TY - JOUR A1 - Bosch, Sina A1 - De Cesare, Ilaria A1 - Demske, Ulrike A1 - Felser, Claudia T1 - Word-order variation and coherence in German infinitival complementation JF - The journal of comparative Germanic linguistics N2 - This study provides a synthesis of corpus-based and experimental investigations of word-order preferences in German infinitival complementation. We carried out a systematic analysis of present-day German corpora to establish frequency distributions of different word-order options: extraposition, intraposition, and 'third construction'. We then examined, firstly, whether and to what extent corpus frequencies and processing economy constraints can predict the acceptability of these three word-order variants, and whether subject raising and subject control verbs form clearly distinguishable subclasses of infinitive-embedding verbs in terms of their word-order behaviour. Secondly, our study looks into the issue of coherence by comparing acceptability ratings for monoclausal coherent and biclausal incoherent construals of intraposed infinitives, and by examining whether a biclausal incoherent analysis gives rise to local and/or global processing difficulty. Taken together, our results revealed that (i) whilst the extraposition pattern consistently wins out over all other word-order variants for control verbs, neither frequency nor processing-based approaches to word-order variation can account for the acceptability of low-frequency variants, (ii) there is considerable verb-specific variation regarding word-order preferences both between and within the two sets of raising and control verbs under investigation, and (iii) although monoclausal coherent intraposition is rated above biclausal incoherent intraposition, the latter is not any more difficult to process than the former. Our findings indicate that frequency of occurrence and processing-related constraints interact with idiosyncratic lexical properties of individual verbs in determining German speakers' structural preferences. KW - Syntactic variation KW - German KW - Infinitives KW - Corpus linguistics KW - Acceptability judgements KW - Self-paced reading Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10828-023-09140-8 SN - 1572-8552 VL - 26 IS - 1 PB - Springer CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Stone, Kate A1 - Verissimo, Joao A1 - Schad, Daniel J. A1 - Oltrogge, Elise A1 - Vasishth, Shravan A1 - Lago, Sol T1 - The interaction of grammatically distinct agreement dependencies in predictive processing JF - Language, cognition and neuroscience N2 - Previous research has found that comprehenders sometimes predict information that is grammatically unlicensed by sentence constraints. An open question is why such grammatically unlicensed predictions occur. We examined the possibility that unlicensed predictions arise in situations of information conflict, for instance when comprehenders try to predict upcoming words while simultaneously building dependencies with previously encountered elements in memory. German possessive pronouns are a good testing ground for this hypothesis because they encode two grammatically distinct agreement dependencies: a retrospective one between the possessive and its previously mentioned referent, and a prospective one between the possessive and its following nominal head. In two visual world eye-tracking experiments, we estimated the onset of predictive effects in participants' fixations. The results showed that the retrospective dependency affected resolution of the prospective dependency by shifting the onset of predictive effects. We attribute this effect to an interaction between predictive and memory retrieval processes. KW - sentence processing KW - visual world eye-tracking KW - prediction KW - gender KW - agreement KW - German Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2021.1921816 SN - 2327-3798 SN - 2327-3801 VL - 36 IS - 9 SP - 1159 EP - 1179 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Salzmann, Martin A1 - Wierzba, Marta A1 - Georgi, Doreen T1 - Condition C in German A'-movement BT - tackling challenges in experimental research on reconstruction JF - Journal of linguistics : JL N2 - In recent experimental work, arguments for or against Condition C reconstruction in A'-movement have been based on low/high availability of coreference in sentences with and without A'-movement. We argue that this reasoning is problematic: It involves arbitrary thresholds, and the results are potentially confounded by the different surface orders of the compared structures and non-syntactic factors. We present three experiments with designs that do not require defining thresholds of 'low' or 'high' coreference values. Instead, we focus on grammatical contrasts (wh-movement vs. relativization, subject vs. object wh-movement) and aim to identify and reduce confounds. The results show that reconstruction for A'-movement of DPs is not very robust in German, contra previous findings. Our results are compatible with the view that the surface order and non-syntactic factors (e.g. plausibility, referential accessibility of an R-expression) heavily influence coreference possibilities. Thus, the data argue against a theory that includes both reconstruction and a hard Condition C constraint. There is a residual contrast between sentences with subject/object movement, which is compatible with an account without reconstruction (and an additional non-syntactic factor) or an account with reconstruction (and a soft Condition C constraint). KW - A'-movement KW - binding KW - Condition C KW - experimental syntax KW - German KW - reconstruction KW - relative clauses KW - wh-questions Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226722000214 SN - 0022-2267 SN - 1469-7742 VL - 59 IS - 3 SP - 577 EP - 622 PB - Cambridge Univ. Press CY - London [u.a.] ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Puebla Antunes, Cecilia A1 - Felser, Claudia T1 - Discourse Prominence and Antecedent MisRetrieval during Native and Non-Native Pronoun Resolution JF - Discours : revue de linguistique, psycholinguistique et informatique N2 - Previous studies on non-native (L2) anaphor resolution suggest that L2 comprehenders are guided more strongly by discourse-level cues compared to native (L1) comprehenders. Here we examine whether and how a grammatically inappropriate antecedent’s discourse status affects the likelihood of it being considered during L1 and L2 pronoun resolution. We used an interference paradigm to examine how the extrasentential discourse impacts the resolution of German object pronouns. In an eye-tracking-during-reading experiment we examined whether an elaborated local antecedent ruled out by binding Condition B would be mis-retrieved during pronoun resolution, and whether initially introducing this antecedent as the discourse topic would affect the chances of it being mis-retrieved. While both participant groups rejected the inappropriate antecedent in an offline questionnaire irrespective of its discourse prominence, their real-time processing patterns differed. L1 speakers initially mis-retrieved the inappropriate antecedent regardless of its contextual prominence. L1 Russian/L2 German speakers, in contrast, were affected by the antecedent’s discourse status, considering it only when it was discourse-new but not when it had previously been introduced as the discourse topic. Our findings show that L2 comprehenders are highly sensitive to discourse dynamics such as topic shifts, supporting the claim that discourse-level cues are more strongly weighted during L2 compared to L1 processing. KW - pronoun resolution KW - non-native sentence processing KW - discourse KW - prominence KW - interference KW - German KW - eye-movement monitoring Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.4000/discours.11720 SN - 1963-1723 IS - 29 PB - Université de Paris-Sorbonne, Maion Recherche CY - Paris ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Fanselow, Gisbert A1 - Zimmermann, Malte A1 - Philipp, Mareike T1 - Assessing the availability of inverse scope in German in the covered box paradigm JF - Glossa : a journal of general linguistics N2 - This paper presents the results of a novel experimental approach to relative quantifier scope in German that elicits data in an indirect manner. Applying the covered-box method (Huang et al. 2013) to scope phenomena, we show that inverse scope is available to some extent in the free constituent order language German, thereby validating earlier findings on other syntactic configurations in German (Rado & Bott 2018) and empirical claims on other free constituent order languages (Japanese, Russian, Hindi), as well as recent corpus findings in Webelhuth (2020). Moreover, the results of the indirect covered-box experiment replicate findings from an earlier direct-query experiment with comparable target items, in which participants were asked directly about the availability of surface scope and inverse scope readings. The configuration of interest consisted of canonical transitive clauses with deaccented existential subject and universal object QPs, in which the restriction of the universal QP was controlled for by the context. KW - inverse scope KW - covered-box KW - free constituent order KW - German KW - experimental semantics Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.5766 SN - 2397-1835 VL - 7 IS - 1 SP - 1 EP - 24 PB - Open Library of Humanities CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Felser, Claudia A1 - Jessen, Anna T1 - Correlative coordination and variable subject-verb agreement in German JF - Languages : open access journal N2 - Coordinated subjects often show variable number agreement with the finite verb, but linguistic approaches to this phenomenon have rarely been informed by systematically collected data. We report the results from three experiments investigating German speakers' agreement preferences with complex subjects joined by the correlative conjunctions sowohl horizontal ellipsis als auch ('both horizontal ellipsis and'), weder horizontal ellipsis noch ('neither horizontal ellipsis nor') or entweder horizontal ellipsis oder ('either horizontal ellipsis or'). We examine to what extent conjunction type and a conjunct's relative proximity to the verb affect the acceptability and processibility of singular vs. plural agreement. Experiment 1 was an untimed acceptability rating task, Experiment 2 a timed sentence completion task, and Experiment 3 was a self-paced reading task. Taken together, our results show that number agreement with correlative coordination in German is primarily determined by a default constraint triggering plural agreement, which interacts with linear order and semantic factors. Semantic differences between conjunctions only affected speakers' agreement preferences in the absence of processing pressure but not their initial agreement computation. The combined results from our offline