Children's Intonation


Book Description

Children’s Intonation is a practical guide that focuses on the nature, causes and assessment of intonation problems for children and adolescents. Highlighting the importance of intonation for everyday conversational interaction and the implications of this for teaching and therapy contexts, this book addresses the following questions: How and when do children learn to use intonation for the purposes of interaction? As children get older, does intonation become more important or less important for communication? How might intonation be used to support or compensate for other aspects of language? What are the implications for practitioners, parents and caregivers when interacting with young children? Clinically oriented, this book explores these questions through case studies that cover a range of developmental communication difficulties including autism spectrum disorders, hearing impairment and specific speech and language difficulties. It provides readers with a tool for profiling children’s intonation skills, a developmental phase model to explain typical and atypical intonation development, a psycholinguistic model of intonation processing, interactional perspectives on intonation use, and consideration of intonation in relation to both written and spoken language. It also includes acccess to a companion website with extra resources.







Bilingual Acquisition of Intonation


Book Description

This book investigates the acquisition of intonation by German/English bilingual children. Intonation is analysed both auditorily and instrumentally, and the transcription system of the British Tradition and the ToBI system in the autosegmental-metrical approach of intonation analysis are employed. Based on longitudinal data of three children comprising the ages 2 years 1 month (2;1) to 5 years 6 months (5;6), the acquisition sequence for the phonological rules and phonetic production of nucleus placement, pitch and intonational phrasing is sketched. Some phonological functions of nucleus placement and pitch such as the marking of contrast or the type of speech act are mastered as early as 2;1 whilst intonational phrasing is first used phonologically at 4;6. Mastery of the phonetic production of all three intonational systems is acquired much later, and acquisition is not completed yet at 5;6. In general, interindividual differences and a clear separation of both language systems are apparent in all children, with a considerable time lag in the acquisition of the weaker language. It is concluded that both transcription systems for intonation need to be modified for the analysis of child speech and that the autosegmental-metrical approach with its distinction between the phonological and the phonetic level proves a more flexible and descriptively valuable tool.




Children's Early Text Construction


Book Description

For decades, research on children's literacy has been dominated by questions of how children learn to read. Especially among Anglophone scholars, cognitive and psycholinguistic research on reading has been the only approach to studying written language education. Echoing this, debates on methods of teaching children to read have long dominated the educational scene. This book presents an alternative view. In recent years, writing has emerged as a central aspect of becoming literate. Research in cognitive psychology has shown that writing is a highly complex activity involving a degree of planning unknown in everyday conversational uses of language. At the same time, developmental studies have revealed that when young children are asked to "write," they show a surprisingly sophisticated understanding of the representational constraints of alphabetic writing systems. They show this understanding long before they can read conventional writing on their own. The rich structure of meanings involved in the word text provided the glue that brought together a group of scholars from several disciplines in an international workshop held in Rome. Reflecting the state of the field at the time, the majority of the workshop participants were scholars working in languages other than English, especially the romance languages. Their work mirrors a linguistic and psychological research tradition that Anglophone scholars knew little of until recently. This volume provides English-language readers with updated versions of the papers presented at the meeting. The topics discussed at the workshop are represented in the chapters as follows: * the relationship between acquisition of language and familiarity with written texts; * the reciprocal "permeability" between spoken and written language; * the initial phases of text construction by children; and * the educational conditions that facilitate written language acquisition and writing practice.




Multilingual Norms


Book Description

Multilinguals are not multiple monolinguals. Yet multilingual assessment proceeds through monolingual norms, as if fair conclusions were possible in the absence of fair comparison. In addition, multilingualism concerns what people do with language, not what languages do to people. Yet research focus remains on multilinguals' languages, as if languages existed despite their users. This book redresses these paradoxes. Multilingual scholars, teachers and speech-language clinicians from Europe, Asia, Australia and the US contribute the first studies dedicated to multilingual norms, those found in real-life multilingual development, assessment and use. Readership includes educators, clinicians, decision-makers and researchers interested in multilingualism.




Language Acquisition


Book Description

The study of language acquisition has become a center of scientific inquiry into the nature of the human mind. The result is a windfall of new information about language, about learning, and about children themselves. In Language Acquisition Jill and Peter de Villiers provide a lively introduction to this fast-growing field. Their book deals centrally with the way the child acquires the sounds, meanings, and syntax of his language, and the way he learns to use his language to communicate with others. In discussing these issues, the de Villiers provide a clear and insightful treatment of the classic questions about language acquisition: Does the child show a genetic predisposition for speech, or grammar, or semantics which makes him uniquely able to learn human language? What kinds of learning are involved in acquiring language and what kinds of experience with a language are necessary to support such learning? Is there a critical period during the child's development which is optimal for language acquisition? And what kind of psychological disabilities underlie the failure to acquire language?




A textbook for parents. How to teach a child to talk. Correct speech development from infant to preschooler .


Book Description

In the book we will consider in detail many topics related to speech development in children. We list just some of the topics that will be described in the book: • The importance of early speech development. • A general overview of language stages from infancy to preschool. • Creation of an environment that stimulates speech development. • The importance of reading from birth. • The importance of early communication and its impact on speech development. • Communication techniques with newborns and infants. • Games and exercises to stimulate the production of sounds. • An introduction to phonetic development and the prevention of common pronunciation problems. • Exercises to develop vocabulary and comprehension. • How to use everyday activities to teach. • Strategies for encouraging first words. • Developing the ability to connect words into sentences. • Games and exercises to teach basic grammar. • The importance of correction and encouragement in the learning process. • Techniques and games to develop storytelling skills. • How to use books to improve speaking skills. • The role of music and singing in speech development. • Practical activities for incorporating music into learning. • Early detection and overcoming of speech development delays. • When to seek specialist help. • Strategies for maintaining interest in learning and conversation. • The importance of social interaction and play with peers. • Wise use of technology in stimulating speech development. • Applications and resources to support learning. • Laying the foundation for reading and writing. • The importance of continuing the educational process at home. • Summing up and parting words for parents for the future. • The importance of patience, consistency and encouragement in the process of speech development. Each chapter will contain specific tips, strategies, games, and activities that parents can use daily to stimulate their child's language development. The book aims to provide parents not only with theoretical knowledge, but also with practical tools to actively participate in the development of their child's speech.




The Oxford Handbook of Language Prosody


Book Description

This handbook presents detailed accounts of current research in all aspects of language prosody, written by leading experts from different disciplines. The volume's comprehensive coverage and multidisciplinary approach will make it an invaluable resource for all researchers, students, and practitioners interested in prosody.




Kids' Slips


Book Description

The study of speech errors, or "slips of the tongue," is a time-honored methodology which serves as a window to the representation and processing of language and has proven to be the most reliable source of data for building theories of speech production planning. However, until Kids' Slips, there has never been a corpus of such errors from children with which to work. This is the first developmental linguistics research volume to document how online processing is revealed in young children, ages 18 months through 5 years, through their slips of the tongue. Thus, this text provides a new methodology and data source, which will greatly expand our ability to uncover the details of early language development. Professor Jaeger's groundbreaking book incorporates both details of her methodology and findings with implications for different aspects of language development, including phonetics and phonology, the lexicon, semantics, morphology, and syntax. While all the child data is included in the book, a Web site hosted by the author provides readers with the adult data as well. Kids' Slips targets those who study language development in linguistics, developmental psychology, and speech and hearing, as well as those who study language representation and processing more generally in the same disciplines.




Language in Infancy and Childhood


Book Description




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