sum: prosody and gestures references
Jeff ALLEN
jeff at elda.fr
Sat Mar 27 15:46:35 UTC 1999
Regarding my 2 separate questions on the topics of Prosody and Gestures last
week on the Prosody and Info-Childes lists, this is the summary of
responses.
I wish to extend my thanks to Fred Cummins, Anton Batliner, Joost van de
Weijer, Olle Engstrand , Joyce Tang Boyland , Paul Kienzle, Patricia
Zukow-Goldring, Julie Vonwiller, Nick Bannan , Deborah Froelich, Jana Iverson,
Laura D'Odorico, Gerard Bailly, Regina Cruz, Alex Monaghan CA , Carolyn Chaney
and Judy Vander Woude for their replies. Given the overwhelming number of
replies as well as requests in private for me to provide a summary, here it
is. I am hope that this information will be beneficial to many of you as
well.
Best,
Jeff
----
PROSODY
My question was:
1. It has been shown in First Language Acquisition that prosodic
patterns are learned and produced by children before
lexical and syntactic structures, and that parents can understand
the speech of children thanks to the intonation when the
grammatical structure is sometimes undecipherable in
isolation.
and in my clarification message I stated:
I have heard that articles/papers
have discussed the concept of prosody being acquired before syntax.
What I am interested in specifically is that prosody is a very
important factor in communication. In some instances of adult
communication, the only way to distinguish between a declarative,
and a question is from prosodic structure when the phonemic string
is the same. In the case of children, especially children who I have
not spent much time with, I sometimes cannot make out the individual
lexical items, but the prosodic nature of the utterance is the glue that
allows me to understand what they are trying to communicate. If there
are articles in favor or against this concept, I would be more than
willing to receive more info along these lines.
The replies were:
@Article{condon:74,
author = {William S. Condon and Louis W. Sander},
title = {Synchrony demonstrated between movements of the
neonate and adult speech},
journal = {Child Development},
year = 1974,
volume = 45,
pages = {456--462}
}
@Article{bertoncini:95,
author = {Josiane Bertoncini and Caroline Floccia and Thierry
Nazzi and Jacques Mehler},
title = {Morae and syllables: rhythmical basis of speech
representation in neonates},
journal = LS,
year = 1995,
volume = 38,
number = 4,
pages = {311--329},
annote = {French 3-day old infants discriminate stimuli based
on syllable count, not moraic count (French infants,
Japanese stimuli..)}
}
@Article{nazzi:98,
author = {Nazzi, T. and Bertoncini, J. and Mehler, J.},
title = {Language discrimination by newborns: towards an
understanding of the role of rhythm},
journal = JEP-HPP,
year = 1998,
volume = 24,
pages = {756--766},
annote = {Newborns (< 5 days, native French) can discriminate
LPF speech (400 Hz) when presented with Engliah and
Japanese, now when presented with English and Dutch,
and only the rhythmic coherent set of
English/Dutch vs Spanish/Italian, not
English/Italian vs Dutch/Spanish. Uses the
concept of 'rhythmic distance'.}
}
@Article{bosch:97,
author = {Bosch, Laura and Sebasti\'{a}n-{G}all\'{e}s},
title = {Native-language recognition abilities in 4-month-old
infants from monolingual and bilingual environments},
journal = {Cognition},
year = 1997,
volume = 65,
pages = {33-69},
annote = {4 mo infants (Catalan) can discriminate
Catalan/English (1). Monolingual Spanish or Catalan
infants can discriminate between the langauge of
their envirinment and the other (2). Ditto with LPF
utterances (400 Hz) (3). Spanish/Catalan bilingual
infants react faster to English than their maternal
language (opposite of expected result)
(4a). Bilingual infants showed no preference for one
of their 2 languages (4b). Result 4a was replicated
with Spanish/Catalan vs Italian (5).}
}
@Article{fowler:86,
author = {Fowler, Carol A. and Smith, Mary R. and Tassinary,
Louis G.},
title = {Perception of syllable timing by prebabbling infants},
journal = JASA,
year = 1986,
volume = 79,
number = 3,
pages = {814-825}
}
---
early responsiveness to intonation preceeds
lexical comprehension and production:
(Achtung: bei `Papousek' ist "uber dem s ein umgekehrtes Dach!)
Papousek, M. \& Papousek, H.:=20
Musical elements in the infant's vocalization:=20
Their significance for communication, cognition and creativity.
In: L.P. Lipsitt (Ed.):
Advances in Infancy Research, Vol. 1 (pp. 163-224).
Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
... awareness of prosodic contrast in adult utterances
directed to the child ... known to be present in children
from around 2 to 3 months ... :
David Crystal: Prosodic development.
