Bettina Braun
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 3591941 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Bettina Braun |
| PRENOMES | Bettina |
| SOBRENOME | Braun |
| ASSINATURA | BRAUN B |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of Konstanz |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7696-3255 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 27 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 99 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 26 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2006 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 6 |
How Do Ukrainian Learners of German Process Lexical Stress? Evidence from Production and Perception
This study examines (a) the prosodic cues to stress and focus in Ukrainian speakers in their first language (L1 Ukrainian) and in a second language (L2 German), as compared to German speakers and (b) the influence of F0 during online word recognition in L2 German. Analyses of productions of trisyllabic target words differing in stress (Experiment 1) show that stressed vowels are consistently longer and produced with slightly higher intensity than…
Contextual Factors That Trigger Sarcasm
We examined the contextual factors that may trigger sarcasm in conversations between close friends and colleagues. Experiment 1 provided situations in which a close friend behaved in neutral or non-neutral (silly/annoying) manners. Sixty participants freely responded and rated the level of sarcasm of their responses and their communicative intent. These self-reported ratings were compared to ratings provided by 360 external observers in Experimen…
How cross–linguistic influence affects the use of duration in the production and perception of corrective and non–corrective focus types
Speakers use corrective focus as an explicit way to correct misunderstandings in communication. We investigate whether immersive contact with a rhythmically different language affects the production and perception of duration as a cue to corrective and non–corrective focus. We tested twenty-eight native speakers and sixty-four native listeners of Urdu, half of whom lived in Germany and used German as a second language, and half lived in Pakistan.…
Language as Infrastructure
Eingegangene Bücher
Three Kinds of Rising-Falling Contours in German wh-Questions
The intonational realization of utterances is generally characterized by regional as well as inter- and intra-speaker variability in f0. Category boundaries thus remain “fuzzy” and it is non-trivial how the (continuous) acoustic space maps onto (discrete) pitch accent categories. We focus on three types of rising-falling contours, which differ in the alignment of L(ow) and H(igh) tones with respect to the stressed syllable. Most of the intonation…
The prosodic marking of rhetorical questions in Standard Chinese
The present study investigates the prosody of information-seeking (ISQs) and rhetorical questions (RQs) in Standard Chinese, in polar and wh-questions. Like in other languages, ISQs and RQs in Standard Chinese can have the same surface structure, allowing for a direct prosodic comparison between illocution types (ISQ vs RQ). Since Standard Chinese has lexical tone, the use of f0 as a cue to illocution type may be restricted. We investigate the pr…
Aren’t Prosody and Syntax Marking Bias in Questions
As first observed by Ladd in 1981, English polar questions with high negation (e.g., Aren’t they adding a menu item?) can be used both to check the speaker’s belief that the proposition p is true (e.g., p = they are adding a menu item) and to check the addressee’s belief that p is not true (¬ p). We hypothesized that this ambiguity can be disambiguated prosodically. We further hypothesized that the prosodic disambiguation is absent in German, bec…
Sentence Prosody in a Second Language
This chapter provides an overview of (i) the intonational properties of second language (L2) speech above the word level, (ii) timing aspects, and (iii) the perception and processing of the target languages’ prosody by L2 learners. Intonationally, the chapter summarizes prosodic differences between different learner groups regarding prosodic marking of information structure (highlighting of new or contrastive information), illocution (questions o…
The Intonation of Information-Seeking and Rhetorical Questions in Icelandic
We investigate the intonation of information-seeking and rhetorical questions in Icelandic. The results for the information-seeking questions largely confirm observations in previous literature based mostly on introspective data: Polar questions are mostly realized with late rise nuclear accents where the peak aligns after a stressed syllable (L*+H), wh -questions with peak accents (H*); wh -questions often start high (%H, H*). Illocution types (…
Quantifying Sources of Variability in Infancy Research Using the Infant-Directed-Speech Preference
Psychological scientists have become increasingly concerned with issues related to methodology and replicability, and infancy researchers in particular face specific challenges related to replicability: For example, high-powered studies are difficult to conduct, testing conditions vary across labs, and different labs have access to different infant populations. Addressing these concerns, we report on a large-scale, multisite study aimed at (a) as…
The Prosody of Rhetorical and Information-Seeking Questions in German
This paper reports on the prosody of rhetorical questions (RQs) and information-seeking questions (ISQs) in German for two question types—polar questions and constituent questions (henceforth “ wh-questions”). The results are as follows: Phonologically, polar RQs were mainly realized with H-% (high plateau), while polar ISQs mostly ended in H-^H% (high-rise). Wh-RQs almost exclusively terminated in a low edge tone, whereas wh-ISQs allowed for mor…
When (not) to Look for Contrastive Alternatives
This study investigates how pitch accent type and additive particles affect the activation of contrastive alternatives. In Experiment 1, German listeners heard declarative utterances (e.g., The swimmer wanted to put on flippers) and saw four printed words displayed on screen: one that was a contrastive alternative to the subject noun (e.g., diver), one that was non-contrastively related (e.g., pool), the object (e.g., flippers), and an unrelated …
Alignment of f0 peak in different pitch accent types affects perception of metrical stress
In intonation languages, pitch accents are associated with stressed syllables, therefore accentuation is a sufficient cue to the position of metrical stress in perception. This paper investigates how stress perception in German is affected by different pitch accent types (with different f0 alignments). Experiment 1 showed more errors in stress identification when f0 peaks and stressed syllables were not aligned – despite phonological association …
The purpose shapes the vocative
The question of whether intonation contours directly signal meaning is an old one. We revisit this question using vocatives in Colombian Spanish (Bogotá). We recorded speakers' productions in three pragmatic conditions - greeting, confirmation-seeking, and reprimand - and compared proper names (vocatives) to situation-specific one-word utterances, such as¡Hola!'Hello' (non-vocatives). Intonational analyses showed no direct one-to-one corresponden…
The limits of metrical segmentation
We tested German nine-month-olds’ reliance on pitch and metrical stress for segmentation. In a headturn-preference paradigm, infants were familiarized with trisyllabic words (weak–strong–weak (WSW) stress pattern) in sentence-contexts. The words were presented in one of three naturally occurring intonation conditions: one in which high pitch was aligned with the stressed syllable and two misalignment conditions (with high pitch preceding vs. foll…
Prosodic and lexical marking of contrast in L2 Italian
We investigated the second language (L2) acquisition of pragmatic categories that are not as consistently and frequently encoded in the L2 than in the first language (L1). Experiment 1 showed that Italian speakers linguistically highlighted affirmative polarity contrast (e.g. The child ate the candies following after The child did not eat the candies) in 34.3% of the cases, by producing a nuclear pitch accent on the finite verb (i.e. verum focus …
Lexical encoding of L2 tones
Native language prosodic structure is known to modulate the processing of non-native suprasegmental information. It has been shown that native speakers of French, a language without lexical stress, have difficulties storing non-native stress contrasts. We investigated whether the ability to store lexical tone (as in Mandarin Chinese) also depends on the first language (L1) prosodic structure and, if so, how. We tested participants from a stress l…
When contrasting polarity, the Dutch use particles, Germans intonation
Use of Competition Elisa for Monitoring of West Nile Virus Infections in Horses in Germany
West Nile virus (WNV) is a mosquito-borne viral pathogen of global importance and is considered to be the most widespread flavivirus in the World. Horses, as dead-end hosts, can be infected by bridge mosquito vectors and undergo either subclinical infections or develop severe neurological diseases. The aim of this study was to detect WNV specific antibodies in horses in Germany as an indicator for an endemic circulation of WNV. Sera from more tha…
