Interaction of vowel length, utterance-position and focus accent in 3-year olds’ Australian English
نویسندگان
چکیده
Durational contrasts can be used to signal prosodic boundaries (utterance-final lengthening) and discourse focus (accentual lengthening). Durational differences can also signal phonemic vowel length contrast such as in non-rhotic Australian English where vowel length distinguishes lexical items (such as, cart /k :t/ and cut /k t/). This raises the question of how and when children acquire phonemic vowel length contrasts along with various prosodic length requirements. An elicited imitation task was conducted with nine 3-year-old Australian Englishspeaking children. Our findings show that the children distinguished long and short vowels in spite of utterance-final and accentual lengthening. The scope of the two types of prosodic lengthening differed, suggesting they are in the process of learning about these prosodic contexts.
منابع مشابه
Three-year-olds' production of Australian English phonemic vowel length as a function of prosodic context.
Durational contrasts are used not only to signal phrasal boundaries and focused constituents, but also to make phonemic distinctions. Boundary and focus effects can therefore interact with phonemic length contrasts, presenting a challenge for learners. Boundary effects are most clearly seen in the syllable rhyme, where the nucleus and coda are longer in utterance-final compared to utterance-med...
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