine nicht von der Hand zu weisende Tatsache und liegt im Fokus sprachwissenschaftlicher Forschung. Hierbei liegt das Hauptaugenmerk auf der Betrachtung der sprachlichen Merkmale und Veränderungen in der Zweitsprache (L2) Deutsch (e.g. Hinnenkamp 2000, Keim 2001, Auer 2003, Cindark & Aslan 2004, Kern & Selting 2006, Selting 2009, Kern 2013). Die Erstsprache (L1) Türkisch findet vorrangig Beachtung in der sogenannten heritage language Forschung. Obwohl der Begriff keiner klaren Definition oder Abgrenzung bezüglich ähnlicher Konzepte, wie der Minderheitensprache unterliegt, bezieht sich heritage language im Allgemeinen auf die Erstsprache bilingualer Sprecher in der Diaspora (vgl. Polinski 2011). Das Türkische in Deutschland wurde bislang vor allem in Bezug auf Sprechstil und den einhergehenden Mechanismen von code-switching und code-mixing (z.B. Kallmeyer & Keim 2003, Keim 2003, 2004, Keim & Cindark 2003, Hinnenkamp 2003, 2005, 2008, Dirim & Auer 2004), aber auch in Bezug auf grammatikalische und orthographische Veränderungen untersucht (e.g. Rehbein & Karacoç 2004, Schroeder 2007). In Bezug auf prosodische Merkmale von bilingualem Türkisch beschreibt Queen (2001, 2006) eine Vermischung (fusion) steigender Intonationskonturen in Konversationen bilingualer Deutsch- Türkischer Kinder. Backus, Jorgenson & Pfaff (2010) bieten einen Überblick zu bisheriger Forschung zum Türkischen in der Diaspora. Mit der vorliegenden Dissertation wird ein Forschungsbeitrag zur Veränderung im prosodischen System des Türkischen als heritage language Deutsch-Türkisch bilingualer Sprecher mit frühem Zweitspracherwerb geleistet. Damit wird zum einen das Themengebiet des kontaktinduzierten Sprachwandels und zum anderen das der bilingualen Intonationsforschung aufgegriffen. Obwohl die Beschreibungen phonologischer Unterschiede bei bilingualen Sprechern in Bezug auf die segmentale Ebene reichhaltig sind, ist ein reges Interesse an phonologischen Phänomenen auf der suprasegmentalen Ebene in der Mehrsprachigkeitsforschung recht frisch und bezieht sich größtenteils auf die Zweitsprache und weniger auf die Veränderungen in der heritage language. Die vorliegende Arbeit beschreibt strukturelle Veränderungen in der L1 Intonation in türkischen Ja/Nein Fragen eines repräsentativen Samples bilingualer Türkischsprecher. Der Untersuchungsschwerpunkt liegt dabei auf der Realisierung funktional relationierter Prosodie. Funktional relationierte Prosodie gilt gemäß markiertheitsstrukturierter Ansätze (z.B. Eckmann 1977, Rasier & Hilligsmann 2007, Zerbian 2015) als markierter als strukturell relationierte Prosodie und damit als potentieller Auslöser von Veränderungen im bilingualen Spracherwerb und Sprachkontakt. In der Dissertation werden zwei funktionale Aspekte der Prosodie untersucht. Zum einen werden Veränderungen in der Intonationskontur in Abhängigkeit von Informationsstruktur (IS) untersucht. Genauer, wie kontrastiver in-situ Fokus in der Grundfrequenz umgesetzt wird. Zum anderen wird untersucht wie die Markierung von Ja/Nein Fragen in der f0 Kontur realisiert wird. Eine Einführung in die Thematik von Ja/nein Fragen erfolgt für das Türkische in Kapitel II. 6 und für das Deutsche in Kapitel V.6. Eine umfassende Erläuterung zu IS und seinen verschiedenen Kategorien erfolgt in Kapitel I. KW - bilingualism KW - prosody KW - pragmatics KW - Turkish KW - Zweisprachigkeit KW - Prosodie KW - Pragmatik KW - Türkisch Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-422079 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kügler, Frank A1 - Genzel, Susanne T1 - On the prosodic expression of pragmatic prominence The case of pitch register lowering in Akan JF - Language and speech N2 - This article presents data from three production experiments investigating the prosodic means of encoding 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 target words either in wide, informational, or corrective focus, or in one of the experiments also in pre-focal or post-focal position rendering it as given. The prosodic parameters F0 and duration were measured on the target words. Duration is not consistently affected by information structure, but contrary to the prediction that High (H) and Low (L) tones are raised in ex situ (fronted) focus constructions we found a significantly lower realization of both H and L tones under corrective focus in ex situ and in situ focus constructions. Givenness does not seem to be marked prosodically. The data suggest that pragmatic prominence is expressed prosodically by means of a deviation from an unmarked prosodic structure. Results are thus contradicting the view of the effort code that predicts a positive correlation of more effort resulting in higher F0 targets. KW - Akan KW - effort code KW - information structure KW - prosody KW - register lowering Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/0023830911422182 SN - 0023-8309 VL - 55 IS - 9 SP - 331 EP - 359 PB - Sage Publ. CY - London ER - TY - GEN A1 - Kügler, Frank A1 - Genzel, Susanne T1 - On the prosodic expression of pragmatic prominence BT - the case of pitch register lowering in Akan N2 - This article presents data from three production experiments investigating the prosodic means of encoding 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 target words either in wide, informational, or corrective focus, or in one of the experiments also in pre-focal or post-focal position rendering it as given. The prosodic parameters F0 and duration were measured on the target words. Duration is not consistently affected by information structure, but contrary to the prediction that High (H) and Low (L) tones are raised in ex situ (fronted) focus constructions we found a significantly lower realization of both H and L tones under corrective focus in ex situ and in situ focus constructions. Givenness does not seem to be marked prosodically. The data suggest that pragmatic prominence is expressed prosodically by means of a deviation from an unmarked prosodic structure. Results are thus contradicting the view of the effort code that predicts a positive correlation of more effort resulting in higher F0 targets. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 369 KW - Akan KW - effort code KW - information structure KW - prosody KW - register lowering Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-403217 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 - JOUR A1 - Ishihara, Shinichiro T1 - Prosody by phase BT - evidence from focus intonation wh-scope correspondence in Japanese JF - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 N2 - Japanese wh-questions always exhibit focus intonation (FI). Furthermore, the domain of FI exhibits a correspondence to the wh-scope. I propose that this phonology-semantics correspondence is a result of the cyclic computation of FI, which is explained under the notion of Multiple Spell-Out in the recent Minimalist framework. The proposed analysis makes two predictions: (1) embedding of an FI into another is possible; (2) (overt) movement of a wh-phrase to a phase edge position causes a mismatch between FI and wh-scope. Both predictions are tested experimentally, and shown to be borne out. KW - Japanese KW - wh-question KW - prosody KW - focus intonation KW - wh-scope KW - cyclicity KW - phase KW - Multiple Spell-Out Y1 - 2004 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-8391 SN - 1866-4725 SN - 1614-4708 IS - 1 SP - 77 EP - 119 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 - JOUR A1 - Holzgrefe-Lang, Julia A1 - Wellmann, Caroline A1 - Petrone, Caterina A1 - Raeling, Romy A1 - Truckenbrodt, Hubert A1 - Höhle, Barbara A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell T1 - How pitch change and final lengthening cue boundary perception in German: converging evidence from ERPs and prosodic judgements JF - Language, cognition and neuroscience N2 - This study examines the role of pitch and final lengthening in German intonation phrase boundary (IPB) perception. Since a prosody-related event-related potential (ERP) component termed Closure Positive Shift reflects the processing of major prosodic boundaries, we combined ERP and behavioural measures (i.e. a prosodic judgement task) to systematically test the impact of sole and combined cue occurrences on IPB perception. In two experiments we investigated whether adult listeners perceived an IPB in acoustically manipulated speech material that contained none, one, or two of the prosodic boundary cues. Both ERP and behavioural results suggest that pitch and final lengthening cues have to occur in combination to trigger IPB perception. Hence, the combination of behavioural and electrophysiological measures provides a comprehensive insight into prosodic boundary cue perception in German and leads to an argument in favour of interrelated cues from the frequency (i.e. pitch change) and the time (i.e. final lengthening) domain. KW - Speech perception KW - prosody KW - Event-Related Potential (ERP) technique KW - Closure Positive Shift (CPS) KW - prosodic boundary cues Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2016.1157195 SN - 2327-3798 SN - 2327-3801 VL - 31 SP - 904 EP - 920 PB - Begell House CY - Abingdon ER - TY - THES A1 - Holzgrefe-Lang, Julia T1 - Prosodic phrase boundary perception in adults and infants T1 - Die Wahrnehmung prosodischer Phrasengrenzen bei Erwachsenen und Säuglingen BT - what the brain reveals about contextual influence and the impact of prosodic cues N2 - 