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Introducing our projects

Our Research

Research in the CRC Prominence in Language has demonstrated that many linguistic phenomena display a sensitivity to the prominence relations between linguistic forms and between their associated meanings. At all levels of language – from phonetics to discourse pragmatics – linguistic cues modulate and reflect prominence relations within a complex interplay of cue interactions. In phase III our research will focus on language in typical usage settings such as written genres comprising larger discourse segments and in everyday conversation, i.e. interactive communication. We will explore, inter alia, how different discourse layers or discourse worlds impact prominence relations, how prominence relations interact with transitions between discourse elements in larger discourse units and how they help signalling speaker turns. Regarding interactive communication, we will also study visual means like gesture or gaze and their role in the shaping of prominence relations. Another focus of our research is individual and population-specific variability, which is affects speaker perspective and dialogic communication in general.

 

Area A - Prosodic Prominence

Grice & Schumacher

Grice & Schumacher

Intonation and attention orienting: Neurophysiological and behavioural correlates
Grice & Vogeley

Grice & Vogeley

Individual behaviour in encoding and decoding prosodic prominence
Repp & Ulbrich

Repp & Ulbrich

Interaction of segmental and suprasegmental prominence-lending features in non-assertive speech acts
Mücke & Barbe

Mücke & Barbe

Digital biomarkers for speech changes in Parkinson`s disease

 

Area B - Prominence in morpho-syntax and semantics

Hellwig & Mitchell

Hellwig & Mitchell

Beyond split case marking: Participant coding strategies in East African languages
García García & Caro Reina

García García & Caro Reina

Interaction of nominal and verbal features for Differential Object Marking
Himmelmann & Riesberg

Himmelmann & Riesberg

Prominence-related structures in Austronesian symmetrical voice and Papuan languages
Perniss

Perniss

Prominence in action: referent representation in German Sign Language (DGS)
Le Foll & Hinterwimmer

Le Foll & Hinterwimmer

The role of gender in prominence hierarchies: A cross-linguistic and cross-register perspective

 

Area C - Prominence managing in discourse

Becker & Egetenmeyer

Becker & Egetenmeyer

Temporality and modalization in discourse structure
Schumacher & Brillmayer

Schumacher & Brillmayer

Forward and backward functions of discourse anaphora

 

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