Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T17:40:56.027Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Intonation comprehension in ten-year-olds*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Alan Cruttenden
Alan Cruttenden
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The comprehension of nine intonational contrasts involving different intonation-groupings, different nucleus placements, and different tones, was examined in 20 ten-year-old children and 20 adults. Fewer ten-year-olds than adults answered correctly on almost all tasks. Initial hypotheses concerning the order of acquisition among the three systems (grouping, nucleus placement, and tone) were in general not confirmed. But the distinction between context-wide and context-limited tonal meanings was predictive of acquisition; and a similar distinction based on local meanings rather than on the intonation patterns themselves is likely to apply to groupings and nucleus placements.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , October 1985 , pp. 643 - 661
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Atkinson-King, K. (1973). Children's acquisition or phonological stress contrasts. UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics 25.Google Scholar
Bolinger, D. (1964). Intonational as a universal. In Lunt, H. G. (ed.), Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Linguists. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Bolinger, D. (1978). Intonation across languages. In Greenberg, J. H., Ferguson, C. A. & Moravcsik, E. (eds), Universals of human language. Vol. 2, Phonology. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Cruttenden, A. (1974). An experiment involving comprehension of intonation in children from 7 to 10. JChLang 1. 221–32.Google Scholar
Crystal, D. (1979). Prosodic development. In Fletcher, P. & Garman, M. (eds), Language acquisition: studies in first language development. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Cutler, A. & Swinney, D. (1980). Development of the comprehension of semantic focus in young children. Paper presented at the Fifth Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development.Google Scholar
de Villiers, J. G. & de Villiers, P. A. (1978). Language acquisition. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard.Google Scholar
Garvey, C. (1975). Requests and responses in children's speech. JChLang 2. 41–63.Google Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K. (1967). Intonation and grammar in British English. The Hague: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K. (1975). Learning how to mean: explorations in the development of language. London: Edward Arnold.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hornby, P. A. & Hass, W. A. (1970). Use of contrastive stress by pre-school children. JSHR 13. 395–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iannucci, D. & Dodd, D. (1980). The development of some aspects of quantifier negation in children. PRCLD 19. 88–94.Google Scholar
Ladd, D. R. (1979). Light and shadow: a study in the syntax and semantics of sentence accent in American English. In Waugh, L. R. & Van Coetsem, F. (eds), Contributions to grammatical studies: semantics and syntax. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Lust, B. & Mervis, C. A. (1980). Development of coordination in the natural speech of young children. JChLang 7. 279–304.Google ScholarPubMed
Nash, R. & Mulac, A. (1980). The intonation of verifiability. In Waugh, L. R. & van Schooneveld, C. H. (eds), The melody of language: intonation and prosody. Baltimore: University Park Press.Google Scholar
Oakeshott-Taylor, J. (1984). Factuality and intonation. jfL 20. 1–21.Google Scholar
Quirk, R., Duckworth, A. P., Rusiecki, J. P. L. & Colin, A. J. T. (1964). Studies in the correspondence of prosodic to grammatical features in English. In Lunt, H. G. (ed.), Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Linguistics. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Solan, L. (1980). Contrastive stress and children's interpretation of pronouns. JSHR 23. 688–98.Google ScholarPubMed
Wieman, L. A. (1976). Stress patterns in early child language. JChLang 3. 283–6.Google Scholar