In: Paul Fletcher and Michael Garman: Language Acquisition.
Studies in first language development. Cambridge University Press, Cambridg=
e et al., 1979. p. 33-48.
----
A. Fernald (1989). Intonation and communicative intent in mothers' speech
to infants: is the melody the message. Child Development, 60, 1897-1510.
---
http://www.ling.su.se/staff/olle/Native_babbling.htm
----
Lynch, MP; Kimbrough Oller, D; Steffens, ML; Buder, EH (1995).
Phrasing in prelinguistic vocalizations.
Developmental Psychology 28(1):3-25
Abstract:
"... Adult judges identified a hirarchical arrangement of syllables
embedded within utterances and utterances embedded within prelinguistic
phrases in the vocalizations of infants. ..."
Hallé, PA; de Boysson-Bardies, B; Vihman, MM;
Beginnings of prosodic organization: Intonation and duration patterns
of disyllables produced by Japanese and French infants
Abstract:
"... by four French and four Japanese children of about 18 months of age
are examind. F- contour and vowel durations in disyyllables are found to
be clearly language-specific. ..."
----
Vonwiller Julie P "The development of Intonation in Infants" 1988
PhD thesis, SHLRC Centre, Macquarie University, Australia
----
You may wish to look at the Tarplee's chapter in the following book:
Tarplee, Clare. (1996). Working on young children's utterances: prosodic
aspects of repetition during picture labeling. In Couper-Kuhlen, E. &
Selting, M. (Eds.) Prosody in conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Clare doesn't address prosody before syntax, but she does wonderfully
illustrate how important prosody is in parent-child conversation. The rest
of the volume addresses the role of prosody in both adult and child
conversations.
----
The link with your own work might be to look at the research of Klaus
Scherer, who has made fascinating comparisons between the sonic
communication of various animal species; Paul Ekman, where the link
between emotionally-motivated facial expression and sonic results ties in
with this; and Terrence Deacon, where the neurological story of how we
communicate is told in a way which leaves room for the kind of assumptions
----
About the discussion of the concept of prosody acquired before syntax, I'm
sending you the references of two articles which show how infants use
different prosodic patterns to differentiate cry and non cry vocalization
produced in different communicative contexts. I hope they will be useful to
you.
D'ODORICO L., Non-segmental features in prelinguistic communication: an
analysis of some types of infant cry and non-cry vocalizations, Journal of
Child Language, 1984, 11,pp.17-27.
D'ODORICO L. e FRANCO F., Selective production of vocalization types in
different communication contexts. Journal of Child Language, 18, 3,
pp.475-500, 1991.
----
GESTURES:
My question was:
2. 50 or so percent of communication is transmitted through
gestures, facial expression, etc.
and in my clarification message I stated:
The number 50 is completely arbitrary. It might be 10%, 20%
30% etc. I remember reading a paper on this topic several years
ago and simply cannot remember the number that was attributed,
nor the author of the paper. It is certain that gestures make up a
part of general communication, but I would like to get some information
on studies that try to quantify it, even in specific contexts.
The replies were:
When Gestures Speak Louder Than Words.
(No claims re 50% of communication, etc!)
Infants often do not initially understand caregiver messages (Catch it!).
Subsequent messages in which caregivers provide perceptual
structure/information with gestures (demonstrating how to catch)
overwhelmingly
lead to achieving a practical understanding of ongoing events. When
caregivers'
subsequent messages are expressed only with more specific verbal utterances
(Catch the ball!), a common understanding is rarely achieved.
This longitudinal research was conducted during the prelinguistic period
from 6
months through the one-word period (19-24 months). There were 5 Euro-American,
English-speaking families and 6 Latino, Spanish-speaking families. The data
were collected in suburbs of Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Briefly, words cannot explain unless a person already knows what words mean.
Learning what words mean is what the infant "means" to learn. These caregivers
assembled messages by "saying and showing", so their infants could perceive
what they said and did.
Pat Zukow-Goldring
Zukow-Goldring, P. (in press). Perceiving referring actions: Latino and
Euro-American
caregivers and infants comprehending speech. In K. L. Nelson, A.
Aksu-Koc, &
C. Johnson (Eds.), Children's Language, Vol. 11. Hillsdale NJ:
Erlbaum.
Zukow-Goldring, P. G. (1997). A social ecological realist approach to the
emergence of the
lexicon: Educating attention to amodal invariants in gesture and
speech." In C. Dent-Read &
P. Zukow-Goldring (Eds.), Evolving explanations of development: Ecological
approaches
to organism-environment systems (pp. 199-250). Washington, D. C.: American
Psychological
Association.
