Project Details
SFB 1252: Prominence in Language
Subject Area
Humanities
Social and Behavioural Sciences
Social and Behavioural Sciences
Term
since 2017
Website
Homepage
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 281511265
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. If we wish to understand which linguistic elements and structures are used in a given context and why, a fine-grained understanding of these cue interactions is key. Phases I and II of the CRC have brought substantial progress in this regard, focusing on cue interactions both within and across linguistic levels. Due to the complexity of the interactions, however, much of the research examined short monologic discourses. Overcoming this limitation, phase III will study language in more typical usage settings, e.g., in written genres comprising larger discourse segments and in everyday conversation (i.e. interactive communication). The research in phase III is guided by four main research questions. As in previous phases, Q1 focuses on the interaction of those prominence-related cues that must form an integral part of a comprehensive, prominence-based model of discourse and dialogue. In addition to the many cues studied in the earlier phases of the CRC, we will now examine multimodal cues such as gestures and speaker gaze on account of their importance for signaling prominence in oral communication. Q2 will address how different discourse layers/worlds impact prominence relations. Specifically, it will seek to shed light on prominence relations which transcend narrative layers in longer prose narratives and on those which unite different speaker perspectives in dialogue. It will also address fluctuating prominence relations across alternative (semantic) worlds. Q3 is dedicated to understanding prominence relations as an important means of discourse-structuring in larger texts and dialogues. Certain changes of prominence relations in discourse (i.e. resets) may signal boundaries between discourse segments or speaker turns. Q4 addresses the issue of individual- and population-specific variability, which impacts speaker perspectives and dialogic communication in general. This is a question carried forth from phases I and II, but which will be investigated with increased systematicity and scope, including, for instance, more clinical populations. The four questions will be addressed with a multi-method approach including diverse experimental methods, corpus analyses, computational modelling and field work. We plan to investigate spoken languages from eight language families (Afro-Asiatic, Austronesian, Indo-European, Japonic, Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan, Trans-New-Guinea, Turkic), German sign language DGS, as well as the output from Large Language Models (LLMs). The overall goal of phase III is to arrive at a comprehensive theoretical model of the role of prominence in language.
DFG Programme
Collaborative Research Centres
International Connection
France
Current projects
- A01 - Intonation and attention orienting: Neurophysiological and behavioural correlates (Project Heads Grice, Martine ; Schumacher, Petra )
- A02 - Individual behaviour in encoding and decoding prosodic prominence (Project Heads Grice, Martine ; Vogeley, Kai )
- A04 - Dynamic modelling of prosodic prominence (Project Head Mücke, Doris )
- A06 - Interaction of segmental and suprasegmental prominence-lending features in non-assertive speech acts (Project Heads Repp, Sophie ; Ulbrich, Christiane )
- A07 - Metrical prominence - Scales and structures (Project Head Baumann, Stefan )
- B02 - Beyond split case marking: Participant coding strategies in East African languages (Project Heads Hellwig, Ph.D., Birgit ; Mitchell, Alice )
- B04 - Interaction of nominal and verbal features for Differential Object Marking (Project Heads Caro Reina, Javier ; García García, Marco ; von Heusinger, Klaus )
- B05 - Prominence-related structures in Austronesian symmetrical voice and Papuan languages (Project Heads Himmelmann, Nikolaus ; Riesberg, Sonja )
- B06 - Attention and prominence in language production and acquisition (Project Heads Penke, Martina ; Verlage, Ph.D., Sarah )
- B08 - Differential Object Marking in the Nuristani Languages (Project Head Hill, Eugen )
- B09 - Prominence in action: The competition for argument-marking in German Sign Language (DGS) (Project Head Perniss, Pamela )
- B10 - The role of gender in prominence hierarchies: A cross-linguistic and cross-register perspective (Project Heads Le Foll, Elen ; Hinterwimmer, Stefan )
- C02 - Temporality and modalization in discourse structure (Project Heads Becker, Martin Gunter ; Egetenmeyer, Jakob )
- C03 - Reference management in bilingual narratives (Project Heads Bongartz, Christiane ; Torregrossa, Jacopo )
- C04 - Conceptual and referential activation in discourse (Project Head von Heusinger, Klaus )
- C07 - Forward and backward functions of discourse anaphora (Project Heads Brilmayer, Ingmar ; Schumacher, Petra )
- C09 - Prominence and predictive modelling (Project Heads Grice, Martine ; Himmelmann, Nikolaus ; Schumacher, Petra )
- C10 - Propositional anaphora in negative polar contexts (Project Heads Hinterwimmer, Stefan ; Repp, Sophie )
- C11 - Prominence in Large Language Models (Project Head Reiter, Nils )
- S - Data, design and sustainability (Project Head Reiter, Nils )
- T01 - Digital biomarkers for speech changes in Parkinson`s disease (Project Heads Barbe, Michael ; Mücke, Doris )
- Z01 - Central Services (Project Heads von Heusinger, Klaus ; Schumacher, Petra )
Completed projects
- A03 - Prosodic prominence in cross-linguistic perspective (Project Head Himmelmann, Nikolaus )
- A05 - Prominence marking and language contact in Spanish (Project Head Uth, Melanie )
- B01 - Prominence phenomena in Slavic languages (Project Head Buncic, Daniel )
- B03 - Agent prominence and the diachrony of predication in Indo-Aryan (Project Heads Dimmendaal, Gerrit J. ; Reinöhl, Uta )
- B07 - Agentivity as a key to prominence: Experimental approaches to argument alternations in German (Project Heads Philipp, Markus ; Primus, Beatrice )
- C01 - Prominence and information structure (Project Head Adli, Aria )
- C05 - Discourse referents as perspectival centres (Project Head Hinterwimmer, Stefan )
- C06 - Prominence in subordinating rhetorical relations (Project Head Jasinskaja, Katja )
- INF - Data, design and sustainability (Project Heads Himmelmann, Nikolaus ; Reiter, Nils )
- Ö - Ö Project (Project Heads Adli, Aria ; von Heusinger, Klaus )
Applicant Institution
Universität zu Köln
Participating University
Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main; Universität Hamburg
Participating Institution
Languages et Civilisations á Tradition Orale
UMR 7107 du CNRS
UMR 7107 du CNRS
Spokespersons
Professor Dr. Klaus von Heusinger, until 12/2021; Professorin Dr. Petra Schumacher, since 1/2022