Mothers are less efficient in employing prosodic disambiguation in child-directed speech than non-mothers : is there a trade-off between affective and linguistic prosody?

摘要

This study examines prosodic disambiguation inudchild-directed (CD) speech. Twenty-four mothersudaddressed syntactically ambiguous sentences toudtheir 2;0 to 3;8 year old child and to an adult confederate.udTwenty-four non-mothers addressed anudimaginary toddler and an imaginary adult. Weudfound that only mothers increased pitch and producedudthe CD-typical pitch excursions when addressingudtheir children. In contrast, non-mothers,udbut not mothers, used prosodic disambiguation inudCD speech, which was corroborated by a forcedudchoice test in which 48 listeners judged the intendedudmeaning of each sentence. The results suggestudthat if speakers express genuine positive affect,udthey tend to emphasise affective prosody at the expenseudof linguistic prosody. In the case of CDudspeech, this communication strategy may be moreudeffective as it serves to elicit the child’s attention.