TY  - THES
A1  - Pregla, Andreas
T1  - Word order variability in OV languages
T1  - Wortstellungsvariabilität in verbfinalen Sprachen
BT  - a study on scrambling, verb movement, and postverbal elements with a focus on Uralic languages
BT  - eine Untersuchung von Scrambling, Verbbewegung und postverbalen Elementen mit besonderem Augenmerk auf die uralischen Sprachen
N2  - This thesis explores word order variability in verb-final languages. Verb-final languages have a reputation for a high amount of word order variability. However, that reputation amounts to an urban myth due to a lack of systematic investigation. This thesis provides such a systematic investigation by presenting original data from several verb-final languages with a focus on four Uralic ones: Estonian, Udmurt, Meadow Mari, and South Sámi. As with every urban myth, there is a kernel of truth in that many unrelated verb-final languages share a particular kind of word order variability, A-scrambling, in which the fronted elements do not receive a special information-structural role, such as topic or contrastive focus. That word order variability goes hand in hand with placing focussed phrases further to the right in the position directly in front of the verb. Variations on this pattern are exemplified by Uyghur, Standard Dargwa, Eastern Armenian, and three of the Uralic languages, Estonian, Udmurt, and Meadow Mari. So far for the kernel of truth, but the fourth Uralic language, South Sámi, is comparably rigid and does not feature this particular kind of word order variability. Further such comparably rigid, non-scrambling verb-final languages are Dutch, Afrikaans, Amharic, and Korean. In contrast to scrambling languages, non-scrambling languages feature obligatory subject movement, causing word order rigidity next to other typical EPP effects.

The EPP is a defining feature of South Sámi clause structure in general. South Sámi exhibits a one-of-a-kind alternation between SOV and SAuxOV order that is captured by the assumption of the EPP and obligatory movement of auxiliaries but not lexical verbs. Other languages that allow for SAuxOV order either lack an alternation because the auxiliary is obligatorily present (Macro-Sudan SAuxOVX languages), or feature an alternation between SVO and SAuxOV (Kru languages; V2 with underlying OV as a fringe case). In the SVO–SAuxOV languages, both auxiliaries and lexical verbs move. Hence, South Sámi shows that the textbook difference between the VO languages English and French, whether verb movement is restricted to auxiliaries, also extends to OV languages. SAuxOV languages are an outlier among OV languages in general but are united by the presence of the EPP.

Word order variability is not restricted to the preverbal field in verb-final languages, as most of them feature postverbal elements (PVE). PVE challenge the notion of verb-finality in a language. Strictly verb-final languages without any clause-internal PVE are rare. This thesis charts the first structural and descriptive typology of PVE. Verb-final languages vary in the categories they allow as PVE. Allowing for non-oblique PVE is a pivotal threshold: when non-oblique PVE are allowed, PVE can be used for information-structural effects. Many areally and genetically unrelated languages only allow for given PVE but differ in whether the PVE are contrastive. In those languages, verb-finality is not at stake since verb-medial orders are marked. In contrast, the Uralic languages Estonian and Udmurt allow for any PVE, including information focus. Verb-medial orders can be used in the same contexts as verb-final orders without semantic and pragmatic differences. As such, verb placement is subject to actual free variation. The underlying verb-finality of Estonian and Udmurt can only be inferred from a range of diagnostics indicating optional verb movement in both languages. In general, it is not possible to account for PVE with a uniform analysis: rightwards merge, leftward verb movement, and rightwards phrasal movement are required to capture the cross- and intralinguistic variation.

Knowing that a language is verb-final does not allow one to draw conclusions about word order variability in that language. There are patterns of homogeneity, such as the word order variability driven by directly preverbal focus and the givenness of postverbal elements, but those are not brought about by verb-finality alone. Preverbal word order variability is restricted by the more abstract property of obligatory subject movement, whereas the determinant of postverbal word order variability has to be determined in the future.
N2  - Diese Dissertation behandelt die Wortstellungsvariabilität verbfinaler Sprachen. Verbfinale Sprachen haben den Ruf, ein hohes Maß an Wortstellungsvariabilität aufzuweisen. Dieser Ruf beruht jedoch lediglich auf anekdotischen Befunden, da es einer systematischen Untersuchung eines solchen Zusammenhangs ermangelt. Die vorliegende Dissertation stellt eine solche systematische Untersuchung dar. Dafür werden neu erhobene Daten zu mehreren verbfinalen Sprachen präsentiert. Der Schwerpunkt liegt dabei auf vier uralischen Sprachen: Estnisch, Udmurtisch, Wiesenmari und Südsamisch. Der Ruf der Wortstellungsvariabilität erweist sich teils als wahr, da viele nicht miteinander verwandte, verbfinale Sprachen dieselbe Art Wortstellungsvariabilität teilen, das sogenannte A-Scrambling. A-Scrambling zeichnet sich gegenüber anderen Arten der Wortstellungsvariabilität dadurch aus, dass vorangestellten Elementen keine spezielle informationsstrukturelle Rolle wie Topic oder kontrastiver Fokus zukommt. A-Scrambling geht mit einem rechtsbefindlichen, unmittelbar präverbalen Fokus einher. Variationen des Musters aus A-Scrambling und präverbalem Fokus finden sich im Uigurischen, Standard-Dargwa, Ostarmenischen und in drei der uralischen Sprachen, nämlich Estnisch, Udmurtisch und Wiesenmari. Insofern bestätigt sich der Eindruck einer homogenen Wortstellungsvariabilität in verbfinalen Sprachen. Die vierte untersuchte uralische Sprache, Südsamisch, widerspricht diesem Eindruck jedoch. Südsamisch weist eine vergleichsweise feste Wortstellung auf trägt nicht die Kennzeichen von A-Scrambling. Darüberhinaus gibt es noch weitere, vergleichsweise starre, scramblinglose verbfinale Sprachen: Niederländisch, Afrikaans, Amharisch und Koreanisch. Im Gegensatz zu Sprachen mit A-Scrambling weisen scramblinglose Sprachen obligatorische Subjektbewegung (EPP) auf. Das EPP führt neben anderen typischen EPP-Effekten zu einer starren Wortstellung.

Das EPP ist ein zentrales Merkmal der Satzstruktur im Südsamischen. Das Südsamische weist eine bislang nicht attestierte Alternation zwischen SOV- und SAuxOV-Stellung auf. Diese Alternation kann durch das Zusammenspiel von EPP und der obligatorischen Bewegung von Hilfsverben, nicht jedoch von lexikalischen Verben, erfasst werden. Andere Sprachen mit SAuxOV-Stellung weisen entweder keine systematische Alternation auf, weil das Hilfsverb obligatorisch vorhanden ist (Makro-Sudanische SAuxOVX-Sprachen), oder sie weisen eine Alternation zwischen SVO und SAuxOV auf (Kru-Sprachen; V2 mit zugrundeliegender Verbfinalität als Zweifelsfall). In den SVO–SAuxOV-Sprachen bewegen sich sowohl Hilfsverben als auch lexikalische Verben. Somit zeigt das Südsamische, dass eine sonst nur für VO-Sprachen bekannte parametrische Unterscheidung auch für OV-Sprachen gilt: der weithin bekannte Unterschied zwischen VO-Sprachen wie Englisch und Französisch, ob Verbbewegung auf Hilfsverben beschränkt ist. SAuxOV-Sprachen bilden insgesamt eine Ausnahme unter den OV-Sprachen, aber sie sind durch das Vorhandensein des EPP vereint.

Wortstellungsvariabilität beschränkt sich in verbfinalen Sprachen nicht auf die präverbale Domäne. Die meisten verbfinalen Sprachen weisen postverbale Elemente (PVE) auf. PVE stellen den Status der Verbfinalität infrage. Strikt verbfinale Sprachen ohne jegliche satzinterne PVE sind jedoch selten. Diese Dissertation stellt zum ersten Mal eine strukturelle und deskriptive PVE-Typologie vor. Verbfinale Sprachen variieren in den Kategorien, die sie als PVE zulassen. Das Zulassen von nicht-oblike PVE ist eine entscheidende Schwelle: Wenn nicht-oblike PVE erlaubt sind, können PVE für informationsstrukturelle Effekte verwendet werden. Viele areal und genetisch nicht verwandte Sprachen erlauben nur gegebene PVE, unterscheiden sich jedoch darin, ob die PVE kontrastiv kontrastiv sein können. In diesen Sprachen steht die Verbfinalität nicht zur Debatte, da verbmediale Ordnungen nicht neutral sind. Im Gegensatz dazu erlauben die uralischen Sprachen Estnisch und Udmurtisch jede Art von PVE, einschließlich Informationsfoki. Verbmediale Stellungen können dort also in denselben Kontexten wie verbfinale Stellungen verwendet werden, ohne dass es zu semantischen und pragmatischen Unterschieden kommt. Hier kann also die Rede von tatsächlicher freier Variation in der Verbstellung sein. Die zugrunde liegende Verbfinalität des Estnischen und Udmurtischen kann nur mithilfe einer Reihe syntaktischer Tests abgeleitet werden, die auf optionale Verbbewegung in beiden Sprachen hinweisen. Insgesamt ist es nicht möglich, PVE mit einer einheitlichen Analyse zu erfassen: Merger nach rechts, linksgerichtete Verbbewegung und rechtsgerichtete Phrasenbewegung sind erforderlich, um die inter- und intralinguistische Variation zu erfassen.

Zu wissen, dass eine Sprache verbfinal ist, erlaubt keine unfehlbaren Schlüsse über die Wortstellungsvariabilität in dieser Sprache. Es gibt Muster der Homogenität, wie die durch unmittelbar präverbalen Fokus und die Gegebenheit postverbaler Elemente getriebene Wortstellungsvariabilität. Diese Muster ergeben sich aber nicht allein aus der Verbfinalität. Die präverbale Wortstellungsvariabilität wird durch die abstraktere Eigenschaft der obligatorischen Subjektbewegung (EPP) bestimmt. Was die Möglichkeiten postverbaler Wortstellungsvariabilität bestimmt muss künftig ermittelt werden.
KW  - Uralic languages
KW  - syntax
KW  - word order
KW  - information structure
KW  - verb-final languages
KW  - uralische Sprachen
KW  - Syntax
KW  - Informationsstruktur
KW  - Wortstellung
KW  - verbfinale Sprachen
Y1  - 2024
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-643636
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Vogel, Annemarie
A1  - Claus, Inga
A1  - Ahring, Sigrid
A1  - Gruber, Doreen
A1  - Haghikia, Aiden
A1  - Frank, Ulrike
A1  - Dziewas, Rainer
A1  - Ebersbach, Georg
A1  - Gandor, Florin
A1  - Warnecke, Tobias
T1  - Endoscopic characteristics of dysphagia in multiple system atrophy
JF  - Movement disorders : official journal of the Movement Disorder Society
N2  - Background
Dysphagia is a major clinical concern in multiple system atrophy (MSA). A detailed evaluation of its major endoscopic features compared with Parkinson's disease (PD) is lacking. 

Objective
This study systematically assessed dysphagia in MSA compared with PD and correlated subjective dysphagia to objective endoscopic findings. 

Methods
Fifty-seven patients with MSA (median, 64 [interquartile range (IQR): 59-71] years; 35 women) underwent flexible endoscopic evaluation of swallowing using a specific MSA-flexible endoscopic evaluation of swallowing task protocol. Findings were compared with an age-matched cohort of 57 patients with PD (median, 67 [interquartile range: 60-73] years; 28 women). In a subcohort, subjective dysphagia was assessed using the Swallowing Disturbance Questionnaire and correlated to endoscopy findings. 

Results
Patients with MSA predominantly showed symptoms suggestive of oral-phase disturbance (premature spillage, 75.4%, piecemeal deglutition, 75.4%). Pharyngeal-phase symptoms occurred less often (pharyngeal residues, 50.9%; penetration/aspiration, 28.1%). In contrast, pharyngeal symptoms were the most common finding in PD (pharyngeal residues, 47.4%). Oral symptoms occurred less frequently in PD (premature spillage, 15.8%, P < 0.001; piecemeal deglutition, 1.8%, P < 0.01). Patients with MSA had a greater risk for oral-phase disturbances with increased disease severity (P < 0.05; odds ratio, 3.15). Patients with MSA showed a significantly higher intraindividual interswallow variability compared with PD. When correlating Swallowing Disturbance Questionnaire scores with endoscopy results, its cutoff, validated for PD, was not sensitive enough to identify patients with MSA with dysphagia. We developed a subscore for identifying dysphagia in MSA and calculated a new cutoff (sensitivity 85%, specificity 100%). 

Conclusions
In contrast with patients with PD, patients with dysphagic MSA more frequently present with oral-phase symptoms and a significantly higher intraindividual interswallow variability. A novel Swallowing Disturbance Questionnaire MSA subscore may be a valuable tool to identify patients with MSA with early oropharyngeal dysphagia.
KW  - multiple system atrophy
KW  - dysphagia
KW  - FEES
KW  - Swallowing Disturbance Questionnaire
KW  - SDQ
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1002/mds.28854
SN  - 0885-3185
SN  - 1531-8257
VL  - 37
IS  - 3
SP  - 535
EP  - 544
PB  - Wiley-Blackwell
CY  - Hoboken
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Hein, Johannes
A1  - Murphy, Andrew
T1  - VP-nominalization and the Final-over-Final Condition
JF  - Linguistic inquiry
N2  - The Final-over-Final Condition has emerged as a robust and explanatory generalization for a wide range of phenomena (Biberauer, Holmberg, and Roberts 2014, Sheehan et al. 2017). 
In this article, we argue that it also holds in another domain, nominalization. 
In languages that show overt nominalization of VPs, one word order is routinely unattested, namely, a head-initial VP with a suffixal nominalizer. 
This typological gap can be accounted for by the Final-over-Final Condition, if we allow it to hold within mixed extended projections. 
This view also makes correct predictions about agentive nominalizations and nominalized serial verb constructions.
KW  - Final-over-Final Condition
KW  - nominalization
KW  - extended projections
KW  - word order
KW  - serial verb constructions
KW  - syntax
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00407
SN  - 0024-3892
SN  - 1530-9150
VL  - 53
IS  - 2
SP  - 337
EP  - 370
PB  - MIT Press
CY  - Cambridge, Mass.
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Bosch, Sina
A1  - De Cesare, Ilaria
A1  - Demske, Ulrike
A1  - Felser, Claudia
T1  - Correction zu: Word-order variation and coherence in German infinitival complementation. - (The journal of comparative Germanic linguistics. -  26 (2023) 1) . - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10828-023-09140-8
JF  - The journal of comparative Germanic linguistics
Y1  - 2023
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10828-023-09143-5
SN  - 1383-4924
SN  - 1572-8552
VL  - 26
IS  - 1
PB  - Springer
CY  - New York
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Bosch, Sina
A1  - De Cesare, Ilaria
A1  - Demske, Ulrike
A1  - Felser, Claudia
T1  - Word-order variation and coherence in German infinitival complementation
JF  - The journal of comparative Germanic linguistics
N2  - This study provides a synthesis of corpus-based and experimental investigations of word-order preferences in German infinitival complementation. We carried out a systematic analysis of present-day German corpora to establish frequency distributions of different word-order options: extraposition, intraposition, and 'third construction'. We then examined, firstly, whether and to what extent corpus frequencies and processing economy constraints can predict the acceptability of these three word-order variants, and whether subject raising and subject control verbs form clearly distinguishable subclasses of infinitive-embedding verbs in terms of their word-order behaviour. Secondly, our study looks into the issue of coherence by comparing acceptability ratings for monoclausal coherent and biclausal incoherent construals of intraposed infinitives, and by examining whether a biclausal incoherent analysis gives rise to local and/or global processing difficulty. Taken together, our results revealed that (i) whilst the extraposition pattern consistently wins out over all other word-order variants for control verbs, neither frequency nor processing-based approaches to word-order variation can account for the acceptability of low-frequency variants, (ii) there is considerable verb-specific variation regarding word-order preferences both between and within the two sets of raising and control verbs under investigation, and (iii) although monoclausal coherent intraposition is rated above biclausal incoherent intraposition, the latter is not any more difficult to process than the former. Our findings indicate that frequency of occurrence and processing-related constraints interact with idiosyncratic lexical properties of individual verbs in determining German speakers' structural preferences.
KW  - Syntactic variation
KW  - German
KW  - Infinitives
KW  - Corpus linguistics
KW  - Acceptability judgements
KW  - Self-paced reading
Y1  - 2023
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10828-023-09140-8
SN  - 1572-8552
VL  - 26
IS  - 1
PB  - Springer
CY  - New York
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Hollenstein, Nora
A1  - Trondle, Marius
A1  - Plomecka, Martyna
A1  - Kiegeland, Samuel
A1  - Ozyurt, Yilmazcan
A1  - Jäger, Lena Ann
A1  - Langer, Nicolas
T1  - The ZuCo benchmark on cross-subject reading task classification with EEG and eye-tracking data
JF  - Frontiers in psychology
N2  - We present a new machine learning benchmark for reading task classification with the goal of advancing EEG and eye-tracking research at the intersection between computational language processing and cognitive neuroscience. The benchmark task consists of a cross-subject classification to distinguish between two reading paradigms: normal reading and task-specific reading. The data for the benchmark is based on the Zurich Cognitive Language Processing Corpus (ZuCo 2.0), which provides simultaneous eye-tracking and EEG signals from natural reading of English sentences. The training dataset is publicly available, and we present a newly recorded hidden testset. We provide multiple solid baseline methods for this task and discuss future improvements. We release our code and provide an easy-to-use interface to evaluate new approaches with an accompanying public leaderboard: .
KW  - reading task classification
KW  - eye-tracking
KW  - EEG
KW  - machine learning
KW  - reading research
KW  - cross-subject evaluation
Y1  - 2023
U6  - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1028824
SN  - 1664-1078
VL  - 13
PB  - Frontiers Media
CY  - Lausanne
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Stone, Kate
A1  - Verissimo, Joao
A1  - Schad, Daniel J.
A1  - Oltrogge, Elise
A1  - Vasishth, Shravan
A1  - Lago, Sol
T1  - The interaction of grammatically distinct agreement dependencies in predictive processing
JF  - Language, cognition and neuroscience
N2  - Previous research has found that comprehenders sometimes predict information that is grammatically unlicensed by sentence constraints. An open question is why such grammatically unlicensed predictions occur. We examined the possibility that unlicensed predictions arise in situations of information conflict, for instance when comprehenders try to predict upcoming words while simultaneously building dependencies with previously encountered elements in memory. 

German possessive pronouns are a good testing ground for this hypothesis because they encode two grammatically distinct agreement dependencies: a retrospective one between the possessive and its previously mentioned referent, and a prospective one between the possessive and its following nominal head. In two visual world eye-tracking experiments, we estimated the onset of predictive effects in participants' fixations. 

