Relating the prosody of infant-directed speech to children's vocabulary size.

This study examines correlations between the prosody of infant-directed speech (IDS) and children's vocabulary size. We collected longitudinal speech data and vocabulary information from Dutch mother-child dyads with children aged 18 ( 49) and 24 ( 27) months old. We took speech context into consideration and distinguished between prosody when mothers introduce familiar vs.

Prosodic input and children's word learning in infant- and adult-directed speech.

This study examines (1) whether infant-directed speech (IDS) facilitates children's word learning compared to adult-directed speech (ADS); and (2) the link between the prosody of IDS in word-learning contexts and children's word learning from ADS and IDS. Twenty-four Dutch mother-child dyads participated when children were 18 and 24 months old. We collect mothers' ADS and IDS at both ages and test children's word learning from ADS and IDS at 24 months.

Pitch properties of infant-directed speech specific to word-learning contexts: a cross-linguistic investigation of Mandarin Chinese and Dutch.

This study investigates the pitch properties of infant-directed speech (IDS) specific to word-learning contexts in which mothers introduce unfamiliar words to children. Using a semi-spontaneous story-book telling task, we examined (1) whether mothers made distinctions between unfamiliar and familiar words with pitch in IDS compared to adult-directed speech (ADS); (2) whether pitch properties change when mothers address children from 18 to 24 months; and (3) how Mandarin Chinese and Dutch IDS differ in their pitch properties in word-learning contexts. Results show that the mean pitch of Mandarin Chinese IDS was already ADS-like when children were 24 months, but Dutch IDS remained exaggerated in pitch at the same age.

Nouns slow down speech across structurally and culturally diverse languages.

By force of nature, every bit of spoken language is produced at a particular speed. However, this speed is not constant-speakers regularly speed up and slow down. Variation in speech rate is influenced by a complex combination of factors, including the frequency and predictability of words, their information status, and their position within an utterance.

Lexical Tones in Mandarin Chinese Infant-Directed Speech: Age-Related Changes in the Second Year of Life.

Tonal information is essential to early word learning in tone languages. Although numerous studies have investigated the intonational and segmental properties of infant-directed speech (IDS), only a few studies have explored the properties of lexical tones in IDS. These studies mostly focused on the first year of life; thus little is known about how lexical tones in IDS change as children's vocabulary acquisition accelerates in the second year (Goldfield and Reznick, 1990; Bloom, 2001).

Praat script to detect syllable nuclei and measure speech rate automatically.

In this article, we describe a method for automatically detecting syllable nuclei in order to measure speech rate without the need for a transcription. A script written in the software program Praat (Boersma & Weenink, 2007) detects syllables in running speech. Peaks in intensity (dB) that are preceded and followed by dips in intensity are considered to be potential syllable nuclei.

Concurrent processing of words and their replacements during speech.

Two picture naming experiments, in which an initial picture was occasionally replaced with another (target) picture, were conducted to study the temporal coordination of abandoning one word and resuming with another word in speech production. In Experiment 1, participants abandoned saying the initial name, and resumed with the name of the target picture. This triggered both interrupted (e.

Semantic and phonological context effects in speech error repair.

When speakers repair speech errors, they plan the repair in the context of an abandoned word (the error) that is usually similar in meaning or form. Two picture-naming experiments tested whether the error's lexical representations influence repair planning. Context pictures were sometimes replaced with target pictures; the picture names were related in meaning or form or were unrelated.

The processing and representation of Dutch and English compounds: peripheral morphological and central orthographic effects.

In this study, we use the association between various measures of the morphological family and decision latencies to reveal the way in which the components of Dutch and English compounds are processed. The results show that for constituents of concatenated compounds in both languages, a position-related token count of the morphological family plays a role, whereas English open compounds show an effect of a type count, similar to the effect of family size for simplex words. When Dutch compounds are written with an artificial space, they reveal no effect of type count, which shows that the differential effect for the English open compounds is not superficial.