The acquisition of prosodic marking of narrow focus in Central Swedish

Anna Sara Romoren, Aoju Chen

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

We investigated how Central Swedish-speaking four to eleven-year-old children acquire the prosodic marking of narrow focus, compared to adult controls. Three measurements were analysed: placement of the prominence-marking high tone (prominence H), pitch range effects of the prominence H, and word duration. Subject-verb-object sentences were elicited in sentence-medial and sentence-final focus conditions via a semi-spontaneous elicitation task. The children largely performed in an adult-like manner already at four to five: they predominantly added prominence H to focal words and avoided this tone post-focally in both sentence-medial and sentence-final position. The placement or avoidance of prominence H had largely the same effects on pitch range for children and adults. Finally, the four to eight-year-olds also increased the duration of the focal word, similar to adults. Hence, Central Swedish-speaking children master the use of prosody for focus marking at an earlier age, compared to children acquiring a West Germanic language.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)213-238
Number of pages26
JournalJournal of Child Language
Volume49
Issue number2
Early online date6 Apr 2021
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Mar 2022

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press.

Keywords

  • Central Swedish
  • acquisition
  • development
  • focus marking
  • prosody

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