Laryngographic analysis of child-directed speech.
This paper reports the results of a small-scale study of mother-child interactions using electrolaryngography to measure mean, mode and range of fundamental frequency variation. The mother-child results are compared with those obtained from recordings of the same subjects in conversation with an adult. The methodology employed allowed statistics to be derived from very much larger samples of speech than have hitherto been used in the literature on child-directed speech. The main findings were that measures of central tendency are higher for adult-child interactions than for adult-adult conversations and the range of fundamental frequency greater. This expansion of the range is effected by increasing the upper limit of the range.
Ogle
S A
SA
Department of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, UK.
Maidment
J A
JA
D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007830:Larynx / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D013060:Speech / Q000502:physiology*