Simon Roessig

Cornell University | CU

Recent empirical studies have highlighted the large degree of analytic flexibility in data analysis which can lead to substantially different conclusions based on the same data set. Thus, researchers have expressed their concerns that these researcher degrees of freedom might facilitate bias and can lead to claims that do not stand the test of time...

Some studies on training effects of pronunciation instruction have claimed that the training of prosodic features has effects at the segmental level and that the training of segmental features has effects at the prosodic level, with greater effects reported when prosody is the main focus of training. This paper revisits this claim by looking at the...

The importance of pre-nuclear prominences for focus marking has been largely neglected. Recent studies however present first evidence that the prosody of the pre-nuclear region indicates its status as part of a broad focus or as pre-focal. This study presents a systematic investigation of the pre-nuclear domain and its relation to the nuclear accen...

Recent empirical studies have highlighted the large degree of analytic flexibility in data analysis which can lead to substantially different conclusions based on the same data set. Thus, researchers have expressed their concerns that these researcher degrees of freedom might facilitate bias and can lead to claims that do not stand the test of time...

A common goal of speech kinematic studies on dysarthric speech is the identification of the speech motor impairments that negatively impact speech function (e.g., precision, rate, intelligibility). However, to date, such research efforts are methodologically challenging. One major obstacle is the complex mapping between poorly defined (variable) a...

Modulations of F0 height and movement magnitude are used to mark focus and differentiate between focus types. Similar F0 changes have been described for loud speech. In this production study, we investigate the interplay of speaking style (habitual vs. loud speech) and focus type (broad vs. corrective focus) by analyzing characteristics of nuclear...

We conducted an interactive online production experiment on German in which participants were asked to read aloud stories for a fellow player who then had to sort picture cards corresponding to single sentences of the stories in the correct order. The target sentences contained two target words, an indirect object followed by a direct object, which...

Focus is known to be expressed by a wide range of phonetic cues but only a few studies have explicitly compared different phonetic variables within the same experiment. Therefore, we presented results from an analysis of 19 phonetic variables conducted on a data set of the German language that comprises the opposition of unaccented (background) vs....

Prosody has been described as being shaped by both discrete, categorical aspects as well as gradient, continuous phenomena. This book is concerned with the relation of these two sides of prosodic prominence. It reviews problems that arise from a strict separation of categorical and continuous representations in models of phonetics and phonology, an...

The present study investigates articulatory modulations of prosodic prominence. Therefore, tongue body kinematics of 27 German speakers are analysed using Electromagnetic Articulography. Our data show that tongue positions and partly also peak velocities are systematically modulated in order to increase prominence. When examining the vertical and h...

Speakers of intonation languages use bundles of cues to express prosodic prominence. This work contributes further evidence for the multi-dimensionality of prosodic prominence in German reporting articulatory (3D EMA) and acoustic recordings from 27 speakers. In particular, we show that speakers use specific categorical and continuous modifications...

Detailed modifications both in the laryngeal as well as in the supra-laryngeal domain have been shown to be used by speakers of German to express prosodic prominence. This paper aims to bring the two domains together in a joint analysis and modeling account. We report results on the prosodic marking of focus types from 27 speakers that were recorde...

The framework of dynamical systems offers powerful tools to understand the relation between stability and variability in human cognition in general and in speech in particular. In the current paper, we propose a dynamical systems approach to the description of German nuclear pitch accents in focus marking to account for both the categorical as well...

The framework of dynamic systems offers powerful tools to understand the relation between stability and variability in human cognition in general and in speech in particular. In the current paper, we propose a dynamic systems approach to the description of German nuclear pitch accents in focus marking to account for both the categorical as well as...

It has already been observed that there is no one-to-one mapping between intonational categories and the pragmatic functions they are used to express. For instance, in German a particular pitch accent (L+H∗) is often used to express contrastive (corrective) focus, but neither is the use of this pitch accent confined to this function nor is this the...

This paper presents newly developed guidelines for prosodic annotation of German as a consensus system agreed upon by German intonologists. The DIMA system is rooted in the framework of autosegmental-metrical phonology. One important goal of the consensus is to make exchanging data between groups easier since German intonation is currently annotate...

A perception experiment with native German listeners provided evidence for the relevance of the tonal onglide in nuclear accents - the pitch movement leading towards the target on the accented syllable. Listeners were able to distinguish between two pragmatic meanings of a short phrase (given/non-contrastive and new/contrastive) using the tonal ong...

Recent studies have shown that speakers systematically modulate properties of voiceless segments according to intonational context. More specifically, in the absence of fundamental frequency (F0), speakers appear to adjust the Center of Gravity (CoG) and the intensity of voiceless fricatives to convey the impression of pitch. In line with these fin...