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. N2 - Die Wahrnehmung prosodischer Phrasengrenzen spielt eine zentrale Rolle sowohl im frühen Spracherwerb als auch bei der auditiven Sprachperzeption: Prosodische Grenzmarkierungen sind insbesondere relevant, da sie den Sprachstrom gliedern (so genanntes chunking), dabei die syntaktische Struktur einer Äußerung widerspiegeln und zusammenhängende Sinneinheiten erkennbar machen. Um die der Verarbeitung prosodischer Information zugrunde liegenden Mechanismen und deren Erwerb besser charakterisieren zu können, befasst die vorliegende Dissertation mit Faktoren, die die Wahrnehmung prosodischer Grenzmarkierungen bei Erwachsenen und Säuglingen beeinflussen. Mithilfe der Erhebung Ereigniskorrelierter Hirnpotentiale (EKPs) wurde untersucht, welche Rolle der prosodische Kontext (hier: die Phrasenlänge) sowie die an Phrasengrenzen auftretenden Hinweisreize (sogenannte prosodische Cues) bei der Wahrnehmung prosodischer Grenzen im Deutschen spielen. Die untersuchten prosodischen Cues umfassen das Auftreten von Tonhöhenveränderung (pitch change) und finaler Dehnung (final lengthening) sowie Pausensetzung (pause). Es wurde hierbei der Frage nachgegangen, welche Cues oder Cue-Kombinationen für die Wahrnehmung einer Phrasengrenze relevant sind und ob bzw. wie sich diese Gewichtung im Säuglingsalter entwickelt. EKPs sind insbesondere geeignet, da sie als on-line Methode die unmittelbare Integration prosodischer Information beim Sprachverstehen erfassen und sowohl bei Erwachsenen als auch bei Säuglingen angewendet werden können. Zudem gibt es mit dem closure positive shift (CPS) eine als Korrelat der Wahrnehmung größerer prosodischer Grenzen etablierte EKP-Komponente. Die Ergebnisse der drei experimentellen Studien untermauern, dass der Äußerungskontext eine unmittelbare Rolle bei der Verarbeitung von prosodischen Grenzmarkierungen spielt. Darüber hinaus konnte gezeigt werden, dass erwachsene Hörer eine prosodische Grenze auch basierend auf einem Sub-Set der möglichen, im akustischen Signal verfügbaren, prosodischen Cues wahrnehmen: Die Kombination von Tonhöhenveränderung und finaler Dehnung ist ausreichend, um die Wahrnehmung einer Phrasengrenze zu evozieren; als alleinige Cues sind jedoch weder Tonhöhenveränderung noch finale Dehnung hinreichend. Dies offenbarte sich sowohl im Ausbleiben des CPS als auch in simultan erhobenen Verhaltensdaten (Beurteilung der prosodischen Struktur). Schließlich ergab die Untersuchung sechs- und achtmonatiger Säuglinge, dass sich die frühe Sensitivität für prosodische Informationen in einem neurophysiologischen Korrelat widerspiegelt, welches dem CPS bei Erwachsenen gleicht. Die EKP-Daten zeigten, dass sowohl sechs- als auch achtmonatige Säuglinge prosodische Phrasengrenzen anhand der Kombination von Tonhöhenveränderung und finaler Dehnung wahrnehmen, wohingegen die Tonhöhenveränderung allein auch bei Säuglingen keinen CPS auslöst. Bereits in diesem frühen Alter ist somit die Pause als Grenzmarkierung nicht zwingend erforderlich. KW - speech perception KW - language acquisition KW - prosody KW - event-related potentials (ERP) KW - prosodic phrase boundaries KW - prosodic boundary cues KW - Closure Positive Shift (CPS) KW - infants KW - Sprachwahrnehmung KW - Spracherwerb KW - Prosodie KW - Ereigniskorrelierte Hirnpotentiale (EKP) KW - prosodische Phrasengrenzen KW - prosodische Grenzmarkierungen KW - Closure Positive Shift (CPS) KW - Säuglinge Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-405943 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gueldemann, Tom A1 - Zerbian, Sabine A1 - Zimmermann, Malte ED - Liberman, M ED - Partee, BH T1 - Variation in information structure with special reference to Africa JF - Annual review of linguistics JF - Annual Review of Linguistics N2 - Information structure has been one of the central topics of recent linguistic research. This review discusses a wide range of current approaches with particular reference to African languages, as these have been playing a crucial role in advancing our knowledge about the diversity of and recurring patterns in both meaning and form of information structural notions. We focus on cross-linguistic functional frameworks, the investigation of prosody, formal syntactic theories, and relevant effects of semantic interpretation. Information structure is a thriving research domain that promises to yield important advances in our general understanding of human language. KW - contrast KW - focus KW - formal syntax KW - prosody KW - theticity KW - topic KW - semantics KW - focus sensitivity Y1 - 2015 SN - 978-0-8243-4201-2 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-linguist-030514-125134 SN - 2333-9691 VL - 1 SP - 155 EP - 178 PB - Annual Reviews CY - Palo Alto ER - TY - THES A1 - Gollrad, Anja T1 - Prosodic cue weighting in sentence comprehension T1 - Gewichtung prosodischer cues bei der Verarbeitung kasusambiger Strukturen BT - processing German case ambiguous structures N2 - 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). Für die prosodische Domäne der phonologischen Phrase und der Intonationsphrase gilt als belegt, dass sie häuptsächlich durch phonetische Parameter der präfinalen Dehnung (Lehiste, 1973; Klatt, 1976; Price et al., 1991; Turk & White, 1999), der Pausendauer (Fant & Kruckenberg, 1996) und der Veränderung der Grundfrequenz (Pierrehumbert, 1980) ausgedrückt werden, wobei die phonetischen grenzmarkierenden Eigenschaften eher quantitativer als qualitativer Natur sind. Ebenfalls ist bekannt, dass auf der anderen Seite Hörer diese phonetischen Eigenschaften der Sprecher nutzen, um die prosodische Struktur einer Äußerung zu ermitteln (Snedeker & Trueswell, 2003; Kraljic & Brennan, 2005). Perzeptuelle Evidenz aus dem Englischen und Niederländischen deuten allerdings darauf hin, dass sich Sprachen hinsichtlich der entscheidenden Korrelate, die für die Perzeption der Domänen konsultiert werden, unterscheiden (Aasland & Baum, 2003; Sanderman & Collier, 1997; Scott, 1982; Streeter, 1978). Die grenzmarkierenden phonetischen Korrelate der Domänen werden in der Perzeption unterschiedlich stark gewichtet, was sich im Konzept eines sprachspezifischen prosodischen cue weightings ausdrückt. Für das Deutsche ist allerdings nicht hinreichend bekannt, welche dieser drei phonetischen Parameter die wichtigste Rolle für die Perzeption der phonologischen Phrasengrenze und der Intonationsphrasengrenze spielt. Ziel der Dissertation war es, diejenigen phonetischen Merkmale zu identifizieren, die für die Perzeption der phonologischen Phrasengrenze und der Intonationsphrasengrenze entscheidend sind und sich somit für 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 Ambiguitäten in der Perzeption. Der Einfluss einzelner phonetischer Merkmale wurde in einem forced-choice Experiment evaluiert, bei dem Hörern syntaktisch ambige Satzfragmente auditiv präsentiert wurden und ihnen anschließend die Aufgabe zukam, aus einer Auswahl an disambiguierenden Satzvervollständigung zu wählen. Die Anzahl der ausgewählten Satzvervollständigungen pro Satzbedingung änderte sich in Abhängigkeit der prosodischen Manipulation der präfinalen 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 Fähigkeit zur Disambiguierung der syntaktischen Strukturen signifikant reduzierte, oder gänzlich 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 optimalitätstheoretische 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 Féry et al. (2009) unter anderen als Phonetik-Phonologie-Mapping beschrieben wird. Die Dissertation hat folgende Hauptergebnisse hervorgebracht: (1) Für die Perzeption phonologischer Phrasengrenzen und Intonationsphrasengrenzen werden nicht alle messbaren phonetischen Grenzmarkierungen gleichermaßen stark genutzt. Das phonetische Merkmal der präfinalen Dehnung ist auf der Ebene der kleineren prosodischen Domäne, der phonologischen Phrase, notwendig. Die Information der Grundfrequenz in der Form von Grenztönen ist in der größeren Domäne der Intonationsphrase notwendig und damit ausschlaggebend für die Perzeption der prosodischen Phrasengrenze. (2) Auf der Ebene der φ-Phrase werden phonetische Eigenschaften der segmentalen Dauer in Form präfinalen Dehnung zur Bildung abstrakter phonologischer Repräsentationen herangezogen werden. Längenconstraints schreiben syntaktische Konstituenten aufgrund ihrer Inputdauern einer prosodischen Kategorie zu. Inputdauern der ersten Nominalphrase von 500ms und mehr signalisieren Finalität und sind durch eine φ- Grenze am rechten Rand markiert. Inputdauern von 400ms und weniger signalisieren Kontinuität und werden durch das Ausbleiben einer φ-Grenze am rechten Rand der ersten Nominalphrase markiert. Inputdauern, die zwischen den kritischen Längen von 400ms und 500ms variieren sind bezüglich der Bildung von φ- Grenzen ambig und können 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 Finalität und wird durch eine ι-Grenze am rechten Rand markiert. Eine steigende Kontur an der ersten Nominalphrase signalisiert phrasale Kontinuität und ist bei den vorliegenden Sätzen der Genitivbedingung gerade durch das Ausbleiben einer ι-Grenze auf der phonologischen Repräsentationseben gekennzeichnet. N2 - One of the central questions in psycholinguistic is understanding whether and how prosodic phrase boundaries are used to resolve syntactic ambiguities in sentence processing. The present work aimed to answer both, first, the effects of φ- and ι-boundaries on syntactic ambiguity resolution, and second, how the prosodic correlates of the auditory input are taken for the phonetic-phonology mapping in order to attain a meaningful sentence interpretation. With regard to the first aim, we investigated locally syntactic ambiguities involving either φ- or ι-phrase boundaries in German and the structural preference that listeners have, based on the prosodic content. The experiments described in this work show that German listeners exploit both types of prosodic phrase boundaries to resolve local syntactic ambiguities, that however, their disambiguation altered by the presence or absence of prosodic cues correlated with the corresponding boundary. Specifically, the perception data revealed that the phonetically measured prosodic correlates of each prosodic boundary such as pitch accents, boundary tones, deaccentuation and durational properties do not contribute to ambiguity resolution in equal measure. Rather, it is the case that listeners rely primarily on prefinal lengthening as a correlate of phrasing in the vicinity of φ-phrase boundaries, while at the level of the ι-phrase boundary, boundary tones serve as phrasal cues. This way the results of the present work take account of the as yet missing information on individual contributions of prosodic correlates on listeners’ disambiguation of syntactically ambiguous sentences in German. It further implies that the question of how German listeners resolve syntactic ambiguities cannot simply be attributed to the presence or absence of prosodic correlates. The interpretation of the phrasal structure rather depends on a more general picture of cohesion between prosodic correlates and prosodic boundary sizes. With respect to the second aim, the processing models proposed in the present work describe a specific phonetics-phonology mapping in the vicinity of both phrase boundaries. It is assumed that auditory sentence processing proceeds in several successively organized steps, during which listeners transform overt phonetic forms into language specific abstract surface forms. This process is referred to as phonetics-phonology mapping in the present work. Perceptual evidence resulting from the experiments of the present work suggest that the phonetics-phonology mapping is guided by the above mentioned boundary related prosodic correlates. The resulting abstract phonological structure is subjected to the syntax-prosody mapping, in turn. The outcome of the presented perception experiments are modulated in an Optimality-Theoretic framework. The offered OT-models are grounded on the assumption that single prosodic correlates are used by listeners as a signal to syntax in sentence processing. This is in line with studies arguing that the prosodic phrase structure determines the syntactic parse (Cutler et al., 1997; Warren et al., 1995; Pynte & Prieur, 1996; Snedeker & Trueswell, 2003; Kjelgaard & Speer, 1999), to name just a few. KW - prosody KW - German KW - case ambiguity KW - prosodisch KW - Cue-Gewichtung KW - Ambiguität KW - OT-Modellierung Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-81954 ER - TY - THES A1 - Genzel, Susanne T1 - Lexical and post-lexical tones in Akan T1 - Lexikalische und post-lexikalische Töne im Akan N2 - 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 (Féry, 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. N2 - Diese Dissertation befasst sich mit Faktoren, welche die Oberflächenrealisierung von Tönen in gesprochenem Akan beeinflussen. Akan ist eine afrikanische Tonsprache, die in Ghana gesprochen wird. Das Akan verfügt über zwei Töne, tief und hoch, automatischen und nicht-automatischen Downstep. Downstep ist als der wichtigste Einflussfaktor auf die Oberflächenrealisierung von Tönen anzusehen. Diese Arbeit zeigt, dass der Absenkungseffekt, der allgemeinhin als Downstep bekannt ist, durch Deklination entsteht. Es wird argumentiert, dass Deklination als Intonationseigenschaft des Akan anzusehen ist, welche dazu dient Kohärenz auszudrücken. Ein Vorschlag zur phonologischen Repräsentation der Deklination wird unterbreitet; jeweils ein hoher und ein tiefer Registerton assoziieren mit dem linken und rechten Rand der Intonationsphrase (IP). Deklination/downstep werden mit Hilfe eines (phonetischen) Tonhöhenimplementationsalgorithmus (Liberman & Pierrehumbert, 1984) modelliert. Eine innovative Anwendung des Algorithmus wird präsentiert, welche die Beziehung zwischen Deklination und Downstep im Akan natürlich erfasst. Ein anderer wichtige Faktor ist die prosodische Manifestation von pragmatischer Bedeutung auf Satzebene, wie Satzmodus und Fokus. Bezüglich der Satzmodusmarkierung zeigt die Dissertation, dass diese Bedeutung durch einen tiefen post-lexikalischen Grenzton, welcher am rechten Rand der IP assoziiert, vermittelt