The acquisition of melodic form and meaning in yes-no interrogatives by Catalan and Spanish speaking children

Abstract

This study investigates the link between interrogative intonation and meaning in child-directed speech (henceforth CDS) and how this is reflected in the early development of yes-no-interrogatives of Catalan-and Spanish-speaking children. Previous research found that children before the two-word period produce several types of interrogatives and that their productions generally reflect the adult inventory pattern (Lleó & Rakow 2011;Prieto et al. 2012). Yet prior studies have not included an analysis of the pragmatic meanings that are encoded intonationally. This investigation takes an integrated approach to the study of intonational development within the domain of yes-no questions, exploring further the correspondence between intonational form and meaning in early interrogative production and relating it to the pragmatics of interrogative intonation in child-directed speech. A set of 723 interrogative utterances produced by 3 Catalan-and 2 Spanish-acquiring children between the onset of interrogative production and 2;4 were pragmatically and then prosodically analyzed, as well as a set of 867 utterances from Catalan and Spanish CDS. The data were extracted from the Serra-Solé Catalan Corpus and the Ojea and López-Ornat Spanish Corpora in CHILDES. Production results show that all children perform some instance of questioning before the two-word period and that their productions generally reflect the adult inventory patterns. Moreover, the results show a preference relationship between the different types of nuclear pitch configurations and the pragmatic meanings that underlie the yes-no-interrogative forms. Finally, these results highlight the importance of the assessment of form-meaning relationships for the understanding of intonational development.

Cadê o amor da mamãe? As interrogativas na Fala Dirigida à Criança adquirindo o PB

“…Pouco estudadas até recentemente, as interrogativas na FDC têm despertado interesse de pesquisas em aquisição da linguagem (Thorson et al, 2014;Geffen e Mintz, 2017;Chiang, Geffen e Mintz, 2018), mas ainda carecem de investigação na FDC usada em contextos de aquisição do português brasileiro (PB), objetivo de nosso trabalho. A partir da análise de corpora de enunciados produzidos no registro de FDC em situações de interação entre adultos e bebês, apresentamos um panorama relativo à proporção de perguntas em relação ao total de enunciados, o tipo de perguntas produzidas (Qu e Sim/Não) e suas características prosódicas, em contraste com os padrões observados no registro de FDA no português brasileiro.…”

The Intonation of Polar Questions in North American (“Heritage”) Icelandic

“…Most interestingly in the present context, the phonetically correct and pragmatically adequate production of a PQ was documented at age 1;6.16 (Prieto et al 2011:210; see also Prieto et al 2012). Thorson et al (2015) study PQ intonational patterns in monolingual Catalan- and Spanish-speaking children aged 1;5 (the age at which PQs are first uttered) to 2;4. They specifically investigate the relation between the intonational form of PQs and their pragmatic functions (information-seeking, confirmation-seeking, offers, pure and resumptive echoes).…”

Intonation and Evidentiality in Spanish Polar Interrogatives

“…This contour clearly contrasts with the falling tone L*L% typically found in declaratives. Two additional nuclear pitch accents have been identified: a rise–fall, circumflex contour L+¡H* L%, and a high-rise pattern H* H% (Escandell-Vidal, 1998, 1999, 2002; Estebas-Vilaplana & Prieto, 2010; Fernández Ramírez, 1957–1959; Hualde & Prieto, 2015; Quilis, 1993; RAE-ASALE, 2011: §§ 10.7–10.9; Thorson, Borras-Comes, Crespo-Sendra, Vanrell, & Prieto, 2014, among many others). These latter contours are considered as marked.…”

“…Approaches such as Estebas-Vilaplana & Prieto (2010) and RAE-ASALE (2011) use a combination of illocutionary force and epistemic state notions, suggesting distinctions between information-seeking, confirmation-seeking, counterexpectational, reiterative, exclamative and imperative questions. Finally, Thorson et al (2014) adopts Escandell-Vidal’s (1998) proposal and conflates it with illocutionary points, thus relating attributed thoughts with echoes, on the one hand, and self-attribution with confirmations, offers and requests, on the other.…”