Intonation in Language Acquisition Evidence from German Inaugural – Dissertation zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades der Philosophischen Fakultät der Universität zu Köln im Fach Phonetik Thomas Grünloh ii Acknowledgements First of all, I would like to thank my supervisors, Michael Tomasello & Elena Lieven from the Max Planck Institute for evolutionary Anthropology and Martine Grice from the University of Cologne, IfL – Phonetics. They not only gave me good advice, engaging discussions and supported me with my PhD research, they also gave me the freedom that I needed to find my own way. To my family, I´d like to say thank you so much for always supporting me in whatever I`ve chosen to do. So many people at the MPI-EVA have helped to make my work possible. In particular, I´d like to thank the nurseries, parents and children who took the time and effort to participate in my studies. Special thanks goes to Nadja Richter, Angela Loose and Manja Teich without whom testing wouldn´t have been possible; also to Henriette Zeidler and Annett Witzmann who put so much effort into organizing trips, working life and dealing with administrative questions. I owe a great deal to Roger Mundry who helped make my statistics a breeze, to the research assistants in Leipzig, as well as Petra Jahn and her team. Additionally, I wish to thank everyone at the Institut fur Phonetik, Köln. I`m very grateful to all those institutes from whom I´ve received helpful comments at colloquia and help with administrative problems. Additionally, I´d like to thank everybody in the Child Language group in Leipzig and Manchester for always being open to new (and sometimes crazy) research proposals. You´ve always supported my ideas, read my scripts - and joined me in celebrating Leipzig‘s night-life! You´ve all been an important part of my life for the last three years and, hopefully, you will continue to be so. Special thanks go to Sarah Girlich for being there when I needed your help with certain psychological questions, and Daniel Schmerse & Robert Hepach for those exciting kicker-games. Also, I´d like to thank my folks in Cologne. I`m grateful also to Patrick and Sven for always offering me a corner on their couch, and to Silke and Lars for always being honest with me. Finally I would like to thank Caro. You‘ve made so many sacrifices in order for us to share our lives together. I‘m grateful for every night and day you‘ve watched over me. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you. iii iv Abstract This dissertation studies the role of intonation in language acquisition. After a general introduction about the phonetic and phonological aspects of intonation and its different forms and functions within language, two different models of language acquisition and the role of intonation within these two models will be presented. Following this, I will present and discuss empirical data on the question, whether young German learning children use intonation in order to acquire language. Two comprehension studies will be presented. Here, I concentrate on the question whether children understand the referential function of intonation and whether they can use this knowledge in order to learn new words. Additionally, I will present empirical evidence that focuses on the question whether children use intonation in resolving participant roles in complex syntactic constructions as well as in resolving syntactic ambiguities development. Finally, I will present two production studies that investigate the prosodic realization of target referents that have different informational statuses within a discourse from both young children and parents, talking to their children. Overall, the data from these studies suggest that language learning children do use the intonational form of an utterance from early on in order to understand another´s intention. Young language learning children do understand that a certain intonational form conveys a function. Additionally, the studies presented in this thesis suggest that children also use intonation in order to convey their own communicative intentions. Thus, intonation is an important instrument for young children‘s language acquisition as they use the information that is provided by intonation, not only to learn words and to combine them to syntactic constructions, but also for the understanding of paralinguistic properties of language. The findings of the studies presented in this thesis are discussed with regard to different theories of language acquisition. Additionally, I will give insight into the understanding of the development of young children´s use of intonation. v vi Contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................................... iii Abstract ..................................................................................................................... v Part I: Theoretical Background .................................................................................... 1 1. General introduction .............................................................................................. 3 2. Intonation .............................................................................................................. 5 2.1. Introduction ......................................................................................................... 5 2.2. The Phonetic aspects of intonation ..................................................................... 6 Speech melody ............................................................................................ 6 Accentuation ............................................................................................... 7 2.3. The phonological aspects of intonation ............................................................. 10 2.3.1. Forms of intonation ................................................................................ 10 Autosegmental and Metrical Phonology .................................................. 10 GToBI ......................................................................................................... 16 2.3.2. Functions of intonation ........................................................................... 18 Affective functions .................................................................................... 18 Intentional functions ................................................................................. 21 2.4. Summary ............................................................................................................ 28 vii 3. Language Acquisition ............................................................................................ 31 3.1. The Nativist-Generative Approach ..................................................................... 31 Bootstrapping mechanisms ...................................................................... 35 3.2. Usage-Based Perspective ................................................................................... 38 Intention reading .............................................................................................. 39 Pattern finding .................................................................................................. 41 3.3. The role of intonation in the two approaches ................................................... 45 4. Intonation in language acquisition ........................................................................ 48 4.1. Prerequisite ........................................................................................................ 48 Perspective taking in infancy .................................................................... 49 Understanding communicative intentions ............................................... 50 4.2. Intonation in Information Marking .................................................................... 51 5. Research questions ............................................................................................... 59 Part II: Empirical Studies - Comprehension ............................................................... 61 6. Referential function of intonation ......................................................................... 63 6.1. Understanding intentions by intonation ............................................................ 63 6.1.1. Introduction ............................................................................................ 63 6.1.2. Data & Method ....................................................................................... 67 Participants ............................................................................................... 67 Materials and design ................................................................................. 67 Procedure .................................................................................................. 68 viii Acoustic properties of the test material ................................................... 71 Coding and reliability ................................................................................ 73 6.1.3. Results & Discussion ............................................................................... 73 6.2. Competition in Word Learning: Intonation vs. Mutual Exclusivity .................... 76 6.2.1. Introduction ............................................................................................ 76 6.2.2. Data & Method ....................................................................................... 76 Participants ..............................................................................................