wird. Zusätzlich, werden lexikalische Töne in Ja – Nein Fragen in einem höheren Tonhöhenregister realisiert. Es kommt jedoch nicht zu einer Reduktion der Deklination. Es wird vorgeschlagen, dass das höhere Register nicht Teil der phonologischen Repräsentation des Akan ist, da es auf der phonetische Ebene entsteht um die „unnatürliche“ Form der Frageprosodie zu kompensieren und damit den „Frequency Code“ (Gussenhoven , 2002, 2004) zu befriedigen. Es wird vorgeschlagen, Rialland’s Fragetypologie der afrikanischen Sprachen um die Kategorie „low tense“ zu erweitern. Bezüglich der Fokusmarkierung wird argumentiert, dass die Nutzung der morpho-syntaktische Strategie an extra-grammatische Faktoren wie Hörererwartung, Diskursakzeptabilität (Zimmermann, 2007) und Emphase (Hartmann, 2008) geknüpft ist. Wenn ein Sprecher des Akan ein bestimmtes Element im Satz prosodisch hervorheben möchte, wird die Standardphrasierung modifiziert, so dass das fokussierte Element seine eigene phonologische Phrase (pP) bildet. Falls das fokussierte Element standardmäßig in eine pP phrasiert ist, werden die Grenzen der pP verstärkt (Féry, 2012). Diese Restrukturierung/Verstärkung geht einher mit einer Unterbrechung des kontinuierlichen Signals durch Einfügung einer Pause und/oder eines Glottalverschlusses. Neben Deklination und Intonation, findet Hochtonanhebung im Akan statt. Hochtonanhebung wird als lokaler antizipatorischer Planungseffekt analysiert, welcher die perzeptuelle Distanz zwischen Hoch- und Tiefton vergrößert. Tieftöne werden angehoben wenn sie zwischen Hochtönen auftreten. Tieftonanhebung wird als lokaler Koartikulationseffekt analysiert. Außerdem wird gezeigt, dass eine globale antizipatorische Tonanhebung auftritt. Sprecher des Akan antizipieren die Länge/Komplexität der IP. Es wird argumentiert, dass antizipatorische Tonanhebung ein wichtiger Prozess auf Ebene der Tonhöhenimplementierung ist, da er sicherstellt, dass Deklination innerhalb der IP aufrechterhalten werden kann. Die Melodie eines Satzes des Akan ist größtenteils durch die Wahl der Wörter bestimmt. Das Inventar an post-lexikalischen Tönen ist klein. Es besteht aus post-lexikalischen Registertönen, welche Deklination auslösen und post-lexikalischen Intonationstönen, welche Satzmodus ausdrücken. Im Allgemeinen ist die Melodieverführung fallend. Auf lokaler Ebene treten Hoch- und Tieftonanhebung auf. Auf globaler Ebene werden initiale Hoch- und Tieftöne höher realisiert, wenn sie in einem langen und/oder komplexen Satz auftreten. Diese Dissertation zeigt das viele Faktoren, welche an unterschiedlichen Ebenen des Tonproduktionsprozesses auftreten zur Oberflächenform der Töne des Akan beitragen. KW - Akan KW - tone language KW - prosody KW - phonetics KW - downstep KW - Akan KW - Tonsprache KW - Prosodie KW - Phonetik KW - Downstep Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-77969 ER - 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 - JOUR A1 - Chen, Aoju A1 - Höhle, Barbara T1 - Four- to five-year-old' use of word order and prosody in focus marking in Dutch JF - Linguistics Vanguard N2 - This study investigated Dutch-speaking four- to five-year-olds’ use of word order and prosody in distinguishing focus types (broad focus, narrow focus, and contrastive narrow focus) via an interactive answer-reconstruction game. We have found an overall preference for the unmarked word order SVO and no evidence for the use of OVS to distinguish focus types. But the children used pitch and duration in the subject-nouns to distinguish focus types in SVO sentences. These findings show that Dutch-speaking four- to five-year-olds differ from their German- and Finnish-speaking peers, who show evidence of varying choice of word order to mark specific focus types, and use prosody to distinguish focus types in subject and object nouns in both SVO and OVS sentences. These comparisons suggest that typological differences in the relative importance between word order and prosody can lead to differences in children’s use of word order and prosody in unmarked and marked word orders. A more equal role of word order and prosody in the ambient language can stimulate more extensive use of prosody in the marked word order, whereas a more limited role of word order can restrict the use of prosody in the unmarked word order. KW - information structure KW - Dutch-speaking children KW - word order KW - prosody KW - focus Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2016-0101 SN - 2199-174X VL - 4 PB - De Gruyter CY - Berlin 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 - TY - JOUR 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 JF - Bilingualism : language and cognition. KW - rhythmic grouping KW - second language acquisition KW - prosody