Linguistische Arbeiten 424. Herausgegeben von Hans Altmann, Peter Blumenthal, Hans Jürgen Heringer, Ingo Plag, Heinz Vater und Richard Wiese

Transcription

1 Linguistische Arbeiten 424 Herausgegeben von Hans Altmann, Peter Blumenthal, Hans Jürgen Heringer, Ingo Plag, Heinz Vater und Richard Wiese

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3 Ulrike Gut Bilingual Acquisition of Intonation A Study of Children Speaking German and English Max Niemeyer Verlag Tübingen 2000

4 Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme Gut, Ulrike: Bilingual acquisition of intonation: a study of children speaking German and English / Ulrike Gut. - Tübingen : Niemeyer, 2000 (Linguistische Arbeiten; 424) Zugl.: Mannheim, Univ., Diss ISBN ISSN Max Niemeyer Verlag GmbH, Tübingen 2000 Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Printed in Germany. Gedruckt auf alterungsbeständigem Papier. Druck: Weihert-Druck GmbH, Darmstadt Einband: Industriebuchbinderei Nädele, Nehren

5 Contents Acknowledgements Notational conventions IX X 1. Introduction 1 2. Bilingual acquisition of intonation Description and transcription of the phonological systems of English and German intonation The British tradition The autosegmental-metrical (AM) approach Compatibility of the two transcription systems The linguistic functions of intonation The phonetic correlates of intonation The phonetic correlates of nuclei, pitch accents and intonational phrasing Pitch Loudness Length Pause Bilingual acquisition of intonation Bilingual first language acquisition Bilingual language representation and processing Language representation and processing in bilingual first language acquisition Bilingual acquisition of the phonological system of intonation Bilingual acquisition of the phonetic parameters of intonation A model of the bilingual acquisition of intonation Bilingual acquisition of nucleus placement The phonological systems of nucleus placement in German and English The phonetic production of nuclei Pitch and pitch movement during stressed syllables Intensity Length The acquisition of nucleus placement The acquisition of word stress Transition to sentence-level stress Acquisition of the phonological rules of nucleus placement Mastery of the phonetic production of nuclear stress and emphasis Research questions 35

6 VI 4. Bilingual acquisition of the system of pitch The phonological systems of pitch in English and German The phonetic production of pitch accents in English and German The acquisition of the phonological system of pitch Mastery of the phonetic production of pitch accents Research questions B ilingual acquisition of intonational phrasing The phonological systems of intonational phrasing in English and German The phonetic correlates of intonational phrases The acquisition of intonational phrasing Mastery of the phonetic correlates of intonational phrasing Research questions The study - research questions, method and analysis Research questions Nucleus placement Pitch Intonational phrasing Method Data The subjects of the study Data collection Analysis Data Auditory analysis and layout of the transcription Reliability of the auditory analysis Acoustic analysis Agreement between the two kinds of analysis Results Hannah's general acquisition path: 2;1 to 2; Laura's general acquisition path: 2;5 to 4; Adam's general acquisition path: 3;6 to 5; The acquisition of nucleus placement Hannah: Acquisition from 2;1 to 2; Phonological use of nucleus placement at 2; Phonetic production of stress Production of nuclei at 2; Laura: Acquisition from 2;5 to 4; Phonological use of nucleus placement The phonetic production of nuclei Adam: Acquisition from 3;6 to 5; Phonological use of nucleus placement The phonetic production of nuclei 120

7 VII 9. The acquisition of the system of pitch Hannah: Acquisition from 2;1 to 2; Phonological use of pitch Marking of the communicative situation by pitch Hannah's acquisition of the systematic use of pitch in questions The phonetic production of pitch accents Laura: Acquisition from 2;5 to 4; Phonological use of pitch Laura's acquisition of the systematic use of pitch in questions The phonetic production of pitch accents Laura's phonetic pattern Adam: Acquisition from 3,6 to 5; Phonological use of pitch Adam's acquisition of the systematic use of pitch in questions The phonetic production of pitch accents Adam's phonetic pattern The acquisition of intonational phrasing Hannah: Acquisition from 2;1 to 2; Production of phonetic correlates of intonational phrases Phonological use of intonational phrasing Laura: Acquisition from 2;5 to 4; Production of the phonetic correlates of intonational phrases Phonological use of intonational phrasing Adam: Acquisition from 3;6 to 5; Summary and discussion Summary and discussion Nucleus placement Pitch Intonational phrasing B ilingual acquisition of intonation Bilingual vs. monolingual acquisition The model revised The acquisition of intonation in the general language acquisition process Outlook and future research References 173

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9 Acknowledgements This work would not have been possible without the generous help of the following people: I am very grateful to Francis Nolan and Sarah Hawkins at Cambridge University for letting me use the Phonetics Laboratory of the Linguistics Department for the instrumental analysis of my data. My thanks go to everyone who made my stays there so productive and enjoyable: To Geoff Potter for his invaluable and untiring technical support, to Tomasina, Steve, Ali, Daniel, Jonny, Eric, Andrew, Juha and all my other friends for their company, help and encouragement and the loan of beds and floor space... In Mannheim, I am very much indebted to Wilfried Schiitte from the Institut fur Deutsche Sprache for letting me occupy the only computer running xwaves for my various last-minute analyses. Furthermore, I owe thanks to Katrin Lindner for the IPA script, and to Richard Wiese, Erika Kaltenbacher, Jadranka Gvozdanovic, Rosemarie Tracy and Ira Gawlitzek-Maiwald for helpful comments on earlier versions. Thank you also to all my friends and everyone in Mannheim who offered me support and encouragement and who lent me their ears and time over the past 2 Vi years. Last, but certainly not least, I would like to express my gratefulness and indebtedness to my supervisor, Rosemarie Tracy: for supplying me with the data for this study, for her wonderful ability to create an atmosphere which is at the same time friendly, relaxed and inducive to hard work, and for always providing me with so many opportunities.

10 Notational Conventions Transcription of Intonation in the British Tradition: Types of nuclei: Prehead: / rise \ fall A rise-fall A rise-fall, low level - mid level 1 high level T high Types of heads: / rising >» falling ' high level, low level Tone groups: minor intonational phrase boundary major intonational phrase boundary Transcription of Intonation in the AM framework: pitch accents L* a low pitch accent H* a high pitch accent H*+L a high plus low pitch accent L*+H a low plus high pitch accent!h* a high pitch accent following another high pitch accent and slightly lower than this (downstepped pitch accent) phrase accents L- a low phrase accent H- a high phrase accent!h- a downstepped phrase accent boundary tones L% a low boundary tone H% a high boundary tone

11 1. Introduction This thesis investigates some selected aspects of the acquisition of intonation of German/English bilingual children. So far, most of the research in both monolingual and bilingual language acquisition has focused on the "classic" parts of grammar: Syntax, morphology, segmental phonology, and semantics. Thus, were one to build a model child based on the current knowledge of language acquisition, she or he might acquire the ability to produce novel and syntactically correct utterances using the phoneme inventory and lexicon of the target language(s), but she would not, in terms of intonation, sound like a child learning to speak. For an illustration consider the following utterances produced by Laura, a German/ English bilingual child: [Laura, 2;06]' E: Is she? What is she doing? (1) L: Jifkinda/tsima she I Kinderzimmer (she I children's room) [Laura, 3;05] (playing a board game) (2) L: ven du ni?.kano 2,k h iraufgamax dafadu ni$,vyaveln bai \mi:a wenn Du nicht ganz draufgemachtldarfst Du nicht wiirfeln bei mir (if you haven't put it on there entirely\you may not roll the dice at my place) [Laura, 3; 10] (3) L: /luk ai \dropt it in di 'gwa:s an da da den its \braukan (look 11 dropped it in the grass and then it's broken) First, given sufficient knowledge of the child's background and her present situation, current theories in bilingualism research may explain why Laura mixes her two languages in (1) but does not mix them in (2) or (3). Second, theories of syntactic acquisition will describe her path from (1), an utterance that lacks a verb and function words, to (2) and (3), which are essentially adult-like structures containing inflectional and complementizer phrases. Finally, theories of phonological acquisition could be employed to explain Laura's substitutions on a segmental level in utterances (2) and (3), such as [gwa:s] for [gra:s] and [kano] for [gans]. 1 2 The conventions for the transcription of child speech used here are as follows: Age is given in square brackets in [years;months]. Descriptions of the situational context are put in round brackets. Child utterances are transcribed in IPA and adult productions are given in orthography. The index "E:" stands for the English-speaking investigator. An overview of the transcription conventions can be found on the previous page and a detailed description is given in section This symbol refers to a particular lisp which is described in section

12 2 In contrast, so far there are only rudimentary hypotheses and ideas which could capture Laura's progress in the area of intonation and which could explain the differences in sentence-level intonation between utterances (1) and (2) and (3). In (1), her intonational phrases (demarcated by the symbol "I") contain no more than a single lexical item. Conversely, in examples (2) and (3) an intonational phrase comprises many more. Furthermore, the intonational phrase boundary is placed at a syntactically relevant position only in (2) and (3) but not in (1). In addition, Laura produces a variety of pitch movements in utterances (1) to (3) (here transcribed with the symbols "," 3 for low level; and for falling; "/" for rising and "'" for high level). A theory of the acquisition of intonation would have to describe and explain their order of appearance and their linguistic functions. In summary, the change from short and intonationally limited utterances to fluent, native-sounding discourse can be observed in every normally developing child but has so far not attracted enough research to obtain sufficient results for a detailed description and reliable predictions. In their recent "Handbook of phonological development", Bernhardt and Stemberger (1998) write that they "do not address sentence intonation, which is notoriously difficult to transcribe reliably and which phonological theories have little to say about" (p. 367). This is especially lamentable because there is a growing demand for research in the area of sentence-level intonation. Firstly, much recent research has been carried out on the acquisition of prosody below the word level: A prosodic hierarchy has been established with mora, syllables, feet and words at the lower levels and compound words at the peak (e.g. Archibald 1995a). An analysis of the acquisition of sentence-level intonation thus supplements and extends this line of research. Secondly, it has been pointed out that intonational acquisition may provide mechanisms for bootstrapping other linguistic systems such as phonology, morphology and syntax (Jusczyk 1997a; Jusczyk & Kemler Nelson 1996; Peters & Stromqvist 1996). The study of sentence-level intonation may contribute to strengthening these assumptions. Bernhardt & Stemberger (1998) justly mentioned the lack of theory in the area of the acquisition of intonation. In this study, therefore, it will be tested whether the theories and transcription systems developed for the system of adult intonation can be meaningfully applied to child speech, and a first descriptive model of the acquisition of intonation will be presented. The study of German/English bilingual children, moreover, offers the opportunity to address additional theoretical issues. It will provide evidence for some specific questions of bilingual acquisition such as questions concerning the nature of the mental representations of the two languages. Since the differences between the intonation systems of German and English are relatively well established on both the phonological and the phonetic level, it will be possible to decide whether bilingual children acquire two separate phonological representations and phonetic production strategies or not and the synchronicity of the acquisition paths in both languages can be compared. The structure of this study is as follows: Chapter 2 presents a definition of intonation and describes the two major transcription systems of sentence-level intonation currently in use: The system of the British tradition and that of the autosegmental-metrical (AM) approach. 3 The conventions of the transcription of intonation used in this study will be described in detail in chapter 2.

13 3 As three of the main linguistic functions of intonation nucleus placement, nuclear tone 4 and intonational phrasing will be discussed, and the phonetic parameters that underlie their production will be described. It will be argued that the intonation of a language consists of both a system of phonological representations and their phonetic realisations and that, consequently, acquisition must be investigated on two levels: The phonetic one, which involves the physical control of certain phonetic parameters, and the phonological one, where these parameters are applied systematically in order to achieve various linguistic purposes. Subsequently, older and current approaches to the study of bilingual language acquisition will be presented, and aspects of bilingual language acquisition on both the phonological and the phonetic level will be discussed. The chapter closes with a provisional model of the bilingual acquisition of intonation. Chapter 3 focuses on the bilingual acquisition of nucleus placement. It describes the phonological systems of German and English and their phonetic correlates. Data from the acquisition of nucleus placement will be discussed before an outline of the research questions of this study is given. Chapter 4 is concerned with the bilingual acquisition of the phonological system of pitch. After a description of the phonological systems and phonetic production in both German and English, current knowledge about the acquisition process will be discussed, and questions for research will be raised. Chapter 5 provides a description of the phonological systems and phonetic production of intonational phrasing in German and English. It will be shown that, so far, very little is known about their acquisition, and the research questions of this study will be presented. Chapter 6 gives a summary of the questions and hypotheses of this study that have been developed in the preceding chapters and describes the methodology and the procedure of the data analysis. In chapter 7, a brief overview of the language acquisition of the three children studied here will be given in order to provide a general background for the more detailed results presented in chapters 8 to 10. There, the results concerning the phonological and phonetic acquisition of nucleus placement, pitch and intonational phrasing will be described. Chapter 11 summarises the results of this study and discusses them in the light of other studies. Finally, the provisional model of the bilingual acquisition of intonation presented in chapter 2 will be revised. 4 In the following, the term "pitch" will be used instead of "nuclear tone". As the latter implies a phonological system, it might not apply to all pitch movements in early child speech. The description of the emergence of a system of nuclear tone will be described as "phonological use of pitch".

14 2. Bilingual acquisition of intonation This chapter explores general aspects of the acquisition of intonation by German/English bilingual children. Intonation is defined by Ladd (1996) as "the use of suprasegmental phonetic features to convey "postlexical" or sentence-level pragmatic meanings in a linguistically structured way" (p. 6). This definition comprises three aspects of intonation: It is described as "linguistically structured" - as a phonological system; this system is used for the linguistic function of conveying meaning; and intonational phenomena are correlated with certain phonetic parameters. These three aspects of intonation will be discussed here. Section 2.1 presents the description of the linguistic systems of English and German intonation in both the British tradition and the autosegmental-metrical approach and introduces their transcription systems. In section 2.2, three of the main linguistic functions of intonation will be discussed: The use of nucleus placement, pitch and intonational phrasing for conveying meaning. The phonetic parameters that underlie these intonational phenomena will be described in section 2.3. Section 2.4 focuses on the bilingual acquisition of intonation. After a description of general aspects of bilingual language acquisition, the acquisition of the phonological system of intonation and the mastery of the phonetic parameters of intonation will be discussed with reference to the specific bilingual task. Section 2.5 summarises these points and presents a first provisional model of the bilingual acquisition of intonation. 2.1 Description and transcription of the phonological systems of English and German intonation The British tradition It has been unanimously accepted by now that intonation constitutes a linguistic system. O'Connor & Arnold (1973), who work within the framework of the so-called British tradition of intonation analysis, founded by Palmer (1922), described the pitch patterns of colloquial English as significant and systematic. "Significant" implies that pitch patterns have phonological status: Just as two lexical items differing in one speech sound can have different meanings, two utterances differing only in their intonation can convey different meanings. "Systematic" refers to the fact that there is only a limited number of distinctive pitch patterns with discrete meanings and that the relationship between form and function is stable. The basic unit of the analysis of English intonation in the British tradition is the "tone": A specific pitch movement on a stressed syllable. The last stressed syllable in an utterance, which usually carries the main stress and a distinctive pitch movement, is called the nucleus. Nuclear types that are usually described for English and their transcription symbols can be taken from figure 1. Simple nuclei include falls, rises and a level terminal pitch contour, complex nuclei include fall-rises, rise-falls and rise-fall-rises.

15 5 Simple Nuclei Complex Nuclei \ fall V fall-rise / rise A rise-fall - level N rise-fall-rise Figure 1: Inventory of English nuclei according to Nolan (1994). Some authors additionally differentiate between high and low falls, high and low rises and high and low levels (Kingdon 1958; O'Connor & Arnold 1973; Cruttenden 1986; Tench 1996). The nucleus in example (4), which falls on do, is simple and a fall. (4) She'll \know what to \do about it The stretch from any stressed syllables preceding the nucleus up to the nucleus constitutes the head. 1 Simple, multiple and compound heads are possible in English. Simple heads can have a falling, rising or level form. Multiple heads consist of a sequence of identical stressed syllables, e.g. three falling ones in a row. Compound heads contain a sequence of different tones on stressed syllables as shown in figure 2. Simple Heads Compound Heads \ falling \+/* falling+rising / rising / +' rising+level /+\ rising+falling ' level '+/* level+rising Figure 2: Inventory of simple and compound heads in English according to Nolan (1994). The head in example (4), which stretches from know to to, is simple and falling. Any unstressed syllables preceding the head - or the nucleus if there is no head - are called "prehead". They can be either low or high, with low being the neutral and high the marked form. Only a high prehead receives a symbol, the t. The prehead in example (4), which comprises she'll, is low and therefore unmarked. Any stressed syllables following the nucleus are called the "tail". However, due to its lack of contrastive function, Nolan (1984) argues against the intonational concept of a tail. There is no tail in example (4). The following intonational structure is proposed in the British tradition: The basic unit of the intonation structure are the tone units (TU). Minor and major tone units (MU) can be 1 This use of the term "head" is not to be confused with the head of a phrase in the X-bar theory of syntactic analysis.

16 6 distinguished (Trim 1959). A major tone unit usually coincides with a sentence and is marked by a II. Utterance (4) is an example for a single major tone unit and is therefore transcribed as in (4a). (4a) She'll \know what to \do about itll (5) \She doesn'tlbut \ I know what to \do about itll Utterance (5) is an example for a major tone unit that comprises two minor tone units: She doesn 't and but I know what to do about it. The transcription symbol for a minor tone unit is the I. A minor tone unit must contain a nucleus and has heads, prehead and tail as optional elements. Figure 3 shows the hierarchical structure of intonation as proposed in the British tradition. Optional éléments are put in parentheses. MU (TU) (TU) TU (PH) (H) N Figure 3: The internal structure of a major tone unit as proposed in the British tradition. N stands for nucleus, H for head, PH for prehead, TU for minor tone unit and MU for major tone unit. Trim (1964) argues that this transcription system of English in the British tradition can be meaningfully applied to the description of German intonation as well. He proposes the following inventory of nuclear tones in German (figure 4): Nuclear Tones \ low fall ' high fall low rise high rise V fall-rise A rise-fall ' high level Figure 4: The inventory of nuclear tones in German according to Trim (1964). In contrast, some researchers claim that German does not make use of some nuclear forms that appear in English. According to Fox (1981) there is no low rise, other authors claim the absence of a low fall-rise (Raith 1986) or rise-fall-rise (Fox 1984). Typically, for the determination of tone units and the types of heads and nuclei, an auditory analysis is carried out. Auditory analysis within the descriptive system of the

17 7 British tradition requires training and yields transcriptions such as those illustrated in examples (4) and (5) The autosegmental-metrical (AM) approach Intonational analysis within the autosegmental-metrical (AM) framework (Pierrehumbert 1980; Liberman & Pierrehumbert 1984; Beckman & Pierrehumbert 1986; Pierrehumbert & Beckman 1988) postulates three kinds of discrete events that make up the pitch contour of an English utterance: Pitch accents, phrase accents and boundary tones. Pitch accents are characteristic pitch movements, which are associated with prominent syllables. Phrase accents occur at the end of phrases, and boundary tones at the end of utterances. Two levels of tones are proposed, high (H) and low (L), which are the basic constituents of all accents and boundary tones. Figure 5 lists all the different types of accents and boundary tones of English with their notation: Pitch accents L* a low pitch accent H* a high pitch accent H+L* H*+L a high plus low (falling) pitch accent L+H* L*+H!H* a low plus high (rising) pitch accent a high pitch accent following another high pitch accent and slightly lower than this (downstepped pitch accent) Phrase accents L- a low phrase accent H- a high phrase accent!h- a downstepped phrase accent Boundary tones L% a low boundary tone H% a high boundary tone Figure 5: The pitch accents, phrase accents and boundary tones as proposed by Beckman & Pierrehumbert (1986). In addition, there are labels for some rare phenomena: %H for a high tone at the beginning of an utterance %r for the resetting of the intonation after a phrase boundary Highest_FO for the highest value of F0 *? for a not clearly identifiable pitch accent

18 8 Pitch accents are associated with prominent syllables and are marked by a star (*). There are two simple pitch accents (H* and L*) and four compound ones, which are marked by a "+" linking the two tones. In the pitch accents H*+L and L*+H, there is a perceptible pitch movement on the stressed syllable, in the pitch accents H+L* and L+H*, it precedes the stressed syllable. The symbol!h* refers to a downstepped accent, a high pitch accent which, following another H*, is at a lower absolute pitch height due to influences of the general slope in the fundamental frequency contour throughout an utterance (declination). Phrase accents are marked by the diacritic "-" and boundary tones by the "%". Both of them can only consist of a single tone: Either a H or a L. Phrase accents stretch from the last pitch accent of an intermediate phrase to the beginning of the following intermediate phrase or to the end of the utterance. The boundary tone falls exactly on the phrase boundary. Example (4) from above would thus look as follows (4b) in the descriptive system of the AM approach: (4b) She'll know what to do about it H*+L H* L-L% Beckman and Pierrehumbert (1986) propose the following hierarchical structure of intonation (figure 6). The smallest elements are tones (either high, H, or low, L), which, either on their own or in combination with each other, form pitch accents that are always associated with a prominent syllable. One or more pitch accents (PA) together with a phrase accent - which is also either a H or a L tone - constitute an Intermediate Phrase. The Intonational Phrase comprises one or more Intermediate Phrases plus a phrase accent and a boundary tone (again either H or L). Intonational Phrase (PA) (PA) PA (PA) (PA) PA Phrase Accent Boundary Tone Figure 6: The structure of intonation according to Beckman and Pierrehumbert (1986). Within this theoretical framework, the transcription system ToBI (Tone and Break Indices) was developed by Silverman et al. (1992) and Beckman & Ayers (1993) for American English. This transcription system is based on an instrumental analysis of pitch, i.e. an automatic tracking of the fundamental frequency movement within an utterance with the help of a speech analysis programme (see figure 7). An utterance is recorded on a computer as a speech file. The FO-tracker, an inbuilt facility of many speech analysis programmes, calculates the fundamental frequency (FO) contour (the pitch movement throughout an utterance) and plots it in a window, as can be seen in the lower half of figure 7. This representation of the phonetic component of intonation forms the basis of the ToBI analysis. The various pitch accent types, which are marked in the top line of figure 7, are determined by a combination of the interpretation of the FO-line and an auditory

19 9 verification. Line 2 gives an orthographic representation of the utterance. 2 In line 3, the types of word boundaries are noted, which yield information about the intonational phrasing of the utterance. Hj Wjb Figure 7: Example for the ToBI analysis of an utterance. The top line carries information about the pitch accents, the second line gives an orthographic rendition of the utterance; in line three the type of word boundaries are marked. The FO line of the utterance is plotted in the window below. The German ToBI system of prosodic labelling was developed simultaneously at the universities of Saarbrücken, Stuttgart and Braunschweig (Grice & Benzmüller 1995; Mayer 1995; Batliner & Reyelt 1994). The inventory of pitch accents proposed for German can be taken from figure 8: Inventory of pitch accents H* H+!H* L* L+H* L*+H H+L* Figure 8: Inventory of pitch accents in German as proposed in the German ToBI system (Grice & Benzmuller 1995). 2 See section for a full description of ToBI transcription.

20 10 Phrase accents and boundary tones are the same as in English: L- and H- and L% and H%. Uhmann (1988) recognises only 4 pitch accents 3 and two boundary tones for German (figure 9) and altogether dispenses with phrase accents. Pitch accents H* L* H*+L L*+H Boundary tones H% L % Figure 9: Pitch accents and boundary tones of German as proposed by Uhmann (1988). Grabe (1998), in her contrastive analysis of the intonational phonologies of German and English, reduces the categories of pitch accents even further and describes only L*+H and H*+L for both languages. She then, however, assumes a second phonological level before the phonetic one, in which various phonological adjustments can apply Compatibility of the two transcription systems The descriptive system of intonation in the British tradition shows many similarities with the systems based on the autosegmental-metrical approach. Ladd (1996) illustrates the correspondences between nuclear types in the British tradition and pitch accent, phrase accent and boundary tone combinations as proposed by Pierrehumbert. Some examples of these are given in figure 10 below. Roach (1994) reports a partially successful attempt to automatically convert British intonation marks to the ToBI notation on a computer. The two description systems will be used alongside each other in this study. Auditory analysis in the British tradition will be complemented by an instrumental analysis of selected utterances. For this, the original ToBI notation will be employed for the description of both German and English intonation as this has the advantage of allowing direct comparison of utterances of one child in both languages. The term "intonational phrase" (IP) will be used for both tone units in the British tradition and IPs in the AM approach. The last pitch accent of an IP will be called the nucleus, and nuclear types, assuming near-perfect correspondence, will be given in both the ToBI and the British-style transcription, as exemplified in figure 10. This twofold approach has several advantages: Both notational systems were developed for adult speech and their applicability to child speech has not been tested yet. Thus, the appropriateness of the phonological categories for the description of child speech can be validated by using two different but comparable notation systems. Furthermore, it can be decided which of the two systems suits the description of child speech better. Intonational 1 Her notation of T (for German 'Tief') for a low tone has not been adopted and is here changed into the L symbol.

21 11 ToBI notation H* L- L% H* L- H% L* H- H% L+H*L- L % L* L- L% British notation \ (fall) V (fall-rise) / (rise) A (rise-fall), (low level) Figure 10: Some nuclear tones in ToBI and British-style transcription. analysis in this combined approach also allows the minimisation of errors and disadvantages connected with the particular systems. On the one hand, technical requirements for a ToBI analysis are so high that it is not feasible as the only means of analysis for large corpora of data typical for longitudinal acquisition studies. Equally, instrumental analysis alone is fraught with difficulties as a direct mapping of FO-movements to phonological categories of pitch movement patterns is not possible (see section below). Therefore, instrumental analysis of the fundamental frequency must be complemented by auditory analysis. On the other hand, the reliability of an auditory analysis in the British tradition can be tested by a comparison with an instrumental analysis. Thus, the auditory impression can be validated with the help of the physical measurements carried out by the computer. 2.2 The linguistic functions of intonation O'Connor & Arnold (1973) defined the pitch patterns of English as significant insofar as two utterances which are identical on a segmental level and only differ in their nuclear pitch pattern can have different meanings. These kinds of intonational minimal pairs can be found for the three intonational phenomena illustrated in examples (6) to (11). Other intonational phenomena such as voice quality, speech rate and register do not have phonological status. (6) \He is going home. (7) He is going \home. (8) It's \green. (9) It's /green. (10) My brother who lives in Rome is coming. (11) My brotherl who lives in Romel is coming. Examples (6) and (7) exemplify the function of intonation to mark focus. The interaction between focus and intonation has been the subject of many studies (e.g. Uhmann 1991; Altmann et al. 1989a, b; Lambrecht 1994) and has turned out to be notoriously difficult to describe. Typically, it seems, focus is marked by intonation (stress in combination with pitch movements), but this does not imply that intonation cannot run counter to the focus of

22 12 a sentence in some cases. A more detailed discussion of this will follow in chapter 3. If intonation is employed to mark focus, it can have two functions (Dik 1997): Either it marks an informational gap on the part of the speaker (e.g. new vs. old information), or it is used for the purpose of contrast. The marking of both types of focus can be achieved by nucleus placement - the placement of the main stress in a sentence. Example (6), in which the nucleus falls on he, would only be appropriate in contexts where it is necessary to assign focus to information already referred to, e.g. for reasons of contrast. For example, this could be the case after "They are all having a good time at the party. Only Andrew and Jill are bored stiff." Conversely, example (7) is only appropriate in a discourse where he unambiguously refers to the only possible subject, and the focus lies on the new information following sentences such as "Andy has had a hard day at work." Example (8) is an utterance with a falling pitch movement on the word green (transcribed with the preceding "\"), which is the typical intonational form of a neutral statement in both German and English. The same sequence of words, however, uttered with a rising pitch movement (transcribed with the "/" in (9)) on green leads to the perception of the utterance as a question. Here, the type of nuclear pitch movement produced has the linguistic function of determining the sentence type and/or of characterising the speech act. Example (10) shows an utterance spoken in one intonational phrase, i.e. without any inserted pauses (pitch movement is not transcribed here). Compare example (11), where two pauses, transcribed with the symbol "I", are inserted after "brother" and "Rome". Here, the intonational phrasing has altered the meaning of the utterance: Whereas (10) implies that the speaker has more than one brother, (11) suggests that there is only one. It will be assumed that the linguistic functions of pitch, nucleus placement and intonational phrasing as described here for German and English are among the earliest to be acquired by language learners: The choice and systematic use of the various types of pitch movements is theoretically possible from the one-word stage on. With the production of two-word utterances, nucleus placement becomes linguistically important, and the expansion of utterances from the multiword stage onwards leading to the production of subordinate structures and larger stretches of speech requires intonational phrasing. 2.3 The phonetic correlates of intonation The acquisition of the linguistic systems of the three intonational phenomena nucleus placement, pitch accents and intonational phrasing requires the acquisition of the physical control of the phonetic parameters underlying their production. As phonetic parameters of intonation pitch, loudness, length and pause have been identified (Cruttenden 1986). Section briefly describes how these parameters are assumed to combine for the production of nuclei, pitch accents and intonational phrasing. The following sections present short descriptions of the physiological, acoustic and auditory correlates of the phonetic parameters pitch, loudness, length and pause.

23 The phonetic correlates of nuclei, pitch accents and intonational phrasing Figure 11 illustrates how the phonetic parameters pitch, loudness, length and pause combine for the production of nuclei, pitch accents and intonational phrasing. The nucleus was defined as the last stressed syllable in an utterance. The phonological use of nucleus placement thus requires the phonetic production of stress. Perception of stressedness is usually correlated with an increase in loudness and length of the stressed syllable and a perceptible jump in pitch or pitch movement. A detailed description of the phonetic mechanisms underlying the production of stress in both German and English will be given in section 3.2. Pitch Loudness Length Pause Figure 11: The combination of the phonetic parameters pitch, loudness, length, and pause for the production of nuclei, pitch accents, and intonational phrases (IPs). The production of pitch accents involves distinct pitch movement on the syllable carrying the pitch accent and an increase in both length and loudness. The specific combinations of the phonetic parameters used in German and English will be described in section 4.2. Intonational phrasing finally involves the placement of pauses. Furthermore, pre-pausal syllables show increased length, and a resetting of pitch after pauses may occur. The interplay of the phonetic parameters used for intonational phrasing in German and English will be described in detail in section Pitch For the production of pitch or voicing, the activities of the internal and external intercostal muscles and the diaphragm combine to force air from the lungs to the mouth. This airstream passes through the larynx. The shape of the larynx is determined by the thyroid cartilage resting on the cricoid cartilage. The vocal folds, fine sheets of muscle, run from the inner sides of the thyroid cartilage to the arytenoids. Various muscles control the opening, closing and tensioning of the vocal folds. When they are drawn close together air pushed upwards from the lungs causes them to vibrate. This vibration consists of regular cycles of opening and closing of the vocal folds, which is an effect of aerodynamic forces and the structure of the vocal folds themselves. Periodic movement of the vocal folds underlies all vowels and voiced consonants. In addition to this creation of sound in the

24 14 larynx, the position of the articulators, including tongue, jaw and various facial muscles, and the nasal cavities in the supralaryngeal vocal tract lend each sound its specific quality. Complex muscular interactions are necessary for maintaining a steady pulmonary air pressure for speech, and both breathing and the movement of the articulators for each speech sound must - as many experiments show (e.g. Barton & Macken 1980; Bond & Wilson 1980; Sereno et al. 1987; Smith 1994, 1995; Stathopoulos 1995) - be learned and automatized, i.e. neural representations in the motor cortex must be acquired (Lieberman & Blumstein 1988; Ackermann 1998; Ziegler 1998). Thus, the acquisition of control over pitch production necessitates automatized physical activities, which co-ordinate the interplay of the laryngeal muscles and the organs involved in the production of the air stream. In acoustic terms, pitch can be described as complex periodic waves with specific frequencies and amplitudes. The vibrations of the vocal folds correspond to the fundamental frequency (F0), given in Hertz (Hz), which indicates the number of openingclosing cycles of the vocal folds per second. The acoustic measurement of the fundamental frequency and the perception of pitch height are not proportionally related. For one tone to be perceived as twice as high as another, a significantly greater difference in fundamental frequency is required in a high region than in a low region (e.g. Lindsay & Norman 1981). The just noticeable difference in pitch height is - depending on the pitch region - between 0.3 and 4% of its frequency in Hz (t'hart, Collier & Cohen 1990) or a semitone (Allen 1983). This, however, also depends on the length of the tone (a minimum of 30 ms). Some of the phenomena which can be described in acoustic terms are not picked up by human perception. Speech consists in part of voiceless sounds (of up to a quarter of the speech signal, depending on the language) without measurable fundamental frequency. In speech perception, however, pitch is perceived as continuous. Additionally, vowels have different inherent fundamental frequencies (Lehiste 1970; Ohala 1978), partly depending on the adjacent consonants, which cannot be perceived by a listener. Another acoustically measurable phenomenon is declination, the constant falling of F0 throughout an utterance (see Kutik et al. 1983; Ladd 1984; Nolan 1995), which is also not picked up by a listener. Neither is the resetting of the F0 line after a pause perceptible. In summary, a hearer employs a number of biologically endowed mechanisms to regulate many aspects of the acoustic signal, which facilitates the task of speech perception. Pitch is independent of the other linguistically relevant phonetic parameters, whereas perception of loudness depends on pitch and intensity. The interaction between pitch and the other phonetic parameters has been described by many authors. Vassiere (1983) notes that in German and English a high F0 is connected with high intensity (loudness). In order to increase pitch height, the tension in various laryngeal muscles and the subglottal air pressure must be increased. As these mechanisms also regulate loudness, an increase in pitch is associated with an increase in loudness (Fant 1968). Equally, pitch movements often correlate with a lengthening of the syllable, and an inserted pause is usually followed by a subsequent resetting of the F0 line of an utterance.

25 Loudness Loudness is produced physiologically by stronger activity in the diaphragm and in the intercostal and laryngeal muscles. This causes an increase in subglottal air pressure and may result in a greater tension of the vocal folds. Acoustically, this results in greater movement of the air particles and an increase of air pressure (measured in dynes/cm 2 ). Increased air pressure is reflected in a greater amplitude of the wave form. The term intensity refers to the square value of amplitude and is given in decibel (db). Perception of loudness varies with the fundamental frequency of a tone (Schmidt 1985) and is given in phon. Vowels have different inherent intensities, which are not picked up by a listener (Lehiste 1970). Despite its role in the production of stress and emphasis, loudness usually is not explicitly transcribed in intonational analysis. In this study, transcription of loudness will be given for all analysed utterances. Intensity interacts with the fundamental frequency and the length of a speech sound. Variation of intensity is closely connected with variation in pitch height. An increase in pulmonary effort and subglottal air pressure may cause greater tension of the vocal folds, which leads to an increase in pitch height as well as an increase in loudness. High intensity in German and English is also correlated with an increased length of a syllable (Vassiere 1983) Length The duration of a segment, syllable or other linguistic unit is identical in terms of production and acoustic measurement. Perception is not necessarily linear, however. In both German and English, lengthening of syllables is used to signal stress (Dogil 1995; Jessen et al. 1995; Sluijter 1995), emphasis or the end of a phrase. As is the case for loudness, length is not transcribed in the intonation systems of either the British tradition or the AM framework. Length interacts with both pitch and loudness. It usually co-occurs with a more pronounced pitch movement, and an increase in intensity generally results in greater length of speech segments Pause Physiologically, a pause is correlated with an absence of both movement of the articulators and vibration of the vocal folds. This happens at the closure period of stops, at phrase boundaries, and at what we call hesitations. A pause interacts with pitch and length in specific ways. For pauses occurring within utterances, pre-pausal syllables show a noticeable pitch movement and often increased length as well. After the pause the fundamental frequency, which dropped during the preceding stretch of utterance, is reset to a higher level. Pauses between utterances are distinctly longer than those within utterances and usually correlate with a phrase boundary.

