<p> Intonation is one of the prosodic features manifested acoustically in the fundamental frequency (F0). Intonation abnormality is common and prominent in the speech of persons with Parkinson's disease (PD). Intensive speech therapies such as Lee Silverman Voice Treatment (LSVT-LOUD^&reg;) have been demonstrated effective for increasing vocal intensity and F0 variability, but no prior studies have examined linguistic features of intonation before and after treatment in PD. Additionally, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has been demonstrated as an appropriate adjuvant to a primary treatment. It is reasonable to hypothesize that intonation abnormality will be improved after the combined modality treatment of LSVT-LOUD^&reg; and TMS. To examine this hypothesis, the current research investigated acoustically five intonational features including F0 declination, resetting, emphasis, terminal fall, and syntactic pre-junctural fall in twenty PD participants, receiving LSVT-LOUD^&reg; alone, or combined with TMS delivered to the left or right cerebral hemisphere. The primary experiment was designed and carried out by Shalini Narayana and colleagues in their project funded by the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research. They collected and provided the recorded reading samples for the current study. </p><p> F0 changes of each of five intonational feature were measured before and after the combined modality treatment, and at two months follow-up, then analyzed statistically. The results revealed that F0 declination, emphasis, and terminal fall changed significantly from pre- to post-treatment, and the changes of declination and terminal fall were maintained at the follow-up evaluations. </p><p> The observed changes in intonation were attributed to LSVT alone, which caused large changes of F0 magnitude. F0 resetting and syntactic pre-junctural fall did not change significantly following treatment, probably because these intonational features need very precise fine motor control of the intrinsic laryngeal muscles to make small-range, rapid F0 adjustments, which were not improved by LSVT in present PD participants. Difficulties with syntactic processing previously reported in PD may have contributed to the lack of improvement in resetting and pre-junctural fall, since these F0 features are used to mark syntactic boundaries within utterances. Consideration of incorporation of linguistic intonation to speech intervention for speakers with PD is suggested for future clinical research.</p><p>

Four comprehension experiments tested the development of negative barriers in complex embedded WH questions in 40 typically developing female and male 3–6 to 7–0 (year-month) year-old Standard American English speaking children. The purpose was to test acquisition assumptions derived from linguistic theory of barriers to long distance WH movement. Syntactic theories of Relativized Minimality and scope marking or partial WH movement helped to account for negative and WH barriers in child language. Further, evidence of Universal Grammar appeared when negation prevented both long distance WH movement (e.g., “Why did the girl not tell her mom she went to the zoo? =/=> Why-went”) and medial WH answers (e.g., “When did the girl not tell her mom how she broke her bike? =/=> How-[tell]-broke”). Negative barriers to children's non-English medial answers supported the use of underlying structures observed cross-linguistically. Such structures are part of universal defaults, or non-specific rules, in child grammar. Before the target grammar is fully set for the specific adult rules, a child uses multiple grammars, some of which are universal defaults which get eliminated in the target adult grammar throughout the course of language development. Measures of Theory of Mind and production of complex embedded clauses predicted the development of aspects of embedded WH questions and negative barriers. Results indicated the interrelatedness of the development of complex sentences.

<p> English phonological abilities of Spanish- and English-speaking bilingual children were compared to those of monolingual children at 30 months of age and at five years. Measures of language abilities and language experience at 30 months were included in order to determine the impact that these variables have on English phonological ability. We hypothesized that early phonological abilities will be predictive of later phonological abilities for both monolingual and bilingual children. We also hypothesized that early language abilities and experience with each language will be predictive of concurrent and later phonological abilities, but we expected the relationship to be stronger between English language abilities and phonological abilities than Spanish language abilities and English phonological abilities. Phonology measures were collected for 10 monolingual and 47 bilingual participants at 30 months and at five years of age. Results indicate that early English phonological abilities are not predictive of later phonological abilities for monolingual or bilingual children. Although language experience was related to language ability (vocabulary size), relative exposure to English was not directly related to English phonological abilities. Although monolingual children had significantly poorer English phonological abilities at 30 months than monolingual English speaking children, their English phonological abilities were commensurate with those of the monolingual group at five years. These findings suggest that bilingual children are learning properties of English phonology at a faster rate than their monolingual peers between 30 months and five years of age.</p>