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Article: Testing The Hyper-articulation And Prosodic Hypotheses Of Child-directed Speech: Insights From The Perceptual And Acoustic Characteristics Of Child-directed Cantonese Tones

TitleTesting The Hyper-articulation And Prosodic Hypotheses Of Child-directed Speech: Insights From The Perceptual And Acoustic Characteristics Of Child-directed Cantonese Tones
Authors
Issue Date2018
PublisherAmerican Speech - Language - Hearing Association. The Journal's web site is located at http://www.asha.org/about/publications/journal-abstracts/jslhr-a/
Citation
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 2018, v. 61 n. 8, p. 1907-1925 How to Cite?
AbstractPurpose The function of child-directed speech has been debated for decades. This study examined the perceptual and acoustic characteristics of child- and adult-directed Cantonese tones to test the hyperarticulation and prosodic hypotheses that have been proposed to account for the acoustic modifications in child-directed speech. Method Sixty-two mother–child dyads participated in the study. The mothers verbally labeled 30 pictures in monosyllabic isolated words and in the final position of a carrier sentence to the experimenter and their 1- to 5-year-old children. The 8,634 adult- and child-directed productions were low-pass filtered to eliminate lexical information and presented to 5 judges for tone identification. Acoustic analysis was performed on the productions. Results Acoustically, child-directed tones were produced with an elevated pitch, and the pitch level decreased as the child's age increased. Acoustic contrasts between phonetically similar and more confusing tones were not enhanced in child-directed speech, and unexpectedly, child-directed tones were identified with a lower accuracy than adult-directed tones. The perceptual errors of child-directed tones mirrored the errors found in identifying tones excised from sentence-final position, which had a pitch-lowering effect on the tones. The lower perceptual accuracy, the lack of enhanced acoustic contrasts in confusing tone pairs, and the similarities in the error patterns in identifying tones in child-directed speech and tones in utterance-final position suggest that the acoustic modifications in child-directed tones are prosodic effects serving pragmatic purposes. Conclusion The findings reject the hyperarticulation hypothesis and support the prosodic hypothesis of child-directed speech.
Persistent Identifierhttp://hdl.handle.net/10722/259483
ISSN
2023 Impact Factor: 2.2
2023 SCImago Journal Rankings: 0.827
ISI Accession Number ID

 

DC FieldValueLanguage
dc.contributor.authorWong, P-
dc.contributor.authorNg, KWS-
dc.date.accessioned2018-09-03T04:08:21Z-
dc.date.available2018-09-03T04:08:21Z-
dc.date.issued2018-
dc.identifier.citationJournal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 2018, v. 61 n. 8, p. 1907-1925-
dc.identifier.issn1092-4388-
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10722/259483-
dc.description.abstractPurpose The function of child-directed speech has been debated for decades. This study examined the perceptual and acoustic characteristics of child- and adult-directed Cantonese tones to test the hyperarticulation and prosodic hypotheses that have been proposed to account for the acoustic modifications in child-directed speech. Method Sixty-two mother–child dyads participated in the study. The mothers verbally labeled 30 pictures in monosyllabic isolated words and in the final position of a carrier sentence to the experimenter and their 1- to 5-year-old children. The 8,634 adult- and child-directed productions were low-pass filtered to eliminate lexical information and presented to 5 judges for tone identification. Acoustic analysis was performed on the productions. Results Acoustically, child-directed tones were produced with an elevated pitch, and the pitch level decreased as the child's age increased. Acoustic contrasts between phonetically similar and more confusing tones were not enhanced in child-directed speech, and unexpectedly, child-directed tones were identified with a lower accuracy than adult-directed tones. The perceptual errors of child-directed tones mirrored the errors found in identifying tones excised from sentence-final position, which had a pitch-lowering effect on the tones. The lower perceptual accuracy, the lack of enhanced acoustic contrasts in confusing tone pairs, and the similarities in the error patterns in identifying tones in child-directed speech and tones in utterance-final position suggest that the acoustic modifications in child-directed tones are prosodic effects serving pragmatic purposes. Conclusion The findings reject the hyperarticulation hypothesis and support the prosodic hypothesis of child-directed speech.-
dc.languageeng-
dc.publisherAmerican Speech - Language - Hearing Association. The Journal's web site is located at http://www.asha.org/about/publications/journal-abstracts/jslhr-a/-
dc.relation.ispartofJournal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research-
dc.titleTesting The Hyper-articulation And Prosodic Hypotheses Of Child-directed Speech: Insights From The Perceptual And Acoustic Characteristics Of Child-directed Cantonese Tones-
dc.typeArticle-
dc.identifier.emailWong, P: puisanw@hku.hk-
dc.identifier.authorityWong, P=rp01831-
dc.description.naturepostprint-
dc.identifier.doi10.1044/2018_JSLHR-S-17-0375-
dc.identifier.pmid30073296-
dc.identifier.scopuseid_2-s2.0-85051488129-
dc.identifier.hkuros289285-
dc.identifier.volume61-
dc.identifier.issue8-
dc.identifier.spage1907-
dc.identifier.epage1925-
dc.identifier.isiWOS:000444980200004-
dc.publisher.placeUnited States-
dc.identifier.issnl1092-4388-

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