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Intonational realisation of topic and focus in child Dutch Aoju Chen Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics NVFW seminar on Prosody MPI, Nijmegen, 1 June, 2007. Outline. 1. Topic-focus and their intonational realisation in Germanic languages 2. Prior work on topic-focus in child language

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  1. Intonational realisation of topic and focus in child DutchAoju Chen Max Planck Institute for PsycholinguisticsNVFW seminar on ProsodyMPI, Nijmegen, 1 June, 2007

  2. Outline 1. Topic-focus and their intonational realisation in Germanic languages 2. Prior work on topic-focus in child language 3. The present study 4. Conclusions 5. Topics for future research

  3. Topic and focus at the sentence level • The topic: the entity about which information is provided • typically realised as a NP or a pronoun at the sentence level • The focus: the information that is provided about the topic e.g. What did the children do next? [The children] topic [went to school] focus. Lambrecht (1994) Information focus (presentational focus) Relationally given Relationally new Referentially given Gundel and Fretheim (in press) Non-contrastive Non-contrastive No, the children [watched TV]focus. Contrastive/corrective

  4. Intonation of focus Speaker A: Which class do you have today? Speaker B: I have [physics]. Information focus (presentational focus) H*L Contrastive focus (corrective focus) contrastive Speaker C: I have [mathematics]. Speaker D: No, we have [psycholinguistics]. (C’s classmate) Gussenhoven (2006)

  5. (Possible) Intonation of topic Wie eet een biet? ‘Who eats a beet?’ • Deaccented • L*H • H*L De poetsvrouw eet [een biet]topic. ‘The cleaning-lady eats a beet.’ Lambrecht (1994) Wie eet een biet? ‘Who eats a beet?’ Braun (2006) De poetsvrouw eet [een biet]topic. ‘The cleaning-lady eats a beet.’ Wie pakt de vaas?‘who picks up the vase?’ Vallduví & Engdahl (1996) Braun (2006) Hedberg & Sosa (2007) De pestkop pakt [de vaas]topic. ‘The pest picks up the vase.’

  6. Topic and focus in child language • Commonality of the topic-focus structure prior to and in the two-word stage • Successive two one-word utterances • e.g. Finger. Touch (Scollon 1976) • Two-word utterances • e.g. Federica acqua ‘Federica water’ (child pretends to drink) (D’Odorico 2003) • Use of intonation in expressing topic and focus • In the one-word stage • Not expressed intonationally (Bloom 1973) • In the two word stage • Accenting the focus and deaccenting the topic (Wieman 1976) • Not expressed intonationally (Chen & Fikkert, to appear) • In the grammatical multi-word speech stage • The use of accentuation in marking contrast

  7. Topic and focus in child language (cont’d) • Contrast + newness in English • A picture-description task • Picture 1: A boy is riding a bike • Picture 2: A GIRL is riding a bike. • Correct use of ‘contrastive stress’ at the age of 3 and 4 • Most frequently in sentence-initial position • An increase in the use of contrastive stress in older children • Contrast + focus in German • An imitation task • Child repeats the answer to a WH-question Question: Tomorrow is Eva and Peter’s mother’s birthday… Eva wants to bake cookies. What does Peter back?) Answer: Peter bakes a CAKE. • Higher mean pitch in contrastive focus (337 Hz) than in topic (320 Hz) in German 4- and 5-year-olds’ speech.(Müller et al. 2005) • Bigger difference in sentence-final position (Hornby and Hass 1970, MacWhinney and Bates 1978)

  8. Topic and focus in child language (cont’d) • No clear predictions on the use of accent placement in marking topic and focus • Conflicting effects of sentence position • Sentence final: weaker intonational realisation (H & H 1970) • Sentence final: stronger intonational realisation (Müller et al. 2005) • No information on the use of pitch accent type in the marking of topic and focus • Accent type matters in adult language • Development of inventory of pitch accent types in child language

  9. The present study • How do Dutch-acquiring children (>3 yrs) use pitch accent types and deaccentuation to realise full NPnon-contrastive topic and focus? • e.g. Speaker A: What did the boy draw? Speaker B: [The boy]topic drew [a castle]focus. • Are topic and focus typically associated with a certain accent type? • Does the position of topic and focus (sentence initial vs. sentence final) matter? • Do children differ from adults? • Is there development over time?

  10. Kijk! Een vos! Wat bechermt de vos? Method • An Answer-reconstruction task (in a picture-matching game) • Participants • 4- to 5-year-olds • 7- to 8-year-olds • 10- to 11-year olds • Adults Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 (N=20, age range: 4;5-5;7, mean age: 5;1) (N=14, age range: 7;2-8;10, mean age: 7;5) (N=12, age range:10;3-11;10, mean age: 10;4) (N=25)

  11. Stimuli 36 question-answer pairs Answers have a fixed word order: SVO 18 pairs with questions about the subject 18 pairs with questions about the object Each subject NP and each object NP occur in both groups of question-answer pairs but in combination with different VPs and SVs. e.g. Wat bescherm de vos? De vos beschermt het bos. e.g. Wie beschert de fiets? De vos beschermt de fiets. e.g. Wat steelt de pestkop? De pestkop steelt een fiets. Method (cont’d) Who protects the bike? The fox protects the bike. Initial Focus Final Topic What does the fox protect? The fox protects the forest. Initial Topic Final Focus

