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The prosody of two-syllable words in french-speaking monolingual and bilingual children: a focus on initial accent and final accent

Published inLanguage and speech, 002383092110303
Publication date2021-08-04
First online date2021-08-04
Abstract

This study examined the acoustic characteristics of disyllabic words produced by French-speaking monolingual and bilingual children, aged 2;6 to 6;10, and by adults. Specifically, it investigated the influence of age, bilingualism, and vocabulary on final-to-initial syllable duration ratios and on the presence of initial and final accent. Children and adults took part in a word-naming task in which they produced a controlled set of disyllabic words. Duration and maximum pitch were measured for each syllable of the disyllabic word and these values were inserted into mixed-effects statistical models. Results indicated that children as young as 2;6 obtained final-to-initial syllable duration ratios similar to those of adults. Young children realized accent on the initial syllable more often and accent on the final syllable less often than older children and adults. There was no influence of bilingualism on the duration and pitch characteristics of disyllabic words. Children aged 2;6 with smaller vocabularies produced initial accent more often than children with large vocabularies. Our findings suggest that early word productions are constrained by developmental tendencies favouring falling pitch across an utterance.

eng
Keywords
  • Prosodic development
  • Bilingualism
  • Vocabulary development
Citation (ISO format)
WINKLER-KEHOE, Margaret. The prosody of two-syllable words in french-speaking monolingual and bilingual children: a focus on initial accent and final accent. In: Language and speech, 2021, p. 002383092110303. doi: 10.1177/00238309211030312
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ISSN of the journal0023-8309
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Creation09/11/2021 14:04:00
First validation09/11/2021 14:04:00
Update time16/03/2023 01:46:56
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