|
Principal
investigators: |
Sabine
Arndt-Lappe & Ingo Plag |
|
Funding: |
Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft (Grants PL151/5-1, and PL 151/5-3) |
|
Funding periods: |
July 2005 –
December 2007; May 2008 – April 2010 |
It is generally assumed that compounds in English are
stressed on the left-hand member (e.g. bláckboard, wátchmaker). However, there
is a considerable amount of variation in stress assignment (e.g. apricot
crúmble, Penny Láne, Tory léader) that is unaccounted for in the literature.
In the first
phase of the project we tested three existing hypotheses against large amounts
of different kinds of data (from speech corpora, dictionaries and experiments).
The hypotheses tested make reference to argument structure, semantics and
analogy as predictors of compound stress. It turned out that, although making
correct predictions for parts of the data, none of the structural and semantic
mechanisms proposed in the literature works in a categorical fashion, and that
probabilistic and analogical models are more successful in their predictions
than traditional rule-based ones. These results were robust, no matter which
kinds of data we used for testing.
In the second
phase of the project we will investigate in more detail some underexplored
sources of stress variability of compounds, and we will implement new
exemplar-based computational models, testing novel hypotheses about compound
stress assignment that we developed on the basis of our previous results.
Furthermore, we extend our research to compounds with three constituents (e.g. seat belt law ), for which hardly any systematic
empirical studies are available.
Dealing with
the interface of phonology, morphology, semantics and syntax, the project will
also shed new light on the question of how linguistic knowledge is to be
represented in a descriptively and explanatorily adequate model of grammar and
lexicon.
|
Sabine
Arndt-Lappe |
(principal investigator, arndt-lappe at
anglistik.uni-siegen.de) |
|
Ingo
Plag |
(principal investigator, plag at
anglistik.uni-siegen.de) |
|
|
|
|
Maria
Braun |
(researcher,
braun at anglistik.uni-siegen.de) |
|
Kristina
Kösling |
(research
assistant, koesling at anglistik.uni-siegen.de) |
|
Gero
Kunter |
(Post-doctoral
researcher, kunter at anglistik.uni-siegen.de) |
|
Mareile
Schramm |
(research assistant,
schramm at anglistik.uni-siegen.de) |
|
|
|
|
Student
assistants |
Miriam
Fuehrer |
Ermert, Adina (2007) Semantische Transparenz
und Kompositabetonung im Englischen: eine experimentelle Studie.
Magisterarbeit, Universität Siegen.
Kösling, Kristina (2006) Zur Betonung
dreigliedriger Komposita im Englischen: Einige empirische Befunde. Magisterarbeit, Universität Siegen.
Kösling, Kristina, and Ingo Plag. 2009. Does
branching direction determine prominence assignment? An empirical investigation of triconstituent compounds in
English. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 5.2, 205-243.
Kunter, Gero (2009) Compound
stress in English. The phonetics and phonology of prosodic prominence. PhD dissertation, University of Siegen.
Kunter, Gero, & Ingo Plag (2007) What is compound stress? In Proceedings of
the 17th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, University of Saarbrücken,
6–10 August 2007, Saarbrücken: Universität Saarbrücken.
Lappe, Sabine, & Ingo Plag (2007) The variability of compound stress in
English: Towards an exemplar-based alternative of the compound stress rule. In Proceedings
of the ESSLLI workshop on exemplar-based models of language acquisition and use,
13–17 August 2007, Dublin, Ireland.
Plag, Ingo (2009) Compound
stress assignment by analogy: The constituent family bias. Submitted for publication.
Plag, Ingo & Gero Kunter (2007) The phonetics of primary and secondary
stress in English. Ms.
Plag, Ingo & Gero Kunter.(2009) Constituent family size and compound
stress assignment in English. to appear in Linguistische Berichte.
Plag, Ingo (2006) The variability of compound stress in
English: structural, semantic and analogical factors. English
Language and Linguistics 10.1, 143–172.
Plag, Ingo, Gero Kunter, & Sabine Lappe (2007) Testing hypotheses about compound
stress assignment in English: a corpus-based investigation, Corpus Linguistics
and Linguistic Theory 3.2, 199–233.
Plag, Ingo, Gero Kunter, Sabine Lappe, & Maria Braun (2008) The role of semantics, argument structure,
and lexicalization in compound stress assignment in English. Language 84.4, 760-794
(presenters are in bold,
co-authors are listed)
Kristina Kösling (2009) Variable compound
stress and the effect of branching direction in NNN compounds. The Third International Conference on the Linguistics of Contemporary
English, London, July 14-17, 2009.
Kösling, Kristina (2008) Does branching direction determine stress assignment? Empirical
investigations of the prominence patterns of triconstituent compounds. 1rst Conference of the International Society
for the Linguistics of English (ISLE 1), Freiburg, October 2008.
