Bilingual Acquisition of Intonation: A Study of Children Speaking German and English

Description

This book investigates the acquisition of intonation by German/English bilingual children. Intonation is analysed both auditorily and instrumentally, and the transcription system of the British Tradition and the ToBI system in the autosegmental-metrical approach of intonation analysis are employed. Based on longitudinal data of three children comprising the ages 2 years 1 month (2;1) to 5 years 6 months (5;6), the acquisition sequence for the phonological rules and phonetic production of nucleus placement, pitch and intonational phrasing is sketched. Some phonological functions of nucleus placement and pitch such as the marking of contrast or the type of speech act are mastered as early as 2;1 whilst intonational phrasing is first used phonologically at 4;6. Mastery of the phonetic production of all three intonational systems is acquired much later, and acquisition is not completed yet at 5;6. In general, interindividual differences and a clear separation of both language systems are apparent in all children, with a considerable time lag in the acquisition of the weaker language. It is concluded that both transcription systems for intonation need to be modified for the analysis of child speech and that the autosegmental-metrical approach with its distinction between the phonological and the phonetic level proves a more flexible and descriptively valuable tool. Acknowledgements Notational conventions 1. Introduction 2. Bilingual acquisition of intonation 2.1 Description and transcription of the phonological systems of English and German intonation 2.1.1 The British tradition 2.1.2 The autosegmental-metrical (AM) approach 2.1.3 Compatibility of the two transcription systems 2.2 The linguistic functions of intonation 2.3 The phonetic correlates of intonation 2.3.1 The phonetic correlates of nuclei, pitch accents and intonational phrasing 2.3.2 Pitch 2.3.3 Loudness 2.3.4 Length 2.3.5 Pause 2.4 Bilingual acquisition of intonation 2.4.1 Bilingual first language acquisition 2.4.2 Bilingual language representation and processing 2.4.3 Language representation and processing in bilingual first language acquisition 2.4.4 Bilingual acquisition of the phonological system of intonation 2.4.5 Bilingual acquisition of the phonetic parameters of intonation 2.5 A model of the bilingual acquisition of intonation 3. Bilingual acquisition of nucleus placement 3.1 The phonological systems of nucleus placement in German and English 3.2 The phonetic production of nuclei 3.2.1 Pitch and pitch movement during stressed syllables 3.2.2 Intensity 3.2.3 Length 3.3 The acquisition of nucleus placement 3.3.1 The acquisition of word stress 3.3.2 Transition to sentence-level stress 3.3.3 Acquisition of the phonological rules of nucleus placement 3.4 Mastery of the phonetic production of nuclear stress and emphasis 3.5 Research questions 4. Bilingual acquisition of the system of pitch 4.1 The phonological systems of pitch in English and German 4.2 The phonetic production of pitch accents in English and German 4.3 The acquisition of the phonological system of pitch 4.4 Mastery of the phonetic production of pitch accents 4.5 Research questions 5. Bilingual acquisition of intonational phrasing 5.1 The phonological systems of intonational phrasing in English and German 5.2 The phonetic correlates of intonational phrases 5.3 The acquisition of intonational phrasing 5.4 Mastery of the phonetic correlates of intonational phrasing 5.5 Research questions 6. The study - research questions, method and analysis 6.1 Research questions 6.1.1 Nucleus placement 6.1.2 Pitch 6.1.3 Intonational phrasing 6.2 Method 6.2.1 Data 6.2.2 The subjects of the study 6.2.3 Data collection 6.3 Analysis 6.3.1 Data 6.3.2 Auditory analysis and layout of the transcription 6.3.3 Reliability of the auditory analysis 6.3.4 Acoustic analysis 6.3.5 Agreement between the two kinds of analysis 7. Results 7.1 Hannah’s general acquisition path: 2;1 to 2;6 7.2 Laura’s general acquisition path: 2;5 to 4;3 7.3 Adam’s general acquisition path: 3;6 to 5;5 8. The acquisition of nucleus placement 8.1 Hannah: Acquisition from 2;1 to 2;6 8.1.1 Phonological use of nucleus placement at 2;1 8.1.2 Phonetic production of stress 8.1.3 Production of nuclei at 2;6 8.2 Laura: Acquisition from 2;5 to 4;3 8.2.1 Phonological use of nucleus placement 8.2.2 The phonetic production of nuclei 8.3 Adam: Acquisition from 3;6 to 5;5 8.3.1 Phonological use of nucleus placement 8.3.2 The phonetic production of nuclei 9. The acquisition of the system of pitch 9.1 Hannah: Acquisition from 2;1 to 2;6 9.1.1 Phonological use of pitch 9.1.2 Marking of the communicative situation by pitch 9.1.3 Hannah’s acquisition of the systematic use of pitch in questions 9.1.4 The phonetic production of pitch accents 9.2 Laura: Acquisition from 2;5 to 4;3 9.2.1 Phonological use of pitch 9.2.2 Laura’s acquisition of the systematic use of pitch in questions 9.2.3 The phonetic production of pitch accents 9.2.4 Laura’s phonetic pattern 9.3 Adam: Acquisition from 3;6 to 5;5 9.3.1 Phonological use of pitch 9.3.2 Adam’s acquisition of the systematic use of pitch in questions 9.3.3 The phonetic production of pitch accents 9.3.4 Adam’s phonetic pattern 10. The acquisition of intonational phrasing 10.1 Hannah: Acquisition from 2;1 to 2;6 10.1.1 Production of phonetic correlates of intonational phrases 10.1.2 Phonological use of intonational phrasing 10.2 Laura: Acquisition from 2;5 to 4;3 10.2.1 Production of the phonetic correlates of intonational phrases 10.2.2 Phonological use of intonational phrasing 10.3 Adam: Acquisition from 3;6 to 5;5 11. Summary and discussion 11.1 Summary and discussion 11.1.1 Nucleus placement 11.1.2 Pitch 11.1.3 Intonational phrasing 11.1.4 Bilingual acquisition of intonation 11.1.5 Bilingual vs. monolingual acquisition 11.2 The model revised 11.3 The acquisition of intonation in the general language acquisition process 11.4 Outlook and future research 12. References