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Neurobiology of the vowel space

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Project overview

This project is part of the RTG »Dynamics and stability of linguistic representations« (project A). The main focus of the project is on the interaction of speaker and speech processing. We use brain imaging and electrophysiological methods next to behavioral experiments.

Project details

In phonetics, representations on the level of sound have usually been separated from the speaker. However, findings from the first cohort of the Research Training Group have shown that not only acoustic-phonetic information is activated in representations, but also  »para« or »metalinguistic« properties (such as age or gender of the speaker) are accessed early on and play an essential role in processing sounds and vowels. 

This serves as a starting point for the project whose aim it is to investigate how »categorically« those paralinguistic properties are interpreted and what the bases of the speech signal might constitute for such a categorisation. This will be explored through a combination of phonetic and sociolinguistic research (including corpora) using neuroscientific methods (electroencephalography [EEG], functional magnetic resonance imaging [fMRI]).

Project members

Project management

Principal investigators

  • Prof. Dr. Michael Cysouw (DSA, Philipps-Universität Marburg)
  • Prof. Dr. Andreas Jansen (Multimodale Bildgebung, Philipps-Universität Marburg)
  • Prof. Dr. Mathias Scharinger

External collaborators

  • Dr. Nadine Lavan (Queen-Mary University, London)