Zukow-Goldring, P. (1996). Sensitive caregivers foster the comprehension of
speech: When
gestures speak louder than words. Early Development and Parenting, 5
(4), 195-211.
-----
I think I know the study you have in mind regarding % of communication:
Mehrabian, A (1972) Nonverbal Communication Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall
Mehrabian (after careful film and audio analysis of conversations) gave the
proportions as 55% gestural and 45% verbal.
Leon Thurman, author of 'Bodymind and Voice', uses this study extensively
in his illustration of the musical features of infant prosody which remain
in place throughout life as the singing voice where the convergent
development of semantic speech (and writing, schooling, etc.) do not
inhibit them.
-----
There is an interesting book by McNeill called Hand and Mind (1992) about
gestures. I would be interested in whatever you hear from others as well.
-----
A group of Italian colleagues and I recently did a study in which we looked
at the frequency of maternal gesture use as mothers interacted with their
16- and 20-month-old children in naturalistic, in-home play sessions. We
found that only 10% of all maternal utterances were accompanied by gesture,
that the vast majority of gestures were points at concrete objects, and
that frequency of maternal gesture did not change across the children's 16
and 20 month sessions (i.e., maternal gesture production did not decline as
children's vocal language skills improved). Interestingly, another
unpublished study that looked at American mothers' use of gesture during
interactions with their 18-month-olds also reported that 10% of maternal
utterances occurred with gesture.
Marilyn Shatz also did some work a few years ago looking at the
relationship between speech and gesture in maternal speech to young
children. Here are some references that might be helpful.
Iverson, J.M., Capirci, O., Longobardi, E., & Caselli, M.C. (in press).
Gesturing in mother-child interactions. Cognitive Development.
Bekken, K. (1989). Is there motherese in gesture? Unpublished doctoral
dissertation, The University of Chicago.
Shatz, M. (1982). On mechanisms of language acquisition: Can features of
the communicative environment account for development? In E. Wanner & L.
Gleitman (Eds.), Language acquisition: The state of the art (pp. 102-127).
New York: Cambridge University Press.
----
There is an older paper by Menyuk & Bernholtz in which a holophrastic
child's babbled utterances were played to listeners, who reliably
identified the uttances as declaratives, questions or emphatics.
I can find the full citation for you if you want it (I'm sure it's cited
in Menyuk's book on language acquisition).
-----
PROSODY AND GESTURES:
Some replies received indicated the combination of my 2 questions
although I have not been working on the hybridization of the
2 areas.
The replies were:
http://www.lpl.univ-aix.fr
Dans cette même homepage, tu peux trouver les details dans congrès qui a eu
lieu à Besançon au mois de décembre derniers dont la plus part de thèmes
était au tours de ce sujet "prosodie et gestes". Les actes sont disponibles
dans les librairies aussi. De toute façon, je t'envoies son mail pour que tu
puisses avoir toutes les informations souhaitées:
----
actually, for those who are interested, the proceedings of the conference
"speech and
gesture" were published as a book:
Santi, Guaïtella, Cavé & Konopczynski (eds) 1998: "Oralité et
Gestualité", Paris: L'Harmattan.
The Aix-en-Provence group is well established and has produced several theses
in
this area, including Santi's and Guaïtella's. They are probably the only group
in Europe to combine significant expertise in gesture, suprasegmental
phonetics
and prosodic phonology.
-----
NOT SURE
Since I posted 2 questions in the same message, I received a couple
of replies that seem to refer to Prosody, but might refer to Gestures
since the title "Signal to Syntax" could be applied to either area.
The replies were:
Look in the PsycInfo (or is it PsycLit?) database
under Anne Fernald and you should get a bunch of
abstracts.
Also look in the book Signal to Syntax edited by
James L. Morgan and Katherine Demuth for a whole
collection of relevant papers and the names of the
people who do this research. This was one of my
qualifying exam topics about 7 years ago.
You can get chapter titles and often chapter abstracts
out of the same database.
----
@book{morgan-demuth:signal-to-syntax,
author = {James L. Morgan and Katherine Demuth},
title = {Signal to syntax: an overview},
year = {1996},
publisher = {Lawrence Erlbaum Associates},
address = {Mahwah, NJ - USA}
}
---- end --------
=================================================
Jeff ALLEN - Directeur Technique
European Language Resources Association (ELRA) &
European Language resources Distribution Agency (ELDA)
(Agence Européenne de Distribution des Ressources Linguistiques)
55, rue Brillat-Savarin
75013 Paris FRANCE
Tel: (+33) 1.43.13.33.33 - Fax: (+33) 1.43.13.33.30
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