No abstract

Interval-based rhythm metrics were applied to the speech of English, Catalan and Spanish 2, 4 and 6 year-olds, and compared with the (adult-directed) speech of their mothers. Results reveal that child speech does not fall into a well-defined rhythmic class: for all three languages, it is more 'vocalic' (higher %V) than adult speech and has a tendency towards lower variability (when normalized for speech rate) in vocalic interval duration. Consonantal interval variability, however, is higher in child speech, particularly for younger children. Nevertheless, despite the identification of common, cross-linguistic patterns in child speech, the emergence of language-specific rhythmic indices is also clearly observable, even in the speech of 2 year-olds.

This investigation focuses on the development of intonation patterns in four Catalan-speaking children and two Spanish-speaking children between 0 ; 11 and 2 ; 4. Pitch contours were prosodically analyzed within the Autosegmental Metrical framework in all meaningful utterances, for a total of 6558 utterances. The pragmatic meaning and communicative function were also assessed. Three main conclusions arise from the results. First, the study shows that the Autosegmental Metrical model can be successfully used to transcribe early intonation contours. Second, results reveal that children's emerging intonation is largely independent of grammatical development, and generally it develops well before the appearance of two-word combinations. As for the relationship between lexical and intonational development, the data show that the emergence of intonational grammar is related to the onset of speech and the presence of a small lexicon. Finally, we discuss the implications of these results for the biological hypothesis of intonational production.

AND MARIA DEL MAR VANRELL 2.1 Introduction 2.1.1 Geographical distribution of the Catalan language Catalan is a Romance language that is spoken by about 10 million people in a region that lies within four adjacent European states, Andorra, Italy, France, and Spain. 1 Fig. 2.1 shows a map of the geographical areas where Catalan is spoken, subdivided into its major and traditionally accepted dialects (Veny 1982): Central Catalan and Northwestern Catalan (spoken in Catalonia, Aragon, and Andorra), Valencian Catalan (Valencian region), Balearic Catalan (Balearic Islands), Northern Catalan (in the Roussillon region of southern France, roughly equivalent to the current département of Pyrénées-Orientales), and Algherese Catalan (in the city of l'Alguer, Sardinia). Breaking down the total number of roughly 10 million Catalan speakers by geographic area, Catalonia and the Valencian region provide the great majority, with 5,703,000 and 2,952,000 respectively, followed by the Balearic community with 735,000 speakers. The remaining territories provide much smaller figures, with 61,000 speakers in Andorra, 142,000 speakers in southern France, and 24,000 in the city of l'Alguer (Sardinia, Italy) (data from Pons and Sorolla 2009). With respect to its legal status, Catalan is the official language in Andorra; within Spain it is co-official 1 The data comes from the Enquesta dels usos lingüístics a Catalunya 2003, coordinated by J. Torres and updated by Pons and Sorolla (2009) and Querol (2010).