John Benjamins Publishing Company
Children’s pragmatic use of prosodic prominence
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Kiwako Ito
Abstract
Prosodic cues are known to support the development of early speech perception and basic communication skills such as turn-taking and comprehension of speaker’s intent in infants. Research on the effect of prosody on language development in older children is relatively sparse. This chapter discusses the production and comprehension of prosodic prominence for referential expressions in toddlers and older children. Reviews of past and recent studies with various experimental techniques suggest that both an inventory of intonation contours and online responses to prosodic prominence improve rather gradually throughout childhood. More systematic cross-linguistic studies are needed to reveal how language-specific prosodic structure and individual’s general cognitive ability affect the development of pragmatically relevant use of pitch prominence.
Abstract
Prosodic cues are known to support the development of early speech perception and basic communication skills such as turn-taking and comprehension of speaker’s intent in infants. Research on the effect of prosody on language development in older children is relatively sparse. This chapter discusses the production and comprehension of prosodic prominence for referential expressions in toddlers and older children. Reviews of past and recent studies with various experimental techniques suggest that both an inventory of intonation contours and online responses to prosodic prominence improve rather gradually throughout childhood. More systematic cross-linguistic studies are needed to reveal how language-specific prosodic structure and individual’s general cognitive ability affect the development of pragmatically relevant use of pitch prominence.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
- The communicative infant from 0-18 months 13
- The development of speech acts 37
- Turn-taking 53
- Conversation Analysis and pragmatic development 71
- Ontogenetic Constraints on Grice’s Theory of Communication 87
- Two Pragmatic Principles in Language Use and Acquisition 105
- Learning conventions and conventionality through conversation 121
- The pragmatics of word learning 139
- The production and comprehension of referring expressions 161
- Scalar Implicature 183
- Children’s pragmatic use of prosodic prominence 199
- The Pragmatic Development of Humor 219
- “The elevator’s buttocks” 239
- Irony production and comprehension 261
- Narrative Development across Cultural Contexts 279
- Children’s understanding of linguistic expressions of certainty and evidentiality 295
- Crosslinguistic and crosscultural approaches to pragmatic development 317
- Atypical pragmatic development 343
- Assessing pragmatic language functioning in young children 363
- Developmental pragmatics 387
- Index 393
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
- The communicative infant from 0-18 months 13
- The development of speech acts 37
- Turn-taking 53
- Conversation Analysis and pragmatic development 71
- Ontogenetic Constraints on Grice’s Theory of Communication 87
- Two Pragmatic Principles in Language Use and Acquisition 105
- Learning conventions and conventionality through conversation 121
- The pragmatics of word learning 139
- The production and comprehension of referring expressions 161
- Scalar Implicature 183
- Children’s pragmatic use of prosodic prominence 199
- The Pragmatic Development of Humor 219
- “The elevator’s buttocks” 239
- Irony production and comprehension 261
- Narrative Development across Cultural Contexts 279
- Children’s understanding of linguistic expressions of certainty and evidentiality 295
- Crosslinguistic and crosscultural approaches to pragmatic development 317
- Atypical pragmatic development 343
- Assessing pragmatic language functioning in young children 363
- Developmental pragmatics 387
- Index 393
