ERIC Number: EJ1246839
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2020
Pages: 27
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1048-9223
EISSN: N/A
Coverbal Speech Gestures Signal Phrase Boundaries: A Production Study of Japanese and English Infant- and Adult-Directed Speech
de la Cruz-Pavía, Irene; Gervain, Judit; Vatikiotis-Bateson, Eric; Werker, Janet F.
Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, v27 n2 p160-186 2020
The acoustic realization of phrasal prominence is proposed to correlate with the order of V(erbs) and O(bjects) in natural languages. The present production study with 15 talkers of Japanese (OV) and English (VO) investigates whether the speech signal contains coverbal visual information that covaries with auditory prosody, in Infant- and Adult-Directed Speech (IDS and ADS). Acoustic analysis revealed that phrasal prominence is carried by different acoustic cues in the two languages and speech styles, while analyses of motion showed that this acoustic prominence is not accompanied by coverbal gestures. Instead, the talkers of both languages produced eyebrow movements to mark the boundaries of target phrases within elicited utterances in combination with head nods. These results suggest that the signal might contain multimodal information to phrase boundaries, which could help listeners chunk phrases from the input.
Descriptors: Infants, Parent Child Relationship, Linguistic Input, English, Japanese, Phrase Structure, Acoustics, Verbs, Language Acquisition, Contrastive Linguistics, Nonverbal Communication, Eye Movements, Speech Communication, Intonation, Suprasegmentals, Language Styles, Foreign Countries, Mothers
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Canada
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A