Acquisition of syllabic prominence in German speaking children

An investigation of the acoustic correlates of word stress in infant polysyllabic vocalization was carried out on the basis of data from 6 German-learning infants between 7 and 36 months of age in order to describe the development of word stress in German. The data were analyzed with respect to duration, intensity, fundamental frequency (f0), as well as vowel quality parameters describing the time and degree of opening of the glottis, the slope of the spectrum and glottal leakage. With beginning of babbling children are able to produce different stress patterns. However, the implementation and usage of the parameters contributing to marking word stress appear to be inconsistent. The children used all measured acoustic parameters for marking word stress but the usage of the parameters depended on age and on the individual child. The most important cue to mark different stress patterns is to learn to reduce the acoustic parameters for the production of unstressed vowels.