Simon Roessig

né Ritter

I am a postdoctoral researcher working in laboratory phonology and phonetics. I use a combination of empirical and computational methods to investigate various aspects of speech. My research interests include prosody, the relationship between phonology and phonetics, or more generally, the relationship between discrete and continuous aspects of speech, as well as dynamical models of speech production. Currently, my two main research foci are phrase-level prominence relations and the modelling of prosody in the framework of articulatory phonology.

Since 2022, I have been a DFG Walter Benjamin Fellow in the Phonetics Lab at Cornell University where I work with Sam Tilsen. In early 2021, I completed my dissertation on a dynamical approach to categorical and continuous modulations in the prosodic expression of information structure, supervised by Doris Mücke and Martine Grice. From 2017 to 2022, I was a researcher (first doctoral, then postdoctoral) in the CRC 'Prominence in Language' at the University of Cologne.

Contact me at simon.roessig [at] cornell.edu, find me on Google Scholar, Researchgate or ORCID.

News

January 2023: New pre-print out: The inverse relation of pre-nuclear and nuclear prominences in German.
This study presents a systematic investigation of the pre-nuclear domain and its relation to the nuclear accent in German. The results show that the realization of the pre-nuclear domain indeed depends on whether it is focal or pre-focal. Furthermore, the realization of a pre-focal, pre-nuclear domain depends on the following focus. The comparison to the nuclear accent suggests an inverse relationship, i.e., the pre-nuclear domain becomes less prominent when the nuclear domain becomes more prominent.

April 2022: The German Research Foundation funded my postdoctoral project on prosodic prominence in the task dynamics framework at the Department of Linguistics of the Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, USA, from summer 2022 to summer 2024 as part of the Walter-Benjamin programme.

November 2021: I received the Offermann-Hergarten Prize of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Cologne for my book Categoriality and continuity in prosodic prominence.

Short bio

Work

Since 2022: Postdoctoral researcher at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
2021-2022: Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cologne, Germany
2017-2021: Doctoral researcher at the University of Cologne, Germany
2015-2016: Software developer for scientific libraries

Education

2017-2021: PhD in Phonetics, summa cum laude
2012-2014: MA in Linguistics
2009-2012: BA in Information Processing and Linguistics & Phonetics

Awards & Grants

2022: Walter Benjamin postdoc project funded by the German Research Foundation (2 years)
2021: Offermann-Hergarten Prize of the University of Cologne
2018: Best Student Paper Award, 16th Conference of the Association for Laboratory Phonology
2013: Best Student Paper Award, 6th Conference on Phonetics and Phonology in Iberia

A detailed CV can be found here.

Publications

Note: prior to 2019 I published under my former name Ritter

Peer-reviewed journal articles

Coretta, S., J. Casillas, S. Roessig […] & T. B. Roettger (accepted). Multidimensional signals and analytic flexibility: Estimating degrees of freedom in human speech analyses. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science.

Dahmen, S., M. Grice & S. Roessig (2023). Prosodic and segmental aspects of pronunciation training and their effects on L2. Languages, 8(1), 74. DOI: 10.3390/languages8010074. link to article

Roessig, S., B. Winter & D. Mücke (2022). Tracing the phonetic space of prosodic focus marking. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence 5. DOI: 10.3389/frai.2022.842546. link to article

Roessig, S. & D. Mücke (2019). Modeling dimensions of prosodic prominence. Frontiers in Communication 4(44). DOI: 10.3389/fcomm.2019.00044. link to article

Roessig, S., D. Mücke & M. Grice (2019). The dynamics of intonation: Categorical and continuous variation in an attractor-based model. PLoS ONE 14(5). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0216859. link to article

Grice, M., S. Ritter, H. Niemann & T. B. Roettger (2017). Integrating the discreteness and continuity of intonational categories. Journal of Phonetics 64. 90-107. DOI: 10.1016/j.wocn.2017.03.003. link to article

Ritter, S. & M. Grice (2015). The role of tonal onglides in German nuclear pitch accents. Language and Speech 58(1). 114-128. DOI: 10.1177/0023830914565688. link to article

Monograph

Roessig, S. (2021). Categoriality and continuity in prosodic prominence (Studies in Laboratory Phonology). Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4121875. link to book

Peer-reviewed conference proceedings

Roessig, S., L. Pagel & D. Mücke (2022). Speaking loudly reduces flexibility and variability in the prosodic marking of focus types. Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2022. DOI: 10.21437/SpeechProsody.2022-102. link to article

Buech, P., S. Roessig, L. Pagel, D. Mücke & A. Hermes (2022). ema2wav: doing articulation by Praat. Proceedings of Interspeech 2022. DOI: 10.21437/Interspeech.2022-10813. link to article

Lorenzen, J., S. Roessig & S. Baumann (2022). Information status and tonal context jointly modulate prosodic prominence relations in German. Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2022. DOI: 10.21437/SpeechProsody.2022-2. link to article

Roessig, S., D. Mücke & L. Pagel (2019). Dimensions of prosodic prominence in an attractor model. Proceedings of Interspeech 2019. DOI: 10.21437/Interspeech.2019-2227. link to article

Kügler, F., B. Smolibocki, D. Arnold, S. Baumann, B. Braun, M. Grice, S. Jannedy, J. Michalsky, O. Niebuhr, J. Peters, S. Ritter, C. Röhr, A. Schweitzer, K. Schweitzer & P. Wagner (2015). DIMA – Annotation guidelines for German intonation. Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. link to article

Ritter, S. & T. B. Roettger (2014). Speakers modulate noise-induced pitch according to intonational context. Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Speech Prosody. DOI: 10.21437/SpeechProsody.2014-167. link to article

Other publications

Pagel, L., Roessig, S., & Mücke, D. (2022). How to achieve a prominence GOAL! in different speaking styles. In Gianollo, C., Jędrzejowski, Ł., & Lindemann, S. I. (eds.), Paths through meaning and form. Festschrift offered to Klaus von Heusinger on the occasion of his 60th birthday (pp. 200-204). Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Köln. DOI: 10.18716/omp.3.c52. link to article

Pagel, L., S. Roessig, & D. Mücke (2021). Modifications of tongue body kinematics as a focus marking strategy in German. Proceedings of the 12th ISSP. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5081658. link to article

Manuscripts under review / in revision

Roessig, S. (under review). The inverse relation of pre-nuclear and nuclear prominences in German. Laboratory Phonology. link to pre-print

Mücke, D., A. Mefferd, T. Thies, S. Roessig & A. Hermes (under revision). Mapping phonetic surface to phonological forms: challenges with the kinematic analysis of impaired speech. Journal of Phonetics.

Presentations

Note: presentations prior to May 2019 as Simon Ritter

Upcoming

Pagel, L., S. Roessig, M. Sóskuthy, D. Mücke (accepted). Multimodal signatures of prosodic prominence in habitual and loud speech. Accepted as talk at International Multimodal Communication Symposium, April 26-28, 2023, Barcelona, Catalonia.

Roessig, S. (forthcoming). TBD. Invited talk at Prosody & Speech Dynamics Lab, Northwestern University, Chicago, USA, March 29, 2023.

Invited talks

Roessig, S. (2022). Two dimensions of prominence relations: prosodic focus marking in habitual and loud speech. Invited talk at IPS Munich, May 11, 2022.

Roessig, S. (2022). Prominence relations on two axes: evidence from focus marking in habitual and loud speech. Invited talk at the University of Bielefeld, work group phonetics an phonology, April 5, 2022.

Roessig, S. & D. Mücke (2020). Prosodic prominence: discreteness, gradience, and a dynamical systems account. Invited talk at the University of Bielefeld, work group phonetics and phonology, January 8, 2020.

Ritter, S. & D. Mücke (2019). Prosodic variation from a dynamical perspective. Invited talk at the University Hamburg, Institut für Romanistik, Jan 8, 2019.

Ritter, S. & D. Mücke (2018). Prosody in a dynamic systems account. Invited talk at the University Potsdam, Linguistics Department, Nov 14, 2018.

Conferences and workshops

Lorenzen, J., S. Roessig & S. Baumann (2022). Individual variability in the prosodic encoding of information status in German. Poster presentation at Phonetik und Phonologie im deutschsprachigen Raum, October 6-7, 2022, Bielefeld, Germany.

Buech, P., S. Roessig, L. Pagel, D. Mücke & A. Hermes (2022). ema2wav: doing articulation by Praat. Poster presentation at Interspeech, September 18-22, 2022, Incheon, Korea.

Pagel, L., S. Roessig & D. Mücke (2022). Supra-laryngeal articulation under vocal effort variation. Poster presentation at the 8th international conference on Speech Motor Control 2022, August 24-27, 2022, Groningen, Netherlands.

Mücke, D., A. Mefferd, T. Thies, S. Roessig & A. Hermes (2022). Analysis and Modelling of Impaired Speech Movements: Challenges and Future Directions. Poster presentation at the 8th international conference on Speech Motor Control 2022, August 24-27, 2022, Groningen, Netherlands.

Buech, P., S. Roessig, L. Pagel & A. Hermes (2022). Making articulation accessible in Praat. Poster presentation at the 8th international conference on Speech Motor Control 2022, August 24-27, 2022, Groningen, Netherlands.

