(1) The activation of syntactic, semantic, and phonological features of words during lexical access in language production
The two-stage model of lexical access postulates that syntactic and semantic features of words and their corresponding phonological word forms are activated at two consecutive and distinct stages of processing. This assumption has previously been tested with regard to the activation of semantic and phonological word properties. We additionally investigate the time course of activation of syntactic features (word class and gender). Our findings do not support the two-stage model, but provide evidence for cascading models of lexical access.
funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG)
(2) Inflectional morphology in speech production
(with Dirk Janssen)
Studies in Dutch have suggested that speakers activate so called
inflectional frames which provide a structure into which stems and diacritic
features like number and tense are inserted (Janssen, 1999). We are testing
whether such frames exist in German which has a much richer morphology than
Dutch. Our experiments also aim at studying subtle questions regarding the processing
of German morphology in language production.
funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG)
(3) The processing of verbal and tonal stimuli
in working memory
It is generally assumed that working memory consists of different
modality-specific subsystems that are partially independent from each other.
We are interested in the question whether auditory-verbal and tonal stimuli
are processed in the same acoustic system or whether they are processed in two
different acoustic sub-systems. We also study whether musicians and non-musicians
differ in this respect.
funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG)
(4) The tritone paradox (with Diana Deutsch, San
Diego, USA)
To demonstrate the tritone paradox synthetically produced tones
are presented whose partials consist of octaves only. In this case it is extremely
difficult to decide whether the first or the second tone of a tritone interval
is higher in frequency. Diana Deutsch provided evidence that listeners' judgments
depend on their local linguistic dialect. We test this assumption on German
samples from Saxony, the Saarland, and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
(5) Predictive sentence processing in German (with Sandra
Muckel)
We investigate to what extent the human parsing system uses
prosodic and information-structural means to predict particular sentence constituents.
We focus on factors like the F0 declination at the end of the sentence, the
position of sentence accents, the marking of phrase boundaries, the definiteness
of determiners, and the use of focus particles.
funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG)
(6) The processing of grammatical gender in a first and second language (with Denisa Bordag)
Does the processing of gender in a second language interfere with the gender of a noun in the first language if they are incongruent? Is access to the gender of a noun in one of the two languages facilitated if it is congruent with the gender of the equivalent noun in the other language? Which factors correlate with the assignment of grammatical gender in different languages? These and related questions will mainly be studied by comparing German and Czech.
funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG)
(7) The processing of syntactic features of words during lexical access in speech production (with Merrill F. Garrett, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA)
We aim at studying the activation of word class information while speakers access their mental lexicon. On the one hand we study the time course of activation, i.e. the time at which word class information is activated relative to e.g. semantic information. On the other hand we plan to investigate the impact of the distinction between open and closed class words in speakers' lexical access.
funded by the National Science Foundation (USA) and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)
(8) Structural priming in German (with Sandra Pappert)
Structural priming refers to speakers' tendency to reuse linguistic structures they have just produced before. We experimentally try to disentangle what exactly is reused. Candidates are phrase structure building, thematic structure, lexical entries, case marking, or animacy.
funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG)