@article{Petrova2006,
  author    = {Petrova, Svetlana},
  title     = {A discourse-based approach to verb placement in early West-Germanic},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-19540},
  year      = {2006},
  abstract  = {The paper presents a novel approach to explaining word order variation in the early Germanic languages. Initial observations about verb placement as a device marking types of rhetorical relations made on data from Old High German (cf. Hinterh{\"o}lzl \& Petrova 2005) are now reconsidered on a larger scale and compared with evidence from other early Germanic languages. The paper claims that the identification of information-structural domains in a sentence is best achieved by taking into account the interaction between the pragmatic features of discourse referents and properties of discourse organization.},
  language  = {en}
}
@misc{HaendlerKlieglAdani2015,
  author    = {Haendler, Yair and Kliegl, Reinhold and Adani, Flavia},
  title     = {Discourse accessibility constraints in children´s processing of object relative clauses},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-78694},
  year      = {2015},
  abstract  = {Children's poor performance on object relative clauses has been explained in terms of intervention locality. This approach predicts that object relatives with a full DP head and an embedded pronominal subject are easier than object relatives in which both the head noun and the embedded subject are full DPs. This prediction is shared by other accounts formulated to explain processing mechanisms. We conducted a visual-world study designed to test the off-line comprehension and on-line processing of object relatives in German-speaking 5-year-olds. Children were tested on three types of object relatives, all having a full DP head noun and differing with respect to the type of nominal phrase that appeared in the embedded subject position: another full DP, a 1st- or a 3rd-person pronoun. Grammatical skills and memory capacity were also assessed in order to see whether and how they affect children's performance. Most accurately processed were object relatives with 1st-person pronoun, independently of children's language and memory skills. Performance on object relatives with two full DPs was overall more accurate than on object relatives with 3rd-person pronoun. In the former condition, children with stronger grammatical skills accurately processed the structure and their memory abilities determined how fast they were; in the latter condition, children only processed accurately the structure if they were strong both in their grammatical skills and in their memory capacity. The results are discussed in the light of accounts that predict different pronoun effects like the ones we find, which depend on the referential properties of the pronouns. We then discuss which role language and memory abilities might have in processing object relatives with various embedded nominal phrases.},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Haendler2016,
  author    = {Haendler, Yair},
  title     = {Effects of embedded pronouns on relative clause processing},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-396883},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {xvi, 186},
  year      = {2016},
  abstract  = {Difficulties with object relative clauses (ORC), as compared to subject relative clauses (SR), are widely attested across different languages, both in adults and in children. This SR-ORC asymmetry is reduced, or even eliminated, when the embedded constituent in the ORC is a pronoun, rather than a lexical noun phrase. The studies included in this thesis were designed to explore under what circumstances the pronoun facilitation occurs; whether all pronouns have the same effect; whether SRs are also affected by embedded pronouns; whether children perform like adults on such structures; and whether performance is related to cognitive abilities such as memory or grammatical knowledge. Several theoretical approaches that explain the pronoun facilitation in relative clauses are evaluated. The experimental data have been collected in three languages-German, Italian and Hebrew-stemming from both children and adults. In the German study (Chapter 2), ORCs with embedded 1st- or 3rd-person pronouns are compared to ORCs with an embedded lexical noun phrase. Eye-movement data from 5-year-old children show that the 1st-person pronoun facilitates processing, but not the 3rd-person pronoun. Moreover, children's performance is modulated by additive effects of their memory and grammatical skills. In the Italian study (Chapter 3), the 1st-person pronoun advantage over the 3rd-person pronoun is tested in ORCs and SRs that display a similar word order. Eye-movement data from 5-year-olds and adult controls and reading times data from adults are pitted against the outcome of a corpus analysis, showing that the 1st-/3rd-person pronoun asymmetry emerges in the two relative clause types to an equal extent. In the Hebrew study (Chapter 4), the goal is to test the effect of a special kind of pronoun-a non-referential arbitrary subject pronoun-on ORC comprehension, in the light of potential confounds in previous studies that used this pronoun. Data from a referent-identification task with 4- to 5-year-olds indicate