Patrick Louis Rohrer

About me

Patrick Louis Rohrer is a PhD candidate carrying out his research within the framework of an international joint cotutelle between Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona, Catalunya) and Nantes Université (Nantes, France). In addition to his PhD, he also teaches at the Department of Translation and Language Sciences at UPF, focusing on language (French and English) and Phonetics and Phonology. He is the recipient of the SGR grant, which allows him to carry out his research.
He holds a B.A. in French Language and Literature from Georgia State University (Atlanta, Georgia, USA), and an M.A. in English Studies with a concentration in Linguistics and Didactics from the Université de Paris III – La Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris, France). Alongside his studies, he has also taught English professionally for a number of years.
His main research interest lies in the relationship between gesture and prosody, their joint contribution to pragmatic meaning from a crosslinguistic perspective, and their effects on cognition and acquisition. His thesis focuses on synchrony between prosodic and gestural prominences, and how these cues combine for the multimodal marking of Information Structure in English and in French. In addition to his main research, he is also interested in how prosody and gesture is processed by native and non-native speakers, and their effects on comprehension, attention, and memorization using both behavioral and electrophysiological (i.e., EEG) techniques. Finally, he is interested in exploring how gesture may help non-native speakers in terms of pronunciation in their L2.

Research Interests

• Audiovisiual Prosody
• Gesture studies
• Second Language Acquisition
• Multimodal learning and Embodied Cognition
• L2 Phonology
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Sociolinguistics

Current Projects

• The MultiModal MultiDimensional (M3D) labeling system for multimodal corpora
• The prosodic and pragmatic features of non-referential gestures in English and French
• The multimodal marking of Information Structure in English and French TedTalks
• The development of multimodal information structure marking in children's narratives

Publications in Peer-Reviewed Journals

Baills, F., Rohrer, P. L., & Prieto, P. (in press). Le geste et la voix pour enseigner la prononciation en langue étrangère. Mélanges Crapel: Journal of language teaching / learning and sociolinguistics.

Rohrer, P. L., Florit-Pons, J., Vilà-Giménez, I., & Prieto, P. (2022). Children Use Non-referential Gestures in Narrative Speech to Mark Discourse Elements Which Update Common Ground. Front. Psychol. 12:661339. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.661339

Rohrer, P. L., Delais-Roussarie, E., & Prieto, P. (2020). Beat gestures for comprehension and recall: Differential effects of language learners and native listeners. Frontiers in Psychology, 11:575929. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.575929

Select Communications

2021

Florit-Pons, J., Rohrer, P. L., Muñoz, S., Vilà-Giménez, I., & Prieto, P. (2021, July 15). Desenvolupament del marcatge prosòdic i gestual dels referents en el discurs: un estudi longitudinal. Oral presentation at the XIIè Workshop sobre la prosòdia del català. Universitat de Barcelona & Universitat de les Illes Balears.
(To see a recording of this presentation in Catalan, click here)

Florit-Pons, J., Vilà-Giménez, I., Rohrer, P. L., & Prieto, P. (2021, January 4-8). The development of non-referential gestures and the ability to mark IS in narrative speech: A longitudinal study. Oral presentation at the Budapest CEU Conference on Cognitive Development. Central European University: Budapest, Hungary.
(To see a recording of this presentation, click here)

Florit-Pons, J., Vilà-Giménez, I., Rohrer, P. L., & Prieto, P. (2021, January 27-29). Referent’s information status, pitch accentuation, and gestural marking in children’s narratives: a longitudinal perspective. Oral presentation at the 18th Old World Conference on Phonology (OCP). University of the Balearic Islands: Ibiza, Balearis Islands.

Florit-Pons, J., Vilà-Giménez, I., Rohrer, P. L., & Prieto, P. (2021, December 6-9). The development of co-speech gestures and their temporal alignment with prosodic prominence: A longitudinal insight from children's narrative speech. Oral presentation at the 1st International Conference on Tone and Intonation (TAI). University of Southern Denmark: Sonderborg, Denmark. **Winner of the Best Oral Presentation Award at TAI, 2021**

Muñoz-Coego, S., Florit-Pons, J., Rohrer, P. L., Vilà-Giménez, I., & Prieto, P. (2021, December 6-9). The prosodic marking of Referent Status in Catalan children's narrative discourse: A longitudinal study. Poster presentation at the 1st International Conference on Tone and Intonation (TAI). University of Southern Denmark: Sonderborg, Denmark.

Rohrer, P. L., & Prieto, P. (2021, December 15-16). Using M3D to Investigate the Multimodal Marking of Information Status. Oral presentation at the Gesture and Head Movements in Language (GeHM) annual plenary meeting. Copenhagen, Denmark

Rohrer, P. L., Delais-Roussarie, E., & Prieto, P. (2021, December 6-9). The temporal alignment of non-referential gestures with pitch accentuation in English and in French. Oral presentation at the 1st International Conference on Tone and Intonation (TAI). University of Southern Denmark: Sonderborg, Denmark.

Rohrer, P. L., & Prieto, P. (2021, November 12). The Multimodal Marking of Information Structure in English Ted Talks. Oral presentation at the URLING Doctoral Workshop. Universitat Pompeu Fabra; Barcelona: Catalonia.

