@article{WellmannHolzgrefeLangTruckenbrodtetal.2012,
  author    = {Wellmann, Caroline and Holzgrefe-Lang, Julia and Truckenbrodt, Hubert and Wartenburger, Isabell and H{\"o}hle, Barbara},
  title     = {How each prosodic boundary cue matters evidence from German infants},
  series = {Frontiers in psychology},
  volume    = {3},
  journal   = {Frontiers in psychology},
  publisher = {Frontiers Research Foundation},
  address   = {Lausanne},
  issn      = {1664-1078},
  doi       = {10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00580},
  pages     = {13},
  year      = {2012},
  abstract  = {Previous studies have revealed that infants aged 6-10 months are able to use the acoustic correlates of major prosodic boundaries, that is, pitch change, preboundary lengthening, and pause, for the segmentation of the continuous speech signal. Moreover, investigations with American-English- and Dutch-learning infants suggest that processing prosodic boundary markings involves a weighting of these cues. This weighting seems to develop with increasing exposure to the native language and to underlie crosslinguistic variation. In the following, we report the results of four experiments using the headturn preference procedure to explore the perception of prosodic boundary cues in German infants. We presented 8-month-old infants with a sequence of names in two different prosodic groupings, with or without boundary markers. Infants discriminated both sequences when the boundary was marked by all three cues (Experiment 1) and when it was marked by a pitch change and preboundary lengthening in combination (Experiment 2). The presence of a pitch change (Experiment 3) or preboundary lengthening (Experiment 4) as single cues did not lead to a successful discrimination. Our results indicate that pause is not a necessary cue for German infants. Pitch change and preboundary lengthening in combination, but not as single cues, are sufficient. Hence, by 8 months infants only rely on a convergence of boundary markers. Comparisons with adults' performance on the same stimulus materials suggest that the pattern observed with the 8-month-olds is already consistent with that of adults. We discuss our findings with respect to crosslinguistic variation and the development of a language-specific prosodic cue weighting.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{PetroneTruckenbrodtWellmannetal.2017,
  author    = {Petrone, Caterina and Truckenbrodt, Hubert and Wellmann, Caroline and Holzgrefe-Lang, Julia and Wartenburger, Isabell and H{\"o}hle, Barbara},
  title     = {Prosodic boundary cues in German},
  series = {Journal of phonetics},
  volume    = {61},
  journal   = {Journal of phonetics},
  publisher = {Elsevier},
  address   = {London},
  issn      = {0095-4470},
  doi       = {10.1016/j.wocn.2017.01.002},
  pages     = {71 -- 92},
  year      = {2017},
  abstract  = {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.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{HolzgrefeLangWellmannPetroneetal.2013,
  author    = {Holzgrefe-Lang, Julia and Wellmann, Caroline and Petrone, Caterina and Truckenbrodt, Hubert and H{\"o}hle, Barbara and Wartenburger, Isabell},
  title     = {Brain response to prosodic boundary cues depends on boundary position},
  series = {Frontiers in psychology},
  volume    = {4},
  journal   = {Frontiers in psychology},
  number    = {28},
  publisher = {Frontiers Research Foundation},
  address   = {Lausanne},
  issn      = {1664-1078},
  doi       = {10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00421},
  pages     = {14},
  year      = {2013},
  abstract  = {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.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{HolzgrefeLangWellmannPetroneetal.2016,
  author    = {Holzgrefe-Lang, Julia and Wellmann, Caroline and Petrone, Caterina and Raeling, Romy and Truckenbrodt, Hubert and H{\"o}hle, Barbara and Wartenburger, Isabell},
  title     = {How pitch change and final lengthening cue boundary perception in German: converging evidence from ERPs and prosodic judgements},
  series = {Language, cognition and neuroscience},
  volume    = {31},
  journal   = {Language, cognition and neuroscience},
  publisher = {Begell House},
  address   = {Abingdon},
  issn      = {2327-3798},
  doi       = {10.1080/23273798.2016.1157195},
  pages     = {904 -- 920},
  year      = {2016},
  abstract  = {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.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{FeryTruckenbrodt2005,
  author    = {F{\´e}ry, Caroline and Truckenbrodt, Hubert},
  title     = {Sisterhood and tonal scaling},
  issn      = {0039-3193},
  year      = {2005},
  abstract  = {This paper discusses central aspects of the effects of hierarchical structure on tonal scaling in intonation. The core results of a number of phonetic studies on this topic, by Ladd, by van den Berg, Gussenhoven and Rietveld, as well as experimental results of our own, are reviewed. We review the suggestions of this earlier work and argue for an addition to the theory. The principle 'The deeper the steeper' says that downstep among sister nodes is relatively larger if these sister-nodes are relatively more deeply embedded in the prosodic representation},
  language  = {en}
}