Intonational Means to Mark Verum Focus in German and French
German and French differ in a number of aspects. Regarding the prosody-pragmatics interface, German is said to have a direct focus-to-accent mapping, which is largely absent in French – owing to strong structural constraints. We used a semi-spontaneous dialogue setting to investigate the intonational marking of Verum Focus, a focus on the polarity of an utterance in the two languages (e.g. the child IS tearing the banknote as an opposite claim to…
Die Begegnung mit Fremden und das Geschichtsbewusstsein
moralisches Bewusstsein 13 . Geschichtsbewusstsein ist, so Pandels Schlussfolgerung, nicht nur eine formale Orientierung in der historischen Zeit, sondern eine sozial-politische Orientierung ber sich wandelnde gesellschaftliche Verhltnisse 14 . Das Geschichtsbewusstsein ist auf die Lebenswelt bezogen und in ihr begrndet. Auch dies legt seine Vernderung durch die Begegnung mit Fremden, durch Fremdheitserfahrungen nahe. In der Begegnung mit Fremden…
Asymmetries in the perception of non-native consonantal and vocalic length contrasts
How well can non-native length contrasts for vowels and for consonants be perceived and is one type more difficult than the other? Three listener groups (native Italian and German as well as advanced German learners of Italian) performed a speeded same–different task involving vocalic and consonantal length contrasts as well as segmental contrasts as controls. Phonologically, Italian, but not German, has a consonantal length contrast, while Germa…
Question or tone 2? How language experience and linguistic function guide pitch processing
Intonation of 'now' in resolving scope ambiguity in English and Dutch
Phonetics and Phonology of Thematic Contrast in German
It is acknowledged that contrast plays an important role in understanding discourse and information structure. While it is commonly assumed that contrast can be marked by intonation only, our understanding of the intonational realization of contrast is limited. For German there is mainly introspective evidence that the rising theme accent (or topic accent) is realized differently when signaling contrast than when not. In this article, the acousti…
Finding Referents in Time
In two eye-tracking experiments the role of contrastive pitch accents during the on-line determination of referents was examined. In both experiments, German listeners looked earlier at the picture of a referent belonging to a contrast pair ( red scissors , given purple scissors) when instructions to click on it carried a contrastive accent on the color adjective (L + H*) than when the adjective was not accented. In addition to this prosodic faci…
When contrasting polarity, the Dutch use particles, Germans intonation
Asymmetries in the perception of non-native consonantal and vocalic length contrasts
How well can non-native length contrasts for vowels and for consonants be perceived and is one type more difficult than the other? Three listener groups (native Italian and German as well as advanced German learners of Italian) performed a speeded same–different task involving vocalic and consonantal length contrasts as well as segmental contrasts as controls. Phonologically, Italian, but not German, has a consonantal length contrast, while Germa…
Alignment of f0 peak in different pitch accent types affects perception of metrical stress
In intonation languages, pitch accents are associated with stressed syllables, therefore accentuation is a sufficient cue to the position of metrical stress in perception. This paper investigates how stress perception in German is affected by different pitch accent types (with different f0 alignments). Experiment 1 showed more errors in stress identification when f0 peaks and stressed syllables were not aligned – despite phonological association …
Lexical encoding of L2 tones
Native language prosodic structure is known to modulate the processing of non-native suprasegmental information. It has been shown that native speakers of French, a language without lexical stress, have difficulties storing non-native stress contrasts. We investigated whether the ability to store lexical tone (as in Mandarin Chinese) also depends on the first language (L1) prosodic structure and, if so, how. We tested participants from a stress l…
The Prosody of Rhetorical and Information-Seeking Questions in German
This paper reports on the prosody of rhetorical questions (RQs) and information-seeking questions (ISQs) in German for two question types—polar questions and constituent questions (henceforth “ wh-questions”). The results are as follows: Phonologically, polar RQs were mainly realized with H-% (high plateau), while polar ISQs mostly ended in H-^H% (high-rise). Wh-RQs almost exclusively terminated in a low edge tone, whereas wh-ISQs allowed for mor…
