Refine
Year of publication
Document Type
- Article (10)
- Doctoral Thesis (6)
- Postprint (3)
- Monograph/Edited Volume (2)
- Part of a Book (1)
Language
- English (22)
Keywords
- prosody (22) (remove)
Institute
- Department Linguistik (22) (remove)
Pivots revisited
(2021)
The term "pivot" usually refers to two overlapping syntactic units such that the completion of the first unit simultaneously launches the second. In addition, pivots are generally said to be characterized by the smooth prosodic integration of their syntactic parts. This prosodic integration is typically achieved by prosodic-phonetic matching of the pivot components. As research on such turns in a range of languages has illustrated, speakers routinely deploy pivots so as to be able to continue past a point of possible turn completion, in the service of implementing some additional or revised action. This article seeks to build on, and complement, earlier research by exploring two issues in more detail as follows: (1) what exactly do pivotal turn extensions accomplish on the action dimension, and (2) what role does prosodic-phonetic packaging play in this? We will show that pivot constructions not only exhibit various degrees of prosodic-phonetic (non-)integration, i.e., differently strong cesuras, but that they can be ordered on a continuum, and that this cline maps onto the relationship of the actions accomplished by the components of the pivot construction. While tighter prosodic-phonetic integration, i.e., weak(er) cesuring, co-occurs with post-pivot actions whose relationship to that of the pre-pivot tends to be rather retrospective in character, looser prosodic-phonetic integration, i.e., strong(er) cesuring, is associated with a more prospective orientation of the post-pivot's action. These observations also raise more general questions with regard to the analysis of action.
Early sensitivity to prosodic phrase boundary cues: Behavioral evidence from German-learning infants
(2023)
This dissertation seeks to shed light on the relation of phrasal prosody and developmental speech perception in German-learning infants. Three independent empirical studies explore the role of acoustic correlates of major prosodic boundaries, specifically pitch change, final lengthening, and pause, in infant boundary perception. Moreover, it was examined whether the sensitivity to prosodic phrase boundary markings changes during the first year of life as a result of perceptual attunement to the ambient language (Aslin & Pisoni, 1980).
Using the headturn preference procedure six- and eight-month-old monolingual German-learning infants were tested on their discrimination of two different prosodic groupings of the same list of coordinated names either with or without an internal IPB after the second name, that is, [Moni und Lilli] [und Manu] or [Moni und Lilli und Manu]. The boundary marking was systematically varied with respect to single prosodic cues or specific cue combinations.
Results revealed that six- and eight-month-old German-learning infants successfully detect the internal prosodic boundary when it is signaled by all the three main boundary cues pitch change, final lengthening, and pause. For eight-, but not for six-month-olds, the combination of pitch change and final lengthening, without the occurrence of a pause, is sufficient. This mirrors an adult-like perception by eight-months (Holzgrefe-Lang et al., 2016). Six-month-olds detect a prosodic phrase boundary signaled by final lengthening and pause. The findings suggest a developmental change in German prosodic boundary cue perception from a strong reliance on the pause cue at six months to a differentiated sensitivity to the more subtle cues pitch change and final lengthening at eight months. Neither for six- nor for eight-month-olds the occurrence of pitch change or final lengthening as single cues is sufficient, similar to what has been observed for adult speakers of German (Holzgrefe-Lang et al., 2016).
The present dissertation provides new scientific knowledge on infants’ sensitivity to individual prosodic phrase boundary cues in the first year of life. Methodologically, the studies are pathbreaking since they used exactly the same stimulus materials – phonologically thoroughly controlled lists of names – that have also been used with adults (Holzgrefe-Lang et al., 2016) and with infants in a neurophysiological paradigm (Holzgrefe-Lang, Wellmann, Höhle, & Wartenburger, 2018), allowing for comparisons across age (six/ eight months and adults) and method (behavioral vs. neurophysiological methods). Moreover, materials are suited to be transferred to other languages allowing for a crosslinguistic comparison. Taken together with a study with similar French materials (van Ommen et al., 2020) the observed change in sensitivity in German-learning infants can be interpreted as a language-specific one, from an initial language-general processing mechanism that primarily focuses on the presence of pauses to a language-specific processing that takes into account prosodic properties available in the ambient language. The developmental pattern is discussed as an interplay of acoustic salience, prosodic typology (prosodic regularity) and cue reliability.