Kunter, Gero (2007)
Within-speaker and between-speaker variation in compound stress assignment, Second International Conference on the
Linguistics of Contemporary English, Université de Toulouse II, 2–4
July 2007.
Kunter, Gero & Ingo Plag (2007) What is compound stress?, 17th International
Congress of Phonetic Sciences, University of Saarbrücken,
Saarbrücken: Universität Saarbrücken, 6–10 August 2007.
Kunter, Gero & Ingo Plag (2006a)
What is compound stress?, University of Edinburgh, 23 May 2006. (same as Kunter & Plag 2006b)
Kunter, Gero & Ingo Plag
(2006b) Links oder rechts — oder doch gleich? Akustische Analyse der
Kompositumsbetonung im Englischen,Interdisziplinäres
Sprachwissenschaftliches Kolloquium, Philipps-Universität Marburg,
19. Mai 2006.
Lappe, Sabine & Ingo Plag (2008) The variability of compound stress in
English: rules or exemplars?, 13th International
Morphology Meeting, University of Vienna, 3–6 February 2008.
Lappe, Sabine & Ingo Plag (2008) An exemplar-based
approach to compound stress assignment.1rst
Conference of the International Society for the Linguistics of English
(ISLE 1), Freiburg, October 2008.
Lappe, Sabine & Ingo Plag
(2007) The variability of compound stress in English: towards an exemplar-based
alternative to the compound stress rule, 19th
European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information, Trinity
College, Dublin, 13–17 August 2007.
Plag, Ingo (2008) Variable
Kompositabetonung im Englischen: Regelhaft, probabilistisch, oder doch
analogisch?, Universität Mainz, June 2008.
Plag, Ingo (2009) Constituent
family and compound stress assignment, Aarhus Universitet (Dänemark), March
2009.
Plag, Ingo (2009) Constituent
family and compound stress assignment, University of Edinburgh, February 2009.
Plag, Ingo (2009) Why morning páper, but júry selection? The variability of compound
stress in English, Universität Bonn, January 2009.
Plag, Ingo (2009) The variability of compound stress in English, University of
Alberta, Edmonton, August 2008.
Plag, Ingo (2009) Variable
Kompositabetonung im Englischen: Regelhaft, probabilistisch, oder doch
analogisch?, Universität Mainz, June 2008.
Plag, Ingo (2007) Deconstructing
compound stress, Universität Paderborn, November 2007.
Plag, Ingo & Gero Kunter (2009) Constituent family and compound stress assignment in English. The Third International Conference on the
Linguistics of Contemporary English, London, July 14-17, 2009.
Plag, Ingo, Gero Kunter, Sabine Lappe, Maria Braun (2007a) Compound stress in English: modeling the prosody of NN constructions. Poster presented at the 29. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft, Universität Siegen, 28.2.–2.3.2007.
Plag, Ingo, Gero Kunter, Sabine
Lappe, Maria Braun (2007b) Compound stress in English: rule-based,
probabilistic, or analogical?, University of Essex, 16
February 2007.
Plag, Ingo, Gero Kunter, Sabine
Lappe, Maria Braun (2006a) Variable stress assignment in noun-noun compounds:
New evidence from corpora, Directions
in English Language Studies, University of Manchester, 6–8 April
2006. abstract
Plag, Ingo & Gero Kunter, Sabine
Lappe, Maria Braun (2006b) Modeling stress assignment in
English noun-noun compounds: a quantitative perspective, Quantitative
Investigations in
Theoretical Linguistics 2, Universität
Osnabrück, 1–2 June 2006.
Plag, Ingo, Gero Kunter, Sabine
Lappe, Maria Braun (2006c) Stress in English compounds: a quantitative
perspective, Lecture Series Products
of the Symbolic Mind, Humboldt-Universität Berlin, 3 July 2006.
Plag, Ingo, Gero Kunter, Sabine
Lappe, Maria Braun (2006d) Selten untersucht, aber gar nicht marginal: Variable
Kompositabetonung im Englischen und ihre theoretischen Konsequenzen, Workshop Marginale Morphologie,
Universität Stuttgart, 21 July 2006.
Plag, Ingo, Gero Kunter, Sabine Lappe, Maria Braun (2006e) Rule-based,
probabilistic, or analogical? Compound
stress in English, University of Toronto, 6 October 2006.
Plag, Ingo, Gero Kunter, Sabine Lappe, Maria Braun (2006f) Rule-based,
probabilistic, or analogical? Compound stress in English, 5th Mental Lexicon Conference, McGill
University, Montreal, 11-13 October 2006.
Plag, Ingo
& Mareile Schramm (2007) Which principles govern
stress assignment in English compounds? Testing structural, semantic, and
analogical factors, Second International Conference on the Linguistics of
Contemporary English, Université de Toulouse II, 2-4
July 2007.