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The relation between prosodic and referential structure


Workshop (AG 2) organized as part of the 40th Annual Conference of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS) to be held at the University of Stuttgart, Germany, March 7-9, 2018.

Organizers:
Stefan Baumann, Klaus von Heusinger
& Petra B. Schumacher; University of Cologne.


Invited Speakers:
Jennifer Arnold (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
Jennifer Cole (Northwestern University)

Aims and background:
Prosodic structure (of spoken language) contributes together with syntactic, morphological and lexical material to the referential structure of phrases, sentences and discourses. Research on prosodic and referential structure has mainly focused on the linguistic cues speakers use to mark the discourse status of a referring expression (cf. Arnold 2010). We would like to broaden this view to different levels of interaction between prosodic and referential structure and address the following questions: (i) Which aspects determine the prosodic setup of referring expressions? (ii) What is the influence of the prosodic structure on the semantics of sentences? (iii) To what extent do we rely on prosodic information to understand discourse structure?


Programme

 Mi., 07.03.2018

13:45-14:15

Stefan Baumann, Klaus von Heusinger & Petra Schumacher | Introduction

Introduction: Prosody and referential structure

14:15-15:15

Jennifer E. Arnold

Is prosody an intentional signal of information structure? (invited talk)

15:15-15:45

Markus Greif & Stavros Skopeteas

Discourse status, lexical mention, and prosodic plasticity

15:45-16:30

Kaffeepause / coffee break

17:00-18:00

Arndt Riester, Kerstin Eckart, Ina Rösiger, Antje Schweitzer, Katrin Schweitzer & Sabrina Stehwien | talk

Studying the prosodic properties of referring expressions in corpus resources: Obstacles and state of the art

  

Do., 08.03.2018

9:00-10:00

Jennifer Cole | talk

Intonational meaning and the representation of prenuclear melodies (invited talk)

10:00-10:30

Nicole Gotzner & Katharina Spalek

Speakers’ expectations about upcoming discourse referents: Effects of pitch accents and focus particles

10:30-11:15

Kaffeepause / coffee break

11:15-11:45

Alessandra Zappoli, Francesco Vespignani, Stefan Baumann, Martine Grice & Petra Schumacher

The processing of German Pitch Accents by Italian learners of German

11:45-12:15           

Gerard O’Grady | talk

Given and New: the interaction of prosody, word order and semantics

12:15-12:45

Malte Belz

Filler form and dialogue structure

12:45-13:45

Mittagspause / Lunch break

13:45-14:15

Marcel Schlechtweg & Holden Härtl | talk

Do we pronounce quotation marks? A comparison of referring and name-mentioning expressions

14:15-14:45

Gerrit Kentner & Michael Wagner | talk

Prosodic rendering of conflicting information structures

 

 Fr., 09.03.2018

11:45-12:15

Carola De Beer, Clara Huttenlauch, Sandra Hanne & Isabell Wartenburger

Inter- and Intra-individual Variability in Prosodic Cue Production

12:15-12:45

Swantje Tönnis | talk

Investigating the Distribution of Clefts in Written and Spoken German: The Role of Prosody

12:45-13:15

Andrea Pešková & Ingo Feldhausen | talk

Intonation and discourse status of Spanish subject pronoun yo (‘I’)

13:15-13:45

Jacopo Torregrossa & Maria Andreou

Er and der: their interpretation and phonology in child language

13:45-14:15

Utz Maas & Nabila Louriz

Prosodic structures in spontaneous (interactive) vs. canonical (edited) utterances. Examples from Moroccan Arabic