and online experimental measures of German speakers' agreement preferences suggest that the constraints under investigation do not only differ in their relative weighting but also in their relative timing during agreement computation. KW - correlative coordination KW - subject– verb agreement KW - German Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3390/languages6020067 SN - 2226-471X VL - 6 IS - 2 PB - MDPI CY - Basel ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wierzba, Marta A1 - Fanselow, Gisbert T1 - Factors influencing the acceptability of object fronting in German JF - The journal of comparative Germanic linguistics N2 - In this paper, we address some controversially debated empirical questions concerning object fronting in German by a series of acceptability rating studies. We investigated three kinds of factors: (i) properties of the subject (given/new, pronoun/full DP), (ii) emphasis, (iii) register. The first factor is predicted to play a crucial role by models in which object fronting possibilities are limited by prosodic properties. Two experiments provide converging evidence for a systematic effect of this factor: we find that the relative acceptability of object fronting across subjects that require an accent (new DPs) is lower than across deaccentable subjects (pronouns and given DPs). Other models predict object fronting across full phrases (but not across pronouns) to be limited to an emphatic interpretation. This prediction is also borne out, suggesting that both types of models capture an empirically valid generalization and can be seen as complementing each other rather than competing with each other. Finally, we find support for the view that informal register facilitates object fronting. In sum, our experiments contribute to clarifying the empirical basis concerning a phenomenon influenced by a range of interacting factors. This, in turn, informs theoretical approaches to the prefield position and helps to identify factors that need to be carefully controlled in this field of research. KW - German KW - Object fronting KW - Prefield KW - Givenness KW - Emphasis KW - Register KW - Experiments KW - Acceptability Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10828-020-09113-1 SN - 1383-4924 SN - 1572-8552 VL - 23 IS - 1 SP - 77 EP - 124 PB - Springer CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Felser, Claudia A1 - Drummer, Janna-Deborah T1 - Binding out of relative clauses in native and non-native sentence comprehension JF - Journal of psycholinguistic research N2 - Pronouns can sometimes covary with a non c-commanding quantifier phrase (QP). To obtain such 'telescoping' readings, a semantic representation must be computed in which the QP's semantic scope extends beyond its surface scope. Non-native speakers have been claimed to have more difficulty than native speakers deriving such non-isomorphic syntax-semantics mappings, but evidence from processing studies is scarce. We report the results from an eye-movement monitoring experiment and an offline questionnaire investigating whether native and non-native speakers of German can link personal pronouns to non c-commanding QPs inside relative clauses. Our results show that both participant groups were able to obtain telescoping readings offline, but only the native speakers showed evidence of forming telescoping dependencies during incremental parsing. During processing the non-native speakers focused on a discourse-prominent, non-quantified alternative antecedent instead. The observed group differences indicate that non-native comprehenders have more difficulty than native comprehenders computing scope-shifted representations in real time. KW - Pronoun binding KW - c-command KW - Eye-movement monitoring KW - Non-native language KW - processing KW - German Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-022-09845-z SN - 0090-6905 SN - 1573-6555 VL - 51 IS - 4 SP - 763 EP - 788 PB - Springer CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Clahsen, Harald A1 - Jessen, Anna T1 - Variability and its limits in bilingual word recognition BT - a morphological priming study JF - The mental lexicon N2 - This study examines the processing of morphologically complex words focusing on how morphological (in addition to orthographic and semantic) factors affect bilingual word recognition. We report findings from a large experimental study with groups of bilingual (Turkish/German) speakers using the visual masked-priming technique. We found morphologically mediated effects on the response speed and the inter-individual variability within the bilingual participant group. We conclude that the grammar (qua morphological parsing) not only enhances speed of processing in bilingual language processing but also yields more uniform performance and thereby constrains variability within a group of otherwise heterogeneous individuals. KW - German KW - inflection KW - morphology KW - L2 processing KW - masked priming Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.20013.cla SN - 1871-1340 SN - 1871-1375 VL - 15 IS - 2 SP - 295 EP - 329 PB - John Benjamins Publishing Co. CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - THES A1 - Chen, Hui Ching T1 - Acquisition of focus - in a cross-linguistic perspective T1 - Spracherwerb im Fokus - eine sprachübergreifende Perspektive N2 - In dieser Dissertation untersuchen wir, wie chinesischen Muttersprachler und deutschen Muttersprachler, sowohl die Erwachsenen als auch die Kinder, verschiedene linguistische Mittel, wie z. B. Wortstellungsinformationen, prosodische und lexikalische Mittel im Sprachverständnis korrekt interpretieren. N2 - Successful communication is often explored by people throughout their life courses. To effectively transfer one’s own information to others, people employ various linguistic tools, such as word order information, prosodic cues, and lexical choices. The exploration of these linguistic cues is known as the study of information structure (IS). Moreover, an important issue in the language acquisition of children is the investigation of how they acquire IS. This thesis seeks to improve our understanding of how children acquire different tools (i.e., prosodical cues, syntactical cues, and the focus particle only) of focus marking in a cross linguistic perspective. In the first study, following Szendrői and her colleagues (2017)- the sentence-picture verification task- was performed to investigate whether three- to five-year-old Mandarin-speaking children as well as Mandarin-speaking adults could apply prosodic information to recognize focus in sentences. More, in the second study, not only Mandarin-speaking adults and Mandarin-speaking children but also German-speaking adults and German-speaking children were included to confirm the assumption that children could have adult-like performance in understanding sentence focus by identifying language specific cues in their mother tongue from early onwards. In this study, the same paradigm- the sentence-picture verification task- as in the first study was employed together with the eye-tracking method. Finally, in the last study, an issue of whether five-year-old Mandarin-speaking children could understand the pre-subject only sentence was carried out and again whether prosodic information would help them to better understand this kind of sentences. The overall results seem to suggest that Mandarin-speaking children from early onwards could make use of the specific linguistic cues in their ambient language. That is, in Mandarin, a Topic-prominent and tone language, the word order information plays a more important rule than the prosodic information and even three-year-old Mandarin-speaking children could follow the word order information. More, although it seems that German-speaking children could follow the prosodic information, they did not have the adult-like performance in the object-accented condition. A feasible reason for this result is that there are more possibilities of marking focus in German, such as flexible word order, prosodic information, focus particles, and thus it would take longer time for German-speaking children to manage these linguistic tools. Another important empirical finding regarding the syntactically-marked focus in German is that it seems that the cleft construction is not a valid focus construction and this result corroborates with the previous observations (Dufter, 2009). Further, eye-tracking method did help to uncover how the parser direct their attention for recognizing focus. In the final study, it is showed that with explicit verbal context Mandarin-speaking children could understand the pre-subject only sentence and the study brought a better understanding of the acquisition of the focus particle- only with the Mandarin-speaking children. KW - information structure KW - language acquisition KW - Mandarin KW - German KW - Prosody KW - Informationsstruktur KW - Spracherwerb KW - Deutsch KW - Mandarin KW - Prosodie Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-553458 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Petrone, Caterina A1 - Truckenbrodt, Hubert A1 - Wellmann, Caroline A1 - Holzgrefe-Lang, Julia A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell A1 - Höhle, Barbara T1 - Prosodic boundary cues in German BT - evidence from the production and perception of bracketed lists JF - Journal of phonetics N2 - This study investigates prosodic phrasing of bracketed lists in German. We analyze variation in pauses, phrase-final lengthening and f0 in speech production and how these cues affect boundary perception. In line with the literature, it was found that pauses are often used to signal intonation phrase boundaries, while final lengthening and f0 are employed across different levels of the prosodic hierarchy. Deviations from expectations based on the standard syntax-prosody mapping are interpreted in terms of task-specific effects. That is, we argue that speakers add/delete prosodic boundaries to enhance the phonological contrast between different bracketings in the experimental task. In perception, three experiments were run, in which we tested only single cues (but temporally distributed at different locations of the sentences). Results from identification tasks and reaction time measurements indicate that pauses lead to a more abrupt shift in listeners׳ prosodic judgments, while f0 and final lengthening are exploited in a more gradient manner. Hence, pauses, final lengthening and f0 have an impact on boundary perception, though listeners show different sensitivity to the three acoustic cues. KW - Prosodic boundary KW - Phrase-final lengthening KW - Pause KW - f0 peaks KW - Production KW - Perception KW - German Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2017.01.002 SN - 0095-4470 VL - 61 SP - 71 EP - 92 PB - Elsevier CY - London 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 - JOUR A1 - Felser, Claudia A1 - Drummer, Janna-Deborah