TY - JOUR A1 - Weskott, Thomas T1 - Stop bashing givenness! BT - A note on Elke Kasimir's "Questions-Answers Test and Givenness" JF - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 N2 - Elke Kasimir’s paper (in this volume) argues against employing the notion of Givenness in the explanation of accent assignment. I will claim that the arguments against Givenness put forward by Kasimir are inconclusive because they beg the question of the role of Givenness. It is concluded that, more generally, arguments against Givenness as a diagnostic for information structural partitions should not be accepted offhand, since the notion of Givenness of discourse referents is (a) theoretically simple, (b) readily observable and quantifiable, and (c) bears cognitive significance. KW - givenness Y1 - 2005 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-8718 SN - 1866-4725 SN - 1614-4708 IS - 3 SP - 53 EP - 62 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Weskott, Thomas A1 - Fanselow, Gisbert T1 - On the informativity of different measures of linguistic acceptability JF - Language : journal of the Linguistic Society of America N2 - This article deals with the claim that the MAGNITUDE ESTIMATION (ME) method of gathering acceptability judgments produces data that are more informative for linguists than binary or n-point scale judgments. We performed three acceptability-rating experiments that directly compared ME data to binary and seven-point scale data. The results clearly falsify the hypothesis that data gathered by the ME method carry a larger amount of information about the acceptability of a given linguistic phenomenon. The three measures are largely equivalent with respect to informativity. Moreover, ME judgments are shown to be more liable to producing spurious variance under certain circumstances.* KW - acceptability judgments KW - empirical syntax KW - magnitude estimation KW - informativity Y1 - 2011 SN - 0097-8507 VL - 87 IS - 2 SP - 249 EP - 273 PB - Linguistic Society of America CY - Washington 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 - 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 - Wiese, Heike T1 - So as a focus marker in German JF - Linguistics : an interdisciplinary journal of the language sciences N2 - This paper discusses a hitherto undescribed usage of the particle so as a dedicated focus marker in contemporary German. I discuss grammatical and pragmatic characteristics of this focus marker, supporting my account with natural linguistic data and with controlled experimental evidence showing that so has a significant influence on speakers' understanding of what the focus expression in a sentence is. Against this background, I sketch a possible pragmaticalization path from referential usages of so via hedging to a semantically bleached focus marker, which, unlike particles such as auch 'also'/'too' or nur 'only', does not contribute any additional meaning. Y1 - 2011 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1515/LING.2011.028 SN - 0024-3949 VL - 49 IS - 5 SP - 991 EP - 1039 PB - De Gruyter Mouton CY - Berlin ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wiese, Heike A1 - Alexiadou, Artemis A1 - Allen, Shanley A1 - Bunk, Oliver A1 - Gagarina, Natalia A1 - Iefremenko, Kateryna A1 - Martynova, Maria A1 - Pashkova, Tatiana A1 - Rizou, Vicky A1 - Schroeder, Christoph A1 - Shadrova, Anna A1 - Szucsich, Luka A1 - Tracy, Rosemarie A1 - Tsehaye, Wintai A1 - Zerbian, Sabine A1 - Zuban, Yulia T1 - Heritage speakers as part of the native language continuum JF - Frontiers in psychology N2 - We argue for a perspective on bilingual heritage speakers as native speakers of both their languages and present results from a large-scale, cross-linguistic study that took such a perspective and approached bilinguals and monolinguals on equal grounds. We targeted comparable language use in bilingual and monolingual speakers, crucially covering broader repertoires than just formal language. A main database was the open-access RUEG corpus, which covers comparable informal vs. formal and spoken vs. written productions by adolescent and adult bilinguals with heritage-Greek, -Russian, and -Turkish in Germany and the United States and with heritage-German in the United States, and matching data from monolinguals in Germany, the United States, Greece, Russia, and Turkey. Our main results lie in three areas. (1) We found non-canonical patterns not only in bilingual, but also in monolingual speakers, including patterns that have so far been considered absent from native grammars, in domains of morphology, syntax, intonation, and pragmatics. (2) We found a degree of lexical and morphosyntactic inter-speaker variability in monolinguals that was sometimes higher than that of bilinguals, further challenging the model of the streamlined native speaker. (3) In majority language use, non-canonical patterns were dominant in spoken and/or informal registers, and this was true for monolinguals and bilinguals. In some cases, bilingual speakers were leading quantitatively. In heritage settings where the language was not part of formal schooling, we found tendencies of register leveling, presumably due to the fact that speakers had limited access to formal registers of the heritage language. Our findings thus indicate possible quantitative differences and different register distributions rather than distinct grammatical patterns in bilingual and monolingual speakers. This supports the integration of heritage speakers into the native-speaker continuum. Approaching heritage speakers from this perspective helps us to better understand the empirical data and can shed light on language variation and change in native grammars. Furthermore, our findings for monolinguals lead us to reconsider the state-of-the art on majority languages, given recurring evidence for non-canonical patterns that deviate from what has been assumed in the literature so far, and might have been attributed to bilingualism had we not included informal and spoken registers in monolinguals and bilinguals alike. KW - heritage speakers KW - registers KW - participles KW - word order KW - bare NPs KW - boundary tone KW - referent introduction KW - relative clause formation Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.717973 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 12 PB - Frontiers Media CY - Lausanne ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wiese, Heike A1 - Mayr, Katharina A1 - Krämer, Philipp A1 - Seeger, Patrick A1 - Müller, Hans-Georg A1 - Mezger, Verena T1 - Changing teachers' attitudes towards linguistic diversity BT - effects of an anti-bias programme JF - International Journal of Applied Linguistics N2 - We discuss an intervention programme for kindergarten and school teachers' continuing education in Germany that targets biases against language outside a perceived monolingual ‘standard’ and its speakers. The programme combines anti-bias methods relating to linguistic diversity with objectives of raising critical language awareness. Evaluation through teachers' workshops in Berlin and Brandenburg points to positive and enduring attitudinal changes in participants, but not in control groups that did not attend workshops, and effects were independent of personal variables gender and teaching subject and only weakly associated with age. We relate these effects to such programme features as indirect and inclusive methods that foster active engagement, and the combination of ‘safer’ topics targeting attitudes towards linguistic structures with more challenging ones dealing with the discrimination of speakers. N2 - Der Beitrag diskutiert ein Interventionsprogramm fur die Weiterbildung von Lehrer/inne/n und Erzieher/inne/n, das Vorurteile gegenuber sprachlichen Praktiken au ss erhalb eines vermeintlichen monolingualen Standarddeutschen und seinen Sprecher/inne/n fokussiert (). Das Programm verbindet Anti-bias -Methoden zur sprachlichen Vielfalt mit solchen, die auf eine Verstarkung kritischer Sprachbewusstheit abheben. Die Evaluation der Materialien in Lehrerfortbildungen in Berlin und Brandenburg weist auf positive und anhaltende Einstellungsveranderungen bei den Teilnehmer/inne/n, aber nicht bei Mitgliedern einer Kontrollgruppe, die nicht an den Fortbildungen teilnahm; die Effekte waren unabhangig von den personenbezogen Variablen Geschlecht und Lehrfach und nur schwach mit Alter assoziiert. Wir diskutieren diese Effekte im Zusammenhang mit Eigenschaften des Programms wie der Verwendung indirekter und inklusiver Methoden, die eine aktive Auseinandersetzung fordern, und der Verbindung von weniger bedrohlichen Themen, die sich auf Einstellungen gegenuber sprachlichen Strukturen beziehen, mit solchen, die die Diskrimierung von Sprecher/inne/n behandeln und daher eine gro ss ere Herausforderung darstellen KW - anti-bias KW - critical language awareness KW - language and education in multilingual settings KW - language attitudes KW - linguistic discrimination Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/ijal.12121 SN - 0802-6106 SN - 1473-4192 VL - 27 IS - 1 SP - 198 EP - 220 PB - Wiley CY - Hoboken ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wiese, Heike A1 - Oncu, Mehmet Tahir A1 - Bracker, Philip T1 - Verb-third-position in Turkish-German Language Contact BT - Information-structured Linearization of singular and multilingual Speakers JF - Deutsche Sprache : ds ; Zeitschrift für Theorie, Praxis, Dokumentation N2 - In present-day German we find new word order options, particularly well-known from Turkish-German bilingual speakers in the contexts of new urban dialects, which allow violations of the canonical verb-second position in independent declarative clauses. In these cases, two positions are occupied in the forefield in front of the finite verb, usually by an adverbial and a subject, which identify, at the level of information structure, frame-setter and topic, respectively. Our study investigates the influence of verbal versus language -independent information-structural preferences for this linearisation, comparing Turkish-German multilingual speakers who have grown up in Germany with monolingual German and Turkish speakers. For tasks, in which grammatical restrictions were largely minimised, the results indicate a general tendency to place verbs in a position after the frame-setter and the topic; in addition, we found language-specific influences that distinguish Turkish-German and monolingual German speakers from monolingual Turkish ones. We interpret this as evidence for an information-structural motivation for verb-third, and for a clear dominance of German for Turkish-German speakers in Germany. Y1 - 2017 SN - 0340-9341 SN - 1866-5233 VL - 45 IS - 1 SP - 31 EP - 52 PB - Erich Schmidt CY - Berlin ER - TY - GEN A1 - Williams, Daniel A1 - Escudero, Paola A1 - Gafos, Adamantios I. T1 - Perceptual sensitivity to spectral change in Australian English close front vowels BT - an electroencephalographic investigation T2 - 19 th annual conference of the international speech communicaton association (INTERSPEECH 2018), VOLS 1-6: Speech research for emerging marjets in multilingual societies N2 - Speech scientists have long noted that the qualities of naturally-produced vowels do not remain constant over their durations regardless of being nominally "monophthongs" or "diphthongs". Recent acoustic corpora show that there are consistent patterns of first (F1) and second (F2) formant frequency change across different vowel categories. The three Australian English (AusE) close front vowels /i:, 1, i/ provide a striking example: while their midpoint or mean F1 and F2 frequencies are virtually identical, their spectral change patterns distinctly differ. The results indicate that, despite the distinct patterns of spectral change of AusE /i:, i, la/ in production, its perceptual relevance is not uniform, but rather vowel-category dependent. KW - vowels KW - pre-attentive discrimination KW - speech perception KW - speech acoustics KW - English dialects Y1 - 2018 SN - 978-1-5108-7221-9 U6 - https://doi.org/10.21437/Interspeech.2018-2505 SN - 2308-457X SP - 1442 EP - 1446 PB - ISCA-International Speech Communication Association CY - Baixas ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Williams, Daniel Philip A1 - Escudero, Paola A1 - Gafos, Adamantios I. T1 - Spectral change and duration as cues in Australian English listeners' front vowel categorization JF - The journal of the Acoustical Society of America N2 - Australian English /iː/, /ɪ/, and /ɪə/ exhibit almost identical average first (F1) and second (F2) formant frequencies and differ in duration and vowel inherent spectral change (VISC). The cues of duration, F1 × F2 trajectory direction (TD) and trajectory length (TL) were assessed in listeners' categorization of /iː/ and /ɪə/ compared to /ɪ/. Duration was important for distinguishing both /iː/ and /ɪə/ from /ɪ/. TD and TL were important for categorizing /iː/ versus /ɪ/, whereas only TL was important for /ɪə/ versus /ɪ/. Finally, listeners' use of duration and VISC was not mutually affected for either vowel compared to /ɪ/. Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1121/1.5055019 SN - 0001-4966 SN - 1520-8524 VL - 144 IS - 3 SP - EL215 EP - EL221 PB - American Institute of Physics CY - Melville ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wittenberg, Eva A1 - Paczynski, Martin A1 - Wiese, Heike A1 - Jackendoff, Ray A1 - Kuperberg, Gina T1 - The difference between "giving a rose" and "giving a kiss": Sustained neural activity to the light verb construction JF - Journal of memory and language N2 - We used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the neurocognitive mechanisms associated with processing light verb constructions such as "give a kiss". These constructions consist of a semantically underspecified light verb ("give") and an event nominal that contributes most of the meaning and also activates an argument structure of its own ("kiss"). This creates a mismatch between the syntactic constituents and the semantic roles of a sentence. Native speakers read German verb-final sentences that contained light verb constructions (e.g., "Julius gave Anne a kiss"), non-light constructions (e.g., "Julius gave Anne a rose"), and semantically anomalous constructions (e.g., 'Julius gave Anne a conversation"). ERPs were measured at the critical verb, which appeared after all its arguments. Compared to non-light constructions, the light verb constructions evoked a widely distributed, frontally focused, sustained negative-going effect between 500 and 900 ms after verb onset. We interpret this effect as reflecting working memory costs associated with complex semantic processes that establish a shared argument structure in the light verb constructions. KW - Event-related potential KW - Sentence processing KW - Light verb constructions KW - Argument structure KW - Syntax-semantics interface KW - Sustained negativity Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2014.02.002 SN - 0749-596X SN - 1096-0821 VL - 73 SP - 31 EP - 42 PB - Elsevier CY - San Diego ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Woolford, Ellen T1 - Aspect splits and parasitic marking JF - Linguistics in Potsdam N2 - Aspect splits can affect agreement, Case, and even preposition insertion. This paper discusses the functional ‘why’ and the theoretical ‘how’ of aspect splits. Aspect splits are an economical way to mark aspect by preserving or suppressing some independent element in one aspect. In formal terms, they are produced in the same way as coda conditions in phonology, with positional/contextual faithfulness.This approach captures the additive effects of cross-cutting splits. Aspect splits are analyzed here from Hindi, Nepali, Yucatec Maya, Chontal, and Palauan. KW - split ergative KW - nepali KW - mayan KW - palauan KW - contextual markedness Y1 - 2009 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-32236 SN - 1616-7392 SN - 1864-1857 IS - 28 SP - 39 EP - 72 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wu, Fuyun A1 - Kaiser, Elsi A1 - Vasishth, Shravan T1 - Effects of early cues on the processing of chinese relative clauses BT - evidence for experience-based theories JF - Cognitive science : a multidisciplinary journal of anthropology, artificial intelligence, education, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology ; journal of the Cognitive Science Society N2 - We used Chinese prenominal relative clauses (RCs) to test the predictions of two competing accounts of sentence comprehension difficulty: the experience-based account of Levy () and the Dependency Locality Theory (DLT; Gibson, ). Given that in Chinese RCs, a classifier and/or a passive marker BEI can be added to the sentence-initial position, we manipulated the presence/absence of classifiers and the presence/absence of BEI, such that BEI sentences were passivized subject-extracted RCs, and no-BEI sentences were standard object-extracted RCs. We conducted two self-paced reading experiments, using the same critical stimuli but somewhat different filler items. Reading time patterns from both experiments showed facilitative effects of BEI within and beyond RC regions, and delayed facilitative effects of classifiers, suggesting that cues that occur before a clear signal of an upcoming RC can help Chinese comprehenders to anticipate RC structures. The data patterns are not predicted by the DLT, but they are consistent with the predictions of experience-based theories. KW - Storage cost KW - Experience KW - Relative clause KW - Chinese KW - Classifiers KW - BEI Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12551 SN - 0364-0213 SN - 1551-6709 VL - 42 SP - 1101 EP - 1133 PB - Wiley CY - Hoboken ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wulff, Dirk U. A1 - De Deyne, Simon A1 - Jones, Michael N. A1 - Mata, Rui A1 - Austerweil, Joseph L. A1 - Baayen, R. Harald A1 - Balota, David A. A1 - Baronchelli, Andrea A1 - Brysbaert, Marc A1 - Cai, Qing A1 - Dennis, Simon A1 - Hills, Thomas T. A1 - Kenett, Yoed N. A1 - Keuleers, Emmanuel A1 - Marelli, Marco A1 - Pakhomov, Serguei A1 - Ramscar, Michael A1 - Schooler, Lael J. A1 - Shing, Yee Lee A1 - da Souza, Alessandra S. A1 - Siew, Cynthia S. Q. A1 - Storms, Gert A1 - Veríssimo, Joao Marques T1 - New Perspectives on the Aging Lexicon JF - Trends in cognitive science N2 - The field of cognitive aging has seen considerable advances in describing the linguistic and semantic changes that happen during the adult life span to uncover the structure of the mental lexicon (i.e., the mental repository of lexical and conceptual representations). Nevertheless, there is still debate concerning the sources of these changes, including the role of environmental exposure and several cognitive mechanisms associated with learning, representation, and retrieval of information. We review the current status of research in this field and outline a framework that promises to assess the contribution of both ecological and psychological aspects to the aging lexicon. Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2019.05.003 SN - 1364-6613 SN - 1879-307X VL - 23 IS - 8 SP - 686 EP - 698 PB - Elsevier CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wulff, Peter A1 - Buschhüter, David A1 - Westphal, Andrea A1 - Nowak, Anna A1 - Becker, Lisa A1 - Robalino, Hugo A1 - Stede, Manfred A1 - Borowski, Andreas T1 - Computer-based classification of preservice physics teachers’ written reflections JF - Journal of science education and technology N2 - Reflecting in written form on one's teaching enactments has been considered a facilitator for teachers' professional growth in university-based preservice teacher education. Writing a structured reflection can be facilitated through external feedback. However, researchers noted that feedback in preservice teacher education often relies on holistic, rather than more content-based, analytic feedback because educators oftentimes lack resources (e.g., time) to provide more analytic feedback. To overcome this impediment to feedback for written reflection, advances in computer technology can be of use. Hence, this study sought to utilize techniques of natural language processing and machine learning to train a computer-based classifier that classifies preservice physics teachers' written reflections on their teaching enactments in a German university teacher education program. To do so, a reflection model was adapted to physics education. It was then tested to what extent the computer-based classifier could accurately classify the elements of the reflection model in segments of preservice physics teachers' written reflections. Multinomial logistic regression using word count as a predictor was found to yield acceptable average human-computer agreement (F1-score on held-out test dataset of 0.56) so that it might fuel further development towards an automated feedback tool that supplements existing holistic feedback for written reflections with data-based, analytic feedback. KW - reflection KW - teacher professional development KW - hatural language KW - processing KW - machine learning Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10956-020-09865-1 SN - 1059-0145 SN - 1573-1839 VL - 30 IS - 1 SP - 1 EP - 15 PB - Springer CY - Dordrecht ER - TY - THES A1 - Yadav, Himanshu T1 - A computational evaluation of feature distortion and cue weighting in sentence comprehension T1 - Eine komputationale Evaluation von Feature-Verfälschung und Cue-Gewichtung in der Satzverarbeitung N2 - Successful sentence comprehension requires the comprehender to correctly figure out who did what to whom. For example, in the sentence John kicked the ball, the comprehender has to figure out who did the action of kicking and what was being kicked. This process of identifying and connecting the syntactically-related words in a sentence is called dependency completion. What are the cognitive constraints that determine dependency completion? A widely-accepted theory is cue-based retrieval. The theory maintains that dependency completion is driven by a content-addressable search for the co-dependents in memory. The cue-based retrieval explains a wide range of empirical data from several constructions including subject-verb agreement, subject-verb non-agreement, plausibility mismatch configurations, and negative polarity items. However, there are two major empirical challenges to the theory: (i) Grammatical sentences’ data from subject-verb number agreement dependencies, where the theory predicts a slowdown at the verb in sentences like the key to the cabinet was rusty compared to the key to the cabinets was rusty, but the data are inconsistent with this prediction; and, (ii) Data from antecedent-reflexive dependencies, where a facilitation in reading times is predicted at the reflexive in the bodybuilder who worked with the trainers injured themselves vs. the bodybuilder who worked with the trainer injured themselves, but the data do not show a facilitatory effect. The work presented in this dissertation is dedicated to building a more general theory of dependency completion that can account for the above two datasets without losing the original empirical coverage of the cue-based retrieval assumption. In two journal articles, I present computational modeling work that addresses the above two empirical challenges. To explain the grammatical sentences’ data from subject-verb number agreement dependencies, I propose a new model that assumes that the cue-based retrieval operates on a probabilistically distorted representation of nouns in memory (Article I). This hybrid distortion-plus-retrieval model was compared against the existing candidate models using data from 17 studies on subject-verb number agreement in 4 languages. I find that the hybrid model outperforms the existing models of number agreement processing suggesting that the cue-based retrieval theory must incorporate a feature distortion