26 Bilingual acquisition of intonation Bilingual first language acquisition "Bilingualism" is a term that, over the past decades, has been used with a wide range of meanings. Haugen (1953) refers to bilingualism when a "speaker of one language can produce meaningful utterances in another language" (p. 7), whereas Bloomfield's (1933) definition of bilingualism is "native-like control of two languages" (p. 56). Apart from linguistic ability in a broad sense, the acquisition process of two languages itself is taken as a criterion for (the degree of) bilingualism. Romaine (1995) argues that only in the case of more or less simultaneous acquisition of two languages the term bilingualism should be employed and that cases of children acquiring one language after the other belong to the field of second language acquisition. This study deals with the acquisition of intonation in bilingual first language acquisition (BFLA), a termed coined by Meisel (1990) and de Houwer (1990). It refers to the child's exposure to two languages from birth on and to a regular (ideally daily) contact with these languages. However, even within this narrow definition several acquisition scenarios are possible, varying in terms of both the persons and the environment associated with each language. This aspect of bilingual language acquisition is closely connected with the question whether competence in both languages has been acquired fully and to the same extent. Romaine (1995) differentiates various types of bilingual language acquisition depending on sociolinguistic factors, the status of the languages in the community, the parents' native language/s and the parents' language policy when speaking to the child. On the basis of these factors, it is claimed, predictions can be made concerning the acquisition process and its end result - the nature of the mental representations of the two languages in the bilingual brain. It seems that quality and amount of language input as well as the social context such as the acceptance and prestige of a language in the speech community directly affect the rate and quality of acquisition. Only very few bilinguals seem to acquire fully equal representations of their two languages insofar as they use both languages equally well in all social contexts. Most bilinguals seem to prefer one language over the other, depending on the context. In these cases, the preferred language is called "dominant". However, language dominance is not static but may change with a bilingual's language environment Bilingual language representation and processing One of the principal areas of interest in research in bilingualism is the nature of language representation and language processing. Nearly half a century ago, Weinreich (1953) proposed the now famous three types of bilingualism: The co-ordinate bilingual speaker was thought to have two separate conceptual representations of the two languages; the compound bilingual was assumed to have one shared conceptual system, to which terms from both languages are linked. Weinreich believed that these differences resulted from the way in which the languages had been learned. In the case of a co-ordinate bilingual there was virtually no overlap in the contexts in which the languages were acquired, whereas the compound bilingual learned the languages in high contextual confusion. The third type of bilingualism, the subordinative one, was hypothesised to be a result of second language

27 17 acquisition at school. Experimental confirmation of Weinreich's distinctions was never achieved, partly because of difficulties with the interpretation of results and partly because of methodological shortcomings such as the choice of subjects and their assignment to the types of bilinguals (see Hakuta 1986; Romaine 1995). Similarly, neurological evidence for bilingual language representation is inconclusive. A proposed right hemisphere involvement of bilinguals in contrast to a left hemisphere lateralization in (right handed) monolinguals seems to apply mainly to bilinguals who learned their second language later in life (Genesee et al. 1978; Wuillemin et al. 1994). This claim is furthermore difficult to maintain in view of the conflicting findings and the lack of comparability between the studies (see Paradis 1990, 1992). Equally, the debate between the "extended system" hypothesis, which claims that the same neural mechanisms underlie the two languages of a bilingual, and the "dual system" hypothesis, which assumes separate neural networks for each linguistic level (i.e. phonology, syntax, morphology, semantics) is still unresolved (Paradis 1981). Psycholinguistic experiments show that the two lexicons of a bilingual are closely connected. Stimulus material in one language results in a parallel low level activation of the other language. In the Stroop test, where subjects are asked to name the colour of the letters of a word, which in itself constitutes a colour term, cross-language interference occurs (Segalowitz 1977; Ehri & Ryan 1980). Similarly, a double activation of both languages for visual word recognition was proposed by Grainger (1993). These experiments provide empirical support for the now prevalent view, derived from sociolinguistic research, that Bloomfield's (1933) "native-like control of two languages" constitutes an unrealistic goal. Rather, it is assumed that no bilingual will perform in both languages with equal ease and motivation (Tracy 1995). Similarly, claims that speech events belong to a definite language (Weinreich 1953) have been found untenable, and the term "bilingual mode" (Grosjean 1982) was introduced to refer to language processing in bilinguals. This term encompasses the simultaneous activation and accessibility of two languages. In speech to monolinguals, it is usually suppressed. In conversation with other bilinguals, in contrast, output control is relaxed and speakers are in the bilingual mode, where code-switching can occur (Grosjean 1995) Language representation and processing in bilingual first language acquisition Language representation and processing have been central issues in research on bilingualism in adults but have been investigated less intensively for bilingual language acquisition. Most evidence comes from studies with monolingual children. Karmiloff- Smith (1992) developed a model describing how (monolingual) children build up and store linguistically relevant representations. Based on the assumption that language acquisition involves more than successful storage and behavioural mastery of linguistic tasks, she argues that the linguistic representations, in the course of language acquisition, undergo redescription "such that they become linguistic objects of attention outside their on-line use in comprehension and production" (p. 48). According to her, initially stored linguistic representations, acquired through an innate linguistic predisposition and attention biases, enable the child to function as a fluent speaker but are not available for metalinguistic reflection. Learning in this first phase is data driven and results in what Karmiloff-Smith

28 18 calls "representational adjunctions", which do not have any relations to other representations. The representational redescription (RR) model postulates that those linguistic representations, embedded implicitly in linguistic procedures (level-i (=implicit) representations) undergo a process of re-representation in order to become flexible and manipulable (Ellevel (^explicit) representations) and to become eventually accessible to metalinguistic reflection and cross-domain relationships with other areas of cognition (E2/3-level representations). Indicators for redescription processes in language acquisition are assumed to be self-repairs and late-occurring errors. In phase 2, learning is assumed to be externally driven with the focus on represented knowledge so that external data can be temporarily disregarded. Balance between internal and external focus is achieved in phase 3. Despite the fact that this model was not explicitly developed for bilingual first language acquisition, it might serve as a descriptional framework for the acquisition of intonation in bilingual first language acquisition. Evidence for a linguistic predisposition and attention biases of (monolingual) infants towards intonational cues is abundant. Hirsh-Pasek et al. (1987) showed that 7-month-old babies are sensitive to the intonational structuring of their mother tongue. Babies oriented longer to speech with pauses at linguistic boundaries than to speech with randomly inserted pauses. Mehler et al. (1988) report that already four-dayolds are able to discriminate any two languages on the basis of their intonational structure. Using the sucking habituation technique, they could show that the infants were sensitive to the overall prosodic shape of languages. Interestingly, two-month-olds fail to differentiate languages if one of them is not their native one. In other words, at two months, infants have set some first parameter values concerning the structure of their mother tongue and treat all unfamiliar languages as not fitting this model. In the TIGRE framework, Mehler et al. (1996) propose that babies are specifically endowed to cope with bi- and multilingualism. TIGRE stands for Time and Intensity Grid Representation and is assumed to be the infant's gridlike representation of the vocalic nuclei in the speech signal as they carry important information about stress, rhythm and metrical properties of a language. On the basis of this, infants are assumed to differentiate languages into three classes: Syllable-based, stressbased and mora-based rhythm. Bilinguals growing up with two languages from different classes thus have a powerful tool to keep them apart. It is claimed that bilinguals growing up with two languages of the same class start with the assumption that they are surrounded by only one language and learn to differentiate them only later. However, experimental results still have to substantiate these claims. Phase 2 of Karmiloff-Smith's (1992) model, applied to the bilingual acquisition of intonation, would then predict the child's emerging awareness of intonational structures. This could coincide with errors in production and the occurrence of self-repairs. In the course of this redescription process, children would become aware of the intonational features of their native languages and be able to comment on them. However, it seems likely that no E2/3-level representations of intonational phonology are possible - research on the teaching of intonation or the acquisition of intonation in a second language suggests that intonation is an area inaccessible to metalinguistic reflection even in adults (e.g. Raith 1986; Trim 1988). Research in language processing and representation during bilingual language acquisition has been largely centred around the debate on the initial fusion vs. early separation of the two languages. The first view was proposed by Volterra & Taeschner

29 19 (1978) and many others (Park & Redlinger 1980; Vihman & McLaughlin 1982; Grosjean 1982; Saunders 1982; Taeschner 1983; Vihman 1985; Arnberg 1987), who describe bilingual language acquisition as a progression from a single undifferentiated system to two separate systems. Supporters of the Independent Development Hypothesis (Bergman 1976; Padilla & Lindholm 1984) assume a completely separate acquisition of the two languages from the beginning. Tracy (1996) argues that the early fusion or separateness of the two systems very much depends on the type of languages involved: Whereas in the case of two languages with very similar phonologies she would predict an initial undifferentiated phonological system, this would be less likely in the case of two languages which have little similarity in this respect. Research in the acquisition of segmental phonology by bilingual children clearly exemplifies the difficulties associated with the study of phonological acquisition in general. The main problem lies in the assessment of whether child productions reflect two separate phonological systems or whether they are a product of an undifferentiated "mixed" mental representation. On the one hand, Burling (1959) and Schnitzer & Krasinski (1994) as well as Leopold (1947) adduce evidence for an initially undifferentiated consonant system in the bilingual children they studied. On the other hand, no such data is reported by Deuchar (1989), Ingram (1981), Oksaar (1970), and Raffler-Engel (1965), which led these authors to assume two separate phonological systems from the beginning. One reason for this apparent contradiction could be that many of the proposed "undifferentiated systems", unfortunately, turn out to be misinterpretations of regular features of phonological acquisition. This is most probably the case in the above cited studies which found evidence for an initial cross-linguistic consonant system: Schnitzer & Krasinski (1994) reported that their Spanish-English subject showed a phase in which the appropriate vowels were produced in each language, but only one consonant system seemed to exist. This was interpreted as evidence for a "mixed" stage. Deuchar & Clark (1996), however, offer a phonetic explanation for this pattern of acquisition. The voice onset time (VOT) for the Spanish stops /p/, /t/, and DsJ nearly equals those of the English stops /b/, /d/, and /g/ - they are produced by a short lag after the release. This means that the contrast between "voiced" and "voiceless" stops in Spanish is realised by voicing lead vs. short lag, whereas in English it is realised by short vs. long lag. At 1; 11, Deuchar & Clark's subjects did not achieve a perceptible voicing contrast in either language. At 2;3, the English contrast was acquired. In Spanish, however, it was hardly perceptible and produced within the short lag. These findings are in line with evidence from monolingual studies which report that Spanish children acquire voicing lead much later than English children acquire their contrast. Thus, whilst English/Spanish bilingual learners may temporarily sound as if they were using the same consonants in their Spanish and English utterances, Deuchar & Clark's study presents clear evidence of a parallel and asynchronous phonological acquisition. Thus, many conclusions of a mixed system could be due to the lack of sophisticated acoustic measurements. Similar examples for the difficulty of identifying cross-linguistic structures in the acquisition of segmental phonology can be adduced for German/English bilingual children. Consider the following examples from Adam, one of the subjects of this study, a German/English bilingual child growing up in Germany.

30 20 (12) [3;6] [we:t] for red (13) [4;4] [hasp] forgave Example (12) shows final devoicing of the /d/ and could be considered an instance of a cross-linguistic production where the German final devoicing rule is applied to an English lexical item. However, data from monolingual children acquiring English also show final devoicing (Wode 1988; cf. Ingram 1989). Example (13) again might be assumed to be a cross-linguistic mix of the German [ha:b] and the English [haev]. Yet, other productions by Adam show that he systematically replaces labiodental fricatives with bilabial stops in English (examples 14 and 15): (14) [4;4] [auba] for over (15) [4;4] [mu:b] for move Moreover, this substitution has also been recorded for monolingual children. Assessment of the nature of bilingual phonological representation must therefore be made with great care. This applies even more to the area of intonational phonology, where not much is known about the adult systems yet and acquisition data is scarce Bilingual acquisition of the phonological system of intonation In the overviews in de Houwer (1990) and Hoffmann (1991), not a single study in bilingual language acquisition is listed that deals with intonation. Consequently, hardly anything is known about the simultaneous acquisition of two intonation systems. As is implied by the definition of intonation given by Ladd (1996) at the beginning of this chapter, the acquisition of the intonational phonology of a language comprises at least three areas: The acquisition of control over the physiological mechanisms underlying the suprasegmental phonetic features used for intonation; the perception and mental representation of the intonation system and its functions; and the matching of the production to the perceived system. To my knowledge, so far no studies have been carried out which explore any of these areas and which could present evidence for either a separate or a mixed representation of the phonological system of intonation in bilingual language learners. Some evidence for a bilingual representation of two separate phonological systems on a suprasegmental level comes from a study by Paradis (1998), who investigated the truncation patterns in multisyllabic words by English/French bilingual two-year-olds. Asked to repeat nonsense words of four-syllable length with varying stress patterns, the bilinguals showed the same truncation strategies as their age-matched monolingual peers. These truncation strategies were specific to either English or French and thus reflected the acquisition of the respective phonological systems. However, the bilinguals also differed from the monolinguals in certain ways: In words with a WSWS (weak-strong-weak-strong) syllable structure or words with a WSWW structure, bilinguals did not preserve the syllables in the second position more often than those in third position - a pattern observed in the English monolingual group. Neither did the bilingual two-year-olds prefer heavy weak syllables over light weak syllables as had their monolingual counterparts. These limited but systematic differences between the two groups led Paradis (1998) to conclude

31 21 that the phonological systems of the bilingual two-year-olds cannot be assumed to be autonomous but rather to be in interaction with each other. The direction of the interaction seems to be determined by language-dominance Bilingual acquisition of the phonetic parameters of intonation Interaction between the two systems of bilingual language learners is even more evident on the phonetic level. In terms of language processing, bilinguals seem to have to make subtle adjustments in both perception and production in order to accommodate the two languages. Cutler (1994) describes how the perception of the rhythm of a language may help the infant to segment speech. A strategy for English would be to assume that a stressed syllable signals the beginning of a word. In French, segmentation would be based on the syllable, and in Japanese on the mora. Children growing up as bilinguals, she claims, can only use one strategy. Should the two languages they acquire require different strategies, their one strategy would be misapplied for one language. This hypothesis was tested with adult French/English bilinguals (Cutler et al. 1992), who had been exposed to both languages from one year on or earlier and who used both languages regularly. They were presented with the same speech perception task as two groups of French and English monolinguals in earlier studies. Results were heterogeneous: The bilinguals behaved neither like monolingual English speakers with the English material nor like French monolinguals in the French part of the experiment. When the subjects were divided into English- or French-dominant speakers, however, Cutler et al. (1992) could show that the French-dominant bilinguals used syllable-based segmentation strategies in French and the English-dominant bilinguals used stress-based segmentation with English. In short, in the dominant language each group resembled monolingual speakers, whereas in the non-dominant language they did not. However, the authors stress that segmentation in the non-dominant language was not imperfect or inferior in any way, but that the subjects simply fell back on general, less language-specific segmentation strategies. This suggests that bilingual language learners may only develop highly specialised segmentation strategies for one of their language. However, it also seems to corroborate the view that the mental representation of the intonational (rhythmic) structure of the two languages is completely separate. Furthermore, there is some evidence that bilinguals employ a specific production strategy for speech sounds. Watson (1991) found that the articulation of certain phonemes by bilinguals may differ from that of monolinguals, yet without being perceptually noticeable. The French/English bilinguals he studied showed a systematic difference in onset frequency of the first formant in vowels following voiced and voiceless stops in both languages; a feature which is produced only by English but not by French monolinguals. He also found greater aspiration in French voiceless velars in his bilingual data compared to monolingual average values. Each production, however, was well within the acceptable monolingual range. Bilinguals thus may have different production routines for some phonemes to reduce the processing load, perceptually, however, they will stay well within monolingually acceptable limits. It is quite possible to suppose that a similar strategy would be employed in the phonetic production of intonational phenomena.

32 A model of the bilingual acquisition of intonation Child language acquisition has traditionally been divided into several stages. The first stage, in which the infant produces speech sounds without using them meaningfully (babbling), is commonly referred to as the "prelinguistic stage". At around one year of age, this is followed by the "one-word stage", in which individual words of the target language/s are produced in a meaningful way. This early child speech is variously called "holophrastic" (Oksaar 1977) and "asyntactic". The next stage is that of the concatenation of two words, which is then replaced by the stage of multiword combinations (see e.g. Radford 1990). Crystal (1981, 1986) proposes a 5-stage model of the development of intonation: He assumes that the intonation of the first vocalisations by infants express their emotional state. As a next step, linguistic awareness of the differences in the use of intonation by adults is acquired. The first productions of pitch movement patterns by the infant are assumed to be accidental and meaningless and to correspond to babbling in the phonological development. From the age of six months on he claims the existence of stable intonation contours without any clearly associated meanings. Intonational phrasing is postulated to begin with the combination of words. Crystal and other authors (Halliday 1975, 1979; Leopold 1947) describe a detailed order of the acquisition of pitch movements and their associated meanings. These claims, however, are based on impressionistic accounts or auditory analyses alone and still await experimental confirmation. The greatest drawback of these models, moreover, is that they describe intonation on a single holistic level of representation and that they make no distinction between the phonological and phonetic aspects of pitch patterns. As discussed at the beginning of this chapter, a model of the acquisition of intonation must incorporate this distinction. Furthermore, current research has begun to challenge the concept of clearly separable stages and stresses their interrelatedness and the continuity of development. In segmental phonology, a great similarity has been discovered between the frequency of certain speech sounds in babbling and early words, which has led authors to propose continuity between those two phases (Boysson-Bardies et al. 1992; Lleo et al. 1994; Menn & Stoel-Gammon 1995). In suprasegmental phonology, Penner (personal communication) claims continuity in the prosodic development from babbling to object+verb constructions (see also Tracy 1991 for syntax). The model presented below will thus use the term "phase" instead of "stage". No clear division between phases is proposed and overlap is assumed to be possible. For example, it is conceivable that a child progresses to phase 2 in a certain aspect of intonation while it still remains in the first phase in another. In summary, current knowledge of the acquisition of phonological and phonetic processes in (segmental) phonology as discussed above suggests the following provisional model of the acquisition of intonation by German/English bilingual learners (table 1): In the first phase, infants are exposed to the intonation of German and English in their parents' speech. They show attentional biases towards the prosodic structure of both English and German and begin to build up representations of the two systems. At this stage, infants have very little physical control over the production mechanisms of the phonetic parameters of intonation, and although accidental productions of either German or English intonational phenomena may occur, they are not used in a linguistic or purposeful way.

33 23 In the second phase, which is assumed to coincide roughly with the onset of speech, control over the physical mechanisms of the phonetic parameters of intonation grows and first rules of the phonological use of intonation are acquired. This can be observed in the systematic application of nucleus placement, pitch accents or intonational phrasing in early words and sentences. The representation of phonological rules is separate for the two languages; however, interaction between the systems is possible. Intonational rules already acquired in the dominant language may be applied in the weaker one so that mixing structures can occur. Phonological Level Phase I Phase II Phase m -beginnings of phonological representation -increase of phonological representation: two separate systems with possible interaction and mixing structures; interaction in the direction of the weaker language -fully acquired phonologies; -two separate systems with possible interaction on a non-perceptual level Phonetic Level -little control over the phonetic parameters -production of intonational phenomena without linguistic function (intonational babbling) -growing control over the phonetic parameters -complete control over phonetic parameters; -possibly simplified production strategy without perceptual consequences Table 1: A provisional model of the phases of bilingual acquisition of intonation on a phonological and phonetic level. The last phase of the bilingual acquisition of intonation entails the full representation of the two phonological systems, which may interact in certain situations. At this stage, redescription processes as postulated by Karmiloff-Smith (1992) are beginning to occur. They become observable in the child's metalinguistic awareness of intonational phenomena as well as the production of speech errors and the occurrence of self-repair. Control over the phonetic parameters is complete, but simplification strategies may be employed; however, it is assumed that they will stay within the monolingual range and thus not be perceptible as "deviant" In the following, this provisional model will be tested. Chapters 3 to 5 deal with our current knowledge on the bilingual acquisition of nucleus placement, pitch and intonational phrasing. Subsequently, the results of this study (chapters 7 to 10), which investigates these

34 24 aspects in the language acquisition of three German/English bilingual children, will be used as a basis to modify this provisional model (chapter 11).

35 3. Bilingual acquisition of nucleus placement This chapter focuses on the bilingual acquisition of nucleus placement. After a discussion of what is known about the German and English phonological systems of nucleus placement (3.1), the specific combination of phonetic parameters employed for the production of nuclei will be investigated (3.2). Section 3.3 presents our current knowledge about the different tasks of a language learner acquiring the phonology of nucleus placement, and section 3.4 gives an outline of research on the mastery of the phonetic production of nuclei. In section 3.5, the research questions of this study will be listed. 3.1 The phonological systems of nucleus placement in German and English In both German and English, the phonological system of nucleus placement is intricately interwoven with the concept of focus. "Focus" has been defined as a grammatical feature (e.g. Selkirk 1984; Winkler 1994) or a semantic term (e.g. Altmann et al. 1989a) and refers to that part of a sentence which is prominent in terms of content and which forms a contrast to the background information of the sentence (Uhmann 1991). Firstly, focus can be differentiated in terms of scope (e.g. Dik 1997): Broad focus falls on entire constituents or even whole sentences, whereas narrow focus applies to individual lexical items (F6ry 1988; Ladd 1980). Examples (16) and (17) illustrate broad focus (which can be described by the term "normal stress" as Ladd (1996) suggests). (16) He took the \ball. (17) Er nahm den \Ball. In both cases, broad focus falls on the constituent "the ball" resp. "den Ball" or it might even be argued that the entire sentence is in focus. In examples (18) and (19) only the words ball resp. Ball have narrow focus. (18) There were a doll and a ball. He took the \ball. (19) Da waren eine Puppe und ein Ball. Er nahm den \Ball. Secondly, focus can be differentiated in terms of pragmatic function. On the one hand, it can be employed to indicate an informational gap on the part of the speaker or an assumed one on the part of the listener. In these cases, as illustrated in (20) and (21), focus is used to mark new vs. old information. (20) Where is the dog? The dog is in the \house. (21) Wo ist der Hund? Der Hund ist im \Haus.

36 26 On the other hand, focus can have the pragmatic function of indicating contrast, as exemplified in (22) or sentences (6) and (7) in section 2.2. (22) All three of them had a /go II only \mother won Here, the nucleus falls on mother although she has previously been referred to in all three of them. By this, the contrast between mother and the rest of the group is achieved. Thus, in instances of contrast, focus can fall on old information. It is generally believed that sentence-stress (and nucleus placement in particular) reflects the intended focus of an utterance. However, Ladd (1996) adduces some examples in which constituents or words are focussed without receiving stress. Conversely, to my knowledge, it has never been argued that a lexical item which carries the nucleus can at the same time not be in focus. Closely related to the concept of focus is the concept of emphasis. A lexical item is perceived to be emphasised when it receives exceptionable stress. Emphasis can be used for pragmatic reasons of contrast (e.g. Bannert 1985), for example to mark a particular item in enumeration. This is illustrated in (23) and (24). (23) Apples, pears, potatoes and peas. (24) Apfel, Birnen, Kar\toffeln und Erbsen. The distinction between emphasis and stress or focus is difficult to make, which is mainly due to the fact that emphasis is defined phonetically rather than grammatically or semantically (see e.g. Gut 1995). The phonological rules of nucleus placement seem to be very similar in German and English. In both languages, the nucleus is associated with a distinctive pitch movement and, in an unmarked utterance, falls on the last word. However, not any word level category can receive nuclear stress. It is far more common for words of a lexical than a non-lexical category (Markus 1992). Crystal (1969) found that the head of English NPs and VPs receives the nucleus as a default and that any other nucleus placements are perceived as marked. Thus, in the majority of cases, unmarked utterances will have the nucleus on the last noun in both German and English (see also Gibbon 1998; Ladd 1980). This clearly applies only to very simple sentences such as simple main clauses. The description of most of adult speech would thus require elaborate additions to this nucleus placement rule. It might, however, serve well for the description of a great proportion of child utterances. From this follows one area of contrast: In German, because it is a V2-language, sentences with verb-end position are possible, for example sentences containing modals or participial constructions, where a noun then appears in the penultimate position. In these cases, at least in unmarked conditions, the nucleus is still on the noun, albeit in penultimate position (example 25). In English, in contrast, word order prevents such cases (example 26). (25) Er kann den \Ball sehen. (26) He can see the \ball.

37 27 Other differences between nucleus placement in German and English are not well attested. However, Gut (1995) found that English speakers put the nucleus on phone in the utterance (27) The \phone rang. whereas German speakers in the equivalent German utterance (28) placed it on the verb. (28) Das Telefon \klingelte. When reading the English text, the German speakers also placed the nucleus on the verb, i.e. produced (29): (29) The phone \rang. Equally, the utterance (30) received nuclear stress on Hi by all English speakers: (30) Hi Nick. German speakers placed the nucleus on Nick in both the German equivalent utterance and the English one. These data provide some evidence for a systematic difference between the phonological use of nucleus placement in the two languages, and it can be concluded that bilingual learners will have to acquire two systems with different phonological rules. 3.2 The phonetic production of nuclei A nucleus is defined as the last stressed syllable of an utterance which carries a distinctive pitch movement. Stress can occur on various levels. Firstly, it is an abstract property of a word, which will be realised when the word is spoken in isolation. There, it can have the function of lexical disambiguation as in 1 object (the noun) and object (the verb) in English and the word pair ueber'setzen (translate) and 'uebersetzen (take across) in German, which are distinguished by the place of stress. Secondly, in connected speech, word stress becomes a potential place for sentence stress. The distribution of stress on the sentencelevel has been proposed to follow generative rules (Chomsky & Halle 1968 for English and Bierwisch 1966 for German). Esser (1978) suggests that its function is communicative differentiation of the individual lexical items and a marking of theme and rheme. Emphasis was cited as one of the linguistic functions of nucleus placement. Emphasis is the term for prominence assigned to a lexical item and is used for contrastive focus, irony and other functions. Although emphasis has its significance attached to the whole word, it is strictly speaking just a feature of the emphasised syllable, which normally carries the word stress. It will be assumed that the difference between stress and emphasis is of a quantitative rather than a qualitative nature (cf. Liberman & Pierrehumbert 1984).

38 28 Most authors agree that stress and emphasis are produced by a combination of the parameters pitch, loudness and length (e.g. Cruttenden 1986; Batliner 1989b; Lehiste 1970, to which de Jong 1995, adds "a formant structure in vowels which is more different from those of a uniform tube than their unstressed counterparts", p. 491), but only rudimentary attempts have so far been made to describe the complex interplay of these features in detail. This is probably largely due to the fact that these parameters are closely connected in physiological terms (see also section 2.3). Two mechanisms have been discovered which are involved in the production of stress. One is an increased effort of muscular activity in the intercostals and the diaphragm which leads to an increase in subglottal air pressure (Lehiste 1970). The other is a tensioning of the vocal folds (Fant 1968). Monsen, Engebretson & Vemula (1978) investigated the effects of both these mechanisms on the fundamental frequency by using a phonation model based on a twomass model of vocal-fold vibration, in which the parameters could be controlled independently. It was found that an increase in air pressure resulted in an increase of intensity without showing a large effect on the fundamental frequency. An increase in vocal-fold tension, conversely, produced a large change in F0, but resulted in only a small decrease of the intensity. No evidence, however, has yet been brought forward which would clarify the extent to which speakers can control these mechanisms independently. It is intuitively clear that pitch and intensity can be controlled separately if attention is drawn to them during a speech act. The question, however, how they act together in unmonitored spontaneous speech is of greater interest. Lehiste (1970) proposes that subglottal pressure peaks are closely related to the production of emphasis as opposed to that of word stress, which is more associated with pitch change. Sundberg, Elliot, Gramming & Nord (1993) discovered that during a recital of a poem the subglottal pressure pulses are synchronised with the voiced consonants of the emphasised syllable. Monsen et al. (1978) conclude from their experiments with speakers phonating into a tube, which acted as a continuation of the vocal tract and yielded glottal waves, that subglottal air pressure regulates fundamental frequency changes within syllables whereas stress, which is reflected in pitch changes between syllables, is associated with both high vocal-fold tension and high subglottal pressure. Vassiere (1983) furthermore suggests that high intensity of a syllable is correlated with a longer duration of the syllable as the general increase in articulatory effort requires additional time. De Jong (1995) describes the production of prominence in English as a localised hyperarticulation. Using an x-ray microbeam facility to record the movements of jaw, tongue, lips and the shape of the vocal tract, he showed that the motions of the articulators, usually characterised by motor economy in unstressed conditions, were greatly increased in order to produce stress, which then resulted in an increased distinctness. Larger duration thus seems to be the physical requirement for a clearer enunciation (cf. Erickson 1998; Erickson et al. 1998). There is some evidence that different relative importance is attached to the parameters pitch, intensity and duration for the production of stress in different languages (e.g. Gut 1995). Jones (described in Lehiste 1970) showed that the identification of word stress in a foreign language poses problems for subjects. Scuffil (1982) demonstrated the same for emphasis. He presented English and German subjects with sentences such as "What S are they \doing?" where / signifies a rising head and \ a falling nucleus. Asked to mark the

39 29 most prominent word in the sentence, a significant number of German native speakers chose the last word, whereas the majority of English speakers agreed on the second word. In addition, in a sentence with the structure 1 2 '3 /4, many Germans heard a prominence on the third word, which led Scuffil to conclude that, for German speakers, low pitch inhibits perceptual prominence. The relative importance of pitch, intensity and duration for the production of stress and emphasis in English and German will be discussed in the following Pitch and pitch movement during stressed syllables A perceptible rise in pitch is commonly described to be the most important cue for stress in English. For German, Kuhlmann (1952) characterises nuclear stress as either a particularly high or low pitch in comparison to the adjacent syllables. Antonsen (1966) and von Essen (1964) consider extra pitch height as most important for the production of emphasis, and Batliner (1989a) and Bannert (1985) report experimental evidence for a higher relative fundamental frequency on stressed syllables. Gut (1995) found that pitch was the most important cue for stress for English speakers. There is some evidence that different heights of pitch accents signal different kinds of focus (e.g. single vs. double focus), at least when associated with rise-falling pitch movements (Liberman & Pierrehumbert 1984; Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg 1990; Ladd & Terken 1995; Rump & Collier 1996) Intensity Whereas in English intensity is considered to play a subordinate role to changes in fundamental frequency in matters of stress, more importance seems to be attached to it in German. Trim (1988) claims that in German the relative importance of emphasised syllables is determined by loudness and predicts the highest volume on the most emphasised one and less loudness on all other syllables including the nucleus. Batliner (1989a) found that the use of intensity is a characteristic of only some speakers. In his experiment, only three of six speakers used loudness for purposes of emphasis and then only in declarative sentences but not in questions. Gut (1995) found that some German speakers use only intensity to mark emphasis, others produce a combination of intensity and pitch. ClaBen et al. (1998) show that the measurement of the overall intensity of vowels might be too crude to pick up characteristics of stressed vowels. They suggest that stress is reflected in the spectral tilt, the relationship between amplitudes in the low frequency and the mid- to high-frequency domain of a vowel's spectrum Length There are currently no languages known which use length as the most important phonetic cue for stress. Lehiste (1970) postulated this for Serbo-Croatian, but this claim was rejected by Gvozdanovic (1980). In English, length merely seems to play a subordinate role and may just constitute a by-product of the clearer articulation of the emphasised syllable. In

40 30 German, the role of length for the production of stress is probably more significant: Bannert (1985) found that two of his four subjects used length as a signal of stress, and Batliner (1989a) reports from his investigation that prominent syllables are slightly longer than unstressed ones. Dogil (1999; see also Kohler 1995) argues that length is the only reliable correlate of word stress in German. In English, emphasised syllables are always characterised by a full vowel. The word of occurring in an unstressed position in a sentence is pronounced with a schwa (a). An emphasised of conversely, is pronounced with a full vowel (the D), which requires a greater and more precise displacement of the tongue than a schwa and therefore more time for its production. This is also true for German; however, unstressed vowels show less reduction than in English. In summary, the phonetic realisation of nuclear stress or emphasis differs between German and English to some extent. Whereas pitch plays the most important role in English, with loudness and length having only minor functions, it seems that stress in German can be produced by an increase in loudness alone. These phonetic differences are associated with perceptually distinguishable acoustic events (Trim 1988), which means for bilingual learners that a "mixed" production strategy would be perceived as deviant from the monolingual norm. 3.3 The acquisition of nucleus placement The acquisition of the phonology of nucleus placement requires the mastery of several phenomena: An utterance may consist of a string of words. Each word has a clearly defined syllable, on which word stress is produced when the word is spoken in isolation. This stress pattern is the property of the word and is likely to be stored in the lexicon with it. The first task of a language learner is therefore to acquire the language-specific rules of word stress. In an utterance however, not every word stress is realised. Some word stresses are suppressed, especially in casual and fast speech. Even in slow speech, function words typically do not receive stress, which leads to the production of a language-specific rhythm, an alternation between stressed and unstressed syllables. The second task of a language learner is thus to realise only certain of the word stresses when stringing words together. By definition, the nucleus is the last stressed syllable of an utterance or sentence. In order to use nucleus placement phonologically with the linguistic purposes of emphasis and the various forms of focus such as contrast described above, children have to master the third task of recognising the specific status of the nucleus and of acquiring the placement rules. Prior and parallel to all this, the phonetic parameters used for the production of stress must be controlled physically. A language-specific combination of pitch, length and loudness must be acquired for the production of stress and emphasis, and the nucleus must be marked by an additional distinct pitch movement. For German/English bilingual learners, two systems of word stress rules and nucleus placement rules as well as two production strategies of nuclear stress must be acquired. The following sections describe what is known about these acquisition tasks so far. Unfortunately, data from bilingual

41 31 children have not been collected yet so that all the evidence cited comes from monolingual acquisition The acquisition of word stress Fikkert (1994, 1995) and Fikkert, Penner & Wymann (1998) propose a model of the acquisition of word stress in Dutch and German with the following phases (figure 12): In the first phase, all disyllabic words are reduced to the stressed syllable and only this is produced. A German example would be the production of ['ta] for Katze ['katsa] (cat). In phase 2, disyllabic words with the stress pattern strong-weak (SW) are produced correctly; production of words with the stress pattern WS, in contrast, show a truncated first syllable and the production of only the stressed syllable. This also occurs with trisyllabic words of the SWS stress pattern, where only the last strong syllable is realised. Examples would be the production of [wa:f] for the English word giraffe and ['te:n] for the German word Kapitän [,kapi'te:n] (captain). In this phase, weak syllables may be added to the strong syllable of iambic (WS) words, while the first syllable is truncated, thus turning the word stress into a trochaic (SW) pattern (['wa:fa] for giraffe). Formen der Erwachsenen baby Baby* / bttbli/ konijn 'Kaninchen* /koriiein/ olifant 'Elephant' ftnhdant/ kapitein 'Kapitän' /Jcaoitcin' Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4 Phase 5 Phase 6 [t>«j fbeibii] Iteibii] [teibiij { betbii] [txabii] Itei} {lein], [teins] fkutnein] [ ka-nein] [koi'neln] [koi*nem] twi (Toni ('osfan] [ orfiifan] ['ot^ii/anq /Vslii/ant/ Cpaipiijein] [Jtapitein] Figure 12: The six phases of the acquisition of word stress as proposed by Fikkert, Penner & Wymann (1998) with examples from Dutch. The reduction of words with more than two syllables to this pattern has, further supported by the listening preference for trochees found by Cutler et al. (1993) in 9-month-olds, led many authors to postulate a bias towards trochaic patterns (Allen & Hawkins 1978, 1980; Echols & Newport 1992; Leopold 1947; however see Vihman et al. 1998) and an initial template with a trochaic form and a simplified structure has been proposed (Archibald 1995b; Fee 1995; Gerken 1994; Wijnen et al. 1994). A model of the prosodic structure of early child word forms with the initial minimal word form (Wd min) as proposed by Fee

42 32 (1995) is shown in figure 13: The word consists of a single foot (F), which comprises two syllables (a), both of which are monomoraic ( i). Figure 13: The minimal word form as proposed by Fee (1995). This basic structure becomes apparent in child word forms that constitute mismatches to adult forms such as ['naenas] for [ba'naena], where the leftmost mora captures the leftmost stressed syllable and the unstressed [ba] is truncated as can be taken from figure 14. [b] [a] [n] [as] [n] [«] Figure 14: The prosodic structure of the child production [naenae] for "banana" as proposed by Fee (1995). Phase 3 of the acquisition of word stress sees an over-generalisation of this trochaic pattern so that a stress shift in iambic words may occur (e.g. ['ku:nein] instead of [ko:'nein], Dutch for rabbit). In phase 4, trisyllabic words of the SWS kind are not truncated any more, but the two strong syllables receive level stress. In the last phases, children produce iambic word stress correctly as well as words with a SWS pattern that show main stress on either the first or the last strong syllable. The single quantity-insensitive trochaic foot, which constituted the proposed minimal word form (figure 13), has been expanded to include more than one foot in view of evidence of disyllabic target language words stressed on the second syllable, as Fikkert (1995) describes. This model was developed for Dutch and has been validated for Swiss German and Standard German (Dahmer 1997). It still needs confirmation with English data and has yet to be tested for German/English bilingual language acquisition. Phase 4 is estimated to be

43 33 reached around age 2;2, which means that children already produce many word combinations before they have acquired the rules of word stress in their language Transition to sentence-level 1 stress As stated above, word combinations are produced when children are still in the phase of level stress production of adult iambic and trisyllabic words. It seems that early two-word utterances are produced within this prosodic frame as well: Penner (personal communication) observed this for early object+verb constructions in German. The first productions show level stress, i.e. equal stress on both words, and only later renditions with a single nucleus become possible. He claims that the acquisition of these early word combinations can be compared to the acquisition of the prosodic structure of compounds and that a representation of syntactic structure is not required yet. Similarly, Oksaar (1977) and Bloom (1971) report that the process of stringing two words together begins with two equally stressed lexical items, which are initially even separated by an intonational pause. Crystal (1986) describes the transition from single- to two-word-utterances as a gradual process dividable into two phases. The first constitutes a simple concatenation of two words still separated by a short pause. The second is characterised by an integration of the two words to a single tone unit or intonational phrase. Usually, one word has a greater intensity than the other, and in 90% of the cases this is the second one. Thus, stress in these early word combinations is not yet produced at a rhythmic or sentence level but still within the prosodic frame of word stress. Probably, the final phase of word stress acquisition has to be reached before sentence-level stress can be produced. Evidence for a complete reorganisation of the speech planning process in monolingual acquisition at the transition to longer utterances comes from several authors: The beginning of word combinations seems to coincide with a restructuring process in word stress. Snow (1994) describes a regression to isochronicity of syllables in the production of single words, and Archibald (1995b) and Fikkert (1994) also claim that adult-like word stress is preceded by a phase of equal stress distribution on the syllables of a word. Elbers & Wijnen (1992), working on the basis of Levelt's (1989) speech production model, describe this phase as the transition from semantic to syntactic speech, which requires the development of a "formulator", a mental device encoding grammar and phonology in speech production. The transitional phase is characterised by many hesitations, restarts and stuttering and reflects the increasing control of speech planning processes. Especially in English, the transition to sentence-level stress is associated with syllable reduction. Allen & Hawkins (1978) differentiate between three levels of stress in syllables: Accented syllables receive both stress and pitch movement, heavy syllables are stressed without pitch movement, and light syllables are neither stressed nor show pitch movement. Child speech at around two years of age consists only of accented and heavy syllables. Even at age 3;9, only two thirds of syllables that would be light in adult speech were 1 In the following, the term "sentence-level stress" will refer to any type of stress above the wordlevel and thus include phrase-level stress.

44 34 produced appropriately. To my knowledge, no equivalent data have been collected for the acquisition of German or bilingual learners Acquisition of the phonological rules of nucleus placement Very few studies have been carried out with the object of investigating the acquisition of the phonological rules of nucleus placement. Cruttenden (1986) adduces examples for systematic variation of nucleus placement with the semantic content of a two-word utterance. If the child wishes to express a locative relationship with the utterance "Daddy garden", the nucleus falls on the second word. If, however, possession is expressed, the nucleus falls on the first word. In longer stretches of speech consisting of a few utterances it can furthermore be observed, he claims, that new information is more likely to be marked by stress than old information. Unfortunately, his description constitutes an impressionistic account rather than a systematic study. Purnell (1997) reports empirical evidence that the function of focusing by nucleus placement is acquired in the stage of early word combinations. She studied nucleus placement in two-word utterances where her subjects provided answers to questions such as "Who is eating the banana?" and "What is the monkey doing?". Responses were "\Monkey banana" in the first and "eat \banana" in the second case, showing a N+N (noun plus noun) respectively V+N (verb plus noun) structure with the nucleus always on the new information. However, experimental data by Schoeler (1987) shows that the acquisition of the phonology of nucleus placement continues well into puberty. He tested the metalinguistic awareness of children concerning the nucleus placement in questions, which determined the marking of new and old information in the context. One situation was given to the subjects, in which two friends saw someone swimming in a lake. The subjects were asked whether question (31) /Schwimmt Peter dort (/Is Peter swimming there) or question (32) Schwimmt /Peter dort (Is /Peter swimming there) was appropriate. At age 7 subjects were only slightly better than chance (56%), and at age 15 only 82% of the replies were correct. This suggests that this development continues beyond 15 years of age. Decision on the appropriateness of nucleus placement in statements proved to be even more difficult for Schoeler's subjects. In production, nucleus placement in questions was correct in 95% of the cases for 9- year-olds and 90% for 14-year-olds. Nucleus placement in statements was mastered by 68% at age 9 and 74% at age 14.

