Description
- Abstract:
- Newborn infants are sensitive to their native language prosody. When children begin to speak, they are able to approximate adult-like intonation patterns and align these contours with the appropriate semantic and pragmatic meanings. However, little research has been conducted on early sensitivities to intonation as it reflects information structure. I conduct a more detailed investigation into the development of intonation and information structure in order to better understand the mechanisms that lead to successful communication. Through a set of three studies, this dissertation explores the interaction between particular pitch accents and information status to show the fundamental role that they play in the language acquisition of toddlers, building upon previous research to demonstrate that children are able to incorporate these features during early attentional processing, word learning, and their own speech. Experiments 1 and 2 focus on perception and examine how intonation interacts with different types of information in discourse to guide attention and aid in early word learning. Experiment 3 focuses on production and explores how young toddlers produce information structure distinctions in their own speech, both intonationally and acoustically, in comparison to adults. An acoustic component is included in Experiment 3 to provide a more complete prosodic analysis that includes both phonology and phonetics together. Experiment 1 demonstrates that either newness or the presence of a pitch accent (via F0 variation only) guide 18-month-olds’ attention during reference resolution. Experiment 2 shows that a complex pitch accent and contrastiveness aid 24-month-olds in learning a novel word. Even with live interactions removed from the procedures, Experiments 1 and 2 reveal the interacting effects of prosody and information structure on communication. Experiment 3 shows how toddlers (2;6) phonologically and acoustic-phonetically produce information structure differences in a manner comparable to ones found in adult speech. The three experiments together support the fundamental goal of the dissertation: to explore the ways that intonation interacts with our ability to correctly interpret and produce informationally-structured categories in day-to-day discourse settings, and how this ability develops during early language acquisition.
- Notes:
- Thesis (Ph.D. -- Brown University (2015)
Access Conditions
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- In Copyright
- Restrictions on Use
- All rights reserved. Collection is open to the Brown community for research.
Citation
Thorson, Jill C.,
"The Development of Intonation and Information Structure: Perceptual and Productive Investigations"
(2015).
Cognitive Sciences Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.7301/Z09Z938R
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Collection:
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Cognitive Sciences Theses and Dissertations
Theses and Dissertations for the Cognitive Sciences department....