Megumi Terada

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Institut für deutsche Sprache und Linguistik

Projects

C06 Seemingly free (morpho)phonetic variation

Contact

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Dorotheenstraße 24, 10117 Berlin

Publications & Presentations

    Publications

  • Lange, Robert; Sell, Bianca Maria; Terada, Megumi; Belz, Malte; Mooshammer, Christine; Lüdeling, Anke  (2024) Schwa realisation in verbal inflection in two dialogue registers of German spontaneous speech  In: Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft [DOI] [ViVo]
    Abstract Word-final schwa in German inflectional suffixes shows varying realisations in spontaneous speech – from full realisations with varying duration to no realisation. While previous research has identified numerous social, distributional, and grammatical factors influencing the variation of phonetic variables in general, it remains unclear how fine-grained functional differences in different registers specifically affect schwa realisation. In this corpus-based study, we compare schwa realisation in two dialogue registers of German spontaneous speech – free conversation and task-based dialogues – which differ only in their communicative goal and therefore have different functional requirements. We find that schwa is rarely realised, though slightly but significantly more often in free conversation than in task-based dialogue. Other factors also promoting schwa realisation across both situations are less frequent verbs and sequences, and IP-final position.
  • Pescuma, Valentina Nicole; Serova, Dina; Lukassek, Julia; Sauermann, Antje; Schäfer, Roland; Adli, Aria; Bildhauer, Felix; Egg, Markus; Hülk, Kristina; Ito, Aine; Jannedy, Stefanie; Kordoni, Valia; Kühnast, Milena; Kutscher, Silvia; Lange, Robert; Lehmann, Nico; Liu, Mingya; Lütke, Beate; Maquate, Katja; Mooshammer, Christine; Mortezapour, Vahid; Müller, Stefan; Norde, Muriel; Pankratz, Elizabeth; Patarroyo, Angela Giovanna; Plesca, Ana-Maria; Ronderos, Camilo R.; Rotter, Stephanie; Sauerland, Uli; Schulte, Britta; Schüppenhauer, Gediminas; Sell, Bianca Maria; Solt, Stephanie; Terada, Megumi; Tsiapou, Dimitra; Verhoeven, Elisabeth; Weirich, Melanie; Wiese, Heike; Zaruba, Kathy; Zeige, Lars Erik; Lüdeling, Anke; Knoeferle, Pia; Schnelle, Gohar  (2023) Situating language register across the ages, languages, modalities, and cultural aspects: Evidence from complementary methods  In: Frontiers in Psychology [DOI] [PDF] [ViVo]
    In the present review paper by members of the collaborative research center ‘Register: Language Users’ Knowledge of SituationalFunctional Variation’ (CRC 1412), we assess the pervasiveness of register phenomena across different time periods, languages, modalities, and cultures. We define ‘register’ as recurring variation in language use depending on the function of language and on the social situation. Informed by rich data, we aim to better understand and model the knowledge involved in situation- and function-based use of language register. In order to achieve this goal, we are using complementary methods and measures. In the review, we start by clarifying the concept of ‘register’, by reviewing the state of the art, and by setting out our methods and modeling goals. Against this background, we discuss three key challenges, two at the methodological level and one at the theoretical level: 1. To better uncover registers in text and spoken corpora, we propose changes to established analytical approaches. 2. To tease apart between-subject variability from the linguistic variability at issue (intra-individual situation based register variability), we use within-subject designs and the modeling of individuals’ social, language, and educational background. 3. We highlight a gap in cognitive modeling, viz. modeling the mental representations of register (processing), and present our first attempts at filling this gap. We argue that the targeted use of multiple complementary methods and measures supports investigating the pervasiveness of register phenomena and yields comprehensive insights into the cross-methodological robustness of register-related language variability. These comprehensive insights in turn provide a solid foundation for associated cognitive modeling.
  • Belz, Malte; Ebert, Melissa; Müller, Miriam; Sun, Jianqi; Terada, Megumi; Xia, Qiang  (2023) Reduced vowel space in video conferences via Zoom: Evidence from read speech  In: JASA Express Letters [DOI] [ViVo]
    This exploratory study compared vowel space area (VSA) in face-to-face situations and video conference situations using the software Zoom. Twenty native German participants read word lists recorded before and after spontaneous conversation. The overall VSA in Zoom was reduced significantly by 11.9%, with a more reduced VSA before and less reduction after the spontaneous conversation. Of nine peripheral vowels in German, /aː iː yː/ showed a significantly reduced Euclidean distance to the centroid of the vowel space. The observed hypoarticulation is discussed in light of the experimental setup, situational differences, and less involvement in Zoom than in face-to-face situations.
  • Terada, Megumi  (2023) Indirect effect of orthographic form on phonetic realisation in L2 German: A Corpus study of inflectional endings in spontaneous speech  In: EuroSLA 32. University of Birmingham [ViVo]
  • Belz, Malte; Zöllner, Alina; Terada, Megumi; Lange, Robert; Adam, Lea-Sophie; Sell, Bianca Maria  (2021) Dokumentation und Annotationsrichtlinien für das Korpus BeDiaCo [DOI] [ViVo]
    BeDiaCo contains topic-led and task-led spontaneous dialogues of 36 participants as well as two read word lists per subject. The main corpus BeDiaCom contains 16 subjects not known to each other in a co-present face-to-face situation. The subcorpus BeDiaCov contains 20 subjects known and familiar to each other in a co-present face-to-face situation and, additionally, in a spatially separated videoconference situation. The corpus contains audio and TextGrid files and is annotated by employing a multi-layer  architecture. In addition to a diplomatic transliteration and its phonetic segmentation, further annotation levels contain, for example, annotation values for filler particles, intonation phrases, dialogue structure, word types, and the realization of inflection.

    • Presentations