45 Mastery of the phonetic production of nuclear stress and emphasis Allen & Hawkins (1978) measured the phonetic production of nuclear and non-nuclear accented and heavy syllables of three children acquiring English between 2;8 and 3;4. Despite difficulties in classifying syllables as nuclear or non-nuclear, they concluded that nuclear accented syllables show greater length than non-nuclear accented and non-nuclear heavy ones. Considerable pitch movement was found in all stressed syllables irrespective of their status as nucleus or not. Intensity was not measured. Pitch movement thus seems to be the most important attribute of stress in English child speech at around three years with length differentiating between nuclear and non-nuclear stress. Pollock et al. (1993) cite evidence for the hypothesis that major developments in the acquisition of the phonetic production of word stress occur between the ages two and three. They compared the combination of the phonetic parameters pitch, loudness and length in the production of stress in disyllabic nonsense words produced by children aged two, three and four years. Acoustic measurements showed that the three- and four-year-olds consistently used higher pitch and increased loudness for the marking of stress. Stress production by the two-year-olds was far more variable. To begin with, only 67% of their productions could be reliably classified as containing a stressed syllable. In other words, in a third of their words adults could not detect or agree on stress placement. The acoustic analysis revealed that, although there were differences in fundamental frequency and intensity between the two syllables of the word, the magnitude of the change was significantly smaller than for those words where stress was clearly perceptible. Yet, even in those productions with perceptible stress placement, two-year-olds did not use pitch and loudness systematically. Although stressed and unstressed syllables differed in pitch height and intensity, only in 55% of the cases this was in the direction predicted by the adult target. In summary, the phonetic production of stress by two-year-olds is still very unstable. Words produced without perceptible stress or with stress patterns other than that suggested by the target indicate that physical control over the production of pitch and intensity has not been mastered yet. In terms of the phonetic parameter of length, Pollock et al. (1993) could replicate the findings by Allen & Hawkins (1978). Unstressed syllables produced by three- and fouryear-olds were significantly shorter than those produced by two-year-olds. The mean length of unstressed vowels in a final position decreased from 25cs at two years to 21cs at four years of age. In non-final position, length of the unstressed vowel decreased from 18cs for the two-year-olds to 12 cs for the four-year-olds. To my knowledge, no data are available for the phonetic correlates of stress production by German children. Neither have bilingual children been tested yet.

46 Research questions From the above it can be seen that the acquisition process up to the word level is very well attested, at least for monolingual acquisition. The acquisition of sentence-level stress and with it nuclear stress has not been the subject of many studies, and data concerning the acquisition of the phonological rules of nucleus placement or the phonetic production of nuclei are very scarce in the case of monolingual children and non-existent in the case of bilingual ones. This study aims to fill some of these gaps: The acquisition of the phonological rules of nucleus placement by German/English bilingual children will be investigated, and their phonetic production during acquisition will be explored. In detail, it will be tested how the transition from word-level stress to sentence-level stress is achieved by languages learners, when and in which order the phonological rules of nucleus placement are acquired, and which phonetic parameters of intonation are used for the production of nuclei. With reference to the specific bilingual acquisition process, it will be investigated whether the phonological systems are acquired at the same rate and order, and whether interactions between the systems occur. On the phonetic level, cross-linguistic differences and similarities in the production of stress will be observed. Chapter 6 summarises all of the research questions of this study.

47 4. Bilingual acquisition of the system of pitch This chapter is concerned with the bilingual acquisition of the phonological system of pitch. Section 4.1 describes the inherent meanings the various types of pitch movements are assumed to have and explores the different ways of phonological use of pitch in the adult systems of German and English, and section 4.2 compares the phonetic productions of pitch accents in both languages. Section 4.3 focuses on the acquisition of phonological rules for the linguistic use of pitch, and data from both monolingual and bilingual studies will be discussed with reference to the theoretical framework and methodology employed. Finally, section 4.4 lists what is known about the acquisition of the phonetic production of pitch accents, and section 4.5 develops the research questions posed in this study in the area of the bilingual acquisition of pitch. 4.1 The phonological systems of pitch in English and German Many authors assume inherent meanings of the various types of nuclear pitch movements identified in the descriptive systems of both the British tradition and the AM approach. Cruttenden (1986) writes that a fall signals finality and completeness and a rise-fall finality and being impressed. A fall-rise is claimed to express reservation, emphatic contrast and contradiction, and a rise uncertainty, menace or a non-committal attitude. Equally, Gussenhoven (1983) suggests that nuclear tones have an inherent and independent meaning. His rationale is that the intonation system must be made up of distinctive elements (which he calls morphemes) and rules that operate on them and that these elements, i.e. the nuclear tones, have distinct meanings as the system would otherwise not be learnable. He distinguishes three basic nuclear tones with morphemic status: The fall (\), the rise (/), and the fall-rise (V), which can all be used both literally and metaphorically. The basic meanings are: \ speaker adds something to the background (the hearer's knowledge) / speaker selects something from the background V speaker does not know whether it belongs to the hearer's background According to the autosegmental approach, each intonational phrase has a tune or melody that is determined by its particular sequence of pitch accents, phrase accents and boundary tone. Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg (1990) claim that their meaning is purely compositional, i.e. made up of the meaning of their elements, which all control their specific domain. Thus, boundary tones convey information about relationships among intonational phrases, phrase accents signal the relatedness of intermediate phrases to the preceding or succeeding ones, and pitch accents convey information about the specific lexical items they are associated

48 38 with. Together, they are assumed to convey information about the way a speaker intends the hearer to interpret his communication regarding a) their shared knowledge and b) the speaker's intentions with the subsequent utterances. In detail, each of the pitch accents, phrase accents and boundary tones are proposed to be associated with distinct meanings: In their analysis of American English intonation, Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg postulate that the H* accent conveys that the lexical items made salient by it are to be treated as new information. In the combinations H* L-L% and H* L-H% it forms the neutral declarative intonation. In combination with a H-H% it signals a high-rise question, in which some information is still given to the hearer. An example is the reply (33) I thought it was good H* H* H-H% to the question "How did you like the film?" if the speaker wants to convey "I liked it, do you agree", as exemplified in Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg (1990, p. 290). They claim that also in combination with H-L% the H* pitch accent expresses that information is given to the hearer. The L* accent, in contrast, is assumed to convey salience of a lexical item, which however is not to form part of what the speaker is predicating in the utterance. The L*+H is taken to signal lack of commitment or uncertainty on the speaker's side, and for the L+H* accent they report that it is used to mark a correction or contrast. Evidence for distinct meanings of H+L* and H*+L, they claim, is rather scarce. Phrase accents in English intonation are interpreted as follows: A H- is taken to signal the cohesion between this phrase and the subsequent phrase, whereas a L- indicates the separation of the current phrase from the following one. Similarly, a H% boundary tone is considered to indicate that the phrase is linked with the subsequent ones, whereas a L% signals completion of this part of the discourse. Most of these assumptions of meanings of certain categories of pitch movements or pitch accents are based on English data. However, Vassiere (1995) proposes universal archetypes of the following: / and high pitch signal beginning \ signals end / signals incompleteness V signals disjuncture Differences of use of pitch between English and German on a very general level were found by Grover, Jamieson & Dobrovolsky (1987), who observed that English speakers use falls to signal continuation whereas German speakers produce rises for this purpose. Furthermore, although falls are used in both languages to signal termination, the falls in German were lower than those in English. This was also noted by Kuhlmann (1952). As illustrated in examples (8) and (9) in section 2.2, the phonological system of pitch can be used to characterise different sentence types. Batliner (1988) and Oppenrieder (1988a, b) postulate that, in German, pitch is used systematically for the marking of different sentence types. Oppenrieder (1988b) attempted a description of intonational prototypes for various German sentence types for which he employed read examples of so-

49 39 called intonational minimal pairs, sentences containing the same string of words and differing only in their intonation. An example would be the utterance (34) Schlafen Sie (sleep you) which can be realised as either a question with the meaning "Are you asleep?" (by a rising nucleus on schlafen) or an imperative "Sleep!" (by a falling nucleus). The read test sentences were judged by naive listeners according to their "naturalness" for several sentence types such as statement, imperative and question. Those sentences that were rated to be typical instances for one of the categories (so-called prototypes) were analysed acoustically. Analyses showed that every prototype sentence is characterised by a particular interplay between initial pitch height, pitch movement on the accented syllable and final pitch height. Figure 15 shows the intonational prototypes of an imperative and a question for sentence (34). ffie-imperativsatz 12 50% tief konvex Schlafen Sie! 100* 50* Bntscheidungs % hoch konkav fragesatz 100% 75% Schlafen Sie? Figure 15: Intonational prototypes for sentence (34) as an imperative (top line) or a question (bottom line) as postulated by Oppenrieder (1988b). It can be seen that the typical yes-no question "Schlafen Sie?" in German has a high onset and a fall-rising pitch movement whereas a typical imperative "Schlafen Sie!" is characterised by a low onset and a falling nucleus. Sentences which listeners judged to have an intonational form typical for statements showed falls or rise-falls on the nucleus (Batliner 1989c). These experiments demonstrate that hearers have specific expectations concerning the nuclear pitch patterns of particular sentence types. Unfortunately, this does not permit the conclusion of corresponding phonological rules for the production of various types of sentences. This very complex issue comprises the interplay of sentence type, intonational form and speech act. In other words, the grammatical form, the use of certain pitch patterns and the pragmatic function all contribute to the "meaning" of an utterance. An utterance with the grammatical form of an interrogative question may nevertheless have the pragmatic function of a statement and vice versa. A rising pitch movement, for example, turns (35) He's going out

50 40 a sentence with the grammatical form of a statement, into a question at the pragmatic level, just as the sentence (36) Nehmen Sie Platz (sit down) with the grammatical form of an imperative has this function only with a falling pitch. A low rise in this utterance, in contrast, would signal a friendly request; a high rise insistence. Choice of both grammatical form and pitch movement pattern seems to depend on situational context. This was demonstrated in an experiment by Dorn-Mahler & Grabowski (1991). Their male subjects were asked to play the role of a boss asking his secretary to make some coffee. In the first situation, the request was both legitimate and appropriate, in the second, resistance from the secretary could be expected (it was well past her leaving time). Results show that in the first case 17 of the 20 requests were grammatical questions with 10 showing a rising nucleus. The three grammatical imperatives all had a rising nucleus. In the second case, only 12 of 21 requests were formulated as grammatical questions with only five rises. The nine imperatives showed rises in eight cases. The analysis of spontaneous speech underlines the difficulty of establishing phonological rules for the use of pitch to mark speech acts. These difficulties are especially apparent in the attempt to characterise English and German questions by specific pitch patterns. Although there seems to be an intuitive consensus that they are associated with rising pitch, empirical research has yielded contrary evidence. Fries (1964) analysed English yes-no questions by TV quiz panellists and found that 62% had a falling rather than a rising pitch. Equally, Crystal (1969) in his corpus of 3 hours speech, could not find a clear association of questions with any nuclear form. Ladd (1996) proposes that the tune of a polite yes/no question in British English is H* L-H% and H* H-H% in American English. Luuko-Vinchenzo (1988) found that 70% of the German questions with a question word she analysed showed a high onset, a fall-rising pitch movement on the nucleus and either a high or low boundary tone. Yes-no questions, in contrast, showed a high onset and fallrising pitch movement, which, however, need not begin on the nucleus but may start earlier and stretch over the rest of the utterance. Batliner (1989c) postulates that the intonational marking of questions is only necessary if grammatical cues are absent. In this case, the speaker can choose between a high boundary tone or a fall-rising nucleus to mark questions. Typically, these two options are realised together. The above discussion suggests that pitch is used in a similar way in English and German when it is employed for the linguistic function of marking the type of speech act. Statements in both languages seem to be marked rather consistently by falls (Oppenrieder 1988a, b; Crystal 1969). The characterisation of other types of speech acts by pitch is influenced by pragmatic criteria. Tendencies of systematic differences only seem to exist in the area of questions, where falling nuclei occur in English in certain types of questions, whereas in German, rises seem most common in all types of questions. Another of the well-researched linguistic functions of pitch in the English adult intonation system is the expression of attitudes. However, it is difficult to keep attitude and marking of sentence type apart: Although Armstrong & Ward (1926) claim that a "final falling contour" is used in ordinary, definite and decided statements in English, they concede that a statement may end in a final rising contour, in which case it is "not so

51 41 definite". It seems that the expression of attitude by pitch overrides the marking of the grammatical sentence type. As described above, O'Connor and Arnold (1973) distinguish between the last stressed syllable in an intonation group (the nucleus) and preceding stressed syllables (the heads) as well as any unstressed syllables preceding the head/s (the pre-head). Each of these elements have contrastive pitch movements. Certain combinations of types of head and types of nucleus form "tunes", a notion introduced by Armstrong and Ward (1926) and Jones (1957). These systematic combinations, of which O'Connor and Arnold establish ten (table 2), are assumed to convey a specific meaning: PITCH FEATURES OF TONE GROUP (UNEMPHATIC) Tone Group Pre-head Head Nuclear Tone Tall The Low Drop X X X The High Drop X X It X The Take-Off X X X W/ X It WA X The Low Bounce n It X The Switchback X 7/M X Wt X The Long Jump X n X The High Bounce X X <y//s X The Jackknife X X m X The High Dive X X m n X The Terrace X X W X o It 0 C v 1 i* fk > o hj o w 2 Cm JS be a eg u X M X a w u X o ^ a rt u ts X be b ttt B s fa «s rt fa o j 1 fa a 4) CO 3 i o J 0> <n 3 rt fa V Z3.2 M Pi fa " i S 2 an essential pitch feature of a tone group, «a I -o i a pitch feature that may occur in a tone group. Table 2: The pitch features of the ten tone groups proposed by O'Connor & Arnold (1973). The 'Take-Off' in table 2, for example, is assumed to convey the following attitudes: In statements, amongst others, encouraging further conversation, guarded and reserving

52 42 judgement; in wh-questions, with the nuclear tone on the interrogative word, wondering and mildly puzzled; in yes-no questions disapproving and sceptical; in commands beginning with don't appealing to the listener to change his mind; and in interjections, sometimes reserving judgement and sometimes calm and casual acknowledgement. It can take on the forms of low rise a) low rise +tail b) low pre-head + low rise (+tail) or c) (low prehead +) low head + low rise (+tail) Example (37) shows the third possibility (c) in a reply to the question "How much did you win?" (37) About a.thousand,pounds with "," symbolising a low head and "," symbolising a low rise. In German, pitch is not used for the expression of attitudes to the same extent as it is in English. For this linguistic purpose, particles such as wohl, ja etc, which English does not have, are much more likely to be employed (Trim 1964). A bilingual learner of German and English is faced with a threefold task of acquisition of the systematic use of pitch. On the one hand, the general meanings of the pitch movement or pitch accent categories are very similar in both languages, although there is some evidence that continuation may be signalled by falls in English and rises in German. On the other hand, pitch accent categories are used in a slightly different way to mark different speech acts in German and English. Whereas statements seem to be associated with falls in both languages, the association of questions with certain pitch movement patterns varies. Furthermore, language learners must unravel the complicated interplay between grammatical form, intonational form and pragmatic function of the various speech acts. As the third task, German/English bilingual children must differentiate between the phonological use of pitch for the expression of attitudes in both languages. The English rules must not be applied in German, where other linguistic forms take over this function. In general, however, it is unlikely that very young children use pitch for the expression of a similar range of attitudes as assumed in the adult system. Many of the attitudes which were described to be associated with various pitch movements above such as "guarded judgement" or "conveying a sense of involvement" cannot be assumed to form part of a child's world or communicative intent yet. 4.2 The phonetic production of pitch accents in English and German The phonetic production of various pitch accents in German and English differs a great deal. Grabe (1998) found that the H*+L pitch accent in both languages exhibits onglides, which can be realised as a rise or level pitch. Cross-linguistic differences become apparent in the alignment of FO within the vowel of the stressed syllable: In German, the peak of FO

53 43 occurs at the right edge of the vowel, whereas it is reached in its middle in English (figure 16, top line). Conversely, for the L*+H pitch accent, the dip in FO is lowest in the middle of the stressed vowel in German and aligned with its right edge in English, as the bottom line of figure 16 illustrates. In English, FO is lowest at the right edge of the vowel (indicated by the grey column), whereas it is lowest in its middle in German. Southern Standard British English Northern Standard German Peak alignment in H*+L H V ( Dip alignment \ V in L*+H ) gj / Jsgj ^ Figure 16: The typical FO movement of the nuclear H*+L and L*+H pitch accents in English (a) and German (b) (from Grabe 1998). In the case of very little sonorant material in the stressed syllable of a H*+L pitch accent, English falls are compressed, i.e. the onglide and fall of the FO occur in a shorter stretch of time (figure 17). The rise is less pronounced, and the fall of FO happens in a shorter time. In German, in contrast, H*+L are truncated, i.e. the fall in FO is not realised any more. Acoustic level (FO) Phonetic level Surface phonology Adjustments Underlying phonology Compression- H*+L NONE H*+L \ Figure 17: Compression of an English H*+L pitch accent (from Grabe 1998). Not all of these differences in the phonetic production of the pitch accents, however, are perceptually noticeable. H*+L pitch accents in both languages are always heard as falling pitch by native speakers irrespective of whether truncation has applied or not. Differences

54 44 in peak alignment between the two languages are sometimes perceptible: The German H*+L accent with pronounced onglide is often heard as a rise-fall, whereas the English H*+L with peak alignment within the syllable is only heard as a fall. For a bilingual learner of both languages, two options seem possible. Either both phonetic production strategies are acquired and applied in the respective languages, or the learner produces the pitch accents in both languages with a perceptually not noticeable mixed strategy. The data cited by Grabe (1998), however, suggest that, at least in the case of H*+L pitch accents, a mixed strategy would be perceptible. 4.3 The acquisition of the phonological system of pitch It has been claimed that the systematic use of pitch is the first aspect of language to be acquired (Bierwisch 1966; Fry 1966; Lenneberg 1967), and indeed the perception of the phonetic features of intonation is well developed from birth. Various older experiments tested infants' sensitivity to variations in isolated phonetic parameters of intonation. Morse (1972) found that the perception of differences between pitch movements is developed early: six- to eight-week-old infants can discriminate changes in pitch contour. Kaplan (1970), however, could not replicate these findings. She exposed four- and eight-montholds to the utterance "See the cat." with either falling or rising pitch on the last lexical item. By measuring their heart rate and their orientation movements, she could show that the four-month-old infants did not discriminate between the two versions, and that the eightmonth-olds discriminated between them only if the pitch movement was associated with stress. These early studies used highly unnatural material: Synthesised speech with the acoustically manipulated variables pitch, loudness and length. As discussed in section 2.3, these phonetic features co-vary in real speech so that abilities were tested that are not required for the perception of real speech. However, recent studies using real speech material (Jusczyk 1992; Decasper 1994) could also demonstrate that infants and even the foetus are sensitive to variations in pitch and other aspects of the intonation of their ambient language/s. Moreover, infants seem to be able to spontaneously imitate the pitch height and pitch movements of their parents' utterances (Lieberman 1967; Papousek & Papousek 1981; Rabson, Lieberman & Ryalls 1982). Several authors have suggested that the pitch movement categories of the target language are already observable in infants' babbling (Halliday 1975; Crystal 1981). The production of pitch is thus assumed to be phonologically represented at an earlier age than the production of phonemes. D'Odorico (1984) cites evidence that pitch movements on vocalisations differ with the context in which they are uttered. She studied the cry and non-cry vocalisations in Italian infants aged 0;4 to 0;9, categorising them as expressions of discomfort, calls and requests. Three of her four subjects showed a higher proportion of rising and high level pitch on requests than on discomfort cries and thus showed a tendency to associate pitch movements with specific communicative situations. Furthermore, young children seem to be able to mark their style of conversation with pitch. This was concluded in a study by Furrow (1984), who recorded 12 children aged

55 45 1; 11 to 2;1 and analysed their utterances auditorily. Each of them received a rating (from low to high) on the parameters pitch, loudness and pitch range, which were then added up to form a prosodic score". Social context was categorised into three broadly defined classes: Eye contact, other social contact, and private speech. Utterances of each category differed significantly in their prosodic score with eye contact" having the highest and private speech" having the lowest. It can thus be concluded that by two years children can use intonation for broadly defined linguistic purposes such as communicating with someone and engaging their attention vs. using speech without a social context, i.e. talking to oneself. This replicates Halliday's (1975) observations, who broadly classified his son's utterances into pragmatic and mathetic. The former refers to speech with instrumental or regulatory function, the latter to utterances with a personal or heuristic function. From 1 ;7 on, Nigel systematically marked the former with a rise and the latter with a fall. In other words, utterances directed at a conversation partner and demanding a response were intonationally marked. This system broke down, Halliday reports, with Nigel's increasing semantic potential, and its role was taken over by the grammatical mood system. Crystal (1981) claims a detailed order of acquisition of the various pitch movement categories of English. According to him, falls are the first pitch movements to be produced. Next, the contrast between falls and level pitch is acquired, then the contrast between falls and rises. Later, a low fall is distinguished from a high fall and a low rise from a high rise. The last pitch movements to be acquired are rise-falls and fall-rises. Unfortunately, this claim is only based on his personal observations and no studies have yet offered support for this notion. Similarly, no experimental data on the bilingual acquisition of the phonological use of pitch can be found in the literature, and extant descriptions are of a highly subjective kind. Leopold (1947) devotes only two pages of his diary study of four volumes on the language acquisition of his German/English bilingual daughter to intonation. 1 In general, he writes, Hildegard imitates use of pitch faithfully. Some examples are adduced of lexical items uttered with distinctive pitch patterns. He notes a high or rising pitch on [?a], a sound combination used to express wishes between 1;3 and 1;6. Early differentiation of pitch movement is documented in Hildegard's systematic use of rises for requests and high pitch for expressions of interest from 1;3 on as well as in the lexical item bye-bye, which had different meanings according to its intonational form: Level pitch and a trochaic stress meant "going for a walk", whereas falling pitch and level stress were used for saying goodbye. Unfortunately, Leopold does not comment at all on any differences of use of the pitch systems in Hildegard's two languages. Anecdotal evidence for the use of pitch by bilingual learners comes from Hoffmann (1985, 1991), who observed that the closer the bilingual's two languages are in terms of phonology, the greater is the likelihood of interference, with pitch movements being the first affected linguistic area. Furthermore, she reports that with decreasing exposure to one language, fluency in intonation is lost first. Similarly, stress, rhythm and pitch features benefit immediately from a renewed exposure to the language in question. 1 He uses the term only for the "melodic aspects", i.e. pitch movement of Hildegard's early utterances.

56 46 Experimental studies concerning the acquisition of the phonological use of pitch have only been carried out with monolingual children. They produced contradictory results as to when the systematic use of pitch begins. The first prerequisite of constructing a linguistic system of pitch is the realisation that different pitch movements may contribute to the function of marking different speech acts: The same segmental string of sounds can express quite distinct intentions and/or meanings according to the pitch movement it carries. As children's utterances are very short at the beginning, this function is usually restricted to the nucleus. Contrastive use of nuclear types obviously requires adequate cognitive capacities - probably the same that enable a child to use speech sounds in their linguistic function (Vihmanetal. 1982). As a general problem, however, the function of nuclear tones produced by children using single words and longer utterances is difficult to establish as their attitudinal meaning can only be inferred by the listener. Discrimination of different nuclear pitch movements by an adult listener, however, is not sufficient proof for the assumption that infants use them with an adult-like intent. There is a danger of circularity when the interpretation of an utterance as for example a question is based on the final rising pitch movement alone. Questions without rises will be ignored and non-interrogative utterances with final rises will be classified erroneously. Only meticulous attention to the general communicative situation can help to determine the linguistic function of pitch. Thus, conclusions for actual linguistic use of pitch at this early stage are almost impossible. Experimenting with various pitch movements by a 1; 10-year-old is reported in Carlson & Anisfeld (1969). They observed an "intonation substitution practice" in their subject, who repeated the same word over and over again with varying pitch movements, in a loud and soft voice and in a staccato or legato (long and slow) way. This playful experimenting with the phonetic parameters shows clear parallels to babbling in the acquisition of segmental phonology and might be an important precursor of the acquisition of the linguistic system of pitch. There is some evidence that children use pitch in order to mark types of utterances from an early age. Galligan (1987) describes the differentiation of statements and questions by nuclear tones in 17-month-olds acquiring English. She investigated two children in their acquisition of the grammatical use of pitch from the age of 10 to 21 months. One of them used rising pitch on utterances that were classified as expressing "general interest". By 12 months, he was found to repeat labelling utterances by his mother with a rising pitch movement, which accompanied the act of turning to her. In the following months, these repeated utterances were produced with a wider pitch range and increasing loudness and duration. At 18 months, he began to produce fall-rises for eliciting labelling responses. The other child also began by associating rises with general interest utterances. Between 14 and 18 months, however, her use of rising pitch movements in utterances in this context decreased in frequency. At 18 months, she again produced rises to elicit naming responses from her mother in the context of book-reading. For both children, instances of words differing only in the use of pitch were analysed, and it could be demonstrated these utterances were associated with falls in a description context and with rises in an interrogative context. Similarly, Bassano and Mendes-Maillochon (1994) describe the early use of the pitch system by a French-learning child. At 1;2 she systematically used falls for declarative and exclamative utterances, and at 1 ;9 rises for interrogative utterances.

57 47 Counter-evidence for an early systematic use of pitch for the differentiation of questions from other types of utterances comes from a study by Flax et al. (1991), who report the individual development of their three subjects acquiring American English. They were recorded at the prelinguistic stage, when they had a vocabulary of 10 words, and when they knew 50 words. The utterances were analysed instrumentally and classified into rise and non-rise terminal contour. Unfortunately, it is not specified whether terminal contour" corresponds to the concept of nucleus or last pitch accent and boundary tone. All subjects showed individually varying and developmentally unstable associations between terminal pitch contours and communicative intent. The first child produced rises in 54% of all utterances. They frequently accompanied requests, responses and the act of giving at 1;2 and requests and giving at 1;8. The second child produced rises only for 14% of all utterances: In the prelinguistic stage, predominately with requests and, from the linguistic stage on, increasingly with protest. The third subject produced 13% rises in the first recording and 22% in the last. They were initially often associated with requests, responses and protests. Later they marked only the majority of requests and protest utterances. These results underline the importance of studying children individually. Furthermore, it demonstrates that although there is a tendency of requests to be accompanied by a rise, the correlation does by no means justify the assumption that the intonation system has been mastered at an early age. Neither could Marcos (1987) establish a clear connection between pitch movement and communicative intent. She studied ten French-learning children between the ages of 1 ;2 and 1;9 and compared their utterances, which she classified as requests or labelling. Although she observed a tendency of requests to be associated with rises and labelling with falls, the differences of pitch marking were not significant. Equally, for English children, a study carried out by Robb & Saxman (1989) did not produce any evidence for the systematic phonological use of pitch with the function of marking communicative intent. These results suggest that, although individual children may show an early systematic use of pitch for the differentiation of such basic types of utterances as questions and statements, the claim that pitch is one of the earliest linguistic systems to be acquired cannot be confirmed on the basis of these studies. Not only are the data of a contradictory character, the studies also show shortcomings on a theoretical and methodological level. None of the descriptions of pitch comply with the notational systems of either the British tradition or the AM approach but are of a highly idiosyncratic character. This is reflected in measurements of initial pitch height (Marcos 1987) or FO-movements across vocalisations (Robb & Saxman 1989), which are of little relevance in the current theoretical framework of intonation. Furthermore, auditory analysis is not complemented by instrumental analysis or vice versa, and often the influence of other phonetic parameters such as loudness on pitch is not regarded (Marcos 1987; Flax et al. 1991). For a description of the acquisition of the phonological use of pitch it is therefore necessary to operate within the theoretical framework of intonational description and to differentiate between phonological category and phonetic realisation of intonational phenomena. Moreover, the mental representation of the phonology of pitch ought to be assessed as well. As already discussed above, the testing of the representation of the intonation system poses severe methodological problems. Yet, Schoeler's (1987) study of the developing metalinguistic awareness of pitch movements in German children allows some inferences. He showed that children under 6 years of age could not judge whether the pitch contour of a

58 48 given utterance was a) anomalous or not and b) context-adequate or not. This ability begins to be acquired with school entry and is fully developed at age 13. He presented his subjects with sentences such as "1st zuviel Geld" (Is too much money) and varied the pitch contour: An overall falling contour or rise-fall contour for statements vs. a rising or fall-rise contour for questions. Judgements whether an utterance constitutes a question or a statement were correct in 70 percent of the replies in seven-year-olds and in 100 percent of the replies by the 15-year-olds. This suggests that not all of the seven-year-olds had reached El-level representations in Karmiloff-Smith's (1992) sense yet. One of the factors contributing to this competence might be short-term memory, which correlates r=.44 with success in the evaluation of the pitch contours. An interesting claim is that the ability to assess the appropriateness of intonation requires the ability to produce it correctly first. Most of the pre-school children were able to produce correct intonation contours. Around age 10, they learned to assess them correctly, and from age 15 on the ability to give reasons for the assessment is acquired. Similarly, Cruttenden (1974) could show that English children of school-age have not acquired the full representation of the phonological functions of pitch yet. English TV readers show regular pitch patterns in their announcement of football results. As illustrated in example (38a), a falling nucleus on the second team indicates a draw: (38) a. Halifax /one I \Liverpool one b. Halifax \one I VLiverpool... An away win by Liverpool, in contrast, would be read with a falling nucleus on the score of Halifax and a fall-rise on Liverpool (38b). Cruttenden (1974) presented children aged 7; 10 to 10; 11 with some anticipatory patterns (i.e. announcements interrupted before the reading of the second score) and asked them to predict the outcome. It emerged that, at age nine, 50% of the children showed no competence for this linguistic task. Cruttenden concluded that children between seven and ten are still in the process of acquiring some functions of the English pitch system. An alternative interpretation of the results might of course be that the children simply lacked experience with this highly specialised linguistic area. 4.4 Mastery of the phonetic production of pitch accents The productive abilities of infants in the area of pitch lag far behind their perceptual skills: Already in the very first cry of a new-born child the phonetic parameters pitch, loudness and length can be measured. However, control over the underlying physiological mechanisms, a prerequisite for their linguistic use in intonation, has yet to be acquired. Due to anatomical differences in the position of the ribs in relation to the spine, new-borns cannot regulate the subglottal air pressure by using their intercostal muscles in an adult-like fashion. The length of their vocalisations is thus physiologically limited (Lieberman 1985). Growing control over these muscles is reflected by the increase of vocalisation length from an average of 600 ms at four weeks of age to an average of 1500 ms at 20 weeks (Laufer & Horii 1977).

59 49 Equally, control over pitch is at first anatomically limited. The larynx of infants is in a high position (Kent & Murray 1982) where it can be moved upwards into the nasopharynx to allow simultaneous drinking and breathing (Laitman, Crelin & Conlogue 1977). At three months of age it moves down into the pharynx (George 1978) into the adult position. Laryngeal control is still very unstable (Kent & Murray 1982), which results in many irregularities during vocalisation. Phenomena such as abrupt FO shifts, irregular vocal fold vibrations and breathiness could be measured in three to nine month-olds. D'Odorico (1984) classified 26% of all vocalisations by the 0;4 to 0;9 olds in her study as dysphonated or hyperphonated (upward shifts of FO in the narrow-band spectrogram). Growing control over the physiological mechanisms involved in the production of pitch is reflected in the emergence of specific pitch movements such as falls and rises. Of 100 vocalisations recorded by Kent & Murray (1982) at three, six and nine months respectively, acoustic measurements showed that about a third had a flat FO shape, a little less than a third had a falling pitch and an equal number had a rise-falling shape. Rises, rise-fall-risefalls and fall-rises were very rare. In data collected by Marcos (1987), half of the utterances produced by 1 ;2 to 1 ;9 olds had a flat shape, and hardly any rise-falls or fall-rises occurred. Cross-linguistic differences in the frequency of rising and falling pitch movements produced by infants in accordance with their distribution in the various target languages were reported by Hallé, Boysson-Bardies & Vihman (1991). It is of course impossible to decide which and how many of these pitch patterns are produced accidentally or with linguistic intent. The phonetic parameter loudness does not seem to be controlled at all at this early stage. Kent & Murray (1982) report that it is completely dependent on pitch movements: They found a frequent occurrence of a "vocal tremor" in their three- to nine-month-old subjects, which can be described acoustically as a slow parallel modulation of intensity and frequency. For Allen's (1983) French-learning subjects this is still the case at 2;0. There are no experimental data describing the phonetic production of pitch accents across language acquisition. In a study concerned with the acquisition of rhythm, Allen & Hawkins (1978) investigated the FO movements within stressed syllables in English utterances by 2;8 to 3;4 olds. Nuclear non-final syllables showed an equal amount of rising, falling and complex FO movements with a slightly less frequent production of steady pitch. Nuclear final syllables also showed rising, falling and complex pitch movements. Unfortunately, pitch alignment within the vowels of the stressed syllables was not measured. To my knowledge, there is a complete lack of similar data from German or bilingual children. 4.5 Research questions From the above can be seen that the studies concerned with the monolingual acquisition of the system of pitch have yielded contradictory evidence. This might in part be due to the lack of a uniform theoretical or methodological background. The phonetic realisation of pitch accents in language learners has not yet been investigated. In this study, therefore, the

60 50 bilingual acquisition of the phonological use and the phonetic production of pitch will be investigated in the following way. Using both auditory and instrumental analysis and the descriptive systems of both the British tradition and the AM approach, child utterances will be analysed in search of evidence of a systematic use of pitch for the marking of speech acts or other linguistic purposes. Looking at the marking of questions by pitch, it will be investigated whether this changes during acquisition, and developments in both languages will be compared. On a phonetic level, the production of pitch accents will be investigated with a view to the question whether one combined production strategy or two separate systems will be acquired.

61 5. Bilingual acquisition of intonational phrasing This chapter is concerned with the bilingual acquisition of intonational phrasing. After a description of the phonological systems of intonational phrasing in both English and German (section 5.1) and the phonetic correlates of intonational phrases (section 5.2), the acquisition of intonational phrasing will be discussed (section 5.3). Here, only evidence from monolingual acquisition can be presented. Section 5.4 focuses on the acquisition of the individual phonetic correlates of intonational phrasing, and section 5.5 presents the research questions developed for this study. 5.1 The phonological systems of intonational phrasing in English and German The linguistic use and function of intonational phrasing in both English and German is far from well understood although there is no lack of research. Couper-Kuhlen (1986) discusses, amongst others, two main linguistic functions of intonational phrasing in English: A grammatical and an informational one. As a grammatical function of intonational phrasing in English the correlation between phrase and clause boundaries with intonational boundaries has been claimed (Halliday 1967; Schubiger 1958). Crystal (1969) found that, in spontaneous speech, only 46% of the English clauses he analysed coincided with tone units and only 28% of tone units coincide with clauses. However, 80% of all tone units coincide with one element of the clause structure such as the NP, the AP or the VP. Gut (1995) claims that the distribution of intonational phrases in read speech is fairly restricted in English. She analysed read texts and found that speakers agreed on the position of major tone unit boundaries in 100% of the cases and minor tone unit boundaries in 80%. Major tone unit boundaries always coincide with clause boundaries and minor tone unit boundaries sometimes mark subordinate clause structures, although their application is variable across speakers. In a similar experiment, Gut (1995) investigated the distribution of major and minor tone units in German texts read aloud. There was nearly perfect agreement among the readers regarding the distribution of major tone unit boundaries, which all coincided with clause boundaries. The distribution of minor tone units, however, seems relatively free in German: Only about half of them appeared to be obligatory, i.e. they were realised in the majority of the 12 readings. The other half were classified as optional since they were realised in only about a third of the readings. Both "obligatory" and "optional" minor tone unit boundaries occurred at punctuation marks or syntactic boundaries such as between main and subordinate clauses. Thus, the main difference between minor tone unit boundaries in German and English seems to be their general frequency in a text and the position in the sentence where they can occur.

62 52 An experiment by Piirschel (1975) provides some evidence for this assumption. Five English and 149 German native speakers read out an English text. In addition, the German subjects were recorded reading a close translation into German of the same text. In general, it could be seen that the English speakers made fewer pauses than the German speakers reading both the English and the German text. Pauses inserted by the English subjects coincided highly with the punctuation marks of the texts. This was in principle also true for the German speakers reading the German text. There, however, some subjects paused in places where no English reader would do so. The following example demonstrates this (the superscripts indicate the frequency of long and short pauses following the word): Grundsaetzlich bedeutet ein solches Programm 54 / den Ruf nach Qualität 145 / verzahnt'"/ mit den Notwendigkeiten 29 / einer liberalen, 44 / demokratischen Gesellschaft. 149 / Trim (1964) argues that, in German, minor tone unit boundaries coincide with phrase boundaries, whereas they comprise larger units such as clauses in English. Utterance (39) would therefore show the following minor tone units for German and the following in English (example 40): (39) Der alte Mann I ist I um sechs Uhr I morgens I nach Hause gekommen (40) The old man came home I at six o'clock in the morning This grammatical function of intonational phrasing, however, seems far more important in reading or prepared speech than in spontaneous conversational speech. Here, the principal function of intonational phrasing is informational - the structuring of utterances and discourse into information units (Halliday 1967; Pheby 1975, 1983; Wunderlich 1988). Thus, the distribution of intonational phrases in spontaneous speech depends to a great extent on situational factors and is far more difficult to predict than in read or prepared speech. However, even in spontaneous speech intonational phrasing is not arbitrary but follows certain phonological rules: Intonational boundaries usually coincide with syntactic boundaries, either at a clause or phrase level. In both German and English, appositions and parenthetical structures are marked by intonational boundaries (examples 41 and 42). (41) I saw the dog I a beautiful retriever I running across the field. (42) Dann kam der Peter I ein ziemlicher Dummkopf I dazu und sagte.. (Then Peter I a real wally I came and said...) Enumeration or other structures with a parallel coordination of several elements are also separated into individual intonational phrases in both languages, as illustrated below: (43) I bought some veg I meat I biscuits I and towels. (44) Da waren Karin I Martin I Frieder I und Elke. (There were Karin I Martin I Frieder I and Elke) In contrast, topicalised structures constitute an intonational phrase in English but not in German (examples 45 and 46). (45) The flower 11 meant. (46) Die Blume meinte ich.

63 53 There seems to be a general tendency for English speakers to separate anything preceding the main clause by an intonational boundary. This applies to all adverbial modifiers (example 47) (47) Surprisingly I he didn't win. as well as "moved structures" in a transformational sense (example 48): (48) Always managed to scrape through I she did. In general, speakers use intonational phrasing in order to structure their discourse into units of information, which also facilitates comprehension by the listener. Thus, the intonational units probably correspond to units of planning in speech production. Fery (1988) cites the disambiguation of utterances as another function of intonational phrasing in German. In examples (49) and (50), it is the intonational phrase boundary that (49) Peter liebt Gerda aber nicht (50) Peter liebt I Gerda aber nicht determines the meaning: In (49) "Peter, however, does not love Gerda", and in (50) "Peter loves, however, Gerda does not". Of course, nucleus placement on liebt in (50), but not in (49) co-determines meaning here. Intonational phrasing is also used for the disambiguation of utterances in English. In examples 51 and 52, it is the intonational boundary that determines whether she washed herself or the baby. (51) She washed and fed the baby. (52) She washed I and fed the baby. In summary, a German/English bilingual learner is faced with two distinct intonational systems, which nevertheless show great similarity. The linguistic use of intonational phrasing between the two languages differs in its grammatical function for reading and prepared speech. The distribution of intonational boundaries is much more limited in English where major tone units always coincide with clause boundaries and minor tone units correlate with subordinate structures and punctuation marks. In contrast, intonational phrasing in terms of minor tone units shows great variation among German speakers. In spontaneous speech, intonational phrases correlate with units of sense and have the function of structuring utterances and discourse in both languages. Because of the variability of situational and conversational contexts, phonological rules of intonational phrasing are difficult to establish, and differences between the two languages are not well attested. One example of language-specific rules for intonational phrasing can be found in topicalised structures, which constitute IPs in English but not in German.

