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 - Holzgrefe-Lang, Julia A1 - Wellmann, Caroline A1 - Petrone, Caterina A1 - Truckenbrodt, Hubert A1 - Höhle, Barbara A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell T1 - Brain response to prosodic boundary cues depends on boundary position JF - Frontiers in psychology N2 - Prosodic information is crucial for spoken language comprehension and especially for syntactic parsing, because prosodic cues guide the hearer's syntactic analysis. The time course and mechanisms of this interplay of prosody and syntax are not yet well-understood. In particular, there is an ongoing debate whether local prosodic cues are taken into account automatically or whether they are processed in relation to the global prosodic context in which they appear. The present study explores whether the perception of a prosodic boundary is affected by its position within an utterance. In an event-related potential (PRP) study we tested if the brain response evoked by the prosodic boundary differs when the boundary occurs early in a list of three names connected by conjunctions (i.e., after the first name) as compared to later in the utterance (i.e., after the second name). A closure positive shift (CPS)-marking the processing of a prosodic phrase boundary-was elicited for stimuli with a late boundary, but not for stimuli with an early boundary. This result is further evidence for an immediate integration of prosodic information into the parsing of an utterance. In addition, it shows that the processing of prosodic boundary cues depends on the previously processed information from the preceding prosodic context. KW - prosodic boundaries KW - event-related potentials KW - closure positive shift KW - speech perception KW - prosody Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00421 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 4 IS - 28 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Holzgrefe-Lang, Julia A1 - Wellmann, Caroline A1 - Petrone, Caterina A1 - Raeling, Romy A1 - Truckenbrodt, Hubert A1 - Höhle, Barbara A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell T1 - How pitch change and final lengthening cue boundary perception in German: converging evidence from ERPs and prosodic judgements JF - Language, cognition and neuroscience N2 - This study examines the role of pitch and final lengthening in German intonation phrase boundary (IPB) perception. Since a prosody-related event-related potential (ERP) component termed Closure Positive Shift reflects the processing of major prosodic boundaries, we combined ERP and behavioural measures (i.e. a prosodic judgement task) to systematically test the impact of sole and combined cue occurrences on IPB perception. In two experiments we investigated whether adult listeners perceived an IPB in acoustically manipulated speech material that contained none, one, or two of the prosodic boundary cues. Both ERP and behavioural results suggest that pitch and final lengthening cues have to occur in combination to trigger IPB perception. Hence, the combination of behavioural and electrophysiological measures provides a comprehensive insight into prosodic boundary cue perception in German and leads to an argument in favour of interrelated cues from the frequency (i.e. pitch change) and the time (i.e. final lengthening) domain. KW - Speech perception KW - prosody KW - Event-Related Potential (ERP) technique KW - Closure Positive Shift (CPS) KW - prosodic boundary cues Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2016.1157195 SN - 2327-3798 SN - 2327-3801 VL - 31 SP - 904 EP - 920 PB - Begell House CY - Abingdon ER -