Dissertation
The development of prosody between 6 and 11 years in English and Greek
Abstract: Prosody (prominence, rhythm, intonation, etc.) is crucial for using language efficiently and conveying one’s intended meaning at different linguistic levels. Therefore, a child has to acquire the prosodic system of the language in order to become a competent speaker of that language. Even though the importance of prosody is well known, we still do not know how early the prosodic system is acquired. The focus of previous research on simpler structures (e.g., word stress) has led to the belief that prosody is acquired early in development, but there is evidence that more complex structures are not fully developed until the early teenage years. Also, most of the previous research either studied the perceptual abilities of children or used adult listeners to evaluate children’s productions. This has limited our understanding of child language and the acoustic properties children produce in different stages of development and led to contradictory conclusions about when children acquire a pattern. The present study addresses these gaps in the literature by testing the hypothesis that the children’s prosodic system develops according to the Prosodic Hierarchy, a universal hierarchy of prosodic domains underlying the prosodic patterns of languages. The development of three complex prosodic structures (compound, phrasal, and clitic prosody) in Greek and English is investigated in 6- and 11-year-old children focusing on the acoustic and variability properties of child speech. The results support the hypothesis that prosodic development follows the Prosodic Hierarchy showing that the three patterns are acquired based on their phonological structure, from the simplest (Greek compounds) to the more complex (phrases). In addition, the acoustic and variability properties of the speech produced by the children show that not all acoustic properties of prosody are acquired similarly, with pitch properties being the last to emerge in both languages. Moreover, prosodic development indeed continues into the teenage years with the more complex structures (phrases) not being fully developed by the oldest children studied here. To conclude, prosodic development is shown to be gradual, influenced by the phonological structure of its units, and extend to the teenage years, when phonological development was previously thought to be completed.
Advisor: Defense: February 19th 2016
Irene Vogel Degree conferred: May 27th 2016
Committee Members: