A06 - Interaction of segmental and suprasegmental prominence-lending features in non-assertive speech acts
The project studies the influence of the speech act type on code prominence relations in spoken utterances. We focus on two parameters of linguistic code that still require close scrutiny for a full understanding of prominence relations in speech – voice quality and pre- and post-aspiration – and study how they interact with prosodic prominence-related cues (especially pitch) in exclamations and questions. We do this in a cross-linguistic comparison (German, Dutch, Icelandic), studying both native speakers as well as second-language learners, to explore the variation between populations and speakers as well as transfer between linguistic systems.
Team
Prof. Dr. Sophie Repp
Project Leader A06 and C10
Deputy Spokesperson of the CRCOffice: Philosophikum, room 2.119
E-Mail: sophie.repp(at)uni-koeln.de
Phone: (+49) 221 470-5235
PD. Dr. Christiane Ulbrich
Project Leader A06
Office: Philosophikum, room 2.118E-Mail: culbrich(at)uni-koeln.de
Phone: (+49) 221 470-5236
Dr. Heiko Seeliger
Associated Researcher A06 and C10
Office: SFB, Luxemburger Str. 299, room 1.04E-Mail: heiko.seeliger(at)uni-koeln.de
Phone: (+49) 221 470-89911
Jörn Krantz
Doctoral Student A06
Office: SFB, Luxemburger Str. 299, room 1.05E-Mail: jkrantz(at)uni-koeln.de
Phone: (+49) 221 470-89903
Student Assistants
Sara Baum | sbaum5(at)smail.uni-koeln.de
Johanna Bodin | jbodin(at)smail.uni-koeln.de
Sarah Schulz | repp-hilfskraefte(at)uni-koeln.de
Publications
To appear
- Seeliger, Heiko. To appear. The prosody of Swedish non-canonical questions. In Regine Eckardt, George Walkden & Nicole Dehé (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Non-Canonical Questions.
- Ulbrich, Christiane & Jörn Krantz. To appear. Comparison of L1 and L2 prosody and voice quality in three speech tasks. Journal of Connected Speech.
2026
- Ulbrich, Christiane, Jörn Krantz, Sophie Repp & Heiko Seeliger. 2026. Beyond F0: Voice-quality bundles as prominence cues in German. In Speech Prosody 2026. Philadelphia, PA. pdf
2025
- Çokal, Derya, Jason Bishop, Jacopo Torregrossa, Clare Patterson, Martine Grice, Simon Wehrle, Maria Lialiou, Sophie Repp, Heiko Seeliger, Sonja Eisenbeiss, Klaus von Heusinger, Kai Vogeley, Petra B Schumacher. 2025. Individual differences in discourse management. Frontiers in Communication 10.
- Repp, Sophie & Heiko Seeliger. 2025. Modal particle meets prosody: Speech act modification in declarative questions. In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Tone and Intonation (TAI). pdf
- Seeliger, Heiko & Constantijn Kaland. 2025. Perception compared to clustered intonation variation in German wh-questions. In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Tone and Intonation (TAI). pdf
2024
- Seeliger, Heiko & Sophie Repp. 2024. Givenness perception in declaratives vs. exclamatives. In Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2024, Leiden.
2023
- Repp, Sophie, Lara Muhtz & Johannes Heim. 2023. Alignment of beat gestures and prosodic prominence in German. In Proceedings of Interspeech 2023, 107–111. Dublin, Ireland.
- Repp, Sophie & Heiko Seeliger. 2023. Contrast and givenness in biased declarative questions. In Radek Skarnitzl & Jan Volín (eds.), Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 1543–1547. Prague, Czech Republic: Guarant International.
- Repp, Sophie & Heiko Seeliger. 2023. Reject?! On the prosody of non-acceptance. In Radek Skarnitzl & Jan Volín (eds.), Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 1355–1359. Prague, Czech Republic: Guarant International.
- Seeliger, Heiko, Anne Lützeler & Constantijn Kaland. 2023. The perception of German wh-phrase-final intonation. In Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Tone and Intonation, 10–14. pdf
- Seeliger, Heiko & Sophie Repp. 2023. Information-structural surprises? Contrast, givenness, and (the lack of) accent shift and deaccentuation in non-assertive speech acts. Journal of Laboratory Phonology 14(1), 1-46.
2022
- Seeliger, Heiko & Constantijn Kaland. 2022. Boundary tones in German wh-questions and wh-exclamatives - a cluster-based approach. In Proceedings Speech Prosody 2022, 27–31. Lisbon, Portugal. pdf
2021
- Repp, Sophie & Katharina Spalek. 2021. The role of alternatives in language. Frontiers in Communication 6:682009.
2020
- Repp, Sophie. 2020. The Prosody of Wh-exclamatives and Wh-questions in German: Speech act differences, information structure, and sex of speaker. Language and Speech 63(2). 306–361.
- Repp, Sophie & Heiko Seeliger. 2020. Prosodic prominence in polar questions and exclamatives. Frontiers in Communication 5:53.
- Seeliger, Heiko & Sophie Repp. 2020. Competing prominence requirements in verb-first exclamatives with contrastive and given information. Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Speech Prosody 2020 (online conference). Tokyo, Japan. pdf
2017
- Seeliger, Heiko & Sophie Repp. 2017. On the intonation of Swedish rejections and rejecting questions. Proceedings of Nordic Prosody XII, 135–146. Trondheim: Peter Lang. pdf