1. Bettina Braun Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics 01.06.2007 Effects of dialect and context on the realisation of German prenuclear accents

2. Related work: effect of dialect on accents Peters (1999): speakers from Hamburg placed f0 peak in nuclear high accents earlier than Berlin speakers (diff. 29ms or 79% vs. 57% of overall sylldur) Atterer&Ladd (2004): Southern German speakers align peaks in prenuclear accents later than Northern Germans (34 vs 21ms)  no functional manipulation!

3. General research question What happens when speakers from different dialectal backgrounds produce different functional categories? Hyp 1: Dialectal differences (i.e. in alignment) persist when producing different categories Hyp 2: Dialectal differences collaps when producing different functional categories since functional demand is stronger c nc c

4. Related work: contrast in German Sentences with a double contrast thematic (prenuclear) accents have later and higher peaks (Braun, 2006) Peter wants a green bicycle and Johanna a blue one. Theme Rheme What do the twins want for Christmas?

5. Braun (2006) Pairwise comparison of sentences produced in contrastive and non-contrastive paragraphs Short sentences with preverbal PPs or NPs (i.e. Italiener sind sehr gastfreundlich) Different numbers of pre and poststressed syllables Speakers from all over Germany Results: contrast affected phonetic realization of theme accents (later and higher peaks) but no different accent types! type of rheme accents (more falling accents (i.e. H+L*) than high ones (H*L-%)

6. Atterer&Ladd (2004) Speakers from Munich and a not further defined “Northern region” Long sentences with different syntactic structures (i.e. “Die Ernennung Meiers zum Minister wurde nicht von allen Parteimitgliedern begrüßt.”) Different numbers of prestressed and poststressed syllables Sentences read out of context from a list (possibly non-contrastive reading) Results: sign. later L alignment and tendency for later H alignment for Southern Germans

7. This study Highly controlled materials Only one syntactic structure (subject-verb-object) Only one rhythmic structure Participants Speakers from Munich (Southeast of Germany) and Münster (Northwest of Germany) Question-answer methodology to elicit standard German with a regional ‘touch’

8. Elicitation Non-contrastive theme accents: What did Johanna rent? – Johanna rented a car. Contrastive theme accents: Sam rented a truck. And Johanna?– Johanna rented a car. Non-corrective rheme accents: Who rented a car? – Johanna rented a car Corrective rheme accent: Martin rented a car? – Johanna rented a car

9. Specific research questions Do Northern and Southern Germans differ in choice of (theme and rheme) accent type when signalling contrast? Do Southerners align all thematic rises later than Northerners, irrespective of context? Is there an effect of dialect on the use of f0-excursion when expressing contrast?

10. Materials 10 triysyllabic proper names with stress on second syllable Five with long stressed vowel, i.e. Marina, Ramona… Five with short stressed vowel (and ambisyllabic consonant), i.e. Johanna, Camilla, … combined with 10 different verb phrases with a comparable grammatical and rhythmic structure (i.e. knitted an apron) via a pseudo Latin square Questions recorded by speakers from the respective areas, all with rising intonation

11. Participants 9 female speakers from a 50km range around the citiy of Münster (recorded at Psychology Institute of the University of Münster) 9 female speakers from the city of Munich (recorded at the Institute for Phonetics of the LMU Munich); one had to be excluded because her phonemes were not Southern German Naïve with respect to the purpose of the experiment

12. Procedure Participants heard context question by a speaker of their region and read sentence that was presented on a computer screen 10 filler sentences without context question 4 randomised lists; every subject read two lists (50 trials each) Only first list analyzed

13. Intonation Analysis Both thematic and rhematic pitch accents labelled following GToBI (Grice et al, 2005) 2 types of theme accents: L*H when stressed syll perceived as low, LH* when perceived as high 2 classes of rheme accents: falling accents high accents

14. Results: theme accent types No effect of contrast or dialect Highly speaker specific One Southern German bias for L*H 3 Northern and 3 Southern speakers bias for LH* 6 Northern and 4 Southern speakers no bias (Bias: one accent four times as often as other accent)

15. Results: theme accent types ct’d For 6 speakers without a bias towards a theme accent: in non-contrastive contexts, sign. more LH* than L*H accents χ2=6.9, df=1, p<0.01

16. Results: rheme accent types No effect of region Effect of contrast: in contrastive contexts sign. more falling than high rheme accents (replication of Braun (2006) with different elicitation technique) χ2=24.6, df=1, p<0.0001

17. Acoustic phonetic analysis: example

18. Dependent measures Alignment of the f0-minimum with respect to the start of the stressed syllable in ms: al(L,C0) Alignment of the f0-maximum with respect to the poststressed vowel in ms: al(H,V1) Rise-excursion in semitones

19. Analysis Univariate Anovas with fixed factors Region Contrast Vowel length Theme accent type Rheme accent type

20. L-alignment Main effects of contrast (for contrast 15ms later than for non-contrast) theme accent type (for L*H 51ms later than for LH*) ns

21. H-alignment Main effects of Region (for north 16ms later than for south) Contrast (for contrast 12ms later than for non-contrast) Vowel length (for short vowels 16ms later than for long vowels) Theme accent (for L*H 14ms later than for LH*) Rheme accent (for falling rheme accents 15ms later than for high rheme accent) Interaction Between contrast, rheme accent and region (p = 0.005)

22. H-alignment ct’d No effect of contrasteffect of contrast for N High rheme accent 37ms 27ms ***ns***

23. Rise-excursion Main effect of Contrast (for contrast 0.8st larger than for non- contrast) Theme accent (for LH* 0.7st larger than for LH*) Rheme accent (for falling rheme 1.3st larger than for high rheme) Interaction between region and contrast (p=0.016)

24. Rise-excursion ct’d Northerners use rise-excursion to mark contrast; Southerners don’t ** ns

25. Conclusion Contrast does not affect theme accent type Contrast affected the phonetic realisation of theme accents: Later L and H higher peak Contrast affected rheme accent type More falling than high rheme accents

26. Conclusion Double contrast is realised differently for theme and rheme accents: Phonological modification for rheme accents: (more falling than high rheme accents in contrastive contexts) Phonetic modification in theme accents (later and higher peak, larger rise)

27. Regional influences Atterer and Ladd’s findings of later peaks for Southerners replicated in one condition only (non-contrastive context, realized with a high rheme accent) Same condition as Atterer and Ladd Magnitude of H-alignment comparable to Atterer and Ladd

28. Regional differences ct’d Differences between Northern and Southern German speakers small No difference in accent types Difference in H-alignment and rise-excursion

29. Do dialectal differences persist? Northern Germans mark contrastiveness more than Southern Germans do For H-alignment dialectal differences become more pronounced in contrastive contexts For rise-excursion, dialectal differences disappear when producing contrast ns L-alignmentH-alignmentrise-excursion

30. Thank you for your attention