Acoustic cues to prominence in children's speech

Abstract

Previous work indicates that phrasal prominence patterns are not yet adult-like in 6-year-old children's speech. Perception of prominence in English is influenced by temporal patterning, amplitude changes, and fundamental frequency variations across the phrase. This study examined the relative weightings of these cues to prominence in adult judgments of 6-year-old children and college-aged adults' speech. Eleven adult judges listened to two—word phrases produced by 25 children and 25 adults in a counting task designed to induce stress shift (thirtéen banana versus thirtéen barbeque). The judges decided which word was most prominent in the phrase: number, noun, or equal prominence. Although the number word was always judged to be prominent regardless of speakers' ages or context, initial results indicate that agreement between judges varied systematically with different cues in children and adults' speech. More judges agreed that the number word was prominent in children's speech when the first syllable of this word was produced with an especially high F0 and long duration, but only the relative intensity of the initial syllable predicted inter-judge agreement for adult speech. The results have implications for understanding the development of cue integration in the prominence production. [Work supported by NIH/R01HD061458.]