64 The phonetic correlates of intonational phrases At the centre of the descriptive systems of intonation described in chapter 2 is the intonational phrase, which provides the framework within which intonational features are described. It is, however, apparent that its characterisation is far easier than its delimitation. Whereas most authors agree on the internal constituents of intonational phrases, little consensus can be found on the definition of the phonetic criteria which could serve to demarcate it. Cruttenden (1986) suggests the following phonetic criteria for the identification of intonational phrase boundaries: Pauses, final syllable lengthening and change in pitch level and direction of unaccented syllables (FO resetting). Intonational boundaries are always correlated with the phonetic parameter pause, however, not every pause in speech is produced in order to mark an intonational phrase boundary. Pauses also occur in hesitations and performance errors, before restarts and repairs, and because of the biological necessity of breathing. Attempts to establish regularities between the type of pause and its length have been only partially successful (Goldman-Eisler 1958). The phonetic parameter pause is thus a necessary but not a sufficient indicator of intonational boundaries, and it has to be supplemented by other phonetic parameters. One such parameter is length, which occurs in the final syllable before an intonational phrase boundary. Often, this final syllable also carries a distinct pitch movement. In examples 53 and 54, the words home and heim constitute the last syllable of the intonational phrase and would thus be significantly longer than in examples 55 and 56, where they occur in the middle of the IP. (53) I am going home I said Peter. (54) Gehst Du heim I fragte sie mich. (55) My home is my castle. (56) Er ging heim mit seinen Hunden. Listeners expect final syllable lengthening as a cue for intonational phrasing (Gussenhoven & Rietfeld 1992), and the length of the syllable is expected to increase with the rank of the boundary. Final syllable lengthening before a major tone unit must be longer than when preceding a minor tone unit boundary. Delattre (1966) compared final syllable lengthening in German and English and found that it followed the same rules: In both languages, stressed final syllables were longer than unstressed ones and, in both conditions, closed syllables were longer than open ones. Stressed open syllables, furthermore, were systematically longer than closed unstressed ones. In absolute terms, final syllable lengthening in English is more pronounced than in German, and the differences between the various types of final syllables are greater. A third phonetic correlate of intonational phrasing is a change in pitch level after an intonational boundary - the resetting of the fundamental frequency. In both German and English utterances, there is a tendency for FO to become lower throughout the utterance, which is called declination (e.g. Ladd 1984). Declination is most apparent in the height of successive high pitch accents, which will follow a downward sequence. At the end of an intonational phrase ending in a L% boundary tone, pitch is at the lowest level and will be

65 55 picked up to a higher starting position for the following intonational phrase (Ladd 1988). This means that in the case of utterances which are produced with more than one intonational phrase the unstressed syllable following an L- boundary tone of the preceding intermediate phrase will begin at a higher level compared to the L-. Listeners are not aware of this resetting of FO, but it is clearly visible in instrumental pitch tracking as described in section (figure 7). The pitch of intonational phrases ending in H% boundary tones does not show this resetting of FO. In summary, the phonetic production of intonational phrasing is not easily determinable because a variety of phonetic parameters interact in many ways. From what is known so far, however, it appears that there are no major differences between German and English so that a bilingual learner would not have to acquire two separate perception and production strategies. 5.3 The acquisition of intonational phrasing Already very young infants are sensitive to intonational phrases and prefer to listen to those with "normal length", which has been postulated to help them to process speech (Jusczyk 1997b). At the age of nine months, American infants listen longer to speech with pauses inserted at clause boundaries than to speech with pauses in the middle of clauses (Hirsh- Pasek et al. 1987). Jusczyk (1991) used read speech to show that the phonetic parameter pause can be discriminated in very early childhood: By the age of 4 Vi months, infants have developed a preference for the prosodic patterns that are used by mothers to segment their speech when addressing them. Whereas this is still independent of the actual language used at this age, at six months this preference is restricted to their mother tongue/s. On a subclausal level, nine month-olds also prefer speech with pauses between subject and verb phrase rather than within (Jusczyk et al. 1992), a preference six-month-olds do not show. Fernald (1985) and Fernald & Kuhl (1987) report that four-month-olds prefer to listen to infant-directed speech rather than adult-directed speech and that it is the pitch pattern which attracts them. Furthermore, they prefer to listen to it with pauses at the clause boundaries (Kemler-Nelson et al. 1989). Differences in the phonetic parameter length also seem to be perceived from very early on. Spring & Dale (1977) report that four- to 17-week-old infants discriminate syllables differing in the phonetic parameter length alone. The production of intonational phrasing in the course of language development is closely connected with both the acquisition of syntax and the development of the mechanisms of speech processing. The former is a prerequisite of the acquisition of the grammatical function of intonational phrasing; the latter provides the conditions for the use of IPs as information groups. There is of course much interaction between these two functions of intonational phrasing since intonational boundaries for sense units show high coincidence with grammatical boundaries. Very early child speech that consists of single-word utterances cannot reflect the acquisition of the phonological rules of intonational phrasing. On the contrary, it provides

66 56 clear evidence for an absence of phonological rules which group syntactic or information units together. Scollon (1979) describes some sequences of one-word utterances by a child of age 1 ;7 that are semantically related but produced in two IPs: (57) fingerll touchll (58) tapell stepll (Brenda reaches out to touch the microphone with her finger) (she lifts her foot and holds it over the recorder) Instances of single-word utterances related in sense but separated by pauses have also been found by other authors (Bloom 1971; Crystal 1986; Tracy 1991). This phenomenon is also observable in the so-called two-word stage. Despite the child's ability to group two words together into one intonational phrase, there is ample counter-evidence that intonational phrasing is not yet used linguistically with either a grammatical or an informational function. Scollon (1979) describes sequences of conversation that show how strings of words that belong to one information unit are broken up by pauses: (59) Ronll makell tape corderll (60) Rottenll foodll dog somell (61) This wayll hold itll hold itll holdingll holdingll It seems that, at this stage, the necessary processes in speech production which would enable the child to process information groups as single units before articulation, have not been acquired yet. All models of speech production assume various stages of speech planning from a pre verbal message to its articulation (Levelt 1989; Herrmann & Grabowski 1994). Usually, some syntactic and phonological encoding of the preverbal message is proposed before the articulation. Levelt postulates that both the grammatical and the phonological encoding take place in the Formulator, whose output goes directly to the Articulator. The generation of intonation is conceptualised as part of the phonological encoding, thus also situated in the Formulator. Elbers & Wijnen (1992) claim that this Formulator only develops with the onset of syntax and that it continues to be adapted over the course of syntactic and phonological acquisition. This raises the question whether grammatical and phonological encoding develop independently or, if not, whether their development is assumed to proceed at the same rate. Unfortunately, there are no studies concerned with the acquisition of the phonological rules of intonational phrasing in either German or English. A first testing ground for their linguistic use is the production of topicalised structures. In English, they constitute an IP, whereas in German the insertion of an intonational boundary would be inappropriate. Thus, language-specific strategies must be adopted by German/English bilingual children. Furthermore, with the onset of the production of subordinate structures, the acquisition of the grammatical and informational function of intonational phrasing can be demonstrated according to how children choose to structure their utterances in terms of IPs.

67 Mastery of the phonetic correlates of intonational phrasing As phonetic criteria for an intonational phrase or tone unit final syllable lengthening, the insertion of pauses and the resetting of pitch after pauses was described. Various authors report final syllable lengthening already in the babbling phase (Laufer 1980; Robb & Saxman 1989; Snow 1994) which is however devoid of linguistic purpose. Systematic use of final-syllable lengthening in falling pitch movements was studied by Snow & Stoel- Gammon (1994). Three children tested at 1;6 and 2;0 showed consistent greater length of final syllables as compared to non-final syllables in their one- or two-word utterances with falling nuclear pitch patterns. Snow (1994) reports that six of his nine subjects showed greater final- than non-final syllable lengthening three months after the onset of combinatory speech. Kubaska & Keating (1981) measured the length of words produced by three children aged 1;3 to 3;0 in order to investigate whether familiar words were articulated faster than relatively new ones. They report that words produced utterance-finally are longer than when produced at the beginning or in the middle of an utterance, that stressed words are longer than unstressed ones, and that a word produced in isolation has a longer duration than when produced in a phrase. Pollock et al. (1993) also reported final syllable lengthening in the production of disyllabic nonsense words by two-, three- and four-year-olds. Both stressed and unstressed vowels in a final position were significantly longer than when produced in a non-final position. A further finding was that the extent of final syllable lengthening decreases between two and three years of age. Whereas the two-year-olds produced final vowels of a mean length of 25cs, the four-year-olds produced them with a mean length of 21cs. Thus, length seems to be exaggerated up to age three. Two reasons for this are possible: a) speech by two-year-olds is overall slower and thus exhibits greater length in vowels than in the case of four-year-olds and b) physical control of the phonetic parameter length is not acquired yet at age two. To my knowledge, there are no studies concerning the systematic use of the phonetic parameter pause or concerning the resetting of pitch after pauses. 5.5 Research questions This chapter showed that the phonological rules of intonational phrasing are more difficult to determine than those of nucleus placement and pitch. IPs mainly seem to have a grammatical function in reading and prepared speech and a more informational function in spontaneous speech. The phonetic correlates of intonational phrasing are pauses, final syllable lengthening, and F0 resetting. Hardly anything is known about the acquisition of the phonology or phonetic realisation of intonational phrasing. This study will thus investigate the following aspects of the acquisition of intonational phrasing: The phonological use of intonational phrasing for grammatical functions will be studied in topicalised structures, subordinate constructions and larger stretches of speech.

68 58 Evidence for the acquisition of IPs as a means of marking sense units will be looked for. On a phonetic level, the child utterances will be analysed for the production of final-syllable lengthening, the systematic production of pauses as intonational phrase boundaries, and the occurrence of FO resetting after intonational boundaries.

69 6. The study - research questions, method and analysis 6.1 Research questions The present study is concerned with the acquisition of intonation by German/English bilingual children. In chapter 2 it was argued that the intonation of a language consists of a system of phonological representations and their phonetic realisations. Consequently, the acquisition of intonation in this study will be investigated on two levels: The phonetic one, which involves the physical control of the phonetic parameters pitch, loudness, and length; and the phonological level, where these phonetic parameters are applied systematically in order to achieve various linguistic purposes. On both levels, separate systems should be acquired for each language of a bilingual. However, as discussed in chapter 2, a specific bilingual production strategy might be acquired on the phonetic level, and the phonological representations may interact Nucleus placement The three intonational phenomena with basic linguistic functions that can be assumed to be among the first to be acquired by children are nucleus placement, pitch and intonational phrasing. In chapter 3 it was described that a prerequisite of the phonological use of nucleus placement is the transition from word-level stress to sentence-level stress. On the phonological level, nucleus placement is used in order to mark focus for either contrast or the differentiation of new vs. old information, and it can be used to mark emphasis. Various differences between the phonological systems of nucleus placement in German and English were pointed out. Subsequently, the phonetic production of nuclear stress was described and compared for German and English. The following research questions were developed from this: when do bilingual children first produce sentence-level stress, i.e. nuclei in their utterances when is nucleus placement used phonologically for which linguistic function is nucleus placement used first and in which order are the various functions acquired how do bilingual children treat the phonological differences between the two language systems how are nuclei produced phonetically do bilingual children use a specific bilingual production strategy does this change across time

70 Pitch The intonational system of pitch was described as very complex in terms of linguistic functions and application in adult speech (chapter 4), and the debate about an early acquisition of the phonological system of pitch was presented. One of its functions prevalent in early child speech is the marking of different types of speech acts with different types of pitch accents. It was pointed out that in the case of questions there might be systematic differences between German and English in the use of pitch accent types. Equally, the phonetic realisation of certain pitch accent categories was proposed to differ between the two languages. Thus, the following research questions emerge for this study: when do bilingual children begin to use pitch accent types systematically when is pitch used phonologically for which linguistic function is pitch used first, and in which order are the various functions acquired are different systems for marking questions with pitch acquired in the two languages how are pitch accents realised phonetically is there a bilingual production strategy does the production strategy change over time Intonational phrasing Intonational phrasing was described as having a grammatical and an informational function (chapter 5). It was discussed that IPs were closely associated with syntactic and semantic units. The phonetic correlates of intonational phrases are pauses, preboundary syllable lengthening and the resetting of the fundamental frequency after a pause. Because of the amount of synchronous phonetic activity and the extent of speech planning required for the production of IPs, it was hypothesised that their acquisition is mastered only late in childhood. Thus, the following research questions will be addressed in this study: when do IPs begin to coincide with syntactic structures such as major constituent boundaries when do IPs begin to be associated with semantic groups when do bilingual children begin to produce final syllable lengthening when are pauses used for the demarcation of IPs when does FO-resetting occur are there any cross-linguistic differences in the phonetic production of IP markers are there any cross-linguistic differences in the phonological use of IPs In summary, the acquisition of the phonological use of nucleus placement, pitch and intonational phrasing as well as the phonetic production of nuclei, pitch accents, final syllable lengthening, pauses and F0 resetting in German/English bilingual children will be explored in this study. Cross-linguistic differences will be analysed, and a model of the acquisition of intonation will be proposed for these children (chapter 11).

71 Method Data The longitudinal data for this study were collected between 1989 and 1994, where they formed part of two larger DFG-projects conducted by Rosemarie Tracy (TR 238/1 and TR 238/2) at the University of Tübingen, involving five monolingual German-speaking and five bilingual German/English children of middle-class background. The focus of interest in the projects was early bilingualism and the emergence of complex sentences in young children. The children were visited at their homes at regular intervals and recorded during play sessions with either a German-speaking or an English-speaking investigator. This was supplemented by some additional structured sessions involving translation tasks for the children. The exact procedures of data collection will be described separately for each child in the following The subjects of the study Hannah Hannah is the first-born child of an English mother and a German father, living in the South of Germany. Her mother speaks Southern British English and has an excellent command of German, which she acquired as a second language. Her father speaks Standard German and is equally fluent in English, which he acquired as a second language. Both parents spoke predominately German with each other before Hannah was born. They then decided to address her in their respective mother tongue and to use English when speaking to one another. The parents estimate that, during her first year of life, Hannah was exposed to an equal amount of English and German. When she started talking, however, she showed little discrimination between the languages, using either of them with her parents and talking predominately German. When Hannah started going to a crèche at 1 ;3, the parents changed their language policy and decided on English as the family language. Some mixing occurs in Hannah's speech, of which some were due to the language situation in the crèche: Two of the caretakers, one from Korea and one from Greece, spoke German as a second language and produced utterances such as "*Gehst Du nach heim", which could also be found in Hannah's speech (see also Tracy 1995). Available data There are 14 tape and video recordings made with Hannah between the ages of 2;0 and 2;9. During these recordings, an English-speaking person (her mother) and a German-speaking project member were present. Recordings lasted between 30 minutes and an hour. Additionally, ten audio recordings were provided by her mother, which cover the ages 2;1 to 3;0. During these, Hannah was addressed in English by both her mother and her father,

72 62 and these recordings contain between 100 and 200 child utterances. For this study, the first five of these recordings were selected, which will be described in detail in section Laura Laura is a second-born child of a German mother and an English father and has lived in Southern Germany all her life. Her mother speaks Standard German with some Swabian influence and acquired English as a second language. In a questionnaire she filled in at the beginning of the study, she rated her proficiency as good for understanding and reading and sufficient for speaking and writing (Tracy 1995). Laura's father speaks an Urban Northern English dialect and has an excellent command of German. Before the children were born, the language spoken between the parents was German. They then decided to address the children in their respective mother tongues. However, Laura's input in English was quite limited. Her father only spent a few hours per week with Laura, during which he spoke English to her. Before the beginning of this study, Laura's only other contacts with English were occasional visits to Great Britain. Laura addressed both of her parents and her elder brother predominately in German. She joined kindergarten after her third birthday, where the input was exclusively German. At the beginning of the study, Laura spoke very little English, even when addressed exclusively in this language. The number of her English utterances increased after 3; 10. Available data Between the ages of 2;7 and 4;9, 83 recordings with Laura were made. In the first three recordings, an English-speaking investigator and her older brother Adam were present. Recordings 4 to 83 comprise different play sessions, either with an English-speaking or with a German-speaking investigator. In several of the later recordings both investigators and her brother Adam were also present for some length of time. Depending on Laura's mood, the length of the recordings ranges from less than 100 to over 500 utterances, a fair portion of them often monosyllabic. For this study, 26 recordings were selected, which will be described in detail in the next section (6.3) Adam Adam was born as the first child to the family described above. After Adam's birth, his parents decided to address him exclusively in their respective mother tongue/s although they continued to speak German to each other. Adam began to use the two different languages with the appropriate parent from the beginning and, as the parents report, showed little inclination to mix languages. As for Laura, Adam's input of English at the time of the study was considerably smaller than his input of German. His father, who, on a weekday, spent about two to four hours playing with him, constituted Adam's only source of English until the onset of the study. The family spent about three-to four-week holidays in England per year, where Adam spoke and was exposed to much English. The rest of the time, Adam

73 63 spoke German with his mother and his younger sisters, and at 3;9 he joined kindergarten where the input was exclusively German. Available data Data of Adam consist of 88 recordings made between the ages 3;6 and 5;8. During the first three sessions, an English-speaking investigator and Laura were present. Recordings 4 to 86 comprise play sessions with either an exclusively English-speaking investigator or an exclusively German-speaking one. In two later recordings, both investigators were present and asked him to translate between them. In recording 88, he was asked to translate some especially prepared sentences. Recordings range from approximately 250 to over 600 child utterances. The 20 recordings selected for this study are described in detail in Data collection During the study, the children were visited at home. One member of the project acted as a German-speaking investigator, the other as an English-speaking investigator. They never addressed the children in the other language, but they did not pretend not to understand it when the children chose to reply in the other language. Parents were addressed in their respective mother tongues by the investigators, i.e. English in the case of Adam's and Laura's father and German in the case of their mother. The recordings were made in relatively unstructured play situations although some toys or books were introduced to elicit specific structures or translating. The children were free to choose toys or activities, and some of the recordings were made outside in the garden or while going for a walk. 6.3 Analysis In this section, the data on which the present study is based will be described (6.3.1). Subsequently, the auditory analysis (6.3.2) and the acoustic analysis (6.3.4) carried out will be presented, together with measurements of their reliability (6.3.3 and 6.3.5) Data Table 3 presents an overview of all the transcribed recordings with Hannah. The first column lists the name of the recording by which it will be referred to in the following. From column two, the child's age can be taken in years;months.days. The third column gives the total number of transcribed child utterances. In the fourth column, the participants of the recording are listed. Participants in the recordings were Hannah's mother (M) and sometimes additionally her father (F). No other investigator was present. All recordings are

74 64 about 60 minutes long with transcripts considerably shorter, as can be taken from the fifth column. A total of 796 utterances were transcribed for Hannah. Recording Age Number of Participants Length of Utterances transcription HI 2; M 20 min H2 2; M 20 min H3 2; M, F 40 min H4 2; M, F 15 min H5 2; M, F 15 min Table 3: Recordings with Hannah transcribed phonetically and with intonation, Hannah's age, the number of child utterances, the other participants of the recording and the length of transcription. For Laura, 26 recordings were transcribed. They included the first and the last recording of the total of 83 made in the Tübingen project described above and were spaced equally over the period of investigation. Because of Laura's initial reluctance to speak English, transcribed German utterances outbalance the English ones. A total of 6121 utterances was transcribed for Laura, comprising German, English and mixed utterances. Tables 4 presents an overview of all the transcribed recordings with Laura. Recording Age Number of Partici- Length of Utterances pants transcription LI 2; E, M, Ad 90 min/ 90 min L2 2; E, M, Ad 105 min/ 105 min L3 2; E, M, Ad (grandparents) 60 min/ 60 min * L4 2; E, M 60 min/ 30 min L5 2; E, M, (G2) 60 min/ 45 min L6 2; G, M 45 min/ 45 min L7 2; E, (M, Ad, G) 40 min/ 40 min L8 2; G, (M) 60 min/ 60 min

75 65 L9 2; E, G, Ad, M 40 min/ 40 min L10 3; E, M 45 min/ 45 min Lll 3; G 40 min/ 40 min L12 3; E, (M,G) 80 min/ 60 min L13 3; G, CE) 30 min/ 30 min L14 3; E, (M, Ad, G) 60 min/ 60 min LIS 3; G 50 min/ 50 min L16 3; G 30 min/ 30 min L17 3;03.19 E, (M, G, Ad) 60 min/ 40 min* L18 3; E (M, G, Ad) 90 min/ 50 min L19 3; G, M 60 min/ 50 min L20 3; E (G, Ad) 70 min/ 70 min L21 3; E 15 min/ 15 min L22 3; E (G, Ad, M) 60 min/ 60 min L23 3; E, (Ad, G) 150 min/ 150 min L24 3; E (G, Ad, M) 120 min/ 80 min L25 4; E, G, Ad 180 min/ 100 min L26 4; E, G, Ad, E2, F 150 min/ 150 min Table 4: Recordings with Laura transcribed phonetically and with intonation, Laura's age, the number of child utterances, the other participants of the recording, and the length of both recording and transcription (The * denotes that only questions were transcribed). Out of the total of 88 recordings with Adam, 20 were selected, spanning the entire period of investigation. With a view of covering all of the development, recordings were chosen in regular intervals of time, and recordings in German and English were balanced equally. A

76 66 total of 7116 utterances were transcribed for Adam including German, English and mixed utterances (see table 5). Recording Age Number of Partici- Length of Utterances pants transcription A1 3; E, L, M 90min/ 90 min A2 3; E, L, M 105min/ 105 min A3 3; E, L, M 60min/ 60 min A4 3; G 60 min/ 60 min A5 3; E, (L) 60 min/ 60 min A6 3; G 60 min/ 60 min A7 3; G 50 min/ 50 min A8 4; G, (L, E) 60min/ 50 min A9 4; G 70 min/ 60 min A10 4; E 60 min/ 60 min All 4; E, (L) 60 min/ 60 min A12 4; G 75 min/ 75 min A13 4; E 60 min/ 60 min A14 4; G, E, L 120 min/ 80 min A15 4; E (L,M) 90 min/ 90 min A16 4; E, Sarah 30 min/ 20 min A17 4; E, L (G) 30 min/ 30 min A18 5, E (L, G) 90 min/ 50 min A19 5; E, G, L, E2, F 150 min/ 150 min

77 67 A20 5; E, G2 120 min Table 5: Recordings with Adam transcribed phonetically and with intonation, his age, the number of child utterances, the other participants of the recording, and the length of both recording and transcription. In both tables 4 and 5, other participants of the recordings were coded as follows: E stands for the investigator speaking only English to the children G stands for the investigator speaking only German to them E2 stands for a second English-speaking investigator during recordings A19 and L25 G2 stands for a second German-speaking investigator during recording A20 M stands for their mother, who was usually simply present with very little participation in the conversation F stands for their father Ad stands for Adam L stands for Laura Sarah is their little sister, who was born after the onset of the study In recording L3, Laura's grandparents were present for a short time but did not participate in the conversation. In general, participants given in brackets only appear shortly and do not speak much. An example would be Adam coming into the room where Laura is playing with an investigator and asking to borrow a pair of scissors. The language environment for Adam and Laura is very complex. A typical situation for Laura would look as follows: Both Adam and their mother speak German to her, although Adam might address some remarks to her in English, as in recordings L22 and L25. Her father speaks both German and English to her, the investigators address her either in German or English. A typical situation for Adam would look as follows: Laura always speaks German to him, his mother also addresses him exclusively in German, whereas his father tries to speak only English to him but sometimes switches to German. The investigators speak only either German or English. Both Adam and Laura use their languages according to the language the conversation partner uses; however, Laura avoids speaking English in the earlier recordings. The fifth column of tables 4 and 5 lists the length of the recording and the duration of the transcribed period. Transcription usually starts at the beginning of the recording but might end before its end for various reasons. Laura sometimes became very monosyllabic after a certain time or recordings ended with her turning very wild, mainly screaming and talking in some nonsense language. In recordings marked with an asterisk (*), only the questions uttered by the child were transcribed Auditory analysis and layout of the transcription All 51 recordings of this study were analysed auditorily according to the system of the British tradition, and transcripts were made according to the following form (figure 18). In the Tubingen projects, transcripts had been made for most of the recordings. The original layout was kept, but each child utterance was reanalysed and transcribed using IPA and the

78 68 intonation transcription system described below. In addition, many of the transcripts were extended considerably. L24 [3 ; 10.28] L und E mit Puppe im Wohnzimmer 006 'fb:,wi/an Who's this, Laura? Hello Florian! What a big baby. Florian can't really see. What does Florian want to play now? Does Florian want to play - I think Florian wants to play with the farm pictures. L schüttelt Kopf Figuren kleben durcheinander 007 \je 008 dnz/fo:lii) 009 ai s \put da to on /hia di \klaimig Ap da steas an des /tau: 010 hi:z'fdilirj \daun/nau f 011 si: \putir) hi \ba? daun ant s st /smeariq his hihis \hes daun f 012 /Jau lak /OBU /OBU mp 013 /jes at val /h3:t mf No? But I do. I wanted to play with your farm pictures. Can you show them to me? Oh oh! What's going on that farm? Has there been a storm? Yeah. Look! What's the cow doing? Mhm. And the farmer, look, he's lying across - right in the air. And what's the little boy doing on the roof? Up there? Hm? What's he doing there? Oh Oh! Don't you think that will hurt?

79 hi,fo:lir) \daun When he falls down, head first And what' s the horse doing in the little - in the little pond? Figure 18: Layout of the transcripts. The first column gives the situational descriptions, the second contains phonetically transcribed child utterances and the third the investigator's utterances. The transcripts consist of three columns: One for the description of the situation, one for the child's utterances, and one for the investigator's utterances. The left-hand column contains descriptions of the child's and the other participants' activities such as "L points at a book" or "A is building a duplo house". (These situational descriptions are given in German, see figure 18). In the middle column, the child utterances are presented in phonetic transcription and with intonational transcription as described below. The utterances are numbered. In recordings A1 to A3 and LI to L3, where both children were present all the time, their utterances are simply indexed by A: and L: respectively. The right-hand column lists the investigator's utterances in orthographic transcription including punctuation marks. Utterances by other participants than the project member are labelled accordingly, i.e. a remark by Adam's and Laura's mother would be transcribed beginning with "M:". Any utterances by Adam and Laura in a recording made with the sibling are transcribed phonetically in the child column with a preceding "A:" or "L:", but are not numbered. In Hannah's case, her mother's and father's utterances were indicated by "M:" and "F:". The transcript can be read from left to right according to the turns of the conversation. Interruptions are marked with II. An example of the transcription layout can be seen in figure Phonetic Transcription As illustrated in figure 18, only child utterances were transcribed phonetically. Transcription was not limited to speech sounds: It was attempted to transcribe any sounds produced by the child in narrow phonetic transcription, using the IPA symbols. Of the diacritics, the following symbols were used: for a long vowel n for nasalisation h for aspiration, for a syllabic consonant One symbol was invented for the description of a lisp prevalent in Laura's speech from L2 to L23 and occasionally also produced by Adam and Hannah: <r stands for this particular lisp

80 70 Sounds and utterances that were masked by other noise or were difficult to transcribe for some other reason were put between {} Transcription of intonation with the British system For the transcription of the intonation derived from auditory analysis, the system used constitutes a modification of the British system with the following symbols for types of nucleus, head, prehead and tail: a) nuclear types / rise \ fall A rise-fall V fall-rise low level - mid level 1 high level b) types of head rising \ falling t high level low level ' c) preheads Î high d) tail Any stressed syllable following the nucleus (i.e. a tail) was marked with a ".". e) tone groups I minor international phrase boundary II major intonational phrase boundary All intonational symbols were placed before the stressed syllable as illustrated in figures 18 and 19. Major IP boundaries were only marked when they occurred in unpredictable places, i. e. they were not marked at the end of an utterance or turn. In addition to pitch, the loudness of an utterance was noted if conspicuously different from normal speech. The following symbols, borrowed from musical notation, were used:

81 71 ff very loud utterance f loud utterance mf slightly louder than normal mp slightly quieter than normal P quiet utterance PP very quiet utterance cresc loudness increases during utterance decresc loudness decreases during utterance Loudness was transcribed at the end of an utterance or before a minor tone unit boundary if it changed after it. The appropriate symbol was put in brackets in the latter case or appeared at the end of the line without brackets in the former case. An example of the transcription of intonation can be seen in figure 19: L24 [3 ; 10.28] 010 hi:z 'fo:lirj \daun /nauf 011 si: \putii] hi \ba? daun ant s st /smearit) hisjhihis \hea daun f And what's the little boy doing on the roof? Up there? Hm? What's he doing there? 012 /Jsulbk /crau /crau mp Figure 19: Transcription of the intonation. Utterance 010, for example, has a high head (on the word falling) and a falling head (on the word down) before a rising nucleus on now. The loudness of the utterance is louder than Laura's usual intensity and thus marked with an T. Utterance 011 is divided into several minor tone units, denoted by the symbol 'I'. Each minor tone unit contains one nuclear pitch movement: A fall on [putirj], another fall on [ba?], a rise on [smeariq] and a fall on [hes]. Utterance 012 is divided by a minor and a major intonational phrase boundary. Each tone unit has a rising nucleus Reliability of the auditory analysis Each child utterance was analysed at least twice with a minimum interval of two weeks between the first and the second analysis. All analyses were carried out by the same investigator. Of all transcribed utterances, 200 were randomly selected for a reliability test. In the intonational transcription, agreement was high in intonational analysis, 99% for intonational phrase boundary placement, and 86% for type of pitch movements. The acoustic analysis of some of the utterances described below provided a second source of reliability testing.

82 Acoustic analysis Analysis of vowels A total of 153 utterances was selected for an acoustic analysis of the phonetic properties of vowels. This yielded information about the presence or absence of stress and nuclei in the child utterances (see chapter 8) as well as the phonetic realisation of pitch accents (chapter 9). Table 6 lists how many utterances were analysed from which child at which age. Hannah Laura Adam Age 2;1 2;6 2;5 3;1 4;3 3;6 4;11 5;3 Number of utterances Table 6: Distribution of acoustically analysed utterances per child and age. Of Hannah's 38 utterances, 19 are in German and 19 in English. For Laura, 26 German and 22 English utterances were selected; and of Adam's 67 utterances, 30 were in German and 37 in English. The acoustic analysis was carried out using ESPS/xwaves. All child utterances were recorded on dat tape. Each utterance was then logged onto the computer for an acoustic analysis. Xwaves can create spectrograms from the speech signal and extract the pitch movements in the FO-tracker. For each utterance, the F0 movement was plotted and a wideband spectrogram was made. Seven measurements were taken for each of the vowels of each utterance. F0 at the beginning of the vowel, at its midpoint and at its end; the respective values of volume at each of these points and the duration of the vowel. The beginning and the end of each vowel were read from the spectrogram and checked auditorily. The F0 values were taken from the calculations of the automatic F0 tracker. By placing a mark at the beginning and the end of a vowel, the vowel duration can be computed and displayed automatically, from which the exact mid-point of the vowel can be calculated. Diphthongs presented difficulties as to finding a stable vowel equivalent. Generally, they were treated as long vowels and the midpoint calculated from that. For each point of the fundamental frequency contour, the energy of the speech signal is displayed automatically as the rms amplitude, a scalar value which refers to the amplitude of the sound wave ToBI labelling of intonation A ToBI analysis was carried out on some of the recorded speech material. This yielded information about the acquisition of the phonological use of pitch (see chapter 9), the acquisition of intonational phrases and the F0 resetting after pauses (chapter 10). The selection of utterances was made on grounds of quality of the recording and the age of the child so as to include samples from the entire period of language acquisition covered in the recordings. Equally, it was tried to balance the number of utterances in German and

83 73 English. In detail, the number of utterances labelled with the ToBI transcription system can be seen in table 7. Hannah Laura Adam Table 7: Number of utterances by Hannah, Laura and Adam with ToBI intonation labelling. These include 10 questions by Hannah, 143 questions by Laura and 104 questions by Adam. The communicative intent "question" was determined with the help of the situational context and the child's and the interlocutor's reactions. In adult speech, syntax, the use of pitch and the pragmatic use of an utterance must be kept apart in the determination of the communicative intent. In child speech, classification was based on pragmatic criteria. Syntax is very simplified at an early age in both German and English, and questions do not always have a question-word or inversion or an "interrogative" intonational pattern. Thus, several strategies were employed to determine whether an utterance difficult to categorise constituted a question or not: - As a pragmatic definition of question was taken "the expression of a wish to know or learn something". This was tried to be inferred from the child's behaviour such as the expectation of a reply and frustration and insistence, or repetition of the question, when an answer was not given. - The occurrence of question words or inversion was taken as corroborative evidence, the lack of them did not influence the decision. - Several utterances were excluded from analysis despite their semblance to a question. These were in particular: what used in the sense of pardon demands in question form such as "Gibst Du mir mal eine Windel?" ("Can you give me a nappy") In total, 898 utterances were selected for a ToBI labelling of intonation. Of these, some could not be analysed for various reasons: 1) the utterances were too short The programme cannot deal with utterances shorter than 200 ms. 2) the utterances were too long The usual limit in length for a speech file is 15 seconds. Although it could be increased to 25 sec for the F0 analysis, utterances longer than 25 sec (especially from A18 to A20) had to remain unanalysed. 3) too much background noise In some cases, the background noise (either wind or other voices) was too great and the F0 could not be picked up reliantly. 4) F0 could not be extracted In very few cases the programme could not trace the fundamental frequency. This was mainly due to the low intensity of the utterance. The acoustic analysis was carried out using ESPS/transcriber. Transcriber yields the windows on which a ToBI analysis is based. They consist of the transcriber window with four tiers, and the FO-tracker window (see figure 20).

84 74 Figure 20: The transcriber window and FO-tracker window of an acoustic analysis with xwaves. The FO-tracker window at the bottom contains the pitch movements of the speech signal measured in Hz, and the intensity measured in root mean square (rms) can be measured at each point. The transcriber window comprises four tiers. In the first tier, pitch accents, phrase accents, and boundary accents of the utterance are labelled. The second tier contains an orthographic representation of the individual words as well as their boundaries. In tier 3, the prosodic breaks between the words are labelled according to their nature. The last tier is for miscellaneous remarks about those properties of the utterance which are not captured in any of the other tiers. Modifications for child speech As both the xwaves and the transcriber programmes are predominately used for the analysis of adult speech, several adjustments had to be made in order to ensure the applicability for child utterances. First of all, the display range of the window of the FO-tracker in both xwaves and transcriber was increased to comprise F0 values from 50 to 550 Hz. Unfortunately, for reasons of readability, an even greater range was not possible, which meant that several of Laura's early utterances, which contain values up to 700 Hz, are difficult to read. However, the automatic measuring of the pitch height was not impaired. The particular pitch height of child utterances furthermore necessitated a change of parameters in the automatic FO-tracker. The default setting of the maximum F0 value to be traced is 550 Hz, which resulted in faulty displays for some very high child utterances. In these cases, the maximum F0 value was set at 750 or 800 Hz. Similarly, adjustments had to

85 75 be made for the occasional poor quality of the recordings. Sometimes, especially when the recording had been made outside with wind blowing, the FO-tracker would display wrong pitch values. For these speech files, the minimum FO value was raised from 50 to 100 Hz, which prevented this kind of error. As some of the utterances are slow and halting and longer than 15 seconds - the default length of display in the waveform window - for some of them the window size was increased to 25 seconds. Unfortunately, transcriber has a maximum size of 15 seconds for the window so that files exceeding that limit had to be analysed and printed in two separate parts. For the ToBI analysis, the conventions (Beckmann & Ayers, 1993) and a slightly modified version of the transcription symbols as described in section were used. Some alterations of these conventions were necessary for the analysis of child speech. I allowed a %H symbol also at the beginning of an intermediate phrase, i.e. after a 3 break index, as otherwise some pitch movements could not have been described appropriately. Some pitch movements within unstressed syllables could not be labelled satisfactorily using the ToBI symbols. For example, in figure 21, which illustrates Laura's utterance "Adam gibt geht auf den tree" (Adam give goes on the tree), the fall in pitch from a high to a low on both of the unstressed syllables geht and auf could not be described on the tonal tier. The word tier, tier 2, represents the word boundaries of the utterance and their orthographic representation (see figure 21). Word boundaries are marked by the field symbol which, when empty, denotes the beginning of a word or, when containing an LJ Hi ni Hi L+Hh L-Lfc Adab Zlfr'l J gsaj aufl denj u u I ll j il 4 Figure 21: Laura's utterance [adam gibt ge:t aof dam \tsi:] ("Adam givesl goes up the tree") with the tonal tiers of the transcriber program and the extracted FO movement.

86 76 orthographic rendition, marks the end of the last segment. The choice of giving a word in orthography rather than IPA in the ToBI conventions is not a happy one. Child speech often does not resemble the phonetic events suggested by orthography. Most child productions are only poorly representable using standard orthography so that compromises had to be made. Generally, and especially when a child production resembled the adult form only loosely, the word was given in its standard orthography. This was decided as to enhance quick comprehension of the graphs and illustrations. Thus, in German, [sirjk] for Geschenk (present) would be given as "Geschenk". Where the child's form deviated only slightly from the adult form, this was integrated into the orthographic representation. Trinken (to drink) pronounced as [tkiqkn] therefore was spelled "trinkn" and [isas] for ist es (it is) as "isses". In the English utterances, [gain] for going was spelled "goin", but [jat] for that would be given as "that". Standardised spellings for contracted forms in fast conversational speech such as "cuppa" for cup of and "gonna" for going to were used as appropriate. Contracted forms in general were counted as one word, and only the word boundary at the end of the form was indicated. The same applied to contractions typical in child speech but unusual in adult conversations such as [ibinain] for ich bin ein (/ am a) or [weksn] for wer ist ein (who is a) in German and [kapati:] for cup of tea in English. Nevertheless, although labelled as one word, the orthographic representation would often indicate the different parts of the contractions by blanks between them. Thus, [ibinain] would be given as "i bin ein" rather than "ibinein" in order to facilitate reading. In short, spaces within the orthographic representation of what counts as a word do not denote perceptible boundaries. In other cases, such as [wilauf] this was not necessary, and the contraction would be spelled "willauf' on the orthographic tier. Equally, words pronounced in their full form but without boundary between them received only one marker field. In some cases, especially when the child struggled with the articulation of certain consonants and when it was perceptually doubtful whether two words were separated by a boundary or not, they would each receive a marker field, but their lack of distinct boundary would be indicated by a '0' boundary in the break indices tier as explained below. A case in point is Adam's utterance "aber a big tail long tail big" (figure 22), where the continuation of the N between tail and long does not suggest a clear word boundary although the joining consonant is slightly longer than expected. In the following presentation of the results, all speech files as illustrations of analysed utterances will be accompanied by a full phonetic transcription using the IPA system as described above. Tier 2 therefore should only be consulted for the understanding of the utterance's semantic content; its phonetic realisation, however, can only be learned from the information given in the subscript. Especially in utterances containing long pauses, the beginning of a word was marked by an empty field (see figure 21 before geht).

