Tonal Word Accents Research Articles

Word-initial consonant-vowel coordination in a lexical pitch-accent language.

Previous research has acknowledged the effect of prosody on inter-gestural coordination, but specifically the effect of tones is still understudied. This paper has a two-fold purpose. First, it aims to explore effects of the Swedish word accents on word-initial consonant-vowel (CV) coarticulation. Second, it aims to revisit the existing evidence for tonal integration. Based on Articulatory Phonology, it has been suggested that tones- in tone languages- are integrated in the gestural organization of a syllable-initial CV sequence in the same manner as would an additional consonant (CCV), indicated by a time lag between the gestural onsets of the C and the V gesture (CV onset time lag). However, we argue that the existing evidence is inconclusive, because previous cross-linguistic research has used small-scale data sets (one to seven speakers), and we still lack a well-grounded consensus on how gestural onsets are to be measured. This study uses Electromagnetic Articulography (EMA) to investigate word-initial CV coordination in a lexical pitch-accent language (Swedish) with a binary tonal word accent distinction: a tonal fall and a tonal rise, respectively. A selection of 13 spatial, temporal or coordinative measures of bilabial and tongue body data from 19 speakers, and acoustic fo data, were examined to study the CV sequence /ma/. Mixed effects regression models revealed a longer tongue body movement in the rising tone context and small but significant differences in tongue body height, in the closing and the opening of the lips, as well as in the CV onset time lag between the two tonal contexts. We argue that these effects are biomechanical in nature, due to the physiological connections between the tongue, the jaw, and the larynx. In addition, our results suggest either synchronized CV onsets or a CV onset time lag (as in tone languages), depending on the timing landmarks used. In order to evaluate such results as evidence for or against the integration of tone in CV coarticulation, we argue that future research needs to compare data from a variety of languages using a considerable number of speakers. The present study provides new reference values for such comparisons.

Features of low functional load in mono- and bilinguals' lexical access: evidence from Swedish tonal accent.

Swedish makes use of tonal accents (Accents 1 and 2) to contrast words, but the functional load is very low, with some regional dialects not even exhibiting the contrast. In particular given the low number of minimal pairs, the question is whether tonal word accent is used in lexical access. Here we present two cross-modal fragment semantic priming studies in order to address this question. Both experiments use first syllable fragments in order to prime semantically related targets. Experiment 1 utilises words whose first syllable occurs with both accent patterns, creating a situation in which there is lexical competition between words that differ solely in terms of accent. Experiment 2 removes this competition by using words that have no such accent competitors. Our results show that native speakers of Swedish use tonal word accent in lexical access: Accent mispronunciations failed to prime semantically related targets, regardless of whether primes had accent competitors or not. Results for a group of early bilingual speakers (who grew up with one Swedish-speaking parent and one other non-tonal language) showed no differences in processing compared to the monolinguals. This indicates that the extraction of accent features during acquisition and their use in lexical access is robust, even in a scenario where multiple input languages lead to tonal word accent being a useful feature for only some of the lexical items that are being acquired. There is no doubt that the accent system is well entrenched into the bilinguals' phonological system.

Prosodic aspects of repetition in Swedish-speaking children with developmental language disorder

Purpose: To examine repetition of stress and tonal word accents in real words and non-words in Swedish-speaking children with developmental language disorder (DLD), and to investigate the relation of prosodic repetition to measures of language ability.Method: A cross-sectional study was undertaken with 30 monolingual Swedish-speaking children with DLD, mean age 4;11 (years;months) and 29 age-matched controls, mean age 5;1, who repeated words and non-words with systematically varying prosody. Group differences for the repetition of prosodic features, and correlations between repetition and phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, were explored.Result: Children with DLD performed below controls on repetition of prosodic features of words and non-words. Repetition of stress and tonal word accent was not correlated with phonological production or receptive vocabulary, but a significant correlation was found between stress repetition in words and expressive grammar.Conclusion: Repetition of stress and tonal word accents is challenging for children with DLD acquiring Swedish as their first language, but may not be a good indicator of general language ability. Prosody should be taken into account when interpreting results from clinically used word repetition (WR) and non-word repetition (NWR) tasks.