assumption. To account for the absence of facilitatory effect in antecedent-reflexive dependen� cies, I propose an individual difference model, which was built within the cue-based retrieval framework (Article II). The model assumes that individuals may differ in how strongly they weigh a syntactic cue over a number cue. The model was fitted to data from two studies on antecedent-reflexive dependencies, and the participant-level cue-weighting was estimated. We find that one-fourth of the participants, in both studies, weigh the syntactic cue higher than the number cue in processing reflexive dependencies and the remaining participants weigh the two cues equally. The result indicates that the absence of predicted facilitatory effect at the level of grouped data is driven by some, not all, participants who weigh syntactic cues higher than the number cue. More generally, the result demonstrates that the assumption of differential cue weighting is important for a theory of dependency completion processes. This differential cue weighting idea was independently supported by a modeling study on subject-verb non-agreement dependencies (Article III). Overall, the cue-based retrieval, which is a general theory of dependency completion, needs to incorporate two new assumptions: (i) the nouns stored in memory can undergo probabilistic feature distortion, and (ii) the linguistic cues used for retrieval can be weighted differentially. This is the cumulative result of the modeling work presented in this dissertation. The dissertation makes an important theoretical contribution: Sentence comprehension in humans is driven by a mechanism that assumes cue-based retrieval, probabilistic feature distortion, and differential cue weighting. This insight is theoretically important because there is some independent support for these three assumptions in sentence processing and the broader memory literature. The modeling work presented here is also methodologically important because for the first time, it demonstrates (i) how the complex models of sentence processing can be evaluated using data from multiple studies simultaneously, without oversimplifying the models, and (ii) how the inferences drawn from the individual-level behavior can be used in theory development. N2 - Bei der Satzverarbeitung muss der Leser richtig herausfinden, wer wem was angetan hat. Zum Beispiel muss der Leser in dem Satz „John hat den Ball getreten“ herausfinden, wer tat die Aktion des Tretens und was getreten wurde. Dieser Prozess des Identifizierens und Verbindens der syntaktisch verwandte Wörter in einem Satz nennt man Dependency-Completion. Was sind die kognitiven Mechanismen, die Dependency-Completion bestimmen? Eine weithin akzeptierte Theorie ist der Cue-based retrieval. Die Theorie besagt, dass die Dependency-Completion durch eine inhaltsadressierbare Suche nach der vorangetrieben wird Co-Abhängige im Gedächtnis. Der Cue-basierte Abruf erklärt ein breites Spektrum an empirischen Daten mehrere Konstruktionen, darunter Subjekt-Verb-Übereinstimmung, Subjekt-Verb-Nichtübereinstimmung, Plausibilität Mismatch-Konfigurationen und Elemente mit negativer Polarität. Es gibt jedoch zwei große empirische Herausforderungen für die Theorie: (i) Grammatische Sätze Daten aus Subjekt-Verb-Nummer-Dependency, bei denen die Theorie eine Verlangsamung vorhersagt das Verb in Sätzen wie „the key to the cabinet was rusty“ im Vergleich zu „the key to the cabinets was rusty“, aber die Daten stimmen nicht mit dieser Vorhersage überein; und (ii) Daten von Antezedenz-Reflexiv Strukturen, wo eine Leseerleichterung beim reflexiven „the bodybuilder who worked with the trainers injured themselves“ vs. „the bodybuilder who worked with the trainers injured themselves", aber die Daten zeigen keine vermittelnde Wirkung. Die in dieser Dissertation vorgestellte Arbeit widmet sich dem Aufbau einer allgemeineren Theorie von Dependency-Completion, die die beiden oben genannten Datensätze berücksichtigen kann, ohne das Original zu verlieren empirische Abdeckung der Cue-based Retrieval-Annahme. In zwei Zeitschriftenartikeln stelle ich Arbeiten zur Computermodellierung vor, die sich mit den beiden oben genannten empirischen Herausforderungen befassen. Um die Daten der grammatikalischen Sätze aus den Abhängigkeiten der Subjekt-Verb-Nummer-Übereinstimmung zu erklären, schlage ich ein neues Modell vor, das davon ausgeht, dass der Cue-basierte Abruf probabilistisch funktioniert verzerrte Darstellung von Substantiven im Gedächtnis (Artikel I). Dieses hybride Distortion-plus-Retrieval-Modell wurde anhand von Daten aus 17 Studien zu Subjekt-Verb mit den bestehenden Kandidatenmodellen verglichen Nummernvereinbarung in 4 Sprachen. Ich finde, dass das Hybridmodell die bestehenden Modelle übertrifft der Nummernvereinbarungsverarbeitung, was darauf hindeutet, dass die Cue-based Retrieval-Theorie Folgendes umfassen muss: a Annahme von Feature-Verfälschung. Um das Fehlen eines unterstützenden Effekts in antezedens-reflexiven Abhängigkeiten zu berücksichtigen, schlage ich ein individuelles Differenzmodell vor, das innerhalb des Cue-based Retrieval-Frameworks erstellt wurde (Artikel II). Das Modell geht davon aus, dass Individuen sich darin unterscheiden können, wie stark sie eine Syntax gewichten Cue über einem Nummern-Cue. Das Modell wurde an Daten aus zwei Studien zum Antezedenz-Reflexiv angepasst Abhängigkeiten, und die Cue-Gewichtung auf Teilnehmerebene wurde geschätzt. Wir finden, dass ein Viertel von Die Teilnehmer in beiden Studien gewichten bei der Verarbeitung den syntaktischen Cue höher als den numerischen Cue reflexive Abhängigkeiten und die verbleibenden Teilnehmer gewichten die beiden Cue gleichermaßen. Das Ergebnis weist darauf hin, dass das Fehlen des prognostizierten Erleichterungseffekts auf der Ebene der gruppierten Daten von einigen, nicht alle Teilnehmer, die syntaktische Cue höher gewichten als Zahlenhinweise. Allgemeiner gesagt, die Das Ergebnis zeigt, dass die Annahme einer differentiellen Hinweisgewichtung wichtig für eine Theorie von ist Dependency-Completion. Diese Idee der differentiellen Cue-Gewichtung wurde unabhängig unterstützt durch eine Modellierungsstudie zu Subjekt-Verb-Nichteinigungsabhängigkeiten (Artikel III). Insgesamt benötigt der Cue-basierte Abruf, der eine allgemeine Theorie der Abhängigkeitsvervollständigung ist um zwei neue Annahmen aufzunehmen: (i) die im Gedächtnis gespeicherten Substantive können einer Wahrscheinlichkeitsanalyse unterzogen werden Feature-Verfälschung, und (ii) die für den Abruf verwendeten sprachlichen Cue können unterschiedlich gewichtet werden. Das ist das kumulative Ergebnis der in dieser Dissertation vorgestellten Modellierungsarbeit.Die Dissertation leistet einen wichtigen theoretischen Beitrag: Satzverständnis in Der Mensch wird von einem Mechanismus getrieben, der einen hinweisbasierten Abruf, eine probabilistische Merkmalsverzerrung und eine differentielle Hinweisgewichtung annimmt. Diese Einsicht ist theoretisch wichtig, weil es einige gibt unabhängige Unterstützung für diese drei Annahmen in der Satzverarbeitung und im weiteren Gedächtnis Literatur. Die hier vorgestellten Modellierungsarbeiten sind auch methodisch wichtig, weil für die Zum ersten Mal wird gezeigt, (i) wie die komplexen Modelle der Satzverarbeitung evaluiert werden können Daten aus mehreren Studien gleichzeitig zu verwenden, ohne die Modelle zu stark zu vereinfachen, und (ii) wie die Schlussfolgerungen aus dem Verhalten auf individueller Ebene können in der Theorieentwicklung verwendet werden. KW - sentence comprehension KW - individual differences KW - cue-based retrieval KW - memory distortion KW - Approximate Bayesian Computation KW - cue reliability KW - ungefähre Bayessche Komputation KW - Cue-Gewichtung KW - Cue-basierter Retrieval KW - individuelle Unterschiede KW - Darstellung Verfälschung KW - Satzverarbeitung Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-585055 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Yadav, Himanshu A1 - Husain, Samar A1 - Futrell, Richard T1 - Do dependency lengths explain constraints on crossing dependencies? JF - Linguistics vanguard : multimodal online journal N2 - In syntactic dependency trees, when arcs are drawn from syntactic heads to dependents, they rarely cross. Constraints on these crossing dependencies are critical for determining the syntactic properties of human language, because they define the position of natural language in formal language hierarchies. We study whether the apparent constraints on crossing syntactic dependencies in natural language might be explained by constraints on dependency lengths (the linear distance between heads and dependents). We compare real dependency trees from treebanks of 52 languages against baselines of random trees which are matched with the real trees in terms of their dependency lengths. We find that these baseline trees have many more crossing dependencies than real trees, indicating that a constraint on dependency lengths alone cannot explain the empirical rarity of crossing dependencies. However, we find evidence that a combined constraint on dependency length and the rate of crossing dependencies might be able to explain two of the most-studied formal restrictions on dependency trees: gap degree and well-nestedness. KW - crossing dependencies KW - dependency length KW - dependency treebanks KW - efficiency KW - language processing KW - syntax Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2019-0070 SN - 2199-174X VL - 7 PB - De Gruyter Mouton CY - Berlin ; New York, NY ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Yue, Jinxing A1 - Alter, Kai-Uwe A1 - Howard, David A1 - Bastiaanse, Roelien T1 - Early access to lexical-level phonological representations of Mandarin word-forms BT - evidence from auditory N1 habituation JF - Language, cognition and neuroscience N2 - An auditory habituation design was used to investigate whether lexical-level phonological representations in the brain can be rapidly accessed after the onset of a spoken word. We studied the N1 component of the auditory event-related electrical potential, and measured the amplitude decrements of N1 associated with the repetition of a monosyllabic tone word and an acoustically similar pseudo-word in Mandarin Chinese. Effects related to the contrastive onset consonants were controlled for by introducing two control words. We show that repeated pseudo-words consistently elicit greater amplitude decrements in N1 than real words. Furthermore, this lexicality effect is free from sensory fatigue or rapid learning of the pseudo-word. These results suggest that a lexical-level phonological representation of a spoken word can be accessed as early as 110ms after the onset of the word-form. KW - Auditory N1 KW - short-term habituation KW - spoken word KW - Mandarin Chinese KW - language KW - event-related potential KW - lexical access Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2017.1290261 SN - 2327-3798 SN - 2327-3801 VL - 32 IS - 9 SP - 1148 EP - 1163 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Yue, Jinxing A1 - Bastiaanse, Roelien A1 - Alter, Kai T1 - Cortical plasticity induced by rapid Hebbian learning of novel tonal word-forms: Evidence from mismatch negativity JF - Brain & language : a journal of the neurobiology of language N2 - Although several experiments reported rapid cortical plasticity induced by passive exposure to novel segmental patterns, few studies have devoted attention to the neural dynamics during the rapid learning of novel tonal word-forms in tonal languages, such as Chinese. In the current study, native speakers of Mandarin Chinese were exposed to acoustically matched real and novel segment-tone patterns. By recording their Mismatch Negativity (MMN) responses (an ERP indicator of long-term memory traces for spoken words), we found enhanced MMNs to the novel word-forms over the left-hemispheric region in the late exposure phase relative to the early exposure phase. In contrast, no significant changes were identified in MMN responses to the real word during familiarisation. Our results suggest a rapid Hebbian learning mechanism in the human neocortex which develops long-term memory traces for a novel segment-tone pattern by establishing new associations between the segmental and tonal representations. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. KW - Language KW - Rapid learning KW - Hebbian learning KW - Event-related potential KW - Novel word KW - Mismatch Negativity (MMN) KW - Oddball paradigm KW - Lexical tone KW - Mandarin Chinese Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2014.09.007 SN - 0093-934X SN - 1090-2155 VL - 139 SP - 10 EP - 22 PB - Elsevier CY - San Diego ER - TY - THES A1 - Zaccarella, Emiliano T1 - Breaking down complexity BT - the neural basis of the syntactic merge mechanism in the human brain T2 - MPI series human cognitive and brain sciences ; 175 N2 - The unbounded expressive capacity of human language cannot boil down to an infinite list of sentences stored in a finite brain. Our linguistic knowledge is rather grounded around a rule-based universal syntactic computation—called Merge—which takes categorized units in input (e.g. this and ship), and generates structures by binding words recursively into more complex hierarchies of any length (e.g. this ship; this ship sinks…). Here we present data from different fMRI datasets probing the cortical implementation of this fundamental process. We first pushed complexity down to a three-word level, to explore how Merge creates minimally hierarchical phrases and sentences. We then moved to the most fundamental two-word level, to directly assess the universal invariant nature of Merge, when no additive mechanisms are involved. Our most general finding is that Merge as the basic syntactic operation is primarily performed by confined area, namely BA 44 in the IFG. Activity reduces to its most ventral-anterior portion at the most fundamental level, following fine-grained sub-anatomical parcellation proposed for the region. The deep frontal operculum/anterior-dorsal insula (FOP/adINS), a phylogenetically older and less specialized region, rather appears to support word-accumulation processing in which the categorical information of the word is first accessed based on its lexical status, and then maintained on hold before further processing takes place. The present data confirm the general notion of BA 44 being activated as a function of complex structural hierarchy, but they go beyond this view by proposing that structural sensitivity in BA 44 is already appreciated at the lowest levels of complexity during which minimal phrase-structures are build up, and syntactic Merge is assessed. Further, they call for a redefinition of BA 44 from multimodal area to a macro-region with internal localizable functional profiles Y1 - 2015 SN - 978-3-941504-60-8 PB - Max-Planck-Institute CY - Leipzig ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zakarias, Lilla A1 - Kelly, Helen A1 - Sails, Christos A1 - Code, Chris T1 - The methodological quality of short-term/working memory treatments in poststroke aphasia BT - a systematic review JF - Journal of speech, language, and hearing research N2 - Purpose: The aims of this systematic review are to provide a critical overview of short-term memory (STM) and working memory (WM) treatments in stroke aphasia and to systematically evaluate the internal and external validity of STM/WM treatments. Method: A systematic search was conducted in February 2014 and then updated in December 2016 using 13 electronic databases. We provided descriptive characteristics of the included studies and assessed their methodological quality using the Risk of Bias in N-of-1 Trials quantitative scale (Tate et al., 2015), which was completed by 2 independent raters. Results: The systematic search and inclusion/exclusion procedure yielded 17 single-case or case-series studies with 37 participants for inclusion. Nine studies targeted auditory STM consisting of repetition and/or recognition tasks, whereas 8 targeted attention and WM, such as attention process training including n-back tasks with shapes and clock faces as well as mental math tasks. In terms of their methodological quality, quality scores on the Risk of Bias in N-of-1 Trials scale ranged from 4 to 17 (M = 9.5) on a 0-30 scale, indicating a high risk of bias in the reviewed studies. Effects of treatment were most frequently assessed on STM, WM, and spoken language comprehension. Transfer effects on communication and memory in activities of daily living were tested in only 5 studies. Conclusions: Methodological limitations of the reviewed studies make it difficult, at present, to draw firm conclusions about the effects of STM/WM treatments in poststroke aphasia. Further studies with more rigorous methodology and stronger experimental control are needed to determine the beneficial effects of this type of intervention. To understand the underlying mechanisms of STM/WM treatment effects and how they relate to language functioning, a careful choice of outcome measures and specific hypotheses about potential improvements on these measures are required. Future studies need to include outcome measures of memory functioning in everyday life and psychosocial functioning more generally to demonstrate the ecological validity of STM and WM treatments. Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1044/2018_JSLHR-L-18-0057 SN - 1092-4388 SN - 1558-9102 VL - 62 IS - 6 SP - 1979 EP - 2001 PB - American Speech-Language-Hearing Assoc. CY - Rockville ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zakarias, Lilla A1 - Salis, Christos A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell T1 - Transfer effects on spoken sentence comprehension and functional communication after working memory training in stroke aphasia JF - Journal of neurolinguistics : an international journal for the study of brain function in language behavior and experience N2 - Recent treatment protocols have been successful in improving working memory (WM) in individuals with aphasia. However, the evidence to date is small and the extent to which improvements in trained tasks of WM transfer to untrained memory tasks, spoken sentence comprehension, and functional communication is yet poorly understood. To address these issues, we conducted a multiple baseline study with three German-speaking individuals with chronic post stroke aphasia. Participants practised two computerised WM tasks (n-back with pictures and aback with spoken words) four times a week for a month, targeting two WM processes: updating WM representations and resolving interference. All participants showed improvement on at least one measure of spoken sentence comprehension and everyday memory activities. Two of them showed improvement also on measures of WM and functional communication. Our results suggest that WM can be improved through computerised training in chronic aphasia and this can transfer to spoken sentence comprehension and functional communication in some individuals. KW - Aphasia KW - Working memory KW - n-back training KW - Transfer KW - Sentence comprehension KW - Verbal communication Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneuroling.2017.12.002 SN - 0911-6044 VL - 48 SP - 47 EP - 63 PB - Elsevier CY - Oxford ER - TY - THES A1 - Zakariás, Lilla T1 - Transfer effects after working memory training in post-stroke aphasia T1 - Transfereffekte nach Arbeitsgedächtnistraining bei Aphasie nach Schlaganfall N2 - Background: Individuals with aphasia after stroke (IWA) often present with working memory (WM) deficits. Research investigating the relationship between WM and language abilities has led to the promising hypothesis that treatments of WM could lead to improvements in language, a phenomenon known as transfer. Although recent treatment protocols have been successful in improving WM, the evidence to date is scarce and the extent to which improvements in trained tasks of WM transfer to untrained memory tasks, spoken sentence comprehension, and functional communication is yet poorly understood. Aims: We aimed at (a) investigating whether WM can be improved through an adaptive n-back training in IWA (Study 1–3); (b) testing whether WM training leads to near transfer to unpracticed WM tasks (Study 1–3), and far transfer to spoken sentence comprehension (Study 1–3), functional communication (Study 2–3), and memory in daily life in IWA (Study 2–3); and (c) evaluating the methodological quality of existing WM treatments in IWA (Study 3). To address these goals, we conducted two empirical studies – a case-controls study with Hungarian speaking IWA (Study 1) and a multiple baseline study with German speaking IWA (Study 2) – and a systematic review (Study 3). Methods: In Study 1 and 2 participants with chronic, post-stroke aphasia performed an adaptive, computerized n-back training. ‘Adaptivity’ was implemented by adjusting the tasks’ difficulty level according to the participants’ performance, ensuring that they always practiced at an optimal level of difficulty. To assess the specificity of transfer effects and to better understand the underlying mechanisms of transfer on spoken sentence comprehension, we included an outcome measure testing specific syntactic structures that have been proposed to involve WM processes (e.g., non-canonical structures with varying complexity). Results: We detected a mixed pattern of training and transfer effects across individuals: five participants out of six significantly improved in the n-back training. Our most important finding is that all six participants improved significantly in spoken sentence comprehension (i.e., far transfer effects). In addition, we also found far transfer to functional communication (in two participants out of three in Study 2) and everyday memory functioning (in all three participants in Study 2), and near transfer to unpracticed n-back tasks (in four participants out of six). Pooled data analysis of Study 1 and 2 showed a significant negative relationship between initial spoken sentence comprehension and the amount of improvement in this ability, suggesting that the more severe the participants’ spoken sentence comprehension deficit was at the beginning of training, the more they improved after training. Taken together, we detected both near far and transfer effects in our studies, but the effects varied across participants. The systematic review evaluating the methodological quality of existing WM treatments in stroke IWA (Study 3) showed poor internal and external validity across the included 17 studies. Poor internal validity was mainly due to use of inappropriate design, lack of randomization of study phases, lack of blinding of participants and/or assessors, and insufficient sampling. Low external validity was mainly related to incomplete information on the setting, lack of use of appropriate analysis or justification for the suitability of the analysis procedure used, and lack of replication across participants and/or behaviors. Results in terms of WM, spoken sentence comprehension, and reading are promising, but further studies with more rigorous methodology and stronger experimental control are needed to determine the beneficial effects of WM intervention. Conclusions: Results of the empirical studies suggest that WM can be improved with a computerized and adaptive WM training, and improvements can lead to transfer effects to spoken sentence comprehension and functional communication in some individuals with chronic post-stroke aphasia. The fact that improvements were not specific to certain syntactic structures (i.e., non-canonical complex sentences) in spoken sentence comprehension suggest that WM is not involved in the online, automatic processing of syntactic information (i.e., parsing and interpretation), but plays a more general role in the later stage of spoken sentence comprehension (i.e., post-interpretive comprehension). The individual