The results showed that the retrospective dependency affected resolution of the prospective dependency by shifting the onset of predictive effects. 
We attribute this effect to an interaction between predictive and memory retrieval processes.
KW  - sentence processing
KW  - visual world eye-tracking
KW  - prediction
KW  - gender
KW  - agreement
KW  - German
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2021.1921816
SN  - 2327-3798
SN  - 2327-3801
VL  - 36
IS  - 9
SP  - 1159
EP  - 1179
PB  - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
CY  - Abingdon
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Schmandt, Silvana
A1  - Nazzi, Thierry
A1  - New, Boris
T1  - Consonant, vowel and lexical neighbourhood processing during word recognition: new evidence using the sandwich priming technique
JF  - Language, cognition and neuroscience
N2  - Studies on French adults using a written lexical decision task with masked priming, in which targets were more primed by consonant- (jalu-JOLI) than vowel-related (vobi-JOLI) primes, support the proposal that consonants have more weight than vowels in lexical processing. 
This study examines the phonological and/or lexical nature of this consonant bias 
(C-bias), using a sandwich priming task in which a brief presentation of the target 
(pre-prime) precedes the prime-target sequence, a manipulation blocking lexical neighbourhood effects. 
Results from three experiments (varying pre-prime/prime durations) show consistent 
C-priming and no significant V-priming at earlier and later processing stages (50 or 66 ms primes). 
Yet, a joint analysis reveals a small V-priming, while confirming a significant consonant advantage. 
This demonstrates the contribution of the phonological level to the C-bias. 
Second, differences in performance comparing the classic versus sandwich priming task also establish a contribution of lexical neighbourhood inhibition effects to the C-bias.
KW  - consonants and vowels
KW  - phonological and lexical processing
KW  - visual word recognition
KW  - consonant bias
KW  - sandwich priming paradigm
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2022.2046115
SN  - 2327-3798
SN  - 2327-3801
VL  - 37
IS  - 9
SP  - 1115
EP  - 1130
PB  - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
CY  - Abingdon
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  - Conrad, Markus
A1  - Ullrich, Susann
A1  - Schmidtke, David S.
A1  - Kotz, Sonja A.
T1  - ERPs reveal an iconic relation between sublexical phonology and affective meaning
JF  - Cognition : international journal of cognitive science
N2  - Classical linguistic theory assumes that formal aspects, like sound, are not internally related to the meaning of words. However, recent research suggests language might code affective meaning such as threat and alert sublexically. Positing affective phonological iconicity as a systematic organization principle of the German lexicon, we calculated sublexical affective values for sub-syllabic phonological word segments from a large-scale affective lexical German database by averaging valence and arousal ratings of all words any phonological segment appears in. We tested word stimuli with either consistent or inconsistent mappings between lexical affective meaning and sublexical affective values (negative-valence/high-arousal vs. neutral-valence/lowarousal) in an EEG visual-lexical-decision task. A mismatch between sublexical and lexical affective values elicited an increased N400 response. These results reveal that systematic affective phonological iconicity - extracted from the lexicon - impacts the extraction of lexical word meaning during reading.
KW  - Sound symbolism
KW  - Visual word recognition
KW  - Phonological iconicity
KW  - Affective meaning
KW  - N400
KW  - ERPs
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105182
SN  - 0010-0277
SN  - 1873-7838
VL  - 226
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Scheffler, Tatjana
A1  - Brandt, Lasse
A1  - de la Fuente, Marie
A1  - Nenchev, Ivan
T1  - Stimulus data and experimental design for a self-paced reading study on emoji-word substitutions
JF  - Data in Brief
N2  - This data paper presents the experimental design and stimuli from an online self-paced reading study on the processing of emojis substituting lexically ambiguous nouns. We recorded reading times for the target ambiguous nouns and for emojis depicting either the intended target referent or a contextually inappropriate homophonous noun. Furthermore, we recorded comprehension accuracy, demographics and a self-assessment of the participants' emoji usage frequency. The data includes all stimuli used, the raw data, the full JavaScript code for the online experiment, as well as Python and R code for the data analysis. We believe that our dataset may give important insights related to the comprehension mechanisms involved in the cognitive processing of emojis. For interpretation and discussion of the experiment, please see the original article entitled "The processing of emoji-word substitutions: A self-paced-reading study".
KW  - Emojis
KW  - Self-paced reading
KW  - Lexical ambiguity
KW  - Homonymy
KW  - Processing
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2022.108399
SN  - 2352-3409
VL  - 43
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Bade, Nadine
A1  - Picat, Leo
A1  - Chung, WooJin
A1  - Mascarenhas, Salvador
T1  - Alternatives and attention in language and reasoning: A reply to Mascarenhas & Picat (2019)
JF  - Semantics and Pragmatics
N2  - In this paper, we employ an experimental paradigm using insights from the psychology of reasoning to investigate the question whether certain modals generate and draw attention to alternatives. The article extends and builds on the methodology and findings of Mascarenhas & Picat (2019). Based on experimental results, they argue that the English epistemic modal might raises alternatives. We apply the same methodology to the English modal allowed to to test different hypotheses regarding the involvement of alternatives in deontic modality. We find commonalities and differences between the two modals we tested. We discuss theoretical consequences for existing semantic analyses of these modals, and argue that reasoning tasks can serve as a diagnostic tool to discover which natural language expressions involve alternatives.
KW  - reasoning
KW  - modals
KW  - alternatives
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.15.2
SN  - 1937-8912
VL  - 15
PB  - Linguistic Society of America
CY  - Washington
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Bürki, Audrey
A1  - Alario, F-Xavier
A1  - Vasishth, Shravan
T1  - When words collide: Bayesian meta-analyses of distractor and target properties in the picture-word interference paradigm
JF  - Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
N2  - In the picture-word interference paradigm, participants name pictures while ignoring a written or spoken distractor word. Naming times to the pictures are slowed down by the presence of the distractor word. The present study investigates in detail the impact of distractor and target word properties on picture naming times, building on the seminal study by Miozzo and Caramazza. We report the results of several Bayesian meta-analyses based on 26 datasets. These analyses provide estimates of effect sizes and their precision for several variables and their interactions. They show the reliability of the distractor frequency effect on picture naming latencies (latencies decrease as the frequency of the distractor increases) and demonstrate for the first time the impact of distractor length, with longer naming latencies for trials with longer distractors. Moreover, distractor frequency interacts with target word frequency to predict picture naming latencies. The methodological and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.
KW  - Picture-word interference
KW  - Bayesian meta-analysis
KW  - distractor frequency
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1177/17470218221114644
SN  - 1747-0218
SN  - 1747-0226
VL  - 76
IS  - 6
SP  - 1410
EP  - 1430
PB  - Sage Publications
CY  - London
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Liu, Liquan
A1  - Götz, Antonia
A1  - Lorette, Pernelle
A1  - Tyler, Michael D.
T1  - How tone, intonation and emotion shape the development of infants' fundamental frequency perception
JF  - Frontiers in psychology
N2  - Fundamental frequency (integral(0)), perceived as pitch, is the first and arguably most salient auditory component humans are exposed to since the beginning of life. 
It carries multiple linguistic (e.g., word meaning) and paralinguistic (e.g., speakers' emotion) functions in speech and communication. 
The mappings between these functions and integral(0) features vary within a language and differ cross-linguistically. For instance, a rising pitch can be perceived as a question in English but a lexical tone in Mandarin. Such variations mean that infants must learn the specific mappings based on their respective linguistic and social environments. 
To date, canonical theoretical frameworks and most empirical studies do not view or consider the multi-functionality of integral(0), but typically focus on individual functions. More importantly, despite the eventual mastery of integral(0) in communication, it is unclear how infants learn to decompose and recognize these overlapping functions carried by integral(0). In this paper, we review the symbioses and synergies of the lexical, intonational, and emotional functions that can be carried by integral(0) and are being acquired throughout infancy. 
On the basis of our review, we put forward the Learnability Hypothesis that infants decompose and acquire multiple integral(0) functions through native/environmental experiences. Under this hypothesis, we propose representative cases such as the synergy scenario, where infants use visual cues to disambiguate and decompose the different integral(0) functions. Further, viable ways to test the scenarios derived from this hypothesis are suggested across auditory and visual modalities. 
Discovering how infants learn to master the diverse functions carried by integral(0) can increase our understanding of linguistic systems, auditory processing and communication functions.
KW  - lexical tone
KW  - intonation, Prosody
KW  - phonological theory
KW  - sensory processing
KW  - cognitive processing
KW  - cross-linguistic transfer
KW  - emotional tone
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.906848
SN  - 1664-1078
VL  - 13
PB  - Frontiers Research Foundation
CY  - Lausanne
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Schad, Daniel
A1  - Nicenboim, Bruno
A1  - Bürkner, Paul-Christian
A1  - Betancourt, Michael
A1  - Vasishth, Shravan
T1  - Workflow techniques for the robust use of bayes factors
JF  - Psychological methods
N2  - Inferences about hypotheses are ubiquitous in the cognitive sciences. Bayes factors provide one general way to compare different hypotheses by their compatibility with the observed data. Those quantifications can then also be used to choose between hypotheses. While Bayes factors provide an immediate approach to hypothesis testing, they are highly sensitive to details of the data/model assumptions and it's unclear whether the details of the computational implementation (such as bridge sampling) are unbiased for complex analyses. Hem, we study how Bayes factors misbehave under different conditions. This includes a study of errors in the estimation of Bayes factors; the first-ever use of simulation-based calibration to test the accuracy and bias of Bayes factor estimates using bridge sampling; a study of the stability of Bayes factors against different MCMC draws and sampling variation in the data; and a look at the variability of decisions based on Bayes factors using a utility function. We outline a Bayes factor workflow that researchers can use to study whether Bayes factors are robust for their individual analysis. Reproducible code is available from haps://osf.io/y354c/. <br /> Translational Abstract <br /> In psychology and related areas, scientific hypotheses are commonly tested by asking questions like "is [some] effect present or absent." Such hypothesis testing is most often carried out using frequentist null hypothesis significance testing (NIIST). The NHST procedure is very simple: It usually returns a p-value, which is then used to make binary decisions like "the effect is present/abscnt." For example, it is common to see studies in the media that draw simplistic conclusions like "coffee causes cancer," or "coffee reduces the chances of geuing cancer." However, a powerful and more nuanced alternative approach exists: Bayes factors. Bayes factors have many advantages over NHST. However, for the complex statistical models that arc commonly used for data analysis today, computing Bayes factors is not at all a simple matter. In this article, we discuss the main complexities associated with computing Bayes factors. This is the first article to provide a detailed workflow for understanding and computing Bayes factors in complex statistical models. The article provides a statistically more nuanced way to think about hypothesis testing than the overly simplistic tendency to declare effects as being "present" or "absent".
KW  - Bayes factors
KW  - Bayesian model comparison
KW  - prior
KW  - posterior
KW  - simulation-based calibration
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1037/met0000472
SN  - 1082-989X
SN  - 1939-1463
VL  - 28
IS  - 6
SP  - 1404
EP  - 1426
PB  - American Psychological Association
CY  - Washington
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Cuperus, Pauline
A1  - de Kok, Dörte
A1  - de Aguiar, Vania
A1  - Nickels, Lyndsey
T1  - Understanding user needs for digital aphasia therapy
BT  - experiences and preferences of speech and language therapists
JF  - Aphasiology : an international, interdisciplinary journal
N2  - Background: 
Aphasia therapy software applications (apps) can help achieve recommendations regarding aphasia treatment intensity and duration. 
However, we currently know very little about speech and language therapists' (SLTs) preferences with regards to these apps. 
This may be problematic, as clinician acceptance of novel treatments and technology are a key factor for successful translation from research evidence to practice. 

Aim: 
This research aimed to increase our understanding of clinicians' experiences with aphasia therapy apps and their perceived barriers and facilitators to the use of aphasia apps. Furthermore, we wanted to explore the influence of some demographic factors (age, country, and SLT availability in the client's hometown) on SLTs' attitudes towards these apps.
 
Method & Procedures:  
35 Dutch and 29 Australian SLTs completed an online survey. The survey contained 9 closed-ended questions and 3 open-ended questions. Responses to the closed-ended questions were summarised through the use of descriptive statistics. The responses to the open questions were analysed and coded into recurring themes that were derived from the data. Logistic regression analyses were performed to explore the relationship between the demographic variables and the responses to the closed-ended questions. 

Outcomes & results: 
Participants were overwhelmingly positive about aphasia therapy apps and saw the potential for their clients to use apps independently. As facilitators of app use, participants reported accessibility and inclusion of different language modalities, while high costs, absence of a compatible device, and clients' potential computer illiteracy were listed as barriers. None of the analysed demographic factors consistently influenced differences in participants' attitudes towards aphasia therapy apps. 

Conclusions: 
The positive, extensive and insightful feedback from speech and language therapists is both useful and encouraging for app developers and aphasia researchers, and should facilitate the development of appropriate, high-quality therapy apps.
KW  - telemedicine
KW  - mobile applications
KW  - user research
KW  - speech and language therapy
KW  - clinician feedback
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1080/02687038.2022.2066622
SN  - 0268-7038
SN  - 1464-5041
VL  - 37
IS  - 7
SP  - 1016
EP  - 1038
PB  - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
CY  - London
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Räling, Romy
A1  - Hanne, Sandra
A1  - Schröder, Astrid
A1  - Keßler, Carla
A1  - Wartenburger, Isabell
T1  - Judging the animacy of words
BT  - The influence of typicality and age of acquisition in a semantic decision task
JF  - Quarterly journal of experimental psychology
N2  - The age at which members of a semantic category are learned (age of acquisition), the typicality they demonstrate within their corresponding category, and the semantic domain to which they belong (living, non-living) are known to influence the speed and accuracy of lexical/semantic processing. So far, only a few studies have looked at the origin of age of acquisition and its interdependence with typicality and semantic domain within the same experimental design. Twenty adult participants performed an animacy decision task in which nouns were classified according to their semantic domain as being living or non-living. Response times were influenced by the independent main effects of each parameter: typicality, age of acquisition, semantic domain, and frequency. However, there were no interactions. The results are discussed with respect to recent models concerning the origin of age of acquisition effects.
KW  - Age of acquisition
KW  - Animacy decision
KW  - Semantic classification task
KW  - Typicality
Y1  - 2017
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2016.1223704
SN  - 1747-0218
SN  - 1747-0226
VL  - 70
IS  - 10
SP  - 2094
EP  - 2104
PB  - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
CY  - Abingdon
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Gansel, Carsten
A1  - Hernik-Młodzianowska, Monika
T1  - Erinnerungsboom, unzuverlässiges Erinnern und "Tricksder Erinnerung" in Jan Koneffkes "Ein Sonntagskind" (2015)
JF  - Literarische Formen des Erinnerns : die deutschsprachige Gegenwartsliteratur zwischen Aufstörung und Stabilisierung
Y1  - 2024
SN  - 978-3-11-125141-7
SN  - 978-3-11-126856-9
SN  - 978-3-11-126777-7
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111267777-015
SP  - 279
EP  - 291
PB  - De Gruyter
CY  - Berlin
ER  - 
TY  - GEN
A1  - Offrede, Tom F.
A1  - Jacobi, Jidde
A1  - Rebernik, Teja
A1  - de Jong, Lisanne
A1  - Keulen, Stefanie
A1  - Veenstra, Pauline
A1  - Noiray, Aude
A1  - Wieling, Martijn
T1  - The impact of alcohol on L1 versus L2
T2  - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe
N2  - Alcohol intoxication is known to affect many aspects of human behavior and cognition; one of such affected systems is articulation during speech production. Although much research has revealed that alcohol negatively impacts pronunciation in a first language (L1), there is only initial evidence suggesting a potential beneficial effect of inebriation on articulation in a non-native language (L2). The aim of this study was thus to compare the effect of alcohol consumption on pronunciation in an L1 and an L2. Participants who had ingested different amounts of alcohol provided speech samples in their L1 (Dutch) and L2 (English), and native speakers of each language subsequently rated the pronunciation of these samples on their intelligibility (for the L1) and accent nativelikeness (for the L2). These data were analyzed with generalized additive mixed modeling. Participants' blood alcohol concentration indeed negatively affected pronunciation in L1, but it produced no significant effect on the L2 accent ratings. The expected negative impact of alcohol on L1 articulation can be explained by reduction in fine motor control. We present two hypotheses to account for the absence of any effects of intoxication on L2 pronunciation: (1) there may be a reduction in L1 interference on L2 speech due to decreased motor control or (2) alcohol may produce a differential effect on each of the two linguistic subsystems.
T3  - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 848 
KW  - acute alcohol consumption
KW  - articulation
KW  - speech
KW  - bilingualism
Y1  - 2020
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-540955
SN  - 1866-8364
IS  - 3
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Offrede, Tom F.
A1  - Jacobi, Jidde
A1  - Rebernik, Teja
A1  - de Jong, Lisanne
A1  - Keulen, Stefanie
A1  - Veenstra, Pauline
A1  - Noiray, Aude
A1  - Wieling, Martijn
T1  - The impact of alcohol on L1 versus L2
JF  - Language and Speech
N2  - Alcohol intoxication is known to affect many aspects of human behavior and cognition; one of such affected systems is articulation during speech production. Although much research has revealed that alcohol negatively impacts pronunciation in a first language (L1), there is only initial evidence suggesting a potential beneficial effect of inebriation on articulation in a non-native language (L2). The aim of this study was thus to compare the effect of alcohol consumption on pronunciation in an L1 and an L2. Participants who had ingested different amounts of alcohol provided speech samples in their L1 (Dutch) and L2 (English), and native speakers of each language subsequently rated the pronunciation of these samples on their intelligibility (for the L1) and accent nativelikeness (for the L2). These data were analyzed with generalized additive mixed modeling. Participants' blood alcohol concentration indeed negatively affected pronunciation in L1, but it produced no significant effect on the L2 accent ratings. The expected negative impact of alcohol on L1 articulation can be explained by reduction in fine motor control. We present two hypotheses to account for the absence of any effects of intoxication on L2 pronunciation: (1) there may be a reduction in L1 interference on L2 speech due to decreased motor control or (2) alcohol may produce a differential effect on each of the two linguistic subsystems.
KW  - acute alcohol consumption
KW  - articulation
KW  - speech
KW  - bilingualism
Y1  - 2020
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1177/0023830920953169
SN  - 1756-6053
SN  - 0023-8309
VL  - 64
IS  - 3
SP  - 681
EP  - 692
PB  - SAGE Publications
CY  - Thousand Oaks
ER  - 
TY  - GEN
A1  - Frank, Ulrike
A1  - Radtke, Julia
A1  - Nienstedt, Julie Cläre
A1  - Pötter-Nerger, Monika
A1  - Schönwald, Beate
A1  - Buhmann, Carsten
A1  - Gerloff, Christian
A1  - Niessen, Almut
A1  - Flügel, Till
A1  - Koseki, Jana-Christiane
A1  - Pflug, Christina
T1  - Dysphagia screening in Parkinson's Disease
BT  - a diagnostic accuracy cross-sectional study investigating the applicability of the Gugging Swallowing Screen (GUSS)
T2  - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe
N2  - Background
Simple water-swallowing screening tools are not predictive of aspiration and dysphagia in patients with Parkinson's Disease (PD). We investigated the diagnostic accuracy of a multi-texture screening tool, the Gugging Swallowing Screen (GUSS) to identify aspiration and dysphagia/penetration in PD patients compared to flexible endoscopic evaluation of swallowing (FEES). 