KW - musicality KW - Iambic KW - Trochaic Law Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728915000425 SN - 1366-7289 SN - 1469-1841 VL - 19 SP - 971 EP - 986 PB - Cambridge Univ. Press CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Boll-Avetisyan, Natalie A1 - Bhatara, Anjali A1 - Höhle, Barbara T1 - Effects of musicality on the perception of rhythmic structure in speech JF - Laboratory phonology N2 - Language and music share many rhythmic properties, such as variations in intensity and duration leading to repeating patterns. Perception of rhythmic properties may rely on cognitive networks that are shared between the two domains. If so, then variability in speech rhythm perception may relate to individual differences in musicality. To examine this possibility, the present study focuses on rhythmic grouping, which is assumed to be guided by a domain-general principle, the Iambic/Trochaic law, stating that sounds alternating in intensity are grouped as strong-weak, and sounds alternating in duration are grouped as weak-strong. German listeners completed a grouping task: They heard streams of syllables alternating in intensity, duration, or neither, and had to indicate whether they perceived a strong-weak or weak-strong pattern. Moreover, their music perception abilities were measured, and they filled out a questionnaire reporting their productive musical experience. Results showed that better musical rhythm perception - ability was associated with more consistent rhythmic grouping of speech, while melody perception - ability and productive musical experience were not. This suggests shared cognitive procedures in the perception of rhythm in music and speech. Also, the results highlight the relevance of - considering individual differences in musicality when aiming to explain variability in prosody perception. KW - Musical ability KW - rhythm KW - grouping KW - Iambic/Trochaic law KW - speech KW - speech perception KW - musicality KW - prosody KW - domain-general KW - German Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.5334/labphon.91 SN - 1868-6346 SN - 1868-6354 VL - 8 IS - 1 PB - Ubiquity Press CY - London 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 - GEN A1 - Barth-Weingarten, Dagmar A1 - Ogden, Richard T1 - “Chunking” spoken language BT - Introducing weak cesuras T2 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Philosophische Reihe N2 - In this introductory paper to the special issue on “Weak cesuras in talk-in-interaction”, we aim to guide the reader into current work on the “chunking” of naturally occurring talk. It is conducted in the methodological frameworks of Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics – two approaches that consider the interactional aspect of humans talking with each other to be a crucial starting point for its analysis. In doing so, we will (1) lay out the background of this special issue (what is problematic about “chunking” talk-in-interaction, the characteristics of the methodological approach chosen by the contributors, the cesura model), (2) highlight what can be gained from such a revised understanding of “chunking” in talk-in-interaction by referring to previous work with this model as well as the findings of the contributions to this special issue, and (3) indicate further directions such work could take starting from papers in this special issue. We hope to induce a fruitful exchange on the phenomena discussed, across methodological divides. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Philosophische Reihe - 174 KW - Conversation Analysis KW - Interactional Linguistics KW - prosody KW - phonetics KW - intonation units KW - talk-in-interaction KW - syntax KW - kinetics Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-536259 SN - 1866-8380 SP - 531 EP - 548 PB - Universität Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Barth-Weingarten, Dagmar A1 - Ogden, Richard T1 - “Chunking” spoken language BT - Introducing weak cesuras JF - Open linguistics N2 - In this introductory paper to the special issue on “Weak cesuras in talk-in-interaction”, we aim to guide the reader into current work on the “chunking” of naturally occurring talk. It is conducted in the methodological frameworks of Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics – two approaches that consider the interactional aspect of humans talking with each other to be a crucial starting point for its analysis. In doing so, we will (1) lay out the background of this special issue (what is problematic about “chunking” talk-in-interaction, the characteristics of the methodological approach chosen by the contributors, the cesura model), (2) highlight what can be gained from such a revised understanding of “chunking” in