87 ai aa tiar mxtl aj &KJ tailj lorg] tail 1 bifd t U <1 d jj u 4 noise I Tlmi(f): « ec 0: 0.72 «s L: s ft: (F: 1 37) ' ' ' I r.trp-. v t T-r I p-^i^wf ' ' 1 ' ' 1 ' <50 <00 3S0 300 h H - it. _ - 1 ~ / i V 1 " V * V» » : 5«Figure 22: Adam's utterance [aba 9 \bik teil \lorj teil bik] containing the four labelled tiers and the FO movement. Tier 3, the break indices tier, represents the prosodic and rhythmic structure of the utterance (see figures 21 and 22). ToBI conventions list the following symbols for the different kinds of breaks: 0 no perceptible word boundary (also used for two words joined up by a prolonged consonant) 1 normal word boundary 3 end of intermediate phrase, always coincides with a phrase accent tone 4 end of intonation phrase, coincides with phrase accent and boundary tone 1 p an abrupt cut-off before an actual repair, or as if stopping to permit a repair or restart of some kind 2p a hesitation pause or prolongation of segmental material where there is no phrase accent perceived in the intonation contour 3p a hesitation pause or pause-like prolongation where there is a phrase accent in the tone tier In addition to that, the symbol 'lp' was also used for abrupt cut-offs before a quick intake of breath. The break indices were placed just after the word label. The fourth tier contains various additions and remarks to the other three tiers. The following list of symbols that were used in this analysis contains many more than suggested by ToBI, which are, however, all necessary to describe the particular nature of the utterances and the recordings. It has to be kept in mind that the recordings were made in play situations with real spontaneous speech. Quite often, speakers interrupted each other or

88 78 spoke at the same time, or, when more than two people were present, either a second conversation was carried on in the background or someone hummed or sang along. The F0- tracker does not differentiate between the voices, picks them all up and describes them equally. Thus, in some of the graphs, the pitch movements in the FO-tracker window sometimes look at odds with the labelling in the tone tier, and explanations are given in the miscellaneous tier. voice denotes an adult speaking in the background Adam Adam speaking, singing, or humming in the background Laura Laura speaking, squealing, or singing in the background breath intake of breath silence silence laughter laughter bang bang in the background bricks bricks clattering in the background noise general or unidentified background noise wind wind blowing An example of a description on tier 4 in figure 22 is the remark "noise" under the first part of the utterance Agreement between the two kinds of analysis Agreement between both kinds of intonational analysis, the acoustic and the auditory, was high. There were hardly any cases of incongruity as far as pitch accent location was concerned. The determination of the type of pitch accent was controversial in some cases; however, the two transcription systems do not show 100% equivalence (see section 2.1.3), which precludes a full comparison.

89 7. Results In the following, a brief overview of the general developments in the children's path to their languages is given in order to create a background for the more detailed results concerning the acquisition of nucleus placement, pitch and intonational phrasing, which will be presented in chapters 8 to 10. Aspects of the phonological, morphological and syntactic acquisition as well as the general communicative behaviour will be described for Hannah (7.1), Laura (7.2) and Adam (7.3). The syntactic development of these children has been investigated in depth, for example by Tracy (1995) and Gawlitzek-Maiwald (1997). These authors adopt an incremental view of the acquisition of syntax and identified certain developmental milestones beginning with verb-phrase (VP) structures, which expand to inflectional phrase (IP) and complementizer phrase (CP) structures. Here, a more general overview of the children's syntactic development will be given which has the aim of enabling the reader to interpret the findings in the area of intonation in perspective of the overall language acquisition process. The data presented in this and the following three chapters will be integrated in the discussion in chapter Hannah's general acquisition path: 2;1 to 2;6 Five recordings with Hannah, covering the ages from 2;1 to 2;6 of her language acquisition, have been transcribed for this study. Table 8 shows her language development on the phonological and syntactic level and in terms of her general communicative behaviour in German. Table 9 lists the same for English. The following phonological processes can be identified in Hannah's German and English speech at 2;1: She reduces consonant clusters as in [dumpfs] for /JtKYmpfa/ (.socks) and [pobian] for /phobi:k3n/ (to try) in German and [li:s] [lipas] [dint] [baun] [pit] [apltost] for please, for slippers, for drink, for Brown, for spit, and for apple juice

90 80

91 81 in English. In German, fronting, i.e. the substitution of a velar plosive by an alveolar one, can be observed, as illustrated in the examples below [taput] for /kaput/ (broken) and [tains] for /kaina/ (no) Furthermore, there is a case of consonant harmony, where the preceding consonant influences the production of the subsequent one. [lufbabon] for /luftbalog/ (balloon) Here, the /b/ of balloon influences the following /l/. Systematic substitution of certain phonemes occurs in both German and English at 2;1 but is far more frequent in the latter. Hannah substitutes the English phonemes /r/ and /d/ as in room which is produced [vuam] and other which is produced [ada] and at 2;2 /r/ is substituted by /w/ in drink and rabbit, /w/ is substituted by /v/ in one, / / is produced as /s/ in three, and l&y is produced as /d$7 in juice In German, far fewer segments show systematic replacement. One example is Hannah's tendency to substitute /s/ for /J/. In English, Hannah's phonology is still full of substitutions at 2;3, with the segments Ivl, /6/, /8/ and initial /j/ as the affected ones. Consonant clusters are still frequently reduced although she manages to pronounce strap correctly in about half of the cases now. Voicing appears to be problematic in her production of [pikan] for bigger. After 2;3, in German, phonological simplification processes cannot be observed any more. At 2;4, Hannah produces many instances of a specific prosodic pattern. In the case of the present tense first person verb form, the monosyllabic forms /kan/, /bin/ and /max/ receive an unstressed second syllable as in ['bina], ['kanja], and f'maxa] One instance of this can also be found at 2;6 in the form ['19a] for /15/ (/). This continues up to 2;6, where Hannah's pattern now also occurs in English. She produces ['puta] ['ona] for put in the mixed utterance "ich-a put-a eine Handschuh da drauf' (1-3 put-3 a glove on that) and for on in the English utterance "on-a my oven door" This pattern has also been interpreted as an overgeneralization of the German grammatical suffix [s] for first person singular as in gehe [ge:a] (go, 1 st pers. sg.) or trinke [tkiqka] (drink, 1 st pers. sg.) (see Gawlitzek-Maiwald 1997), but Hannah's use of -a With

92 82 other lexical categories than verbs as in [ich-a] (1-3) and [on-a] points to a prosodic rather than a morphological interpretation. It might in fact indicate that Hannah is in phase 2 of the model of the acquisition of word stress proposed by Fikkert et al. (1998) (see section 3.3). At 2;1 Hannah's MLU (mean length of utterance) in German is 1.7 words and in English 1.5 words. MLU was calculated on the basis of words, not morphemes (see Tracy 1995). This means that a great portion of her utterances consists of one-word utterances (48% in German and 65% in English). In her longer utterances, Hannah produces many non-finite verb-end (marked as "n-f VE" in tables 8 and 9) structures in both languages and in mixed utterances (62). Examples are the following: (62) \muzik maxan music machen (63) 'papa,maxan Papa machen (64) vas povbi:an was probieren (music make) (Daddy make) (something try) In German, there are a few instances of utterances with verbs in the first position (65) hap,taina 'aua nox,mea hab keine aua noch mehr (have no ouch any more) or finite verbs in second position in the following mixed utterance: (66) 15 hap I nan \koa t ich hab nen cold (I have a cold) At 2;4, structures with a finite verb in second position (V2 structures) are predominant in German (67) unt 15 maxa 'di:zas 'des zo: und ich mache dieses des so (and I make this that so) and the verbs show target-language inflections. Hannah has acquired the simple main clause structure. At 2;6, her MLU is 3.4. In English, the first -ing morphemes are produced at 2;3: (68) hana /to.kirj Hannah talking In 2;4, they occur in combination with auxiliary verbs: (69) aim,kli:mq a ju: I am cleaning you (70) aim,meikirj ju matj \beta I am making you much better At the same time, the modal verb can is produced:

93 83 (71) ai ka:nt \wo:k I can't walk Hannah's MLU in English at 2;6 is 3.1. Hannah's general language development shows that mixing, i.e. productions that comprise structural and/or lexical elements of both languages, occur throughout the period of investigation analysed for this study. Mixing decreases after 2;6 and is rare from 2;9 on (see Tracy 1995). Her speech is fluent up to 2;4, when suddenly stuttering and many restarts can be observed. This again decreases considerably at 2;6. The above provides strong evidence that Hannah acquires two separate language systems. For the syntactic level, this has been discussed in detail in Tracy (1995) and Gawlitzek- Maiwald (1997), who demonstrate an asynchronous acquisition in the two languages. In Hannah's phonology, asynchrony is less apparent: The prosodic pattern described above occurs at roughly the same age in both languages as well as the substitution of segments and reduction of consonant clusters. These phonological processes, however, can only be observed until 2;3 in German whereas they continue until 2;6 and probably beyond in her English system. 7.2 Laura's general acquisition path: 2;5 to 4;3 Table 10 presents Laura's acquisition on the syntactic, morphological and phonological levels in German from age 2;5 to 4;3, and table 11 lists the same for English. In her German phonology, Laura shows fronting and consonant cluster reduction at 2;5. She produces [tani$] for kann ich /kan 15/ (can I) [babut] for kaputt /kaput/ (broken) [patien] for spazieren /Jpatsi:an/ (go for a walk) [KO:S] for groß /giro:s/ (big) Many of Laura's speech sounds at this age are unstable and vary in their pronunciation. Problematic phonemes are /$"/, /v/, /h/, and /j/. Although they are sometimes produced according to the adult target phoneme substitutions occur as well. Some of these are illustrated in the following examples: tp Fisch /fij/ Stuhl /Jtu:L/ Schnuller /Jnuls/ Schokolade /jokolaida/ steh /fte:/ Stein /ftain/ /v/ will /vil/ (fish) is realised as [fis] and [fig] in LI (chair) is sometimes realised as [stu:l] in LI and [tu:l] in L2 (dummy) is produced as [nulls] in LI (chocolate) is [soke'laide] or [foke'laidc] in LI (stand) is [ste:] in L2 (stone) is [ot b ain] and [stain] in L2 (want) is realised as [bil] in L2

94 84

95 85

96 86 /h/ Haare /ha:ks/ '}/ Junge /juga/ (hair/s) is [a:kß] in LI and (boy) is pronounced [luga] in LI Consequently, many of Laura's words are phonetically unstable. An example would be trinken /tkirjkan/ (to drink) which she realises as [tkiigken], [Kigkim] and [tkigken] within a single minute in LI. Another case in point is Elefantenbuch /elsfantanbuix/ (book about elephants), which comes out as [ela.fandanlboux], [ela,fandan \baux] and [ele,fandanbu:x] in a row or Schokolade (chocolate), which begins with either /J"/, /f / or /s/ in LI. The state of Laura's English phonology at 2;5 is hard to establish due to the paucity of lexical items she produces. This difficulty is further enhanced by the problematic classification of many productions as either German or English: Forms such as [boat] are not clear renditions of either /bo:t/ (for the German Boot) or /baut/ for the British English pronunciation of boat. Neither is it determinable without doubt whether [bilda \boat] stands for build a boat" or build ein boat/boot". Some phonemes, however, clearly present difficulties for her: /Ö/ /r/ they is always pronounced [dei] in tree is pronounced [tsi:] Consonant clusters are reduced or deleted completely: children is realised as [ildan] There is final devoicing as in big, which is realised as [bik] and pig, which she pronounces [pi:k] As discussed in section 2.4, these instances of final devoicing should not be considered evidence for an interference from the German devoicing rule for final voiced plosives since they have also been observed in the language acquisition of monolingual English children. Some of Laura's English forms are phonologically unstable: Hedgehog is pronounced [hedjhok] and [hat,jok] in a row. With the increase in vocabulary, more areas of phonological instability become apparent for Laura's German speech at 2;6: /JV is often realised as Isl or /?/ or a lisp (a) Isl is usually a lisp /z/ is often a lisp or an Isl /f/->/p/ Iii is sometimes substituted by Ipl as in schläft /Jle:ft/ (sleeps), which Laura pronounces [oiept] /b/->/v/ fbl is sometimes replaced by /v/ as in bau /bau/ (build), which she pronounces [vau] or aber /a:ba/ (but) as [ava]

97 87 IhJ /v/ is omitted as in Haare Ihawsl (hair/s), which Laura pronounces [a:n] or heim /haim/ (home), which is realised as [xaim] is sometimes pronounced /w/ as in [wilst] for /vilst/ (you want) or [windal] for /vindal/ (nappy) Many consonant clusters are reduced: /tke:gt/ /pfead/ /dinn/ /Jmekt/ /mil?/ (carries) is [da:g] (horse) is [feda] (inside) is [din] (tastes) is fmskt] and (milk) is [mif] to show but a few examples. In Laura's German speech at 2;6, phonological processes such as velarisation and palatalisation (fronting) can be identified: - velarisation: /tirauirig/ (sad) is [gkauink] and IdmnJ (inside) appears as [ginn] - palatalisation: /kena/ (I know) is [tena] Some unstable words are: /galop/ /Jviman/ (banter), which is produced [loka] after many repetitions and (to swim), which Laura produces as [svimin] Another area of instability is that of voicing. Many of Laura's voiced consonants are devoiced and many voiceless consonants are realised as voiced ones, as can be seen from the following list: -voiced becomes voiceless /gabaidat/ (bathed) becomes [gaba:tan] /bkaux/ (need) becomes [piraux] /difin/ (inside) becomes [tkin] - voiceless becomes voiced /tmgksn/ (to drink) becomes [dmggan] /klainan/ (small) becomes [glainan] /ky?a/ (kitchen) becomes [gy?a] /raitst/ (he rides) becomes [Kaidad] and /laufan/ (to walk) becomes [lauvan] Due to the increase in lexicon, Laura's phonology in English is easier to assess at 2;6 than at 2;5. Segmental replacing occurs in the following cases: /w/ M pronounced as /v/ in woman, where and want either omitted (in tree and front) or pronounced as /K/ in front or /w/ in roof, red.

98 88 rabbit, ice-cream and carrot /s/ lisp in lettuce and this /9/ is /f/ in Dorothy and fkj in [mauk] for mouth /6/ substituted by /d/ in that, this and another /J7 pronounced as /s/ in she or as a lisp in fish or /$/ in kitchen, shoot and chair Izl is a lisp in legs and nose Consonant clusters are reduced: tree front bring is [til] is [font] is [big] There is final devoicing: in pig, which she pronounces [pik] and live, which she produces as [lif] or big as [bik] and velarisation: doing as [guig] Some vowels are realised as diphthongs, as for example red as [weid] and bed as [bead] and some word forms are unstable such as: woman boat which is pronounced [bkomen] or [Komra] and which she pronounces [bom] or [boat] In English also, a certain instability in the area of voicing is apparent from 3;00 on. Voicing of voiceless consonants occurs in medial, final and initial position. Devoicing of voiced consonants can be observed in initial and final position: shopping little milk plate drink red is pronounced [crobig] is pronounced [lidl] is realised as [milg] and as [bleid] is realised as [twigk] and is pronounced [wet] There is some evidence that Laura is beginning to have a separate phonological system for English. She uses different vowels or consonants to make a German word sound English in an English context: /ho:l/ (to fetch) is changed to [haul] and [hu:l] and

99 89 /iiva/ (a name) becomes [i:wa] Thus, it seems that Laura's phonological system in English does not comprise the vowel /o/ and certain phonemes she produces in German such as /K/. As indicated in tables 10 and 11, the asynchrony of Laura's acquisition of the two languages is very pronounced in the area of syntax. At 2;5, Laura produces finite V2- structures and modal verbs in her German utterances: (72) vil a 'tsu:g max will ein Zug machen (want a train make) (73) 'das da:f 15 \ha:ban des darf ich haben (this may I have) (74) 'i mus au an,keks ich muß auch ein Keks (I must also a biscuit) (75) vil \aux li:p maxan will auch lieb machen (want also stroke) (76) mam,tu:am iz ka\put maxt mein Turm ist kaputt macht (my tower is broken made) In morphology, inflections appear although they are still unstable: (77) 19 bin AlauKa ich bin Laura (78) /du moxst \kafe: du möchst Kaffee (79) di,baum ain Ahaus die bauen ein Haus (lam Laura) (you want coffee) (they build a house) although deviant forms not documented here also show that the system has not been fully acquired yet. In English, conversely, there is no clear evidence for Laura's acquisition of any syntax at 2;5 (see Gawlitzek-Maiwald 1997 for a different analysis). Laura's speech, when addressed in English, can rather be described as German with occasional English lexical items. Striking is the complete absence of any word categories besides nouns, verbs and adjectives in Laura's English vocabulary. Auxiliaries, determiners and other non-lexical categories are, at this stage, always produced in German, which leads to a high number of mixed utterances. Some examples are given below with the German words underlined. Words which could not be classified without doubt as either German or English appear in italics. pronouns (LI) 'du: bau bi:g,boat (you build big boat) ISl /bild 'fo;af (I build boat) (L2) da \main kapavti: (this my cup of tea) /dam tubm.bgok-f (your tower broken) 19 hoi am,buk (I fetch a book) determiner (Li) du,bild-an am \boat (L2) lam,gal /das /z ain,ti: (you build-inf a boat) (a girl) (this is a tea)

100 90 gain 'hedjhok (is a hedgehog) auxiliaries (LI) 19 Vila 'n 3 u: \bost (I want new boat) vil \au bik bost (want also big boat) (L2) vil aux ain \ti: (want also a tea) mam /taua /j pa.put (my tower is broken) There is no doubt that Laura understands English. She replies promptly and correctly to questions and demands in English such as What is your teddy called?" and Where's the bird?". However, it seems that she has hardly any active knowledge of English. Those few words she uses she imitates from statements and questions put to her, but she cannot fall back on a differentiated lexicon for English. From 3;00.20 on, Laura produces complementizer-introduced subordinate structures (marked as "comp" in table 10) in German. The first complementizer to appear in recording Lll is weil: (80) vail das.ni? ka'putga\gai) weil des nicht kaputtgegangen (because this not broken) (81) vail di 'tiaka /sin da 'k h inn weil die Tiere sind da drin (because the animals are in there) (82) am vail 15 /vaina em weil ich weine (er- because I am crying) (83) vail dea is /fesgakle:b 'io weil der ist festgeklebt ist (because he is stuck is) These subordinate clauses are not yet used with target-language structures. Utterance (80) lacks the verb in the end-position, utterance (81) shows a V2 position (which, in adult speech, is a variant to the VE-form with distinct difference in meaning) and utterance (83) has a double copula in V2 and verb-end position. These "deviant" productions, however, have also been documented for monolingual children (Fritzenschaft et al. 1990; Gawlitzek- Maiwald et al. 1992). As new complementizers daß, wenn and ob are produced from L15 on: (84) 00: muomao fa\bi:gn dao dat /apge:t so muß man's verbiegen daß des abgeht (you have to bend it so so that it can be taken off) (85) ven mea /tovai /kirign wenn wir zwei kriegen (when we get two) (86) dao das hia /apge:t daß des hier abgeht (so that this can be taken off) (87) dao dea Aa:baitn kan daß der arbeiten kann (so that he can work) (88) Ava:t mal op dao \da: ge:t wart mal ob des da geht (wait whether it goes there) At 3;5, Laura acquires further complementizers and produces the following subordinate clause structures in German:

101 91 (89) daa /kan ai$ aux feothaldn ven dao bil des kann sich auch festhalten wenn des will (this can hold on if it wants) (90) ven du nif dao,kano,k h Kaufg3max dafodu ni?.vyaveln bai \mi:a wenn du nicht des ganz draufgemacht darfst du nicht würfeln bei mir (when you haven't put that on entirely you may not roll the dice at my place) The first relative clauses are produced: (91) daa,man hat aina,firoindin d3a ja\la:ni haiat der Mann hat eine Freundin die Jalani heißt (the man has a girl-friend who is called Jalani) (92) aignli9 \da: vo: di /mama 3 vo di \mamamaua icrt eigentlich da wo die mama wo die Mamamaus ist (actually there where the mummy where the mummy mouse is) (93) zol 19 dia mal des tsaign vas 19 /kans soll ich dir mal des zeigen was ich kann-s (shall I show you what I can) In general, her utterances have nearly reached adult complexity and she begins to produce co-ordinate main clauses as well: (94) [3;6] /ne: du du bist dox \my:da du mus di9 \tsu:dekn un ain Acmuli ne:mn nee du du bist doch müde du mußt dich zudecken und ein Schnulli nehmen (no you you are tired und you must cover yourself and take a dummy) In English, Laura's syntactic acquisition lags behind considerably. At 2;6, Laura is beginning to produce some utterances in English comprising wh-words and the -ing morpheme. However, they are all direct imitations of what the English investigator said, as adduced in the following examples: [2;06] [2;06] [2;06] (reading a book) E: Who's that? L: 'hu a /det who is that (looking at a book) E: Look, what's the baby dog doing? L: 'vdt,beibi dog Vdu:i: what baby dog doing (looking at a book) E: What's the boy doing? L: 'vat di,boi Vdu:ir) what the boy doing

102 92 [2;06] (Laura is building a ship) E: Where's the front? Where's the back? L: nveazda /feointl/fkant More complex utterances in English comprising the use of morphological forms such as the plural marker [-s], the -ing suffix and the production of pronouns and prepositions can be observed in Laura's speech from 2;6 on: (95) /ai brii] moa,bbks I'll get some more blocks (96) ju:,bild it,ap ge\gan you build it up again (97) deo i ia \v3:kig this is working (98) is /V3:kiq 'd3s is working this (99) dea \v3:kir nau this working now (100) deo / gants \v3:kiq this all working (101) ai,ai,hav III have In comparison to her German speech, Laura does not yet produce English modals or inflections. Instead, some English verbs receive German inflectional endings such as -Inf [an] and second person singular [-st] (in (103) also realised as [-s]): (102) nam \i lukan,bo.k nein ich look-inf book (no I look-lnf book) (103) un du /liks loko \deo,bu:k und du liks looks des book (and you liks looks this book) (104) nain do \lukot da s bu:k /dea nein du look-st des book there (no you look-st this book there) Furthermore, it is still Laura's preferred strategy to reply in German when addressed in English. The first example shows her use of ja (yes) and des (das = this) in her English reply. The forms [bot] and [hap] are difficult to classify as either German or English. [2:061 (building a boat) E: Does your boat have a sail? L: \ja mai,bot daz,hapa /seil ja my boat des hab a sail

103 93 [2;06] (still building the boat, E offers something) E: Do you want it? L: jea 15,vont it yeah ich want it (yeah I want it) [2;06] (referring to G2, who has just left the room) E: Is she? What is she doing? L: Jifkinda/tsima she Kinderzimmer (she children's room) At 3;0, some new syntactic elements can be observed in Laura's English system although they are often produced only once. She produces an -ing form with be as auxiliary (105) 'jets iz,v3:kir) now is working and at 3,7 the auxiliary do appears, also in the past form: (106) ai du: it I do it (107) ai 'did it I did it Laura produces the first wh-questions with copula that are not imitated directly from the input: (108) /*vea iz da -ti: where's the tea (109) VE9 iz \hi where's he (110) weaz da /gwa:o where's the grass In general, she now produces many simple main clauses with S-V-0 structure in English as examples 111 to 116 show: (111) ai,kwos da Awaud I cross the road (112) Adea 10 mai p3:o there is my purse (113) wi a'got a?i\ta: we [have] got a guitar (114) wi got a ba\lu:n we got a balloon (115) ai /wont mai,<l\mi I want my dummy

104 94 (116) an /ai gona meik da \jeta /gwi:n n Vjet and I gonna make the that green that Mixings are still common. They either involve individual lexical items as in: (117) ai ai /bin a \ga:l 11 bin a girl (II am a girl) (118) ain \oamba ein jumper (a jumper) (119) wi ge:n Aainkaufan we gehen einkaufen (we go shopping) (120) 15 ma:l \tjeldn ich mal children (I draw children) (121) x*des is \gwa:s des is grass (this is grass) (122),ne: deo hat \kain glu: nee des hat kein glue (no this doesn't have glue) (123) Ahei dea dea nax ni? \fikst hey des des noch nicht fixed (hey this isn 't fixed yet) or involve the borrowing of inflectional morphemes (124) [3;1] wi 'gouan \<TDpir) /jea we go-inf shopping yeah (we go-inf shopping yeah) From 3;10 on, further structures appear in Laura's English speech. She produces negation with do (125) its / didnt \fit it's didn't fit (126) d3i,ra:fs dount 'hev aoka giraffes don't have socks As a first complementizer because appears: (127) bikos,ain ai biga den Vju: because I am I am bigger than you Thus, Laura's syntactic system in English shows a curious imbalance. On the one hand, first complementizers appear; on the other hand, many modals, auxiliaries and plural forms are still missing. As can be taken from tables 10 and 11, in her general communicative behaviour at 2;5, Laura produces very short utterances and is very repetitive. Sequences such as: (E is talking to Ad) L: bild boat (build boat) 'bilda boat bilda \boat bilda \boat bilda \boat

105 95 or (L is looking for a book) L: du,kuksn Buch gucken (book look) 'bu,kuksn /*bu ku\kan bu ku\ksn bu ku\ksn are typical for her conversational style. Sometimes it is very hard to establish whether she is not simply talking to herself without any communicative intention. The longest utterance in LI is: (128) 15 hap main \tedibe:a Her MLU at 2;6 is 3.3 words in German and 3.1 in English. However, the latter is only due to the great number of utterances Laura imitates directly from the English input. At 3;0, her MLU in English is 3.0 and in German 3.8. Not much difference can be observed in Laura's general communicative behaviour at 3;00 compared to 2;5. Quite often she speaks in an invented language, whispers, sings or puts on a different voice in role-playing. She also enjoys exploring her vocal abilities and produces quite a few non-linguistic sounds. Mixing is very common up to 3;5. However, at 4;3, her two language systems are sufficiently separate to allow for rapid translations: (129) bi,k3 vail des \bkent 'kuk (130) dei 'sli:pir) 'dea Jla:ft (131) ain \hunt a do:g For Laura, the asynchrony of acquisition between German and English is very striking on all linguistic levels. Up to 3; 10, she produces only very few utterances in English, even when addressed exclusively in this language. Simple main clauses, which she produces in German with finite verbs in second position at 2;5 do not appear in her English speech before 3;0. Equally, complementizer-introduced subordinate clauses can be observed from 3;0 on in German but only from 3; 10 on in English. Even then, however, Laura does not produce certain plural markers, modal verbs or auxiliary verbs in English. Consequently, mixed utterances are frequent when Laura is addressed in English. In the area of phonology, Laura initially shows much the same processes such as voicing instability, consonant cluster reduction and systematic substitution of various phonemes in both languages. The latter, however, continues much later in English than in German.

106 Adam's general acquisition path: 3;6 to 5;5 In the following, a short overview of the general developments in Adam's acquisition of English and German from age 3;6 to age 5;5 is given. Table 12 shows the developments on the various linguistic levels in Adam's acquisition of German during the period covered by the recordings A1 to A20, and table 13 lists the same for English. Adam's German phonology at 3;6 shows the following characteristics: The segments /] /, /?/, and /h/ are systematically substituted [snaidn] for /jnaidan/ (to cut) [simpft] for /Jimpft/ (he tells off) [svats] for /JVairts/ (black) [ix] for /15/ (I) [nax] for/nift/ (not) [xab] for /haiba/ (I have) and consonant clusters are reduced as in [pkigt] for /JpKi9t/ (speaks). Also noteworthy is his compression of two words to the trochaic template form as described in section 3.3. Adam produces [seqk] for /gajeqk/ (present) and [lama] for /alaina/ (alone) which was described as a feature of phase 2 in the model of the acquisition of word stress (Fikkert et al. 1998). Furthermore, Adam shows instability in the area of voicing in general and the areas of sibilants and fricatives in particular. Quite often, voiced plosives at the beginning of words are realised as voiceless ones as in [tkauf] for [dirauf] (on/to) [k h iro:s] for [gko:s] (big) and [p h Kent] for [birent] ([it is] burning). Conversely, voicing of voiceless plosives occurs as well, although far less often. Adam produces [bolitsei] for [politsei] (police)

107 97 Ti. ik 1 S 8 ta «1 00 & ir co vo Î 1 t> ü I. S o g i l SS -g. I a. E 1» I I u o Ci l i I * v> IB.S S S ^.2 -o.t: u S O ïïl u o M) S 08 <» S >_ «s * pc a u <.S s B» 'S S g i o l o 1 3 M S "S a G O S t

108 98 in «K VO <r -if I U m VO cn 1 il a g a 3 I (A 1 J > è «Ö > tw o ci JS s CA NM J Ü z M I Sä & ts a g IP S o 3 s ë S

109 99 only once in A4. The voiced Izl is often voiceless as in [b0:sa], [sain] and [sind] for [b0:za] (naughty), [zain] (to be) and [zind] ([they] are). Adam's English phonological system at 3;6 shows consonant cluster reduction and the substitution of various phonemes as well as final devoicing. Consonant cluster reduction appears in [waiwa] [boukan] for driver and for broken An example for final devoicing is [we:t] for red. Especially the sibilants and fricatives seem to pose problems for Adam and are always substituted: /8/ in three becomes [fri:] /&/ is omitted in there and produced as a /d/ or /j/ in that /v/ in heavy becomes [hebi] Approximants are also substituted: /r/ /w/ /j/ is always substituted by /w/ is substituted by /v/ and initially is omitted in yellow As shown in table 12, from 3; 10 on, the substitution of German phonemes also includes /s/ and /v/. Adam often replaces /J"/ with /s/ and substitutes a lisp for /s/ as in [SDn] for [jon] (already) [Kainpao] for [Kainpast] ([it]fits) All /$/ are produced as /x/, and fh/ is also very often realised as /x/, as illustrated below. [ni9t] [hat] (not) thus becomes [nix] and ([he/she] has) becomes [xat] Finally, /v/ is often produced as /w/ as for example in [wil] [wi:] for [vil] (want) or for [vi:] (as) The sibilants are less problematic for Adam in English than in German, with hardly any lisps for /s/ and only rare substitutions of / / or /s/ for /J7. /$/, however, is always replaced as in [keitf] [enjin] for cage and for engine Adam's German phonology from 4;4 on shows far fewer substitutions of segments than in the earlier phases, /v/ and Ifsl he masters completely, and /$/ is only rarely replaced by /x/

110 100 now. /s/ and /J"/ are generally pronounced correctly although there are still a few substitutions of /st/ for /ft/ as in [sttieka] for [Jtireka] (tracks) [sviman] for [JViman] (swim) [spi:lan] for [Jpiilan] (play) and [duplostaina] for [duiplojtaina] (duplos) where the difficulty could be caused by the following consonant. The only remaining source of variation from adult pronunciation is the devoicing of initial consonants as in [kiro:s] [pirauxan] [tkai] for [gko:s] (big) for [birauxn] (need) and for [dtfai] (three) and a rare voicing of medial consonants as for example in [aida] for [alta] (old) a phenomenon, however, which is quite common in the dialect spoken in his area. In Adam's English phonological system at 4;4, the linking "r" has been added: (132) bat \ai nau weant is but I know where it is On a segmental level, /r/ is still consistently replaced by /w/. /w/ itself is predominately realised as /v/, and /v/ is realised as /b/ in [hebi] [auba] [mu:b] for heavy, for over and for move and as /p/ in [haep] [sepan] for have and for seven. lil is substituted by /p/ in the word fence. Another area of problems is the initial /j/ in yellow: Sometimes it is omitted, sometimes Adam produces [fao] or [welo]. The sibilants are nearly correct all the time, but the interdentals still raise problems: IQI is produced as ItI in thing, as Isl in three and sometimes 16/ shows the same substitution patterns as earlier, i.e. replacement by Idl and Ijl / 5/ is realised as / I in treasure and dangerous

111 101 up to A16. From then on, Adam substitutes /$/ for it as in [dfast] [bvitj] for just and for bridge In A18, Adam produces the diphthongised [ e i:] as in please and sea, and he begins to overgeneralise this to other vowels. red and head do and you he pronounces [w e id] and [h e it] and are [d 3 u] and [j'u:] Devoicing of final consonants is still common, but it can also be found in initial and medial positions. As can be seen in table 13, at 5;6, Adam's English phonology is still characterised by problems with the interdental fricatives. /9/ is replaced according to the same pattern as at earlier stages. This equally applies to Id/. /w/ is only rarely substituted by /v/, and /v/ is only replaced once by /b/ in over. /r/ is still realised as /w/ in about 50% of the cases, and ty is realised as /ts/ in just and /tj/ in jump. Final devoicing occurs in four cases; there is one instant of initial devoicing [kdt] for got and one of medial devoicing: [haitii)] for hiding. From table 12 can be seen that, in his German syntax, Adam produces main clause structures at 3;6. As finite verbs in second position modals (133) and auxiliaries (134) appear: (133) 19 /*kan das ni$ Mains ich kann des nicht alleine (134) das hat di 'launa ga.maxt des hat die Laura gemacht (I can't do this alone) (Laura did this) Adam also produces main clause structures in his English utterances at 3,6 and 3;7: (135) wi bild a 'bik \baat we build a big boat (136) da pu:l da / siqk \aut they pull the present out (137) dei hxvnt \gdtn.aktsidsnt they haven't got an accident (138) 'da / klaim Ap da \twi: they climb up the tree

112 102 Adam's early utterances show a fair amount of mixing phenomena with lexical mixings such as (139) \da:z kap da ist cup (140) /'klaina 'taug \baun kleinen tower bauen (there's cup) (small tower build) or mixings at a morphological level, where he adds the German suffix [-da], which is used in informal speech to indicate the third person singular, to an English verb (141) [3;6] 'jet,klaimda Ap da twi: At 3; 10, Adam produces his first complementizer clauses in German. Both weil and wenn (when/if) appear: (because) (142) vail '15 so \k h K0.s bin weil ich so groß bin (because I am so big) (143) /du aba vail vails do: /du vails dox naxt Wainpast du aber weil weil's doch du weil's doch nicht reinpasst (you but because because it you because it doesn 'tflt in) (144) aba wens \ainkaufan aber wenn's einkaufen (but when it buy) From 3; 11 on, he produces syntactic structures with co-ordinated sentences (145) zonan sin /hais unt unt /kalt kalt zint /wint sint \kalt /gel Sonnen sind heiß und und kalt kalt sind Wind sind kalt gel (suns are hot and cold cold are wind are cold -tag) (146) dea dire:t S15,um unta un bs,ve:g six /gel der dreht sich um unten und bewegt sich gel (it turns down there and moves -tag) (147) mit,de:n m de:n is Ahing3fa:n un da isa jets \to:t mit dem den is hingefahren und da ist er jetzt tot (with this this he is gone there and now he is dead) Furthermore, Adam produces relative clauses at 4;2: (148) di,loit3 di \Jle:fan die Leute die schlafen (the people they sleep) (149) /na na das das bke?t das dl ala /to:t gamaxt hat nee nee des des spricht das die alle tot gemacht hat (no no that that speaks that has killed them all) As illustrated in table 13, in English, Adam produces the auxiliary do at 3; 10 (150) du: dei fiks i/naf do they fix enough and the modal verb can. Wh-questions without inversion can be observed:

113 103 (151) VDt'hu: /bilt what you build Main clauses are co-ordinated by the conjunction and (152) 'ai got,tu: tvaks an 'ju got -lota,tv3ks I got two trucks and you got lot of trucks (153) an 'wonz gdt a /teibl an sum /tjeaz an WDnz,gDt a,kabin and one's got a table and some chairs and one's got a cabin The first complementizer is because (154) bi,kos dei,diqs a: folan Vdaun because they things are falling down (155) bikos ai,daunt got a Vbig WDn because I don't got a big one In negations, do-insertion is used and sometimes overgeneralised: (156) nau ai,dount 'ni:d sni /moa no I don't need any more (157) its go?dount gota sna a a \ stoun/kaetja it's got don't got a sno a a stone catcher (158) \nau ai,dount goirjta /ju:z it no I don't going to use it From 4;4 on, Adam produces subordinate clause structures in English (159) ai fii)k its a \bweikdaun I think it's a breakdown (160) bat \ai nau wearit is but I know where it is (161) luk ai /?au ju: hau jet,w3:ks look I show you how it works (162) ai /Jau ju: WDt dis wo:s I show you what this was and attempts a passive structure in A18: (163) da \dauz a: bi:n \i:t, fdn da muaza'sairas /nau those are been eat from the mozesaurus now Furthermore, he acquires other German complementizers, which he uses in order to build increasingly long utterances. He begins to utter longer passages of speech, as yet still interrupted by many IP boundaries. In both German and English, Adam strings longer utterances together into little narratives. The difficulty this presents is reflected in the many inserted pauses as shown below for German (164) and English (165):

114 104 (playing pirates) (164) a aba aba,balt \iz da aba va vens 'naxt / iz 'da,venma venva VJla:fn da da dan iz da iz di fija fola,knoxfi un des 'vasa an 'moagans /ja aber bald ist der aber wenn's Nacht ist da wenn man wenn wir schlafen dann ist der ist die Fische voller Knochen und das Wasser und morgens ja (but soon it is when it is night is then when one when we sleep then it is full of fish full of bones the water and in the morning yes) (talking about a cash dispenser in a bank) (165) da ma^j"i:ns put jet in/sai da da,den wa,ounli men ins ea dan an da maji:n put da,mani invsai an an di da da da \seif seiftaian da da put den on tfas da ma/ji:n d3 da den da wonig /bak da den,ai kam da waniq /bak... the machine put that inside I the the then I with only men ins I there then I and the machine put the money inside I and and the the I the the safe I safeman the the put then on just the machine I the the then they running back I the I then I come they running back... Inversion in Adam's English questions is now built exclusively with a copula, with the [a:] acting as "placeholder" (cf. Peters 1983; Tracy 1995): (166) /*a: ju 'wont jaet are you want that (167) /*a: ju Anda'staend /d33:mn are you understand German In his general communicative behaviour, Adam speaks fairly fluently at 3;6. His MLU is 3.0 words. At 3; 11, however, his speech is slow and halting and sounds deliberate with a flat and sometimes even monotonous intonation. Stammering occurs. In general, there are few mixings in Adam's speech, and he shows great competence at translation tasks. For Adam, asynchronous acquisition of his two languages can be seen on all linguistic levels listed in tables 12 and 13. In phonology, identical processes such as consonant cluster reduction, voicing instability and the systematic replacement of phonemes can be observed in both languages. However, in German, hardly any of these still occur after 4;4, whereas the majority of them still applies in Adam's English phonology at 5;6. In the area of syntax, he produces finite V2-structures at 3;6 in both languages. However, inflection, modals and auxiliaries only occur in German. Tracy (1995) and Gawlitzek-Maiwald (1997) argue that Adam's early English main clauses do not reflect the acquisition of inflectional phrases but can be analysed as verb phrases, whereas he produces inflectional phrases in German from 3;6 on. Similarly, complementizer phrases occur later in English (4;2) than in German (3;10). This points to a clear separation of his two languages. The acquisition of both is congruent to monolingual acquisition (Fritzenschaft et al. 1990), except for the rate of acquisition, which is slower in English.

