Acquisition of suprasegmental phonology in child bilingualism

Abstract

Like segmental features, prosodic - or "suprasegmental" - features of language form an essential part of language phonology and are a key ingredient of phonological development. Prosody encompasses both words (word-level prosody) and phrases (phrase-level prosody). Among word-level prosodic phenomena, stress and tone can be used contrastively, reading to changes in word meaning in intonational languages (e.g., the use of lexical stress in English nouns such as "contrast" versus verbs such as "contrast") and the use of lexical tone in tone languages (e.g., the use of tone changes such as /ta1/ "build" versus /ta4/ "big" in Mandarin Chinese). Among phrase-level prosodic phenomena, rhythm and intonation stand out as the most relevant. The analysis of rhythmic patterns across languages has led to the defining of different rhythmic classes, which allow us to acoustically characterize cross-linguistic differences in a more salient way. The phrasal variations in "fundamental frequency" (F0, perceived as pitch) generate different intonational pitch patterns, which also convey prominent cross-linguistic differences.