Tonal targets in early child English, Spanish, and Catalan

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• dc.contributor.author Prieto Vives, Pilar, 1965-ca
• dc.contributor.author Astruc, Lluïsaca
• dc.contributor.author Payne, Elinorca
• dc.contributor.author Post, Brechtjeca
• dc.contributor.author Vanrell, Maria del Marca
• dc.date.accessioned 2017-07-21T10:01:46Z
• dc.date.available 2017-07-21T10:01:46Z
• dc.date.issued 2013
• dc.description.abstract This study analyses the scaling and alignment of low and high intonational targets in the speech of 27 children – nine English-speaking, nine Catalan-speaking and nine Spanish-speaking – between the ages of two and six years. We compared the intonational patterns of words controlled for number of syllables and stress position in the child speech to the adult target speech provided by their mothers, and to a dataset of adult-directed speech recorded at a later stage for the purpose of measuring pitch height. A corpus of 624 utterances was elicited using a controlled naming task and analysed within the Autosegmental Metrical framework. Measuring the pitch height and pitch timing of nuclear pitch accents, we found that once the effects of syllable duration are accounted for, young children reach tonal targets with remarkable precision. Overall, the results indicate that the phonetic aspects of intonation are acquired from a very early age. Even the youngest children show adult-like alignment of the low target, although mastery of the high target increases with age. Young Spanish-speaking children, however, show a more precise attainment of pitch scaling and alignment of their (high) tonal targets than do Catalan and English children; where the ambient language lies within a general prosodic typology appears to influence the acquisition of tonal targets.en
• dc.description.sponsorship This research has been funded by a Batista i Roca grant (Ref: 2007 PBR 29, Pilar Prieto as P.I.) and by a British Academy Small Grant (Ref: SG-51777, P.I. Brechtje Post). We are grateful to Núria Argemí, Anna Barberà, Melanie Bell, Ana Estrella, and Francesc Torres-Tamarit for recording the data in different languages, and especially to Naomi Hilton for segmenting the data.en
• dc.format.mimetype application/pdf
• dc.identifier.citation Astruc L, Payne E, Post B, Vanrell MM, Prieto P. Tonal targets in early child English, Spanish, and Catalan. Lang Speech. 2013 June 1;56(2):229-53. DOI: 10.1177/0023830912460494
• dc.identifier.issn 0023-8309
• dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/10230/32592
• dc.language.iso eng
• dc.publisher SAGE Publicationsca
• dc.relation.ispartof Language and Speech. 2013 June 1;56(2):229-53
• dc.rights The final, definitive version of this paper has been published in Language and Speech, 56/2, June/2013 by SAGE Publications Ltd, All rights reserved.
• dc.rights.accessRights info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
• dc.subject.keyword Catalanen
• dc.subject.keyword Child languageen
• dc.subject.keyword Englishen
• dc.subject.keyword Spanishen
• dc.subject.keyword Speech developmenten
• dc.title Tonal targets in early child English, Spanish, and Catalanca
• dc.type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
• dc.type.version info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersion