The adaptation and application of relational and independent analyses for intonation production in young children

Abstract

Previous research has indicated that relational and independent analyses of the phonological skills of young children result in very different interpretation of the data. This paper presents an adaptation of each of these analysis types, making them appropriate for the analysis of intonational characteristics of utterances produced by very young children. Meaningful and nonmeaningful utterances from a total of 30 children (ages 12–23 months) were studied. Measures of accent range served as the relational measure for this study and a contour inventory was introduced as the independent measure. The results from the two analyses revealed that the contour inventory was the most sensitive to different aspects of intonation development during the second year of life. The contour inventory was best at identifying the differences between rising and falling contours. This study supports the use of the contour inventory for measuring intonational development as a supplement to more traditionally utilized measures (e.g., accent range).