Abstract
Primary sentence stress is an important aspect of the English prosodic system. Its adequate use is a prerequisite in the development of normal intonation patterns. This study examined the use of primary sentence stress in autistic children with mean length of utterance (MLU) scores between 1.9 and 4.1 morphemes. Normal and aphasic subjects at similar MLU levels served as contrast groups. The primary sentence task required that the subjects verbally respond to a request for information and provide a description of a play situation. Toy manipulation was used to elicit the desired responses. Listener judgment served as the basis for analyzing results. Although all subjects were able to perform the task, differences were seen in the number of correct responses and in the pattern of stress misassignment. These results are at variance with a prediction of stress placement on grammatical grounds. An explanation is offered, based on pragmatic considerations and cognitive developmental trends in young children.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Allen, G., & Hawkins, S. (1980). Phonological rhythm: Definition and development. In G. Yeni-Komshian, J. Kavanagh, & C. Ferguson (Eds.),Child phonology (pp. 227–256). New York: Academic Press.
American Psychiatric Association. (1980).Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (3rd ed.). Washington, D.C.: Author.
Atkinson-King, K. (1973). Children's acquisition of phonological stress contrasts.UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics, 25.
Baltaxe, C. (1981). Acoustic characteristics of prosody in autism. In P. Mittler (Ed.),Frontiers of knowledge in mental retardation. Baltimore: University Park Press.
Baltaxe, C.(1984a).Durational characteristics of utterances in normal, aphasic, and autistic children. Paper presented at the 5th International Congress of Phonology, Vienna, Austria.
Baltaxe, C. (1984b). Use of contrastive stress in normal, aphasic, and autistic children.Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 27, 97–105.
Baltaxe, C., & Simmons, J. Q. (1975). Language in childhood psychosis.Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 40, 439–458.
Baltaxe, C., & Simmons, J. Q. (1981). Disorders of language in childhood psychosis: Current concepts and approaches. In J. Darby (Ed.),Speech evaluations in psychiatry. New York: Grune and Stratton.
Baltaxe, C., & Simmons, J. Q. (1985). Prosodic development in normal and autistic children. In E. Schopler & G. Mesibov (Eds.),Issues of autism Vol. III: Communications problems in autism. New York: Plenum Press.
Baltaxe, C., Simmons, J. Q., & Zee, E.(1984). Intonation patterns in normal, autistic, and aphasic children. In A. Cohen & M. P. R. v.d. Broecke (Eds.),Proceedings of the Tenth International Congress of Phoenetic Sciences. Dordrecht, Holland: Foris.
Baltaxe, C., & Zee, E. (1986). Acoustic characteristics of contrastive and primary sentence stress in normal, aphasic, and autistic children. Manuscript in preparation.
Bartolucci, G., & Albers, R. (1974). Deictic categories in the language of autistic children.Journal of Autism and Childhood Schizophrenia, 14, 131–141.
Bates, E., & MacWhinney, B. (1979). A functionalist approach to the acquisition of grammar. In E. Ochs & B. Schieffelin (Eds.),Developmental pragmatics. New York: Academic Press.
Bloom, L. (1970).Language development: Form and function in emerging grammars. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Bloom, L. (1973).One word at a time. The Hague: Mouton.
Bloom, L., & Lahey, M. (1978).Language development and language disorders. New York: Wiley.
Bolinger, D. L. (1972a). Accent is predictable (if you're a mind-reader).Language, 48, 633–644.
Bolinger, D. L. (1972b). Around the edge of language. In D. L. Bolinger (Ed.),Intonation. Penguin Books.
Brown, R. (1973).A first language: The early stages, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Bruner, J. (1975). The ontogenesis of speech acts.Journal of Child Language, 2, 1–19.
Chafe, W. (1970).Meaning and the structure of language. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Chomsky, N., & Halle, M. (1968).The sound pattern of English. New York: Harper.
Chomsky, N., Halle, M., & Lukoff, F. (1956). On accent and juncture in English. In M. Halle (Ed.),For Roman Jakobson. The Hague: Mouton.
Clark, E. (1973). What is a word? On the child's acquisition of semantics in his first language. In T. Moore (Ed.),Cognitive development and the acquisition of language. New York: Academic Press.
Crystal, D. (1979). Prosodic development. In P. Fletcher & M. Garman (Eds.),Language acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cutler, A. (1983). Semantics, syntax, sentence accent. In A. Cohen & M. P. E. v.d. Broecke (Eds.),Abstracts of the Tenth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Dordrecht, Holland: Foris.
Cutler, A., & Fodor, J. A. (1979). Semantic focus and sentence comprehension.Cognition, 7, 49–59.
Cutler, A., & Swinney, P. A. (1980).Development of the comprehension of semantic focus in young children. Paper presented at the Fifth Boston Child Language Conference on Language Development.
Duchan, J. (1983). Autistic children are non-interactive, or so we say.Seminars in Speech and Language, 53–61.
Ervin-Tripp, S. (1966). Imitation and structural change in children's language. In E. Lenneberg (Ed.),New directions in the study of language. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Fraser, C., Bellugi, U., & Brown, R. (1963). Control of grammar in imitation, comprehension, production. In C. F. Ferguson & V. I. Slobin (Eds.),Studies of child language development, New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Fry, H., (1958). Experiments in the perception of stress.Language and Speech, 126–152.
Goldfarb, W., Braunstein, P., & Lorge, I. (1956). A study of speech patterns in a group of schizophrenic children.American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 26, 544–555.
Goldfarb, W., Goldfarb, N., Braunstein, P., & Scholl, H. (1972). Speech and language faults of schizophrenic children.Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 13, 395–399.
Hornby, P. A., & Hass, W. A., (1970. Use of contrastive stress by preschool children.Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 13, 395–399.
Jakobson, R. (1968). Child language, aphasia, and phonological universals (A. Keiler, Trans.). The Hague: Mouton.
Johnston, J., & Schery, T. (1976). The use of grammatical morphemes by children with communication disorders. In D. Morehead & E. Morehead (Eds.),Normal and Language deficient child language. Baltimore: University Park Press.
Kanner, L. (1943). Autistic disturbances of affective contact.Nervous Child, 2, 217–250.
Kanner, L. (1946). Irrelevant and metaphorical language in early infantile autism.American Journal of Psychiatry, 103, 242–246.
Kaplan, E. (1970). Intonation and child language acquisition.Papers in Research in Child Language Development, 1, 1–21.
Kent, R. D., & Forner, L. L. (1980). Speech segment durations in sentence recitations by children and adults.Journal of Phonetics, 8, 157–168.
Kirk, L. (1973). Analysis of speech imitation by children.Anthropological Linguistics, 15, 267–276.
Lea, W. A. (1979).Testing linguistic stress rules with listener's perceptions. Paper presented at the 50th Annual meeting of the Acoustic Society of America.
Lenneberg, E. (1967).Biological foundations of language. New York: Wiley.
Lieberman, P. (1968).Intonation, perception and language. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Lyons, F. (1969).Introduction to theoretical linguistics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Morehead, D., & Ingram, D. (1976). The development of base syntax in normal and linguistically deviant children. In D. Morehead & E. Morehead (Eds.),Normal and language deficient child language. Baltimore: University Park Press.
O'Hala, J. (1977). The physiology of stress. In L. M. Hyman (Ed.),Studies in stress and accent, Los Angeles: Southern California Occasional Papers in Linguistics.
Ornitz, E., & Ritvo, E. (1976). Medical assessment. In E. Ritvo (Ed.),Austism: Diagnosis, current research and management. New York: Spectrum.
O'Shaughnessy, D. (1979). Linguistic features in fundamental frequency patterns.Journal of Phonetics, 7, 119–145.
Paccia, J., & Curcio, F. (1982). Language processing and forms of immediate echolalia in autistic children.Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 25, 42–27.
Piaget, J. (1954).The construction of reality in the child. New York: Basic Books.
Piaget, J., & Inhelder, B. (1969).The psychology of the child (Helen Weaver,Trans.). New York: Basic Books.
Pierce, S., & Bartolucci, G. (1977). A syntactic investigation of verbal austistic, mentally retarded, and normal children.Journal of Autism and Childhood Schizophrenia, 7, 121–134.
Prizant, B. (1978). An analysis of the function of immediate echolalia in autistic children. Doctoral dissertation, State University of New York.
Prizant, B. (1983). Gestalt language and gestalt processing in autism.Topics in Language Disorders, 3, 16–23.
Rees, N. (1973). Noncommunicative functions of child language.Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 38, 98–110.
Scherer, K. (1979). Nonlinguistic vocal indicators of emotions and psychpathology. In C. E. Isard (Ed.),Emotions in personality and psychopathology. New York: Plenum Press.
Scherer, K. (1981a). Speech and emotional states. In J. Darby (Ed.),Speech evaluation in psychiatry. New York: Grune and Stratton.
Scherer, K. (1981b). Vocal indicators of stress and speech production. In J. Darby (Ed.),Speech evaluation in psychiatry. New York: Grune and Stratton.
Schlesinger, I. M. (1984). Relational concepts underlying language. In R. L. Schiefelbusch & L. L. Lloyd (Eds.),Language perspectives, acquisition retardation. Baltimore: University Park Press.
Schmerling, S. (1976).Aspects of English sentence stress. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Simon, N. (1975). Echolalic speech in childhood autism.Archives of General Psychiatry, 32, 1439–1446.
Slobin, D., & Welsh, C. (1967). Elicited imitation as a research tool indevelopmental psycholinguistics. In C. Ferguson & D. Slobin (Eds.),Studies of child language development. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Stockwell, R. P. (1962). On the analysis of English intonation. In E. A. Hill (Ed.),Second Texas Conference on Problems of Linguistic Analysis in English. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Stockwell, R. P. (1972). The role of intonation: Reconsiderations. In D. L. Bolinger (Ed.),Intonation. Penguin Books.
Tonkava-Yampolskaya, R. V. (1969). Development of speech intonation during the first two years of life.Soviet Psychology, 7, 48–54.
Tonkava-Yampolskaya, R. V. (1973). Development of speech intonation during the first two years of life. In C. Ferguson & D. I. Slobin (Eds.),Studies of child language development. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Weiman, L. (1976). Stress patterns of early child language.Journal of Child Language, 3, 282–286.
Weitz, S. (1979). Paralanguage. In S. Weitz (Ed.),Nonverbal communication: Readings with commentary. New York: Oxford University Press.
Williams, C. E., & Stevens, K. N. (1981). Vocal correlates of emotional states. In J. Darby (Ed.),Speech evaluation in psychiatry. New York: Grune and Stratton.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
This research was supported by NINCDS Grant No. NS 16479, MCH Training Grant UAF 31886-12, SHARE, and DD Grant UAF 23577-12. We would like to thank Saeed Ali and Deena Bornstein for assisting in the transcriptions and rating of the data.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Baltaxe, C.A.M., Guthrie, D. The use of primary sentence stress by normal, aphasic, and autistic children. J Autism Dev Disord 17, 255–271 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01495060
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01495060