Intonational Means to Mark Verum Focus in German and French
German and French differ in a number of aspects. Regarding the prosody-pragmatics interface, German is said to have a direct focus-to-accent mapping, which is largely absent in French – owing to strong structural constraints. We used a semi-spontaneous dialogue setting to investigate the intonational marking of Verum Focus, a focus on the polarity of an utterance in the two languages (e.g. the child IS tearing the banknote as an opposite claim to…
When (not) to Look for Contrastive Alternatives
This study investigates how pitch accent type and additive particles affect the activation of contrastive alternatives. In Experiment 1, German listeners heard declarative utterances (e.g., The swimmer wanted to put on flippers) and saw four printed words displayed on screen: one that was a contrastive alternative to the subject noun (e.g., diver), one that was non-contrastively related (e.g., pool), the object (e.g., flippers), and an unrelated …
Intonation of 'now' in resolving scope ambiguity in English and Dutch
The purpose shapes the vocative
The question of whether intonation contours directly signal meaning is an old one. We revisit this question using vocatives in Colombian Spanish (Bogotá). We recorded speakers' productions in three pragmatic conditions - greeting, confirmation-seeking, and reprimand - and compared proper names (vocatives) to situation-specific one-word utterances, such as¡Hola!'Hello' (non-vocatives). Intonational analyses showed no direct one-to-one corresponden…
Prosodic and lexical marking of contrast in L2 Italian
We investigated the second language (L2) acquisition of pragmatic categories that are not as consistently and frequently encoded in the L2 than in the first language (L1). Experiment 1 showed that Italian speakers linguistically highlighted affirmative polarity contrast (e.g. The child ate the candies following after The child did not eat the candies) in 34.3% of the cases, by producing a nuclear pitch accent on the finite verb (i.e. verum focus …
Question or tone 2? How language experience and linguistic function guide pitch processing
Aren’t Prosody and Syntax Marking Bias in Questions
As first observed by Ladd in 1981, English polar questions with high negation (e.g., Aren’t they adding a menu item?) can be used both to check the speaker’s belief that the proposition p is true (e.g., p = they are adding a menu item) and to check the addressee’s belief that p is not true (¬ p). We hypothesized that this ambiguity can be disambiguated prosodically. We further hypothesized that the prosodic disambiguation is absent in German, bec…
The prosodic marking of rhetorical questions in Standard Chinese
The present study investigates the prosody of information-seeking (ISQs) and rhetorical questions (RQs) in Standard Chinese, in polar and wh-questions. Like in other languages, ISQs and RQs in Standard Chinese can have the same surface structure, allowing for a direct prosodic comparison between illocution types (ISQ vs RQ). Since Standard Chinese has lexical tone, the use of f0 as a cue to illocution type may be restricted. We investigate the pr…
Finding Referents in Time
In two eye-tracking experiments the role of contrastive pitch accents during the on-line determination of referents was examined. In both experiments, German listeners looked earlier at the picture of a referent belonging to a contrast pair ( red scissors , given purple scissors) when instructions to click on it carried a contrastive accent on the color adjective (L + H*) than when the adjective was not accented. In addition to this prosodic faci…
Phonetics and Phonology of Thematic Contrast in German
It is acknowledged that contrast plays an important role in understanding discourse and information structure. While it is commonly assumed that contrast can be marked by intonation only, our understanding of the intonational realization of contrast is limited. For German there is mainly introspective evidence that the rising theme accent (or topic accent) is realized differently when signaling contrast than when not. In this article, the acousti…
Intonation of 'now' in resolving scope ambiguity in English and Dutch
Question or tone 2? How language experience and linguistic function guide pitch processing
Die Begegnung mit Fremden und das Geschichtsbewusstsein
