TY  - JOUR
A1  - Petrone, Caterina
A1  - Truckenbrodt, Hubert
A1  - Wellmann, Caroline
A1  - Holzgrefe-Lang, Julia
A1  - Wartenburger, Isabell
A1  - Höhle, Barbara
T1  - Prosodic boundary cues in German
BT  - evidence from the production and perception of bracketed lists
JF  - Journal of phonetics
N2  - This study investigates prosodic phrasing of bracketed lists in German. We analyze variation in pauses, phrase-final lengthening and f0 in speech production and how these cues affect boundary perception. In line with the literature, it was found that pauses are often used to signal intonation phrase boundaries, while final lengthening and f0 are employed across different levels of the prosodic hierarchy. Deviations from expectations based on the standard syntax-prosody mapping are interpreted in terms of task-specific effects. That is, we argue that speakers add/delete prosodic boundaries to enhance the phonological contrast between different bracketings in the experimental task. In perception, three experiments were run, in which we tested only single cues (but temporally distributed at different locations of the sentences). Results from identification tasks and reaction time measurements indicate that pauses lead to a more abrupt shift in listeners׳ prosodic judgments, while f0 and final lengthening are exploited in a more gradient manner. Hence, pauses, final lengthening and f0 have an impact on boundary perception, though listeners show different sensitivity to the three acoustic cues.
KW  - Prosodic boundary
KW  - Phrase-final lengthening
KW  - Pause
KW  - f0 peaks
KW  - Production
KW  - Perception
KW  - German
Y1  - 2017
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2017.01.002
SN  - 0095-4470
VL  - 61
SP  - 71
EP  - 92
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - London
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Czypionka, Anna
A1  - Spalek, Katharina
A1  - Wartenburger, Isabell
A1  - Krifka, Manfred
T1  - On the interplay of object animacy and verb type during sentence comprehension in German: ERP evidence from the processing of transitive dative and accusative constructions
JF  - Linguistics : an interdisciplinary journal of the language sciences
N2  - Comprehension of transitive sentences relies on different kinds of information, like word order, case marking, and animacy contrasts between arguments. When no formal cues like case marking or number congruency are available, a contrast in animacy helps the parser to decide which argument is the grammatical subject and which the object. Processing costs are enhanced when neither formal cues nor animacy contrasts are available in a transitive sentence. We present an ERP study on the comprehension of grammatical transitive German sentences, manipulating animacy contrasts between subjects and objects as well as the verbal case marking pattern. Our study shows strong object animacy effects even in the absence of violations, and in addition suggests that this effect of object animacy is modulated by the verbal case marking pattern.
KW  - sentence comprehension
KW  - animacy
KW  - case marking
KW  - ERP
KW  - German
Y1  - 2017
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2017-0031
SN  - 0024-3949
SN  - 1613-396X
VL  - 55
SP  - 1383
EP  - 1433
PB  - De Gruyter Mouton
CY  - Berlin
ER  -