Research Profile

 

Field of research

 Contents Cooperations Cross references
Articulatory modelling
How are the articulators (tongue tip, tongue back, lips and jaw) coordinated during speech production?
 
Articulatory phonetics and phonology are concerned with the characterization, analysis and modelling of spoken language. Its phonological base unit is the articulatory gesture. Phonological processes can be mapped to gestures and their coordination. In Cologne we place an emphasis on the interaction between prosody and articulation, for example by investigating the marking of prominence (focus, degrees of givenness), speech motor activity during syllable production and the synchronization of speech melody and text.
  • Haskins Labs
  • University of Southern California
  • intonation theory (coordination of articulation and accent)
  • information structure
Intonation theory
  • modelling of tone and intonation in autosegmental phonology
  • form and function of intonation (cross-linguistically)
  • intonation of German (GToBI)
  • intonation of Maltese and Maltese English

The term "intonation" generally refers to the melody of human speech. In a broader sense the term also includes accentuation, the the grouping of phrases into utterances, speech rhythm and speech rate. Another term for this broader definition is "prosody".
  • Uni Potsdam
  • Uni Malta
  • Uni Edinburgh
  
Information structure
In verbal communication a speaker structures or 'packages' the information he/she wants to communicate according to the listener's assumed state of knowledge. For example, the speaker encodes parts of an utterance as new or given or as important or unimportant. This is achieved primarily through morphosyntactic and prosodic means.
  • Germanistik Köln
  • Uni Mainz
  • Uni Stuttgart
  • intonation theory (expression of information by means of intonation)
  • language acquisition
Experimental phonology & phonological structures
Experimental phonology (also called laboratory phonology) is concerned with the empirical assessment of phonological issues. The emphasis here is placed on the connection between functional phonological hypothesis formulation and phonetic praxis. For example, the syllable and its constituents (onset, nucleus, coda) can be measured in terms of articulation (coordination of consonantal and vocalic gestures based on kinematic data) as a means of phonological representation.
  • Uni Bari
  • Haskins Labs
  • articulatory modelling
Lexical tones and intonation
  • interaction in Vietnamese
  • discourse structure

The complex tone system of Vietnamese is characterised not only by pitch (F0) and tonal register, but also by voice quality. It consists of six contour tones, two tonal registers, and the interaction of tone and laryngeal features (glottalisation, creaky voice and breathiness). In the context of a doctoral thesis the following questions are investigated:

  • Which prosodic means are employed in everyday telephone conversations in North Vietnamese?
  • What are the interactions between lexical tones and the intonation contours involved in conversational functions?
  • Are there cross-linguistic and intercultural differences in the use of prosody in, for example, Vietnamese and German conversations?
  • Uni Ottawa
  • ZAS Berlin
  • Institute of Linguistics, Hanoi
  • intonation theory
Language acquisition
In the context of a doctoral thesis the question investigated is how children learn intonation and whether they use intonation during language acquisition. Data from production and perception experiments conducted with children between 20 months and 5 years of age is being evaluated. For example, one of the questions of interest is whether a child interprets a sentence like "There's an ELEPHANT!" in such a way that "elephant" is new and not given. That is: does the child understand that the accentuation refers to something which has not been mentioned before? And, for example, does a child make use of the prosodic marking (of newness) and the newness of the referent to interrelate the referent with the lexical item?
  • information structure
  • speech motor activity
Speech motor activity
Articulation requires the quick and precisely timed employment of over a hundred different muscles. A wide bi-hemispherical network of motor and sensory cerebral areas controls speech production seemingly effortlessly. But we become aware of the complexity of the process when we learn a new language or when articulation is impaired by a neurological disease (dysarthria).
 
In this project the learning process of new combinations of speech sounds is recorded with articulatory and acoustic methods and functional magnet resonance tomography (fMRT). The changes in cerebral activity within the neural speech network during learning are registered by fMRT and correlated with phonetically observed learning progress. The examination of a long and intensive training period allows for comparison of different learning phases. In particular, we investigate the acquisition of word-initial voiced consonant clusters by German speakers. These present native speakers of German with sequences of laryngeal and oral gestures which are difficult for them to learn.
 
The results of these investigations are meant to contribute to the development of a more efficient therapy for dysarthria.
  • Uniklinik Köln
  • MPI Köln
  • language acquisition