moralisches Bewusstsein 13 . Geschichtsbewusstsein ist, so Pandels Schlussfolgerung, nicht nur eine formale Orientierung in der historischen Zeit, sondern eine sozial-politische Orientierung ber sich wandelnde gesellschaftliche Verhltnisse 14 . Das Geschichtsbewusstsein ist auf die Lebenswelt bezogen und in ihr begrndet. Auch dies legt seine Vernderung durch die Begegnung mit Fremden, durch Fremdheitserfahrungen nahe. In der Begegnung mit Fremden…
Asymmetries in the perception of non-native consonantal and vocalic length contrasts
How well can non-native length contrasts for vowels and for consonants be perceived and is one type more difficult than the other? Three listener groups (native Italian and German as well as advanced German learners of Italian) performed a speeded same–different task involving vocalic and consonantal length contrasts as well as segmental contrasts as controls. Phonologically, Italian, but not German, has a consonantal length contrast, while Germa…
Use of Competition Elisa for Monitoring of West Nile Virus Infections in Horses in Germany
West Nile virus (WNV) is a mosquito-borne viral pathogen of global importance and is considered to be the most widespread flavivirus in the World. Horses, as dead-end hosts, can be infected by bridge mosquito vectors and undergo either subclinical infections or develop severe neurological diseases. The aim of this study was to detect WNV specific antibodies in horses in Germany as an indicator for an endemic circulation of WNV. Sera from more tha…
Intonational Means to Mark Verum Focus in German and French
German and French differ in a number of aspects. Regarding the prosody-pragmatics interface, German is said to have a direct focus-to-accent mapping, which is largely absent in French – owing to strong structural constraints. We used a semi-spontaneous dialogue setting to investigate the intonational marking of Verum Focus, a focus on the polarity of an utterance in the two languages (e.g. the child IS tearing the banknote as an opposite claim to…
Lexical encoding of L2 tones
Native language prosodic structure is known to modulate the processing of non-native suprasegmental information. It has been shown that native speakers of French, a language without lexical stress, have difficulties storing non-native stress contrasts. We investigated whether the ability to store lexical tone (as in Mandarin Chinese) also depends on the first language (L1) prosodic structure and, if so, how. We tested participants from a stress l…
When contrasting polarity, the Dutch use particles, Germans intonation
Prosodic and lexical marking of contrast in L2 Italian
We investigated the second language (L2) acquisition of pragmatic categories that are not as consistently and frequently encoded in the L2 than in the first language (L1). Experiment 1 showed that Italian speakers linguistically highlighted affirmative polarity contrast (e.g. The child ate the candies following after The child did not eat the candies) in 34.3% of the cases, by producing a nuclear pitch accent on the finite verb (i.e. verum focus …
The limits of metrical segmentation
We tested German nine-month-olds’ reliance on pitch and metrical stress for segmentation. In a headturn-preference paradigm, infants were familiarized with trisyllabic words (weak–strong–weak (WSW) stress pattern) in sentence-contexts. The words were presented in one of three naturally occurring intonation conditions: one in which high pitch was aligned with the stressed syllable and two misalignment conditions (with high pitch preceding vs. foll…
The purpose shapes the vocative
The question of whether intonation contours directly signal meaning is an old one. We revisit this question using vocatives in Colombian Spanish (Bogotá). We recorded speakers' productions in three pragmatic conditions - greeting, confirmation-seeking, and reprimand - and compared proper names (vocatives) to situation-specific one-word utterances, such as¡Hola!'Hello' (non-vocatives). Intonational analyses showed no direct one-to-one corresponden…
The Prosody of Rhetorical and Information-Seeking Questions in German
This paper reports on the prosody of rhetorical questions (RQs) and information-seeking questions (ISQs) in German for two question types—polar questions and constituent questions (henceforth “ wh-questions”). The results are as follows: Phonologically, polar RQs were mainly realized with H-% (high plateau), while polar ISQs mostly ended in H-^H% (high-rise). Wh-RQs almost exclusively terminated in a low edge tone, whereas wh-ISQs allowed for mor…
When (not) to Look for Contrastive Alternatives
This study investigates how pitch accent type and additive particles affect the activation of contrastive alternatives. In Experiment 1, German listeners heard declarative utterances (e.g., The swimmer wanted to put on flippers) and saw four printed words displayed on screen: one that was a contrastive alternative to the subject noun (e.g., diver), one that was non-contrastively related (e.g., pool), the object (e.g., flippers), and an unrelated …
