Dankovičová, J., Pigott, K., Wells, B., & Peppé, S. (2004) Temporal markers of prosodic boundaries in children’s speech production. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 34(1): 17–36.
Presentation: Shelly
Summary: Sarah
Past studies showed that children are able to mark intonational phrase boundaries as early as age 2. However, as for intermediate phrase boundaries, even 7-year-old children could not master it. This study aims to investigate whether children could consistently utilize temporal cues when producing minor prosodic phrase boundaries. Specifically, temporal cues examined here included the degree of final lengthening and pause duration. A production experiment on children and a perception experiment on adults were conducted. In the production experiment, ten 8-year-old children were asked to make listing intonation of either two targets (e.g., coffee cake and tea) or three targets (e.g., coffee, cake, and tea), in which the three-target list contains intermediate boundaries. Results showed that most children produced three targets with more final lengthening and longer pause. In the perception experiment, adults listened to children’s production, and judged whether they were listing two targets or three targets. It was found that in general, more final lengthening and longer pause would result in more three-target judgments. In conclusion, children indeed used temporal cues to mark intermediate phrase boundaries, though developmental differences among them were found. To better understand this issue, pitch cues should be further investigated as well.
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