Methods
Swallowing function was evaluated in 51 PD participants in clinical 'on-medication' state with the GUSS and a FEES examination according to standardized protocols. Inter-rater reliability and convergent validity were determined and GUSS- and FEES-based diet recommendations were compared. 

Key Results
Inter-rater reliability of GUSS ratings was high (r(s) = 0.8; p < 0.001). Aspiration was identified by the GUSS with a sensitivity of 50%, and specificity of 51.35% (PPV 28%, NPV 73%, LR+ 1.03, LR- 0.97), dysphagia/penetration was identified with 72.97% sensitivity and 35.71% specificity (PPV 75%, NPV 33.33%, LR+ 1.14, LR- 0.76). Agreement between GUSS- and FEES-based diet recommendations was low (r(s) = 0.12, p = 0.42) with consistent NPO (Nil per Os) allocation by GUSS and FEES in only one participant.

Conclusions and Inferences
The multi-texture screening tool GUSS in its current form, although applicable with good inter-rater reliability, does not detect aspiration in PD patients with acceptable accuracy. Modifications of the GUSS parameters "coughing," "voice change" and "delayed swallowing" might enhance validity. The GUSS' diet recommendations overestimate the need for oral intake restriction in PD patients and should be verified by instrumental swallowing examination.
T3  - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 854 
KW  - aspiration
KW  - dysphagia
KW  - FEES
KW  - Gugging Swallowing Screen
KW  - Parkinson' s disease
Y1  - 2021
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-569625
SN  - 1866-8364
IS  - 5
ER  - 
TY  - GEN
A1  - von der Malsburg, Titus Raban
A1  - Poppels, Till
A1  - Levy, Roger P.
T1  - Implicit gender bias in linguistic descriptions for expected events
BT  - the cases of the 2016 United States and 2017 United Kingdom elections
T2  - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe
N2  - Gender stereotypes influence subjective beliefs about the world, and this is reflected in our use of language. But do gender biases in language transparently reflect subjective beliefs? Or is the process of translating thought to language itself biased? During the 2016 United States (N = 24,863) and 2017 United Kingdom (N = 2,609) electoral campaigns, we compared participants' beliefs about the gender of the next head of government with their use and interpretation of pronouns referring to the next head of government. In the United States, even when the female candidate was expected to win, she pronouns were rarely produced and induced substantial comprehension disruption. In the United Kingdom, where the incumbent female candidate was heavily favored, she pronouns were preferred in production but yielded no comprehension advantage. These and other findings suggest that the language system itself is a source of implicit biases above and beyond previously known biases, such as those measured by the Implicit Association Test.
T3  - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 856 
KW  - language
KW  - psycholinguistics
KW  - event expectations
KW  - reference
KW  - implicit bias
KW  - open data
KW  - open materials
Y1  - 2020
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-516154
SN  - 1866-8364
IS  - 2
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - von der Malsburg, Titus Raban
A1  - Poppels, Till
A1  - Levy, Roger P.
T1  - Implicit gender bias in linguistic descriptions for expected events
BT  - the cases of the 2016 United States and 2017 United Kingdom elections
JF  - Psychological Science
N2  - Gender stereotypes influence subjective beliefs about the world, and this is reflected in our use of language. But do gender biases in language transparently reflect subjective beliefs? Or is the process of translating thought to language itself biased? During the 2016 United States (N = 24,863) and 2017 United Kingdom (N = 2,609) electoral campaigns, we compared participants' beliefs about the gender of the next head of government with their use and interpretation of pronouns referring to the next head of government. In the United States, even when the female candidate was expected to win, she pronouns were rarely produced and induced substantial comprehension disruption. In the United Kingdom, where the incumbent female candidate was heavily favored, she pronouns were preferred in production but yielded no comprehension advantage. These and other findings suggest that the language system itself is a source of implicit biases above and beyond previously known biases, such as those measured by the Implicit Association Test.
KW  - language
KW  - psycholinguistics
KW  - event expectations
KW  - reference
KW  - implicit bias
KW  - open data
KW  - open materials
Y1  - 2020
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797619890619
SN  - 0956-7976
SN  - 1467-9280
VL  - 31
IS  - 2
SP  - 115
EP  - 128
PB  - Sage
CY  - London
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Parshina, Olga
A1  - Laurinavichyute, Anna
A1  - Sekerina, Irina A.
T1  - Eye-movement benchmarks in heritage language reading
JF  - Bilingualism : language and cognition
N2  - This eye-tracking study establishes basic benchmarks of eye movements during reading in heritage language (HL) by Russian-speaking adults and adolescents of high (n = 21) and low proficiency (n = 27). Heritage speakers (HSs) read sentences in Cyrillic, and their eye movements were compared to those of Russian monolingual skilled adult readers, 8-year-old children and L2 learners. Reading patterns of HSs revealed longer mean fixation durations, lower skipping probabilities, and higher regressive saccade rates than in monolingual adults. High-proficient HSs were more similar to monolingual children, while low-proficient HSs performed on par with L2 learners. Low-proficient HSs differed from high-proficient HSs in exhibiting lower skipping probabilities, higher fixation counts, and larger frequency effects. Taken together, our findings are consistent with the weaker links account of bilingual language processing as well as the divergent attainment theory of HL.
KW  - bilingualism
KW  - heritage language
KW  - reading
KW  - eye movements
KW  - Russian
KW  - children
KW  - L2 learners
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1017/S136672892000019X
SN  - 1366-7289
SN  - 1469-1841
VL  - 24
IS  - 1
SP  - 69
EP  - 82
PB  - Cambridge University Press
CY  - Cambridge
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Höhle, Barbara
A1  - Fritzsche, Tom
A1  - Meß, Katharina
A1  - Philipp, Mareike
A1  - Gafos, Adamantios I.
T1  - Only the right noise?
BT  - Effects of phonetic and visual input variability on 14-month-olds' minimal pair word learning
JF  - Developmental Science
N2  - Seminal work by Werker and colleagues (Stager & Werker [1997]Nature, 388, 381-382) has found that 14-month-old infants do not show evidence for learning minimal pairs in the habituation-switch paradigm. However, when multiple speakers produce the minimal pair in acoustically variable ways, infants' performance improves in comparison to a single speaker condition (Rost & McMurray [2009]Developmental Science, 12, 339-349). The current study further extends these results and assesses how different kinds of input variability affect 14-month-olds' minimal pair learning in the habituation-switch paradigm testing German learning infants. The first two experiments investigated word learning when the labels were spoken by a single speaker versus when the labels were spoken by multiple speakers. In the third experiment we studied whether non-acoustic variability, implemented by visual variability of the objects presented together with the labels, would also affect minimal pair learning. We found enhanced learning in the multiple speakers compared to the single speaker condition, confirming previous findings with English-learning infants. In contrast, visual variability of the presented objects did not support learning. These findings both confirm and better delimit the beneficial role of speech-specific variability in minimal pair learning. Finally, we review different proposals on the mechanisms via which variability confers benefits to learning and outline what may be likely principles that underlie this benefit. We highlight among these the multiplicity of acoustic cues signalling phonemic contrasts and the presence of relations among these cues. It is in these relations where we trace part of the source for the apparent paradoxical benefit of variability in learning.
KW  - acoustic variability
KW  - habituation-switch paradigm
KW  - infant word learning
KW  - minimal pairs
KW  - phonological development
KW  - visual variability
Y1  - 2020
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12950
SN  - 1363-755X
SN  - 1467-7687
VL  - 23
IS  - 5
SP  - 1
EP  - 16
PB  - Wiley-Blackwell
CY  - Oxford
ER  - 
TY  - GEN
A1  - Höhle, Barbara
A1  - Fritzsche, Tom
A1  - Meß, Katharina
A1  - Philipp, Mareike
A1  - Gafos, Adamantios I.
T1  - Only the right noise?
BT  - Effects of phonetic and visual input variability on 14-month-olds' minimal pair word learning
T2  - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe
N2  - Seminal work by Werker and colleagues (Stager & Werker [1997]Nature, 388, 381-382) has found that 14-month-old infants do not show evidence for learning minimal pairs in the habituation-switch paradigm. However, when multiple speakers produce the minimal pair in acoustically variable ways, infants' performance improves in comparison to a single speaker condition (Rost & McMurray [2009]Developmental Science, 12, 339-349). The current study further extends these results and assesses how different kinds of input variability affect 14-month-olds' minimal pair learning in the habituation-switch paradigm testing German learning infants. The first two experiments investigated word learning when the labels were spoken by a single speaker versus when the labels were spoken by multiple speakers. In the third experiment we studied whether non-acoustic variability, implemented by visual variability of the objects presented together with the labels, would also affect minimal pair learning. We found enhanced learning in the multiple speakers compared to the single speaker condition, confirming previous findings with English-learning infants. In contrast, visual variability of the presented objects did not support learning. These findings both confirm and better delimit the beneficial role of speech-specific variability in minimal pair learning. Finally, we review different proposals on the mechanisms via which variability confers benefits to learning and outline what may be likely principles that underlie this benefit. We highlight among these the multiplicity of acoustic cues signalling phonemic contrasts and the presence of relations among these cues. It is in these relations where we trace part of the source for the apparent paradoxical benefit of variability in learning.
T3  - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 868 
KW  - acoustic variability
KW  - habituation-switch paradigm
KW  - infant word learning
KW  - minimal pairs
KW  - phonological development
KW  - visual variability
Y1  - 2020
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-516674
SN  - 1866-8364
IS  - 5
ER  - 
TY  - GEN
A1  - Ciaccio, Laura Anna
A1  - Clahsen, Harald
T1  - Variability and consistency in first and second language processing
BT  - A masked morphological priming study on prefixation and suffixation
T2  - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe
N2  - Word forms such as walked or walker are decomposed into their morphological constituents (walk + -ed/-er) during language comprehension. Yet, the efficiency of morphological decomposition seems to vary for different languages and morphological types, as well as for first and second language speakers. The current study reports results from a visual masked priming experiment focusing on different types of derived word forms (specifically prefixed vs. suffixed) in first and second language speakers of German. We compared the present findings with results from previous studies on inflection and compounding and proposed an account of morphological decomposition that captures both the variability and the consistency of morphological decomposition for different morphological types and for first and second language speakers. Open Practices This article has been awarded an Open Materials badge. Study materials are publicly accessible via the Open Science Framework at . Learn more about the Open Practices badges from the Center for Open Science.
T3  - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 869 
KW  - prefixed words
KW  - derivation
KW  - second language processing
KW  - masked priming
KW  - morphology
Y1  - 2019
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-517727
SN  - 1866-8364
IS  - 1
ER  - 
TY  - GEN
A1  - Ruberg, Tobias
A1  - Rothweiler, Monika
A1  - Veríssimo, João Marques
A1  - Clahsen, Harald
T1  - Childhood bilingualism and Specific Language Impairment
BT  - A study of the CP-domain in German SLI
T2  - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe
N2  - This study addresses the question of whether and how growing up with more than one language shapes a child's language impairment. Our focus is on Specific Language Impairment (SLI) in bilingual (Turkish-German) children. We specifically investigated a range of phenomena related to the so-called CP (Complementizer Phrase) in German, the hierarchically highest layer of syntactic clause structure, which has been argued to be particularly affected in children with SLI. Spontaneous speech data were examined from bilingual children with SLI in comparison to two comparison groups: (i) typically-developing bilingual children, (ii) monolingual children with SLI. We found that despite persistent difficulty with subject-verb agreement, the two groups of children with SLI did not show any impairment of the CP-domain. We conclude that while subject-verb agreement is a suitable linguistic marker of SLI in German-speaking children, for both monolingual and bilingual ones, 'vulnerability of the CP-domain' is not.
T3  - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 870 
KW  - developmental language impairment
KW  - specific language impairment
KW  - child second language acquisition
KW  - syntax
KW  - agreement
Y1  - 2019
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-518095
SN  - 1866-8364
IS  - 3
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ruberg, Tobias
A1  - Rothweiler, Monika
A1  - Veríssimo, João Marques
A1  - Clahsen, Harald
T1  - Childhood bilingualism and Specific Language Impairment
BT  - A study of the CP-domain in German SLI
JF  - Bilingualism: Language and Cognition
N2  - This study addresses the question of whether and how growing up with more than one language shapes a child's language impairment. Our focus is on Specific Language Impairment (SLI) in bilingual (Turkish-German) children. We specifically investigated a range of phenomena related to the so-called CP (Complementizer Phrase) in German, the hierarchically highest layer of syntactic clause structure, which has been argued to be particularly affected in children with SLI. Spontaneous speech data were examined from bilingual children with SLI in comparison to two comparison groups: (i) typically-developing bilingual children, (ii) monolingual children with SLI. We found that despite persistent difficulty with subject-verb agreement, the two groups of children with SLI did not show any impairment of the CP-domain. We conclude that while subject-verb agreement is a suitable linguistic marker of SLI in German-speaking children, for both monolingual and bilingual ones, 'vulnerability of the CP-domain' is not.
KW  - developmental language impairment
KW  - specific language impairment
KW  - child second language acquisition
KW  - syntax
KW  - agreement
Y1  - 2019
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728919000580
SN  - 1366-7289
SN  - 1469-1841
VL  - 23
IS  - 3
SP  - 668
EP  - 680
PB  - Cambridge Univ. Press
CY  - Cambridge
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  - Heffner, Christopher C.
A1  - Fuhrmeister, Pamela
A1  - Luthra, Sahil
A1  - Mechtenberg, Hannah
A1  - Saltzman, David
A1  - Myers, Emily B.
T1  - Reliability and validity for perceptual flexibility in speech
JF  - Brain and language : a journal of clinical, experimental and theoretical research
N2  - The study of perceptual flexibility in speech depends on a variety of tasks that feature a large degree of variability between participants. Of critical interest is whether measures are consistent within an individual or across stimulus contexts. This is particularly key for individual difference designs that are deployed to examine the neural basis or clinical consequences of perceptual flexibility. In the present set of experiments, we assess the split-half reliability and construct validity of five measures of perceptual flexibility: three of learning in a native language context (e.g., understanding someone with a foreign accent) and two of learning in a non-native context (e.g., learning to categorize non-native speech sounds). We find that most of these tasks show an appreciable level of split-half reliability, although construct validity was sometimes weak. This provides good evidence for reliability for these tasks, while highlighting possible upper limits on expected effect sizes involving each measure.