that, when the experimental material is controlled, the non-referential pronoun does not necessarily facilitate ORC comprehension. Importantly, however, children have even more difficulties when the embedded constituent is a referential pronoun. The non-referentiality / referentiality asymmetry is emphasized by the relation between children's performance on the experimental task and their memory skills. Together, the data presented in this thesis indicate that sentence processing is not only driven by structural (or syntactic) factors, but also by discourse-related ones, like pronouns' referential properties or their discourse accessibility mechanism, which is defined as the level of ease or difficulty with which referents of pronouns are identified and retrieved from the discourse model. Although independent in essence, these structural and discourse factors can in some cases interact in a way that affects sentence processing. Moreover, both types of factors appear to be strongly related to memory. The data also support the idea that, from early on, children are sensitive to the same factors that affect adults' sentence processing, and that the processing strategies of both populations are qualitatively similar. In sum, this thesis suggests that a comprehensive theory of human sentence processing needs to account for effects that are due to both structural and discourse-related factors, which operate as a function of memory capacity.},
  language  = {en}
}
@misc{Thomae2017,
  type      = {Master Thesis},
  author    = {Thom{\"a}, Jonas},
  title     = {Swearing in a public place},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-409521},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {81},
  year      = {2017},
  abstract  = {Die vorliegende Arbeit behandelt das Vorkommen von Schimpfw{\"o}rtern auf der online Plattform "Reddit". Die drei zugrundeliegenden Forschungsfragen sind: Wie oft werden Schimpfw{\"o}rter benutzt? Wie werden diese von den Lesern aufgenommen? Beeinflusst das Thema einer Konversation die Reaktion der Leser und die allgemeine H{\"a}ufigkeit der Nutzung? Die zugrundeliegenden Daten beinhalten fast 900 Millionen W{\"o}rter und stammen aus dem Februar 2017. Sie sind damit h{\"o}chstaktuell und repr{\"a}sentativ. Im Vergleich zu anderen Untersuchungen ist das Korpus damit wesentlich gr{\"o}ßer. Zus{\"a}tzlich werden im theoretischen Teil die linguistischen Grundlagen zu Schimpfw{\"o}rtern er{\"o}rtert. Dazu geh{\"o}ren u.a. Konzepte wie die H{\"o}flichkeitstheorie, das Thema Tabu und die dazugeh{\"o}renden Worte und Zensur. Dies wird getan um die Faktoren, die die Benutzung und Verwendung von Schimpfw{\"o}rtern beeinflussen darzulegen. Dabei wird herausgestellt, was Schimpfw{\"o}rter so besonders im Vergleich zu anderen Wortgruppen macht. Zudem werden weitere Forschungsergebnisse, die aus anderen Korpora stammen dargelegt und hinterher mit den Resultaten verglichen. Dies beinhaltet Korpora die sich ebenfalls aus Onlinekommunikationen zusammensetzen, sowie Korpora die gesprochene Sprache wiedergeben. Die Ergebnisse aus allen dargestellten Korpora behandeln Ergebnisse aus der englischen Sprache. Die Ergebnisse dieser Studie weisen daraufhin, dass die Schimpfw{\"o}rter auf Reddit ungef{\"a}hr gleichh{\"a}ufig wie auf anderen Plattformen benutzt werden. Die Reaktionen auf diese Schimpfw{\"o}rter ist {\"u}berdurchschnittlich positiv, was darauf schließen l{\"a}sst, dass die Benutzung von Schimpfw{\"o}rtern auf Reddit nicht als unh{\"o}flich aufgefasst wird. Zudem konnte ein Einfluss des Diskussionsthemas auf die H{\"a}ufigkeit und Rezeption von Schimpfw{\"o}rtern festgestellt werden.},
  language  = {en}
}
@misc{PaapeHemforthVasishth2018,
  author    = {Paape, Dario L. J. F. and Hemforth, Barbara and Vasishth, Shravan},
  title     = {Processing of ellipsis with garden-path antecedents in French and German},
  series = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe},
  journal   = {Postprints der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe},
  number    = {452},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-414062},
  pages     = {46},
  year      = {2018},
  abstract  = {In a self-paced reading study on German sluicing, Paape (Paape, 2016) found that reading times were shorter at the ellipsis site when the antecedent was a temporarily ambiguous garden-path structure. As a post-hoc explanation of this finding, Paape assumed that the antecedent's memory representation was reactivated during syntactic reanalysis, making it easier to retrieve. In two eye tracking experiments, we subjected the reactivation hypothesis to further empirical scrutiny. Experiment 1, carried out in French, showed no evidence in favor in the reactivation hypothesis. Instead, results for one out of the three types of garden-path sentences that were tested suggest that subjects sometimes failed to resolve the temporary ambiguity in the antecedent clause, and subsequently failed to resolve the ellipsis. The results of Experiment 2, a conceptual replication of Paape's (Paape, 2016) original study carried out in German, are compatible with the reactivation hypothesis, but leave open the possibility that the observed speedup for ambiguous antecedents may be due to occasional retrievals of an incorrect structure.},
  language  = {en}
}