Prosodic Disambiguation in Child-Directed Speech

Autor/inn/en	Kempe, Vera; Schaeffler, Sonja; Thoresen, John C.
Titel	Prosodic Disambiguation in Child-Directed Speech
Quelle	In: Journal of Memory and Language, 62 (2010) 2, S.204-225 (22 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0749-596X
DOI	10.1016/j.jml.2009.11.006
Schlagwörter	Sentences; Cues; Mothers; Form Classes (Languages); English (Second Language); Experiments; Young Children; Adults; Speech Communication; Syntax; Suprasegmentals; Comparative Analysis; Early Childhood Education + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Sentence analysis; Satzanalyse; Stichwort; Mother; Mutter; Analytischer Sprachbau; English as second language; English; Second Language; Englisch als Zweitsprache; Erprobung; Frühe Kindheit; Early childhood; Education; Frühkindliche Bildung; Frühpädagogik
Abstract	The study examines whether speakers exaggerate prosodic cues to syntactic structure when addressing young children. In four experiments, 72 mothers and 48 non-mothers addressed either real 2-4-year old or imaginary children as well as adult confederates using syntactically ambiguous sentences like "Touch the cat with the spoon" intending to convey either an instrument (high attachment) or a modifier (low attachment) interpretation. Mothers produced longer segments and pauses in child-directed speech (CDS) compared to adult-directed speech (ADS). However, in CDS, mothers lengthened post-nominal pauses in both the instrument and the modifier sentences to a similar extent thereby failing to disambiguate between the two interpretations. In contrast, non-mothers provided reliable prosodic disambiguation cues in CDS by producing post-nominal pauses that were longer in instrument than modifier sentences. Experiment 5, using ratings from 50 participants, determined that expressed positive affect was higher in the CDS of mothers than of non-mothers. Negative correlations between vocal affect and degree of prosodic disambiguation in CDS compared to ADS suggest that there may be a trade-off between affective and linguistic prosody such that greater dominance of affective prosody may limit the informativeness of prosodic cues as markers of syntactic structure. (Contains 7 tables and 5 figures.) (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10