T1 - Sensitivity to Crossover Constraints During Native and Non-native Pronoun Resolution JF - Journal of psycholinguistic research N2 - We report the results from two experiments examining native and non-native German speakers’ sensitivity to crossover constraints on pronoun resolution. Our critical stimuli sentences contained personal pronouns in either strong (SCO) or weak crossover (WCO) configurations. Using eye-movement monitoring during reading and a gender-mismatch paradigm, Experiment 1 investigated whether a fronted wh-phrase would be considered as a potential antecedent for a pronoun intervening between the wh-phrase and its canonical position. Both native and non-native readers initially attempted coreference in WCO but not in SCO configurations, as evidenced by early gender-mismatch effects in our WCO conditions. Experiment 2 was an offline antecedent judgement task whose results mirrored the SCO/WCO asymmetry observed in our reading-time data. Taken together, our results show that the SCO constraint immediately restricts pronoun interpretation in both native and non-native comprehension, and further suggest that SCO and WCO constraints derive from different sources. KW - Strong crossover KW - Weak crossover KW - Pronoun resolution KW - Eye-movement monitoring KW - German Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-016-9465-8 SN - 0090-6905 SN - 1573-6555 VL - 46 SP - 771 EP - 789 PB - Springer CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Klassert, Annegret A1 - Bormann, Sarah A1 - Festman, Julia A1 - Gerth, Sabrina T1 - Primary School Children’s Spelling of Consonant Clusters and Morphological Awareness T1 - Rechtschreibung von Konsonantenclustern und morphologische Bewusstheit bei Grundschüler_innen JF - Zeitschrift für Entwicklungspsychologie und pädagogische Psychologie N2 - Die vorliegenden Studien untersuchen die Entwicklung der Rechtschreibfähigkeit für finale Konsonantencluster im Deutschen und die ihr zugrundeliegenden Strategien bei Erst- bis Drittklässler_innen (N = 209). Dazu wurde der Einfluss der morphologischen Komplexität (poly- vs. monomorphematische Cluster) auf die Rechtschreibung qualitativ und quantitativ analysiert, sowie mit einer Messung zur morphologischen Bewusstheit korreliert. Von der ersten Klasse an zeigt sich eine hohe Korrektheit in der Schreibung und somit eine sprachspezifisch schnelle Entwicklung der alphabetischen Rechtschreibstrategie für finale Konsonantencluster. Der Einfluss morphologischer Verarbeitungsprozesse wurde allerdings erst für die Drittklässler_innen gefunden. Obwohl bereits die Erstklässler_innen gut entwickelte morphologische Bewusstheit zeigten, scheinen sie noch nicht in der Lage zu sein, diese bei der Rechtschreibung anzuwenden. Die Ergebnisse werden im Kontrast zu den umfangreicher vorliegenden Befunden für die englische Sprache diskutiert. N2 - The present studies investigate the development of the ability to spelt final consonant clusters in German and its underlying strategies in first- to third-graders (N = 209). In these studies, the influence of morphological complexity (poly- vs. monomorphemic clusters) was analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively, and correlated with a measure of morphological awareness. From the first grade onwards, we found a high spelling accuracy and therefore a language-specific early development of the alphabetic spelling strategy for final consonant clusters. However, the influence of morphological processing mechanisms was only found for third graders. Although even first graders showed a well-developed morphological awareness, they did not seem to be able to use it during spelling. The results are discussed in contrast to extensive previous research in English. KW - spelling KW - final consonant clusters KW - morphological awareness KW - German KW - Rechtsschreibung KW - finale Konsonantencluster KW - morphologische Bewusstheit KW - Deutsch Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1026/0049-8637/a000193 SN - 0049-8637 SN - 2190-6262 VL - 50 IS - 3 SP - 115 EP - 125 PB - Hogrefe CY - Göttingen ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Lago Huvelle, Maria Sol A1 - Felser, Claudia T1 - Agreement attraction in native and nonnative speakers of German JF - Applied psycholinguistics : psychological and linguistic studies across languages and learners N2 - Second language speakers often struggle to apply grammatical constraints such as subject-verb agreement. One hypothesis for this difficulty is that it results from problems suppressing syntactically unlicensed constituents in working memory. We investigated which properties of these constituents make them more likely to elicit errors: their grammatical distance to the subject head or their linear distance to the verb. We used double modifier constructions (e.g., the smell of the stables of the farmers), where the errors of native speakers are modulated by the linguistic relationships between the nouns in the subject phrase: second plural nouns, which are syntactically and semantically closer to the subject head, elicit more errors than third plural nouns, which are linearly closer to the verb (2nd-3rd-noun asymmetry). In order to dissociate between grammatical and linear distance, we compared embedded and coordinated modifiers, which were linearly identical but differed in grammatical distance. Using an attraction paradigm, we showed that German native speakers and proficient Russian