differences in treatment outcomes call for future research to clarify how far these results are generalizable to the population level of IWA. Future studies are needed to identify a few mechanisms that may generalize to at least a subpopulation of IWA as well as to investigate baseline non-linguistic cognitive and language abilities that may play a role in transfer effects and the maintenance of such effects. These may require larger yet homogenous samples. N2 - Patienten mit einer Aphasie nach einem Schlaganfall weisen häufig auch Beeinträchtigungen des Arbeitsgedächtnisses auf. Studien, die das Zusammenspiel von Arbeitsgedächtnis und Sprachfähigkeit untersuchen führten zu der Hypothese, dass ein Training des Arbeitsgedächtnisses auch zu Verbesserungen der Sprache führen könnten (sogenannte Transfer-Effekte). Obwohl jüngste Therapiestudien nachweislich die Leistung des Arbeitsgedächtnisses verbessern konnten, gibt es derzeitig nur wenig Evidenzen, ob und in welchem Ausmaß sich Verbesserungen des Arbeitsgedächtnisses auch auf ungeübte Gedächtnisaufgaben, das auditive Satzverständnis und die Kommunikationsfähigkeit im Alltag auswirken können. Das vorliegende Dissertationsprojekt untersucht, ob (a) das Arbeitsgedächtnis bei Patienten mit einer Aphasie über ein adaptiertes N-Back-Training verbessert werden kann (Studie 1–3) und (b) das Arbeitsgedächtnistraining zu einem nahen Transfer auf ungeübte Arbeitsgedächtnisaufgaben (Studie 1–3) und zu einem weiten Transfer auf auditive Satzverständnisaufgaben (Studie 1–3), auf die Alltagskommunikation (Studie 2–3) und auf das Alltagsgedächtnis (Studie 2–3) bei Patienten mit einer Aphasie führt. Zudem evaluiert das vorliegende Projekt (c) die methodische Qualität bereits existierender Arbeitsgedächtnistrainings bei Patienten mit einer Aphasie (Studie 3). Zur Beantwortung der vorliegenden Studienfragen wurden zwei empirische Studien (Studie 1 und 2) sowie ein systematisches Review (Studie 3) durchgeführt. In Studie 1 und 2 durchliefen Studienteilnehmer mit einer chronischen Aphasie nach einem Schlaganfall ein adaptiertes N-Back-Training. Es zeigte sich ein sehr gemischtes Trainingsmuster und Transfereffekte bei den Studienteilnehmern: Fünf von sechs Probanden verbesserten sich signifikant beim N-Back-Training. Alle sechs Probanden zeigten zudem signifikante weite Transfereffekte auf das auditive Satzverständnis. Darüber hinaus konnte ein weiter Transfereffekt auf die Kommunikationsfähigkeit und das Gedächtnis im Alltag sowie ein naher Transfer auf ungeübte N-Back-Aufgaben nachgewiesen werden. Allerdings schwankte das Transferverhalten innerhalb der Probanden stark. Das systematische Review (Studie 3) zeigte eine schwache interne und externe Validität über die 17 eingeschlossenen Studien. Obwohl die Ergebnisse bezüglich des Arbeitsgedächtnisses, des auditiven Satzverständnisses und des Lesens trotz der methodischen Einschränkungen der untersuchten Studien vielversprechend sind, sollten Schlussfolgerungen über die positiven Transfereffekte von Arbeitsgedächtnistrainings dennoch mit Vorsicht betrachtet werden. Die Ergebnisse der empirischen Studien zeigten, dass sich mit Hilfe eines computergestützten und adaptiven Trainings das Arbeitsgedächtnis verbessert und zudem ein Transfer auf das auditive Satzverständnis und die Kommunikationsfähigkeit im Alltag bei einigen Patienten mit einer chronischen Aphasie nach einem Schlaganfall erzielt werden konnte. Es sind jedoch weitere Studien notwendig, um den Einfluss individueller Unterschiede auf die individuellen Transfermaße aufzudecken und eine Generalisierbarkeit der Ergebnisse auf Untergruppen aphasischer Teilnehmer zu beleuchten. Darüber hinaus werden zukünftige Studien benötigt, die die Rolle der Baseline nicht-linguistischer kognitiver Fähigkeiten und der Sprachproduktion sowie die Aufrechterhaltung von Transfereffekte weiter untersuchen. KW - aphasia KW - working memory KW - treatment KW - Aphasie KW - Arbeitsgedächtnis KW - Therapie Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-423600 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zakariás, Lilla A1 - Keresztes, Attila A1 - Marton, Klara A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell T1 - Positive effects of a computerised working memory and executive function JF - Neuropsychological rehabilitation N2 - Aphasia, the language disorder following brain damage, is frequently accompanied by deficits of working memory (WM) and executive functions (EFs). Recent studies suggest that WM, together with certain EFs, can play a role in sentence comprehension in individuals with aphasia (IWA), and that WM can be enhanced with intensive practice. Our aim was to investigate whether a combined WM and EF training improves the understanding of spoken sentences in IWA. We used a pre-post-test case control design. Three individuals with chronic aphasia practised an adaptive training task (a modified n-back task) three to four times a week for a month. Their performance was assessed before and after the training on outcome measures related to WM and spoken sentence comprehension. One participant showed significant improvement on the training task, another showed a tendency for improvement, and both of them improved significantly in spoken sentence comprehension. The third participant did not improve on the training task, however, she showed improvement on one measure of spoken sentence comprehension. Compared to controls, two individuals improved at least in one condition of the WM outcome measures. Thus, our results suggest that a combined WM and EF training can be beneficial for IWA. KW - Aphasia rehabilitation KW - transfer effect KW - updating training KW - interference control KW - sentence comprehension deficit Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/09602011.2016.1159579 SN - 0960-2011 SN - 1464-0694 VL - 28 IS - 3 SP - 369 EP - 386 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - GEN A1 - Zarriess, Sina A1 - Schlangen, David T1 - Objects of Unknown Categories T2 - The 57th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics N2 - Zero-shot learning in Language & Vision is the task of correctly labelling (or naming) objects of novel categories. Another strand of work in L&V aims at pragmatically informative rather than "correct" object descriptions, e.g. in reference games. We combine these lines of research and model zero-shot reference games, where a speaker needs to successfully refer to a novel object in an image. Inspired by models of "rational speech acts", we extend a neural generator to become a pragmatic speaker reasoning about uncertain object categories. As a result of this reasoning, the generator produces fewer nouns and names of distractor categories as compared to a literal speaker. We show that this conversational strategy for dealing with novel objects often improves communicative success, in terms of resolution accuracy of an automatic listener. Y1 - 2019 SN - 978-1-950737-48-2 SP - 654 EP - 659 PB - Association for Computational Linguistics CY - Stroudsburg ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zeijlstra, Hedde T1 - Hard and soft conditions on the faculty of language BT - constituting parametric variation JF - Linguistics in Potsdam N2 - In this paper I argue that both parametric variation and the alleged differences between languages in terms of their internal complexity straightforwardly follow from the Strongest Minimalist Thesis that takes the Faculty of Language (FL) to be an optimal solution to conditions that neighboring mental modules impose on it. In this paper I argue that hard conditions like legibility at the linguistic interfaces invoke simplicity metrices that, given that they stem from different mental modules, are not harmonious. I argue that widely attested expression strategies, such as agreement or movement, are a direct result of conflicting simplicity metrices, and that UG, perceived as a toolbox that shapes natural language, can be taken to consist of a limited number of markings strategies, all resulting from conflicting simplicity metrices. As such, the contents of UG follow from simplicity requirements, and therefore no longer necessitate linguistic principles, valued or unvalued, to be innately present. Finally, I show that the SMT does not require that languages themselves have to be optimal in connecting sound to meaning. KW - Parameters KW - Simplicity KW - Complexity KW - Uninterpretablity KW - Agreement KW - Movement Y1 - 2009 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-32221 SN - 1616-7392 SN - 1864-1857 IS - 28 SP - 9 EP - 38 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zerbian, Sabine T1 - Variation in the grammar of black south African English JF - Southern African linguistics and applied language studies Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.2989/16073614.2012.693721 SN - 1607-3614 VL - 30 IS - 1 SP - 131 EP - 135 PB - NISC CY - Grahamstown ER - 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 - JOUR A1 - Zerbian, Sabine A1 - Barnard, Etienne T1 - Realisation of two adjacent high tones : Acoustic evidence from Northern Sotho N2 - We present findings of a multi-speaker production study that was undertaken to investigate the realisation of two adjacent high tones within the verb word in Northern Sotho, a Southern Bantu language. Experimental tokens are selected to ensure that the high tones originate from different combinations of morphosyntactic constituents. It is found that the morphosyntactic constituency determines how the adjacent high tones are realised. When both high tones originate within either the inflectional stem or the macrostem constituents, a single pitch peak is realised. Additionally, when the macrostem contains two high tones, the tone of the object concord is absorbed into the stem. Two adjacent high tones, of which one stems from the inflectional stem and the other from the macrostem, produce two pitch peaks, with the latter of the two delayed in order to satisfy the Obligatory Contour Principle. These generalisations are supported by acoustic data. A set of rules is formulated that describes the surface realisation of adjacent high tones in the verbal domain of Northern Sotho (with the exception of one unresolved issue). Y1 - 2010 UR - http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t911319881~db=all U6 - https://doi.org/10.2989/16073614.2010.519099 SN - 1607-3614 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zerbian, Sabine A1 - Downing, Laura A1 - Kügler, Frank T1 - Introduction : tone and intonation from a typological perspective Y1 - 2009 UR - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00243841 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2007.10.024 SN - 0024-3841 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zimmermann, Malte T1 - Wird Schon Stimmen! BT - A Degree Operator Analysis of Schon JF - Journal of semantics N2 - The article puts forward a novel analysis of the German modal particle schon as a modal degree operator over propositional content. The proposed analysis offers a uniform perspective on the semantics of modal schon and its aspectual counterpart meaning ‘already’: Both particles are analyzed as denoting a degree operator, expressing a scale-based comparison over relevant alternatives. The alternatives are determined by focus in the case of aspectual schon (Krifka 2000), but are restricted to the polar alternatives p and ¬p in the case of modal schon. Semantically, modal schon introduces a presupposition to the effect that the circumstantial conversational background contains more factual evidence in favor of p than in favor of ¬p⁠, thereby making modal schon the not at-issue counterpart of the overt comparative form eher ‘rather’ (Herburger & Rubinstein 2014). The analysis incorporates basic insights from earlier analyses of modal schon in a novel way, and it also offers new insights as to the underlying workings of modality in natural language as involving propositions rather than possible worlds (Kratzer 1977, 2012). Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffy010 SN - 0167-5133 SN - 1477-4593 VL - 35 IS - 4 SP - 687 EP - 739 PB - Oxford Univ. Press CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zimmermann, Malte T1 - Contrastive focus N2 - The article puts forward a discourse-pragmatic approach to the notoriously evasive phenomena of contrastivity and emphasis. It is argued that occurrences of focus that are treated in terms of ‘contrastive focus’, ‘kontrast’ (Vallduví & Vilkuna 1998) or ‘identificational focus’ (É. Kiss 1998) in the literature should not be analyzed in familiar semantic terms like introduction of alternatives or exhaustivity. Rather, an adequate analysis must take into account discourse-pragmatic notions like hearer expectation or discourse expectability of the focused content in a given discourse situation. The less expected a given content is judged to be for the hearer, relative to the Common Ground, the more likely a speaker is to mark this content by means of special grammatical devices, giving rise to emphasis. KW - contrastive focus KW - emphasis KW - discourse expectability Y1 - 2007 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19688 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zimmermann, Malte T1 - On the functional architecture of DP and the feature content of pronominal quantifiers in Low German JF - The journal of comparative Germanic linguistics N2 - The article investigates the functional architecture of complex pronominal quantifying expressions (PQEs) in Low German, such as jeder-een 'everyone' and keen-een 'no-one', which provide overt evidence for a Num-projection, situated between the NP- and DP-layer. The feature specification of Num as [+lattice] or [-lattice] is responsible for whether the DP denotes into the domain of atomic or mass/plural entities, respectively. In the case of complex PQEs, the syntactic Num-head hosts the overt element een 'a, one', which carries a [-lattice] feature, thus ensuring that the PQE ranges exclusively over the domain of atomic entities, but not mass or plural entities. The Num-head een differs from its simplex counterpart wat 'something', which is analyzed as an NP-proform with an underspecified [lattice]-feature. As a result, wat can range over atomic and mass domains alike. In the final part of the article, it is argued that wat is also underspecified for the operator feature [rel/wh], for which reason it can also function as an interrogative expression (what) and as a relative pronoun (which), respectively, depending on the syntactic context. Throughout the article, the Low German data are compared with relevant data from other German dialects and Germanic and Romance languages, pointing out similarities and differences in the syntactic structure and feature content of PQEs across these languages and dialects. KW - DP structure KW - NumP KW - Low German KW - Complex quantifiers KW - Lattice features KW - Interrogative/relative operator Y1 - 2011 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10828-011-9046-z SN - 1383-4924 VL - 14 IS - 3 SP - 203 EP - 240 PB - Springer CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zimmermann, Malte T1 - The grammatical expression of focus in West Chadic variation and uniformity in and across languages JF - Linguistics : an interdisciplinary journal of the language sciences N2 - The article provides an overview of the grammatical realization of focus in four West Chadic languages (Chadic, Afro-Asiatic). The languages discussed exhibit an intriguing crosslinguistic variation in the realization of focus, both among themselves as well as compared to European intonation languages. They also display language-internal variation in the formal realization of focus. The West Chadic languages differ widely in their ways of expressing focus, which range from syntactic over prosodic to morphological devices. In contrast to European intonation languages, the focus marking systems of the West Chadic languages are inconsistent in that focus is often not grammatically expressed, but these inconsistencies are shown to be systematic. Subject foci (contrastive or not) and contrastive nonsubject foci are always grammatically marked, whereas information focus on nonsubjects need not be marked as such. The absence of formal focus marking supports pragmatic theories of focus in terms of contextual resolution. The special status of focused subjects and contrastive foci is derived from the Contrastive Focus Hypothesis, which requires unexpected foci and unexpected focus contents to be marked as such, together with the assumption that canonical subjects in West Chadic receive a default interpretation as topics. Finally, I discuss certain focus ambiguities which are not attested in intonation languages, nor do they follow on standard accounts of focus marking, but which can be accounted for in terms of constraint interaction in the formal expression of focus. Y1 - 2011 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1515/LING.2011.032 SN - 0024-3949 VL - 49 IS - 5 SP - 1163 EP - 1213 PB - De Gruyter Mouton CY - Berlin ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zimmermann, Malte T1 - Predicate focus JF - The Oxford handbook of information structure Y1 - 2016 SN - 978-0-19-964267-0 SP - 314 EP - 335 PB - Oxford University Press CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zimmermann, Malte T1 - Im Korpus gibt’s keine Vögel nicht BT - A corpus study on Negative Concord in Eastern German dialects JF - Of trees and birds. A Festschrift for Gisbert Fanselow KW - Festschrift KW - Informationsstruktur KW - Linguistik KW - Morphologie KW - Syntax KW - festschrift KW - information structure KW - linguistics KW - morphology KW - syntax Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-432541 SN - 978-3-86956-457-9 SP - 287 EP - 306 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - GEN A1 - Zimmermann, Malte T1 - The grammatical expression of focus in West Chadic BT - Variation and uniformity in and across languages N2 - The article provides an overview of the grammatical realization of focus in four West Chadic languages (Chadic, Afro-Asiatic). The languages discussed exhibit an intriguing crosslinguistic variation in the realization of focus, both among themselves as well as compared to European intonation languages. They also display language-internal variation in the formal realization of focus. The West Chadic languages differ widely in their ways of expressing focus, which range from syntactic over prosodic to morphological devices. In contrast to European intonation languages, the focus marking systems of the West Chadic languages are inconsistent in that focus is often not grammatically expressed, but these inconsistencies are shown to be systematic. Subject foci (contrastive or not) and contrastive nonsubject foci are always grammatically marked, whereas information focus on nonsubjects need not be marked as such. The absence of formal focus marking supports pragmatic theories of focus in terms of contextual resolution. The special status of focused subjects and contrastive foci is derived from the Contrastive Focus Hypothesis, which requires unexpected foci and unexpected focus contents to be marked as such, together with the assumption that canonical subjects in West Chadic receive a default interpretation as topics. Finally, I discuss certain focus ambiguities which are not attested in intonation languages, nor do they follow on standard accounts of focus marking, but which can be accounted for in terms of constraint interaction in the formal expression of focus. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 298 Y1 - 2011 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-93617 SP - 1163 EP - 1213 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zimmermann, Malte A1 - De Veaugh-Geiss, Joseph P. A1 - Tönnis, Swantje A1 - Onea, Edgar T1 - (Non-)exhaustivity in focus partitioning across languages JF - Approaches to Hungarian N2 - We present novel experimental evidence on the availability and the status of exhaustivity inferences with focus partitioning in German, English, and Hungarian. Results suggest that German and English focus-background clefts and Hungarian focus share important properties, (É. Kiss 1998, 1999; Szabolcsi 1994; Percus 1997; Onea & Beaver 2009). Those constructions are anaphoric devices triggering an existence presupposition. EXH-inferences are not obligatory in such constructions in English, German, or Hungarian, against some previous literature (Percus 1997; Büring & Križ 2013; É. Kiss 1998), but in line with pragmatic analyses of EXH-inferences in clefts (Horn 1981, 2016; Pollard & Yasavul 2016). The cross-linguistic differences in the distribution of EXH-inferences are attributed to properties of the Hungarian number marking system. KW - clefts KW - definite pseudoclefts KW - Hungarian focus KW - exhaustivity KW - experimental evidence KW - semantics-pragmatics interface Y1 - 2020 VL - 16 PB - John Benjamins CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - GEN A1 - Zimmermann, Malte A1 - De Veaugh-Geiss, Joseph P. A1 - Tönnis, Swantje A1 - Onea, Edgar T1 - (Non-)exhaustivity in focus partitioning across languages T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - We present novel experimental evidence on the availability and the status of exhaustivity inferences with focus partitioning in German, English, and Hungarian. Results suggest that German and English focus-background clefts and Hungarian focus share important properties, (É. Kiss 1998, 1999; Szabolcsi 1994; Percus 1997; Onea & Beaver 2009). Those constructions are anaphoric devices triggering an existence presupposition. EXH-inferences are not obligatory in such constructions in English, German, or Hungarian, against some previous literature (Percus 1997; Büring & Križ 2013; É. Kiss 1998), but in line with pragmatic analyses of EXH-inferences in clefts (Horn 1981, 2016; Pollard & Yasavul 2016). The cross-linguistic differences in the distribution of EXH-inferences are attributed to properties of the Hungarian number marking system. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 724 KW - clefts KW - definite pseudoclefts KW - Hungarian focus KW - exhaustivity KW - experimental evidence KW - semantics-pragmatics interface Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-524677 SN - 1866-8364 VL - 16 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zimmermann, Malte A1 - Féry, Caroline T1 - Introduction Y1 - 2010 SN - 978-0-19-957095-9 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ziubanova, Anastasia A. A1 - Laurinavichyute, Anna A1 - Parshina, Olga T1 - Does early exposure to spoken and sign language affect reading fluency in deaf and hard-of-hearing adult signers? JF - Frontiers in psychology N2 - Introduction Early linguistic background, and in particular, access to language, lays the foundation of future reading skills in deaf and hard-of-hearing signers. The current study aims to estimate the impact of two factors – early access to sign and/or spoken language – on reading fluency in deaf and hard-of-hearing adult Russian Sign Language speakers. Methods In the eye-tracking experiment, 26 deaf and 14 hard-of-hearing native Russian Sign Language speakers read 144 sentences from the Russian Sentence Corpus. Analysis of global eye-movement trajectories (scanpaths) was used to identify clusters of typical reading trajectories. The role of early access to sign and spoken language as well as vocabulary size as predictors of the more fluent reading pattern was tested. Results Hard-of-hearing signers with early access to sign language read more fluently than those who were exposed to sign language later in life or deaf signers without access to speech sounds. No association between early access to spoken language and reading fluency was found. Discussion Our results suggest a unique advantage for the