KW  - Reliability
KW  - Construct validity
KW  - Individual differences
KW  - Speech
KW  - perception
KW  - Phonetic identification
KW  - Phonetic learning
KW  - Phonetic
KW  - adaptation
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2021.105070
SN  - 0093-934X
SN  - 1090-2155
VL  - 226
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Amsterdam [u.a.]
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Laurinavichyute, Anna
A1  - von der Malsburg, Titus
T1  - Semantic attraction in sentence comprehension
JF  - Cognitive science
N2  - Agreement attraction is a cross-linguistic phenomenon where a verb occasionally agrees not with its subject, as required by grammar, but instead with an unrelated noun ("The key to the cabinets were horizontal ellipsis ").
Despite the clear violation of grammatical rules, comprehenders often rate these sentences as acceptable. Contenders for explaining agreement attraction fall into two broad classes: Morphosyntactic accounts specifically designed to explain agreement attraction, and more general sentence processing models, such as the Lewis and Vasishth model, which explain attraction as a consequence of how linguistic structure is stored and accessed in content-addressable memory.
In the present research, we disambiguate between these two classes by testing a surprising prediction made by the Lewis and Vasishth model but not by the morphosyntactic accounts, namely, that attraction should not be limited to morphosyntax, but that semantic features of unrelated nouns equally induce attraction. 
A recent study by Cunnings and Sturt provided initial evidence that this may be the case. Here, we report three single-trial experiments in English that compared semantic and agreement attraction and tested whether and how the two interact. 
All three experiments showed strong semantically induced attraction effects closely mirroring agreement attraction effects. We complement these results with computational simulations which confirmed that the Lewis and Vasishth model can faithfully reproduce the observed results. 
In sum, our findings suggest that attraction is a more general phenomenon than is commonly believed, and therefore favor more general sentence processing models, such as the Lewis and Vasishth model.
KW  - agreement attraction
KW  - computational modeling
KW  - sentence processing;
KW  - similarity-based interference
KW  - semantic attraction
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.13086
SN  - 0364-0213
SN  - 1551-6709
VL  - 46
IS  - 2
PB  - Wiley
CY  - Hoboken
ER  - 
TY  - THES
A1  - Rubertus, Elina
T1  - Coarticulatory changes across childhood
T1  - Koartikulatorische Veränderungen in der Kindheit
BT  - implications for speech motor and phonological development
BT  - Implikationen für die sprechmotorische und phonologische Entwicklung
N2  - The present dissertation investigates changes in lingual coarticulation across childhood in German-speaking children from three to nine years of age and adults. Coarticulation refers to the mismatch between the abstract phonological units and their seemingly commingled realization in continuous speech. Being a process at the intersection of phonology and phonetics, addressing its changes across childhood allows for insights in speech motor as well as phonological developments. Because specific predictions for changes in coarticulation across childhood can be derived from existing speech production models, investigating children’s coarticulatory patterns can help us model human speech production.
While coarticulatory changes may shed light on some of the central questions of speech production development, previous studies on the topic were sparse and presented a puzzling picture of conflicting findings. One of the reasons for this lack is the difficulty in articulatory data acquisition in a young population. Within the research program this dissertation is embedded in, we accepted this challenge and successfully set up the hitherto largest corpus of articulatory data from children using ultrasound tongue imaging. In contrast to earlier studies, a high number of participants in tight age cohorts across a wide age range and a thoroughly controlled set of pseudowords allowed for statistically powerful investigations of a process known as variable and complicated to track.
The specific focus of my studies is on lingual vocalic coarticulation as measured in the horizontal position of the highest point of the tongue dorsum. Based on three studies on a) anticipatory coarticulation towards the left, b) carryover coarticulation towards the right side of the utterance, and c) anticipatory coarticulatory extent in repeated versus read aloud speech, I deduct the following main theses:
1. Maturing speech motor control is responsible for some developmental changes in coarticulation.
2. Coarticulation can be modeled as the coproduction of articulatory gestures. 
3. The developmental change in coarticulation results from a decrease of vocalic activation width.
N2  - Die vorliegende Dissertation untersucht Veränderungen der lingualen Koartikulation in der Kindheit bei deutschsprachigen Kindern im Alter von drei bis neun Jahren und Erwachsenen. Koartikulation bezieht sich auf die Diskrepanz zwischen abstrakten phonologischen Einheiten auf der einen und ihrer scheinbar vermischten kontinuierlichen Realisierung auf der anderen Seite. Da es sich um einen Prozess an der Schnittstelle zwischen Phonologie und Phonetik handelt, ermöglicht die Untersuchung koartikulatorischer Veränderungen im Laufe der Kindheit Einblicke sowohl in sprechmotorische als auch in phonologische Entwicklungen. Da sich aus bestehenden Sprachproduktionsmodellen spezifische Vorhersagen für Veränderungen der Koartikulation im Kindesalter ableiten lassen, kann die Untersuchung der kindlichen Koartikulation bei der Modellierung der menschlichen Sprachproduktion helfen.
Obwohl koartikulatorische Veränderungen Licht auf einige der zentralen Fragen der Sprachentwicklung werfen können, waren frühere Studien zu diesem Thema spärlich und boten ein rätselhaftes Bild widersprüchlicher Ergebnisse. Einer der Gründe für diesen Mangel ist die Schwierigkeit der artikulatorischen Datenerfassung in einer jungen Population. Im Rahmen des Forschungsprogramms, in das diese Dissertation eingebettet ist, haben wir die Herausforderung angenommen und mit Hilfe von Ultraschallaufnahmen der Zungenbewegung beim Sprechen erfolgreich den bisher größten Korpus artikulatorischer Daten von Kindern erstellt. Im Gegensatz zu früheren Studien ermöglichte eine hohe Anzahl von Teilnehmenden in engen Alterskohorten über einen weiten Altersbereich und ein sorgfältig kontrollierter Satz von Pseudowörtern statistisch aussagekräftige Untersuchungen eines Prozesses, der als variabel und kompliziert zu erfassen gilt.
Der besondere Schwerpunkt meiner Studien liegt auf der lingualen vokalischen Koartikulation, gemessen an der horizontalen Position des höchsten Punktes des Zungenrückens. Ausgehend von drei Studien zur a) antizipatorischen Koartikulation nach links, b) perseveratorischen Koartikulation nach rechts und c) antizipatorischen Koartikulation bei wiederholter gegenüber laut vorgelesener Sprache leite ich die folgenden Hauptthesen ab:
1. Die heranreifende Sprachmotorik ist für einige entwicklungsbedingte Veränderungen der Koartikulation verantwortlich.
2. Koartikulation kann als Koproduktion von artikulatorischen Gesten modelliert werden.
3. Die entwicklungsbedingte Veränderung der Koartikulation resultiert aus einer Abnahme der vokalischen Aktivierungsbreite.
KW  - language acquisition
KW  - coarticulation
KW  - ultrasound tongue imaging
KW  - phonology
KW  - phonetics
KW  - Spracherwerb
KW  - Koartikulation
KW  - Ultraschall
KW  - Phonologie
KW  - Phonetik
Y1  - 2024
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-630123
ER  - 
TY  - THES
A1  - Shipova, Evgeniya
T1  - Formal analysis of èto-clefts in Russian: syntax and semantics
T1  - Formale Analyse von èto-Clefts im Russischen: Syntax und Semantik
N2  - Èto-clefts are Russian focus constructions with the demonstrative pronoun èto ‘this’ at the beginning: “Èto Mark vyigral gonku” (“It was Mark who won the race”). They are often being compared with English it-clefts, German es-clefts, as well as the corresponding focus-background structures in other languages.
In terms of semantics, èto-clefts have two important properties which are cross-linguistically typical for clefts: existence presupposition (“Someone won the race”) and exhaustivity (“Nobody except Mark won the race”). However, the exhaustivity effects are not as strong as exhaustivity effects in structures with the exclusive only and require more research.
At the same time, the question if the syntactic structure of èto-clefts matches the biclausal structure of English and German clefts, remains open. There are arguments in favor of biclausality, as well as monoclausality. Besides, there is no consistency regarding the status of èto itself.
Finally, the information structure of èto-clefts has remained underexplored in the existing literature.
This research investigates the information-structural, syntactic, and semantic properties of Russian clefts, both theoretically (supported by examples from Russian text corpora and judgments from native speakers) and experimentally. It is determined which desired changes in the information structure motivate native speakers to choose an èto-cleft and not the canonical structure or other focus realization tools. Novel syntactic tests are conducted to find evidence for bi-/monoclausality of èto-clefts, as well as for base-generation or movement of the cleft pivot. It is hypothesized that èto has a certain important function in clefts, and its status is investigated. Finally, new experiments on the nature of exhaustivity in èto-clefts are conducted. They allow for direct cross-linguistic comparison, using an incremental-information paradigm with truth-value judgments.
In terms of information structure, this research makes a new proposal that presents èto-clefts as structures with an inherent focus-background bipartitioning. Even though èto-clefts are used in typical focus contexts, evidence was found that èto-clefts (as well as Russian thetic clefts) allow for both new information focus and contrastive focus. Èto-clefts are pragmatically acceptable when a singleton answer to the implied question is expected (e.g. “It was Mark who won the race” but not “It was Mark who came to the party”). Importantly, èto in Russian clefts is neither dummy, nor redundant, but is a topic expression; conveys familiarity which triggers existence presupposition; refers to an instantiated event, or a known/perceivable situation; finally, èto plays an important role in the spoken language as a tool for speech coherency and a focus marker.
In terms of syntax, this research makes a new monoclausal proposal and shows evidence that the cleft pivot undergoes movement to the left peripheral position. Èto is proposed to be TopP.
Finally, in terms of semantics, a novel cross-linguistic evaluation of Russian clefts is made. Experiments show that the exhaustivity inference in èto-clefts is not robust. Participants used different strategies in resolving exhaustivity, falling into 2 groups: one group considered èto-clefts exhaustive, while another group considered them non-exhaustive. Hence, there is evidence for the pragmatic nature of exhaustivity in èto-clefts. The experimental results for èto-clefts are similar to the experimental results for clefts in German, French and Akan. It is concluded that speakers use different tools available in their languages to produce structures with similar interpretive properties.
N2  - Èto-Clefts (Spaltsätze) sind russische Fokuskonstruktionen mit dem Demonstrativpronomen èto 'dies' am Anfang: “Èto Mark vyigral gonku” ("Es war Mark, der das Rennen gewonnen hat"). Sie werden oft mit englischen it-Clefts, deutschen es-Clefts sowie den entsprechenden Fokus-Hintergrund-Strukturen in anderen Sprachen verglichen. 
In semantischer Hinsicht haben èto-Clefts zwei wichtige Eigenschaften, die für Clefts typisch sind: Existenzpräsupposition ("Jemand hat das Rennen gewonnen") und Exhaustivität ("Niemand außer Mark hat das Rennen gewonnen"). Die Exhaustivitätseffekte sind jedoch nicht so stark wie die Exhaustivitätseffekte in Strukturen mit dem Exklusiven "only" ("nur") und erfordern weitere Forschung. 
Gleichzeitig bleibt die Frage offen, ob die syntaktische Struktur von èto-clefts der biklausalen Struktur von englischen und deutschen Clefts entspricht. Es gibt Argumente für Biklausalität sowie für Monoklausalität. Außerdem gibt es keine Einigung hinsichtlich des Status von èto selbst. Schließlich wurde die Informationsstruktur von èto-Clefts in der vorhandenen Literatur kaum erforscht. 
Diese Forschung untersucht die informationsstrukturellen, syntaktischen und semantischen Eigenschaften russischer Clefts sowohl theoretisch (gestützt auf Beispiele aus russischen Textkorpora und Schätzungen von Muttersprachlern) als auch experimentell. Es wird bestimmt, welche gewünschten Änderungen in der Informationsstruktur Muttersprachler dazu motivieren, eine èto-Cleft und nicht die kanonische Struktur oder andere Fokusrealisierungswerkzeuge zu wählen. Neue syntaktische Tests werden durchgeführt, um Hinweise auf die Biklausalität oder Monoklausalität von èto-Clefts sowie auf die Basisgenerierung oder Bewegung des Cleft-Pivots zu finden. Es wird die Hypothese aufgestellt, dass èto eine bestimmte wichtige Funktion in Clefts hat, und sein Status wird untersucht. Schließlich werden neue Experimente zur Natur der Exhaustivität in èto-Clefts durchgeführt. Sie ermöglichen einen direkten sprachübergreifenden Vergleich unter Verwendung eines inkrementellen Informationsparadigmas mit Wahrheitswerturteilen. 
In Bezug auf die Informationsstruktur gibt diese Forschung eine neue Analyse, die èto-Clefts als Strukturen mit einer inhärenten Fokus-Hintergrund-Aufteilung präsentiert. Obwohl èto-Clefts in typischen Fokus-Kontexten verwendet werden, wurde es festgestellt, dass èto-Clefts (genauso wie russische thetische Clefts) sowohl Informationsfokus als auch kontrastiven Fokus ermöglichen. Èto-Clefts sind pragmatisch akzeptabel, wenn eine Einzelantwort auf die implizite Frage erwartet wird (z. B. "Es war Mark, der das Rennen gewonnen hat", aber nicht "Es war Mark, der zur Party kam"). Wichtig ist noch, dass èto in russischen Clefts weder einen Platzhalter noch leer ist, sondern ein Topikausdruck; èto zeigt Familiarität, die eine Existenzpräsupposition auslöst; èto bezieht sich auf ein konkretes Ereignis oder eine bekannte/wahrnehmbare Situation; schließlich spielt èto eine wichtige Rolle in der gesprochenen Sprache als Werkzeug für die Kohärenz und als Fokusmarker. 
In Bezug auf Syntax macht diese Forschung einen neuen Vorschlag für eine monoklasuale Struktur und zeigt Hinweise darauf, dass das Cleft-Pivot eine Bewegung in die linke periphere Position durchläuft. Èto wird als TopP analysiert. 
Schließlich wird in Bezug auf Semantik eine neuartige sprachübergreifende Bewertung russischer Clefts vorgenommen. Experimente zeigen, dass die Exhaustivitätsinferenz in èto-Clefts nicht robust ist. Die Teilnehmer verwendeten verschiedene Strategien zur Auflösung der Exhaustivität und fielen in 2 Gruppen: Eine Gruppe betrachtete èto-Clefts als exhaustiv, während eine andere Gruppe sie als nicht exhaustiv betrachtete. Daher gibt es Hinweise auf die pragmatische Natur der Exhaustivität in èto-Clefts. Die experimentellen Ergebnisse für èto-Clefts sind den experimentellen Ergebnissen für Clefts im Deutschen, Französischen und Akan sehr ähnlich. Es wird geschlossen, dass Sprecher verschiedene verfügbare Werkzeuge in ihren Sprachen verwenden, um Strukturen mit ähnlichen interpretativen Eigenschaften zu produzieren.
KW  - clefts
KW  - Russian
KW  - Spaltsätze
KW  - Russisch
KW  - exhaustivity
KW  - Exhaustivität
KW  - information structure
KW  - Informationsstruktur
KW  - focus
KW  - Fokus
KW  - biclausality
KW  - Biklausalität
KW  - familiarity
KW  - Familiarität
KW  - experimental studies
KW  - experimentelle Studien
Y1  - 2024
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-630149
ER  - 
TY  - THES
A1  - Boila, Chiara
T1  - The processing of OVS and passive sentences in German monolingual and German-Italian simultaneous bilingual children
T1  - Die Verarbeitung von OVS- und Passiv-Sätzen in deutschen monolingualen und deutsch-italienisch simultan-bilingualen Kindern
