C01

Project Overview

This project examines how intonation shapes the interpretation of negation in German. The research asks how intonation interacts with negation both within the grammar and during real-time (online) and post-hoc (offline) sentence processing. In a further step, it will extend the investigation to another negation construction involving a negative particle plus an indefinite article in German.

Research Questions & Theoretical Framework

This project addresses the interface between prosody, syntax, and semantics by investigating how intonational patterns are realized in negated sentences. In doing so, the project contributes to the Neg-Plus hypothesis by exploring how negation combines with prosodic categories, especially different pitch accent types and their positions in the sentence.

Methodologies & Data

The empirical work includes controlled speech-for-reading experiments that test how the prosody of negated sentences depends on word order and information structure. These data will be compared with corpus data to ensure ecological validity. Comprehension will be studied using both online and offline methods. Online measures, in particular eye movements in the visual-world paradigm, will track the time course of negation processing and reveal how prosodic cues guide listeners’ expectations. Offline measures, including continuation and forced-choice tasks, will show how prosodic cues (highlighting/accentuation, phrasing, or both) modulate interpretive preferences and final judgments.