hard-of-hearing individuals from having early access to both sign and spoken language and support the existing claims that early exposure to sign language is beneficial not only for deaf but also for hard-of-hearing children. KW - reading fluency KW - deaf KW - hard-of-hearing KW - sign language KW - multimodal bilingualism KW - scanpaths KW - eye movements Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1145638 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 14 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - THES A1 - Zolotarenko, Olha T1 - Visualization approaches for coherence relations T1 - Visualisierungsansätze zur Kohärenzrelationen N2 - Die hier vorliegende Arbeit stellt einen Versuch dar, den Visualisierungsansätzen in dem Feld der annotierten Diskursrelationen nahezukommen und durch Vergleich verschiedener Programmierwerkzeuge eine anforderungsnahe Lösung zu finden. Als Gegenstand der Forschung wurden Kohärenzrelationen ausgewählt, welche eine Reihe an Eigenschaften aufweisen, die für viele Visualisierungsmethoden herausfordernd sein können. Die Arbeit stellt fünf verschiedene Visualisierungsmöglichkeiten sowohl von der Anwendungs- als auch von der Entwicklungsperspektive vor. Die zunächst getesteten einfachen HTML-Ansätze sowie das Softwarepaket displaCy zeigen das unzureichende Niveau für die Visualisierungszwecke dieser Arbeit. Die alternative Implementierung mit D3 würde die Voraussetzungen zwar optimal erfüllen, sprengt aber deutlich den Rahmen des Projektes. Die gewählte Hauptmethode wurde als Single-Web-Anwendung konzipiert und verwendet das Annotationstool brat, welches die meisten definierten Voraussetzungen für die Repräsentation der Kohärenzrelationen erfüllt. Die Anwendung stellt die im Text annotierten Kohärenzrelationen graphisch dar und bietet eine Filterfunktion für verschiedene Relationstypen an. N2 - This thesis aims to investigate the visualization approaches in the field of annotated discourse relations and to find a solution that meets the requirements best by comparing different programming tools. The subject of this research are coherence relations, which have several properties that can be challenging for many visualization methods. The thesis presents five different visualization options from both the application and the development perspective. The initially tested simple HTML approaches as well as the software package displaCy show the insufficient level for the visualization purposes of this work. The alternative implementation with D3 would optimally meet the requirements but goes beyond the scope of the project. The main method chosen in this thesis was implemented as a single web application and uses the brat annotation tool, which fulfills most of the defined requirements for the representation of the coherence relations. The application graphically displays the coherence relations annotated in the text and offers a filter function for different relation types. KW - visualization KW - discourse parsing KW - computational linguistics KW - brat KW - web application KW - coherence relations KW - brat KW - Kohärenzrelationen KW - Computerlinguistik KW - Diskursparsing KW - Visualisierung KW - Web-Anwendung Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-516997 ER - TY - THES A1 - Zona, Carlotta Isabella T1 - Visuo-linguistic integration for thematic-role assignment across speakers T1 - Visuell-linguistische Integration für die Zuweisung thematischer Rollen über Sprecher hinweg N2 - This dissertation examines the integration of incongruent visual-scene and morphological-case information (“cues”) in building thematic-role representations of spoken relative clauses in German. Addressing the mutual influence of visual and linguistic processing, the Coordinated Interplay Account (CIA) describes a mechanism in two steps supporting visuo-linguistic integration (Knoeferle & Crocker, 2006, Cog Sci). However, the outcomes and dynamics of integrating incongruent thematic-role representations from distinct sources have been investigated scarcely. Further, there is evidence that both second-language (L2) and older speakers may rely on non-syntactic cues relatively more than first-language (L1)/young speakers. Yet, the role of visual information for thematic-role comprehension has not been measured in L2 speakers, and only limitedly across the adult lifespan. Thematically unambiguous canonically ordered (subject-extracted) and noncanonically ordered (object-extracted) spoken relative clauses in German (see 1a-b) were presented in isolation and alongside visual scenes conveying either the same (congruent) or the opposite (incongruent) thematic relations as the sentence did. 1 a Das ist der Koch, der die Braut verfolgt. This is the.NOM cook who.NOM the.ACC bride follows This is the cook who is following the bride. b Das ist der Koch, den die Braut verfolgt. This is the.NOM cook whom.ACC the.NOM bride follows This is the cook whom the bride is following. The relative contribution of each cue to thematic-role representations was assessed with agent identification. Accuracy and latency data were collected post-sentence from a sample of L1 and L2 speakers (Zona & Felser, 2023), and from a sample of L1 speakers from across the adult lifespan (Zona & Reifegerste, under review). In addition, the moment-by-moment dynamics of thematic-role assignment were investigated with mouse tracking in a young L1 sample (Zona, under review). The following questions were addressed: (1) How do visual scenes influence thematic-role representations of canonical and noncanonical sentences? (2) How does reliance on visual-scene, case, and word-order cues vary in L1 and L2 speakers? (3) How does reliance on visual-scene, case, and word-order cues change across the lifespan? The results showed reliable effects of incongruence of visually and linguistically conveyed thematic relations on thematic-role representations. Incongruent (vs. congruent) scenes yielded slower and less accurate responses to agent-identification probes presented post-sentence. The recently inspected agent was considered as the most likely agent ~300ms after trial onset, and the convergence of visual scenes and word order enabled comprehenders to assign thematic roles predictively. L2 (vs. L1) participants relied more on word order overall. In response to noncanonical clauses presented with incongruent visual scenes, sensitivity to case predicted the size of incongruence effects better than L1-L2 grouping. These results suggest that the individual’s ability to exploit specific cues might predict their weighting. Sensitivity to case was stable throughout the lifespan, while visual effects increased with increasing age and were modulated by individual interference-inhibition levels. Thus, age-related changes in comprehension may stem from stronger reliance on visually (vs. linguistically) conveyed meaning. These patterns represent evidence for a recent-role preference – i.e., a tendency to re-assign visually conveyed thematic roles to the same referents in temporally coordinated utterances. The findings (i) extend the generalizability of CIA predictions across stimuli, tasks, populations, and measures of interest, (ii) contribute to specifying the outcomes and mechanisms of detecting and indexing incongruent representations within the CIA, and (iii) speak to current efforts to understand the sources of variability in sentence comprehension. N2 - Diese Dissertation untersucht die Integration inkongruenter visueller Szenen- und morphologisch-kasusbezogener Informationen ("Hinweise") beim Aufbau thematischer Rollenrepräsentationen gesprochener Relativsätze auf Deutsch. Das Coordinated Interplay Account (CIA) beschreibt einen Mechanismus in zwei Schritten zur Unterstützung der visuell-linguistischen Integration, der die wechselseitige Beeinflussung visueller und sprachlicher Verarbeitung adressiert (Knoeferle & Crocker, 2006, Cog Sci). Die Ergebnisse und Dynamiken der Integration inkongruenter thematischer Rollenrepräsentationen aus verschiedenen Quellen wurden jedoch kaum untersucht. Außerdem gibt es Hinweise darauf, dass sich sowohl Zweitsprachler (L2) als auch ältere Sprecher möglicherweise relativ stärker auf nicht-syntaktische Hinweise verlassen als Erstsprachler (L1)/jüngere Sprecher. Dennoch wurde die Rolle visueller Informationen für das Verständnis thematischer Rollen bei L2-Sprechern nicht gemessen und nur begrenzt über die gesamte Lebensspanne hinweg. Thematisch eindeutige, kanonisch geordnete (subjektausgezogene) und nichtkanonisch geordnete (objektausgezogene) gesprochene Relativsätze auf Deutsch (siehe 1a-b) wurden isoliert und zusammen mit visuellen Szenen präsentiert, die entweder dieselben (kongruente) oder entgegengesetzte (inkongruente) thematische Beziehungen wie der Satz vermittelten. Die relative Beitrag jedes Hinweises zur thematischen Rollenrepräsentation wurde durch die Identifizierung des Agenten bewertet. Genauigkeits- und Latenzdaten wurden nach dem Satz von einer Stichprobe von L1- und L2-Sprechern (Zona & Felser, 2023) sowie von einer Stichprobe von L1-Sprechern über die Lebensspanne hinweg (Zona & Reifegerste, in Überprüfung) gesammelt. Darüber hinaus wurden die momentane Dynamik der Zuweisung thematischer Rollen mit Mausverfolgung in einer jungen L1-Stichprobe untersucht (Zona, in Überprüfung). Die folgenden Fragen wurden adressiert: (1) Wie beeinflussen visuelle Szenen thematische Rollenrepräsentationen kanonischer und nichtkanonischer Sätze? (2) Wie variiert der Verlass auf visuelle Szenen, Kasus- und Wortstellungs-Hinweise bei L1- und L2-Sprechern? (3) Wie verändert sich der Verlass auf visuelle Szenen, Kasus- und Wortstellungs-Hinweise im Laufe des Lebens? Die Ergebnisse zeigten zuverlässige Effekte der Inkongruenz visuell und sprachlich vermittelter thematischer Beziehungen auf thematische Rollenrepräsentationen. Inkongruente (vs. kongruente) Szenen führten zu langsameren und weniger genauen Reaktionen auf Agentenidentifikationsproben, die nach dem Satz präsentiert wurden. Der kürzlich inspizierte Agent wurde etwa 300 ms nach Beginn des Versuchs als der wahrscheinlichste Agent betrachtet, und die Übereinstimmung von visuellen Szenen und Wortstellung ermöglichte es den Verstehenden, thematische Rollen vorherzusagen. L2-Teilnehmer (vs. L1) verließen sich insgesamt stärker auf die Wortstellung. Auf nichtkanonische Klauseln, die mit inkongruenten visuellen Szenen präsentiert wurden, sagte die Sensibilität für den Kasus die Größe der Inkongruenzeffekte besser vorher als die Einteilung in L1-L2. Diese Ergebnisse legen nahe, dass die Fähigkeit des Einzelnen, bestimmte Hinweise auszunutzen, ihr Gewicht vorhersagen könnte. Die Sensibilität für den Kasus blieb über die Lebensspanne hinweg stabil, während sich visuelle Effekte mit zunehmendem Alter verstärkten und durch individuelle Interferenz-Hemmungslevel moduliert wurden. Somit können altersbedingte Veränderungen im Verständnis von einer stärkeren Abhängigkeit von visuell (vs. sprachlich) vermittelter Bedeutung herrühren. Diese Muster stellen einen Beleg für eine Präferenz für kürzlich eingeführte Rollen dar - d. h. eine Tendenz, visuell vermittelte thematische Rollen den gleichen Referenten in zeitlich koordinierten Äußerungen neu zuzuweisen. Die Ergebnisse (i) erweitern die Verallgemeinerbarkeit der Vorhersagen des CIAs über Stimuli, Aufgaben, Populationen und Interessenmaße hinweg, (ii) tragen zur Spezifizierung der Ergebnisse und Mechanismen bei der Erkennung und Indizierung inkongruenter Repräsentationen innerhalb des CIAs bei und (iii) sprechen aktuelle Bemühungen an, die Quellen der Variabilität im Satzverständnis zu verstehen. KW - spoken sentence comprehension KW - visuo-linguistic integration KW - thematic-role assignment KW - Sprachverständnis KW - Zuweisung thematischer Rollen KW - visuell-linguistische Integration Y1 - 2024 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-631857 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Šimík, Radek T1 - On