Pagel, L., S. Roessig & D. Mücke (2022). Articulatory encoding of prominence in habitual and loud speech. Talk at the 3rd International Conference Prominence in Language, June 2-3, 2022, Cologne, Germany.

Roessig, S., J. Lorenzen & S. Baumann (2022). Evidence for a prosodic prominence budget in German utterances. Poster presentation at the 3rd International Conference Prominence in Language, June 2-3, 2022, Cologne, Germany.

Roessig, S., B. Winter & D. Mücke (2022). Exploring the phonetic space of focus. Poster presentation at LabPhon 18, June 23-25, 2022, online.

Lorenzen, J., S. Roessig & S. Baumann (2022). Syntagmatic and paradigmatic effects of information status on prosodic prominence relations in German – an online production task. Poster presentation at LabPhon 18, June 23-25, 2022, online.

Roessig, S., L. Pagel & D. Mücke (2022). Speaking loudly reduces flexibility and variability in the prosodic marking of focus types. Talk at Speech Prosody 2022, May 23-26, 2022, Lisbon, Portugal.

Lorenzen, J., S. Roessig & S. Baumann (2022). Information status and tonal context jointly modulate prosodic prominence relations in German. Talk at Speech Prosody 2022, May 23-26, 2022, Lisbon, Portugal.

Pagel, L., S. Roessig, D. Mücke (2021). Prominence relations and articulatory modifications in habitual and loud speech. Talk at PaPE, June 21-23, 2021, Barcelona, Spain.

Pagel, L., S. Roessig, D. Mücke (2020). Modifications of tongue body kinematics as a focus marking strategy in German. Poster presentation at 12th International Seminar on Speech Production, December 14–18, 2020, Rhode Island, USA.

Pagel, L., S. Roessig & D. Mücke (2019). Prosodic strengthening in German: an investigation of tongue body kinematics. Talk at 15. Phonetik und Phonologie Tagung, September 27, 2019, Düsseldorf, Germany.

Roessig, S., D. Mücke & L. Pagel (2019). Dimensions of prosodic prominence in an attractor model. Talk at Interspeech, September 15-19, 2019, Graz, Austria.

Roessig, S., D. Mücke (2019). Prosodic variation in a multi-dimensional dynamic system. Talk at Phonetics and Phonology in Europe, June 17-19, 2019, Lecce, Italy.

Ritter, S. & D. Mücke (2018). Continuity and categoriality in prosodic prominence – the case of focus marking. Talk at the 2nd International Conference “Prominence in Language”, July 11-13, 2018, Cologne, Germany.

Ritter, S. & D. Mücke (2018). The phonetics and phonology of focus marking – an integrated account. Poster presentation at 16th Conference on Laboratory Phonology, June 19-22, 2018, Lisbon, Portugal.

Ritter, S. & T.B. Roettger (2014). Speakers modulate noise-induced pitch according to intonational context. Poster presentation at the 7th International Conference on Speech Prosody, May 20-23, 2014, Dublin.

Ritter, S. & M. Grice (2013). Tonal Onglides of Nuclear Pitch Accents in German. Talk at Nijmegen-Cologne Prosody Meeting, July 1, 2013, Cologne, Germany.

Ritter, S. & M. Grice (2013). The Role of Tonal Onglides in German Nuclear Pitch Accents. Talk at Phonetics and Phonology in Iberia, June 25-26, 2013, Lisbon, Portugal.

Ritter, S., M. Krüger, Mücke, D. & M. Grice (2012). Production and Perception of Contrast: Tonal Onglides and Oral Gestures. Poster presentation at the final symposium of the DFG Priority programme 1234, July 26, 2012, Stuttgart, Germany.

Ritter, S., Riester, A. & M. Grice (2012). Onglides von Nuklearakzenten: Brauchen wir Leading Tones? Talk at Workshop: Deutsche Intonation - Annotation und Modellierung, March 21-22, 2012, Konstanz, Germany.

Resources

ema2wav – an open source software package I am developing in collaboration with Philipp Buech. It converts data from electromagnetic articulography (EMA) into the wav-format. The resulting files can be displayed and analyzed in programs like Praat: https://github.com/phbuech/ema2wav
Code and data accompanying my book 'Categoriality and continuity in prosodic prominence', including MATLAB code demonstrating all dynamical systems reviewed in chapter 3: https://osf.io/4g6s2/.
GToBI training materials for the transcription of German intonation (joint work with Martine Grice, Stefan Baumann, and Christine Röhr): http://www.gtobi.uni-koeln.de/.