ERIC Number: EJ1032412
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2014-Jul
Pages: 23
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0305-0009
EISSN: N/A
Lexical and Phrasal Prominence Patterns in School-Aged Children's Speech
Shport, Irina A.; Redford, Melissa A.
Journal of Child Language, v41 n4 p890-912 Jul 2014
This study investigated the integration of word- and phrase-level prominences in speech produced by twenty-five school-aged children (6;2 to 7;3) and twenty-five adults. Participants produced disyllabic number words in a straight count condition and in two phrasal conditions, namely, a stress clash and non-clash phrasal context. Duration and amplitude measures of syllable rhymes were used to assess the realization of lexical stress, and fundamental frequency (F0) measures were used to assess the realization of phrasal pitch accents across conditions. Results showed that the duration and F0 correlates varied independently of each other as a function of condition in child speech, but much less so in adult speech. The group differences were taken to indicate that six-year-old children have yet to develop prosodic structures with integrated prominence. Structural and pragmatic interpretations of the results are discussed.
Descriptors: Speech, Young Children, Adults, Syllables, Rhyme, Suprasegmentals, Correlation, Age Differences, Intonation
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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