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WE 1: Distribution of reduced syllables: Optimized for dynamic attending?

A central question for the production and perception of weak phonological elements is their distribution in the speech signal. This is because a regular distribution may be advantageous for attentional processes, assuming that attention changes dynamically and can be conceived of as oscillations (»dynamic attending theory«). Moments of increased attention could thus coincide temporally with the occurrence of weak elements, thereby enhanced speech comprehension. Assuming that human communication is, amongst other things, striving towards comprehensibility, the aforementioned correlation should be empirically detectable. This project pursues exactly this question and focusses on the reduced syllable which commonly occurs in second position of German trochees. Firstly, it will be investigated by means of corpus studies how regular the distribution of reduced syllables really is, i.e., whether the temporal lag between reduced syllables in speech is constant. For this purpose, read speech alongside with free speech (friend’s conversations) will be analyzed. Furthermore, different registers will be compared, hypothesizing that registers with higher demands on comprehensibility (e.g., in formal situations, using standard German as opposed to regional variants) will show a more regular distribution of reduced syllables. Next, it is planned to examine the perceptual consequence of regular distributed reduced syllables. The assumption is that reduced attention (e.g., by irregularly presented reduced syllables) correlates with the lack of discriminability between minimal pairs such as »Wunder« (miracle) and »Wunde« (wound). Finally, the connection of attentional cycles and regularity of reduced syllable distribution in the speech signal will be investigated by means of electrophysiology (electroencephalography). The assumption here is that regularly spaced reduced syllables correlate with brain oscillations that are interpreted as mechanism of dynamic attention. Altogether, this project furthers our understanding of reduced syllable production and perception on the background of dynamic attentional processes and is of high relevance for the entire research unit, both regarding scientific content and scientific methodology.