speakers of German exhibited similar attraction rates and that their errors displayed a 2nd-3rd-noun asymmetry, which was more pronounced in embedded than in coordinated constructions. We suggest that both native and second language learners prioritize linguistic structure over linear distance in their agreement computations. KW - agreement attraction KW - German KW - linear distance KW - Russian Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S0142716417000601 SN - 0142-7164 SN - 1469-1817 VL - 39 IS - 3 SP - 619 EP - 647 PB - Cambridge Univ. Press CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Sauermann, Antje A1 - Höhle, Barbara T1 - Word order in German child language and child-directed speech BT - a corpus analysis on the ordering of double objects in the German middlefield JF - Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics N2 - We report two corpus analyses to examine the impact of animacy, definiteness, givenness and type of referring expression on the ordering of double objects in the spontaneous speech of German-speaking two- to four-year-old children and the child-directed speech of their mothers. The first corpus analysis revealed that definiteness, givenness and type of referring expression influenced word order variation in child language and child-directed speech when the type of referring expression distinguished between pronouns and lexical noun phrases. These results correspond to previous child language studies in English (e.g., de Marneffe et al. 2012). Extending the scope of previous studies, our second corpus analysis examined the role of different pronoun types on word order. It revealed that word order in child language and child-directed speech was predictable from the types of pronouns used. Different types of pronouns were associated with different sentence positions but also showed a strong correlation to givenness and definiteness. Yet, the distinction between pronoun types diminished the effects of givenness so that givenness had an independent impact on word order only in child-directed speech but not in child language. Our results support a multi-factorial approach to word order in German. Moreover, they underline the strong impact of the type of referring expression on word order and suggest that it plays a crucial role in the acquisition of the factors influencing word order variation. KW - German KW - word order KW - corpus study KW - language acquisition KW - information structure KW - referring expression Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.281 SN - 2397-1835 VL - 3 IS - 1 PB - Ubiquity Press LTD CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Nicenboim, Bruno A1 - Vasishth, Shravan A1 - Engelmann, Felix A1 - Suckow, Katja T1 - Exploratory and confirmatory analyses in sentence processing BT - a case study of number interference in German JF - Cognitive science : a multidisciplinary journal of anthropology, artificial intelligence, education, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology ; journal of the Cognitive Science Society N2 - Given the replication crisis in cognitive science, it is important to consider what researchers need to do in order to report results that are reliable. We consider three changes in current practice that have the potential to deliver more realistic and robust claims. First, the planned experiment should be divided into two stages, an exploratory stage and a confirmatory stage. This clear separation allows the researcher to check whether any results found in the exploratory stage are robust. The second change is to carry out adequately powered studies. We show that this is imperative if we want to obtain realistic estimates of effects in psycholinguistics. The third change is to use Bayesian data-analytic methods rather than frequentist ones; the Bayesian framework allows us to focus on the best estimates we can obtain of the effect, rather than rejecting a strawman null. As a case study, we investigate number interference effects in German. Number feature interference is predicted by cue-based retrieval models of sentence processing (Van Dyke & Lewis, 2003; Vasishth & Lewis, 2006), but it has shown inconsistent results. We show that by implementing the three changes mentioned, suggestive evidence emerges that is consistent with the predicted number interference effects. KW - Exploratory and confirmatory analyses KW - Sentence processing KW - Bayesian hierarchical modeling KW - Cue-based retrieval KW - Working memory KW - Similarity-based interference KW - Number interference KW - German Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12589 SN - 0364-0213 SN - 1551-6709 VL - 42 SP - 1075 EP - 1100 PB - Wiley CY - Hoboken ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Drummer, Janna-Deborah A1 - Felser, Claudia T1 - Cataphoric pronoun resolution in native and non-native sentence comprehension JF - Journal of memory and language N2 - Encountering a cataphoric pronoun triggers a search for a suitable referent. Previous research indicates that this search is constrained by binding Condition C, which prohibits coreference between a cataphoric pronoun and a referential expression within its c-command domain. We report the results from a series of eye-movement monitoring and questionnaire experiments investigating cataphoric pronoun resolution in German. Given earlier findings suggesting that the application of structure-sensitive constraints on reference resolution may be delayed in