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In:Intonational Grammar in Ibero-Romance: Approaches across linguistic subfields
Edited by Meghan E. Armstrong, Nicholas Henriksen and Maria del Mar Vanrell
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 6] 2016
► pp. 325–350

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A preliminary study of wh-questions in German and Spanish child language

 | University of Hamburg
Published online: 31 March 2016
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.6.15lle
This article presents a preliminary study of L1 acquisition of wh-questions in German and Spanish. According to traditional descriptions, neutral informationseeking wh-questions show similar contours in both languages, although there are cross-linguistic differences in scaling and alignment as well as different pitch accents, formalized in the Autosegmental-Metrical model of intonation. Whquestions uttered by two 3-year-old German-Spanish bilinguals are compared to those produced by monolingual children, and adults. Analyses show that most aspects of such utterances seem to already be acquired at the age of 3;0. However, bilinguals exhibit much variation, which reveals cross-linguistic interaction. Moreover, 3-year-olds produce many rising contours in German, only a few of which can be characterized as non-neutral.
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Pešková, Andrea
2024. Intonational and Syntactic Innovations in a Language Contact Situation: An Explorative Study of Yes/No Questions in Paraguayan Guarani–Spanish Bilinguals. Language and Speech 67:2 ► pp. 561 ff. DOI logo
Frota, Sónia & Joseph Butler
2018. Early development of intonation. In The Development of Prosody in First Language Acquisition [Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 23], ► pp. 145 ff. DOI logo
Lleó, Conxita
2018. Bilingual children’s prosodic development. In The Development of Prosody in First Language Acquisition [Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 23], ► pp. 317 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2024. Интонация русского частного вопроса / The Intonation of Russian Wh-questions [Biblioteca di Studi Slavistici, 56], DOI logo

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