Phonology

Scientific profile

• Prosody, tone and intonation
• Multimodal communication and gesture-prosody integration
• Intonation and information structure
• Intonation and sentence mode
• Prosodic typology
• Prosodic phrasing and recursivity
• Experimental phonology

Contact

Room: IG 4.315
Telefon: 069 / 798-32217
E-Mail: kuegler AT em.uni-frankfurt.de

Secretary

Scheinabholung: Mi, 10:00 – 12:00 Contact: Birgit Nutz, nutz AT lingua.uni-frankfurt.de

Teaching

Current courses in Phonology and beyond can be found in the LSF of the University. We’re looking forward to seeing you!

Research

Current news and information

• June 2025: Frank Kügler & Pilar Prieto, Organization of a Workshop Multimodal marking of information and discourse structure at the 6th Phonetics and Phonology in Europe (PaPE 2025), Palma, Spain
• June 2025: Joint talk with Samaneh Darighgoftar, and Gerrit Kentner at Workshop Prosody in Languages of the Middle East at PaPE 2025, Palma, Spain
• June 25: Alina Gregori & Paula G. Sánchez-Ramón, joint talk with Pilar Prieto & Frank Kügler at the Workshop “Multimodal marking of information and discourse structure” at PaPE 2025 in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. Title: The expression of focus types through multimodal prominence in Catalan and German
• June 2025: Paula Sánchez-Ramón, joint talk with Frank Kügler and Pilar Prieto at PaPE 2025, Palma, Spain, The acoustic realization of focus types in the Catalan language: a case of prosodic mitigation in corrective focus
• Juli 2025: Corinna Langer, joint poster presentation with Dr. Tina Bögel The prosody of Hungarian complex noun phrases in focus – LFG 2025 Conference, Barcelona, Spain, 22-24 July 2025. 
• August 2025: Corinna Langer, joint talk with Prof. Dr. Frank Kügler, Prof. Dr. Anja Arnhold and Dr. Nele Ots Prosodic expression of focus in Estonian, Finnish and Hungarian complex noun phrases – Congressus XIV Internationalis Fenno-Ugristarum – Symposium B.11: Prosody of Uralic languages, Tartu, Estonia, 18-23 August 2025. 
• February 26: Alina Gregori & Frank Kügler, together with Petra Wagner (Bielefeld University) – Organisation of a workshop at the Annual Meeting of the German Society of Linguistics 2026 in Trier: Visual patterns in the phonetics of gestures

Projects

• Current project: Frank Kügler, Frankfurt, und Pilar Prieto, Barcelona:
  Co-speech gestures and prosody as multimodal markers of information structure (MultIS)
  Part of the priority programme ViCom: Visual Communication. Theoretical, Empirical, and Applied Perspectives,  DFG Priority Programme 2329, Cornelia Ebert und Markus Steinbach.
• Approved project: New CRC funded by the DFG on Negation in Language and Beyond, including a project on the processing of prosody and negation (PIs: Frank Kügler und Markus Bader).

Laboratories

There are two laboratories associated with the chair of phonology:

• timetable perception lab
• timetable production lab

If you would like to use the laboratories, please contact Anna Pressler.

