Prosodic Marking of Continuation versus Completion in Children's Narratives

Discourse prosody in school-aged children’s narratives was investigated to test for developmental changes in transitional prosody and to characterize the acquisition of key contrastive features for marking continuation versus completion. Spontaneous narratives were obtained from 42 children (5 to 7 years old) and 14 adult caregivers. The narratives were prosodically transcribed using a formal annotation system that relies on perceptual and acoustic analyses. Metalinguistic judgments of prosodic function and appropriateness were also obtained. Analyses examined effects of age on the use of transitional prosody as well as on prosodic cues to continuation and completion. Results were that children marked phrases for completion less often and less appropriately than adults. Children and adults both used phrase-final tones and postboundary pauses to mark continuation versus completion; however, children’s overall higher rate of pausing lessened the extent to which continuation and completion were differentiated through pausing.