N2  - It is a common finding that preschoolers have difficulties in identifying who is doing what to whom in non-canonical sentences, such as (object-verb-subject) OVS and passive sentences in German. This dissertation investigates how German monolingual and German-Italian simultaneous bilingual children process German OVS sentences in Study 1 and German passives in Study 2. Offline data (i.e., accuracy data) and online data (i.e., eye-gaze and pupillometry data) were analyzed to explore whether children can assign thematic roles during sentence comprehension and processing. Executive functions, language-internal and -external factors were investigated as potential predictors for children’s sentence comprehension and processing.
Throughout the literature, there are contradicting findings on the relation between language and executive functions. While some results show a bilingual cognitive advantage over monolingual speakers, others suggest there is no relationship between bilingualism and executive functions. If bilingual children possess more advanced executive function abilities than monolingual children, then this might also be reflected in a better performance on linguistic tasks. In the current studies monolingual and bilingual children were tested by means of two executive function tasks: the Flanker task and the task-switching paradigm. However, these findings showed no bilingual cognitive advantages and no better performance by bilingual children in the linguistic tasks. The performance was rather comparable between bilingual and monolingual children, or even better for the monolingual group. This may be due to cross-linguistic influences and language experience (i.e., language input and output). Italian was used because it does not syntactically overlap with the structure of German OVS sentences, and it only overlapped with one of the two types of sentence condition used for the passive study - considering the subject-(finite)verb alignment. The findings showed a better performance of bilingual children in the passive sentence structure that syntactically overlapped in the two languages, providing evidence for cross-linguistic influences. 
Further factors for children’s sentence comprehension were considered. The parents’ education, the number of older siblings and language experience variables were derived from a language background questionnaire completed by parents. Scores of receptive vocabulary and grammar, visual and short-term memory and reasoning ability were measured by means of standardized tests. It was shown that higher German language experience by bilinguals correlates with better accuracy in German OVS sentences but not in passive sentences. Memory capacity had a positive effect on the comprehension of OVS and passive sentences in the bilingual group. Additionally, a role was played by executive function abilities in the comprehension of OVS sentences and not of passive sentences. It is suggested that executive function abilities might help children in the sentence comprehension task when the linguistic structures are not yet fully mastered. 
Altogether, these findings show that bilinguals’ poorer performance in the comprehension and processing of German OVS is mainly due to reduced language experience in German, and that the different performance of bilingual children with the two types of passives is mainly due to cross-linguistic influences.
N2  - Es ist ein häufiger Befund, dass Vorschulkinder Schwierigkeiten haben zu erkennen ‚wer etwas mit jemandem tut‘ in nicht-kanonischen Sätzen, wie z.B. deutsche OVS- (Objekt-Verb-Subjekt) oder Passiv-Sätze. Diese Dissertation untersucht wie deutsche monolinguale und deutsch-italienische simultan-bilinguale Kinder deutsche OVS-Sätze (Studie 1) und deutsche Passiv-Sätze (Studie 2) verarbeiten. Offline-Daten (z.B. Datengenauigkeit) und Online-Daten (z.B. Blickbewegung-Daten und Pupillometrie-Daten) wurden analysiert, um herauszufinden, ob Kinder thematische Rollen während Satzverständnis und Satzverarbeitung zuteilen können. Exekutive Funktionen, interne und externe Sprachfaktoren wurden als mögliche Prädiktoren für Satzverständnis und Satzverarbeitung in Kindern untersucht.
In der Literatur findet man unterschiedliche Ergebnisse über den Zusammenhang zwischen Sprache und exekutiven Funktionen. Während einige Ergebnisse kognitive Vorteile für bilinguale Sprecher zeigen, deuten andere darauf hin, dass es keinen Zusammenhang zwischen Bilingualismus und exekutiven Funktionen gibt. Wenn bilinguale Kinder fortgeschrittene exekutive Funktionen im Vergleich zu monolingualen Kindern haben, könnte sich dies auch in besseren Leistungen in linguistischen Aufgaben widerspiegeln. In diesem Forschungsprojekt wurden monolinguale und bilinguale Kinder mit zwei verschiedenen Aufgaben getestet, die die exekutiven Funktionen messen: der Flanker-Test und das Aufgabenwechsel-Paradigma. Die Ergebnisse konnten jedoch keinen bilingualen kognitiven Vorteil und keine besseren Leistungen von bilingualen Kindern in den linguistischen Aufgaben belegen. Die Leistung war vergleichbar zwischen monolingualen und bilingualen Kindern, oder sogar besser in der monolingualen Gruppe. Dies könnte an cross-linguistische Einflüssen und Spracherfahrung (z.B. Sprach-Input und -Output) liegen. Italienisch wurde gewählt, da es zum einen keine syntaktischen Überschneidungen mit der Struktur von deutschen OVS-Sätzen aufweist, und zum anderen sich nur in einer von zwei der in der Passiv-Studie genutzten Satz-Bedingungen überschneidet – im Hinblick auf die Subjekt-(finite) Verb Ausrichtung. Die Ergebnisse zeigen eine bessere Leistung von bilingualen Kindern in Passiv-Sätzen, die eine syntaktische Überschneidung in den zwei Sprachen aufweisen, und zeigen somit Hinweise für cross-linguistische Einflüsse. 
Weitere Einflussfaktoren auf das Satzverständnis der Kinder wurden berücksichtigt. Der Bildungsgrad der Eltern, die Anzahl von älteren Geschwistern und Spracherfahrungsvariablen wurden über den, von den Eltern beantworteten, Sprachhintergrund-Fragebogen abgeleitet. Werte zu rezeptivem Vokabular und Grammatik, Visuelles- und Kurzeitgedächtnis und Denkfähigkeit wurden durch standardisierte Tests erhoben. Es konnte gezeigt werden, dass größere Spracherfahrung im Deutschen bei bilingualen Kindern mit einer größeren Genauigkeit bei deutschen OVS-Sätzen korreliert, aber nicht bei Passiv-Sätzen. Bessere Gedächtnisleistung hatte einen positiven Effekt auf das Sprachverständnis der bilingualen Gruppe bei OVS- und Passiv-Sätzen. Zusätzlich spielten exekutive Funktionen eine Rolle beim Verständnis von OVS-Sätzen, aber nicht bei Passiv-Sätzen. Es wird angenommen, dass exekutive Funktionen Kindern in Satzverständnisaufgaben helfen könnten, wenn die linguistischen Strukturen noch nicht vollständig beherrscht werden.
Zusammengenommen zeigen die vorliegenden Ergebnisse, dass die geringere Leistung von bilingualen Kindern beim Satzverständnis und Satzverarbeitung von deutschen OVS Sätzen hauptsächlich an der geringeren Spracherfahrung im Deutschen liegt und, dass die unterschiedliche Leistung von bilingualen Kindern mit den zwei Strukturen des Passivs überwiegend auf cross-linguistische Einflüsse zurückzuführen ist.
KW  - sentence processing
KW  - bilingualism
KW  - executive functions
KW  - eye-tracking
KW  - Bilingualismus
KW  - exekutive Funktionen
KW  - Eye-Tracking-Verfahren
KW  - Satzverarbeitung
Y1  - 2024
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-629723
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Kidd, Evan
A1  - Garcia, Rowena
T1  - How diverse is child language acquisition research?
JF  - First language
N2  - A comprehensive theory of child language acquisition requires an evidential base that is representative of the typological diversity present in the world's 7000 or so languages. However, languages are dying at an alarming rate, and the next 50 years represents the last chance we have to document acquisition in many of them. Here, we take stock of the last 45 years of research published in the four main child language acquisition journals: Journal of Child Language, First Language, Language Acquisition and Language Learning and Development. We coded each article for several variables, including (1) participant group (mono vs multilingual), (2) language(s), (3) topic(s) and (4) country of author affiliation, from each journal's inception until the end of 2020. We found that we have at least one article published on around 103 languages, representing approximately 1.5% of the world's languages. The distribution of articles was highly skewed towards English and other well-studied Indo-European languages, with the majority of non-Indo-European languages having just one paper. A majority of the papers focused on studies of monolingual children, although papers did not always explicitly report participant group status. The distribution of topics across language categories was more even. The number of articles published on non-Indo-European languages from countries outside of North America and Europe is increasing; however, this increase is driven by research conducted in relatively wealthy countries. Overall, the vast majority of the research was produced in the Global North. We conclude that, despite a proud history of crosslinguistic research, the goals of the discipline need to be recalibrated before we can lay claim to truly a representative account of child language acquisition.
KW  - linguistic diversity
KW  - child language acquisition
KW  - typology
KW  - archival
KW  - research
KW  - language coverage
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237211066405
SN  - 0142-7237
SN  - 1740-2344
VL  - 42
IS  - 6
SP  - 703
EP  - 735
PB  - Sage
CY  - London [u.a.]
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Skopeteas, Stavros
A1  - Verhoeven, Elisabeth
A1  - Fanselow, Gisbert
T1  - Discontinuous noun phrases in Yucatec Maya
JF  - Journal of linguistics : JL / publ. for the Linguistics Association of Great Britain
N2  - Languages differ in whether or not they allow discontinuous noun phrases. If they do, they further vary in the ways the nominal projections interact with the available syntactic operations. Yucatec Maya has two left-peripheral configurations that differ syntactically: a preverbal position for foci or wh-elements that is filled in by movement, and the possibility to adjoin topics at the highest clausal layer. These two structural options are reflected in different ways of the formation of discontinuous patterns. Subextraction from nominal projections to the focus position yielding discontinuous NPs is possible, but subject to several restrictions. It observes conditions on extraction domains, and does not apply to the left branch of nominal structures. The topic position also appears to license discontinuity, typically involving a non-referential nominal expression as the topic and quantifiers/adjectives that form an elliptical nominal projection within the clause proper. Such constructions can involve several morphological and syntactic mismatches between their parts that are excluded for continuous noun phrases, and they are not sensitive to syntactic island restrictions. Thus, in a strict sense, discontinuities involving the topic position are only apparent, because the construction involves two independent nominal projections that are semantically linked.
KW  - discontinuous noun phrases
KW  - focus movement
KW  - left dislocation
KW  - possessor
KW  - extraction
KW  - split topicalization
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226720000419
SN  - 0022-2267
SN  - 1469-7742
VL  - 58
IS  - 3
SP  - 609
EP  - 648
PB  - Cambridge University Press
CY  - New York
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  - Czapka, Sophia
A1  - Schwieter, John W.
A1  - Festman, Julia
T1  - The influence of peripheral emotions on inhibitory control among children
JF  - Acta psychologica : international journal of psychonomics
N2  - In this study, we investigated the cognitive-emotional interplay by measuring the effects of executive competition (Pessoa, 2013), i.e., how inhibitory control is influenced when emotional information is encountered. Sixty-three children (8 to 9 years of age) participated in an inhibition task (central task) accompanied by happy, sad, or neutral emoticons (displayed in the periphery). Typical interference effects were found in the main task for speed and accuracy, but in general, these effects were not additionally modulated by the peripheral emoticons indicating that processing of the main task exhausted the limited capacity such that interference from the task-irrelevant, peripheral information did not show (Pessoa, 2013). Further analyses revealed that the magnitude of interference effects depended on the order of congruency conditions: when incongruent conditions preceded congruent ones, there was greater interference. This effect was smaller in sad conditions, and particularly so at the beginning of the experiment. These findings suggest that the bottom-up perception of task-irrelevant emotional information influenced the top-down process of inhibitory control among children in the sad condition when processing demands were particularly high. We discuss if the salience and valence of the emotional stimuli as well as task demands are the decisive characteristics that modulate the strength of this relation.
KW  - Executive function
KW  - Inhibitory control task
KW  - Cognitive emotional
KW  - regulation
KW  - Primary school children
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2022.103507
SN  - 0001-6918
SN  - 1873-6297
VL  - 223
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Vicente, Luis
A1  - Barros, Matthew
A1  - Messick, Troy
A1  - Saab, Andres
T1  - On a nonargument for cleft sources in sluicing
JF  - Linguistic inquiry
N2  - On the basis of certain semantic intuitions, Barros (2012) argues that ellipsis does not require structural isomorphism between elided structure and its antecedent. We tackle this claim. Semantic intuitions cannot be a pointer to the analysis of silent structure. We provide empirical evidence that raises the question of to what extent semantic intuitions about plausible articulable syntax must inform one's analysis of silent structure. We conclude that the answer to this question must be crosslinguistically informed. We conjecture that ellipsis introduces ellipsis-specific interpretive mechanisms, so that intuitions about "how the unelided structure would be interpreted" are not empirically relevant.
KW  - sluicing
KW  - contextual restriction
KW  - ellipsis identity
KW  - inheritance of
KW  - content
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00390
SN  - 0024-3892
SN  - 1530-9150
VL  - 52
IS  - 4
SP  - 867
EP  - 880
PB  - MIT Press
CY  - Cambridge
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Albert, Aviad
A1  - Nicenboim, Bruno
T1  - Modeling sonority in terms of pitch intelligibility with the nucleus attraction principle
JF  - Cognitive science : a multidisciplinary journal of anthropology, artificial intelligence, education, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology ; journal of the Cognitive Science Society
N2  - Sonority is a fundamental notion in phonetics and phonology, central to many descriptions of the syllable and various useful predictions in phonotactics. Although widely accepted, sonority lacks a clear basis in speech articulation or perception, given that traditional formal principles in linguistic theory are often exclusively based on discrete units in symbolic representation and are typically not designed to be compatible with auditory perception, sensorimotor control, or general cognitive capacities. In addition, traditional sonority principles also exhibit systematic gaps in empirical coverage. Against this backdrop, we propose the incorporation of symbol-based and signal-based models to adequately account for sonority in a complementary manner. We claim that sonority is primarily a perceptual phenomenon related to pitch, driving the optimization of syllables as pitch-bearing units in all language systems. We suggest a measurable acoustic correlate for sonority in terms of periodic energy, and we provide a novel principle that can account for syllabic well-formedness, the nucleus attraction principle (NAP). We present perception experiments that test our two NAP-based models against four traditional sonority models, and we use a Bayesian data analysis approach to test and compare them. Our symbolic NAP model outperforms all the other models we test, while our continuous bottom-up NAP model is at second place, along with the best performing traditional models. We interpret the results as providing strong support for our proposals: (i) the designation of periodic energy as the acoustic correlate of sonority; (ii) the incorporation of continuous entities in phonological models of perception; and (iii) the dual-model strategy that separately analyzes symbol-based top-down processes and signal-based bottom-up processes in speech perception.