Language and music share many rhythmic properties, such as variations in intensity and duration leading to repeating patterns. Perception of rhythmic properties may rely on cognitive networks that are shared between the two domains. If so, then variability in speech rhythm perception may relate to individual differences in musicality. To examine this possibility, the present study focuses on rhythmic grouping, which is assumed to be guided by a domain-general principle, the Iambic/Trochaic law, stating that sounds alternating in intensity are grouped as strong-weak, and sounds alternating in duration are grouped as weak-strong. German listeners completed a grouping task: They heard streams of syllables alternating in intensity, duration, or neither, and had to indicate whether they perceived a strong-weak or weak-strong pattern. Moreover, their music perception abilities were measured, and they filled out a questionnaire reporting their productive musical experience. Results showed that better musical rhythm perception - ability was associated with more consistent rhythmic grouping of speech, while melody perception - ability and productive musical experience were not. This suggests shared cognitive procedures in the perception of rhythm in music and speech. Also, the results highlight the relevance of - considering individual differences in musicality when aiming to explain variability in prosody perception.
This study investigated Dutch-speaking four- to five-year-olds’ use of word order and prosody in distinguishing focus types (broad focus, narrow focus, and contrastive narrow focus) via an interactive answer-reconstruction game. We have found an overall preference for the unmarked word order SVO and no evidence for the use of OVS to distinguish focus types. But the children used pitch and duration in the subject-nouns to distinguish focus types in SVO sentences. These findings show that Dutch-speaking four- to five-year-olds differ from their German- and Finnish-speaking peers, who show evidence of varying choice of word order to mark specific focus types, and use prosody to distinguish focus types in subject and object nouns in both SVO and OVS sentences. These comparisons suggest that typological differences in the relative importance between word order and prosody can lead to differences in children’s use of word order and prosody in unmarked and marked word orders. A more equal role of word order and prosody in the ambient language can stimulate more extensive use of prosody in the marked word order, whereas a more limited role of word order can restrict the use of prosody in the unmarked word order.
There is evidence that infants start extracting words from fluent speech around 7.5 months of age (e.g., Jusczyk & Aslin, 1995) and that they use at least two mechanisms to segment words forms from fluent speech: prosodic information (e.g., Jusczyk, Cutler & Redanz, 1993) and statistical information (e.g., Saffran, Aslin & Newport, 1996). However, how these two mechanisms interact and whether they change during development is still not fully understood.
The main aim of the present work is to understand in what way different cues to word segmentation are exploited by infants when learning the language in their environment, as well as to explore whether this ability is related to later language skills. In Chapter 3 we pursued to determine the reliability of the method used in most of the experiments in the present thesis (the Headturn Preference Procedure), as well as to examine correlations and individual differences between infants’ performance and later language outcomes. In Chapter 4 we investigated how German-speaking adults weigh statistical and prosodic information for word segmentation. We familiarized adults with an auditory string in which statistical and prosodic information indicated different word boundaries and obtained both behavioral and pupillometry responses. Then, we conducted further experiments to understand in what way different cues to word segmentation are exploited by 9-month-old German-learning infants (Chapter 5) and by 6-month-old German-learning infants (Chapter 6). In addition, we conducted follow-up questionnaires with the infants and obtained language outcomes at later stages of development.
Our findings from this thesis revealed that (1) German-speaking adults show a strong weight of prosodic cues, at least for the materials used in this study and that (2) German-learning infants weight these two kind of cues differently depending on age and/or language experience. We observed that, unlike English-learning infants, 6-month-old infants relied more strongly on prosodic cues. Nine-month-olds do not show any preference for either of the cues in the word segmentation task. From the present results it remains unclear whether the ability to use prosodic cues to word segmentation relates to later language vocabulary. We speculate that prosody provides infants with their first window into the specific acoustic regularities in the signal, which enables them to master the specific stress pattern of German rapidly. Our findings are a step forwards in the understanding of an early impact of the native prosody compared to statistical learning in early word segmentation.
Rhythm perception is assumed to be guided by a domain-general auditory principle, the Iambic/Trochaic Law, stating that sounds varying in intensity are grouped as strong-weak, and sounds varying in duration are grouped as weak-strong. Recently, Bhatara et al. (2013) showed that rhythmic grouping is influenced by native language experience, French listeners having weaker grouping preferences than German listeners. This study explores whether L2 knowledge and musical experience also affect rhythmic grouping. In a grouping task, French late learners of German listened to sequences of coarticulated syllables varying in either intensity or duration. Data on their language and musical experience were obtained by a questionnaire. Mixed-effect model comparisons showed influences of musical experience as well as L2 input quality and quantity on grouping preferences. These results imply that adult French listeners' sensitivity to rhythm can be enhanced through L2 and musical experience.