Phonological and grammatical production in children with developmental language disorder and children with hearing impairment

Children with hearing impairment (HI) are at an increased risk of developing speech and language problems similar to those of children with developmental language disorder (DLD), including difficulties with phonology and grammar. This study investigated similarities and differences in phonological and grammatical production between children with bilateral sensorineural HI ( n = 14) and children with DLD ( n = 30) between 4-6 years of age and age-matched controls with typical language development and normal hearing (TLD) ( n = 29), all with Swedish as their first language. Production of consonants, vowels, stress patterns and tonal word accents was assessed in a picture naming task, and in a word and nonword repetition task. Grammatical production was assessed for verb and noun morphology, and syntax. While performance for both children with HI and DLD were generally significantly below that of the controls with TLD, production of accents and syntax emerged as relative strengths. There were few differences between the between the children with HI and DLD, but noun–adjective agreement in predicative was more challenging for the children with HI. The results have implications for language assessment and planning of intervention.

Prosodic and segmental aspects of nonword repetition in 4- to 6-year-old children who are deaf and hard of hearing compared to controls with normal hearing

ABSTRACTChildren who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) are at an increased risk of speech and language deficits. Nonword repetition (NWR) is a potential predictor of problems with phonology, grammar and lexicon in DHH children. The aim of the present study was to examine repetition of prosodic features and segments in nonwords by DHH children compared to children with normal hearing (NH) and to relate NWR performance to measures of language ability and background variables. In this cross-sectional study, 14 Swedish-speaking children with mild–profound sensorineural hearing loss, aged 4–6 years, and 29 age-matched controls with NH and typical language development participated. The DHH children used cochlear implants (CI), hearing aids or a combination of both. The assessment materials included a prosodically controlled NWR task, as well as tests of phonological production, expressive grammar and receptive vocabulary. The DHH children performed below the children with NH on the repetition of tonal word accents, stress patterns, vowels and consonants, with consonants being hardest, and tonal word accents easiest, to repeat. NWR performance was also correlated with language ability, and to hearing level, in the DHH children. Both prosodic and segmental features of nonwords are problematic for Swedish-speaking DHH children compared to children with NH, but performance on tonal word accent repetition is comparably high. NWR may have potential as a clinically useful tool for identification of children who are in need of speech and language intervention.

Second language prosody and its development: connection between different aspects

ABSTRACT This study focuses on the development of L2 prosody and, in particular, whether different aspects can affect each other. Finnish-speaking learners of Swedish took part in a pronunciation and oral skills course and were recorded for various speaking tasks before and after the experimental intervention. Read-aloud declarative sentences (statements) from nine learners were acoustically analysed for several tonal and temporal aspects, focusing on the marking of primary stress. The results reveal that the learning of Swedish tonal word accent 2 (H*LH) facilitates other tonal developments towards native-like utterance intonation. A link between tonal and temporal developments in the marking of primary stress was, however, not found, but the duration measurements suggest that articulation rate and tonal developments may be connected. The study’s implications for teaching and future research regarding any L2 – not only Swedish – include that aspects of learning L2 prosody should not be treated as separate, and that more emphasis should be placed on the possible connections between the learning of different aspects.

Repetition of words and non-words in typically developing children: The role of prosody

In this study, segmental and prosodic aspects of word repetition and non-word repetition in typically developing children aged four to six years were investigated. Focus was on developmental differences, and on how tonal word accent and word length affect segment production accuracy. Prosodically controlled words and non-words were repeated by 44 Swedish-speaking children. Repetition accuracy for both words and non-words increased with age, and was higher for words than non-words. Further, tonal word accents I and II provided different conditions for segment repetition in favor of accent II during both word repetition and non-word repetition for older children, but only during word repetition for younger children. This suggests age-dependent differences regarding how prosody is stored and integrated with segments. The findings have theoretical significance regarding the role of prosody in the perception, processing and production of phonological information. There are also clinical implications concerning the interpretation of repetition tasks and the potential use of prosody in speech and language intervention.

