Bilingual Acquisition of Intonation: A Study of Children Speaking German and English

191 Pages·2000·6.6 MB·English

by  Ulrike Gut

Linguistische
Arbeiten 4 24
Herausgegeben von Hans Altmann, Peter Blumenthal,
Hans Jürgen Heringer, Ingo Plag, Heinz Vater und Richard Wiese

Ulrike Gut
Bilingual Acquisition
of Intonation
A Study of Children Speaking German
and English
Max Niemeyer Verlag
Tübingen 2000
Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme
Gut, Ulrike: Bilingual acquisition of intonation: a study of children speaking German and English / Ulrike
Gut. - Tübingen : Niemeyer, 2000
(Linguistische Arbeiten; 424)
Zugl.: Mannheim, Univ., Diss. 1999
ISBN 3-484-30424-3 ISSN 0344-6727
© Max Niemeyer Verlag GmbH, Tübingen 2000
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Contents
Acknowledgements IX
Notational conventions X
1. Introduction 1
2. Bilingual acquisition of intonation 4
2.1 Description and transcription of the phonological systems of English
and German intonation 4
2.1.1 The British tradition 4
2.1.2 The autosegmental-metrical (AM) approach 7
2.1.3 Compatibility of the two transcription systems 10
2.2 The linguistic functions of intonation 11
2.3 The phonetic correlates of intonation 12
2.3.1 The phonetic correlates of nuclei, pitch accents and intonational phrasing... 13
2.3.2 Pitch 13
2.3.3 Loudness 15
2.3.4 Length 15
2.3.5 Pause 15
2.4 Bilingual acquisition of intonation 16
2.4.1 Bilingual first language acquisition 16
2.4.2 Bilingual language representation and processing 16
2.4.3 Language representation and processing in bilingual first language
acquisition 17
2.4.4 Bilingual acquisition of the phonological system of intonation 20
2.4.5 Bilingual acquisition of the phonetic parameters of intonation 21
2.5 A model of the bilingual acquisition of intonation 22
3. Bilingual acquisition of nucleus placement 25
3.1 The phonological systems of nucleus placement in German and English 25
3.2 The phonetic production of nuclei 27
3.2.1 Pitch and pitch movement during stressed syllables 29
3.2.2 Intensity 29
3.2.3 Length 29
3.3 The acquisition of nucleus placement 30
3.3.1 The acquisition of word stress 31
3.3.2 Transition to sentence-level stress 33
3.3.3 Acquisition of the phonological rules of nucleus placement 34
3.4 Mastery of the phonetic production of nuclear stress and emphasis 35
3.5 Research questions 35
VI
4. Bilingual acquisition of the system of pitch 37
4.1 The phonological systems of pitch in English and German 37
4.2 The phonetic production of pitch accents in English and German 42
4.3 The acquisition of the phonological system of pitch 44
4.4 Mastery of the phonetic production of pitch accents 48
4.5 Research questions 49
5. B ilingual acquisition of intonational phrasing 51
5.1 The phonological systems of intonational phrasing in English and German 51
5.2 The phonetic correlates of intonational phrases 54
5.3 The acquisition of intonational phrasing 55
5.4 Mastery of the phonetic correlates of intonational phrasing 57
5.5 Research questions 57
6. The study - research questions, method and analysis 59
6.1 Research questions 59
6.1.1 Nucleus placement 59
6.1.2 Pitch 60
6.1.3 Intonational phrasing 60
6.2 Method 61
6.2.1 Data 61
6.2.2 The subjects of the study 61
6.2.3 Data collection 63
6.3 Analysis 63
6.3.1 Data 63
6.3.2 Auditory analysis and layout of the transcription 67
6.3.3 Reliability of the auditory analysis 71
6.3.4 Acoustic analysis 72
6.3.5 Agreement between the two kinds of analysis 78
7. Results 79
7.1 Hannah's general acquisition path: 2;1 to 2;6 79
7.2 Laura's general acquisition path: 2;5 to 4;3 83
7.3 Adam's general acquisition path: 3;6 to 5;5 96
8. The acquisition of nucleus placement 105
8.1 Hannah: Acquisition from 2;1 to 2;6 105
8.1.1 Phonological use of nucleus placement at 2;1 105
8.1.2 Phonetic production of stress 107
8.1.3 Production of nuclei at 2;6 110
8.2 Laura: Acquisition from 2;5 to 4;3 112
8.2.1 Phonological use of nucleus placement 112
8.2.2 The phonetic production of nuclei 115
8.3 Adam: Acquisition from 3;6 to 5;5 117
8.3.1 Phonological use of nucleus placement 117
8.3.2 The phonetic production of nuclei 120
VII
9. The acquisition of the system of pitch 124
9.1 Hannah: Acquisition from 2;1 to 2;6 124
9.1.1 Phonological use of pitch 124
9.1.2 Marking of the communicative situation by pitch 125
9.1.3 Hannah's acquisition of the systematic use of pitch in questions 126
9.1.4 The phonetic production of pitch accents 127
9.2 Laura: Acquisition from 2;5 to 4;3 129
9.2.1 Phonological use of pitch 129
9.2.2 Laura's acquisition of the systematic use of pitch in questions 130
9.2.3 The phonetic production of pitch accents 133
9.2.4 Laura's phonetic pattern 135
9.3 Adam: Acquisition from 3,6 to 5;5 137
9.3.1 Phonological use of pitch.. 137
9.3.2 Adam's acquisition of the systematic use of pitch in questions 139
9.3.3 The phonetic production of pitch accents 139
9.3.4 Adam's phonetic pattern 140
10. The acquisition of intonational phrasing 146
10.1 Hannah: Acquisition from 2;1 to 2;6 146
10.1.1 Production of phonetic correlates of intonational phrases 146
10.1.2 Phonological use of intonational phrasing 149
10.2 Laura: Acquisition from 2;5 to 4;3 150
10.2.1 Production of the phonetic correlates of intonational phrases 150
10.2.2 Phonological use of intonational phrasing 154
10.3 Adam: Acquisition from 3;6 to 5;5 156
11. Summary and discussion 162
11.1 Summary and discussion 162
11.1.1 Nucleus placement 162
11.1.2 Pitch 164
11.1.3 Intonational phrasing 164
11.1.4 B ilingual acquisition of intonation 165
11.1.5 Bilingual vs. monolingual acquisition 167
11.2 The model revised 168
11.3 The acquisition of intonation in the general language acquisition process 170
11.4 Outlook and future research 171
12. References 173

