Talk by Marieke Einfeldt (University of Konstanz)

We are happy to announce a talk by Marieke Einfeldt (Konstanz) in the Phonology Colloquium. Room: IG 4.301 Date: November 06, 2024 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Title: "Differences of prenuclear accents and stops in the two varieties of Zurich German speakers: A within speaker comparison” Abstract: While research on the two languages of bilingual speakers has already received a lot of attention (see e.g., Chang, 2021 for an overview), research on the two varieties of bilectal speakers is still scarce (Kupisch et al., 2023). I will present findings from the analyses of two closely related Swiss German varieties (Zurich German and Swiss Standard German) spoken by the same speakers and compare them to a Standard German control group. We focused on segmental (VOT and closure duration) and prosodic (prenuclear accents) properties that have the potential to differ in the dialectal and in the standard realizations: Zurich German stops have been reported to differ based on closure duration, while Standard German stops are differentiated based on VOT (Ladd &...
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Talk by Laura McPherson (Dartmouth College & Universität zu Köln)

We are happy to announce a talk by Laura McPherson (Dartmouth College & Universität zu Köln) in the Phonology Colloquium. Room: IG 4.301. If you wish to participate virtually via Zoom, please contact Alina Gregori for the link.  Date: June 5, 2024 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct  Title: Spoken rhythms and drummed speech: Bidirectional iconicity at the crossroads of language and music Abstract: Language and music share many of the same raw ingredients, including pitch, rhythm, prosodic grouping, and timbre. This talk focuses on an underexplored aspect of the language-music connection: the iconic representation of one modality using the other, through onomatopoeia (music encoded as speech) and musical surrogate languages (speech encoded as music). In particular, I focus on drums to probe the bidirectional nature of this iconicity, what differences exist in the two directions of encoding, and what this tells us about the language and music faculties. All languages are capable of encoding percussive sounds through onomatopoeia, but certain linguistic and musical traditions...
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Talk by Katharina Zahner-Ritter (Trier University)

We are happy to announce a talk by Katharina Zahner-Ritter (Trier University) in the Phonology Colloquium. Room: IG 4.301 Date: January 31, 2024 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Title: Accounting for the dynamics in the L2 acquisition of intonation: Cross-linguistic influence, proficiency, and individual variation Abstract: Learning a foreign language (L2) is a challenge for learners, especially when it comes to intonation and timing. Even advanced learners have been shown to differ from native (L1) speakers with respect to pitch accent placement or pitch accent type. Comparatively fewer studies have focused on the fine phonetic detail of intonational patterns in the L2, e.g., alignment, scaling, or the shape of contour. In the talk, I will present data from different experiments that focus on the dynamics in the L2 acquisition of fine phonetic detail. One study targets the acquisition of tonal alignment configurations in L2 German, testing learners of tone- and non-tone languages in an imitation paradigm. Another study concentrates on the...
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Talk by Candy Adusei (Stuttgart University)

We are happy to announce the next talk in the Phonology Colloquium by Candy Adusei (Stuttgart University) on "Relative Clause Attachment and Prosodic Phrasing in Akan Twi and English" on Wednesday, 10.01.2024, from 16-18 ct. Abstract: Ample research has been conducted on the intricacies of attachment preferences which are caused by ambiguity when the head noun of the relative clause to which it is attached is complex, exemplified in the sentence: The servant of the actress who shot the man is here. This has given rise to the high attachment (where the parser attaches the relative clause to the initial noun, ‘the servant’), versus the low attachment (where the relative clause is attached to the most recent noun, the actress’) debate. Different languages have been shown to prefer different attachments for various reasons. One of such theories which attempt to account for this variation is Fodor (2002)’s Implicit Prosody Hypothesis, which explains that attachment resolution is affected by the default prosodic phrasing...
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Talk by Bernd Möbius (Saarland University, Saarbrücken) in the Phonology Colloqium

We are happy to announce a talk by Bernd Möbius in the Phonology Colloqium on Wednesday, 13.12.2023, 16-18 ct. in IG 4.301. Title: Information Density and Phonetic Variation. Abstract: In this talk I will take an information-theoretic perspective on speech production and perception. I will explore the relation between information density and phonetic encoding and decoding. Information density of a linguistic unit is defined in terms of surprisal (the unit's negative log probability in a given context). The main hypothesis underlying our experimental and modeling work is that speakers modulate details of the phonetic encoding in the service of maintaining a balance of the complementary relation between information density and phonetic encoding. To test this hypothesis we analyzed the effects of surprisal on phonetic encoding, in particular on dynamic vowel formant trajectories, stop consonant voicing, syllable duration, and vowel space size, while controlling for several basic factors related to the prosodic structure, viz. lexical stress and major prosodic boundaries, in the statistical...
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