Does prosodic patterning relate to phonemic accuracy during speech learning?

By C.J. Poletto, A. Whittle, D. Baker, M.K. Kenney and C.L. Ludlow

Our purpose was to determine if prosodic patterning relates to phonemic accuracy during speech learning. Participants underwent a reiterative study of speech perception, recall and repetition, of 2 nonsense “words” over 12 trials. Amplitude contours between consecutive utterances were correlated to measure changes in consistency of prosodic patterning. The correlation between the amplitude contours of adjacent utterances increased during the repetition task but was not related to phonemic accuracy during learning across subjects. The results suggest that phonemic and prosodic acquisition may be acquired independently.