The acquisition of prosodic marking of narrow focus in Central Swedish

Abstract

We investigated how Central Swedish-speaking four-to-eleven year-old children acquire the prosodic marking of narrow focus, compared to adult controls. Three measurements were analysed: placement of the prominence-marking high tone (prominence H), pitch range effects of the prominence H, and word duration. Subject-verb-object sentences were elicited in sentence-medial and sentence-final focus conditions via a semi-spontaneous elicitation task. The children largely performed in an adult-like manner already at four to five: They predominantly add prominence H to focal words and avoid this tone post-focally in both sentence-medial and sentence-final position. The placement or avoidance of prominence H has largely the same effects on pitch range for children and adults. Finally, four to five-year-olds and seven to eight-year-olds also increase the duration of the focal word, similar to adults. Hence, Central Swedish-speaking children master the use of prosody for focus marking at an earlier age, compared to children acquiring a West Germanic language.