Tone hyperarticulation and intonation in Cantonese infant directed speech

Nan Xu, Denis Burnham

    Research output: Chapter in Book / Conference PaperConference Paper

    Abstract

    ![CDATA[Vowel hyperarticulation in infant-directed speech (IDS) has been found consistently across both tone (Mandarin [1]) and non-tone (Russian, Swedish, American [2] and Australian English [3]) languages and has been posited as a possible bootstrapping mechanism for early language development in infancy [1]. Here we investigated (1) IDS in Cantonese to examine whether tones, like vowels, are hyperarticulated in a tone language and (2) the interaction of F0 measures (mean and range) in tone and intonation. Our results show there is tone hyperarticulation in Cantonese IDS compared to Cantonese adult-directed speech (ADS). Regarding the interaction of tone and intonation, F0 mean was elevated in IDS compared with ADS especially for level tones. F0 range is greater in intonation over utterances than in tones in words, and greater in ADS than IDS. These results suggest that pitch in IDS tone hyperarticulation and IDS intonation is manipulated relatively independently and tone fidelity is not affected by the exaggerated intonation of IDS.]]
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationProceedings of the 5th Speech Prosody 2010 Conference, held in Chicago, USA, 11-14 May 2010
    PublisherCreative Commons
    Number of pages4
    Publication statusPublished - 2010
    EventSpeech Prosody 2010 Conference -
    Duration: 1 Jan 2010 → …

    Conference

    ConferenceSpeech Prosody 2010 Conference
    Period1/01/10 → …

    Keywords

    • Cantonese dialects
    • tone (phonetics)

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