  12. Intonation transcription ToDI + a few additional labels (Gussenhoven 2005) Annotator 1 Annotating all data 2-3 times with a 2-week interval or longer Blind to the experimental conditions Annotator 2 Annotating a selection of the data independent of Annotator 1 Checking all labels with doubts from Annotator 1 Disagreements were resolved together Method (cont’d)

  13. Analyses • Within-subject factors • Pragmatic condition (topic,focus) • Position (sentence initial, sentence final) • Between-subject factor • Age • Dependent variables • Mean percentage (%) distributions of • Deaccentuation • H* • H*L • L*H • !H*L

  14. Results: Adults • Focus • Sentence-initial: mostly H*L (78%), H* (13%) • Sentence-final: most frequently H*L (46%), !H*L (26%), deaccented (17%) • Topic • Sentence-initial: mostly H*L (65%), H* (20%) • Sentence-final: typically deaccented (62%), !H*L (27%)

  15. Interim discussion • Deaccentuation as the default intonation of topic • Facilitating the processing of relationally given information (e.g. Terken and Nootboom 1987, Birch and Clifton 1995) • Facilitating the marking of focus • Why is sentence-initial topic mostly accented? • Rhythmically motivated: accent the accentable word preceding the accent that marks focus within the same IP (Horne 1991, Terken & Hirschberg 1994) Wat beschermt de vos? [De vos]topic beschermt [het bos]focus. 1. # H*L L% 2. H*L H*L L% • Pattern 2 was judged to be more pleasant sounding than pattern 1 by native speakers of Dutch. (Chen 2007)

  16. Interim discussion (cont’d) • Consequences for language acquisition • Children need to learn to associate H*L with focus and deaccentuation with topic. • Further, they need to know that topic can be accented for rhythmic motivation when preceding an accent assigned to mark focus in the same intonational phrase.

  17. Results: 4- to 5-year-olds Mean % distributions of accent types across conditions Adults (N=10) 4- to 5-yr-olds (N=20) OTHER: H*LH, L*, L*HL, H*LHL, L*HLH OTHER: H*LH, L*, L*HL H* H*L L*H !H*L deaccented

  18. Sentence-final (N=20) Results: 4- to 5-year-olds (cont’d) Sentence-initial (N=20) • Deaccentuation: topic > focus, independent of sentence position, contra prior work. • Focus: (1) Sentence-initially, mostly H*L, followed by H* (2) Sentence-finally, mostly L*H and H*L. (why L*H?) • Topic: (1) similar realisation to focus, with only one difference concerning L*H (2) realised similarly frequently with L*H, H*L, and deaccentuation

  19. S V O Results: 4- to 5-year-olds (cont’d) • Phrasing • In both topic and focus conditions, an IP boundary occurs more frequently after the sentence-initial NP (subject) than after the verb. • However, • an IP boundary occurs after the subject more frequently when it is topical; • an IP boundary occurs after the verb (or before the object) more frequently when the subject is focal and the object is topical. Position x Pragmatics: F (1, 17) = 2.64, p=0.12

  20. 4- to 5-yr-olds vs. adults • Sentence-finally, children use H*L similarly frequently in topic and focus; adults use H*L typically to realise focus. • Sentence-initially, children show a weaker preference for H*L over H* in sentence-initial topic/focus than adults. • Children accent sentence-final topic frequently (>85%); deaccentuation is the typical intonation of topic in adult Dutch. • 4- to 5-year-olds tend to insert an IP after sentence-initial topic and before sentence-final topic; adults rarely do this.

  21. Interim summary • 4- to 5-years-olds have adult-like inventory of pitch accent types. • They are sensitive to the accentuation-focus and deaccentuation-focus associations, like adults • The Lack of effect of sentence position on accentuation suggest that children under 6 are not sensitive to the role of sentence position in marking topic and focus. • 4- to 5-years-olds have not acquired H*L as the typical focus pitch accent and deaccentuation as the default intonation of topic. • They appear to use phrasing as another means to realise topic.

  22. Results: 7- to 8-yr-olds 7- to 8-yr-olds (N=5): sentence initial 7- to 8-yrs-olds (N=5): sentence-final

  23. Results: all age groups

  24. Results: all age groups (cont’d)

  25. Conclusions • Children as young as 4 have adult-like inventory of pitch accent types in Dutch. • Children are sensitive to the accentuation-focus and deaccentuation-topic associations at the age of 4, as suggested in prior work. • However, children under 6 are not adult-like in intonational marking of topic and focus. • They acquire H*L as the typical ‘focus accent’ and deaccentuation as the typical ‘topic intonation’ at the age of 7 or 8. • Possibly, frequent use of H*L in sentence-initial topic in adult Dutch has made it difficult for young children to extract the functions of H*L and deaccentuation from the input. • Only 4- to 5-year-olds appear to use phrasing to realise sentence-initial topic, which forms its own IP. Older children and adults utter the topic-focus structure mostly as one IP.

  26. Topics for future research • How do pitch accent types affect the interpretation of topic and focus by children? • Will a deaccented NP create a bias towards a topic interpretation and an NP with H*L a focus interpretation? • How do pitch accent types affect the processing of given vs. new information in 4- to 5-yr-olds? • Will their overuse of accentuation mask the facilitating effect of pragmatically appropriate intonation? • Can listeners tell the topic apart from the focus in the sentence initial position? • Any differences in the phonetic realisation of H*L?

  27. Special thanks Information Structure in Language Acquisition Christine Dimroth Laura Herbst Wolfgang Klein Bhuvana Narasimhan Sarah Schimke Alice Kruisselbrink (former student-assistant) Marieke Hoetjes Steven Rekké

  28. Thank you!

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