Talk by Constantijn Kaland (Universität zu Köln)

by Tina Bögel Comment Closed
We are happy to announce a talk by Constantijn Kaland in the Phonology Colloquium. Room: IG 4.301 Date: December 3, 2024 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Title: "Categorizing productions of prosody and intonation" Abstract: In recent years, there is an increased interest in the application of cluster analysis in the analysis of f0 contours. Studies have used this technique to explore previously under-documented languages and to confirm and refine intonation theory of well-studied languages. Cluster analysis is useful, because it is able to group contours based on their numerical similarity, facilitating the analysis and interpretation of f0 variation. While the output of the clustering does not constitute intonational phonology, it is informative to our understanding of phonological categories. The R application 'Contour Clustering' primarily focuses on f0 contours, and recent updates also allow for the inclusion of other prosodic cues such as intensity and duration (https://constantijnkaland.github.io/contourclustering/). In this way, the methodological approach offers an effective way of scrutinizing prosodic variation of all kinds. It poses no limits to the type of data (spontaneous to...
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Talk by Laura McPherson (Dartmouth College & Universität zu Köln)

by Tina Bögel Comment Closed
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 Kathleen Jepson (LMU München): Encoding focus within noun phrases in a free word order language

by Tina Bögel Comment Closed
We are very happy to announce the next talk in the Phonology Colloquium by Kathleen Jepson (LMU München) on Wednesday, 29.11.2023, from 16-18 in IG 4.301. Abstract: Prosody often encodes focus and givenness at the utterance level. Within noun phrases (NPs), languages use phonological prosodic means such as accenting focused and new information, and deaccenting given information, as well as phonetic prosodic cues such as relative pitch height and alignment, and variation in intensity. Some languages, however, do not mark focus within NPs prosodically, or may have a number of other mechanisms to do the task such as syntactic movement or morphological markers. This talk is concerned with how focus and givenness are realised within NPs in Djambarrpuyŋu, an Australian Indigenous language. Like many Australian languages, Djambarrpuyŋu allows free word order at the utterance-level and within NPs, and additionally permits discontinuous nominal constituents in which the noun and modifiers occur distributed throughout the clause. In other Australian languages, the variability is found to be constrained by information structure both at the utterance...
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Talk by Lena Borise (Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics, Budapest)

by Tina Bögel Comment Closed
We are happy to announce the next talk in the Phonology Colloquium by Lena Borise (Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics, Budapest)! Title: A unified prosodic account of two types of preverbal foci Date: Wednesday, 08.02.2023 Time: 16-18 ct. Location: in person on campus IG 4.301 (if necessary, we will stream the talk via Zoom) If you are registered in Olat you'll find the Zoom link there. If you want to participate via Zoom, please register via email to Alina Gregori: gregori@lingua.uni-frankfurt.de Abstract: The preference or requirement for immediately preverbal focus placement, common especially in verb-final languages, has been shown to result from different syntactic configurations cross-linguistically. Some immediately preverbal foci are raised to a dedicated projection, accompanied by verb movement (e.g., in Hungarian; Bródy 1990; É. Kiss 1998), while other ones remain in situ, with any material intervening between the focus and the verb undergoing displacement (e.g., in Turkish; Şener 2010). We offer a unified account of the two types of preverbal foci, raised and in-situ ones, based...
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