Speech and Language in African American Children and Adults (Supplement) Grant uri icon

abstract

  • The current study will address the need to understand African American English (AAE) speech prosody as the relationship of sub and suprasegmental acoustic phonetic production. During the 18 month extension period, beginning in July 2024 to December 2025, we will finish collecting speech produced by 120 children between the ages 3.5- and 5- years old. Data will be collected from AAE and White American English (WAE) speaking children in eastern NC completing structured and unstructured speech tasks. An additional set of data will be collected from one primary female caregiver (n =60) for half the children. The adult will also complete a structured and an unstructured speech task. We will evaluate the following questions. 1. What is the variation between AAE and WAE as used by 3.5 - 5.0 years old children in the community under study? 2. What is the variation between AAE and WAE adult caregiver speech in the community under study? 3. Can we predictively identify emerging similarities of child AAE and WAE to adult productions in the child caregiver dyads with respect to the diagnostic features of the AAE as previously described in the literature?

date/time interval

  • July 2024 - December 2025