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Project A1 - Neurobiology of the vowel space

PI: Prof. Dr. Scharinger, Prof. Dr. Cysouw
Ph.D.-student: Paula Rinke

Research context

In phonetic research, speech sound representations have often been discussed in relation to categorical perception. If speech sound representations are categorical, the question is how this affects their neural codes, both in their cerebral localization and cerebral processing. Moreover, how are »para«- or »meta«-linguistic properties, such as pronunciation variants, dialectal or regional differences, and speaker-dependent features, encoded in speech sound representations in the brain?

Current dissertation project

In the current dissertation project, the focus is on paralinguistic sound features that characterize a speaker. These features allow to gain information about speaker gender, age or other speaker-related properties. In generative linguistics, speaker information has usually played a minor role, if at all. Other approaches assume that speaker information is dispensed with at certain processing stages (aka speaker normalization). By contrast, neurolinguistic studies suggest that speaker information is processed very early during language processing and interacts with sound-based information.

Aims

The goal of this project is to arrive at representations which account for or can model the interaction between linguistic and paralinguistic information. A further aspect concerns the question of whether this interaction also depends on the language background of the respective speakers.

Methods

Methods used in this project are rooted in phonetics research (e.g., sound identification, same-different task) or stem from Psycho- and Neurolinguistics (e.g., Electroencephalography, [EEG]). Speech material used in this project are vowels because they provide the ideal stimulus to explore linguistic (e.g., phonetic features) and paralinguistic (e.g., gender) information.

Preliminary work

• Rinke, P. (2020). Die Verarbeitung indexikalischer Merkmale des Sprachsignals am Beispiel des Geschlechts. Master’s Thesis in Phonetics, Philipps-Universität Marburg
  
  
• Rinke, P. (2022). Online Eye-Tracking-Studie als Alternative zum Laborexperiment: Replikationsstudie mit den Programmen Gorilla und Webgazer. Master’s Thesis in Linguistics, Cognition & Communication, Philipps-Universität Marburg
  
  
• Rinke, P. (2021): “On the Basis of Sex”: A Study on Speaker’s Gender Recognition. Poster auf der 29th Conference of The International Association for Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics (IAFPA2021), online.
  
  
• Rinke, P., Schmidt, T., Beier, K., Kaul, R., & Scharinger, M. (2021). Rapid pre-attentive processing of a famous speaker: Electrophysiological effects of Angela Merkel’s voice. Neuropsychologia, 173, 108312.

Relation to other projects

Relations exists mainly to Project B1 (Dynamics of phonological representations during language acquisition). The aspects of the interaction between linguistic and paralinguistic information are also relevant for the change of linguistics representations, thus relating to project C1 (Dynamics and stability of regiolect boundaries).