Phonemic and pitch variability in bilingual preschoolers: A comparison of Jamaican Creole and English.
Amna Samir Mira, Mary Elizabeth Wilkens, Karla Nadine Washington and 1 others
PMID 38375802WHAT IT FOUND
Mean pitch and stop-timing measures did not differ between languages.
Pitch variability was higher in English than in Jamaican Creole. Pitch variability and stop-timing variability were not related.
Key findings
01Pitch variability was greater in English than in Jamaican Creole (mean 7.06 Hz vs 5.91 Hz).
02Mean pitch, mean stop-timing, and stop-timing variability did not differ between languages.
03Pitch variability and stop-timing variability were not related in either language.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Only 16 children had usable acoustic data, and the sample was limited to preschoolers in Kingston, Jamaica. Seven children were excluded because background noise made reliable acoustic extraction impossible. Data were collected in schools, where incidental background noise interfered with recordings. Repeated productions may have tired or bored children and could have influenced some speech. Phonological contexts were not controlled, which could affect pitch, especially stressed and unstressed vowels. Analyses were done at the word level, not in continuous speech.
Declared interests
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
The easy way to misread this
Do not read higher pitch variability in English as a sign of disorder. The sample was small and included children with typical development and functional intelligibility. Most mean pitch and stop-timing measures did not differ between languages.