115 8. The acquisition of nucleus placement In this chapter, the results concerning the acquisition of nucleus placement by Hannah (8.1), Laura (8.2) and Adam (8.3) will be presented. Each child will be dealt with separately, and both the phonetic and the phonological level will be analysed. 8.1 Hannah: Acquisition from 2;1 to 2; Phonological use of nucleus placement at 2; 1 At age 2;1, Hannah cannot use nucleus placement in a systematic phonological way because she is only just beginning to acquire the intonational concept of a nucleus. Many of her utterances do not contain an auditorily distinct nucleus but consist of a series of two or more lexical items that receive the same amount of stress. This means that Hannah realises every word stress in an utterance and has not yet acquired sentence-level stress. In German, 13 of her 37 two-word utterances and 7 of her 13 three-word utterances show stress on every lexical item (examples 168 to 170). (168) /\du: 'das 'is 'hap \hana du das ist hab Hannah (169) 'das -de:.ni? das geht nicht (170) 'kaina,aua keinaua (you this is have Hannah) (this doesn 't work) (no ouch) The same applies to English: 4 of her 6 two-word utterances and all of her three-word utterances consist of a concatenation of equally stressed words, as can be seen in examples 171 and 172. (171)/won 'mai 'li/pa want my slippers (172) 'bu:t /on boot on These examples illustrate that nearly all of Hannah's words receive stress in this early phase. Reasons are obviously that her vocabulary is so small that she does not use function words yet. Thus, because of the lack of intervening unstressed syllables, her communication appears to be a concatenation of words that are all stressed. In this telegraphic style of speech, no auditory impression of a nucleus can be realised. Unstressed words in Hannah's speech can only be found in formulaic or repeated utterances. Formulaic utterances are strings of words that are assumed to be stored and accessed as a single unanalysed entry in the mental lexicon (Peters 1983; Kaltenbacher 1990). They are especially frequent in Hannah's English speech where she often repeats

116 106 utterances by her mother or recites parts of poems or songs. (173) is an example for a repeated utterance, (174) and (175) for a line from songs. (173) [2; 1 ] M: Say please Mummy do it up. H: ja,mami dua V\p yes Mummy do it up (174) [2;1],fi baun,tedi five brown teddies (175) [2;2],fa:mas,ini,den farmer's in his den In non-formulaic utterances, where Hannah produces utterance-final stress this cannot be classified as a nucleus, because it is not productive, i.e. she does not use nucleus placement in a phonological way. Rather, specific lexical items seem to be inseparably associated with stress. In German, the lexical item auch (too, as well) is always associated with much stress (examples 176 and 177). However, examples (178) and (179) also show that there is no deaccenting of the subsequent words so that the stressed syllable cannot be called a nucleus. (176) das \aux das auch (177) da \aux da auch (178) mama N-aux /kufn Mama auch cushion (179) das 'au,gel \sa das auch gel so (this too) (there too) (Mummy too cushion) (this too - tag -so) Negation words receive much stress as well (examples 180 to 182), also in mixed utterances (183). No such association could be found for English words. An equivalent of auch does not exist yet in Hannah's English speech, and she uses German negation words in English. Again, stress is clearly associated with the word and no subsequent adjustment in terms of deaccenting within the intonational phrase is carried out. (180) hap,kaina,aua hab keine aua (181) / nain \das nein das (182) 'ni?,hana nicht Hannah (183) \nain wo:m,tau:s nein warm juice (have no ouch) (no this) (not Hannah) (no warm juice) The above utterances provide strong evidence for the claim that Hannah produces stress predominately on the word level. Examples (168) to (172) show that stress is frequently associated with every word of Hannah's early utterances. (173) to (175) illustrate her use of stress in fixed positions of formulaic utterances. In the case of auch, nein and kein ((176) to (183)), stress constitutes an inseparable property of the word, not the sentence. Since the

117 107 international concept of a nucleus involves stress distribution on a sentence level, Hannah clearly has not acquired it yet. One instance of the emergence of phonological use of nucleus placement, however, can be found in Hannah's early speech. There is a tendency for her to use it in order to assign focus. In the utterances below, Hannah expresses contrast or insistence by an early nucleus placement. (184) \mama zirjn Mama singen (185) \da: ge:n da gehen (186) \ai kukir) I cooking (Mummy sing) (there go) In an unmarked condition, these utterances would normally receive the nucleus on the second word. This early nucleus placement is applied systematically by Hannah in order to achieve a contrastive meaning Phonetic production of stress How does stress, which Hannah achieves on an auditory level, correlate with the phonetic parameters pitch, length and intensity? Initial stress on disyllabic words is achieved by both high pitch and high intensity. Figure 23 shows the pitch height of the stressed and the unstressed vowels in three of Hannah's renditions of the word music. Figure 24 shows the correspondent levels of intensity. Clearly, initial stress is associated with both high pitch and high intensity. Figure 23: F0 height (in Hz) of the vowels [u] and [i] (measured at the mid-point) in three of Hannah's productions of music at 2;1.

118 108 Figure 24: The intensity (in rms) of the vowels [u] and [i] (measured at the mid-point) in three of Hannah's productions of music at 2;1. This is also the case for Hannah's productions of the German words machen (make) and Papa (Daddy), as can be taken from the first row of table 14. The F0 height in Hz and the intensity in rms for the mid-point of the vowel are given. In both cases, the auditory impression of stress is achieved by a simultaneous drop in pitch height and intensity: In Hannah's rendition of the word machen, pitch height falls from Hz on the first 'ma xan (make) pa pa (Daddy) F0 (Hz) intensity (rms) F0 (Hz) intensity (rms) F0 (Hz) intensity (rms) Table 14: Combinations of pitch intensity on the lexical items machen, Papa and music produced by Hannah at 2;1. syllable to Hz on the second one. Equally, the intensity drops from 7.9 to 1.2. In the word Papa, the vowel has a pitch height of 500 Hz on the first and on the second syllable, and intensity drops from 28 to 22. However, as rows 2 and 3 of table 14 illustrate, word stress is unstable in Hannah's speech at 2; 1. Sometimes pitch and intensity of the second syllable are higher than that on the first (machen in row 2 and 3). In the case of Papa in row 2, pitch height does not vary perceptibly but intensity increases from the stressed to the unstressed syllable. There is no systematic use of length for the production of stress. A vowel in a stressed syllable is not systematically longer than when it is produced in an unstressed syllable. The production of fixed stress in formulaic utterances or with specific words is also created by an increase in pitch and intensity. In summary, for the production of word stress, Hannah

119 109 shows only limited control over the phonetic parameters pitch and intensity. They always vary in concert and cannot be controlled separately. There is some very subtle phonetic evidence for the emergence of sentence-level stress and the phonological concept of a nucleus in Hannah's speech at 2;1. In utterances that consist of a concatenation of equally stressed lexical items, the last one is sometimes marked by a rise in pitch as figures 25 and 26 show. des is hap Han nah Figure 25: F0 height at the midpoint of each vowel in Hannah's utterance ['das 'is 'hap \hana] "des is hab Hannah" ("this is have Hannah") at 2;1. In [das is hap hana] (this is have Hannah), the F0 of the stressed vowel [a] in Hannah is higher than the preceding one of hab. In fact, the falling line of F0 across the utterance is reversed on the last lexical item, which constitutes phonetic evidence for a marking of a nucleus by a rise in pitch. Since it is still achieved on a word level rather than a sentence level, the term "pre-nucleus" shall be used here. Figure 26: F0 height at the midpoint of each vowel in Hannah's utterance [won mai 'li/pa] "want my slippers" at 2;1.

120 110 The same holds true for the utterance [won mai 'li/pa] ("want my slippers") depicted in figure 26: The stressed syllable slip of the last lexical item shows the highest F0 in the overall rising line of the utterance. In the German example (figure 25), the pre-nucleus is associated with the highest intensity of the utterance; in the English example this is not the case. There is no other evidence for the emergence of a nucleus concept in Hannah's speech at 2;1. Distinct pitch movement is as likely on the vowels of unstressed syllables as on those of stressed ones. This is probably also due to the lack of physical control of pitch production. In summary, as described above, at 2;1 Hannah does not have a phonological category of nucleus yet because nearly all of the lexical items she produces receive heavy word stress. Nucleus production would involve the non-realisation of some of these word stresses and a distribution of stress on a sentence level. A first rudimentary use of stress placement with focussing can be observed in the systematic stress placement on the first word of contrastive two-word utterances Production of nuclei at 2;6 At 2;6, Hannah begins to produce stress on a sentence level. This is reflected in two phenomena. Firstly, particular words such as the German auch or negation words, which were always associated with stress at 2;1, now can also be produced without stress. Secondly, Hannah does not realise all word stresses anymore. Her speech now consists of a series of stressed and unstressed syllables and thus appears rhythmic and more fluent. Overall, her speech is faster: A comparison of the lexical items des (colloquial form of das) and noch at 2;1 and 2;6 shows that her vowels are shorter at 2;6 (table 15). age length of [a] in des length of [D] in noch 2; sec to 0.13 sec 0.16 sec 2; sec 0.11 sec Table 15: Length of the vowels [a] and [D] in the lexical items des (das) and noch in Hannah's speech at 2;1 and 2;6. Her ability to suppress some of the word stresses of an utterance contributes to the fact that the majority of her utterances at 2;6 have perceptible nuclei. On a phonetic level, the production of these nuclei is very similar to their production at 2;1. In German, Hannah frequently produces nuclear stress by using exceptionable pitch height. Her use of intensity is more subtle. There may be louder vowels in words preceding the nucleus, but, after a H*+L nucleus, following words are quieter. In English, the nucleus is most often associated with an increase in intensity. Some, but not all vowels of high intensity also show high pitch. 1 In one utterance, only high pitch but not high intensity marks the nucleus. However, 1 Due to the enormous length of vowels and considerable rises of F0 within them (e.g. from 308 to 395 Hz on the [e] of messy) the highest point is often not reached at the mid-point but at the right edge of the vowel.

121 Ill distinct pitch movement is not limited to nuclei in Hannah's speech at 2;6. There is also much pitch movement on unstressed, non-final syllables such as what in "what is the problem" (426 to 461 Hz) and zu in "nehme sie zu Bett" (take her/them to bed) (405 to 355 Hz). In English, furthermore, the vowels of stressed words show an increase in length. Wiping as a nucleus shows the vowel lengths of [ai] at 0.22 sec and 0.13 sec. The respective values for renditions as unstressed vowels are 0.11 sec and 0.12 sec. The same applies to got in the utterance "I got you as well." As an unstressed vowel, [D] is 0.07 sec long; in a stressed syllable it is 0.13 to 0.28 sec long. This indicates that Hannah, in some cases, is beginning to use length for the production of nuclei. The beginning of phonological use of nucleus placement can be seen in utterances that Hannah repeats with variable nucleus positions. Examples 187 to 192 show that within the same utterance the nucleus can appear in different positions. (187) \das da das da (this there) (188) das /da: das da (this there) (189) ai \gdtju: I got you (190) ai,got ju:s,wel I got you as well (191) wot IS3 /pkoblem what is the problem (192) vot IS9 /pkoblem,dedi what is the problem Daddy These utterances are taken from play sequences with her father, whom she imitates and who responds with the same utterance. Furthermore, stress is increasingly associated with the focus of a sentence. The following examples show that Hannah uses stress in order to mark contrastivity: (193) vo:s /"main,kuxa wo ist mein Kuchen (194) its \ju:,pkoblem it's your problem (195) 15 va: on /\mai.ovando: ich war on my ovendoor (where is my cake) (I was on my ovendoor) However, these contrasted lexical items do not receive nuclear stress yet as this would involve the deaccenting of the following words. In summary, Hannah begins to use stress on a sentence level at 2;6. This enables her to produce an alternation of unstressed and stressed words and consequently also nuclei. In a very rudimentary form, nucleus placement is associated with focus and is used for the purpose of contrastivity. However, phonetically, the deaccenting of subsequent words is not realised yet. On the phonetic level, pre-nuclei in German are associated with high pitch and high intensity. In English, intensity seems to play a more important role than pitch. Length

122 112 is also sometimes used for nuclear stress. Distinct pitch movements are not yet restricted to nuclei. The close association of pitch and intensity in many utterances points towards a continued lack of individual physical control. 8.2 Laura: Acquisition from 2;5 to 4; Phonological use of nucleus placement Laura's speech at 2;5 shows cross-linguistic differences in the rate of acquisition of the phonological use of nucleus placement. In her early utterances containing English words and produced in an English context, many instances of stress produced equally on all or nearly all words of an utterance can be observed: (196),i5,bild,bo3t ich build boat (197) 'bilda 'nu: 'boat build a new boat (198) 'nox 'lak 5ok3,la:da noch like Schokolade (199) 'das,main,taua das mein tower (I build boat) (I want more chocolate) (this is my tower) However, some of Laura's longer utterances also contain unstressed words: (200) du: bildan nox Aboa du build-en noch boat (201) du /»bo:t bau du,bo:t du boat bau du boat (202) 'du: bau big,boat du bau big boat (203) da,bilda lag \boat du build-e long boat (you build still boat) (you boat build you boat) (you build big boat) (you build a long boat) In purely German utterances, in contrast, a concatenation of equally stressed words is rare. However, Laura sometimes uses this type of speech for specific linguistic purposes such as special emphasis in repeated utterances: (204) 'mast 'nox Jbko,la:da möchte noch Schokolade (205) 'bu:,kukan Buch gucken (206) 'das 'da:f 15 \ha:ban das darf ich haben (I want more chocolate) ([I want to] read book) (this 1 may have) The so-called telegraphic style sometimes still occurs. This, however, is clearly a result of the small number of words per utterance and not due to the lack of a phonological rule to realise stress on a sentence level as the following example shows:

123 113 (207) /"du m05st \kafe: /»du: \kafe: du möchst Kaffee II Du Kaffee (you want coffee II you coffee) Here, the second utterance cannot be cited as evidence for the lack of ability to produce unstressed words because Laura demonstrates in the immediately preceding utterance that she can produce unstressed words such as [m09st]. The production of long utterances with a nucleus and a lot of unrealised word stresses is fairly frequent in German: (208) main,tu:am is ka\put maxt mein Turm ist kaputt gemacht (209) vil \aux br) big bo:t will auch long big boat (210) ei \kukan das au ei gucken das auch (211) na 'du: maxt,aux mal tinrjkan nee, Du möcht auch mal trinken (212) '15 mus,au am,keks ich muß auch ein Keks (my tower was broken) (want too long big boat) (hey, look that too) (no you want also drink) (I must also a biscuit) Here, utterances (208) to (211) illustrate that Laura realises the deaccenting of words following the nucleus. This is further indication for the presence of stress on a sentence level. From 2;5 on, Laura uses nucleus placement for focussing. In the two-word utterances below she shows what could also be found for Hannah: The use of stress in order to mark contrast and emphasis. (213) \main tedibe:a mein Teddybär (214) \des main das mein (my teddy) (this mine) In syntactically more complex utterances, this is usually combined with topicalisation (movement to the right (example 215) or the left (examples 216 to 219)) and deaccenting as illustrated in examples (215) to (219). (215) est \blu:man di pfeat ißt Blumen die Pferd (216) ain \bau maxan via ein Baum machen wir (217) mit dan \ftift hat S15 angama:lt mit den Stift hat sich angemalt (218) da \ku: wil di papa Kaidan die Kuh will die Papa reiten (219) mit dan \tiairan vil das.spiüan mit den Tieren will das spielen (eats flowers the horse) (a tree we make) (with the pencil she's painted herself) (the cow the Daddy wants to ride) (with the animals she wants to play) Further evidence for Laura's acquisition of a phonological use of nucleus placement comes from German clauses containing modals. As discussed in section 3.1, unmarked nucleus

124 114 placement in simple German sentences typically falls on the last noun, which usually coincides with the last word. Some such examples in Laura's speech are given below. (220) via,bauan am,haus wir bauen ein Haus (221) ma maxan ainan Wo:tes wir machen ein rotes (222),des sin \apfal das sind Äpfel (we build a house) (we make a red one) (these are apples) In sentences containing modals or auxiliaries, however, an infinitive or a participle appears after the last noun. In adult speech, the nucleus placement strategy is kept, i.e. it is still on the last noun, which is then in the penultimate position of the utterance. Laura realises this from 2;8 on. The examples below show that the nucleus is on the noun. In the tail, postnuclear accents can occur as in utterance (225). They are, however, not associated with distinct pitch movement. (223) mus Ahenda vajan muß Hände waschen (224) / haban aina \enda mikapvax haben eine Ente mitgebracht (225) ia,haban ain ain /stu:l mitga.p h iraxt ihr haben ein ein Stuhl mitgebracht (must wash hands) (have brought a duck) (you have brought a chair) Thus, nucleus placement has clearly become a phonological concept associated with the linguistic function of focussing. In English, modals do not change the word order and the last noun is still the last word in the utterance. Thus, these utterances cannot indicate whether nucleus placement is used productively: (226),kan ju si: a \ka: can you see a car (227),kan ju si: a 'm3:/meit can you see a mermaid (228) ai,wanta hi:a \lo:wa I want to hear Laura In general, Laura's acquisition of the phonological use of nucleus placement proceeds with cross-linguistic disparity. The development in English lags behind considerably. Here, deaccenting cannot be observed even as late as 3; 10: (229) [3;4],nau jets /Nnot a,wabit no that's not a rabbit (230) ai 'wont mai,dami I want my dummy (231) an /ai gona meik da \jets /gwi:n and I gonna make the that green (232) \daznt vi:li \fiks doesn't really fix

125 115 (233) unt vjats daznt vi:ali \fiks and that doesn't really fix (234) [3;6] jets,not a bik \bo:l that's not a big ball (235),nou jets a Abaind sneik no that's a bind (?) snake (236) ai,ni:d mai,prstl I need my pistol (237) [3;10]/"ai /bai bai 'kama,ba:z I buy buy cameras This, combined with the above illustrated (utterances (196) to (199)) predominance of stressed words in Laura's early utterances containing English words, results in the impression of a much slower speech rate in English than in German. The use of contrastive focus in English is only evident from 3;8 on: (238) a lidl \pleit...\nau nau,jets a \bik plert a little plate no no that's a big plate (239) ai Nwant nota.spotpuzl ai wont \jat I want not a spot puzzle I want that (240) dan wi go: den \ju: gsu.haum then we go then you go home (241) kan \ju: si: a.flans can you see a flower The phonetic production of nuclei The phonetic production of Laura's nuclei at the ages 2;5, 3; 1 and 4;3 is summarised in table 16. At 2;5, Laura shows a strong tendency to associate nuclear stress with an increase in pitch (60% of all nuclei) although this may be combined with an increase in intensity (28%). GERMAN 2;5 pitch (+intensity) ENGLISH 3;1 intensity (+pitch) 4;3 pitch+intensity pitch+intensity Table 16: The phonetic parameters employed by Laura for the production of German and English nuclei at 2;5, 3;1 and 4;3. Figure 27 illustrates an example of a German utterance by Laura aged 2;5, in which the nucleus is marked by pitch alone. Intensity is lower on the nuclear syllable (13) than on the following one (16), but pitch drops from Hz to Hz from the stressed to the unstressed syllable.

126 116 pitch (Hz) intensity (rms) \kuk du Figure 27: The use of pitch and intensity in the utterance [\kuk du] by Laura aged 2;5. The nucleus is on kuk. Since Laura does not produce any nuclei in English at 2;5 and they only emerge systematically at 3;1, table 16 shows the phonetic production of Laura's English nuclei at 3;1. Here, Laura tends to produce nuclear stress by an increase in intensity (50%) or a combination of high intensity and high pitch (30%). Figure 28 shows an utterance by Laura aged 3;1, in which the nucleus is marked by an increase in intensity alone. pitch (Hz) intensity (rms) where Figure 28: The use of pitch and intensity in the utterance "Where is the \tea" by Laura aged 2;5. The nucleus is on tea. At 2;5 and 3;1, when Laura uses pitch for the marking of a nucleus, F0 movement within the nuclear vowel is often great, and the highest point is frequently reached at the right edge of the vowel. The auditory impression is nevertheless that of higher pitch in the entire vowel. In general, pitch movement on the nucleus is quite pronounced compared to pitch movement on heads as can be seen in the following examples. Heads receive only either high or low level stress, whereas pitch movement on the nucleus is often realised as compound nuclei (utterances 242 and 243): (242) di,baum ain Ahaus die bauen ein Haus (243) di bau am Asne: man die bauen ein Schneeman (244) 'sdsm bau am \haus Adam baut ein Haus (245) 'das da:f 15 \ha:ban das darf ich haben (they build a house) (they build a snowman) (Adam builds a house) (this I may have) However, there is very little evidence for complete physical control of the phonetic production of nuclei by Laura at 2;5 and 3;1. First, distinct pitch movements are not restricted to stressed syllables but also occur on unstressed ones. Second, neither increased

127 117 pitch nor increased loudness are produced exclusively for nuclei. Many of Laura's utterances begin on an exceptionally high pitch and with high loudness. Finally, not all of her utterances show clearly perceptible nuclei. In utterances where a nucleus is hard to determine on an auditory basis there is often contradicting increase of pitch and loudness on the phonetic level. This might take on the form that the nucleus shows the highest pitch of all words in an utterance, whereas another word shows the highest intensity. At 4;3, Laura produces nuclear stress with a combination of increased intensity and a distinct jump in pitch in both languages (see table 16). Differences between the phonetic production of rising and falling nuclei become apparent at this age. Rises are not necessarily associated with high intensity of the stressed vowel but rather begin with a distinct initial jump down in pitch. Table 17 illustrates this for three of Laura's utterances: children /doing der /mama heisst /Peggy Table 17: Jump down for a rising pitch accent. Numbers refer to pitch height in Hz. The rising nucleus in each example falls on the second word. The first measurement of pitch in table 17 refers to the FO height in Hz of the vowel in the word preceding the nucleus. It can be seen that it is considerably higher than the vowel of the nuclear syllable, whose pitch height in Hz is given as the second number. In summary, Laura reliably produces nuclei at 2;5 in German and shows some phonological use of nucleus placement for purposes such as contrast and emphasis. From 2;7 on, she shows deaccenting of words following the nucleus and produces nuclei in the penultimate position of utterances with a verb-end position. Laura's acquisition of nucleus placement in English lags behind: At 2;5, she still produces utterances with equally stressed lexical items, and only begins to use nucleus placement for contrastive focus at 3; 10. On the phonetic level, no cross-linguistic differences between the production of nuclei can be determined. At 2;5 respectively 3;1, the phonetic production of nuclei is very unstable in both languages with a preference for marking them with pitch in German and with intensity in English. At 4;3, Laura realises nearly every nuclear stress with high intensity and a distinct jump in pitch in both English and German. However, in the case of rises there is a distinct jump downwards at the beginning of the nuclear syllable. Cross-linguistic differences in the phonetic production of nuclei cannot be observed. 8.3 Adam: Acquisition from 3;6 to 5; Phonological use of nucleus placement Adam's speech at 3;6 shows that he produces stress on a sentence-level in both German and English. However, the acquisition of the phonological use of nucleus placement in English seems to lag behind that of German. Whereas in German only few utterances show more

128 118 stress on words than an adult utterance would have, in English Adam still realises a fair number of "unnecessary" word stresses. Examples (246) and (247) illustrate this: (246) wivta,bild a 'fleg,an it we have to build a flag on it (247) wi bild a 'bik \boat we build a big boat The transition from word-level stress to sentence-level stress is possibly not quite completed yet in English. In German, an early nucleus is already associated with the deaccenting of the following words. Adam shows many early nuclei with emphasis: (248) 'i main 'j"tu:l kaput gamaxt hab ich mein Stuhl kaputt gemacht hab (I have broken my chair) Another instance of phonological use of nucleus placement can be seen in German sentences with a noun in the penultimate position of the utterance (utterances containing modals or past participles). In the examples below, the nucleus stays on the last noun: (249) [3;7] o:s da \anhega abgakiraxt oh ist der Anhänger abgekracht (oh the trailer has broken) (250) Ada: da iz am 'bux gale:sn da da ist ein Buch gelesen (there there is a book read) (251) [3;11] amaizn \da:f ni,jtira:sa laufan Ameisen darf nicht Straße laufen (ants must not run street) (252) [4;00] di di,ky:a dafns,bet sla:fn die die Kühe darfen's Bett schlafen (the the cows may sleep bed) (253) [4;4] vail /main Akaukatja kaputga.garjn is weil mein cowcatcher kaputtgegangen ist (because my cow catcher is broken) Adam uses nucleus placement in both languages to mark contrastive focus. (254) [3;6] and a \big fij svel and a big fish as well (255) [3; 10] hias da \khko:sa vasa/fal unt hias ti k h laina Yvasafal hier ist die große Wasserfall und hier ist die kleine Wasserfall (here is the big waterfall and here is the small waterfall) (256) [3; 11] zonan sin /hais unt... / wint sint \kalt /gel Sonnen sind heiß und... Wind sind kalt gel (suns are hot and... wind are cold -tag) (257) [4;2] siz a 'nais /laian this a nice lion However, utterance 249 also exemplifies the variability and instability of Adam's phonological system. Whereas the adjective große (big) receives stress with the function of contrastive focus, the adjective kleine (small) is not stressed. Instead, the nucleus falls on the old information, the noun Wasserfall (waterfall). Thus, in German, Adam does not use nucleus placement systematically yet in order to mark focus on new information. Although

129 119 he usually applies it correctly (examples 258 to 263), there are also examples where he puts the nucleus on old information (examples 264 to 266): (258) A: da:sn \lox da ist ein Loch (there is a Viole) G: Wo' sn Loch?" (where is a hole) A: \da: isn bx da ist ein Loch (Slhere is a hole) (259) G: Warum ist die denn schmutzig?" (why is it dirty) A: ta habt \vais is.smutsi? da habt weiß ist schmutzig (there is \white is dirty) (260) G: Dürfen die anderen Tiere nicht fressen?" (aren 7 the other animals allowed to feed) A: da /da:f di Yvaisa feat.firesn der darf die weiße Pferd fressen (it may feed, the \white horse) (261) G: Und die Tiere schwimmen jetzt alle im Wasser?" (and the animals are all swimming in the water) A: da tiaira svim \o:bn in.vasa die Tiere schwimmen oben im Wasser (the animals swim \on the water) (262) G: Was suchst Du denn?" (what are you looking for) A: 15 su:xn \ha:n ich such'n Hahn (lam looking for a \cock) (263) G: Was machen die denn auf dem Dach?" (what are they doing on the roof) A: di di Kepa\tri:an aufn.dax. die die reparieren auf dem Dach (they they repair on the roof) (264) G: Wo geht das Pferd hin?" (where is the horse going) A: ds,ge:tn di pfeat da ge:tn \feat da,ge:tn,feat \hin de geht'n die Pferd die geht'n Pferd da geht Pferd hin (there,goes the horse there goes\horse there,goes,horse) (265) G: Wo reiten die denn jetzt hin?" (where are they riding to) A: di Waitn jetst hin die reiten jetzt hin (they are \riding now) (266) G: Und was macht das weiße Pferdchen?" (and what is the white horse-dim 2 A: da vaisa \feat9an maxtas ak tans gans \b0'.za der weiße Pferdchen machtes ach ganz ganz böse (the white\ horse -dim does [particle] very very \naughty) doing) Systematic nucleus placement for marking of contrastive focus in English is well established now (267) an /"jets a \do:s... eas a \gwi:n do:a and that's a doors there's a green door 2 "-dim" stands for a suffix marking the diminutive form.

130 120 (268) ai no ai bildan da / e:pot an ju: 'bildan da \taon I no I build-en the airport and you build-en the town (269) am vit \gwi:n bviks... an vit /*elou bvikswel er with green bricks... and with yellow bricks as well (270) bikos ai,daunt got a Vbik won ai got a Vsmo:l won because I don't got a big one I got a small one and, at 3; 10, the focussing of new information is usually signalled by nucleus placement as well: (271) E: Where's the airport? A: \e:as da.e:apot there's the airport (272) E: What happens then? A: dan /xapan \bvoukt then happen broked (273) E: Where have all the keys gone? A: o:l da \/"ki:s gon aywei all the keys gone away (274) E: What are you building? A: ai bildan ai bildan a Ve:pot I builden I builden a airport In summary, at 3;6, stress is firmly established on a sentence-level in German and mainly so in English as well. There, sometimes too many word stresses are realised and a slight tendency not to deaccent words following the nucleus can be observed. From 3; 10 on, the phonological use of nucleus placement becomes apparent in both languages: It is used for the linguistic functions of marking contrastive focus and the differentiation of new versus old information. However, the phonological system is still unstable and errors do occur The phonetic production of nuclei The phonetic realisation of nuclei by Adam shows some variability at 3;6. In both German and English, the majority of nuclei is associated with high pitch and high intensity. Figures Figure 29: The F0 height (in Hz) of the vowels in Adam's utterance [a \big spot svel] at 3;6.

131 and 30 illustrate the F0 height (in Hz) and the correspondent level of intensity (in rms) of Adam's utterance [a \big spot svel] ("a big spot as well") at 3;6. From figure 29 can be seen that the nucleus on big is associated with a jump up in pitch. In fact, the nucleus has the highest F0 of the entire utterance. Figure 30 illustrates that this is also the case for the rms intensity of the vowels: rms rms Figure 30: The rms intensity of the vowels in Adam's utterance [a \big spot svel] at 3;6. The [i] on big is the loudest of all vowels of the utterance. This marking of the nucleus by high pitch and high intensity also applies to Adam's German utterances, as illustrated in figures 31 and 32. Figure 31 illustrates the F0 height Figure 31: The F0 height (in Hz) of the vowels in Adam's utterance [ka\put ij"] at 3;6. of all vowels in Adam's utterance [ka\put ij]. The pitch height of the vowel /u/ in [put] is considerably higher than the pitch height of the preceding vowel /a/. Equally, the intensity of the vowel /u/ is higher than that of the preceding /a/ (figure 32).

132 122 rms 40 -i 10-0 T r 1 ka putt isch Figure 32: The intensity (in rms) of the vowels in Adam's utterance [ka\put ij] at 3;6. At 3;6, distinct pitch movement, high pitch and high intensity are used regularly for the production of nuclei in both languages. Other variants of the phonetic correlates of nuclei are listed in table 18. It can be seen that across all ages and both languages, the combination of at least two phonetic parameters is more common than the use of only one for nuclear stress production. Adam's nuclei are usually accompanied by a distinct pitch movement (top row). Increase in intensity alone only occurs in German; increase in pitch and length alone only in English. The combination of pitch and length is relatively frequent in English (see fifth row). Pitch plus intensity is the most frequent production strategy for nuclear stress in both languages. 3;6 4;11 5;6 5;6 German English German English distinct pitch movement increase in intensity 2 1 increased length 1 increased pitch height 1 1 pitch and length pitch, intensity and length 3 4 pitch and intensity Table 18: Absolute number of the different types of phonetically realised pitch accents by Adam at 3;6 and 5;6. As can be seen from table 18, at age 3;6, Adam does not use the phonetic parameter length systematically for the production of nuclei. Table 19 compares the length of some vowels in nuclear and in unstressed syllables. In order to avoid confusion with final syllable lengthening, only non-final nuclear vowels were measured and compared to the same vowel in other utterances in unstressed non-nuclear position.

133 123 Adam's vowel duration, especially in unstressed position, is very variable. There are tendencies for nuclear vowels to be longer, but as yet the picture is unclear. At 5;6, length becomes an important phonetic parameter for the production of nuclei in English (see table 18 above). As for Laura, the typical rise is associated with an initial jump down in pitch at the beginning of the vowel compared to the preceding vowel and a subsequent distinct rise. The typical fall involves a jump up in pitch compared to the preceding vowel or a rise within the vowel up to its right edge. Vowel Word Nucleus Unstressed D: bo:t boils vo:dwaub 0.24 go:n D stopt A Aksident WAn i big fis in litl 0.08 fiks u: du:ig hu: e jet jelo getiq 0.08 revrend Table 19: The length (in sec) of some of Adam's vowels in nuclear and unstressed position at 3;6. In summary, Adam's phonetic production of nuclear stress is not stable at either 3;6 or 5;6. He shows a tendency to associate both an increase in pitch and intensity with it. However, other combinations of the phonetic parameters are also possible. Slight cross-linguistic differences are suggested by Adam's preference to use length more frequently in English than in German and to use intensity only exclusively in German.

134 9. The acquisition of the system of pitch This chapter presents the results concerning the acquisition of the system of pitch by Hannah (9.1), Laura (9.2) and Adam (9.3) on both the phonological and the phonetic level. 9.1 Hannah: Acquisition from 2;1 to 2; Phonological use of pitch Table 20 shows the inventory of pitch accent categories produced by Hannah at 2;1. The columns indicate the relative frequency (absolute numbers in brackets) of the phonological pitch accent categories fall (H*+L), fall-rise (H*+L H%), rise (L*+H), high level (H*) and low level (L*) Hannah produces in recording HI. The first column gives the percentages for German, the second for her English utterances. Since the previous chapter showed that, at this stage, Hannah does not use nucleus placement in a phonological sense yet, no differentiation between nuclear and pre-nuclear pitch accents was made. German English fall, H*+L 46% (72) 53% (17) fall-rise, H*+L H% 7% (11) 6% (2) rise, L*+H 10% (17) 6% (2) high level, H* 16% (25) 22% (7) low level, L* 20% (31) 12% (4) Table 20: The absolute frequency of the various pitch accent categories produced by Hannah at 2; 1. As described in the previous chapter, Hannah realises nearly every word stress in an utterance. Table 20 shows that her German as well as her English words are most likely to be associated with a falling (H*+L) pitch accent. Furthermore, the frequency of H* and L* pitch accents exceeds that of rising (L*+H) and fall-rising (H*+L H%) ones in both languages. There is some evidence that Hannah, at this early age, produces pitch accents in a phonological way. Table 21 explores the systematic variation of pitch accent types with length of utterance. One-word utterances constitute about half of all her utterances in both languages at 2;1. Table 21 shows the relative distribution of pitch accents in Hannah's oneword utterances in German and English. The H*+L pitch accent with a H% boundary tone is significantly more often associated with one-word utterances than longer utterances in both languages (compare table 20). In English, it does not appear in any longer utterances at all. The rising pitch accent, on the other hand, is not very common in one-word utterances,

135 125 and none occur in English. In German, Hannah hardly ever produces H* pitch accents in one-word utterances. In English, they are equally likely in utterances of any length. German English H*+L 55% (34) 62% (8) H*+L H % 11% (7) 15% (2) L*+H 8% (5) H* 3% (2) 23% (3) L* 22% (14) Table 21: Distribution of pitch accent categories in Hannah's German and English one-word utterances at 2;1. Conversely, Hannah does not produce any English one-word utterances with a L* pitch accent, whereas they are far more frequent in German one-word utterances than longer ones. Thus, a tendency can be established for one-word utterances to be predominately associated with fall-rises and falls and, in German, with low-level pitch accents. Longer utterances tend to be associated with rises and falls and, in German, high-level pitch accents. There is also a systematic use of specific pitch accents varying with their position in the utterance. Hannah shows a tendency to produce rising (L*+H) pitch accents in non-final position. Of the 12 German two-word or longer utterances containing a L*+H pitch accent, only three have it on an utterance-final word; nine rises can be found utterance-initial or on a medial lexical item. Similarly, there are only two instances of an utterance-final H* in German. This seems to point towards a strategy of Hannah's to associate the end of an utterance with a falling or low pitch in German. The same applies to her English utterances at 2; Marking of the communicative situation by pitch Table 22 shows the association of utterance-final pitch patterns produced by Hannah with various communicative situations at 2;1 and 2;2, separated by languages. The first column lists the absolute numbers of pitch accent type for German (G), the second for English (E). G E G E G E G E G E statement request question contrast insistence fall rise low level high level 1 rise-fall 4 1 Table 22: Types of pitch accents produced by Hannah in various communicative situations at 2;1 and 2;2 in German (G) and English (E).

