Prosodic Marking of Focus in Autistic and Neurotypical Adults

Author

Nishtha N. Trivedi, The Graduate Center, City University of New YorkFollow

Date of Degree

6-2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.A.

Program

Linguistics

Advisor

Jason Bishop

Subject Categories

Other Social and Behavioral Sciences | Phonetics and Phonology | Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics

Keywords

prosody, autistic adults, pitch accent types, intonation, intonational phonology

Abstract

Purpose: This study investigates how adult autistic speakers compare with neurotypical speakers in the manipulation of prosody to mark narrow and contrastive focus in American English. In particular, it explores whether the two groups differ in terms of pitch accent status, pitch accent type, and overall nuclear contour patterns in focus marking.

Methods: We conducted an experiment eliciting speech from autistic and neurotypical adults in which we compared their use of pitch accent in answers to wh-questions and in corrective statements.

Results: We found neurotypical speakers to primarily use H* to mark narrow focus on subjects and L+H* to mark narrow contrastive focus subjects, while autistic speakers used H* to mark narrow contrastive focus on the subject, and a variety of pitch accents to mark narrow (noncontrastive) focus on the subject. Neurotypical speakers on average preferred rising accents and falling boundary contours, while autistic speakers used a variety of accents (though mostly rising) and on average preferred rising boundary contours.

Conclusion: Autistic speakers marked contrast with H* while neurotypical speakers preferred L+H*. Greater consistency was observed in pitch accent choice among neurotypical speakers compared to a diversity of pitch accents and individual differences in the autistic group.

Recommended Citation

Trivedi, Nishtha N., "Prosodic Marking of Focus in Autistic and Neurotypical Adults" (2024). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/5826