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1 from Sound to Syntax: the Prosodic Bootstrapping Of From Sound to Syntax: The Prosodic Bootstrapping of Clauses Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation Authors Hawthorne, Kara Eileen Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 25/09/2021 05:22:33 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/283672 1 FROM SOUND TO SYNTAX: THE PROSODIC BOOTSTRAPPING OF CLAUSES by Kara Hawthorne _____________________ Copyright © Kara Hawthorne 2013 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College of THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2013 2 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Dissertation Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by Kara Hawthorne entitled From Sound to Syntax: The Prosodic Bootstrapping of Clauses and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy _______________________________________________________________________ Date: 11/13/2012 Dr. LouAnn Gerken _______________________________________________________________________ Date: 11/13/2012 Dr. Rebecca Gomez _______________________________________________________________________ Date: 11/13/2012 Dr. Heidi Harley _______________________________________________________________________ Date: 11/13/2012 Dr. Diane Ohala Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate’s submission of the final copies of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement. ________________________________________________ Date: 11/13/2012 Dissertation Director: LouAnn Gerken 3 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the copyright holder. SIGNED: Kara Hawthorne 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS While this dissertation will go forth into the world bearing only my name, it is truly a collaborative document. I would like to thank the following people for their advice and support. * LouAnn Gerken, my adviser, for her patience, encouragement, and unfailingly excellent advice. Each time we met, I left her office inspired. * My committee members – Rebecca Gomez, Heidi Harley, and Diane Ohala – for being in my corner throughout this whole process. * Reiko Mazuka for welcoming me into her lab in Tokyo and helping me finish an entire infant experiment in just ten weeks. * Cecile McKee for teaching me much of what I know about how to conduct responsible research and how to keep preschoolers from crying. Also, Adam Ussishkin for his helpful comments at the earliest stages of this project. * Colin Dawson for patiently answering the same six questions about statistics over and over again. And for the tea. * Greg Key and Alex Trueman for answering my truly embarrassing questions about syntax. * Jessamyn Schertz for reading a dissertation about Japanese prosody written in French on my behalf. That's a good friend. * Carolyn Quam, Andréa Davis, and Davi Vitela for useful discussion and emotional support in the forms of lab floor time, swimming dates, baked goods, and venting sessions. * Sara Knight, Brianna McMillan, and Juliet Minton – I've been through a lot of lab managers in my time, but each provided invaluable practical help. * Omar Aujani, Jeannette Bell, Lauren Clough, Erin Huff, and Kelly McGinn – the undergraduate research assistants who helped with everything from scheduling appointments to dealing with undergraduate participants to acoustic analysis of hundreds of sentences. * Mihoko Hasegawa ,Yuri Hatano, and Mari Kanamura – the lab coordinators in Japan – for introducing me to tomato ramen and for easing every aspect of conducting an experiment in a foreign country. * Ai Kanato, Yumiko Maeda, and Yuka Miyake, for facilitating the experiment in Japan and for their excellent puppeteering. * The babies, parents, and adults in Tucson and Tokyo, who graciously donated their time to participate in these experiments. * Finally, to the funding agencies: NSF grant 0950601 to LouAnn Gerken, RIKEN BSI funding to Reiko Mazuka, and NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program and East Asian and Pacific Summer Institute Grants to me. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES . 7 LIST OF TABLES . 8 ABSTRACT . 9 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO THE RESEARCH QUESTIONS . 11 1.1 Introduction . 11 1.2 Prosodic bootstrapping hypotheses . 15 1.3 Mechanisms underlying prosodic bootstrapping . 21 1.4 Structure of the dissertation . 23 CHAPTER 2 AN OVERVIEW OF PREVIOUS RESEARCH ON PROSODIC BOOTSTRAPPING . 25 2.1 The linguistics of prosody . 25 2.1.1 The prosodic hierarchy . 25 2.1.2 Prosody and syntax . 28 2.1.3 Prosodic correlates of syntactic boundaries . 31 2.2 Prosodic bootstrapping of syntax . 35 2.2.1 Infants' perception of prosodic cues at syntactic boundaries . 36 2.2.2 Infants' use of prosody for speech processing and grouping . 42 2.2.3 Adult studies . 48 2.3 Other useful cues for the learning of constituency and phrase structure . 57 2.4 The role of language-specific experience: Bootstrapping from non-native prosody . 62 2.4.1 Infant studies . 63 2.4.2 Adult studies . 68 2.5 Situating the present work in context . 71 CHAPTER 3 THE PROSODIC BOOTSRAPPING OF CLAUSES . 73 3.1 Experiment 1: Infants . 75 3.1.1 Participants . 75 3.1.2 Materials . 76 3.2.2.1 Acoustic analysis of the prosodic features . 81 3.1.3 Design . 84 3.1.4 Task . 86 3.1.5 Hypotheses . 87 3.1.6 Results . 88 3.1.7 Discussion . 90 3.2 Experiment 2: Adults . 96 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS – Continued 3.2.1 Participants . 96 3.2.2 Materials, design, and task . 97 3.2.3 Hypotheses . 98 3.2.4 Results . 99 3.2.5 Discussion . 100 3.3 Interim conclusions . 101 CHAPTER 4 THE TRANS-LINGUISTIC ROBUSTNESS OF PROSODIC CUES IN SYNTAX ACQUISITION . 103 4.1 A comparison of English and Japanese prosody . 104 4.2 Experiment 3: Japanese infants listening to English prosody . 109 4.2.1 Participants . 109 4.2.2 Materials, design, and task . 110 4.2.3 Hypotheses . 111 4.2.4 Results . 113 4.2.5 Discussion . 116 4.3 Experiment 4: American infants listening to Japanese prosody . 120 4.3.1 Participants . 120 4.3.2 Materials . 120 4.3.2.1 Acoustic analysis of the prosodic features . 122 4.3.3 Design and task . 126 4.3.4 Hypotheses . 127 4.3.5 Results . 128 4.3.6 Discussion . 130 4.4 Experiment 5: American adults listening to Japanese prosody . 133 4.4.1 Participants . 133 4.4.2 Materials, design, and task . 133 4.4.3 Hypotheses . 133 4.4.4 Results . 135 4.4.5 Discussion . 138 CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSIONS AND DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH . 141 5.1 Summary and conclusions: Prosodic bootstrapping of constituency . 141 5.1.1 Alternative interpretations and possible follow-up studies . 143 5.2 Summary and conclusions: Mechanisms underlying prosodic bootstrapping . ..
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