TY  - JOUR
A1  - Vasishth, Shravan
A1  - Gelman, Andrew
T1  - How to embrace variation and accept uncertainty in linguistic and psycholinguistic data analysis
JF  - Linguistics : an interdisciplinary journal of the language sciences
N2  - The use of statistical inference in linguistics and related areas like psychology typically involves a binary decision: either reject or accept some null hypothesis using statistical significance testing. When statistical power is low, this frequentist data-analytic approach breaks down: null results are uninformative, and effect size estimates associated with significant results are overestimated. Using an example from psycholinguistics, several alternative approaches are demonstrated for reporting inconsistencies between the data and a theoretical prediction. The key here is to focus on committing to a falsifiable prediction, on quantifying uncertainty statistically, and learning to accept the fact that - in almost all practical data analysis situations - we can only draw uncertain conclusions from data, regardless of whether we manage to obtain statistical significance or not. A focus on uncertainty quantification is likely to lead to fewer excessively bold claims that, on closer investigation, may turn out to be not supported by the data.
KW  - experimental linguistics
KW  - statistical data analysis
KW  - statistical
KW  - inference
KW  - uncertainty quantification
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2019-0051
SN  - 0024-3949
SN  - 1613-396X
VL  - 59
IS  - 5
SP  - 1311
EP  - 1342
PB  - De Gruyter Mouton
CY  - Berlin
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  - JOUR
A1  - Féry, Caroline
A1  - Drenhaus, Heiner
T1  - Single prosodic phrase sentences
N2  - A series of production and perception experiments investigating the prosody and well-formedness of special sentences, called Wide Focus Partial Fronting (WFPF), which consist of only one prosodic phrase and a unique initial accented argument, are reported on here. The results help us to decide between different models of German prosody. The absence of pitch height difference on the accent of the sentence speaks in favor of a relative model of prosody, in which accents are scaled relative to each other, and against models in which pitch accents are scaled in an absolute way. The results also speak for a model in which syntax, but not information structure, influences the prosodic phrasing. Finally, perception experiments show that the prosodic structure of sentences with a marked word order needs to be presented for grammaticality judgments. Presentation of written material only is not enough, and falsifies the results.
KW  - Prosody
KW  - experimental linguistics
Y1  - 2008
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19371
ER  -