TY - JOUR
T1 - Acoustic emphasis in four year olds
AU - Wonnacott, Elizabeth
AU - Watson, Duane G.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by National Institute of Health Grants NIH Grants 5T32 MH 19942-08 and NIH 2T32 DC 0000 35-11 and by ESRC grant PTA-026-27-1296. We are very grateful to Elissa Newport for her helpful discussion on this topic, and for allowing us the use of her laboratory and resources at The University of Rochester. We would also like to thank Cindy Fisher for her help in recruiting child participants at The University of Illinois. Finally, we would like to thank Katie Daniels and Kathleen Eberhardt for their help in data collection and analysis.
PY - 2008/6
Y1 - 2008/6
N2 - Acoustic emphasis may convey a range of subtle discourse distinctions, yet little is known about how this complex ability develops in children. This paper presents a first investigation of the factors which influence the production of acoustic prominence in young children's spontaneous speech. In a production experiment, SVO sentences were elicited from 4 year olds who were asked to describe events in a video. Children were found to place more acoustic prominence both on 'new' words and on words that were 'given' but had shifted to a more accessible position within the discourse. This effect of accessibility concurs with recent studies of adult speech. We conclude that, by age four, children show appropriate, adult-like use of acoustic prominence, suggesting sensitivity to a variety of discourse distinctions.
AB - Acoustic emphasis may convey a range of subtle discourse distinctions, yet little is known about how this complex ability develops in children. This paper presents a first investigation of the factors which influence the production of acoustic prominence in young children's spontaneous speech. In a production experiment, SVO sentences were elicited from 4 year olds who were asked to describe events in a video. Children were found to place more acoustic prominence both on 'new' words and on words that were 'given' but had shifted to a more accessible position within the discourse. This effect of accessibility concurs with recent studies of adult speech. We conclude that, by age four, children show appropriate, adult-like use of acoustic prominence, suggesting sensitivity to a variety of discourse distinctions.
KW - Accent
KW - Accessibility
KW - Discourse
KW - Language development
KW - Language production
KW - Prosody
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U2 - 10.1016/j.cognition.2007.10.005
DO - 10.1016/j.cognition.2007.10.005
M3 - Article
C2 - 18070621
AN - SCOPUS:42249104228
VL - 107
SP - 1093
EP - 1101
JO - Cognition
JF - Cognition
SN - 0010-0277
IS - 3
ER -