Tag: Melissa Redford

How Delayed Articulation Skills Effect the Outcome on Suprasegmental Aspects of a Lexical Stress Task.

Presenter(s): Quinn Mitchell

Faculty Mentor(s): Melissa Redford & Jill Potratz

Poster 116

Session: Social Sciences & Humanities

Lexical stress is determined by varying amounts of duration, intensity, and pitch. These aspects work together to convey if a word is iambic or trochaic. The purpose of this study was to compare two groups of 5-year-old children: (n=10) typically developing children and those with delayed articulation skills (n=5). Their performance on a lexical stress task was analyzed to determine how an articulation delay effects the suprasegmental aspects of production. The Diagnostic Evaluation of Articulation and Phonology (Dodd et al., 2012) was used to determine if the children were in the typically developing (TD) group or the delayed articulation skills (DA) group. The lexical stress task used in this study tests children’s ability to repeat randomized disyllabic non-word sounds that were either trochaic (/ˈbɑdɑ) or iambic (bɑˈdɑ/) and increased in repetition length as the task progressed. The children’s productions were judged and scored by 6 trained research assistants who determined that the DA group produced more errors than the TD group. Acoustic measures on duration, intensity, pitch (F0), and vowel quality (F1 and F2) of correctly produced vowels gave no indication as to why the DA group was performing more poorly. In some case’s the DA group made more correct trochees and iambs, yet they still have more errors than the TD group. Perhaps children with delayed articulation skills are putting focus on their articulators and do not have enough residual attention to give to their working memory to be able to recall the order of trochees and iambs.

Investigating the Effect of Second Language Learning on the Acquisition of a Third Language Rhythm Pattern

Presenter(s): Carissa Diantoro—Linguistics

Faculty Mentor(s): Melissa Redford

Session: Prerecorded Poster Presentation

Language rhythm arises from the language-specific timing of syllables, dictated by the language- specific stress patterns . Previous studies show that speaking a language with a similar rhythm pattern to a target second language (L2) could aid in rhythm acquisition of that language . The question addressed in this study is whether training in an L2 could help the acquisition of a third language (L3) . We hypothesize that compared to a monolingual speaker, an L2 learner will better acquire the rhythm patterns of an L3 if the L2 rhythm pattern is similar to that of the L3 . We tested this hypothesis by asking whether English-speaking learners of French more quickly learn an L3 language with a French-like rhythm pattern (i .e ., Indonesian) than English speakers with no such L2 experience . The French learners and English-only speakers were recorded while repeating Indonesian sentences as well as French sentences . Their repetitions were acoustically segmented into consonant and vowel intervals, and several interval-based rhythm metrics were calculated . Preliminary findings, based on 5 second-year English learners of French and 5 monolingual English speakers, show little meaningful differences between the two groups in their production of Indonesian . Segmentation and analysis of the French sentences is on-going to ensure that there are at least difference between the groups in their production of French . Also, more study participants are being recruited to increase the sample sizes . Overall, the goal of the study is to better understand adult language acquisition, including the benefits of L2 learning .