Prosodic Development

[Mary Helen Immordino-Yang]

Hi,

I am a doctoral student in human development at the Harvard Graduate School of
Education and I am interested in prosodic development in normal and
brain-damaged children.  I have some language production data from my daughter
(now 13 months) as well as some data from two hemispherectomized adolescent
boys, one missing his right and one missing his left hemisphere.  I am posting
this message to solicit suggestions for analytical procedures that might be
suitable for my data and questions, and to inquire about any possibly relevant
areas of work (e.g. unpublished theses or current work) that I may have missed
in my review (see below).  Also, if there were anyone on the list working on
related issues, I would love to correspond about methods, findings, and other
issues.

Briefly, I am interested in the development of language functions normally
associated with the right hemisphere, including things like intonation,
stress, and perhaps effective conversational monitoring and turn taking.  I am
also interested in the development of the relationship between these right
hemisphere functions and the more traditional, "left-hemisphere" aspects of
language (syntax, the lexicon, etc.). As these right hemisphere functions
essentially contribute the affective (and social/interactive) components of
speech, I would like to analyze prosodic development as an affective/social
phenomenon, rather than from the perspective of syntactic bootstrapping or
intonational phonology.  For examples, I am interested in the development of
questioning intonations and sarcastic tone of voice.  In general, I am
interested in the development of the cognitive and neuropsychological
relationship between language and emotion.

I see several bodies of work as relevant to my interests.  (If anyone has
other suggestions or would like references, please let me know.)  These
include neuropsychological work on language and emotion in adults and children
with brain damage, SLI and schizophrenia, work on emotion and prosody in
infant-directed speech, work on the development of irony and sarcasm in
childhood, work on emotion/affect in language development, work on the
development of emotional versus linguistic facial expressions in the deaf, and
work on prosody and fundamental frequency in early language development.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be much appreciated!

Thanks,
Mary Helen Immordino-Yang

Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, Ed.M.
Doctoral Candidate in Human Development and Psychology
Harvard University Graduate School of Education
immordma at gse.harvard.edu