Skip Navigation


Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education Advance Access originally published online on December 4, 2008
The Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 2009 14(3):362-370; doi:10.1093/deafed/enn043
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
14/3/362    most recent
enn043v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Disclaimer
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Whitehead, R. L.
Right arrow Articles by Schiavetti, N.
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Whitehead, R. L.
Right arrow Articles by Schiavetti, N.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Suprasegmental Characteristics of Speech Produced during Simultaneous Communication by Inexperienced Signers

Robert L. Whitehead

National Technical Institute for the Deaf

Dale E. Metz

Erin Girardi

Jacqueline Irwin

Amanda Krigsman

Christina Swanson

Douglas MacKenzie

Nicholas Schiavetti

State University of New York, Geneseo


  Abstract

This study investigated suprasegmental variables of syllable stress and intonation contours in contextual speech produced during simultaneous communication (SC) by inexperienced signers. Ten hearing inexperienced sign language users were recorded under SC and speech-alone (SA) conditions speaking a set of sentences containing stressed versus unstressed versions of the same syllables and a set of sentences containing interrogative versus declarative versions of the same words. Results indicated longer sentence durations for SC than SA for all speech materials. Vowel duration and fundamental frequency differences between stressed and unstressed syllables as well as intonation contour differences between declarative and interrogative sentences were essentially the same in both SC and SA conditions. The conclusion that prosodic rules were not violated by inexperienced signers in SC is consistent with previous research indicating that temporal alterations produced during SC do not involve degradation of other temporal or spectral characteristics of English speech.

Correspondence should be sent to Robert L. Whitehead, National Technical Institute for the Deaf at RIT, 96 Lomb Memorial Drive, NY (e-mail: rwwncr{at}rit.edu).

Received August 20, 2008; revised October 29, 2008; accepted October 31, 2008


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.