talk-in-interaction by referring to previous work with this model as well as the findings of the contributions to this special issue, and (3) indicate further directions such work could take starting from papers in this special issue. We hope to induce a fruitful exchange on the phenomena discussed, across methodological divides. KW - Conversation Analysis KW - Interactional Linguistics KW - prosody KW - phonetics KW - intonation units KW - talk-in-interaction KW - syntax KW - kinetics Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2020-0173 SN - 2300-9969 VL - 7 IS - 1 SP - 531 EP - 548 PB - De Gruyter CY - Berlin ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Barth-Weingarten, Dagmar A1 - Küttner, Uwe-Alexander A1 - Raymond, Chase Wesley T1 - Pivots revisited BT - cesuring in action JF - Open linguistics N2 - The term "pivot" usually refers to two overlapping syntactic units such that the completion of the first unit simultaneously launches the second. In addition, pivots are generally said to be characterized by the smooth prosodic integration of their syntactic parts. This prosodic integration is typically achieved by prosodic-phonetic matching of the pivot components. As research on such turns in a range of languages has illustrated, speakers routinely deploy pivots so as to be able to continue past a point of possible turn completion, in the service of implementing some additional or revised action. This article seeks to build on, and complement, earlier research by exploring two issues in more detail as follows: (1) what exactly do pivotal turn extensions accomplish on the action dimension, and (2) what role does prosodic-phonetic packaging play in this? We will show that pivot constructions not only exhibit various degrees of prosodic-phonetic (non-)integration, i.e., differently strong cesuras, but that they can be ordered on a continuum, and that this cline maps onto the relationship of the actions accomplished by the components of the pivot construction. While tighter prosodic-phonetic integration, i.e., weak(er) cesuring, co-occurs with post-pivot actions whose relationship to that of the pre-pivot tends to be rather retrospective in character, looser prosodic-phonetic integration, i.e., strong(er) cesuring, is associated with a more prospective orientation of the post-pivot's action. These observations also raise more general questions with regard to the analysis of action. KW - Conversation Analysis KW - Interactional Linguistics KW - syntax KW - talk-in-interaction KW - prosody KW - phonetics KW - cesuras KW - intonation units KW - social action Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2020-0152 SN - 2300-9969 VL - 7 IS - 1 SP - 613 EP - 637 PB - de Gruyter CY - Warsaw 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 - BOOK ED - Ishihara, Shinichiro ED - Schwarz, Anne T1 - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; Working papers of the SFB 632. - Vol. 10 N2 - The 10th volume of the working paper series contains two papers contributed by SFB-members. The first paper “Single prosodic phrase sentences” by Caroline Féry (A1) and Heiner Drenhaus (C6, University of Potsdam) investigates the prosody of Wide Focus Partial Fronting in a series of production and perception experiments. The second paper “Focus Asymmetries in Bura” by Katharina Hartmann, Peggy Jacob (B2, Humboldt University Berlin) and Malte Zimmermann (A5, University of Potsdam) explores the strategies of marking focus in Bura (Chadic). T3 - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 - 10 KW - prosody KW - experimental linguistics KW - afro-asiatic KW - focus asymmetries KW - argument / adjunct focus Y1 - 2008 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-16929 SN - 1866-4725 ER - TY - BOOK ED - Ishihara, Shinichiro ED - Petrova, Svetlana ED - Schwarz, Anne T1 - Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Prosody, Syntax, and Information Structure (WPSI 2) N2 - This volume contains the proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Prosody, Syntax, and Information Structure (WPSI2), held at University of Potsdam on March 18, 2005. WPSI 2 was aimed to discuss issues on the interaction of prosody, syntax, and information structure, from interdisciplinary points of view. The contributors (Haruo Kubozono, Shinichiro Ishihara, Yoshihisa Kitagawa, and Satoshi Tomioka) have been recently working on relevant issues, especially looking at the phenomena related to the intonation of focus and (wh-)questions in Japanese. T3 - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 - 9 KW - syntax KW - prosody KW - information structure KW - interface KW - Japanese Y1 - 2007 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-22234 SN - 1866-4725 ER -