Alignment of f0 peak in different pitch accent types affects perception of metrical stress
In intonation languages, pitch accents are associated with stressed syllables, therefore accentuation is a sufficient cue to the position of metrical stress in perception. This paper investigates how stress perception in German is affected by different pitch accent types (with different f0 alignments). Experiment 1 showed more errors in stress identification when f0 peaks and stressed syllables were not aligned – despite phonological association …
Sentence Prosody in a Second Language
This chapter provides an overview of (i) the intonational properties of second language (L2) speech above the word level, (ii) timing aspects, and (iii) the perception and processing of the target languages’ prosody by L2 learners. Intonationally, the chapter summarizes prosodic differences between different learner groups regarding prosodic marking of information structure (highlighting of new or contrastive information), illocution (questions o…
The Intonation of Information-Seeking and Rhetorical Questions in Icelandic
We investigate the intonation of information-seeking and rhetorical questions in Icelandic. The results for the information-seeking questions largely confirm observations in previous literature based mostly on introspective data: Polar questions are mostly realized with late rise nuclear accents where the peak aligns after a stressed syllable (L*+H), wh -questions with peak accents (H*); wh -questions often start high (%H, H*). Illocution types (…
Quantifying Sources of Variability in Infancy Research Using the Infant-Directed-Speech Preference
Psychological scientists have become increasingly concerned with issues related to methodology and replicability, and infancy researchers in particular face specific challenges related to replicability: For example, high-powered studies are difficult to conduct, testing conditions vary across labs, and different labs have access to different infant populations. Addressing these concerns, we report on a large-scale, multisite study aimed at (a) as…
Aren’t Prosody and Syntax Marking Bias in Questions
As first observed by Ladd in 1981, English polar questions with high negation (e.g., Aren’t they adding a menu item?) can be used both to check the speaker’s belief that the proposition p is true (e.g., p = they are adding a menu item) and to check the addressee’s belief that p is not true (¬ p). We hypothesized that this ambiguity can be disambiguated prosodically. We further hypothesized that the prosodic disambiguation is absent in German, bec…
Three Kinds of Rising-Falling Contours in German wh-Questions
The intonational realization of utterances is generally characterized by regional as well as inter- and intra-speaker variability in f0. Category boundaries thus remain “fuzzy” and it is non-trivial how the (continuous) acoustic space maps onto (discrete) pitch accent categories. We focus on three types of rising-falling contours, which differ in the alignment of L(ow) and H(igh) tones with respect to the stressed syllable. Most of the intonation…
The prosodic marking of rhetorical questions in Standard Chinese
The present study investigates the prosody of information-seeking (ISQs) and rhetorical questions (RQs) in Standard Chinese, in polar and wh-questions. Like in other languages, ISQs and RQs in Standard Chinese can have the same surface structure, allowing for a direct prosodic comparison between illocution types (ISQ vs RQ). Since Standard Chinese has lexical tone, the use of f0 as a cue to illocution type may be restricted. We investigate the pr…
Language as Infrastructure
Eingegangene Bücher
How cross–linguistic influence affects the use of duration in the production and perception of corrective and non–corrective focus types
Speakers use corrective focus as an explicit way to correct misunderstandings in communication. We investigate whether immersive contact with a rhythmically different language affects the production and perception of duration as a cue to corrective and non–corrective focus. We tested twenty-eight native speakers and sixty-four native listeners of Urdu, half of whom lived in Germany and used German as a second language, and half lived in Pakistan.…
Phonetics and Phonology Research (21 obras) · Psychology (21 obras) · Linguistics (20 obras) · Computer Science (14 obras) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (14 obras) · Prosody (14 obras) · German (12 obras) · Pitch accent (12 obras) · Philosophy (11 obras) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (9 obras)