Biomaterial Database

Acoustic emphasis in four year olds. 2008

Elizabeth Wonnacott, and Duane G Watson

Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 1UD, UK. elizabeth.wonnacott@psy.ox.ac.uk

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.

UI	MeSH Term	Description	Entries
D008297	Male		Males
D010700	Phonetics	The science or study of speech sounds and their production, transmission, and reception, and their analysis, classification, and transcription. (Random House Unabridged Dictionary, 2d ed)	Speech Sounds,Sound, Speech,Sounds, Speech,Speech Sound
D002663	Child Language	The language and sounds expressed by a child at a particular maturational stage in development.	Child Languages,Language, Child,Languages, Child
D002675	Child, Preschool	A child between the ages of 2 and 5.	Children, Preschool,Preschool Child,Preschool Children
D005260	Female		Females
D006801	Humans	Members of the species Homo sapiens.	Homo sapiens,Man (Taxonomy),Human,Man, Modern,Modern Man
D013061	Speech Acoustics	The acoustic aspects of speech in terms of frequency, intensity, and time.	Acoustics, Speech,Acoustic, Speech,Speech Acoustic
D013067	Speech Perception	The process whereby an utterance is decoded into a representation in terms of linguistic units (sequences of phonetic segments which combine to form lexical and grammatical morphemes).	Speech Discrimination,Discrimination, Speech,Perception, Speech
D014705	Verbal Behavior	Includes both producing and responding to words, either written or spoken.	Behavior, Verbal,Behaviors, Verbal,Verbal Behaviors