The aim of this study was to determine, using speech error and articulatory analyses, whether the binary distinction between iambs and trochees should be extended to include additional prosodic subcategories. Adults, children who are normally developing, and children with specific language impairment (SLI) participated. Children with SLI were…

How do children develop the mapping between prosody and other levels of linguistic knowledge? This question has received considerable attention in child language research. In the present study two experiments were conducted to investigate four- to five-year-old Mandarin-speaking children's sensitivity to prosody in ambiguity resolution. Experiment…

Presents experimental evidence supporting the assertion that successive single-word utterances share certain suprasegmental characteristics with multiple-word utterances and that they are therefore not single words but the first manifestation of syntax in speech. (AM)

Describes vocalizations of five 13-month-old infants. Data are reported on syllable shape, vowel-like and consonant-like production in context and time, periodic utterances, complex babbling sequences, recurrent phonetic forms, fundamental frequency, and intonation types. Results are consistent with data from other studies and support theory of…

Study used two experiments to examine the development of children's comprehension of the use of intonation and belief verbs to mark the relative certainty with which a speaker makes a statement. It is argued that children's understanding of prosody will be best revealed in contexts in which they are required to respond to the pragmatic function of…

Investigates the comprehension of nine intonational contrasts in ten-year-olds and adults. Overall performance on the tasks was much lower among the children than among the adults. Results indicate that hypotheses concerning the chronological order of development of meanings dependent on groupings, nucleus placements, and tones are too simplistic.…

The effects of speech rate, intonation, and sentence length on children's ability to imitate sentences were examined. Results indicate that adult speech is more readily imitated by children when intonation is normal, sentences are short, and speech rate is close to that of the child. (Author/AM)

Research undertaken to date suggests that important developments in the understanding and use of intonation may take place after the age of 5;0. The present study aims to provide a more comprehensive account of these developments. A specially designed battery of prosodic tasks was administered to four groups of thirty children, from London (U.K.),…