New Publications

• Gregori, Alina, Sánchez-Ramón, Paula G., Prieto, Pilar & Kügler, Frank (2025). The MultiFocus corpus: An audiovisual database for the elicitation of focus types and semi-spontaneous speech and gestures in Catalan and German. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/4M53Q
• Gregori, Alina, Sánchez-Ramón, Paula G., Prieto, Pilar, Kügler, Frank (2024) Prosodic and gestural marking of focus types in Catalan and German. In: Proc. Speech Prosody 2024, 891-895, doi: 10.21437/SpeechProsody.2024-180
• Pressler, Anna, Kügler, Frank, Kentner, Gerrit (2024) Length affects the positioning of French attributive adjectives – Evidence from perception and production. Proc. Proc. Speech Prosody 2024, 1195-1199, doi: 10.21437/SpeechProsody.2024-241
• Henlein, Alexander, Bauer, Anastasia, Bhattacharjee, Reetu, Cwiek, Alexandra, Gregori, Alina, Kügler, Frank, Lemanski, Jens, Lücking, Andy, Mehler, Alexander, Prieto, Pilar, Sánchez-Ramón, Paula G., Schepens, Job, Schulte-Rüther, Martin, Schweinberger, Stefan, & Eiff, Celina I. von (2024). An Outlook for AI Innovation in Multimodal Communication Rese-arch. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science (HCII 2024), Springer Cham (pp. 1–55)
• Féry, Caroline, Feldhausen, Ingo & Kügler, Frank (2024) An Introduction to the Special Issue “Syntax-Phonology Interface and Recursivity”. Languages 9(2), 48. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9020048
• Kügler, Frank (2024). Topicalization and prosodic phrasing in Akan. In Anke Himmelreich, Daniel Hole and Johannes Mursell (Eds.), To the left, to the right, and much in between: A Festschrift for Katharina Hartmann (pp. 241-257). Frankfurt: Goethe University Frankfurt. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/3FX4M
• Kügler, Frank & Alina Gregori. 2023. “Iconic Gestures in Focus – Synchronization of Prosody and Gestures in Prominence.” In: Skarnitzl, R. & Volín, J. (eds) Proceedings of 20th ICPhS 2023, Prague, Czech Republic August 2023. 4125-4129. Guarant International.
• Gregori, Alina, Federica Amici, Ingmar Brilmayer, Aleksandra Ćwiek, Lennart Fritzsche, Susanne Fuchs, Alexander Henlein, Oliver Herbort, Frank Kügler, Jens Lemanski, Katja Liebal, Andy Lücking, Alexander Mehler, Kim Tien Nguyen, Wim Pouw, Pilar Prieto, Patrick L. Rohrer, Paula G. Sánchez-Ramón, Martin Schulte-Rüther, Petra Schumacher, Stefan Schweinberger, Volker Struckmeier, Patrick C. Trettenbrein & Celina I. von Eiff. 2023. “A Roadmap for Technological Innovation in Multimodal Communication Research.” In: Duffy, V.G. (eds) Digital Human Modeling and Applications in Health, Safety, Ergonomics and Risk Management. HCII 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14029. 402-438. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35748-0_30.
• Langer, Corinna & Kügler, Frank. 2023. “Prosody-Syntax Interface and Hungarian Noun Phrases”. In: Skarnitzl, R. & Volín, J. (eds) Proceedings of 20th ICPhS 2023, Prague, Czech Republic August 2023. 1290-1294. Guarant International.
• Zerbian, Sabine & Kügler, Frank. 2023. “Sequences of high tones across word boundaries in Tswana”. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 53,2: 361-382. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025100321000141
• Asudeh, Ash, Bögel, Tina, and Daniel Siddiqi. 2023. “Modelling exponents”. In Proceedings of the LFG23 Conference. PubliKon, University of Konstanz.
• Zhang, Cong, Lai, Catherine, Napoleao de Souza, Ricardo, Turk, Alice, and Tina Bögel. 2023. “Language redundancy effects on F0: A preliminary controlled study”. In: Skarnitzl, R. & Volín, J. (eds) Proceedings of 20th ICPhS 2023, Prague, Czech Republic August 2023. Guarant International.
• Bögel, Tina, Hill, Romi, Hofenbitzer, Justin, and Tianyi Zhao. 2023. “The phonetics-phonology-syntax interface: A computational implementation”. In: Skarnitzl, R. & Volín, J. (eds) Proceedings of 20th ICPhS 2023, Prague, Czech Republic August 2023. Guarant International.
• Kentner, G., Franz, I., Knoop, C.A., & Menninghaus, W. 2023.”Prosodic boundary strength and phrase-initial syllable duration”. In: Skarnitzl, R. & Volín, J. (eds) Proceedings of 20th ICPhS 2023, Prague, Czech Republic August 2023. 1440-1443. Guarant International.
• Kentner, G. 2023. “Reduplication as expressive morphology in German”. In: Williams, J. (Ed.): Expressivity in European Languages. Cambridge University Press. 103-119.
• Kentner, G., Franz, I., Knoop, C.A., & Menninghaus, W. 2023. “The final lengthening of pre-boundary syllables turns into final shortening as boundary strength levels increase”. Journal of Phonetics, 97, 101225.

Older news and research output can be accessed here here

Retrospect

Several group members visited the ICPhS 2023 in Prague:

Former members

Beata Moskal
Dominik Thiele