doubling unconditionals JF - Of trees and birds. A Festschrift for Gisbert Fanselow KW - Festschrift KW - Informationsstruktur KW - Linguistik KW - Morphologie KW - Syntax KW - festschrift KW - information structure KW - linguistics KW - morphology KW - syntax Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-432267 SN - 978-3-86956-457-9 SP - 155 EP - 169 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - BOOK ED - Papathanasiou, Ilias ED - De Bleser, Ria T1 - The sciences of aphasias: from therapy to theory Y1 - 2003 SN - 0-08-044073-8 PB - Pergamon CY - Oxford, Boston ET - 1st ed. ER - TY - BOOK ED - Ishihara, Shinichiro ED - Schmitz, Michaela ED - Schwarz, Anne T1 - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632. - Vol. 1 N2 - Contents: A1: Phonology and syntax of focussing and topicalisation: Gisbert Fanselow: Cyclic Phonology–Syntax-Interaction: Movement to First Position in German Caroline Féry and Laura Herbst: German Sentence Accent Revisited Shinichiro Ishihara: Prosody by Phase: Evidence from Focus Intonation–Wh-scope Correspondence in Japanese A2: Quantification and information structure: Cornelia Endriss and Stefan Hinterwimmer: The Influence of Tense in Adverbial Quantification A3: Rhetorical Structure in Spoken Language: Modeling of Global Prosodic Parameters: Ekaterina Jasinskaja, Jörg Mayer and David Schlangen: Discourse Structure and Information Structure: Interfaces and Prosodic Realization B2: Focussing in African Tchadic languages: Katharina Hartmann and Malte Zimmermann: Focus Strategies in Chadic: The Case of Tangale Revisited D1: Linguistic database for information structure: Annotation and retrieval: Stefanie Dipper, Michael Götze, Manfred Stede and Tillmann Wegst: ANNIS: A Linguistic Database for Exploring Information Structure T3 - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 - 1 Y1 - 2004 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-8237 SN - 1866-4725 ER - TY - BOOK ED - Dipper, Stefanie ED - Götze, Michael ED - Stede, Manfred T1 - Heterogeneity in focus : creating and using linguistic databases N2 - The papers in this volume were presented at the workshop Heterogeneity in Linguistic Databases', which took place on July 9, 2004 at the University of Potsdam. The workshop was organized by project D1: Linguistic Database for Information Structure: Annotation and Retrieval', a member project of the SFB 632, a collaborative research center entitled Information Structure: the Linguistic Means for Structuring Utterances, Sentences and Texts'. The workshop brought together both developers and users of linguistic databases from a number of research projects which work on an empirical basis, all of which have to cope with different sorts of heterogeneity: primary linguistic data and annotated information may be heterogeneous, as well as the data structures representing them. The first four papers (by Wagner, Schmidt, Lüdeling, and Witt) address aspects of heterogeneous data from the point of view of database developers; the remaining three papers (by Meyer, Smith, and Teich/Fankhauser) focus on data exploitation by the users. T3 - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 - 2 Y1 - 2005 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-8244 SN - 978-3-937786-48-3 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - BOOK ED - Dipper, Stefanie ED - Götze, Michael ED - Stede, Manfred T1 - Approaches and findings in oral, written and gestural language N2 - Der vorliegende dritte Band der Serie "Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure" enthält sieben Beiträge aus verschiedenen Projekten des Sonderforschungsbereiches "Informationsstruktur: Die sprachlichen Mittel der Gliederung von Äußerung, Satz und Text" (SFB 632). Der Titel "Approaches and Findings in Oral, Written and Gestural Language" reflektiert die Bandbreite der Untersuchungen zum Thema Informationsstruktur. In ihrem Artikel hinterfragt Elke Kasimir die Zuverlässigkeit des sog. Frage-Antwort-Tests zur Bestimmung des fokussierten Elementes in Sätzen. Ihr alternativer Lösungsvorschlag wird in dem Kommentar von Thomas Weskott kritisch diskutiert. Der Artikel von Paul Elbourne befasst sich mit Phänomenen der Ellipse und bietet eine neue semantische Analyse an. Spezielle morphologisch stark markierte Fokuskonstruktionen aus fünf verschiedenen afrikanischen Sprachen der Gur- und Kwa-Sprachgruppe werden von Ines Fiedler und Anne Schwarz analysiert und diachronisch interpretiert. Ebenfalls sprachhistorisch ausgerichtet ist der Artikel von Roland Hinterhölzl, Svetlana Petrova und Michael Solf, die Belege für die Interaktion von Wortstellung und Informationsstruktur bereits in der althochdeutschen Tatian-Übersetzung fanden. Anke Sennema, Ruben van de Vijver, Susanne E. Carroll und Anne Zimmer-Stahl diskutieren anhand einer Serie von Experimenten die Nutzung von Prosodie, Wortlänge und –Stellung für die semantischen Interpretation in der Erst- und Zweitsprache. Die besondere Rolle von Gestik in Verbindung mit Intonation für die Strukturierung des sprachlichen Diskurses wird von Stefanie Jannedy und Norma Mendoza-Denton hervorgehoben. T3 - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 - 3 Y1 - 2005 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-8255 SN - 1866-4725 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - BOOK ED - Ishihara, Shinichiro ED - Jannedy, Stefanie ED - Schwarz, Anne T1 - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; Working papers of the SFB 632. - Vol. 8 N2 - The 8th volume of the working paper series Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure (ISIS) of the SFB 632 contains a collection of eight papers contributed by guest authors and SFB-members. The first paper on “Biased Questions” is an invited contribution by Nicholas Asher (CNRS, Laboratoire IRIT) & Brian Reese (University of Texas at Austin). Surveying English tag questions, negative polar questions, and what they term “focus” questions, they investigate the effects of prosody on discourse function and discourse structure and analyze the interaction between prosody and discourse in SDRT (Segmented Discourse Representation Theory). Stefan Hinterwimmer (A2) explores the interpretation of singular definites and universally quantified DPs in adverbially quantified English sentences. He suggests that the availability of a co-varying interpretation is more constrained in the case of universally quantified DPs than in the case of singular definites, because different from universally quantified DPs, co-varying definites are inherently focus-marked. The existence of striking similarities between topic/comment structure and bimanual coordination is pointed out and investigated by Manfred Krifka (A2). Showing how principles of bimanual coordination influence the expression of topic/comment structure beyond spoken language, he suggests that bimanual coordination might have been a preadaptation of the development of Information Structure in human communication. Among the different ways of expressing focus in Foodo, an underdescribed African Guang language of the Kwa family, the marked focus constructions are the central topic of the paper by Ines Fiedler (B1 & D2). Exploring the morphosyntactic facilities that Foodo has for focalization, she suggests that the two focus markers N and n have developed out of a homophone conjunction. Focus marking in another scarcely documented African tone language, the Gur language Konkomba, is treated by Anne Schwarz (B1 & D2). Comparing the two alleged focus markers lé and lá of the language, she argues that lé is better interpreted as a syntactic device rather than as a focus marker and shows that this analysis is corroborated by parallels in related languages. The reflexes of Information Structure in four different European languages (French, German, Greek and Hungarian) are compared and validated by Sam Hellmuth & Stavros Skopeteas (D2). The production data was collected with selected materials of the Questionnaire on Information Structure (QUIS) developed at the SFB. The results not only allow for an evaluation of the current elicitation paradigms, but also help to identify potentially fruitful venues of future research. Frank Kügler, Stavros Skopeteas (D2) & Elisabeth Verhoeven (University of Bremen) give an account of the encoding of Information Structure in Yucatec Maya, a Mayan tone language spoken on the Yucatecan peninsula in Mexico. The results of a production experiment lead them to the conclusion that focus is mainly expressed by syntax in this language. Stefanie Jannedy (D3) undertakes an instrumental investigation on the expressions and interpretation of focus in Vietnamese, a language of the Mon-Khmer family contrasting six lexical tones. The data strongly suggests that focus in Vietnamese is exclusively marked by prosody (intonational emphasis expressed via duration, f0 and amplitude) and that different focus conditions can reliably be recovered. This volume offers insights into current work conducted at the SFB 632, comprising empirical and theoretical aspects of Information Structure in a multitude of languages. Several of the papers mine field work data collected during the first phase of the SFB and explore the expression of Information Structure in tone and non-tone languages from various regions of the world. T3 - Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632 - 8 Y1 - 2007 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-14359 SN - 978-3-939469-72-8 SN - 1866-4725 SN - 1614-4708 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - BOOK ED - Vogel, Ralf T1 - Three papers on German verb movement N2 - This volume offers new arguments and perspectives in the ongoing debate about the optimal analysis of verb movement, mainly, but not exclusively, in German. Fanselow and Meinunger deal with verb second (V2) movement in German main clauses. Fanselow argues that head movement of the substitution type follows the standard minimalist conceptions of Merge and Move and is therefore not subject to the same objections as head movement as head adjunction which violates Chomsky's minimalist extension condition, operates countercyclically, and fails to let the moved head c-command its trace. Fanselow argues for V2 movement as head movement of the substitution type. Meinunger discusses a restriction on V2 movement imposed by phrases like "mehr als" ('more than'), as in "Der Wert hat sich weit mehr als verdreifacht" ('the value has far more than tripled') where V2 movement is ruled out (cf. *"Der Wert verdreifachte sich mehr als"). Meinunger claims that this restriction is best analysed in phonological terms: the preposition/complementiser "als" acts as a prefixal clitic to its host, the finite verb, which therefore may not move without it. With respect to the V2 debate, Meinunger argues for an interface perspective. He shows that V2 is restricted from both the conceptual and the phonological interface. Vogel, finally, discusses the syntax of clause-final verbal complexes and their dialectal variation in German. He compares three different syntactic analyses, a minimalist head movement analysis, a minimalist XP movement analysis, and an Optimality theoretic PF movement analysis. The three accounts are evaluated relative to the additional assumptions they have to make, the complications they face and how they fit the observations. Vogel argues in favour of the phonologically oriented OT analysis because of its ability to create a direct link between the coming about of a particular word order pattern and its basically phonological trigger. Each of the three papers recognises the relevance of surface forms in the analysis of German verb movement. They differ, however in the extent to which phonological aspects take part in the explanations they offer. T3 - Linguistics in Potsdam - 22 KW - Verbsyntax KW - Verbzweit KW - Verbkomplexe Y1 - 2004 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-10934 SN - 978-3-937786-07-0 SN - 1864-1857 ER -