Considers some ways in which choral directors can help choristers improve intonation. Suggests music exercises for vertical and horizontal intonation and unified vowel formation. Also discusses physical factors, including tension, poor posture, and poor breath management, that influence how well a chorus stays in tune. Outlines relaxation and…

Argues that contour tones in East Asian languages behave as melodic units consisting of a root node [upper] dominating a branching specification. It is also argued that, with upper as the tonal root node, no more than two rising or falling tones will contrast underlying. (49 references) (JL)

Two experiments compared the abilities of third and sixth graders and adults to recognize sarcasm given context and intonation cues. Children recognized sarcasm only when given a speaker's sarcastic intonation cue, even when context strongly indicated a nonliteral interpretation. (BC)

Investigates effects of variations in tone quality on listeners' perception of both tone quality and intonation. Indicates that more inexperienced instrumentalists rated stimuli that were "brighter" in quality as sharper in intonation, and those that were "darker" as flatter. Also, finds differences for brass versus woodwind instruments. (DSK)

Presents various activities for use in the foreign language classroom. These include listening to songs to develop an awareness of intonation and rhythm, reading literature to learn the functions of relative pronouns, engaging in conversation to become proficient in a second language, and preparing a weather report to improve one's vocabulary…

This study used three experiments to study whether infant-directed (ID) or adult-directed (AD) speech facilitated the learning of Chinese vocabulary by adults whose native language was English and who had had no prior knowledge of Chinese. Results indicate that ID speech may play a pivotal role in early lexical acquisition. (51 references)…

The nature of linguistic emphasis was studied from audio recordings of 29 mother-child dyads. Nineteen dyads involved mothers interacting with their 4-year-olds who evidenced language impairments. Approximately 84 percent of children evidencing language impairments could be so classified based on the acoustic variables associated with maternal use…

We report the case of a neonate tested three weeks after a neonatal left sylvian infarct. We studied her perception of speech and non-speech stimuli with high-density event-related potentials. The results show that she was able to discriminate not only a change of timbre in tones but also a vowel change, and even a place of articulation contrast…

Pitch constancy, perceiving the same pitch from tones with differing spectral shapes, requires one to extract the fundamental frequency from two sets of harmonics and compare them. We previously showed this difficult task to be easier when tonal context is present, presumably because the context creates a tonal reference point from which to judge…

The canonical form for Japanese words is (Consonant)Vowel(Consonant) Vowel[approximately]. However, a regular process of high vowel devoicing between voiceless consonants and word-finally after voiceless consonants results in consonant clusters and word-final consonants, apparent violations of that phonotactic pattern. We investigated Japanese…

Included in the phonology are three contrastive lexical tones, a prepause syllable (as part of intonation), nine oral vowels, four nasal vowels, and many consonant clusters which differ in accordance with their distribution in reference to their place in the word: prestress, stressed syllable, and poststress. (SCC)

The use of audio media in foreign language teaching is presented. Drills in intonation, differentiation, and dialogue are described, with the aid of examples for use in an EFL class. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

One of a series of reports on the status of speech investigation, this collection of articles deals with topics including intonation and morphological knowledge. The titles of the articles and their authors are as follows: (1) "Integration and Segregation in Speech Perception" (Bruno H. Repp); (2) "Speech Perception Takes Precedence…

Students need teacher guidance to have ample practice in understanding and using the concept of intonation and its inherent parts: (1) stress (placing emphasis); (2) pitch (higher or lower sound); and (3) juncture (pauses). To communicate effectively, students need to utilize stress, pitch, and juncture appropriately in oral and written discourse.…

A model of early phonotactic and prosodic development in Swedish children is described. Although the model is based on data about the phonology of language disordered children, it is valid for normal development and useful for diagnosis of phonological impairment. Data included a cross-sectional study of 31 language disordered children aged 4 to 8…