Programm 74. StuTS

This study examines how native German speakers perceive fragmented responses in dialogues with contrastive focus. Participants rated the naturalness of auditory and written dialogues with and without emphasis on contrasting words, as well as those containing lexical or functional fragments. The results supported the hypotheses, showing that auditorily presented dialogues with emphasized contrasting words were rated highest in naturalness. However, contrary to expectations, dialogues with functional fragments, namely prepositions, were perceived as more natural than those with lexical fragments. These findings contribute to our understanding of acceptability ratings, ellipsis processing, and language comprehension.

This pioneering study explores the factors that influence how native speakers perceive
fragments in dialogues involving contrastive focus in German. The auditory and written
dialogues differentiated in whether the fragmentary answer included lexical words,
namely nouns denoting human referents, or functional words, specifically prepositions.
They also varied in whether contrasting words were emphasised or not. A total of 100
participants were asked to rate the fragmentary answers in the dialogues using a 7-
point Likert scale to assess their naturalness. This study hypothesised that (1) auditory
dialogues will be perceived as more natural compared to their written counterparts, (2)
dialogues featuring either prosodically or orthographically emphasised contrasting
words will receive higher ratings than those without emphasis, and (3) dialogues
incorporating lexical fragments will receive higher naturalness ratings than those
containing functional fragments. The results align with the hypotheses, as auditorily
presented dialogues bearing pitch accent on the contrasting words receive the highest
ratings. However, in contrast to the final hypothesis, dialogues incorporating
prepositions as functional fragments were perceived as more natural than those
containing lexical contrasting words. These findings shed light on the complex interplay
of acceptability ratings, ellipsis processing intricacies, and the identification of
correlate-remnant pairings. In this manner, the study not only lays the groundwork for
future research using acceptability judgement tasks but also enhances the
understanding of language comprehension processes

Info

Tag: 27.10.2023
Anfangszeit: 14:00
Dauer: 00:25
Raum: Hofburg Raum 2
Track: Diverse
Sprache: en

Links:

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Dateien

• Acceptability judgements on contrastive dialogues involving ellipsis

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