The acoustic realization of contrastive focus by 6-year-old Australian English-speaking children

Children as young as five have some ability to produce contrastive focus [Wells et al. (2004) J. Child Lang. 31, 749-778]. However, adult listeners' ability to identify the location of contrastive focus depends on whether the speech came from a 4-, 7-, or 11-year-old [Patel and Brayton (2009) J. Speech. Lang. Hear. Res. 52, 790-801]. Recent acoustic studies have also reported the use of F0 vs duration in contrastive focus productions by American English-speaking 2-year-olds [Thorson and Morgan (2021) J. Child Lang. 48, 541-568] and 4-year-olds [Wonnacott and Watson (2008) Cognition 107, 1093-1101], respectively. This study, therefore, evaluated the extent to which older 6-year-olds, with more language experience, used F0 and/or duration when producing contrastive focus, and compared this to adult speech. Monosyllabic and disyllabic adjective + noun targets (e.g., green ball) in utterance medial and final position were elicited from 20 Australian English-speaking 6-year-olds and 14 adults in adjective focus and noun focus conditions. Although both adults and children used high F0, only adults consistently used word and stressed syllable duration as well. This suggests that children may master the different acoustic cues to contrastive focus at different stages of development, with late cue integration.