TY - JOUR A1 - Schmitz, Michaela A1 - Höhle, Barbara A1 - Müller, Anja A1 - Weissenborn, Jürgen T1 - The recognition of the prosodic focus position in German-Learning Infants from 4 to 14 Months Y1 - 2006 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schmitz, Michaela A1 - Höhle, Barbara A1 - Müller, Anja A1 - Weissenborn, Jürgen T1 - The recognition of the prosodic focus position in German-learning infants from 4 to 14 months N2 - The aim of the present study was to elucidate in a study with 4-, 6-, 8-, and 14-month-old German-learning children, when and how they may acquire the regularities which underlie Focus-to-Stress Alignment (FSA) in the target language, that is, how prosody is associated with specific communicative functions. Our findings suggest, that 14-month-olds have already found out that German allows for variable focus positions, after having gone through a development which goes from a predominantly prosodically driven processing of the input to a processing where prosody interacts more and more with the growing lexical and syntactic knowledge of the child. KW - prosodic focus KW - HTP KW - infants Y1 - 2006 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19566 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Müller, Anja A1 - Höhle, Barbara A1 - Weissenborn, Jürgen T1 - Teaching a new word : properties of CDS to 12-month-old German-learning children Y1 - 2008 SN - 978-1-8471-8532-7 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Müller, Anja A1 - Höhle, Barbara A1 - Schmitz, Michaela A1 - Weissenborn, Jürgen T1 - Information structural constraints on children's early language production : the acquisition of the focus particle "auch" (also) in German learning 12-to 36-month-olds Y1 - 2009 UR - http://fla.sagepub.com/ SN - 0142-7237 ER - TY - THES A1 - Müller, Anja T1 - Wie interpretieren Kinder nur? : Experimentelle Untersuchungen zum Erwerb von Informationsstruktur T1 - How children interpret sentences with nur? : Experiments on the acquisition of information structure N2 - Im Zentrum der Arbeit steht die Frage, wie sechsjährige monolingual deutsche Kinder Sätze mit der Fokuspartikel nur interpretieren. In 5 Experimenten wurde untersucht, welchen Einfluss die Oberflächenposition der Fokuspartikel auf das Satzverständnis hat und ob die kontextuelle Einbettung der nur-Sätze zu einer zielsprachlichen Interpretation führt. Im Gegensatz zu den Ergebnissen bisheriger Studien (u.a. Crain, et al. 1994; Paterson et al. 2003) zeigen die Daten der Arbeit, dass die getesteten Kinder die präsentierten nur-Sätze zielsprachlich interpretierten, wenn diese in einen adäquaten Kontext eingebettet waren. Es zeigte sich weiterhin, dass die Kinder mehr Fehler bei der Interpretation von Sätzen mit nur vor dem Subjekt (Nur die Maus hat einen Ball.) als mit nur vor dem Objekt (Die Maus hat nur einen Ball.) machten. Entgegen dem syntaktisch basierten Ansatz von Crain et al. (1994) und dem semantisch-pragmatisch basierten Ansatz von Paterson et al. (2003) werden in der Arbeit informationsstrukturelle Eigenschaften bzw. Unterschiede der nur-Sätze für die beobachteten Leistungen verantwortlich gemacht. Der in der Arbeit postulierte Topik-Default Ansatz nimmt an, dass die Kinder das Subjekt eines Satzes immer als Topik analysieren. Dies führt im Fall der Sätze mit nur vor dem Subjekt zu einer falschen informationsstrukturellen Repräsentation des Satzes. Basierend auf den Ergebnissen der Arbeit und dem postulierten Topik-Default Ansatz wird in der Arbeit abschließend ein Erwerbsmodell für das Verstehen von Sätzen mit der Fokuspartikel nur entworfen und diskutiert. N2 - Challenging previous accounts of children’s comprehension of focus particles, this study investigated how 6-year-old, German-speaking children interpret sentences with the focus particle nur(‘only’). Five experiments examined 1) whether the surface position of the focus particle has an impact on the sentence comprehension and 2) which role an adequate context plays for a target-like interpretation of a nur-sentence. It is known that in English, up to age 7, sentences with only are not interpreted adult-like. Crain et al. (1992) attributed errors to incorrect scope restrictions of the FP; Paterson et al. (2003) argued that children do not process the contrast information and instead ignore the FP. As oppose to previous research, the present data showed that German-speaking children interpret nur-sentences target-like if the sentences were contextually embedded. Furthermore, the results showed that children performed better on nur-object sentences like Die Maus hat nur einen Ball (‘The mouse has only a ball.’) than on nur-subject sentences like Nur die Maus hat einen Ball. (‘Only the mouse has a ball.’). This study argues that the asymmetry in the interpretation of nur-sentences stems from information-structural characteristics. In particular, I postulate the topic-default account which claims that children recognize the subject of the sentence as the topic by default. As a consequence, children assign an incorrect information structure to sentences with nur before the subject. Finally, based on the empirical findings of this study and on the topic-default account, an acquisition model for the comprehension of sentences with the focus particle nur is developed and discussed. KW - Fokuspartikel KW - Informationsstruktur KW - Spracherwerb KW - Satzverständnis KW - focus particle KW - information structure KW - language acquisition KW - sentence comprehension Y1 - 2010 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-57767 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Höhle, Barbara A1 - Schmitz, Michaela A1 - Müller, Anja A1 - Weissenborn, Jürgen T1 - The recognition of discontinuous verbal dependencies by German 19-month-olds : evidence for lexical and structural influences on children’s early processing capacities N2 - Recent work has shown that English-learning 18-month-olds can detect the relationship between discontinuous morphemes such as is and -ing in Grandma is always running (Gomez, 2002; Santelmann & Jusczyk, 1998) but only at a maximum of 3 intervening syllables. In this article we examine the tracking of discontinuous dependencies in children acquiring German. Due to freer word order, German allows for greater distances between dependent elements and a greater syntactic variety of the intervening elements than English does. The aim of this study was to investigate whether factors other than distance may influence the child’s capacity to recognize discontinuous elements. Our findings provide evidence that children’s recognition capacities are affected not only by distance but also by their ability to linguistically analyze the material intervening between the dependent elements. We speculate that this result supports the existence of processing mechanisms that reduce a discontinuous relation to a local one based on subcategorization relations. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - paper 024 Y1 - 2006 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-16297 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Höhle, Barbara A1 - Fritzsche, Tom A1 - Müller, Anja T1 - of Cognitive Control: An Eye Tracking Study with German-Learning 4-Year-Olds JF - PLoS one N2 - Children’s interpretations of sentences containing focus particles do not seem adult-like until school age. This study investigates how German 4-year-old children comprehend sentences with the focus particle ‘nur’ (only) by using different tasks and controlling for the impact of general cognitive abilities on performance measures. Two sentence types with ‘only’ in either pre-subject or pre-object position were presented. Eye gaze data and verbal responses were collected via the visual world paradigm combined with a sentence-picture verification task. While the eye tracking data revealed an adult-like pattern of focus particle processing, the sentence-picture verification replicated previous findings of poor comprehension, especially for ‘only’ in pre-subject position. A second study focused on the impact of general cognitive abilities on the outcomes of the verification task. Working memory was related to children’s performance in both sentence types whereas inhibitory control was selectively related to the number of errors for sentences with ‘only’ in pre-subject position. These results suggest that children at the age of 4 years have the linguistic competence to correctly interpret sentences with focus particles, which–depending on specific task demands–may be masked by immature general cognitive abilities. Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0149870 SN - 1932-6203 VL - 11 PB - PLoS CY - San Fransisco ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Höhle, Barbara A1 - Fritzsche, Tom A1 - Müller, Anja T1 - Children’s Comprehension of Sentences with Focus Particles and the Role of Cognitive Control BT - An Eye Tracking Study with German-Learning 4-Year-Olds JF - PLoS one N2 - Children’s interpretations of sentences containing focus particles do not seem adult-like until school age. This study investigates how German 4-year-old children comprehend sentences with the focus particle ‘nur’ (only) by using different tasks and controlling for the impact of general cognitive abilities on performance measures. Two sentence types with ‘only’ in either pre-subject or pre-object position were presented. Eye gaze data and verbal responses were collected via the visual world paradigm combined with a sentence-picture verification task. While the eye tracking data revealed an adult-like pattern of focus particle processing, the sentence-picture verification replicated previous findings of poor comprehension, especially for ‘only’ in pre-subject position. A second study focused on the impact of general cognitive abilities on the outcomes of the verification task. Working memory was related to children’s performance in both sentence types whereas inhibitory control was selectively related to the number of errors for sentences with ‘only’ in pre-subject position. These results suggest that children at the age of 4 years have the linguistic competence to correctly interpret sentences with focus particles, which–depending on specific task demands–may be masked by immature general cognitive abilities. KW - eyes KW - sentence processing KW - cognition KW - cognitive linguistics KW - human performance KW - syntax KW - cognitive psychology KW - working memory Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0149870 SN - 1932-6203 VL - 11 IS - 3 SP - 1 EP - 27 PB - PLoS CY - Lawrence, Kan. ER - TY - GEN A1 - Höhle, Barbara A1 - Fritzsche, Tom A1 - Müller, Anja T1 - Children’s Comprehension of Sentences with Focus Particles and the Role of Cognitive Control BT - An Eye Tracking Study with German-Learning 4-Year-Olds N2 - Children’s interpretations of sentences containing focus particles do not seem adult-like until school age. This study investigates how German 4-year-old children comprehend sentences with the focus particle ‘nur’ (only) by using different tasks and controlling for the impact of general cognitive abilities on performance measures. Two sentence types with ‘only’ in either pre-subject or pre-object position were presented. Eye gaze data and verbal responses were collected via the visual world paradigm combined with a sentence-picture verification task. While the eye tracking data revealed an adult-like pattern of focus particle processing, the sentence-picture verification replicated previous findings of poor comprehension, especially for ‘only’ in pre-subject position. A second study focused on the impact of general cognitive abilities on the outcomes of the verification task. Working memory was related to children’s performance in both sentence types whereas inhibitory control was selectively related to the number of errors for sentences with ‘only’ in pre-subject position. These results suggest that children at the age of 4 years have the linguistic competence to correctly interpret sentences with focus particles, which–depending on specific task demands–may be masked by immature general cognitive abilities. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 287 KW - cognition KW - cognitive linguistics KW - cognitive psychology KW - eyes KW - human performance KW - sentence processing KW - syntax KW - working memory Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-90524 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Höhle, Barbara A1 - Berger, Frauke A1 - Müller, Anja A1 - Schmitz, Michaela A1 - Weissenborn, Jürgen T1 - Focus particles in children's language : production and comprehension of auch "also" in German learners from 1 year to 4 years of age Y1 - 2009 UR - http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t775653668~db=all U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/10489220802584550 SN - 1048-9223 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Berger, Frauke A1 - Müller, Anja A1 - Höhle, Barbara A1 - Weissenborn, Jürgen T1 - German 4-year-olds comprehension of sentences containing the focus particle "auch" (also) : evidence from eye- tracking Y1 - 2007 ER -