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Prominence in Language

C07 - Forward and backward functions of discourse anaphora

This project investigates referential prominence in multimodal communication and draws particular attention to the use and processing of personal and demonstrative pronouns in German, both in written text and in spoken dialogue. Our research is driven by two main goals. First, we examine the impact of clause-mate referents on prominence management and how prominence profiles develop dynamically. Building on previous research, we seek to deepen our understanding of prominence as a relational notion and focus on referential relations arising from the immediate utterance, in addition to those derived from the broader discourse. This perspective allows us to explore how elements within the same clause can affect the interpretation of referential expressions, shedding light on the dynamic nature of prominence in real-time communication. Second, we examine how multimodal cues, such as pointing gestures and gaze direction, interact with prosodic features (such as accentuation) and discourse-level prominence markers (referential forms) during joint referent management in dyadic interaction. This research builds on the idea that gesture, accentuation, and demonstratives function in comparable ways, despite operating in distinct modalities (visual vs. auditory). Our primary focus is on the interaction between pointing gestures and prosodic cues with referential forms, but we also investigate the role of facial expressions and other manual gestures in supporting reference establishment and maintenance. In the project, we use gesture and gaze data, electrophysiological recordings and corpus analysis to develop a comprehensive model of how prominence is processed in real-time during referent identification in dyadic interactions.

See list of publications

Team

Prof. Dr. Petra Schumacher

Prof. Dr. Petra Schumacher

Speaker of the CRC, Project Leader A01, C07, C09 and Z

Office: Philosophikum, room 2.124 und SFB, Luxemburger Str. 299, Raum 1.09
E-Mail: petra.schumacher(at)uni-koeln.de
Phone: (+49) 221 470-2696 (Philosophikum) und -89900 (SFB)
Dr. Ingmar Brilmayer

Dr. Ingmar Brilmayer

Project Leader C07

Office: Philosophikum, room 2.120
E-Mail: ibrilmay(at)uni-koeln.de
Phone: (+49) 221 470-5201
Dr. Clare Patterson

Dr. Clare Patterson

Associated researcher in C07

Office: SFB, Luxemburger Str. 299, room 3.05
E-Mail: cpatters(at)uni-koeln.de
Phone: (+49) 221 470-89918
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Magdalena Repp

Magdalena Repp

Doctoral student C07

Office: SFB, Luxemburger Str. 299, room 3.05
E-Mail: mrepp1(at)uni-koeln.de
Phone: (+49) 221 470-89918
Robert Voigt

Robert Voigt

Research Assistant C07

Office: SFB, Luxemburger Str. 299, room 3.05
E-Mail: rvoigt4(at)uni-koeln.de
Phone: (+49) 221 470-89918
Anne Lützeler

Anne Lützeler

Student Assistant C07

Office: Philosophikum, room 2.125
E-Mail: anne.luetzeler(at)uni-koeln.de
Phone: (+49) 221 470-5391
Clarissa Selegrad

Clarissa Selegrad

Student Assistant C07

Office: Philosophikum, room 2.125
E-Mail: cselegr2(at)uni-koeln.de
Phone: (+49) 221 470-5391
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Publications

To appear

  • Patterson, Clare, Umesh Patil, Caterina Ventura, Maria Lialiou, Petra Schumacher & Stefan Hinterwimmer. To appear. Why register might be more important than modality for the choice of demonstrative pronouns. Linguistische Berichte.

2024

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