Contrastive topic constituents in German

Abstract

This article reports on a study investigating the intonational realization of context-changing and context-preserving contrastive topics in German. Results of the pilot study show that both kinds of topics can be marked by different pitch accents on the topic constituent, although speakerspecific differences emerge. When speakers do use different pitch accents, low rises (L*H) exclusively occur on contextchanging contrastive topics whereas simple rises ((L)H*) are frequently used for both types. The qualitative results are complemented by a fine-grained phonetic analysis using Functional Data Analysis. Together, the results provide empirical evidence from a carefully controlled study for the impressionistic descriptions found in the literature.

When (not) to Look for Contrastive Alternatives: The Role of Pitch Accent Type and Additive Particles

“…Furthermore, we will compare the processing of prenuclear L*+H accents in German, which have been found in contrastive topics. This comparison involves two kinds of prenuclear accents (contrastive (topic) vs. non-contrastive (neutral) rising accents), an intonational contrast that is hard to represent phonologically (Braun, 2004, 2005, 2006; Zellers & Post, 2009; Zerbian, Turco, Schauffler, Zellers, & Riester 2012). Another direction for future research is to study how listeners cope with variability in the marking of information-structural differences, such as variability due to differences in regional variation or speaker idiosyncrasies (Atterer & Ladd, 2004; Braun, 2007; Zerbian et al, 2012).…”

“…This comparison involves two kinds of prenuclear accents (contrastive (topic) vs. non-contrastive (neutral) rising accents), an intonational contrast that is hard to represent phonologically (Braun, 2004, 2005, 2006; Zellers & Post, 2009; Zerbian, Turco, Schauffler, Zellers, & Riester 2012). Another direction for future research is to study how listeners cope with variability in the marking of information-structural differences, such as variability due to differences in regional variation or speaker idiosyncrasies (Atterer & Ladd, 2004; Braun, 2007; Zerbian et al, 2012). Furthermore, it would be worthwhile to use this paradigm to investigate other kinds of focus-sensitive particles (exclusive “only” or inclusive “also,” as tested in Kim, Gunlogson, Tanenhaus, & Runneret, 2015 using the visual-world paradigm; Spalek et al, 2014 with memory tasks) to document the time-course of alternative activation and suppression.…”

Prosodic Convergence with Spoken Stimuli in Laboratory Data

“…The data analyzed in this study were collected as part of a larger project on the realization of Contrastive Topics (CTs) in firstand second-language speakers ( [18]). The current subset of data comprises recordings of 15 native speakers of Southern German producing utterances with three different CT types.…”

“…The current subset of data comprises recordings of 15 native speakers of Southern German producing utterances with three different CT types. The three conditions can be summarized as follows (for more detail, see [18], [19] • Context-preserving: Question requires a multi-part answer…”