Melissa Ebert

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Melissa Ebert is a PhD student in C06 and is interested in (seemingly) free variation of phonetic aspects and their potential dependency on different registers. After finishing an M.A. degree in International Relations in Berlin and Potsdam, she completed an M.A. degree in Linguistics at Humboldt University of Berlin, specializing on phonetics. In her master’s thesis, she examined the size sound symbolic information carried by phonological features in dimensional antonym adjective pairs in 24 languages. During her studies, she worked as a research assistant in the phonetics and phonology research area at ZAS.

Projects

MGK Integrated Graduate School
C06 Seemingly free (morpho)phonetic variation

Contact

melissa.ebert@hu-berlin.de

Publications & Presentations

Publications

Ebert, Melissa; Lange, Robert; Weißgerber, Marie-Theres; Belz, Malte; Lüdeling, Anke; Mooshammer, Christine (2024) Register. Realisation of schwa and word‑final /t d/ In: Inter-CRC-Meeting on “Face to Face Interaction”, University of Cologne [ViVo]
Ebert, Melissa; Belz, Malte; Mooshammer, Christine (2024) Variation in word-final [t]-realisation in formal and informal register of spoken German In: P&P 20. Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg [ViVo]
Belz, Malte; Ebert, Melissa; Müller, Miriam; Sun, Jianqi; Terada, Megumi; Xia, Qiang (2023) Einfluss videobasierter Kommunikation (Zoom) auf die Vokalqualität In: P&P 18. Universität Bielefeld [DOI] [ViVo]
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.