An exploration of rhythmic grouping of speech sequences by french- and german-learning infants
(2016)
Rhythm in music and speech can be characterized by a constellation of several acoustic cues. Individually, these cues have different effects on rhythmic perception: sequences of sounds alternating in duration are perceived as short-long pairs (weak-strong/iambicpattern), whereas sequences of sounds alternating in intensity or pitch are perceived as loud-soft, or high-low pairs (strong-weak/trochaic pattern). This perceptual bias-called the lambic-Trochaic Law (ITL) has been claimed to be an universal property of the auditory system applying in both the music and the language domains. Recent studies have shown that language experience can modulate the effects of the ITL on rhythmic perception of both speech and non-speech sequences in adults, and of non-speech sequences in 7.5-month-old infants. The goal of the present study was to explore whether language experience also modulates infants' grouping of speech. To do so, we presented sequences of syllables to monolingual French- and German-learning 7.5-month-olds. Using the Headturn Preference Procedure (HPP), we examined whether they were able to perceive a rhythmic structure in sequences of syllables that alternated in duration, pitch, or intensity. Our findings show that both French- and German-learning infants perceived a rhythmic structure when it was cued by duration or pitch but not intensity. Our findings also show differences in how these infants use duration and pitch cues to group syllable sequences, suggesting that pitch cues were the easier ones to use. Moreover, performance did not differ across languages, failing to reveal early language effects on rhythmic perception. These results contribute to our understanding of the origin of rhythmic perception and perceptual mechanisms shared across music and speech, which may bootstrap language acquisition.
Prosody is a rich source of information that heavily supports spoken language comprehension. In particular, prosodic phrase boundaries divide the continuous speech stream into chunks reflecting the semantic and syntactic structure of an utterance. This chunking or prosodic phrasing plays a critical role in both spoken language processing and language acquisition. Aiming at a better understanding of the underlying processing mechanisms and their acquisition, the present work investigates factors that influence prosodic phrase boundary perception in adults and infants. Using the event-related potential (ERP) technique, three experimental studies examined the role of prosodic context (i.e., phrase length) in German phrase boundary perception and of the main prosodic boundary cues, namely pitch change, final lengthening, and pause. With regard to the boundary cues, the dissertation focused on the questions which cues or cue combination are essential for the perception of a prosodic boundary and on whether and how this cue weighting develops during infancy.
Using ERPs is advantageous because the technique captures the immediate impact of (linguistic) information during on-line processing. Moreover, as it can be applied independently of specific task demands or an overt response performance, it can be used with both infants and adults. ERPs are particularly suitable to study the time course and underlying mechanisms of boundary perception, because a specific ERP component, the Closure Positive Shift (CPS) is well established as neuro-physiological indicator of prosodic boundary perception in adults.
The results of the three experimental studies first underpin that the prosodic context plays an immediate role in the processing of prosodic boundary information. Moreover, the second study reveals that adult listeners perceive a prosodic boundary also on the basis of a sub-set of the boundary cues available in the speech signal. Both ERP and simultaneously collected behavioral data (i.e., prosodic judgements) suggest that the combination of pitch change and final lengthening triggers boundary perception; however, when presented as single cues, neither pitch change nor final lengthening were sufficient. Finally, testing six- and eight-month-old infants shows that the early sensitivity for prosodic information is reflected in a brain response resembling the adult CPS. For both age groups, brain responses to prosodic boundaries cued by pitch change and final lengthening revealed a positivity that can be interpreted as a CPS-like infant ERP component. In contrast, but comparable to the adults’ response pattern, pitch change as a single cue does not provoke an infant CPS. These results show that infant phrase boundary perception is not exclusively based on pause detection and hint at an early ability to exploit subtle, relational prosodic cues in speech perception.
This article presents data from three production experiments investigating the prosodic means of encoding information structure in Akan, a tone language that belongs to the Kwa branch of the Niger-Congo family, spoken in Ghana. Information structure was elicited via context questions that put target words either in wide, informational, or corrective focus, or in one of the experiments also in pre-focal or post-focal position rendering it as given. The prosodic parameters F0 and duration were measured on the target words. Duration is not consistently affected by information structure, but contrary to the prediction that High (H) and Low (L) tones are raised in ex situ (fronted) focus constructions we found a significantly lower realization of both H and L tones under corrective focus in ex situ and in situ focus constructions. Givenness does not seem to be marked prosodically. The data suggest that pragmatic prominence is expressed prosodically by means of a deviation from an unmarked prosodic structure. Results are thus contradicting the view of the effort code that predicts a positive correlation of more effort resulting in higher F0 targets.