2020

Florit-Pons, J., Graziano, M., Vilà-Giménez, I., Rohrer, P. L., & Prieto, P. (2020, October 22-23). Crosslinguistic analysis of gesture development in narrative speech. Oral presentation at the GEstures and Head Movements in Language (GEHM) annual plenary meeting. Copenhagen, Denmark.

Florit-Pons, J., Vilà-Giménez, I., Rohrer, P. L., & Prieto, P. (2020, September 7-9). The developmental and temporal integration of co-speech gesture in narrative speech: A longitudinal study. Oral presentation at Gesture and Speech in Interaction (GESPIN). Stockholm, Sweden.
(To see a recording of this presentation, click here)

Rohrer, P. L., Delais-Roussarie, E., & Prieto, P. (2020, July 27-29). Beat gestures for recall: Differential effects of language status. Oral presentation at the UK Cognitive Linguistics Conference (UK-CLC). Birmingham, UK.

Rohrer, P. L., Prieto, P., & Delais-Roussarie, E. (2020, April 8-20). Beat gestures and prosodic phrasing in French. Oral presentation at the GLOW43 Workshop: Prosody in Speech Signal, Perception and Gestures. Berlin, Germany.
(To see a recording of this presentation, click here)

Rohrer, P. L., Vilà-Giménez, I., Florit-Pons, J., Esteve-Gibert, N., Ren, A., Shattuck-Hufnagel, S., & Prieto, P. (2020, September 7-9). The MultiModal MultiDimensional (M3D) labelling scheme for the annotation of audiovisual corpora. Oral presentation at Gesture and Speech in Interaction (GESPIN), Stockholm, Sweden.
(To see a recording of this presentation, click here)

2019

Baills, F., Rohrer, P. L., & Prieto, P. (2019, October 24-25). Le geste et la voix pour enseigner la prononciation en langue étrangère. Oral presentation at the 2ème Colloque International Enseignement du Français Parlé. Rouen, France.

Domínguez, M., Rohrer, P. L. & Soler-Company, J. (2019). PyToBI: a Toolkit for ToBI Labeling under Python. Proc. Interspeech 2019, 3675-3676.

Gutierrez, S., Rohrer, P. L. & Prieto, P. (2019, June 6-7). The effects of a shadowing vs. listen-and-repeat training on second language pronunciation. Poster presentation at the L2 Pronunciation Research Workshop: Bridging the Gap between Research and Practice. Universitat de Barcelona: Barcelona, Catalonia. 

Rohrer, P. L., Prieto, P. & Delais-Roussarie, E. (2019). Beat gestures and prosodic domain marking in French. In S. Calhoun, P. Escudero, M. Tabain & P. Warren (Eds.), Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, (pp. 1500-1504). 

Rohrer, P. L., Prieto, P. & Delais-Roussarie, E. (2019, June 17-19). Beat Gestures as Prosodic Domain markers in French: A case study. Poster presentation at Phonetics and Phonology in Europe (PaPE). Lecce, Italy.

2018

Llanes-Coromina, J., Prieto, P., &  Rohrer, P. L. (2018). Brief training with rhythmic beat gestures helps L2 pronunciation in a reading aloud task. In K. Klessa, J. Bachan, A. Wagner, M. Karpiñski, and D. ´Sledziñski (Eds.), Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Speech Prosody, (pp. 498-502). Vientiane: International Speech Communication Association. doi: 10.21437/SpeechProsody.2018-101.

Prieto P., Cravotta, A., Kushch, O., Rohrer, P. L., & Vilà-Giménez, I. (2018). Deconstructing beat gestures: a labelling proposal. In K. Klessa, J. Bachan, A. Wagner, M. Karpiñski, and D. ´Sledziñski (Eds.), Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Speech Prosody, (pp. 201-205). Vientiane: International Speech Communication Association. doi: 10.21437/SpeechProsody.2018-41.

Prieto, P., Cravotta, A., Kushch, O., Rohrer, P. L., & Vilà-Giménez, I. (2018, June 28). Una proposta d'etiquetatge de la prominència gestual i prosòdica: els gestos rítmics. Oral presentation at Xè Workshop sobre la prosòdia del català. Universitat de Barcelona: Barcelona, Catalonia.

Rohrer, P. L., Prieto, P. & Delais-Roussarie, E. (2018, December 6-7). L'influence des gestes de battements sur la prononciation d'une langue étrangère: Le cas de la technique de shadowing. Poster presentation at Journées d'Etudes ReAL2: Dimension sonore et acquisition des L2, Nantes, France.

2017

Rohrer, P. L. (2017, November 16-17). Grounded cognition of prosodic elements via gesture: Preliminary evidence in a French learner of English. Poster presentation at L2 Phonetics and Phonology by Romance Learners (L2PHROL). University of Turin: Turin, Italy.

Rohrer, P. L. (2017, March 23-24). The Use of Gesture in the Acquisition of English Prosody by a French Student in Tandem Language Learning. Oral presentation at Tandem Language and Intercultural Learning in Higher or Secondary Education Settings (ALCTES). Université Paris III - La Sorbonne Nouvelle: Paris, France.