non-native language processing, we tested both native and proficient non-native speakers of German. Our results show that cataphoric pronouns trigger an active search in both native and non-native comprehenders. Whilst both participant groups demonstrated awareness of Condition C in an offline task, we found Condition C effects to be restricted to later processing measures during online reading. This indicates that during natural reading, Condition C applies as a relatively late filter on potential coreference assignments. KW - Cataphoric pronouns KW - Reference resolution KW - Condition C KW - Eye-movement monitoring KW - Bilingual processing KW - German Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2018.04.001 SN - 0749-596X SN - 1096-0821 VL - 101 SP - 97 EP - 113 PB - Elsevier CY - San Diego ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Westphal, Andrea A1 - Vock, Miriam A1 - Kretschmann, Julia T1 - Unravelling the relationship between teacher-assigned grades, student personality, and standardized test scores JF - Frontiers in psychology / Frontiers Research Foundation N2 - The Big Five personality traits play a major role in student achievement. As such, there is consistent evidence that students that are more conscientious receive better teacher-assigned grades in secondary school. However, research often does not support the claim that students that are more conscientious similarly achieve higher scores in domain-specific standardized achievement tests. Based on the Invest-and-Accrue Model, we argue that conscientiousness explains to some extent why certain students receive better grades despite similar academic accomplishments (i.e., achieving similar scores in domain-specific standardized achievement tests). Therefore, the present study examines to what extent the relationship between student personality and teacher-assigned grades consists of direct as opposed to indirect associations (via subject-specific standardized test scores). We used a representative sample of 14,710 ninth-grade students to estimate these direct and indirect pathways in mathematics and German. Structural equation models showed that test scores explained between 8 and 11% of the variance in teacher-assigned grades in mathematics and German. The Big Five personality traits in students additionally explained between 8 and 10% of the variance in grades. Finally, the personality-grade relationship consisted of direct (0.02 | β| ≤ 0.27) and indirect associations via test scores (0.01 | β| ≤ 0.07). Conscientiousness explained discrepancies between teacher-assigned grades and students’ scores in domain-specific standardized tests to a greater extent than any of the other Big Five personality traits. Our findings suggest that students that are more conscientious may invest more effort to accomplish classroom goals, but fall short of mastery. KW - Big Five KW - student personality KW - teacher-assigned grades KW - grading practice KW - conscientiousness KW - mathematics KW - German KW - secondary school Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.627440 SN - 1664-1078 IS - 12 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - GEN A1 - Westphal, Andrea A1 - Vock, Miriam A1 - Kretschmann, Julia T1 - Unravelling the relationship between teacher-assigned grades, student personality, and standardized test scores T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - The Big Five personality traits play a major role in student achievement. As such, there is consistent evidence that students that are more conscientious receive better teacher-assigned grades in secondary school. However, research often does not support the claim that students that are more conscientious similarly achieve higher scores in domain-specific standardized achievement tests. Based on the Invest-and-Accrue Model, we argue that conscientiousness explains to some extent why certain students receive better grades despite similar academic accomplishments (i.e., achieving similar scores in domain-specific standardized achievement tests). Therefore, the present study examines to what extent the relationship between student personality and teacher-assigned grades consists of direct as opposed to indirect associations (via subject-specific standardized test scores). We used a representative sample of 14,710 ninth-grade students to estimate these direct and indirect pathways in mathematics and German. Structural equation models showed that test scores explained between 8 and 11% of the variance in teacher-assigned grades in mathematics and German. The Big Five personality traits in students additionally explained between 8 and 10% of the variance in grades. Finally, the personality-grade relationship consisted of direct (0.02 | β| ≤ 0.27) and indirect associations via test scores (0.01 | β| ≤ 0.07). Conscientiousness explained discrepancies between teacher-assigned grades and students’ scores in domain-specific standardized tests to a greater extent than any of the other Big Five personality traits. Our findings suggest that students that are more conscientious may invest more effort to accomplish classroom goals, but fall short of mastery. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 719 KW - Big Five KW - student personality KW - teacher-assigned grades KW - grading practice KW - conscientiousness KW - mathematics KW - German KW - secondary school Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-523024 SN - 1866-8364 IS - 12 ER -