Yu Jue, Liao Yiyuan, Wu Shengyi, Li Yun, Huang Meiping
Center for Speech-Language Processing, School of Foreign Languages, Tongji University, Shanghai, China.
Lab of Phonetics and Phonology, School of Humanities, Shaoxing University, Zhejiang, China.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2020 Jun 22;63(6):1736-1751. doi: 10.1044/2020_JSLHR-19-00333. Epub 2020 Jun 16.
Purpose This study aimed to obtain a comprehensive understanding about how Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants (CIs) performed speech prosody in a connected discourse and to what extent their prosodic scenario differed from those normal-hearing (NH) peers. Method Fifteen prelingually deaf Mandarin-speaking children with unilateral multichannel CIs were chosen and 15 age-matched NH controls were recruited. Speech samples were spontaneously elicited by children's rhyme speech genre and subject to phonetic annotation. Acoustic analysis was conducted on all speech samples, mainly focusing on the measurements of duration and fundamental frequency (F0). Tempo measures included temporal fluency, syllable-lengthening, and rhythm metrics, whereas melodic measures included both local and global F0 variations under different prosodic domains. Results The CI children generally achieved compatible temporal performance with the NH children in spontaneous discourse, except that they were somewhat arbitrary when operationalizing lengthening strategy and pausing strategy at different prosodic boundaries. With regard to melodic performance, CI children may not sufficiently modulate local phonetic nuances of F0 variation, and meanwhile, they performed atypically in the global F0 declination pattern and overall F0 resetting pattern, failing to signal the specific structure of children's rhyme discourse. Early age at implantation and longer CI experience did not play a significant role in the temporal performance of the CI children but did facilitate their articulation of dynamic pitch variation in the spontaneous discourse to some extent. Conclusion CI children did exhibit atypical prosodic patterns in discourse context, especially the overall mapping between the prosodic manifestation and the discourse structure.
目的 本研究旨在全面了解使用人工耳蜗（CI）的讲普通话儿童在连贯话语中语音韵律的表现，以及他们的韵律情况与正常听力（NH）同龄人有多大程度的不同。方法 选取15名单侧多通道人工耳蜗植入的语前聋讲普通话儿童，并招募15名年龄匹配的正常听力对照组。通过儿童押韵语音体裁自发引出语音样本，并进行语音标注。对所有语音样本进行声学分析，主要关注时长和基频（F0）的测量。节奏测量包括时间流畅性、音节延长和节奏指标，而旋律测量包括不同韵律域下的局部和全局F0变化。结果 在自发话语中，人工耳蜗植入儿童总体上在时间表现上与正常听力儿童相当，只是在不同韵律边界实施延长策略和停顿策略时有些随意。在旋律表现方面，人工耳蜗植入儿童可能没有充分调节F0变化的局部语音细微差别，同时，他们在全局F0下降模式和整体F0重置模式上表现异常，未能表明儿童押韵话语的特定结构。植入年龄早和人工耳蜗使用经验长在人工耳蜗植入儿童的时间表现中没有起到显著作用，但在一定程度上确实有助于他们在自发话语中清晰表达动态音高变化。结论 人工耳蜗植入儿童在话语情境中确实表现出非典型的韵律模式，尤其是韵律表现与话语结构之间的整体映射。