KW  - Sonority
KW  - Pitch intelligibility
KW  - Periodic energy
KW  - Bayesian data
KW  - analysis
KW  - Speech perception
KW  - Phonetics and phonology
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.13161
SN  - 0364-0213
SN  - 1551-6709
VL  - 46
IS  - 7
PB  - Wiley
CY  - Hoboken
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ciaccio, Laura Anna
A1  - Veríssimo, João
T1  - Investigating variability in morphological processing with Bayesian distributional models
JF  - Psychonomic bulletin & review : a journal of the Psychonomic Society
N2  - We investigated the processing of morphologically complex words adopting an approach that goes beyond estimating average effects and allows testing predictions about variability in performance. We tested masked morphological priming effects with English derived ('printer') and inflected ('printed') forms priming their stems ('print') in non-native speakers, a population that is characterized by large variability. We modeled reaction times with a shifted-lognormal distribution using Bayesian distributional models, which allow assessing effects of experimental manipulations on both the mean of the response distribution ('mu') and its standard deviation ('sigma'). Our results show similar effects on mean response times for inflected and derived primes, but a difference between the two on the sigma of the distribution, with inflectional priming increasing response time variability to a significantly larger extent than derivational priming. This is in line with previous research on non-native processing, which shows more variable results across studies for the processing of inflected forms than for derived forms. More generally, our study shows that treating variability in performance as a direct object of investigation can crucially inform models of language processing, by disentangling effects which would otherwise be indistinguishable. We therefore emphasize the importance of looking beyond average performance and testing predictions on other parameters of the distribution rather than just its central tendency.
KW  - RT distribution
KW  - Distributional models
KW  - Masked priming
KW  - Visual word
KW  - recognition
KW  - Morphological processing
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-022-02109-w
SN  - 1069-9384
SN  - 1531-5320
SP  - 2264
EP  - 2274
PB  - Springer
CY  - New York
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Barth-Weingarten, Dagmar
A1  - Küttner, Uwe-Alexander
A1  - Raymond, Chase Wesley
T1  - Pivots revisited
BT  - cesuring in action
JF  - Open linguistics
N2  - The term "pivot" usually refers to two overlapping syntactic units such that the completion of the first unit simultaneously launches the second. In addition, pivots are generally said to be characterized by the smooth prosodic integration of their syntactic parts. This prosodic integration is typically achieved by prosodic-phonetic matching of the pivot components. As research on such turns in a range of languages has illustrated, speakers routinely deploy pivots so as to be able to continue past a point of possible turn completion, in the service of implementing some additional or revised action. This article seeks to build on, and complement, earlier research by exploring two issues in more detail as follows: (1) what exactly do pivotal turn extensions accomplish on the action dimension, and (2) what role does prosodic-phonetic packaging play in this? We will show that pivot constructions not only exhibit various degrees of prosodic-phonetic (non-)integration, i.e., differently strong cesuras, but that they can be ordered on a continuum, and that this cline maps onto the relationship of the actions accomplished by the components of the pivot construction. While tighter prosodic-phonetic integration, i.e., weak(er) cesuring, co-occurs with post-pivot actions whose relationship to that of the pre-pivot tends to be rather retrospective in character, looser prosodic-phonetic integration, i.e., strong(er) cesuring, is associated with a more prospective orientation of the post-pivot's action. These observations also raise more general questions with regard to the analysis of action.
KW  - Conversation Analysis
KW  - Interactional Linguistics
KW  - syntax
KW  - talk-in-interaction
KW  - prosody
KW  - phonetics
KW  - cesuras
KW  - intonation units
KW  - social action
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2020-0152
SN  - 2300-9969
VL  - 7
IS  - 1
SP  - 613
EP  - 637
PB  - de Gruyter
CY  - Warsaw
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Schoknecht, Pia
A1  - Roehm, Dietmar
A1  - Schlesewsky, Matthias
A1  - Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, Ina
T1  - The interaction of predictive processing and similarity-based retrieval interference
BT  - an ERP study
JF  - Language, cognition and neuroscience
N2  - Language processing requires memory retrieval to integrate current input with previous context and making predictions about upcoming input. We propose that prediction and retrieval are two sides of the same coin, i.e. functionally the same, as they both activate memory representations. Under this assumption, memory retrieval and prediction should interact: Retrieval interference can only occur at a word that triggers retrieval and a fully predicted word would not do that. The present study investigated the proposed interaction with event-related potentials (ERPs) during the processing of sentence pairs in German. Predictability was measured via cloze probability. Memory retrieval was manipulated via the position of a distractor inducing proactive or retroactive similarity-based interference. Linear mixed model analyses provided evidence for the hypothesised interaction in a broadly distributed negativity, which we discuss in relation to the interference ERP literature. Our finding supports the proposal that memory retrieval and prediction are functionally the same.
KW  - Language
KW  - memory retrieval
KW  - interference
KW  - prediction
KW  - predictive
KW  - processing
KW  - interaction
KW  - ERP
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2022.2026421
SN  - 2327-3798
SN  - 2327-3801
VL  - 37
IS  - 7
SP  - 883
EP  - 901
PB  - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
CY  - Abingdon
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Gianelli, Claudia
A1  - Kühne, Katharina
A1  - Lo Presti, Sara
A1  - Mencaraglia, Silvia
A1  - Dalla Volta, Riccardo
T1  - Action processing in the motor system
BT  - Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) evidence of shared mechanisms in the visual and linguistic modalities
JF  - Brain and cognition : a journal of experimental and clinical research
N2  - In two experiments, we compared the dynamics of corticospinal excitability when processing visually or linguistically presented tool-oriented hand actions in native speakers and sequential bilinguals. In a third experiment we used the same procedure to test non-motor, low-level stimuli, i.e. scrambled images and pseudo-words.
Stimuli were presented in sequence: pictures (tool + tool-oriented hand action or their scrambled counterpart) and words (tool noun + tool-action verb or pseudo-words). Experiment 1 presented German linguistic stimuli to native speakers, while Experiment 2 presented English stimuli to non-natives. Experiment 3 tested Italian native speakers. Single-pulse trascranial magnetic stimulation (spTMS) was applied to the left motor cortex at five different timings: baseline, 200 ms after tool/noun onset, 150, 350 and 500 ms after hand/verb onset with motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) recorded from the first dorsal interosseous (FDI) and abductor digiti minimi (ADM) muscles. 
We report strong similarities in the dynamics of corticospinal excitability across the visual and linguistic modalities. MEPs' suppression started as early as 150 ms and lasted for the duration of stimulus presentation (500 ms). Moreover, we show that this modulation is absent for stimuli with no motor content. Overall, our study supports the notion of a core, overarching system of action semantics shared by different modalities.
KW  - TMS
KW  - motor cortex
KW  - action observation
KW  - action language
KW  - motor
KW  - inhibition
KW  - motor-evoked potentials
Y1  - 2020
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2019.105510
SN  - 0278-2626
SN  - 1090-2147
VL  - 139
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - San Diego
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Sotiropoulou, Stavroula
A1  - Gibson, Mark
A1  - Gafos, Adamantios I.
T1  - Global organization in Spanish onsets
JF  - Journal of phonetics
N2  - This paper addresses the relation between syllable structure and inter-segmental temporal coordination. The data examined are Electromagnetic Articulometry recordings from six speakers of Central Peninsular Spanish (henceforth, Spanish), producing words beginning with the clusters /pl, bl, kl, gl, p(sic), k(sic), t(sic)/ as well as corresponding unclustered sonorant-initial words in three vowel contexts /a, e, o/. In our results, we find evidence for a global organization of the segments involved in these combinations. This is reflected in a number of ways: shortening of the prevocalic sonorant in the cluster-initial case compared to the unclustered case, reorganization of the relative timing of the internal CV subsequence (in a CCV) in the obstruent-lateral context, early vowel initiation, and a strong compensatory relation between the duration of the obstruent-to-lateral transition and the duration of the lateral. In other words, we find that the global organization presiding over the segments partaking in these tautosyllabic CCVs is pleiotropic, that is, simultaneously expressed over a set of different phonetic parameters rather than via a privileged metric such as c-center stability or any other such given single measure (employed in prior works).
KW  - syllables
KW  - inter-segmental coordination
KW  - Central Peninsular Spanish
KW  - obstruent-lateral clusters
KW  - obstruent-rhotic clusters
Y1  - 2020
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2020.100995
SN  - 0095-4470
VL  - 82
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - London
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Nicenboim, Bruno
A1  - Vasishth, Shravan
A1  - Rösler, Frank
T1  - Are words pre-activated probabilistically during sentence comprehension?
BT  - evidence from new data and a Bayesian random-effects meta-analysis using publicly available data
JF  - Neuropsychologia : an international journal in behavioural and cognitive neuroscience
N2  - Several studies (e.g., Wicha et al., 2003b; DeLong et al., 2005) have shown that readers use information from the sentential context to predict nouns (or some of their features), and that predictability effects can be inferred from the EEG signal in determiners or adjectives appearing before the predicted noun. While these findings provide evidence for the pre-activation proposal, recent replication attempts together with inconsistencies in the results from the literature cast doubt on the robustness of this phenomenon. Our study presents the first attempt to use the effect of gender on predictability in German to study the pre-activation hypothesis, capitalizing on the fact that all German nouns have a gender and that their preceding determiners can show an unambiguous gender marking when the noun phrase has accusative case. Despite having a relatively large sample size (of 120 subjects), both our preregistered and exploratory analyses failed to yield conclusive evidence for or against an effect of pre-activation. The sign of the effect is, however, in the expected direction: the more unexpected the gender of the determiner, the larger the negativity. The recent, inconclusive replication attempts by Nieuwland et al. (2018) and others also show effects with signs in the expected direction. We conducted a Bayesian random-ef-fects meta-analysis using our data and the publicly available data from these recent replication attempts. Our meta-analysis shows a relatively clear but very small effect that is consistent with the pre-activation account and demonstrates a very important advantage of the Bayesian data analysis methodology: we can incrementally accumulate evidence to obtain increasingly precise estimates of the effect of interest.
KW  - ERP
KW  - pre-activation
KW  - predictions
KW  - grammatical gender
KW  - Bayesian meta-analysis
Y1  - 2020
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2020.107427
SN  - 0028-3932
SN  - 1873-3514
VL  - 142
PB  - Elsevier Science
CY  - Oxford
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Reifegerste, Jana
A1  - Jarvis, Rebecca
A1  - Felser, Claudia
T1  - Effects of chronological age on native and nonnative sentence processing
BT  - evidence from subject-verb agreement in German
JF  - Journal of memory and language
N2  - While much attention has been devoted to the cognition of aging multilingual individuals, little is known about how age affects their grammatical processing. We assessed subject-verb number-agreement processing in sixty native (L1) and sixty non-native (L2) speakers of German (age: 18-84) using a binary-choice sentence-completion task, along with various individual-differences tests. Our results revealed differential effects of age on L1 and L2 speakers' accuracy and reaction times (RTs). L1 speakers' RTs increased with age, and they became more susceptible to attraction errors. In contrast, L2 speakers' RTs decreased, once age-related slowing was controlled for, and their overall accuracy increased. We interpret this as resulting from increased L2 exposure. Moreover, L2 speakers' accuracy/RT patterns were more strongly affected by cognitive variables (working memory, interference control) than L1 speakers'. Our findings show that as regards bilinguals' grammatical processing ability, aging is associated with both gains (in experience) and losses (in cognitive abilities).
KW  - sentence processing
KW  - subject-verb agreement
KW  - attraction errors
KW  - second-language processing
KW  - aging
Y1  - 2020
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2019.104083
SN  - 0749-596X
SN  - 1096-0821
VL  - 111
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Amsterdam [u.a.]
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Horn, Peter
A1  - Fritzsche, Tom
A1  - Ehlert, Antje
A1  - Adani, Flavia
T1  - Tapping into the interplay of lexical and number knowledge using fast mapping
BT  - a longitudinal eye-tracking study with two-year-olds
JF  - Infant behavior & development : an international and interdisciplinary journal
N2  - Language skills and mathematical competencies are argued to influence each other during development. While a relation between the development of vocabulary size and mathematical skills is already documented in the literature, this study further examines how children's ability to map a novel word to an unknown object as well as their ability to retain this word from memory may be related to their knowledge of number words. Twenty-five children were tested longitudinally (at 30 and at 36 months of age) using an eye-tracking-based fast mapping task, the Give-a Number task, and standardized measures of vocabulary. The results reveal that children's ability to create and retain a mental representation of a novel word was related to number knowledge at 30 months, but not at 36 months while vocabulary size correlated with number knowledge only at 36 months. These results show that even specific mapping processes are initially related to the acquisition of number words and they speak for a parallelism between the development of lexical and number-concept knowledge despite their semantic and syntactic differences.
KW  - Number
KW  - Number knowledge
KW  - Cognitive development
KW  - Fast mapping
KW  - Word
KW  - learning
KW  - Cross-domain development
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2021.101573
SN  - 0163-6383
SN  - 1879-0453
VL  - 64
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Müller, Nina
A1  - Beer, Carola de
A1  - Frank, Ulrike
T1  - Ist die therapeutische Mundpflege bei Dysphagiepatient*innen verschwendete Zeit?
BT  - ein narrativer Review zu Effekten der Mundpflege auf die Pneumoniehäufigkeit und Ableitung einer Handlungsempfehlung
BT  - a narrative review on the effects of oral care on pneumonia risk and guidelines for an effective and structured approach
JF  - Sprache, Stimme, Gehör : Zeitschrift für Kommunikationsstörungen
N2  - Aspirationspneumonien sind eine häufige Todesursache bei Dysphagiepatient*innen. In diesem Beitrag wird durch die Evaluation relevanter Studien die Frage untersucht, ob die therapeutische Mundpflege bei Dysphagiepatient*innen zur Verringerung des Pneumonierisikos beitragen kann. Zudem wird auf dieser Grundlage eine Handlungsempfehlung für die Umsetzung der Mundpflege entwickelt.

