ERIC Number: EJ1325492
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2022-Mar
Pages: 26
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0305-0009
EISSN: N/A
The Acquisition of Prosodic Marking of Narrow Focus in Central Swedish
Romøren, Anna Sara H.; Chen, Aoju
Journal of Child Language, v49 n2 p213-238 Mar 2022
We investigated how Central Swedish-speaking four to eleven-year-old children acquire the prosodic marking of narrow focus, compared to adult controls. Three measurements were analysed: placement of the prominence-marking high tone (prominence H), pitch range effects of the prominence H, and word duration. Subject-verb-object sentences were elicited in sentence-medial and sentence-final focus conditions via a semi-spontaneous elicitation task. The children largely performed in an adult-like manner already at four to five: they predominantly added prominence H to focal words and avoided this tone post-focally in both sentence-medial and sentence-final position. The placement or avoidance of prominence H had largely the same effects on pitch range for children and adults. Finally, the four to eight-year-olds also increased the duration of the focal word, similar to adults. Hence, Central Swedish-speaking children master the use of prosody for focus marking at an earlier age, compared to children acquiring a West Germanic language.
Descriptors: Language Acquisition, Swedish, Intonation, Suprasegmentals, Preschool Children, Children, Phonology, Sentence Structure, Task Analysis, Adults, Comparative Analysis, German, Contrastive Linguistics
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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