Snow D
Child Language Center, The University of Arizona, Tucson, USA.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 1998 Oct;41(5):1158-70. doi: 10.1044/jslhr.4105.1158.
This study focuses on the potential role of prosodic "boundary features" in developmental disorders of morphosyntax. As exemplified melodically by the final portion of the falling tone and rhythmically by final syllable lengthening, boundary features mark the right edge of major constituent units in speech and thus phonetically reflect syntactic structure on the level of clauses and sentences. To resolve conflicting findings about the development of boundary features in children with specific language impairment (SLI), this study describes the falling tone and final syllable lengthening in the spontaneous speech of 10 four-year-old children with the phonologic-syntactic type of SLI and 10 four-year-old children with normal language development. The results--indicating that some prosodic boundary features are normal in preschoolers with SLI--show that impairments of morphology and syntax on the segmental level of the grammar do not implicate systematic deficits in syntax-sensitive features on the suprasegmental level. The potential dissociation between prosodic and morphosyntactic development is shown most clearly by the remarkable robustness of the falling tone, which was observed in 9 of the 10 children with SLI, in spite of the moderate to severe deficits they demonstrated in segmental phonology, morphosyntax, and mean length of utterance.
本研究聚焦于韵律“边界特征”在形态句法发育障碍中的潜在作用。如降调的最后部分在旋律上以及最后音节延长在节奏上所体现的那样，边界特征标记了言语中主要成分单元的右边缘，从而在语音上反映了从句和句子层面的句法结构。为了解决关于特定语言障碍（SLI）儿童边界特征发育的相互矛盾的研究结果，本研究描述了10名患有音韵句法型SLI的四岁儿童和10名语言发育正常的四岁儿童在自发言语中的降调和最后音节延长情况。结果表明，患有SLI的学龄前儿童的一些韵律边界特征是正常的，这表明语法的音段层面上的形态和句法损伤并不意味着超音段层面上对句法敏感特征的系统性缺陷。降调的显著稳健性最清楚地表明了韵律和形态句法发育之间可能存在的分离，在10名患有SLI的儿童中，有9名观察到了降调，尽管他们在音段音韵学、形态句法和平均语句长度方面表现出中度至重度缺陷。