Danish stød as evidence for grammaticalisation of suffixal positions in word structure

(1) According to the Non-Stød Model (Basbøll 2005, The Phonology of Danish, Oxford: Oxford University Press; Basbøll 2008, “Stød, Diachrony and the Non-Stød Model.” North-Western European Language Evolution 54/55: 147–189), the distribution of stød (a laryngeal syllable rhyme prosody) can be predicted from the word structure of Danish. Danish word structure, for its part, can be derived from a set of general principles for integration (in the stem) of suffixes combined with a hypothesis of grammaticalised status in Danish; (2) the position of a suffix can be predicted from its grammatical category according to the principles under (1); (3) changes in stød alternations in the twentieth century give diachronic evidence for the grammaticalisation claimed under (1). Next, I discuss lexical specifications predicted by the Non-Stød Model, with respect to stød alternations, and finally, I compare Danish stød to the functionally related but phonologically completely different Scandinavian tonal word accents.

The role of Swedish tonal word accents in children with language impairment

The present study was designed to examine the production of the Swedish tonal accents in children with language impairment and normal controls in order to verify previous findings. The productions of 25 children with linguistic impairment and their matched controls, aged 4;4–10;0 (mean age 5;11) were evaluated by ratings of fundamental frequency patterns, and by perceptual analysis by ten linguistically naive listeners to assess the distinctiveness of the accents. These methods give a more detailed description of the children's productions of tonal word accents. The results show that 60.8% of the children with language impairment have difficulties to produce the contrast of tonal word accents according to the F0 patterns. The difference in the rating of the F0 curves between the children with LI and their matched controls was significant. There is a significant positive correlation between the perceptual results and the F0‐rating, indicating that the better a child was perceived, the better his/her F0 production was rated. We conclude that the distinction between the tonal word accents is a difficult feature to acquire for Swedish children, which is shown both by acoustic and perceptual evaluations.

Towards assessment of prosodic abilities in Swedish children with language impairment

Swedish children with language impairment (LI) have prosodic problems at word and phrase level, possibly also at discourse level. The aim of this study was to investigate the reliability and validity of a newly developed comprehensive procedure to capture prosody at word level (e.g., tonal word accent), phrase level (e.g., copula) and discourse level (e.g., conversation) in Swedish children with LI. Twenty-nine children with LI participated in the study. The reliability of the total score of the procedure was found to be sufficiently high, as was inter-examiner agreement. The total score significantly correlated with language comprehension and grammatical abilities. Prosodic problems were found by perceptual assessment in one third of the children. t test for equality of variances for presence versus absence of prosodic problems showed that these two groups significantly differed in total score of the procedure. This indicates that the procedure is a valid measure of prosodic problems.

Does Babbling Sound Native? Listener Responses to Vocalizations Produced by Swedish and American 12- and 18-Month-Olds

Previous studies of infants’ babbling have reported contradictory results as to the extent and timing of discernible phonetic influences of the ambient language. In the present experiment, five experienced phoneticians were asked to listen for ambient language effects on vocalizations produced by American and Swedish 12- and 18-month-olds (with 8 children in each language and age group), and to motivate their decisions in terms of word or phonetic cue perception. Group results indicated that listeners did not perceive effects of ambient language on pure babbles for either of the two age groups, whereas a clear effect appeared in both age groups given a more liberal definition of babbling. This is taken to suggest that results of ambient language listening tests may depend crucially on judgments of vocalizations’ word status. As compared to the group trends, listener responses to individual children’s vocalizations did not indicate that a majority of either 12- or 18-monthers were sufficiently native-sounding to be reliably identified on the basis of ambient language. A closer analysis of listeners’ use of phonetic cues indicated that one single phonetic property, the grave tonal word accent, was discerned by most listeners in vocalizations produced by the Swedish 18-monthers; this property was also discerned by one listener in vocalizations produced by Swedish 12-monthers. This result is consistent with the generally held belief in the primacy of tonal features in phonetic acquisition, and with experimental evidence indicating that Swedish mothers tend to enhance word accent contours in baby talk. In the final section of the paper, the results are discussed with a view to reconcile competing theories of babbling development, notably the ‘babbling drift’ and the ‘independence’ hypotheses.