Die ausgewählten Studien zeigen, dass die Mundpflege einen positiven Effekt auf das Pneumonie-Risiko von Dysphagiepatient*innen hat. Sie sollte auf den Grundsätzen Einfachheit, Sicherheit, Arbeitskräfteentlastung, Wirksamkeit, Universalität, Wirtschaftlichkeit und vollständige Mundpflege aller Teile der Mundhöhle beruhen und nimmt weniger als fünf Minuten täglich ein. Sie bereitet durch die taktile Stimulation auf die anschließende Dysphagie-Therapie vor und ist somit sinnvoll investierte Therapiezeit.
N2  - Aspiration pneumonia is a common cause of death in dysphagia patients. In this review, we investigate whether a structured oral care approach can help to reduce pneumonia risk in dysphagic patients. In addition, guidelines for the implementation of oral care on the basis of the analyzed studies are presented. Oral care has positive effects on the risk of pneumonia in dysphagia patients. Oral care should be based on the principles of simplicity, safety, efficiency and effectiveness, universality and economy and it should include all parts of the oral cavity. Effective oral care takes less than five minutes a day. The tactile stimulation prepares the patient for dysphagia therapy and can be considered wisely-invested time.
T2  - Is oral care for dysphagic patients wasted time?
KW  - oral care
KW  - dysphagia
KW  - pneumonia
KW  - Therapeutische Mundpflege
KW  - Dysphagie
KW  - Pneumonie
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1055/a-1714-1587
SN  - 0342-0477
SN  - 1439-1260
VL  - 46
IS  - 03
SP  - 150
EP  - 155
PB  - Thieme
CY  - Stuttgart
ER  -