136 126 The label "statement" includes utterances such as comments, replies and utterances accompanying a pointing gesture; "requests" are uttered in situations where Hannah expresses a wish or tries to attract someone's attention. The category "question" was defined according to the criteria described in section "Contrast" comprises protest, and "insistence" refers to utterances repeated several times in order to lend force to them. Clearly, Hannah uses distinct utterance-final pitch accents in systematic variation with communicative intent or situation. Statements are characterised by falls or low levels, which also tends to be the case for requests and insistence. Questions are clearly marked intonationally by showing relatively frequent rises. Contrastive utterances do not seem to be systematically associated with a particular type of pitch accent. There is no clear systematic marking of the communicative situation "request". Table 22 shows that it is associated with a variety of pitch accents. However, rise-falls can only be found in utterances that constitute requests. No cross-linguistic differences can be found. This phonological use of pitch can already be observed in Hannah's two-word utterances at 2;1. Table 23 shows the systematic association of utterance-final pitch patterns and communicative situations in her two-word utterances. Because of the small number of English examples and the lack of cross-linguistic differences, German and English are not presented separately. age request statement questions H*+L (1) H*+L (3) L*+H (3) 2;1 L* (4) L* (1) H*+L H% (1) L*+H (1) Table 23: Types of pitch accents produced in utterance-final position in various communicative situations in Hannah's two-word utterances at 2; 1. Some clear associations between situation and utterance-final pitch pattern can be seen in Hannah's two-word statements. They are always characterised by either a fall or a low level pitch accent. Equally, Hannah's two-word questions show either rises or fall-rises. Requests have nearly always falls or low levels, and Hannah only occasionally produces rises. The other situations occurred so infrequently that trends could not be established. Thus, Hannah seems to use pitch systematically in order to signal intentions or to characterise various situational contexts already at 2;1. Statements and the expression of wishes are usually characterised by a fall or a low level, whereas questions are generally accompanied by a rising or fall-rising nucleus Hannah's acquisition of the systematic use of pitch in questions The development of Hannah's marking of questions with pitch can be taken from table 24. In the five transcribed recordings with Hannah, she produced a total of 44 questions; 31 in German and 13 in English. Of these, 10 were selected for an acoustic analysis. Table 24 shows Hannah's acquisition of the intonation of questions from 2;1 to 2;6. It can be seen that Hannah produces the same question words in the same order in English and German, with only a little lag in English. At 2;1, nearly all of her questions in both languages show

137 127 fall-rises as utterance-final pitch movements. The only exception is a simple rise in GERMAN 2;1 2;2 2;3 2;6 question wo was, wer words pitch H*+L H% w accents L*+H w L* H*+L w Syntax verb end V2 w ENGLISH question where what words pitch H*+L H% w accents L*+H w L* w Syntax non-finite Table 24: The acquisition of the intonation of questions by Hannah in German and English from 2;1 to 2;6. German. From 2;2 on, rising pitch accents are most frequently produced with questions. Two German questions show a low level nucleus, and both of them are wh-questions. The first falling pitch accent produced with a question appears in German at 2;3. It is used to mark a wh-question. Thus, Hannah always marks her yes/no questions with a rising final pitch movement. This reflects a clear differentiation between the question types yes/no- and wh-question. There are no cross-linguistic differences in Hannah's acquisition of the intonation of questions The phonetic production of pitch accents This study only yields inconclusive results on Hannah's phonetic production strategy of pitch accents. Table 25 compares Hannah's various phonetic realisations of the L*+H and H*+L pitch accents in final and non-final position for German (italics) and English (bold) at 2;1 and 2;6. It can be seen that at 2;1 the phonetic production of the various pitch accents is very heterogeneous, but some tendencies can be established: In the non-final H*+L and H*, there is an alignment of FO with the right edge of the vowel in open syllables and with the end of the rhyme in closed syllables in both languages. Final L*+H pitch accents are often

138 128 associated with dips in FO in both languages. Unfortunately, numbers for the other pitch accent categories are too small to establish tendencies. It seems that there is no systematic variation between Hannah's languages in terms of pitch accent production at 2;1. At 2;6, most of her H*+L pitch accents in German have a level FO, whereas in English, FO is either aligned with the right edge of the vowel or shows a dip during the vowel. Levels in English pitch accents occur in non-final L*+H or L* accents. At this age, greater differences between Hannah's two languages can be made out, but the tendencies cannot be considered stable. Again, the absolute numbers of stressed vowels that were analysed are so small that it is very difficult to draw any reliable conclusions. at 2;1; German/English H*+L, non-final: H*+L, final: aligned with right edge of vowel (3), level (I), straight aligned with right edge (1) rise mid-vowel (1) fall(l) L*+H, non-final: level (1) L*+H, final: H*, non-final: dip (2), level (1), rise+level (I) dip (1) aligned with right edge (2), aligned with end of syllable (2) aligned with right edge (1) at 2;6; German/English H*+L, non-final: level (3), rise mid-vowel ( 1 ) dip mid-vowel (2), right edge (3), rise+level (1), straight fall (1) H*+L, final: straight fall (1) level+fall (1), dip-rise-fall (1), straight fall (1) L*+H, non-final: rise mid-vowel (1), level (1) level (3) L*+H, final: L*, non-final: dip(l) levelfl) level (1) Table 25: The various phonetic productions of H*+L and L*+H pitch accents in final and non-final position by Hannah at 2;1 and 2;6. (German in italics, English in bold) In summary, Hannah tends to use pitch systematically from 2;1 on. One-word as opposed to longer utterances tend to be associated with specific types of pitch accents. Final pitch accents are more likely to be associated with falls than non-final ones. Furthermore, Hannah shows a clearly differentiated use of pitch for the linguistic purpose of marking

139 129 various communicative situations. Her acquisition of the intonation of questions is parallel in both languages and shows differentiation between question types. However, the phonetic production of the pitch accent categories H*+L and L*+H does not show any stable tendencies. FO movements within the vowels are heterogeneous at 2;1 but show some cross-linguistic differences at 2;6. However, more data are necessary to establish any reliable trends. 9.2 Laura: Acquisition from 2;5 to 4; Phonological use of pitch At 2;5, Laura shows the full inventory of pitch accent categories in German. Table 26 presents the association between various pitch accents produced by Laura at 2;5 and their use in different situational contexts or with different communicative intents. Falls constitute the majority of nuclear pitch patterns in all categories of communicative intent. Requests are mostly associated with falls, although other nuclear patterns occur occasionally. Statements are most often associated with falling or low level nuclei. However, rises, high levels and rise-falls appear infrequently. Questions show some variability of nuclear patterns with falls, rise-falls and even a rise-fall-rise but mainly a majority of falling nuclei. request statement question 2;5 H*+L (35) H*+L (69) H*+L (8) L*+H (2) L*+H (2) H* (4) H* (3) L* (2) L* (3) L*+H L% (5) L*+H L % (2) L*+H L-H% (1) Table 26: Association of situational context and intention with nuclear pitch patterns by Laura at 2;5. Numbers in brackets indicate absolute frequencies. Thus, only statements and requests show a significantly stable association with a specific pitch pattern - in both cases a falling nucleus. Questions are mainly associated with falls and some other nuclear types. It is therefore not determinable whether Laura's pitch movements at 2;5 are systematically associated with context or meaning. First signs of the phonological use of specific pitch accents by Laura can be observed at 2;6. Laura imitates some English questions using a different category of pitch accent than in the input as illustrated in examples (275) and (276) (275) E: \ Look what's the baby dog \doing? L:?Dt,beibi dog Vdu:i: (276) E: \ What's the boy \doing? L: \VDta boi Vdu:ir) (277) E: And.where's the /front?ll And, where's the /back? L: ve:sds /frant

140 130 This suggests that Laura prefers to associate English questions with rising pitch movements. If the input has a falling nuclear pitch movement (examples 275 and 276), she changes it to a fall-rise, otherwise she imitates it (example 277). In German, the particle ja at the end of questions is always associated with a rise, whereas all other utterances by Laura mainly carry falls. The rise is also carried over to the question tag [gel], which is produced from 2;9 on. Phonological use of rises can be seen from 2;7 on, when Laura marks the individual elements of enumeration by rises (examples 278 and 279). This only occurs in English from 3;7 on (examples 281 and 282): (278) [2;7] Svai Sfia /fvnf \be':bi drei vier fünf Baby (279) [3;2] /aino /tovai /kkai /fi:a fymf 'gans \fi:l eins zwei drei vier fünf ganz viel (280) [3;7] /tu: /wan /tu two one two (281) [3; 10] /von /tau /swei,fo: one two three four (282) [4;2] /ketjap /vmaka /mai3nes ketchup vinegar mayonnaise (three four five baby) (one two three four five a lot) At 3;7, the rise is used to signal continuation before an intonational pause: (283) [3;7] dan iz des so/nam dan must du... dann ist des so nehm dann mußt du (then this is so take then you must...) (284) da mus du mit darns hendn /zo maxan dan \zo maxan da mußt du mit deinen Händen so machen dann so machen (then you have to do so with your hands then do so) (285) dea hat mi? 'ga/haut dan hata ga/laxt un 19 \aux der hat mich gehaut dann hat er gelacht und ich auch (he hit me then he laughed and I too) and contrastive focus is marked: (286) [3; 10] ains gahct /"mia unt ains gshost \dia o/ke: eins gehört mir und eins dir ok fone 's mine and one 's yours ok) (287) maxst du / des unt 15,des machst du des und ich des (make you this and I that) In these examples, the rising head and not the nucleus is associated with the focus of the sentence Laura's acquisition of the systematic use of pitch in questions Laura's development of the marking of questions by pitch is illustrated in table 27. In the 26 transcribed recordings, Laura produced a total of 583 questions: 120 in English and 445 in German, with 18 questions containing lexical items or structural elements of both

141 131 languages. Due to the quality of the recordings, only a small part 1 of these questions was selected for an acoustic analysis. In total, there are 115 instrumental analyses of questions by Laura. 2;5 2;6 2;7 2;8 3;0 3;10 GERMAN question words wo, was welches wie, warum wer, wann syntax V2 w nuclear H*+L L% pitch L*+H accents ENGLISH CP w H*+L H% w w question words what where why, which, who syntax SVO " w nuclear H*+T.T.% w W pitch L*+H accents H*+L H% whquestions: L*+H L% Table 27: Laura's acquisition of the intonation in questions from age 2;5 onwards. The production of question words, the state of her syntactic development and the inventory of her nuclear pitch patterns for both German and English. Table 27 gives an overview of Laura's acquisition of questions on various linguistic levels in both German and English. The syntactic development of Laura's questions shows initial 1 There was often background noise, wind, or many voices at once.

142 132 syntactic simplifications (verb-argument structure) in both languages. A comparison of the two languages, however, shows that English lags behind considerably. Whereas Laura produces complex structures such as complementizer phrases (CP) in German by 3;0, she does not do so in English before 3; 10 (see also section 7.2). The sequence of acquisition Laura shows in all linguistic areas is remarkably similar in her two languages. The order of the acquisition of the w- respectively wh-words is the same in German and English: What and where are followed by why, which, and who. Only the pace of acquisition differs. Whereas Laura's acquisition in German is continuous (wo and was are acquired at 2;5, welches appears at 2;6, wie and warum follow at 3;0 and wer and wann are produced at 3;10), she remains on a very early level (just what from 2;5 on) in English for a long time until, at 3;10, a sudden spurt of acquisition occurs with the production of where, why, which and who. This pattern of acquisition in English is true for Laura on all linguistic levels such as syntax (see above), phonology and morphology. Asynchrony in Laura's language acquisition is most striking in her use of nuclear pitch movements. At 2;5, Laura produces only one phonological category of nuclear pitch accents in her German questions: a H*+L. Of her 20 questions, the majority (16) end in a low boundary tone (L%), three give the auditory impression of a fall ending midway, and only one ends in a high tone (H%). Thus, Laura's questions at this point are clearly associated with a final falling pitch movement. This is, however, not due to Laura's inability to produce a L*+H pitch accent. Two questions have them in a prenuclear position: (288) main tedibe:a is vo: L*+H H*+L L% (289) vo:z tedibe.-a L*+H H*+LL% Laura does not produce many English questions at 2;5. There are only two instances of an utterance beginning with what. However, the following [izdes] (is that) cannot be assigned clearly to either German or English. The nuclear pitch accents produced in both cases are H*L. At 2;6, Laura for the first time produces a nuclear L*+H in German questions. However, it is very rare in comparison to the H*+L pitch accent, which is still exclusively associated with a L%. Differentiated use of pitch accents in wh-questions and yes/no questions cannot be observed. In English, most of her six questions are direct imitations of the input. She produces two H*+L pitch accents with H% and three L*+H nuclear pitch accents. Another instance of an asynchronous acquisition in both languages is the emergence of the pitch accent+nucleus combination H*+L plus H% in German. This pattern is firmly established at 3;00 when it is used with the majority of questions - both wh-questions and yes/no questions. In English, it only appears at 3; 10. There, however, Laura also produces another pattern, that of a L*+H pitch accent plus a H*+L nucleus, which is produced exclusively in wh-questions. This pattern never occurs in German. Thus, a clear separation of the phonological systems of intonation in their linguistic use for the marking of questions seems to have been established at 3; 10.

143 133 In summary, Laura's acquisition of the intonation of questions is highly asynchronous. In a situation where the acquisition of one language considerably lags behind the acquisition of the other, opportunities to fill gaps with structures from the further developed language are high. However, Laura does not seem to make use of this option. At 2;7, when she begins to produce a new pattern in German, she does not borrow it in English, but remains there on the previous level. Not before ten months after the establishment of H*+L H% in German does she first produce it in English. Whether her acquisition path reflects her specific bilingual task still awaits confirmation by monolingual data The phonetic production of pitch accents The phonetic realisations of Laura's nuclear H*+L and L*+H pitch accents in both languages at the ages 2;5 and 4;2 are compared in table 28 below. At 2;5, Laura produced only H*+L pitch accents in English (frequencies of English nuclear types appear after the "/"). All of her final (i.e. where the nucleus falls on the last syllable of the utterance) H*+L show a rise of FO within the vowel - a small one on the lexical item tea, and a distinct one on horse (figure 33). As figure 33 illustrates, the fundamental frequency at the beginning of the vowel (marked by the left-hand vertical line) is 450 Hz. It then rises to about 510 Hz 1 i i i r j i i i i r~i i i i T i j i r~r t Figure 33: Laura's phonetic realisation of the H*+L accent on horse. before falling to 300 Hz at the end of the vowel (right-hand vertical line). In non-final (i.e. where one or more unstressed syllables follow the nucleus) H*+L pitch accents, F0 either rises before the drop on a long vowel or stays level before dropping in short vowels. The small numbers of examples unfortunately preclude any conclusion other than that that

144 134 Laura's phonetic realisations of pitch accents in English at this age are highly variable and do not show any systematic tendencies. As can be taken from table 28, in German (values in front of the "/" refer to German), Laura's phonetic realisations of final H*+L pitch accents at 2;5 are equally variable. Out of six instances, three straight falls of FO, one level FO plus subsequent drop, and two rises of FO within the vowel can be observed. The productions do not show systematic variation, and there is no correlation of a particular pattern with vowel length. The non-final H*+L shows a less heterogeneous picture: In the majority of Laura's productions, the rise of FO is aligned with the right edge of the vowel, both on short vowels (as in essen [eat]) and long vowels respectively diphthongs (as in deinen [yours]). Other phonetic realisations include: The peak of the rise within the vowel, a level FO plus subsequent drop, and a rise aligned with the right edge of the syllable. alignment of FO within pitch accent H*+L non-final H*+L final L*+H non-final L*+H final 2;5 right edge 91- str fall 3/2 right edge 3/- dip 21- German/ end/syll 21- rise mid-v 2/2 rightedge 21- English str fall 1/1 lev+fall 1/1 rise mid-v 2/1 dip mid-v 1/- 4;3 rightedge 3/2 right edge 1/1 rise 3/- rise 1 /- German/ mid-v 2/1 str fall 1/1 right edge 1/- level -/I English level 1/- mid-v 1/- level -/3 end/syll -/I level 1/- mid-v -/I lev+fall -/I lev+fall 1/1 lev+fall -/I lev+rise -/I end/syll -/I Table 28: Laura's phonetic realisations of pitch accents in English and German at 2;5 and 4;3. Values for German appear in front of the /, values for English after it. In the production of German final L*+H pitch accents, Laura shows both straight rises and dips of FO within the vowel. In the non-final L*+H, only alignments of the rise with the right edge of the vowel can be observed. In summary, Laura's productions of pitch accents at 2;5 in both English and German are characterised by a great variety. The only tendency that can be made out is the alignment of the FO rise in German non-final H*+L and L*+H pitch accents with the right edge of the vowel. Not much development can be seen when Laura's productions at 4;3 are compared to those at 2;5. In English, no tendency in the phonetic realisations of any of the pitch accents can be established. In German, non-final H*+L is no longer exclusively associated with a rise in FO aligned with the right edge of the vowel in long vowels. Other phonetic realisations such as rises in mid-vowel regions and level FOs occur. Final H*+L pitch accents show a similar picture: One is realised as a straight fall, one as a level, one with a

145 135 rise in FO aligned with the right edge of the vowel, and one with a rise within the vowel. Laura's L*+H pitch accents in German show no dip in FO at 4;3, but either straight rises or alignments of FO with the right edge of the vowel. L*+H pitch accents in English are also realised in various phonetic ways. It can be concluded that Laura does not use a stable production strategy for any of the pitch accents in either language even at 4;3. Tendencies of language-specific differences can be observed insofar as rises of FO are more likely in English H*+L than in their German counterpart. Equally, the rise of FO in a non-final H*+L is aligned with the right edge of the vowel only in German. However, much more data are needed in order to consolidate the tendencies found in this study. Especially monolingual data are needed in order to decide whether Laura's unstable productions are typical for children of her age or whether they reflect her specific bilingual acquisition process, which might result in a cross-linguistic hybrid phonetic production strategy. Laura exhibits some favourite pitch pattern combinations during her acquisition of the intonation of questions: At 3;1, S+\ and \+l are very frequent in German and from 4;2 on also in English. Frequency of production declines towards the end of the period of investigation. One pitch pattern associated temporarily with a particular question in Laura's speech from 2;6 to 2;9 is described below Laura's phonetic pattern As discussed above, in her one- and two-word utterances, Laura does not seem to use nuclear pitch movements in a systematic and phonological way in order to indicate the type of utterance or her intentions. Conversely, she seems to play with pitch and produce the same lexical item with varying FO-patterns. Variability of nuclear types can be observed at 2;5, where Laura playfully experiments with nuclear pitch movements. The word pig is uttered five times in a row with varying patterns: (290) /pi:k /pik \pi:k Vpi:k /pi:k This trend continues in her early longer utterances. However, an opposing trend is also becoming visible: Some of Laura's utterances seem to be associated with a fixed pitch movement pattern which is not only phonologically but sometimes even phonetically identical. The utterance is the German fixed expression [vas is des] ("What's this?"). In LI, this question has the intonational form of a rise-fall (or %L H* L-L%) with the nucleus /a/ 111 Id Table 29: FO height in Hz of the vowels in [vas is des] in LI. on [is]. FO values of the vowels /a/, III and l&l (measured at mid-point) in the two renditions are given in table 29. Apart from the phonological equivalence of a rise-fall, the phonetic

146 136 rendition is very different with the second instance having a much higher pitch in the vowel III than the first one. This is also the case in L4, where Laura produces 11 instances of [vas is des]. As can be taken from table 30, seven of these utterances show a nuclear rise (or %H L* H-L%), however, using a different pitch range. Some start the rise at Hz and go up to Hz, whereas others only go from Hz to Hz. /a/ III /e/ Table 30: F0 height in Hz of the vowels in [vas is des] in L4. In L5, in contrast, the pitch movement and pitch height of some of the renditions of [vas is des] seem to have become fixed as can be taken from table 31. The fixed phonetic pitch pattern of the question is a %H at -350 Hz, the L* at -300 Hz and the boundary tone H-L% at ~440 Hz. Thus the prototype of this intonational pattern looks as follows: vas is des %H L* H-L% Hz: This can be seen in table 31, which lists five instances from a total of 14 renditions of this particular question in recording L5. Although it can only be presented visually instead of auditorily here, the similarity of them is very striking, especially considering that some of /a/ III /e/ Table 31: F0 height in Hz of the vowels in some of the renditions of [vas is des] in L5. these questions are produced after intervals of up to 10 minutes. This patternised use of intonation could be taken as an indication of the transition of Laura's representations of pitch from the I-level to the El-level (Karmiloff-Smith 1992). This hypothesis will be discussed in chapter 11.

147 137 Notwithstanding the frequency of the phonetic realisation of this intonational pattern, it is not exclusively associated with this question type in Laura's speech and she continues to use different patterns with [vas is des]. Thus, other utterances become associated with this fixed pattern, which furthermore demonstrates its status as a stable phonological pattern. 9.3 Adam: Acquisition from 3;6 to 5; Phonological use of pitch The following table shows Adam's nuclear pitch accent inventory at 3;6, separated by languages. The frequency of each pitch accent type is given in absolute numbers. German English H*+L L*+H 4 7 H* 3 1 L* L*+H L % 3 H*+L H% 1 Table 32: Adam's inventory of nuclear pitch accents in German and English at 3;6. Adam uses the pitch accent category L*+H phonologically in order to mark both continuation in subordinate clause structures and enumeration in German and English. Examples for enumeration are (291) a /wont /tu: /fri: \faa a one two three four (292) unts /featb unti /ku:s un ti /Je:fl3 un ti /hunda... und die Pferdle und die Kühe und die Schäfle und die Hunde (and horses -dim and the cows and the sheep -dim and the dogs) Continuation in a general sense and in subordinate or co-ordinate structures is marked by rising pitch in the following examples: (293) [3;6] aba das /lauka das,kkokadi:l \da: aber des Laura des Krokodil da (but that's Laura'(s) the crocodile there) (294) [3;10]und /"Jnela und cmela und /cmela und /*anela und \onela und schneller und schneller und schneller und schneller und schneller (and faster and faster and faster and faster and faster) (295) Atailen is /klain und /»tailen is \k h Ko:s Teilen ist klein und Teilen ist groß (some are small and some are big) (296) 'jats da /do:a and jats d9 \si:lirj that's the door and that's the ceiling

148 138 (297) fo da /taunfai 'ni:d fo: \bviks for the town I need four bricks Example (297) shows that not only a rising but also a high level pitch (on need) can be used to signal that Adam intends to continue his utterance. A comparison of the phonological use Adam makes of pitch accents in both German and English shows differences in the frequency of certain pitch movements and combinations of pitch patterns. At 3;10, in English, the S +\ pattern is very frequent: (298) its a / treila \ca:s it's a trailer cars (299) da / wodwouz \bvoukn the wardrobe's broken (300) dei /"put da \faia they put the fire (301) ju ni:d /*elou bvikswel you need yellow bricks as well (302) Snau da /"faias \stopt now the fire's stopped In these examples, the rise is usually very long and the fall starts on a very high FO. Stress on both head and nucleus is perceptually equally salient. Another frequent pattern Adam produces in English at 3; 10 is the high level+rise or V pattern, which is often realised with only a very small rise. (303) its X^letas it's letters (304) a con'te:na /lowi a container lorry (305) vel ai \do:nt si: \/mo:3 well I don't see more (306) ven da a gveit \/*sta:m kam when the a great storm come Patterns of specific pitch accents and nuclear types do not exist in his German speech. In the entire recording, there are only two utterances bearing this English intonation pattern. Those can possibly be counted as intonational borrowings: (307) un / deas gants a\laina und der's ganz alleine (308) un di /*boima \aux nijt und die Baume auch nicht (and he's all alone) (and the trees neither) Thus, there is some evidence that his intonational phonologies constitute two languagespecific systems. This assumption is underlined by a temporary preference Adam displays for the fall-rise nucleus. At 4;2, he produces a great number of V nuclei in English. Only half of his questions show V, though, which means that a high number of his English statements are associated with fall-rising nuclei. Not a single V nucleus can be found in his German

149 139 statements at that time. At 5;5, all differences between English and German nuclear pitch accents are gone. Adam does not produce V in English statements any more Adam's acquisition of the systematic use of pitch in questions In the 20 recordings with Adam analysed in this study he asks a total of 366 questions; 148 in English, 214 in German and 4 containing lexical or structural elements of both languages. Of these, 104 were selected for an instrumental and ToBI analysis. Adam does not systematically mark his questions with specific pitch movements. At 3;6, his syntax is already so far developed that all his questions are clearly marked as such. He shows full command of all question words so that the pragmatic need to mark questions intonationally (see Oppenrieder 1991) does not exist for him. He can use intonation for other functions than identifying the type of speech act in his questions. In German and English, he produces mainly L*+H nuclear pitch accents in his questions. Other questions show H*+L nuclei with a very high beginning. This continues to be so up to 4;2, when the first H*+L H% nuclei are produced in English. In German, this nucleus appears in 3; 11. At 3;10, the in his question tag Igsl is produced in German, which can be found as a single imitation in the English lyes at 4;2. At 4;0, many A are produced in German, which appear in 4; 11 in English. One instance of Misn't it can be observed in 4;8. Adam's expert use of intonation can be seen in the following examples (from age 5;5), where he varies his nuclear pitch accents in the utterance "Shall we play dinosaurs?": (309) Jal wi plei Adainasoia (310) Jal wi plei Vdainaso:3 (311) Jal wi plei /dainssoisz The phonetic production of pitch accents Table 33 lists Adam's phonetic realisation of the H*+L and L*+H pitch accent categories in English and German at 3;6 and 5;6. At 3;6, all pitch accents are produced in variable phonetic ways without any clear tendencies for either language. At 4;11, when Adam produces the V nuclei described above, a clear association of non-final H*+L pitch accents and a rise of the F0 aligned with the right edge of the vowel can be seen. This is still distinctive at 5;6 in English. In German, alignment of F0 with the right edge of the vowel is very common, but level F0 does also occur. Tendencies for the non-final L*+H can also be established. It is produced by a right-edge alignment and level F0 in German and right-edge alignment and level+rise F0 in English. There is slightly less variation in the phonetic production of pitch accents at 5;6 compared to that at 3;6. However, acquisition is not completed yet. Furthermore, it is difficult to decide whether there are any cross-linguistic differences. The only tendency can be seen in the production of the non-final L*+H described above.

150 140 H*+L non-final H*+L final L*+H non-final L*+H final 3;6 right edge 2/1 rise mid-v 2/- right edge 3/1 dip 1/- German/ end syll 1/- str fall 1/3 level+rise 1/- English level 1/- str. rise -11 mid -v -/I 4;11 right edge 5 English level+rise 1 5;6 right edge 1/3 right edge 1/- right edge 5/3 right edge -11 German/ end syll -/I end syll -/I lev+rise -/I English level 2/- level 2/- mid -v -/I level+rise -14 Table 33: Absolute numbers of Adam's phonetic realisations of H*+L and L*+H pitch accent categories in German (in front of the "/") and English (after the "/") Adam's phonetic pattern It was shown in section that Laura temporarily produced some specific utterances with an intonation pattern that verged tin phonetic identity. Whereas, in her case, this phonetic pattern was associated with the same utterance, Adam seems to have one pattern that he uses across utterances of many kinds. In ToBI transcription it would be (L*+H) L*+H H* L-L% with the bracketed element applied for utterances with more than one lexical item associated with a pitch accent. Examples can be found mainly in A2: (312) botls gotn boat L*+H L*+H H* L-L% (313) da du:ir) inda boa ts lai daun L*+H L*+H H* L-L % (314) da go:n si: am fis L*+H L*+H H*L-L% (315)ndu:in flanij da boat L*+H L*+H H* L-L% (316) da liti letas L*+H H* L-L% (317) du:ir) flair) L*+H H* L-L% (318) da du:ig waun da ste:s L*+H L*+H H* L-L% bottles gotten boat they doing in the boats lie down they go see any fish n doing flying the boat the little letters doing flying they doing round the stairs These utterances are either replies to questions about what people in a picture book are doing or direct imitations of the adult description of these pictures. In fact, in approximately the last 30 minutes of this recording Adam exclusively uses this intonation pattern.

151 141 Figure 34 shows the pitch movement and the ToBI labelling of utterance (315). Doing and flying are clearly associated with a L+*H pitch accent and boat is realised as a H* pitch accent. The phrase accent is a L- and the boundary tone a L%. L~ i doingl flying 1 oej boati il à 4 Figure 34: The pitch movement and ToBI labelling of Adam's utterance [n /*du:in /"flang da \boat] in A2. Figure 35 below shows the same for utterance (314). Again, gone and see are associated with a L*+H pitch accent, and fish receives a H*. The only difference is the phrase accent, which is a H- in this case. Although this intonational pattern occurs most frequently in recording A2, in A3 and later recordings, some instances of the pitch pattern can still be found, which shows that it is not a reflection of an idiosyncratic mood in just one recording: (319) ai /kauwa da \su:tke:'s I carry the suitcase (320) sitsn /on da / on da \kaus sitzen on the on the cows (321) /le:ban d3 \revwend on da haus leben the reverend on the house (322) da /* vo:dwos \bwoukn the wardrobe's broken (323) an /"jets a \do:a and that's a door (sit on the on the cows) (live the reverend on the house)

152 142 (324) ju / bild a \taun you build a town Examples (319) to (321) demonstrate that the intonational phrase structure is still under construction in A3 (see also section 10.3). In utterances (319), (320) and (321), Adam inserts intonational boundaries within a VP. L'+lt U H-Lffe ardj gorel seel any! fish I TioCf): (sac 0: I: R: «(F:- y% sets I m 1 I 1 Figure 35: The pitch movement and ToBI labelling of Adam's utterance [da / go:n / si: am \fis] in A2. Figure 36 shows the instrumental analysis of Adam's utterance [ai /kauwa d3 \su:tke:'s] at 3;7. Similarly to the utterances described in figures 34 and 35, the stressed syllable of carry is associated with a L*+H pitch accent and the nucleus suitcase receives a H* pitch accent on its stressed syllable.

153 143 fc! al «J il carry 1 thej suitcase J 11 i 11 4 sso T TiinCf): stc i: I: R: (F: V sala!l0. "Vs. - '«j Figure 36: The pitch movement of Adam's utterance [ai /kauwa da \su:tke:'s] at 3;7. There is a second intonation pattern with similar phonetic qualities that Adam produces in connection with as well. In ToBI notation it would be H*!H*!H-L% again with the number of pitch accents dependent on the length of the utterance. Examples from Al are (325) a 'big 'spot svel a big spot as well (326) a 'bik -wan -svel a big one as well (327),and a 'big fis svel and a big fish as well The pitch movement of utterance (326) can be seen in figure 37. Here, Adam's speech is very deliberate with pitch accents on every possible syllable.

154 144 Figure 37: The pitch movement of Adam's utterance [a 'bik - WAn -svel] at 3;6. As a last example of Adam's intonational patterns, two questions he produces at 3;8 can be adduced. They have the intonational form vot hu: bild H* L*+H H-H% Although the second [vot hu: bild] is uttered approximately 35 minutes after the first one in this recording, its phonetic realisation is completely identical. Adam only produces these patterns in English. Since this is the language he is far less exposed to and which lags behind in his acquisition compared to German, this reduced use of intonation patterns might reflect the state of his intonational representations in English. Possibly, his inventory of intonational forms at this early stage is much more limited than in German. In summary, Adam uses pitch in a phonological way from 3;6 on. In both languages, he marks continuation in enumeration or continuation in subordinate or co-ordinate clause structures with a rising pitch movement. Differences between his languages become apparent in the occurrence of specific pitch accent categories. In English, he frequently produces rising head+falling nucleus combinations and V nuclei for statements. These pitch patterns cannot be found in his German utterances. At 3;6, Adam's questions all show clear syntactical marking so that he can use pitch for other functions than the intonational marking of the type of speech act. In repeated identically worded questions it can be observed that he freely produces different pitch accents and probably uses them with the function of expressing attitudes.

155 Adam's phonetic production of pitch accents is still unstable at 5;5. In German, alignment of FO with the right edge of the stressed vowel is very frequent, but other variants occur. Cross-linguistic production differences can be seen in the phonetic realisation of the non-final L*+H. Whereas it shows right-edge alignment or level FO in German, Adam produces it systematically with a level+rise FO in English. At 3;6, Adam produces two phonetic pitch patterns in English, which seem to function as intonational frames into which the majority of his utterances is fitted. These patterns do not occur in German. These results for intonation converge with the findings for Adam's syntactic development (cf. Tracy 1995; Gawlitzek-Maiwald 1997). A pronounced asynchrony in his acquisition of various syntactic structures was found. In specific cases, his acquisition in English, the language for which he had considerably less input, lagged behind by up to 6 months compared to German. Thus it can be concluded from both linguistic levels, the phonological and the syntactic one, that Adam seems to have two separate systems for his two languages. 145

156 10. The acquisition of intonational phrasing This chapter presents the results concerning the acquisition of intonational phrasing by Hannah (10.1), Laura (10.2) and Adam (10.3). Acquisition on both the phonological and the phonetic level will be analysed Hannah: Acquisition from 2;1 to 2; Production of phonetic correlates of intonational phrases There is no evidence that Hannah has acquired the concept of an intonational phrase (IP) at 2;1. She does not produce any of the phonetic criteria for IPs in a systematic way. Final syllable lengthening is not used systematically as a property of an IP. In the majority of her utterances, the vowel of the final syllable is the longest of all vowels in the utterance. However, direct comparison between the vowels within an utterance is not possible as they all have different vowel qualities with different inherent lengths (Lehiste 1970). Compared across all utterances, an [a] in an unstressed position is between 0.06 and 0.15 sec long, in a stressed syllable between 0.06 and 0.20 sec, and in a stressed final syllable between 0.06 and 0.18 sec. Similarly, the lexical item des (das; this) in an utterance-initial position is 0.09 sec long, in a stressed syllable between 0.12 and 0.14, and in a final syllable Thus, there is no clear evidence that Hannah uses final syllable lengthening systematically. Neither does she use pauses as IP boundaries. At 2;1, her utterances comprise up to three words, of which all very often receive the same amount of stress (see section 8.1). Exceptions are only formulaic strings of words Hannah has learned by rote such as [,fa:mas,ini,den]. Most of her utterances containing more than two words are not produced as one intonational phrase but are broken up by one or more inserted pauses. (328) 15 hapl'nan \kdat ich hab I nen cold (329) hap,tain3 'aua: nd,mea hab keine I aua noch mehr (330) da \aux (f)l,aua (p) da auch I aua (331) aina \lufbabdn eine Luftballon (/ have I a cold) (have no I ouch any more) (there also I ouch) (a I balloon) In all these examples, the pauses produced by Hannah do not coincide with major syntactic or semantic boundaries. Their insertion seems random, and the only regularity is that Hannah never produces more than two words in a row, i.e. that she pauses at least after each second word. Clearly, Hannah does not use intonational boundaries in a phonological way such as in order to mark sense groups or syntactic groups. This trend continues up to age 2;6. In general, it can be noted that the longer Hannah's utterance the more likely it is to contain pauses. Figure 37 exemplifies this for Hannah's

157 147 utterances at 2;3: Only 6.7% of her German three-word utterances are broken up by a pause, but the ratio of inserted pauses increases up to 60% of all utterances of six words or 100 I German I English mixed three four five six words words words words Figure 37: Percentage of utterances with inserted pauses of all German, English and mixed utterances between three and six or more words of length. longer. The same applies to her English and mixed utterances. As can be taken from figure 37, the ratio of interrupted utterances is highest in mixed utterances irrespective of their length. Cross-linguistic productions by Hannah between 2;1 and 2;6 are relatively infrequent as the following table shows: Age 2;1 2;2 2;3 2;4 2;6 Percentage of mixed utterances in all utterances 4.7% 7.8% 8.5% 16% Table 34: Percentage of mixed utterances of all of Hannah's utterances at 2;1 to 2;6. Table 34 summarises the percentage of mixed utterances of all Hannah's utterances across all recordings. It can be seen that they are most frequent at age 2;4 (16%). At 2;1 and 2;2, Hannah's cross-linguistic utterances rarely contain pauses; many of her mixed productions are fluent and without hesitations. Mixing consists mainly of lexical borrowing as shown in examples (332), (334), and (336). English words are given in italics. (332) 19 hapfnan \koat ich hab I nen cold (333) \maina \aua: \litl meine aua I little (334) mama \aux /kujan Mama auch cushion ( have I a cold) (my ouch I little) (Mummy also cushion)

158 148 (335) ju: as aut \sa: you I es out I so (336) mas'lipss auf mach slippers auf (you I it out I so) (make slippers open) However, if there is an inserted pause, it is often found at the point of language switch (examples 333 and 335). At 2;3, pauses are inserted in half of the cross-linguistic six-word and longer utterances Hannah produces. In (337), the intonational boundary occurs at the point of the language switch, in (338), it is impossible to decide whether [i:n] is a German or an English in, but the pauses separate the mixed first part from the unclassifiable second and the German third part. (337) di,mama helf \mia /tap it \i:n die Mama helf mir I strap it in (338) das ains \stwa:p \i:n (f) di,pu:pa des eins strap I in I die Puppe (this one strap I in I the doll) There is also a fair number of similarly disrupted cross-linguistic two-word utterances to be observed at 2;3. Hannah produces utterances such as (339) and (340) (339),pAp3ts,kükan puppets I gucken (340) gu:/ga:n /teli: gucken I telly (puppets I watch) (watch I telly) where the words of each language are separated by an intonational break. At 2;4, the relative frequency of cross-linguistic utterances in Hannah's speech increases dramatically. To illustrate: She produces the same number of cross-linguistic utterances as purey English utterances in this recording. Hannah's language acquisition seems to be in a phase of restructuring. On a prosodic level, she frequently extends monosyllabic words with an unstressed syllable [a] as illustrated for ich and put in (341) (see also section 7.1): (341) '193,puta aina Ahandju: da dirauf ich-a put-9 eine Handschuh da drauf (Is put-a a glove on that) (342) aof main Aovan unt,dan 1 ai,kukan veri \keafoli auf mein oven I und dann i I cook-an very carefully (on my oven I and then I cook-an very carefully) (343) 15 hap ga,meid ju nutf beta ich hab gemade you much better (I have ge-made you much better) On a morphological level, Hannah produces English verbs with German inflectional markers. The "-an" suffix is added to an English verb in (342) [cook+en]; the "ga-" prefix for a German past participle is added to the English past participle in (343) [ge+made]. Mixed utterances containing structural mixing of this kind are fairly likely to be interrupted by intonational breaks. Those mixings that involve just lexical borrowing are generally produced without intonational breaks. When they are interrupted by pauses, the majority of these intonational boundaries coincide with language switches as the following examples show:

159 149 (344) da,ha<rt,ba:di ain \aua in ju,mauf da hast I badi ein aua I in you mouth (345) 'iij max ju: matf \bets ich mach I you much better (346) 15,kana ni9 waund da \kitjan ich kann-3 nicht I round the kitchen (there you have I bad I an ouch in your mouth) (I make I you much better) (I can-a not I round the kitchen) Intonational features of Hannah's speech such as pauses may help to determine the nature of her mixed utterances. In lexically mixed utterances, Hannah is usually fluent and does not insert intonational breaks. If she does so, however, they coincide frequently with the language switch and thus might reflect processing load. In structurally mixed utterances, pauses are much more likely than in lexically mixed ones. This probably again reflects the processing load in a phase of structural reorganisation. At 2;4, pauses increasingly occur at IP boundaries and mark repairs and self-corrections. Whereas Hannah never interrupted her speech in order to repair an utterance up to 2;3, this can be observed from 2;4 on: (347) [2;4] 15 musa das des no,maxan ich muß-a des I des noch I machen (348) du kanst das da da \hauza gean du kannst des de I de Hause gehen (349) aim ai meik ju matj' \beta I'm 11 make you much better (350) [2;6] \ia hap,kain ba: ha \kain ba:fy:ss ich hab kein ba I hab kein barfüße (I have this I this still to do) (you can this to I to go home) (I have no bare I have no barefeet) Utterance (347) above is the first attested example of Hannah's repetition of a word in association with a repair of the utterance. The second boundary is still used in an unphonological way where she simply continues with the sentence. The fact that Hannah now repeats [da] in (348) and [ai] in (349) suggests that she develops a concept of clausal unity Phonological use of intonational phrasing This phonological use of intonational phrasing is also reflected in her increasing use of IP boundaries in association with syntactic and semantic boundaries. The following two examples illustrate the emerging linguistic function of intonational phrases. Hannah separates [kuk] from the main clause (351) and employs a pause to intonationally separate the two main clauses (352). (351) 19 hap Aaua gamaxt kuk ich hab aua gemacht I guck (I have ouch made I look) (352) o: alas \na:s unt alas \nesa hap 19 oh alles nass I und alles nässer hab ich (oh all wet I and all wetter have I)

160 150 These are obviously only very tentative beginnings of a systematic use of pauses, and most pauses are still inserted between units that do not make IPs. However, a rudimentary acquisition of the concept of an IP might be beginning here. In summary, Hannah does not have a concept of an IP at 2;1 and consequently does not use it in any phonological way. This is reflected in the fact that she does not employ any of the phonetic correlates of an IP in a systematic way. She has not yet acquired the concept of a nucleus (see section 8.1). Final syllable lengthening does occur occasionally but not systematically yet, and pauses are inserted between utterances without apparent linguistic function. The random production of pauses may be a reflection of her processing load as evidence from early speech and later mixings suggests. At 2;4, Hannah shows the first rudimentary beginnings of the acquisition of IPs. In a few cases, she produces pauses that coincide with semantic or syntactic phrases Laura: Acquisition from 2;5 to 4; Production of the phonetic correlates of intonational phrases Laura shows very distinct final syllable lengthening in her speech at 2;5. 19 utterances in LI and two in L2 show a particular phenomena: High level stress on the first lexical item and an exaggerated lengthening of the final syllable of the second (examples 353 to 356), which result in a perceptual effect of almost equal stress. (353) 'log big \boat long big boat (354) vil 'aux Iii) \bo: will auch long Boot (355) iç bin 'lauwa: ich bin Laura (356) ain 'tedi\bwe:a: ein Teddybär (want also long boat) (I am Laura) (a teddy) All of the final syllables are associated with a distinct drop in F0 (e.g. from Hz on boat in (354)). In the case of disyllabic words with a trochaic stress pattern such as /'kukan/ (look) and /'Jpi:lan/ (play), the exaggerated lengthening even creates a perceptual disfiguring of the words which results in a perception of equally stressed syllables. Part of this lengthening might be due to the Swabian influence in Laura's speech. This type of final syllable lengthening decreases with time. At 2;5, exaggerated pitch movement and lengthening can always be observed in Laura's final syllables. At 3;10, exaggerated final syllable lengthening (i.e. the vowel of the final syllable is longer than the nucleus) is still very frequent, but not necessarily associated with a rise or drop in F0. At 4;2, exaggerated final syllable lengthening is still frequent in German, but less so in English. It is not associated with a distinct pitch movement any more. The phonetic parameter pause does not seem to be used systematically for the demarcation of IPs yet. Pauses are frequent, but their distribution seems to be governed by

161 151 rules other than linguistic ones. Consider the following examples from 2;5 where Laura inserts pauses within utterances: (357) du 'bildanl.ain,boat du build-en ein Boot (you build-en a boat) (358),15 bi \lauka ich bin Laura (I am Laura) (359) vih> 'tsu:g will e Zug (want a train) (360),i5 'vil /bau ich will bau (I want build) (361) mak SDka'la:d3 \no:x mag Schokolade noch (want more chocolate) (362) 15 hap mainlatedibe: ich hab mein Teddybär (1 have my teddy) One possible interpretation of Laura's insertion of pauses could be that she uses them to mark focus. Especially utterances (358), (359) and (362) could constitute examples of pauses inserted to enhance the prominence of the following word: Laura, Zug and Teddybär. However, the auditory impression of the preboundary syllable is that of interruption - they certainly do not exhibit the preboundary lengthening usually associated with phrase-final syllables. I therefore conclude that these pauses are not "planned". Furthermore, as examples (357), (360) and (361) demonstrate, Laura also produces pauses at semantically or syntactically irrelevant points, and the thus separated words or groups of words do not constitute semantic or syntactic phrases. at lj ET *K t! rx L-L» Adafc Stuhl is 1 " peputt 1 il bang! bangi Tima(f): sec 0: t: S R: (F: 1.05) to o-o-i ÉÉ 'IT Mill Figure 38: Laura's utterance [ / edgms /stu:l iz pa\put] produced at 2;5.

