Abstract
AbstractThis article presents the results of a study on articulatory and acoustical correlates of contrastive focus in French in five children aged 4 and 5 and five adults. The speakers repeated the sequence [baba] in two prosodic contexts: neutral conditions and contrastive focus. The acoustic signal and the trajectories of three sensors placed on the subjects’ upper lip, lower lip, and chin were recorded using an Optotrak system. Articulatory movements were analyzed for the two syllables in the sequence, in each of the two prosodic conditions. Formant measurements, sound intensity, fundamental frequency, and acoustic duration of the segments were also extracted from the acoustic signal. The results show that the effects of contrastive focus are smaller in the children than the adult speakers. The results are interpreted in light of recent theories on the emergence of spoken language in children.
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