Browsing by Author "Lintfert, Britta"

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    Phonetic and phonological development of stress in German
    (2010) Lintfert, Britta; Möbius, Bernd (Prof. Dr.)
    The purpose of this thesis is to describe the development of stress in children's speech and its evolution over the first few years of their lives. Within the results of the conducted analyses an exemplar-based speech production model of the acquisition of stress was developed. To this end the phonological and phonetic development of stress were analysed as well as the development of vowel space. The development of different perceptual spaces was adressed in the context of stress development of German children. Longitudinal speech samples of children from 5 months up to 36 months of age were recorded and analysed to create a prosodically annotated speech corpus of babbling, first words and meaningful speech of German-speaking children. In order to compare the child's use of the acoustic parametres, the parental use of the acoustic parametre of stress was also annotated and analysed. Furthermore, for describing the vowel development, cross-sectional data for children between 4 and 10 years were evaluated. First the crucial role of stress in the development of different syllable structures is described. Then the acoustic realisation of stress is analysed. The correlates of German word stress which include vowel duration, RMS Intensity, fundamental frequency, first four formants and different voice quality parameters, were therefore also analysed in children between 5 and 36 months of age and their parents. Besides, the development of the F1-F2 and F2-F3 vowel space depending on stress is described illustrating a cognitive map of representations in the perceptual space The development of the articulatory-acoustic relationship seems to be nonlinear and dependent on an increased control of motor abilities. The results of the different analyses are integrated in a comprehensive neural model of speech production using a self-organising neural network. This model is very appropriate to describe the differences in the production of babbling and words as there are possibilities to develop different neural maps depending on the stage of development as well as on the articulatory abilities. Self-feedback as well as feedback from the environment is also integrated in this model of production and perception.