Die Dissertation untersucht die Entwicklung der prosodischen Struktur von Simplizia und Komposita im Deutschen. Ausgewertet werden langzeitlich erhobene Produktionsdaten von vier monolingualen Kindern im Alter von 12 bis 26 Monaten. Es werden vier Entwicklungsstufen angenommen, in denen jedoch keine einheitlichen Outputs produziert werden. Die Asymmetrien zwischen den verschiedenen Wörtern werden systematisch auf die Struktur des Zielwortes zurückgeführt. In einer optimalitätstheoretischen Analyse wird gezeigt, dass sich die Entwicklungsstufen aus der Umordnung von Constraints ergeben und dass dasselbe Ranking die Variation zwischen den Worttypen zu einer bestimmten Entwicklungsstufe vorhersagt. / The thesis investigates the development of the word-prosodic structure in child German. The database consists of longitudinal production data of four monolingal children aged between 12 and 26 months. It is argued in the thesis that the children pass through four developmental stages which are characterized by non-uniform outputs. The asymmetries in the output pattern are attributed to the proosdic shape of the target word. The thesis provides an optimality-theoretic analysis showing that a single ranking of constraints accounts for the variation in the output at a given stage.

Thesis (M.Phil.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 97-101). Also available in electronic version. Access restricted to campus users.

This study proposes that metrical constituents are inherently headless and stress is autosegmental. Chapter 2 argues that, since stress is the only diagnostic for the presence of a metrical head, the latter is redundant and must be eliminated from phonological theory. Further arguments for the inherent headlessness of feet are cited fl:om the theory of prosodic morphology (McCarthy and Prince 1990, Crowhurst 1991b) and from the facts of Yidinʸ stress (Dixon 1977, Crowhurst 1991a, Crowhurst and Hewitt, to appear). Next, stress is shown to exhibit the following auto segmental properties: stability (Bedouin Hijazi Arabic) , morphemic stress (Spanish, Turkish, Tagalog) and the ability to float (Mayo, Tagalog). After comparing the properties of stress with those of autosegments, it is concluded that stress is an autosegment. Assuming that feet can be either disyllabic, bimoraic or iambic (Hayes 1991), the above conclusion predicts the existence of five types of binary stressed feet. These are the left- and right-stressed syllabic foot, instantiated by Warao and Mayo, respectively, the left- and right-stressed moraic foot, instantiated by Cairene Arabic and Turkish, respectively, and the iambic foot, instantiated by Hixkaryana. The asymmetric nature of the iamb is attributed to the Weight-to-Stress Principle (Prince 1990), which allows stress to be assigned directly to heavy syllables. Furthermore, this principle predict6 all and only the attested types of unbounded stress systems. Chapter 5 argues that stressless feet and unfooted stresses are instantiated in Mayo, and the theories of Halle and Vergnaud 1987a, b and Hayes 1987, 1991 are shown to be incapable of accounting for these facts. The autosegmental theory of stress advances phonological theory in three ways. First, it eliminates most of the principles and devices which up to now have been used only to describe stress, leaving only the abstract stress autosegment which is itself subject to the principles of autosegmental theory. Second, this approach attributes many of the apparent differences between stress and tone to differences in their respective domains rather than differences in their formal properties. Third, the autosegmental theory of stress facilitates the formalization of a number of stress systems with heretofore complex analyses, including Yidinʸ, Mayo, Cairene Arabic, Turkish, Khalkha Mongolian and Tagalog.

Vid flertalet studier har det framkommit att ordförrådets storlek och förmågan till nonordsrepetition påvisar samband med nyordsinlärning. De prosodiska egenskapernas inverkan vid nyordsinlärning är emellertid inte lika studerad. Syftet med föreliggande studie var att undersöka hur barn mellan 4:5 och 6:0 år med typisk språkutveckling presterar på nyordsinlärning i relation till ordförråd och repetition av nonord samt att utforska vilken inverkan prosodiska egenskaper har på förmågan till nyordsinlärning. I studien deltog 15 barn vilkas resultat på nyorden, ordförrådstestningen och nonordsrepetitionen uträknades. Nyordsinlärningsuppgiften bestod av sex ord vilka sammankopplades med sex olika föremål. Nyorden matchades i par med avseende på en åtskiljande prosodisk egenskap mellan dem: antingen antal stavelser, betoning eller ordaccent. Inga signifikanta korrelationer mellan nyordsinlärning, ordförråd och nonordsrepetition kunde påvisas. Det framkom dock att korrelationen mellan ålder och nonordsrepetition var nära signifikans och indikerade att ökad ålder gav ett högre resultat på nonordsrepetitionen. Gällande de prosodiska egenskapernas relation till nyordsinlärning upptäcktes en signifikant skillnad i betoningsplacering, nyord med betoning på den finala stavelsen fick högst resultat. Barnen lärde sig också trestaviga ord i större utsträckning än tvåstaviga ord. Studien implicerar att betoning och ordlängd verkar ha viss betydelse för nyordsinlärning i kontrast till ordaccent, medan det inte kan påvisas några föreliggande korrelationer mellan nyordsinlärning, ordförråd och nonordsrepetition. / Several studies have shown that vocabulary size and nonword repetition ability correlate with novel word learning. The impact of prosodic features on novel word learning has, however, not been studied extensively. The purpose of this study was to examine how children aged 4:5–6:0 with typical language development perform on novel word learning, vocabulary and nonword repetition and to explore what impact prosodic features have on the ability to learn novel words. The study involved 15 children whose performance on the novel word learning task, vocabulary testing and nonword repetition was calculated. The novel word learning task consisted of six words which were connected to six different items. The novel words were matched in pairs differing by only one prosodic feature: either the number of syllables, stress or tonal word accent. No significant correlations between the novel word learning, vocabulary and nonword repetition were found. However, the correlation between age and nonword repetition reached near significance, which indicated that increased age gave a higher result on the nonword repetition. Regarding how the prosodic features related to the novel word learning, a significant difference between stress placements was detected. Novel words with stress on the final syllable were easier to learn. The children also achieved a higher result on the three syllable words than the two syllable words. The study implies that stress and word length seem to play a somewhat important role for novel word learning in contrast to tonal word accent, while it appears to be no relation between novel word learning, vocabulary and nonword repetition.