Phonetic Interpretation of the Word Accent Contrast in Swedish: Evidence from Spontaneous Speech

Abstract Fundamental frequency (F₀) correlates of the Swedish tonal word accents, ‘grave’ and ‘acute’, were studied in spontaneous speech produced by 3 male speakers of Central Standard Swedish. The grave accent was invariably marked by an F₀ fall on the primary stress syllable, while the corresponding F₀ contour in acute words seemed to be predictable from sentence-level intonation. The latter observation, which could not be tested on the basis of spontaneous speech data, was confirmed in a companion paper in which a controlled speech material was analysed. In combination, the two papers corroborate the view that an F₀ fall is a positive phonetic feature of the grave accent, while the acute accent constitutes the unmarked member of the contrast. They also illustrate the methodological advantage of using complementary spontaneous and controlled speech materials.

The Inter-Nordic Study of Language Acquisition

The typological variation between the Nordic languages offers a “natural laboratory” for the cross-linguistic study of first language acquisition. Based on an on-going inter-Nordic project, the present article discusses research designs for the exploration of this laboratory together with pilot analyses of acquisition data across Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish. On the basis of evidence from longitudinal case studies, from narrative tasks, and from morphological and phonetic experiments, the project aims at producing an integrated picture of the development of grammatical morphology and its interaction with (a) the semantic domains of spatial and temporal relations and (b) the prosodic domains of tonal word accents and duration. In the present article the focus is on spatial relations and prosody. Comparisons of developmental data between languages that show considerable typological differences (Finnish vs Icelandic vs the Mainland Scandinavian languages) allow us to establish broad cross-linguistic commonalities in acquisition structure. It is shown that, across all five languages, very similar relational concepts are encoded by the first grammatical morphemes emerging in the field of spatial relations. The impact of linguistic details on acquisition structure can be explored with greater precision through comparisons between languages that show minimal typological differences (the internal differences between the Mainland Scandinavian languages: Danish vs Norwegian vs Swedish). Here, the early development of the Verb + particle construction in two Danish and two Swedish children is analysed. Language-specific effects on acquisition structure of syntactical and prosodic traits are demonstrated. Further, language-specific effects on the development of verb argument structure in spatial descriptions are discussed.

Tonal word accent II in Swedish speech directed to infants

Motherese (or child-directed speech) denotes a special speech style typically used by mothers and other caretakers in their interaction with infants. Prosodic modifications at sentence or phrase levels—such as higher mean fundamental frequency, wider pitch excursions, tonally and temporally coherent intonation contours—have been observed in a number of studies [e.g., Fernald and Simon, Dev. Psychol. 20, 104–113 (1984)]. Such modifications are also likely to affect the intonation contour in the word domain. This paper reports an investigation of tonal and temporal aspects in disyllabic accent II words, produced by Swedish mothers in spontaneous interaction with their 3-months-old infants. The child-directed speech data are contrasted with matching adult-directed speech data. Preliminary results are compatible with those from earlier studies. The results suggest that work emphasis is signaled differentially in infant-directed speech and adult-directed speech. Much wider pitch excursions were observed in the accent II words occurring in the former than in the latter case. In infant-directed speech, F0 may be the primary variable for marking prominence while in adult-directed speech duration seems to be the corresponding one [Sundberg, PERILUS XVII, 65–74 (1993)].