The Development Of Prosody And Prosodic Structure

This book provides a comprehensive yet succinct overview of research on prosodic development, uniting phonetic, phonological, and clinical approaches to the topic. It brings together diverse research findings on prosodic perception, prosodic production, the development of prosodic structure, and prosodic disorders in clinical populations.

Prosodic development is increasingly recognized as a fundamental stepping stone in first language acquisition. Prosodic sensitivity starts developing very early, with newborns becoming attuned to the prosodic properties of the ambient language, and it continues to develop during childhood until early adolescence. In the last decades, a flourishing literature has reported on the varied set of prosodic skills that children acquire and how they interact with other linguistic and cognitive skills. This book compiles a set of seventeen short review chapters from distinguished experts that have contributed significantly to our knowledge about how prosody develops in first language acquisition. The ultimate aim of the book is to offer a complete state of the art on prosodic development that allows the reader to grasp the literature from an interdisciplinary and critical perspective. This volume will be of interest to scholars and students of psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, speech therapy, and education.

This monograph addresses three basic questions regarding the development of word-internal prosodic structure: How much of the phonological structure of early words is regulated by the same constituents and principles that govern the organization of prosodic structure of mature grammar? Why do early words diverge from the adult targets in shape and size? And what is the best way to model developmental changes that occur in prosodic structure? Answers to these questions are explored through the longitudinal analysis of spontaneous production data from child Japanese. The analysis provides new types of evidence and new arguments that the prosodic phonology of young children is largely continuous with that of adults, and that the surface child-adult divergence in word forms and the overall pattern of developmental changes are best explained in terms of ranked violable constraints on the representation of prosodic structure, whose ordering is modified in the course of acquisition.

This book provides a state-of-the-art survey of intonation and prosody from a phonological perspective, for advanced students and researchers in phonology.

This handbook presents detailed accounts of current research in all aspects of language prosody, written by leading experts from different disciplines. The volume's comprehensive coverage and multidisciplinary approach will make it an invaluable resource for all researchers, students, and practitioners interested in prosody.

Prosodic Features and Prosodic Structure presents an overall view of the nature of prosodic features of language - accent, stress, rhythm, tone, pitch, and intonation - and shows how these connect to sound systems and meaning. It is a work of great scholarship and learning, expressed in way that will be accessible to all linguists from advanced undergraduates to postdoctoral researchers. The last substantial overview was published over 20 years ago. Since then the subject has been transformed by linked advances in phonological and phonetic theory and accoustic technology. This book will interest phonologists, phoneticians, and researchers in related applied fields such as speech pathology and speech synthesis.

This book illustrates an approach to prosodic typology through descriptions of the intonation and the prosodic structure of thirteen typologically different languages based on the same theoretical framework, the 'autosegmental-metrical' model of intonational phonology, and the transcriptionsystem of prosody known as Tones and Break Indices (ToBI). It is the first book introducing the history and principles of this system and it covers European languages, Asian languages, an Australian aboriginal language, and an American Indian language. The book shows how languages and dialects aresimilar to or different from other languages or dialect varieties in terms of the prosodic structure, the intonational categories, and their realizations. This is the first book on intonation which is accompanied by a CD-ROM where sound files mentioned in each chapter are stored.

This volume explores the elusive subject of English prosody—the stress, rhythm and intonation of the language—, and its relevance for English language teaching. Its sharp focus will be especially welcomed by teachers of English to non-native speakers, but also by scholars and researchers interested in Applied Linguistics. The book examines key issues in the development of prosody and delves into the role of intonation in the construction of meaning. The contributions tackle difficult areas of intonation for language learners, providing a theoretical analysis of each stumbling block as well as a practical explanation for teachers and teacher trainers. The numerous issues dealt with in the book include stress and rhythm; tone units and information structure; intonation and pragmatic meaning; tonicity and markedness, etc... The authors have deployed speech analysis software to illustrate their examples as well as to encourage readers to carry out their own computerized prosodic analyses.

Phonology - the study of how the sounds of speech are represented in our minds - is one of the core areas of linguistic theory, and is central to the study of human language. This handbook brings together the world's leading experts in phonology to present the most comprehensive and detailed overview of the field. Focusing on research and the most influential theories, the authors discuss each of the central issues in phonological theory, explore a variety of empirical phenomena, and show how phonology interacts with other aspects of language such as syntax, morphology, phonetics, and language acquisition. Providing a one-stop guide to every aspect of this important field, The Cambridge Handbook of Phonology will serve as an invaluable source of readings for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, an informative overview for linguists and a useful starting point for anyone beginning phonological research.

This text illustrates an approach to prosodic typology through descriptions of the intonation and the prosodic structure of 13 typologically different languages based on the same theoretical framework and the transcription system of prosody known as Tones and Break Indices (ToBI).