Prosodic development from 4 to 10 years: Data from the Italian adaptation of the PEPS-C

Abstract

• The development of prosodic functions covers a long period, till adolescence. • The PEPS-C evaluates the prosodic competence in both comprehension and expression. • The Italian version aimed to describe the developmental trajectories in this language. • The cross-linguistic comparison showed similarities and differences amongst languages. The development of prosody covers a long age period, with some functions not well-mastered till adolescence. Moreover, languages show different prosodic developmental trajectories, which can be related to their distinctive characteristics. The Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech-Communication (PEPS-C) consists of a battery of tasks developed to analyse this competence in both comprehension and expression. It takes into account several prosodic functions (including both affective and linguistic functions). Easy to administer and to score, it has demonstrated its usefulness in the evaluation of prosodic competence from preschool age and in several languages. The main aim of the present work is to investigate the development of prosodic competence in a group of Italian children from four to ten years of age through the administration of the Italian version of the PEPS-C. The results confirm that prosodic development covers a long age period for Italian too: indeed, while the affective function of prosody seemed to be well-mastered from the preschool period, other functions, like use of the prosodic focus, are not well-mastered till late, after the age of ten years. The developmental trajectories found are discussed in relation to those found for languages other than Italian.