No description available.

Research on prosodic structure, the underlying structure organising the prosodic grouping of spoken utterances, has shown that it consists of hierarchically organised prosodic constituents. The present thesis explores the nature of this constituency, in particular the question of whether prosodic structure is comprised of a given set of qualitatively distinct domains, or of a set of domains of the same type varying only gradiently in "strength", or a possible mixture of both types of relations across prosodic levels. This question is addressed by testing how prosodic constituency (mirrored on boundary strength manipulations) is signalled acoustically via pre- and post-boundary durations, intonation contours, and two sandhi processes, namely vowel hiatus resolution and post-nasal stop voicing in Modern Greek. Results show that the phonetic signalling of boundary strength provides support for a mixture of both differences of type and strength across prosodic levels, with some levels only differing in terms of their strength. Pre-boundary durations and resolution of vowel hiatus are gradiently affected by boundary strength with shorter to longer durations from lower to higher domains, and less instances of vowel deletion higher in the hierarchy. Post-nasal stop voicing is qualitatively affected by boundary strength with almost all voicing instances occurring in the lowest constituent of the structure in the way a qualitative view of prosodic constituency would predict, and in line with research on prosodic phonology. Finally, both the alignment and scaling of intonation contours at the edges of domains is found to distinguish qualitatively the lowest domain from the higher ones. All higher phrasal domains align with respect to the boundary and their peak scaling varies consistently gradiently across speakers. When combining those two findings, support is provided for the existence of differences of strength and type within the same process. Taken together the results from these four phenomena support the postulation of an underlying prosodic structure with a limited number of qualitatively distinct domains, within which at the same time some type of recursivity or structured variability must be allowed for. It is shown that there are structural properties of speech, like the length of the utterance, influencing the organisation of utterances in a principled gradient manner, supporting the existence of differences of strength within domain types. These findings bear significance for theories of prosodic structure that have assumed either the view of solely qualitative differences, or sole boundary strength differences, as well as for future proposals on prosodic constituency. Finally, the use of Modern Greek in this thesis adds to the existing literature on a language that has been extensively used by researchers working in views supporting the existence of qualitative distinctions of type across prosodic domains, and provides the first in depth experimental analysis of post-nasal stop voicing.

A dichotic listening task was used to investigate the lateralization of sarcasm processing. Thirty-nine right-handed students were asked to identify which ear heard sarcastic and sincere phrases. Prosody and discourse context were simultaneously manipulated. For some trials, participants heard only the short prosodic phrases, while on other trials participants heard short vignettes prior to the phrases, which provided a context that primed either literal (sincere) or non-literal (sarcastic) interpretation. Contrary to Voyer et al. (2008), there were no differences in accuracy between the two hemispheres. However, when discourse context and prosody did not match, there was a significant right hemisphere advantage for sarcasm recognition and a left hemisphere advantage for the recognition of sincere utterances. / Department of Psychological Science

The purpose of the study was to observe and document the manner through which eight students from two separate Grade 2 classes combined both syllabic (musical) and prosodic (word) rhythmic composing strategies during an eight week composing unit. Through the triangulation of data collected in the form of a research journal, student compositions, videotapes of composing behaviour, and transcriptions of group student interviews, integrated and music dominated group composing processes emerged, as well as four dominant trends of composing behaviour. First, a dialectical relationship between phrasal development and conception of meter was observed to exist depending upon student choice of composing strategy. Second, the influence of leadership roles was observed to play a dominant role in the determination of group composing process. Third, students exhibited differing modes of rhythmic perception during the assembly and performance stages of composition. Fourth and finally, an ambiguity regarding future preferred composing strategy was noted by students. Implications for education include the integration of cross-curricular (music and language) composing units. Further study of the influence of cooperative learning and student perception of meter within the domain of composition is recommended as children were capable of generating linguistic and musical learning opportunities “from the inside-out.”

It is widely recognized that differences in both prosodic complexity and position-sensitive contrasts exist both within and across languages. In contemporary phonological theory, these differences are often attributed to differences between heads and non-heads and the asymmetries in licensing potential that exist between such positions. / In this thesis, the consequences of such differences for the second language (L2) acquisition of prosodic complexity and position-sensitive contrasts are explored. It is argued that an explanatorily adequate account of L2 syllabification must include highly-structured representations as well as a theory of licensing, which distinguishes between the licensing of a given position and the licensing of featural content in such a position. Using data drawn primarily from a number of studies that investigate the acquisition of French by native speakers of English and Mandarin, it is demonstrated that the widely-attested interlanguage (IL) syllable-structure-modification processes of deletion, epenthesis, and feature change have a common source. Specifically, all three processes result from the IL grammar's inability to license a syllable position or (some of) the featural content present in such a position in the target representation. Within Optimality theory, the framework adopted, this is formalized through the competition between Faithfulness constraints and Markedness constraints, which evaluate the wellformedness of the licensing relationships. Finally, it is argued that Prosodic Licensing and the principle of Licensing Inheritance from Harris (1997) work together to encode prosodic markedness in representation, as they create a series of head-dependent asymmetries in which heads are strong licensors vis-a-vis their dependents.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 177-191). / Microfiche. / xv, 191 leaves, bound ill. 29 cm