A comparison of maternal and child intonation: Does adult input support child production?
Intonation involves the musical aspects of speech production and consists of suprasegmental aspects of phonology (i.e., pitch, length and loudness). The development of intonation involves various changes throughout the first 2 years of life as children learn how to manipulate intonation features as their linguistic system develops. Evidence from the literature provides a mixed message related to the influence of surrounding adult models on intonation production. The current study observed intonation characteristics in 23 mother-child pairs. Results indicated that, in general, children did not directly imitate maternal intonation, but that maternal support assisted the production of wider contours.
Posted on May 14, 2010, in Research and tagged imitation, intonation, language acquisition, prosody. Bookmark the permalink. 1 Comment.
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The development of intonation that involves musical aspects should be treated when a mother was pregnant. Olivia, my wife and I did it when Leongtia, my first daugther had not been born. When I knew that Olivia was pregnat, I let her listen to some classical music almost every night before sleeping. She likes Bethoven and Mozart. The result is before one year old, my little daughter can mention about elevens words. Even a number of difficult pronounciation in Indonesia, such as ayam, anjing,ronald can be mention relatively good. She quickly remember and point the position of pets in our house. Every morning, Leongtia cries not for bread but she wants to see our pets from one location to another. I feel the development speech production etc must be started better early not waiting for the first 2 years of life as a child.