Additive effects of lengthening on the utterance-final word in child-directed speech.
OBJECTIVE
The authors investigated lengthening effects in child-directed speech (CDS) across the sentence, testing the additive effects on duration of Word Position, Register, Focus, and Sentence Mode (statement/question).


METHODS
Five theater students produced 6 sentences containing 5 monosyllabic words in a simulated dialogue, varying in Register, Focus, and Sentence Mode. The authors segmented a total of 1,800 sentences using forced-alignment tools, and they analyzed the duration of each word.


RESULTS
The results show significant effects of Register, Word Position, and their interactions. The simple effect of Register was significant in all 5 word positions, indicating a global elongation effect in CDS. Interestingly, there was no proportional increase of the final word in CDS. In addition, the 3-way interactions Register × Word Position × Focus and Register × Word Position × Sentence Mode were significant, which converge to the conclusion that the utterance-final word in CDS is additively elongated when it is focused and in a statement.


CONCLUSIONS
Elongation in CDS is a global effect, but the additive effects of duration demonstrated in the authors' data suggest that the effect of enhanced utterance-final lengthening in CDS in naturalistic samples may be a by-product of discourse characteristics of CDS.
University at Buffalo, State University of New York, USA. eonsukko@buffalo.edu
Eon-Suk
ES
Ko
Melanie
M
Soderstrom
D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D009035:Mothers; D010700:Phonetics; D013060:Speech; D013067:Speech Perception; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D014831:Voice