Entropy as a measure of mixedupness of realizations in child speech
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Elena Babatsouli
,
David Ingram
Abstract
Typical morpho-phonological measures of children’s speech realizations used in the literature depend linearly on their components. Examples are the proportion of consonants correct, the mean length of utterance and the phonological mean length of utterance. Because of their linear dependence on their components, these measures change in proportion to their component changes between speech realizations. However, there are instances in which variable speech realizations need to be differentiated better. Therefore, a measure which is more sensitive to its components than linear measures is needed. Here, entropy is proposed as such a measure. The sensitivity of entropy is compared analytically to that of linear measures, deriving ranges in component values inside which entropy is guaranteed to be more sensitive than the linear measures. The analysis is complemented by computing the entropy in two children’s English speech for different categories of word complexity and comparing its sensitivity to that of linear measures. One of the children is a bilingual typically developing child at age 3;0 and the other child is a monolingual child with speech sound disorders at age 5;11. The analysis and applications demonstrate the usefulness of the measure for evaluating speech realizations and its relative advantages over linear measures.
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© Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Introduction to the special issue: Monolingual and bilingual speech acquisition across languages
- Early lexical composition of Turkish-Dutch bilinguals: Nouns before verbs or verbs before nouns
- Entropy as a measure of mixedupness of realizations in child speech
- A developmental approach to diglossia: Bilectalism on a gradient scale of linguality
- Interaction between input frequency, transparency and productivity in acquisition of noun plural inflection in Danish
- Native and non-native listeners’ sensitivity to English onset restrictions and universal onset markedness
- Acquiring non-native speech through early media exposure: Belgian children’s productions of english vowels
- The same or different: A comparison of the rhythmic structure of Swedish and Albanian
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Introduction to the special issue: Monolingual and bilingual speech acquisition across languages
- Early lexical composition of Turkish-Dutch bilinguals: Nouns before verbs or verbs before nouns
- Entropy as a measure of mixedupness of realizations in child speech
- A developmental approach to diglossia: Bilectalism on a gradient scale of linguality
- Interaction between input frequency, transparency and productivity in acquisition of noun plural inflection in Danish
- Native and non-native listeners’ sensitivity to English onset restrictions and universal onset markedness
- Acquiring non-native speech through early media exposure: Belgian children’s productions of english vowels
- The same or different: A comparison of the rhythmic structure of Swedish and Albanian
