Project B9

3rd Phase - Prosodic focus marking in language contact

The project investigates prosodic marking of information structure due to contact-induced change in selected contact varieties of Germany and South Africa. It starts out from the observation that the languages of the world differ with respect to whether and how new and given discourse information is marked prosodically. The varieties that are investigated are German as spoken by Turkish migrant youth, German as a second language (L2) of speakers with Turkish as a first language (L1), as well as Black South African English as L1 and L2. The project investigates which mechanisms are at play in the prosodic marking of information structure in these varieties: Transfer, as known from L2 research, or linguistic innovation.

A first research goal of the project is to describe prosodic marking of new and given discourse information in the contact varieties mentioned. A second goal is to compare the patterns with those observed in the reference varieties German, Turkish, English and Zulu/Sotho, and to categorize any differences with respect to the mechanisms of transfer and/or innovation. A third goal is to evaluate the findings in the frame of markedness theory.

The project carries out controlled experiments in both contact situations. It addresses the production, perception and interpretation of the phenomenon in order to elicit cross-linguistically comparable data. Through this, it aims at answering the research question of how language contact influences the prosodic marking of information structure.

Principal Investigators

  • Prof. Dr. Sabine Zerbian
  • Prof. Dr. Christoph Schroeder

Former Staff Members

  • Jane Kühn
  • Anne Zimmer-Stahl
  • Bruce Wileman

Student Assistants

  • Burak Dalkiliç
  • Svenja Schürmann

Activities

November 2014 Workshop Zimmer, A. & Sennema, A.: Access to prosodic information: Does linguistic background matter? Workshop: Linguistic and psycholinguistic studies in L2 Phonology. Universität Stuttgart.
October 2014 Talk Kühn, J.: Sentence level prosody in L1 and L2 German and the influence of L1 Turkish. Talk presented at MGK SFB 632 Phd Day 2014, Potsdam/Germany.
October 2014 Talk Kühn, J.: Prosodic encoding of IS and sentence type in L1 and L2 German and the influence of L1 Turkish. Talk presented at ZAS, Berlin/ Germany.
September 2014 Talk Kühn, J.: L2-Aquisition of Marked Prosodic Features. Talk presented at ICTL, University of Rouen/France.
September 2014 Talk Kühn, J.: L2-Aquisition of Complex Senetence Level Prosody. Talk presented at LAGB, Queens College Oxford/UK.
May 2014 Poster Zerbian, S., Kühn, J., Schroeder, C. & Schuermann, S.: Deaccentuation in the speech of Turkish learners of German as a Foreign language (GFL). Poster presented at Speech Prosody 7, Trinity CollegeDublin/Ireland.
May 2014 Poster Kühn, J.: Aspects of Prosodic Phrasing in Turkish. Poster presented at Speech Prosody 7, Trinity College Dublin/Ireland.
October 2013 Talk Kühn, J.: Towards Focus Typology in Turkish. Talk presented at 4th colloquium on Speech Prosody, Maceió/ Brazil.
September 2013 Talk Kühn, J.: Prosodic Focus and Question Marking in bilingual speech. Talk presented at BSBM 13, Pampeu Fabra Barcelona / Spain.
August 2013 Poster Zerbian, S., Kühn, J., Schroeder, C. & Schuermann, S.: Deaccentuation in the speech of Turkish learners of German as a Foreign language (GFL). Poster presented at EuroSLA 2013, Amsterdam.
August 2013 Talk Zerbian, S.: Focus prosody in languages in contact: the role of markedness. Invited talk at Interspeech Satellite Workshop on Phonetics, phonology and languages in contact. Paris.
June 2013 Talk Zerbian, S.: Focus prosody in read and semi-spontaneous speech in Black South African English. Invited talk at Workshop Ïnformation Structure in Spoken Language Corpora, Bielefeld.
March 2012 Poster Zimmer-Stahl, A.: F0 as cue to focus in the L2-perception of English. L2 Prosody-Workshop, Prifisgol University Bangor.
March 2012 Poster Kühn, J.: Focus Marking in Turkish German L2 Varieties. L2 Prosody-Workshop, Prifisgol University Bangor.
March 2012 Workshop Kühn, J. & Zimmer-Stahl, A.: L2 Prosody. L2 Prosody-Workshop, Prifisgol University Bangor.
March 2012 Poster Zimmer-Stahl, A.: F0 as cue to focus in the L2-perception of English. 35th GLOW, Universität Potsdam.
March 2012 Poster Kühn, J.: Prosodic Focus Marking in Turkish German L2 Varieties. 35th GLOW, Universität Potsdam.
March 2012 Workshop Zerbian, S. & Kuegler, F.: Production and perception of prosodically encoded information structure. Organization Workshop, 35th GLOW, Universität Potsdam.
January 2012 Talk Zerbian, S. & Kuegler, F.: Sequences of High Tones across word boundaries: Downstep and phrasing in Sotho-Tswana. Talk presented at OCP 9, Berlin.
August 2011 Talk Zerbian, S.: Intensity in narrow focus across varieties of South African English. International Congress of Phonetic Science (ICPhS), Hong Kong.
June 2011 Talk Zerbian, S.: Subject/object-asymmetry in varieties of South African English. English Language and Linguistics Joint Annual Conference 2011, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa.
October 2010 Talk Zerbian, S.: Intonational focus marking in Black South African English. International Conference on Multilingual Individuals and Multilingual Societies, Universität Hamburg.
October 2010 Talk Zerbian, S.: Markedness in the prosody of information structure. 6th International Contrastive Linguistics Conference, Freie Universität Berlin.
May 2010 Talk Zerbian, S.: Prosodic transfer in Black South African English. Speech Prosody 2010, Chicago.