This study investigates whether or not the representation of lexical stress information can be primed during speech production. In four experiments, we attempted to prime the stress position of bisyllabic target nouns (picture names) having initial and final stress with auditory prime words having either the same or different stress as the target…

Studies of prosodic control in severe dysarthria (DYS) have focused on differences between impaired and nonimpaired speech in terms of the range and variation of fundamental frequency (F0), intensity, and duration. Whether individuals with severe DYS can adequately signal prosodic contrasts and "which" acoustic cues they use to do so has received…

Retaining detailed representations of unstressed syllables is a logical prerequisite for infants' use of probabilistic phonotactics to segment iambic words from fluent speech. The head-turn preference study was used to investigate the nature of English- learners' representations of iambic word onsets. Fifty-four 10.5-month-olds were familiarized…

Background: A number of previous studies have revealed that children with Specific Language Impairment have limitations in Phonological Working Memory as revealed by a task that requires them to repeat non-words of increasing syllable length. However, most published studies have used non-words that are phonotactically English. Aims: The purpose…

This study examines effects of short, medium, and extended second language (L2) experience (3 months, 3 years, and 10 years of United States residence, respectively) on the production of five suprasegmentals (stress timing, peak alignment, speech rate, pause frequency, and pause duration) in six English declarative sentences by 30 adult Korean…

This article discusses the relationship between intonation and enunciation. The premise is that intonation performs in dependent sentences what allocution and modality perform in independent sentences. (Text is in French.) (AM)

The evidence on the acquisition of intonation by children is reviewed. Reports on the early use of pitch contours fall into two categories, imitational and differential intonation. While imitational intonation is based on mimicry of adults, differential intonation involves the acquisition of two or three tunes that contrast in meaning from an…

The research described here confirmed the hypothesis that for each variable, the Hispanic variant is realized in higher percentages in syllable-timed utterances and that the non-Hispanic variant is realized in higher percentages in stress-timed utterances. (Author/RM)

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Because of neo-acute stress--or transferred acute stress--long vowel prosody in West Slavic had a special evolution. Two kinds of long vowel evolution are examined. The nature of transitionality across Slavic territory from tonal opposition to distinctive stress placement is pointed out. (SC)

The present study is a pilot phonemic analysis which attempts primarily to establish an inventory of phonemic contrasts in Bemba. Also referred to as Chibemba, the term Bemba is used to cover several regional variants of the language. (The variant examined in this study is known as "Central Bemba," spoken in the Kasama District and contiguous…

The behavior of the "It's...who..." type of construction and its relation to defining and non-defining relative clauses is examined. Reference is made particularly to suprasegmental features. Parallels are drawn to French relative constructions. (SCC)

Considers the effects of the loss of the plural morpheme 's' in the Spanish dialect known as oriental Andalusian. The openness of the final vowels is now considered the plural marker but this seems to be only a transitory replacement for the missing plural. (Text is in Spanish.) (TL)

Discusses the esthetic ideas of Henri Bergson with particular emphasis on his thoughts about "intuition" in art and the importance of the prosodic features of literary style. The prosodic quality parallels or reproduces the rhythm of the thoughts being expressed. (Text is in Spanish.) (TL)

Presents an analysis of Spanish stress based on natural generative theory that places strong constraints on phonological abstractness. This analysis takes Spanish stress to be morphologically determined in relation to the stem of the word. (Author/RM)