Speech breathing and prosody during statement and question productions in seven-year-old children

• Author / Creator

  Papadopoulos, Georgina Paulette Maria

• The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of prosodic contrasts in
  differing contextual scenarios (e.g., questions, statements) on acoustic measures and
  speech breathing parameters in children. Twelve English-speaking 7-year-old children
  participated. Structured and unstructured speaking tasks were used to elicit productions
  of questions and statements. Speech breathing measures included: lung volume
  initiations, terminations, and excursions, and number of syllables per breath group.
  Acoustic measures included: f0 average, f0 slope, dB average, and syllable duration.
  Significant differences were observed for acoustic measures associated with questions
  and statements in both structured and unstructured tasks and only f0 slope was found
  significant different in both tasks. Also, one breathing measure in the unstructured task
  had significance difference for questions and statements. Results of the study
  demonstrated that 7-year old children appeared to use mainly laryngeal adjustments to
  mark prosodic contrasts in structured conditions eliciting question and statement
  productions.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Speech breathing
  • Prosody

• Graduation date

  Spring 2014

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Science

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3BH51

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.