162 152 For Laura, too, the frequency of pauses seems to be connected with her processing load. With the exception of example (362), not more than two words are produced in a row. Longer utterances are much more likely to be separated by pauses than shorter ones. Inserted pauses occur in a third of her utterances containing three words and in nearly half of her four-, five- and six-word utterances. This applies to both German and English. Two main patterns associated with the insertion of an intonational break can be distinguished for Laura. One is an utterance that is split up into a properly intoned first part and a very quiet "tail" spoken on a low volume. Figure 38 above shows the FO movement of Laura's utterance [Vedams /stu:l iz pa\put] (Adam's chair is I broken). It can be seen that the words before the intonational break are spoken on a higher pitch than the word following it. [pa\put] appears nearly subdued. The same holds true for her utterances [das mainlskwalal] and [/main 'bebi] not illustrated here. The second pattern of interrupted utterances consists of a first holistic part plus a "normal" second part. The term holistic is used for a string of words that belong together intonationally and which are uttered very fast without clear word boundaries and a very imprecise articulation (see also section 7.1). A case in point is Laura's utterance [i'binaral.madganamonsta] (I am a I girl monster) as shown in figure 39. The first part shows very fast articulation and no clear word boundaries. The inserted pause is 0.39 seconds long, and the second part is spoken at a slower speech rate. Similar examples are her utterances >5'vilain,kAp3fti: /ja] (I want a I cup of tea I yes) and [max/auf 'au,gn] (make open I eyes). This pattern can be found up to age 3; 10. Figure 39: Pitch movement and interruption of Laura's utterance [I'binain^madfanAmDnsta] at 2;5.

163 153 Furthermore, as could be demonstrated for Hannah, Laura is much more likely to insert intonational breaks in mixed utterances than in monolingual ones. Figure 40 shows that, of her 99 mixed three-word utterances at 2;6, Laura produces 18% divided into two or more tone units. With her four-word utterances, the percentage is 40%, and in her five-word utterances 47%. Figure 40: Percentage of Laura's German and mixed three-, four- and five-words utterances interrupted by a pause at 2;6. This is consistently higher compared to the relative frequency of divided utterances in German of the same length (left-hand columns). Most of them have the break inserted at the language switch as the following examples show. In example (363) it is difficult to decide whether [big] is the English word bring /brig/ or the German word bring /bing/. (363) 15 'birj sam /m33 am,vo:nsim9 /ja ich bring I some more I im Wohnzimmer ja (364) un /das di,milk/bo,dsl und des I die milk bottle (365) /ja das islgud,bet ja das ist I good bed (I bring I some more I in living room yes) (and this I the milk bottle) (yes this is I good bed) From age 2;9 on, inserted pauses within utterances are fairly rare for Laura. However, most of them do not correlate with semantic or syntactic groups. Often, newly acquired complementizers are separated by pauses as in utterance (366) containing weil plus a verb in second position and utterance (367) containing weil plus a verb in end position: (366) [3;00] vail da da:fma /tvaufs weil I da darf man drauf (367) [3;5] vail dea \to:t io weil I der tot ist (because I you are allowed to go up there) (because I he is dead)

164 Phonological use of intonational phrasing First beginnings of a systematic use of the phonetic parameter pause can be seen in Laura's German utterances from 3;5 on. She inserts pauses to separate the two parts of a contrastive utterance such as examples (368) to (370). (368) [3;5] aina nax /di:aa aaida un aina 'nax,da: eine nach diese Seite I und eine nach da (one to this side I and one there) (369) deo ICT di /muda un,deo ia da \papa des ist die Mutter I und des ist der Papa (this is the mother I and this the daddy) (310) [3;10],ni des,be:bi l0:va 'sdnden das,be:bi nicht des Babylöwe I sondern das Baby (not the baby lion I but the baby) Other phonological uses of IPs can be found in the following examples, where Laura separates subordinate structures from main clauses: (371) dea,man hat aina,fkdindin daa ja\la:ni haiot der Mann hat eine Freundin I der Jalani heißt (the man has a girl-friend I who is called Jalani) (372) vail 15,mus da,kukn vo: di \loita oitcran weil ich muß da gucken I wo die Leute sitzen (because 1 must look there I where the people are sitting) Equally, in English, Laura produces two utterances at 3; 10 in which she uses pauses for the structuring of contrastive statements: (373) \ gwi:n won /nofndt,pir)k won green one no I not pink one (374) won fi it /misig an won fit \misirj one piece is missing I and one piece missing These, however, are the only two examples for a phonological use of IPs in Laura's English utterances. Laura's acquisition of the IP as a phonological concept is also reflected in her continuation of the F0 line after an interruption such as a pause before a repair. There is some evidence for a F0 resetting in Laura's early speech. Laura's first self-correction appears at 2;5 in the utterance [adam gibt ge:t auf den tsi:] ("Adam gives I goes on the tree") (see figure 41). Associated with the repair is the beginning of a new intonation contour, which is reflected by a considerably higher pitch on geht. However, unlike the definition of F0 resetting given in chapter 5, this new intonation contour after the pause is associated with a H* pitch accent and does not refer to the unstressed syllables after the IP boundary (the prehead of the following intonational phrase). First evidence for a F0 resetting of the unstressed syllables following an intonational boundary can be found at 3;7. Figure 42 shows Laura's utterance "mit mir I und in den Hals gepiekt I hat er mich" ("with me I and in the throat stung I has he me"). The L- phrase accent of the intermediate phrase "mit mir" ends at ca. 270 Hz, and the new intonational phrase ("und in den Hals gepiekt") starts at nearly 300 Hz on und. Equally, the H- on gepiekt ends on a pitch height of ca. 330 Hz, and the hater after the intonational boundary is picked up at

165 155 nearly 350 Hz. (The circled F0 line indicates an utterance by Adam, who was speaking in the background.) Figure 41: Laura's utterance [adam gibt ge:t auf den tsi:] with the repair gives/goes at 2;5. Thus, figure 42 demonstrates that IP boundaries for Laura are associated with an F0 resetting at 3;7. HUHflflBHH L; KU^^^Hl Hj J HiL mil mtr 1 1 'jnal ini Hifcl liwleb 1 1 fitter 1 mic^ 11 t al H il i 4 - i~t 3 T~j' T1w( f): s«c" D: I: ft: CF: B.34) tmm - n 550 H a ^oo 350 H I 5» %» 1 1 ' "T n-,! tv f x \ "" llllutmmil Figure 42: FO resetting after two intonational boundaries in Laura's utterance [mit mis und in dan hals gepi:kt hats mi;] at 3;7. /

166 156 Two kinds of repairs can be distinguished: Those that take up a new intonational contour and those that show no disruption of the intonational contour. The former are usually associated with restarts comprising entire phrases, the latter with "on-line" corrections of individual lexical items because of articulatory or language-choice reasons. Examples for the latter kind are: (375) hier wohnt Kai and an Fiona and an Claudiu L+H*!H*!H- L* H- L* H*!H*!H- H* H*!H-L% here lives Kai and and Fiona and and Claudiu (376) jetzt muss du de des hier hinkleben L* H* H- L*+H H* L-L% now must you the this here stick (377) du muss dann de des noch fertig machen L*+H H- L* L*+H L-L% you must then this this still finish (378) nimm den krai tri cycle H* H- L*H- L*+H!H*L-L% take the krai try cycle In summary, Laura does not produce intonational phrases at 2;5. Although her utterances show exaggerated final syllable lengthening, she does not use pauses systematically and thus does not, in terms of intonation, structure her utterances in any semantic or syntactic relevant way. First evidence for a systematic use of pauses can be found in her German utterances from 3;5 on, when she begins to separate information units in contrastive statements or subordinate clauses from main clauses. Beginnings of this can also be found for English from 3; 10 on. However, most of her utterances are not structured by intonational phrases and some of the pauses are inserted for other than phonological reasons even at 4;3. F0 resetting occurs occasionally from 2;5 on. At 3;7, evidence for an F0 resetting of the unstressed syllables following an IP boundary can be found. However, the total number of occurrences is very small Adam: Acquisition from 3;6 to 5;5 Adam produces final syllable lengthening in every of his German and English utterances at 3;6. At 4;11, when he produces many English statements with a nuclear V pitch movement (see section 9.3), this becomes very exaggerated. He hardly produces any randomly inserted pauses. Rather, his pauses have the linguistic function of IP boundaries. They are inserted to demarcate sense groups as for example in contrastive statements. Examples (379) to (381) illustrate this for both German and English: (379) 'das da auf da biivka Jtelii des da I auf die Brücke stellen (this I on the bridge put)

167 157 (380) a bik \fij in da \wo:ta au a big fish I in the water too (381) a 'bik /teil /*an a \litl teil a big tail I and a little tail From 3; 10 on, his speech in both languages becomes very disfluent and is full of restarts, stammering and interruptions. Quite often, a pause is inserted before the nucleus of an utterance as in examples (382) and (383): (382) aba mitn \unfal aber mitn I Unfall (383) ea va di eapo:t \not fi:t there were the airport I not feet (but with an I accident) Equally, complementizers at beginnings of utterances are often followed by a pause in both clauses with (384 and 386) and without subject (385): (384) [3;7] Aem vails vails 'keksa 'is em weil's I weil's Kekse ist (385) [4,3] biko:s is \hebi because I is heavy (386) [4;4] bi,kos ai Vni:dir) öem because 11 needing them (er because I because it's biscuits) However, despite the halting way of his speech, Adam never inserts pauses at unsyntactic places such as between determiner and noun. Conversely, there is evidence for a phonological use of IP boundaries in the separation of subordinate clauses and information units in contrastive statements: (387) 15 ne:m das un du ne:mst \dan ich nehm des I und du nehmst den (I take this I and you take this) (388) nam du mus \aux fa:n dan tkyk 19 nein du mußt auch fahrn I dann drück ich (no you must also go I then '11 press it) (389) da birauxma 'aux nox Vkuavn da dasma \so: maxn ken da brauchma auch noch Kurven I de daßma so machen können (there we also still need bends I so that we can make so) (400) ju \hoald it an ai kaetj da,krap /jes you hold it I and I catch the crab yes (401) ndt \dous fiqks bi,kos wi,ka:nt \i:t it not those things I because we can't eat it From 4;9 on, Adam begins to produce longer passages of speech, which he sometimes even structures with the help of intonational phrases. (402) da ma\fi:ns put jet in/sai da da,den wa,ounli men ins ea dan an da maji:n put da,mani invsai an an di da da da \seif)\y seifman da da put den on tjas da ma/fi:n da d a den da wonig /bak da den,ai kam da wanir) /bak... the machine put that inside I the the then I with only men ins I there then I and the machine put the money inside I and and the the I the the safe I safeman the the put then on just the machine I the the then they running back I the I then I come they running back...

168 158 (403) vilst 'du des /sa:gn vailvail \sonst maxt vail 'sdnst vail ven 'i sa 'sa:g d3n maxtsas \1115 willst du des sagen I weil I weil sonst macht I weil sonst I weil wenn ich se sag I dann macht sie's nicht (do you want to say I because I because otherwise she won't I because otherwise \because when I tell her I she won't do it) (404) sousou 'ven is laik \dis /vei den del sei of dis \pairat an ven dis got \dis /vei dan da si: of da \doa is paurats... so so when is like this I way then they say of this pirate and when I this got this way I then they see of the door is pirates... (405) /won hi -faind aut of /wo:ta it,wos frdm wit as samsiij laik /dis on da bak of h3a /he:id an jet WDS a /g3:l am litl fut wos a /boi... one I he find out of water it I was from with I is something like this I on the back I of her head I and that was a girl I and little foot was a boyl... In example (402), which he produces at 4;9, Adam uses IP boundaries in order to group words into semantic units. The first boundary creates a unit out of "the machine put that inside"; the next three pauses are probably not used as intonational boundaries but have other causes such as speech planning irregularities. Nevertheless, the phrases they create show some semantic coherence: "then", "? only men inside" and "there then". The next pause is again an IP boundary, which signals the end of the unit "and the machine put the money inside". The last two intonationally indicated information units are "then they running back" and "then I come they running back". The German example (403) from 4;10 also demonstrates Adam's phonological use of intonational phrasing. Of the four inserted pauses, three mark the end of an IP and one is associated with a restart. Adam structures this utterance into the intonational phrases "Do you want to say it", "because otherwise (she) does", "because if I say it" and "then she won't do it". This and the other examples adduced above clearly show Adam's linguistic use of intonational phrasing for structuring discourse into informational or semantic units. There is no evidence that Adam produces F0 resetting at 3;6. Figure 43 illustrates this for a mixed utterance by Adam. He produces "Des da is Geschenk I for the Spot I Geschenk" ("this there is present I for the Spot I present"). No F0 resetting occurs after the pause following Geschenk. Pitch height preceding the pause is 240 Hz and following it 230 Hz.

169 159 Si U UL> HJ Hi iti äs si Geschenk! fortte 1 S[«i Geschenk! 1]!l 1 il il äm!2ü briete 1 breaük brearh> 1 Tim >: 4.653C lossc L: ( 550,,,,,, IT T n 500 I 450 I'' " r 4ua 350 5f ZL " I 4- j 300 L 250 V N l 200 J Ik I c ^ 150 I 100 I sä "" ^-'n - m m 1 m ÜB m IM» Figure 43: The FO movement of Adam's utterance [das da is sir)k fob spot siijk] at 3;6. There is no evidence for an FO resetting. Ir> J-.r M M i Figure 44 shows the pitch movement of Adam's utterance "Aber wenn des I aber wenn nicht tot I ist" ("but when this I but when not dead I is"). Pitch height on des before the pause is about 250 Hz, and pitch height after the pause is about 240 Hz on is. Figure 44: The FO movement of Adam's utterance [aba ven das aba ven ni? to:t is]. There is no evidence for FO resetting after the pause.

170 160 There is one example for pitch resetting after a pause associated with a restart in an English utterance by Adam aged 4;2. From figure 45 can be taken that the pitch height before the 1 " y ti LVLJI L_ H-LN fej picfcl J si Pictl the I trains il il 3l i il il il il A Mil T S8C 0: I: 7. EG034 R: J (F: ,,. r 400 % i <r S r : TV s "i V f s : nf> f 5 Figure 45: The FO movement of Adam's utterance [an ts pik ta pik da tweins Ap] at 4;2. FO resetting after the pause can be observed. pause is 250 Hz on the and nearly 300 Hz on to after it. However, no systematic pitch resetting can be observed after pauses that function as intonational boundaries. This is in part due to the fact that Adam does not produce many intermediate IP boundaries - the vast majority of his utterances consist of single intonational phrases. Furthermore, if Adam does produce intonational boundaries, they are in nearly all cases preceded by a rising nucleus (see also section 9.3) so that pitch resetting does not apply. Figure 46 depicts an utterance by Adam aged 5;5, in which he inserts an intonational boundary after an NP. No FO resetting can be observed. Unterhemd ends on 300 Hz, and the following in has a pitch height of about 270 Hz.

171 161 ii 5d al y mug melrj Unterhemd J SSsJ Hoaj stop fen n i) i il il 4 P; t; S 8: 26.SB858 CF: 0.«) sottfl 0.0. Figure 46: The pitch movement of Adam's utterance [mus mam undahemt in ds horza Jtopfan] at 5;5. No F0 resetting occurs. In summary, Adam reliably produces final syllable lengthening at 3;6. Many of the pauses he produces coincide with semantic and/or syntactic boundaries. This is especially apparent in longer passages of speech, which he produces in both German and English from 4;9 on. There, many pauses have the function of IP boundaries. However, even at this age, pauses occur without obvious linguistic function and thus occasionally contribute to an impression of stuttering and halting speech. Systematic F0 resetting after unstressed syllables following an (intermediate) phrase boundary cannot be observed for Adam.

172 11. Summary and discussion In this chapter, the results presented in the previous chapters will be summarised and discussed (11.1). Then, the provisional model given in section 2.5 will be revised to include the major aspects of the acquisition of intonation by German/English bilingual children found here (11.2). In section 11.3, the acquisition of intonational phonology will be discussed in the perspective of the overall language acquisition of the three children studied here. Finally, an outlook and suggestions for future research will be given in Summary and discussion This study was concerned with the acquisition of intonation by German/English bilingual children. Intonation was defined as the phonological use of the phonetic parameters pitch, loudness, length and pause for various linguistic functions. Three intonational areas were selected for closer analysis: Nucleus placement, which is closely connected with focus for the purpose of marking contrast and new vs. old information; pitch, with the function of marking different types of speech acts; and intonational phrasing, with the grammatical and informational function of structuring utterances and discourse. The acquisition of these three areas was studied on both the phonetic and the phonological level based on child utterances produced in the age range from 2;1 to 5; Nucleus placement The results for nucleus placement show that neither its phonetic production nor its phonological use are acquired yet in the earliest data ftom around 2 years of age. The phonological use of nucleus placement with the linguistic purpose of focussing, emphasis or the like presupposes a stable production of nuclei in utterances, which in turn requires a reliable production of the phonetic correlates of nuclei such as distinct pitch movement and increase in pitch height, intensity and length on the vowel of the stressed syllable. Most of the here analysed child utterances that were produced at 2;1 do not have any perceptible nucleus but consist of a concatenation of two or three equally stressed words. Three phenomena suggest that stress is not yet assigned on a sentence level. Firstly, the strings of words do not contain one particular lexical item, which is salient in terms of stress or pitch movement. Secondly, some lexical items such as the German word auch or the negation words nicht and nein are always associated with stress. This suggests that in these cases, stress is the property of the word and not assigned according to phonological rules, which apply on a sentence level. Interestingly, this focus particle auch has been pointed out as a word with an important bootstrapping function for structural expansion in language acquisition (Penner, Tracy & Wymann 1999). Thirdly, even when stress is

173 assigned to particular lexical items with the function of marking emphasis or contrast, subsequent words still receive an identical amount of stress. Thus, one of the reasons why nucleus placement is not yet used phonologically at this stage is the child's difficulty with deaccenting or the realisation of unstressed words and syllables. This ties in with observations by Pollock et al. (1993) and Allen & Hawkins (1980), who found that the reduction of unstressed syllables in English does not take place reliably before age 3. In this study, further evidence for difficulties with deaccenting was found in the instability of some word stress productions. Some disyllabic words were realised with nearly equal stress at around two years of age. Thus, the children were assumed to be still in phase II of the model of the acquisition of word stress proposed by Fikkert et al. (1998). Phonological use of nucleus placement can only be expected in a later phase when the acquisition of word stress is nearly completed. Results from the analysis of the phonetic parameters associated with the production of stress show that their physical control is far from complete at two years. Usually, pitch and intensity are used for the production of stress, but typically they vary in concert and cannot be controlled separately. Distinct pitch movements occur on stressed and unstressed syllables alike and seem to be by-products of the length of vowels rather than systematic correlates of stress. There is no systematic correlation of length with stress. Thus, there is a fourth reason why, at 2;1, nucleus placement cannot be used phonologically yet: On the phonetic level, nuclei cannot be reliably produced. At 2;5, the majority of child utterances show nuclei, and at the same time phonological use of nucleus placement can be observed. Minimal pairs of identical utterances, which differ only in nucleus placement, demonstrate its function of marking contrastive focus and emphasis. The marking of focus by nucleus placement on new information seems to be acquired later. In this study, it could only be observed from 3;10 on. Purnell (1997) argues for an acquisition evident already in two-word utterances in her experimental data. Here, only contrastive focus could be found in two-word utterances. This discrepancy could be due to the nature of the data involved: Whereas Purnell elicited speech in experimental conditions, here spontaneous speech from unstructured situations was analysed. Children simply did not produce utterances containing both new and old information before 3; 10. Further evidence for a phonological and sentence-level use of nuclei can be taken from German verb-end constructions (e.g. sentences with the structure subject - modal verb - object - participle) where the nucleus appears in the penultimate position. In simple main clauses with an S-V-0 structure, in contrast, the nucleus normally occurs in the last position. Nuclei in the penultimate position in the former type of sentence are produced reliably from 2;8 on. After that, the deaccenting of words following an early nucleus is acquired. On the phonetic level, nuclei are associated with high intensity and high pitch. Length may play a role, but distinct pitch movement continues to be produced on non-nuclear syllables. In general, the phonetic production of nuclei is still variable as late as 5;3. For Adam, a phonetic stress pattern could be found at age 3,6. A majority of his utterances conformed to this rhythmical frame, which he used only in English, the language for which he received considerably less input. It can be speculated whether this intonational grid served as an obstacle for his syntactic acquisition or whether it provided a bootstrapping mechanism in terms of a frame for structural expansion. 163

174 Pitch This study provided evidence that pitch as an intonational system is acquired fairly early. Even when children only produce strings of equally stressed words, systematic use of pitch in order to mark sentence types or speech acts can already be observed. Nuclei of one-word utterances show more pitch movement than those of longer utterances. Rising pitch movements are more likely in non-final than in final positions, and last words are mostly associated with falling pitch movements. At 2 years, one child reliably marked different types of speech acts by different pitch accents categories. Another child did not show any systematic tendencies at 2;5. The difficulty of this aspect of the study clearly lies in the categorisation of communicative situations or intentions. The determination of communicative intent proved very difficult in many cases so that only few could be classified satisfactorily. However, it could be concluded that at least for one child, questions systematically showed rises and statements were associated with falls. Other categories did not show clear association with distinct pitch movements. The longitudinal observation of the intonational marking of questions demonstrated great interindividual variability between children and their languages. One starts with V and rises and only later produces V The other starts with \ and only later produces V. Usually, the differentiation between the question types yes/no- question and wh-question is acquired early. It seems that pitch is used for the marking of questions to a greater extent in very early productions. The last stage to be acquired comprises a relative independence from pitch as a marker for type of speech act and its use for other purposes as was suggested by Oppenrieder (1991). This might correlate with the development in the area of syntax - when questions are clearly marked syntactically, pitch can be used for different functions such as the expression of attitude. Specific pitch movements are produced systematically for other linguistic functions as well. Rising pitch is used in enumeration and for attracting attention from around 2;7 on. Further phonological use can be observed in the signalling of continuation by rises and the linking of subordinate structures to main clauses by rises. Adam and Laura showed phases during their language acquisition when a specific nuclear type or a specific combination of head + nucleus type was produced very frequently. These were usually newly acquired patterns, and their frequency declined with time. The phonetic realisation of nuclear pitch accents is very heterogeneous. From 2;1 to 5;6 very little stabilisation can be seen, and in no pitch accent category can a congruence of the phonetic realisation be found with the adult data collected by Grabe (1998). The occurrence of phonetic patterns with phonetically identical pitch movements across different utterances was noted for two of the children studied here. Its significance in terms of indication for the representational level will be discussed below in section Intonational phrasing The results of this study show that children do not structure their utterances with intonational phrases in an adult way at two years of age. Because of the difficulty to determine the semantic content of some utterances, assumptions about the correspondence

175 165 of international phrases with information units cannot be made reliably. Some cases, however, point towards a dissociation of these two: There are utterances separated by long pauses that seem to belong together semantically. This was also observed by Scollon (1979) and Tracy (1995). Although there might be some final syllable lengthening at 2;5, it is not used systematically as a property of an IP. Neither are pauses produced to signal the end of an intonational phrase. Rather, the insertion of pauses seems governed by limits of speech processing capacity. However, some pauses produced at this early stage show systematic use: Mixed utterances that are interrupted by pauses often have them at the point of the language switch. In these cases again, pauses can be interpreted as a direct reflection of processing load. Other systematic uses of pauses can be observed in one child's productions that consisted of a formulaic and a "normal" part. These two different production types were regularly separated by a pause, which might reflect different underlying production strategies. Pauses used systematically as IP boundaries could first be observed from 3;5 on. They separate both syntactic and semantic units of speech. Contrastive statements of the kind "I do this I and you do that" show pauses as indicated. Similarly, subordinate structures are separated from main clauses. At 4;9, first examples of the structuring of longer passages of speech with the help of IP boundaries can be found. However, many pauses, even at this late age, do not have the linguistic function of intonational boundaries but still seem to reflect processing load directly. Newly acquired complementizers for example, are likely to be separated from the following clause. Equally, pauses are frequently inserted before the nucleus or after certain head + nucleus patterns. It is possible that physical reasons prevent children up to 5;6 years to use intonational phrases in a phonological way. The resetting of pitch seems to be the last phonetic correlate of an IP to be acquired. The resetting of FO was analysed in children's restarts and repairs. In this study, children up to 2;5 very rarely corrected their utterances. If they did, phrases were not picked up and repeated at an earlier point but corrected lexical items were simply fitted into the utterance. When self-corrections with restarts occurred they were usually associated with the beginning of a new intonational contour and a resetting of the FO, whereas "on-line" corrections did not influence FO movement. From 3;7 on, some instances of a resetting of pitch in the unstressed syllables following an IP boundary can be observed, however, there is probably no systematic production yet Bilingual acquisition of intonation As discussed in section 2.4, research in bilingual language acquisition has produced contradictory results either confirming the hypothesis that bilingual phonological acquisition proceeds separately from the very beginning or suggesting that there might be an initial mixed system that only separates later. It was also pointed out that an initial fused system is more likely when the two languages to be acquired show many similarities and only few disparities (Tracy 1996). Chapters 3 to 5 showed that this is the case for the intonational systems of nucleus placement, pitch and intonational phrasing in German and English. Thus, it might be expected that the German/English bilingual children studied here

176 166 begin with an undifferentiated system on the phonological level, which separates into two systems in the course of acquisition. On the phonetic level, it has been suggested for segmental phonology that bilingual speakers never acquire two separate systems but that they produce speech sounds with a bilingual strategy, which allows them to sound nativelike in both languages, but which differs from monolingual production when analysed instrumentally (Watson 1991). Looking at the data analysed here from a perspective of bilingual acquisition, much evidence can be cited for the two-system hypothesis. Especially Laura showed very asynchronous acquisition patterns in both her languages, which comprised all areas of language acquisition. As can be taken from chapter 7, Laura's syntactic development in German precedes that of English by up to 14 months (see Gawlitzek-Maiwald 1997 for details). Equally, her acquisition of the phonological use of pitch is asynchronous. As described in detail in section 9.2, Laura produces rising nuclei in German questions well before she does so in English. Similarly, the fall-rise appears in German at 3;0, in English only at 3; 10. The sequence of acquisition in both languages is nearly congruent but the rate of acquisition in English is much slower. Similar observations can be made for her acquisition of the phonological use of IP boundaries and the acquisition of nucleus placement. In the former, Laura begins to separate information units in contrastive statements or main clauses from subordinate clauses in German at 3;5. Only 5 months later can this be found in her English speech. The production of nuclei in German, equally, precedes that in English, where Laura does not yet reliably assign stress on a sentence level at 2;5. The asynchrony of development can probably be directly related to the amount of input in the two languages. Interesting is the fact that the head-start in one language does not tempt children to borrow intonational forms for their other language and thus produce intonationally mixed utterances. Indeed, no conclusive evidence could be found for any mixed structures (see also Gut 1999, 2000). On the phonetic level, the data presented in this study does not support the hypothesis of a production of phonetic parameters using a bilingual strategy as described by Watson (1991). On the contrary, for two children language-specific differences become apparent: Adam uses the phonetic parameter length only in his English nuclei. The production of nuclear stress by an increase of intensity alone can only be observed in German. For Hannah, the production of nuclei in English is more closely associated with an increase in intensity than the production of German nuclei. Conversely, German nuclei are more likely to be produced by an increase of pitch than English ones. The phonetic production of pitch accents types also shows some cross-linguistic variation. At 2;6 Hannah shows a tendency to realise falls in German with a level F0, whereas in English F0 is aligned with the right edge of the vowel. For Laura, in contrast, non-final H*+L pitch accents tend to be aligned with the right edge of the vowel only in German. Adam finally shows cross-linguistic differences in the production of rises, which are systematically produced with a level+rise F0 in English and with right edge alignment in German. Thus, cross-linguistic differences for each child are not very stable and, between the children, differ enormously. Furthermore, they stand in flat contradiction to the adult data presented by Gut (1995) and Grabe (1998). These inconclusive results are probably partly due to the small numbers of analysable productions here. As will be

177 167 discussed below, experimental data rather than spontaneous speech is better suited for the investigation of bilingual phonetic production strategies of pitch accent types Bilingual vs. monolingual acquisition Another approach to capture specific bilingual elements in language acquisition is to compare their acquisition process to that of monolingual children. It has been repeatedly suggested that the pattern of language development is the same for those two groups. Grosjean (1982) and Romaine (1995) collected evidence from several authors who claim an identity of sequence and even rate of acquisition between monolingual and bilingual language acquisition. This also seems to apply to the subjects of this study. Tracy (1995) and Gawlitzek-Maiwald (1997) argue that the acquisition of German and English syntax by both Hannah and Adam proceeds according to monolingual acquisition, both in terms of sequence and rate. For Laura, the acquisition of German syntax equals that of monolingual children, and the acquisition of English syntax shows no qualitative differences but is slower. In the area of intonational phonology comparison with monolingual acquisition is made difficult by the scarcity of monolingual data. Thus, only a few aspects of Hannah's, Laura's and Adam's acquisition of nucleus placement, pitch and intonational phrasing can be compared to monolingual acquisition. The marking of focus on new information by nucleus placement, observed for English already in two-word utterances by Purnell (1997), could not be demonstrated in the bilingual data. However, this might also be due to the type of data analysed here as discussed above. Wode & Schmitz (1974) observed an intonational and stress marking of negation words such as nein or nicht in early German utterances of monolingual children, which was also found for the bilingual children here. Other phonological uses of nucleus placement have not yet been investigated for monolingual children. The phonetic production of nuclear stress by monolingual English children shows great parallels to the production observed for the bilingual children in this study. Pollock et al. (1993) found that in monolingual child utterances before age 3 stress is difficult to detect. Furthermore, the use of pitch height and intensity for the production of stress is highly variable at age 2. Only from 3 years on do children use an increase in pitch and in intensity for the production of stress. Thus, the bilingual children studied here show the same quality and rate of the mastery of phonetic stress production in English as monolingual children. Similarly, difficulties with the production of unstressed syllables and considerable pitch movement in syllables other than nuclear ones as observed by Allen & Hawkins (1978) were also found here. In the area of pitch, monolingual data is contradictory in terms of rate and order of acquisition (see also section 4.3). It was suggested that this reflects both methodological and theoretical shortcomings as well as individual differences between language learners. These individual differences could also be demonstrated in the bilingual children studied here. Whereas Hannah consistently uses specific pitch patterns with certain communicative situations at 2;1, Laura does not do this even at 2;5. The acquisition of questions, albeit with only passing or no reference to intonation at all, has been investigated for both English

178 168 and German monolingual children. Comparison shows that the order of acquisition of question words is the same as for the bilingual children of this study. In English, the sequence what, where, why, how, who, when found by Tyack & Ingram (1977) is very similar to Laura's sequence what, where, why, which, who observed here. In German, Wode (1974) proposed the sequence wo, was, wie, wer, wann and Laura shows wo, was, welches, wie, wann, wer, warum. Similarly, Wode (1974) demonstrates that the use of intonation to mark questions decreases with the acquisition of morphological and grammatical markers, which was postulated for Adam in this study. Systematic associations of rises with questions in two-word utterances observed for Hannah were also found by Wode (1974). The phonetic production of pitch accents has not yet been investigated for monolingual children. The only aspect of the production of phonetic correlates of intonational phrasing investigated in English monolingual children is final syllable lengthening. This was assumed to present at 2 (Snow 1994) and decrease in quantity between 2 and 3 (Pollock et al. 1993). The bilingual children studied here show final syllable lengthening from 2;5, although not necessarily associated with intonational boundaries. Exaggerated lengthening for Laura continues up to 4;2. In summary, the scarcity of monolingual data in the area of the acquisition of intonational phonology does not allow a comprehensive comparison between monolingual and bilingual acquisition, but those aspects that could be compared suggest no major differences either in the sequence or in the rate of acquisition The model revised In general, considerable differences between children and age of acquisition were observed. This means that the provisional model of the acquisition of intonation presented in section 2.5 and revised here will only make reference to the sequence of acquisition but not specify any ages. Table 35 shows that in phase I stress is produced at the word level. Pitch is already used systematically for the marking of the type of utterance. No phonological use of intonational phrasing occurs. On the phonetic level, the production of stress is very unstable, as well as the phonetic realisation of the various pitch accent categories. Pauses are not produced with linguistic purpose but seem to be influenced by speech processing abilities. Phase II sees the phonological use of nucleus placement for contrast and emphasis. Thus, stress is now produced on a sentence level. Rises are used systematically to signal continuation, and a very rudimentary structuring of semantic units in utterances can be observed. On the phonetic level, stress production is more stable now. Usually, a combination of a distinct jump in pitch and high intensity is used. Pitch accent realisation continues to be unstable. Final syllable lengthening is systematic in phase II, and phonetic patterns can occur. In phase III, nucleus placement is used for the marking of new information, and nucleus shift occurs. Pitch is no longer primarily used for the marking of the type of speech act but

179 169 can be employed for the expression of attitudes (in English). Intonational phrasing is used for the structuring of discourse into semantic units. On the phonetic level, the production of pitch accents is still unstable, but FO resetting is beginning to be produced. In English, length is now a regular feature of nuclei. Phase I Phase II Phase III Phonological level word-level stress; nucleus placement used phonologically for contrast and emphasis; marking of new information, nucleus shift; pitch: phonological use for the marking of communicative intent/type of utterance; rises mark continuation; pitch used for expressing attitudes no IPs beginning of semantic structuring of utterances structuring of subordinate clauses Phonetic level unstable stress production; stress production: pitch+intensity; length used systematically for English nuclei; unstable pitch accent production; pauses inserted for reasons of processing load unstable pitch accent production, phonetic pitch patterns; final syllable lengthening unstable pitch accent production beginning of FO resetting Table 35: The revised model of the acquisition of intonation. To summarise, nucleus placement is the first aspect of intonation to be acquired in its phonological use and phonetic production. Although the phonological use of pitch occurs early, the phonetic realisation of pitch accents is still unstable in phase III. The phonetic correlates of intonational phrasing are beginning to be acquired in phase II, but many of its phonological functions are only mastered in phase III and beyond.

180 The acquisition of intonation in the general language acquisition process In order to see the above described developments in the area of intonation in a greater perspective, the results of chapters 8 to 10 will now be integrated with the children's individual language acquisition described in chapter 7. The acquisition in segmental and intonational phonology will be compared, the significance of phases of stuttering and their connection with sentence-level stress will be explored, and the relationship between intonational patterns and the level of representation will be discussed. The acquisition of intonational phonology of all three children shows that segmental and suprasegmental phonology develop separately. From Laura's development it can be seen that the phonetic production of nuclear stress is controlled earlier than the production of certain speech sounds. This also holds true for Adam, who systematically uses pitch and intensity for the production of English nuclei at 5;5 but still shows systematic substitution of various speech sounds at this age. Equally, Hannah uses pitch systematically at an age when consonant cluster reduction, phoneme substitution and other phonological processes such as velarisation and consonant harmony are still prevalent in her speech. However, the analysis of the phonetic production of pitch accent types and F0 resetting shows that none of these phenomena are produced reliably as late as 5;5. Thus, the physical control over pitch takes as long to be mastered as the production of certain speech sounds. Some evidence can be found for a phase of reorganisation that coincides with the development of the Formulator as proposed by Elbers & Wijnen (1992) (see section 3.3). It can be seen that, for Hannah, the acquisition of sentence-level stress at 2;6 is preceded by a phase of stuttering and halting speech from 2;4 to 2;6. Also for Adam, the emergence of complex syntactic structures such as complementizer-introduced subordinate clauses coincides with a phase of stuttering and halting speech. Furthermore, the production of main clause structures in both German and English by Hannah occurs at the same time as the acquisition of intonational phrasing with the function of grouping information units together. This is also the case for Laura in English, where the acquisition of this function of intonational phrasing correlates with her production of complex syntactic structures. Both Adam and Laura produce intonational patterns at some stage in their language acquisition. This means that, in the case of Adam, a great number of his English utterances show the same type of pitch accents and the same rhythmic structure. For Laura, one particular question was produced with an intonational shape verging on phonetic identity. These patterns might be counted as late-occurring errors that indicate redescription processes of the representation of intonation, which result in explicit (E-l level) representations as proposed by Karmiloff-Smith (1992) in the RR model (see section 2.4). Adam furthermore shows a phase of flat and monotonous intonation that immediately precedes the production of intonationally structured discourse. Unfortunately, the hypothesis that this reflects redescription processes of representations cannot be substantiated any further because, in the recordings analysed here, the children did not make meta-linguistic comments on intonation. This would be much easier to test in an experimental setting. It has been suggested that intonation might provide bootstrapping mechanisms for other linguistic systems (see chapter 1). This was found for early perceptual abilities that seem to

181 171 facilitate the acquisition of certain syntactic features. Unfortunately, this claim cannot be further substantiated on the basis of this study as it was only concerned with the production side of intonation. On the contrary, in many cases, production of intonational features seemed to lag behind syntactical and morphological acquisition. One case in point is intonational phrasing where the lack of control over pause production results in the intonational division of syntactic and semantic units in early child speech. For an investigation of bootstrapping mechanisms it therefore seems necessary to include perceptual abilities in the study of the acquisition of intonation Outlook and future research This study was able to provide a first description of the bilingual acquisition of intonation but it has become evident that future research is necessary in many areas. In order to determine whether the pace and order of acquisition in the three areas of intonation investigated here is due to the specific bilingual task of the language learners, monolingual data need to be collected for comparison. Furthermore, cohort data from other bilinguals of the same age and language combination could serve as a means of comparison for the case studies presented here. Finally, many of the questions left open here, such as the age of acquisition of the phonetic realisation of pitch accents could be explored in more detail using experimental methodology instead of longitudinal approaches. Concerning the question which transcription system of intonation to employ for child utterances, the combination of auditory and instrumental analysis proved valuable. As discussed in chapter 6, both notational systems had to be modified in order to incorporate child-specific factors such as slow articulation and inexplicable pauses. Especially the type of breaks produced sometimes proved very difficult to determine. In particular, early child utterances constitute a challenge for the transcription system of intonation developed in the British tradition. As shown in section theoretical assumptions on the intonational form of utterances cannot be kept up in the case of early child speech. The differentiation between head and nuclei is difficult to apply when utterances consist of a concatenation of equally stressed words. In this respect, the ToBI system appears more flexible. In this study, the parallel use of two systems provided greater reliability and a means of comparison.

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