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The role of Swedish tonal word accents in children with language impairment.

Samuelsson, Christina LU and Löfqvist, Anders LU (2006) In Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics 20(4). p.231-248
Abstract
The present study was designed to examine the production of the Swedish tonal accents in children with language impairment and normal controls in order to verify previous findings. The productions of 25 children with linguistic impairment and their matched controls, aged 4;4-10;0 (mean age 5;11) were evaluated by ratings of fundamental frequency patterns, and by perceptual analysis by ten linguistically naive listeners to assess the distinctiveness of the accents. These methods give a more detailed description of the children's productions of tonal word accents. The results show that 60.8% of the children with language impairment have difficulties to produce the contrast of tonal word accents according to the F0 patterns. The difference in... (More)
The present study was designed to examine the production of the Swedish tonal accents in children with language impairment and normal controls in order to verify previous findings. The productions of 25 children with linguistic impairment and their matched controls, aged 4;4-10;0 (mean age 5;11) were evaluated by ratings of fundamental frequency patterns, and by perceptual analysis by ten linguistically naive listeners to assess the distinctiveness of the accents. These methods give a more detailed description of the children's productions of tonal word accents. The results show that 60.8% of the children with language impairment have difficulties to produce the contrast of tonal word accents according to the F0 patterns. The difference in the rating of the F0 curves between the children with LI and their matched controls was significant. There is a significant positive correlation between the perceptual results and the F0-rating, indicating that the better a child was perceived, the better his/her F0 production was rated. We conclude that the distinction between the tonal word accents is a difficult feature to acquire for Swedish children, which is shown both by acoustic and perceptual evaluations. (Less)
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author
and
organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
keywords
language impairment, Swedish, tonal accents
in
Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics
volume
20
issue
4
pages
231 - 248
publisher
Taylor & Francis
external identifiers
  • wos:000237105600001
  • pmid:16644584
  • scopus:33646428658
ISSN
1464-5076
DOI
10.1080/09537100400010360
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
62acdb4a-45db-40f4-9fb4-9887e9e57362 (old id 155617)
date added to LUP
2016-04-01 12:31:59
date last changed
2022-01-27 06:21:59
@article{62acdb4a-45db-40f4-9fb4-9887e9e57362,
  abstract     = {{The present study was designed to examine the production of the Swedish tonal accents in children with language impairment and normal controls in order to verify previous findings. The productions of 25 children with linguistic impairment and their matched controls, aged 4;4-10;0 (mean age 5;11) were evaluated by ratings of fundamental frequency patterns, and by perceptual analysis by ten linguistically naive listeners to assess the distinctiveness of the accents. These methods give a more detailed description of the children's productions of tonal word accents. The results show that 60.8% of the children with language impairment have difficulties to produce the contrast of tonal word accents according to the F0 patterns. The difference in the rating of the F0 curves between the children with LI and their matched controls was significant. There is a significant positive correlation between the perceptual results and the F0-rating, indicating that the better a child was perceived, the better his/her F0 production was rated. We conclude that the distinction between the tonal word accents is a difficult feature to acquire for Swedish children, which is shown both by acoustic and perceptual evaluations.}},
  author       = {{Samuelsson, Christina and Löfqvist, Anders}},
  issn         = {{1464-5076}},
  keywords     = {{language impairment; Swedish; tonal accents}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  number       = {{4}},
  pages        = {{231--248}},
  publisher    = {{Taylor & Francis}},
  series       = {{Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics}},
  title        = {{The role of Swedish tonal word accents in children with language impairment.}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09537100400010360}},
  doi          = {{10.1080/09537100400010360}},
  volume       = {{20}},
  year         = {{2006}},
}