Acknowledgements
This work would not have been possible without the generous help of the following people:
I am very grateful to Francis Nolan and Sarah Hawkins at Cambridge University for letting
me use the Phonetics Laboratory of the Linguistics Department for the instrumental
analysis of my data. My thanks go to everyone who made my stays there so productive and
enjoyable: To Geoff Potter for his invaluable and untiring technical support, to Tomasina,
Steve, Ali, Daniel, Jonny, Eric, Andrew, Juha and all my other friends for their company,
help and encouragement and the loan of beds and floor space...
In Mannheim, I am very much indebted to Wilfried Schiitte from the Institut fur
Deutsche Sprache for letting me occupy the only computer running xwaves for my various
last-minute analyses.
Furthermore, I owe thanks to Katrin Lindner for the IPA script, and to Richard Wiese,
Erika Kaltenbacher, Jadranka Gvozdanovic, Rosemarie Tracy and Ira Gawlitzek-Maiwald
for helpful comments on earlier versions. Thank you also to all my friends and everyone in
Mannheim who offered me support and encouragement and who lent me their ears and time
over the past 2 Vi years.
Last, but certainly not least, I would like to express my gratefulness and indebtedness to
my supervisor, Rosemarie Tracy: for supplying me with the data for this study, for her
wonderful ability to create an atmosphere which is at the same time friendly, relaxed and
inducive to hard work, and for always providing me with so many opportunities.
Notational Conventions
Transcription of Intonation in the British Tradition:
Types of nuclei: Types of heads:
/ rise / rising
\ fall >» falling
A rise-fall ' high level
A rise-fall , low level
, low level
- mid level
1 high level
Prehead: Tone groups:
T high minor intonational phrase boundary
major intonational phrase boundary
Transcription of Intonation in the AM framework:
pitch accents
L* a low pitch accent
H* a high pitch accent
H*+L a high plus low pitch accent
L*+H a low plus high pitch accent
!H* a high pitch accent following another high pitch accent and
slightly lower than this (downstepped pitch accent)
phrase accents
L- a low phrase accent
H- a high phrase accent
!H- a downstepped phrase accent
boundary tones
L% a low boundary tone
H% a high boundary tone