Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-jr42d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T01:28:35.143Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The prosodic licensing of coda consonants in early speech: interactions with vowel length

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2015

KELLY MILES ,
IVAN YUEN ,
FELICITY COX  and
KATHERINE DEMUTH
KELLY MILES*
Affiliation:
Macquarie University, Australia
IVAN YUEN
Affiliation:
Macquarie University, Australia
FELICITY COX
Affiliation:
Macquarie University, Australia
KATHERINE DEMUTH
Affiliation:
Macquarie University, Australia
*
[*]Address for correspondence: Kelly Miles, Macquarie University – Linguistics, 5th floor, Building C5A Room 508, Balaclava Road, New South Wales 2109, Australia. e-mail: kelly.miles@mq.edu.au
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

English has a word-minimality requirement that all open-class lexical items must contain at least two moras of structure, forming a bimoraic foot (Hayes, 1995).Thus, a word with either a long vowel, or a short vowel and a coda consonant, satisfies this requirement. This raises the question of when and how young children might learn this language-specific constraint, and if they would use coda consonants earlier and more reliably after short vowels compared to long vowels. To evaluate this possibility we conducted an elicited imitation experiment with 15 two-year-old Australian English-speaking children, using both perceptual and acoustic analysis. As predicted, the children produced codas more often when preceded by short vowels. The findings suggest that English-speaking two-year-olds are sensitive to language-specific lexical constraints, and are more likely to use coda consonants when prosodically required.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , March 2016 , pp. 265 - 283
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bååth, R. (2010). ChildFreq: an online tool to explore word frequencies in child language. LUCS Minor 16, online: <http://childfreq.sumsar.net/>.Google Scholar
Bates, D., Maechler, M. & Bolker, B. (2012). lme4: linear mixed-effects models using S4 classes. R Package version 0.999999-0, online: <http://cran.rproject.org/package=lme4>..>Google Scholar
Boersma, P. & Weenink, D. (2001). Praat: doing phonetics by computer, online: <http://www.praat.org/>..>Google Scholar
Bottell, F. & Clark, J. (1986). /r/ misarticulation in children's speech. Paper presented at the 1st Australian Conference on Speech Science and Technology, Canberra, Australia, November 1986.Google Scholar
Broselow, E. (1995). Skeletal positions and moras. In Goldsmith, J. (ed.), The handbook of phonological theory (pp. 175–205). Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Cohn, A. (2003). Phonological structure and phonetic duration: the role of the mora. Working Papers of the Cornell Phonetics Laboratory 15, 69–100.Google Scholar
Cox, F. & Palethorpe, S. (2007). An illustration of the IPA: Australian English. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 37, 341–50.Google Scholar
Demuth, K. (2014). Prosodic licensing and the development of phonological and morphological representations. In Farris-Trimble, A. & Barlow, J. (eds.), Perspectives on phonological theory and acquisition: papers in honor of Daniel A. Dinnsen (pp. 11–25) (Language Acquisition and Language Disorders Series). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Demuth, K., Culbertson, J. & Alter, J. (2006). Word-minimality, epenthesis, and coda licensing in the acquisition of English. Language & Speech 49, 137–74.Google Scholar
Demuth, K. & Fee, J. (1995). Minimal words in early phonological development. Unpublished manuscript, Brown University and Dalhousie University.Google Scholar
Demuth, K. & Johnson, M. (2003). Truncation to subminimal words in early French. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 48, 211–41.Google Scholar
Doke, C. & Mofokeng, S. (1957). Textbook of Southern Sotho grammar. Cape Town: Longman.Google Scholar
Fenson, L., Pethick, S., Renda, C., Cox, J., Dale, P. & Reznick, J. (2000). Short-form versions of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories. Applied Psycholinguistics 21, 95–116.Google Scholar
Fikkert, P. (1994). On the acquisition of prosodic structure (HIL dissertations 6, Leiden University). The Hague: Holland Academic Graphics.Google Scholar
Geffner, D. (1980). Feature characteristic of spontaneous speech production in young deaf children. Journal of Communication Disorders 13, 443–54.Google Scholar
Harrington, J., Cox, F. & Evans, Z. (1997). An acoustic phonetic study of broad, general, and cultivated Australian English vowels. Australian Journal of Linguistics 17, 155–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayes, B. (1995). Metrical stress theory: principles and case studies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kehoe, M. (2002). Developing vowel systems as a window to bilingual phonology. International Journal of Bilingualism 6, 315–34.Google Scholar
Kehoe, M. & Lleó, C. (2003). The acquisition of nuclei: a longitudinal analysis of phonological vowel length in three German-speaking children. Journal of Child Language 30, 527–56.Google Scholar
Kehoe, M. & Stoel-Gammon, C. (2001). Development of syllable structure in English-speaking children with particular reference to rhymes. Journal of Child Language 28, 393–432.Google Scholar
Lane, H. & Perkell, J. (2005). Control of voice-onset time in the absence of hearing: a review. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research 48, 1334–343.Google Scholar
Lehiste, I. (1973). Rhythmic units and syntactic units in production and perception. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 54, 1228–34.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lehman, M. (1993). Development differences in vowel duration in open and closed syllables. Perception of Motor Skills 77, 471–81.Google Scholar
Lleó, C. (2003). Prosodic licensing of codas in the acquisition of Spanish. Probus 15, 257–81.Google Scholar
Lleó, C. &Arias, J. (2009). The role of weight-by-position in the prosodic development of Spanish and German. In Grijzenhout, J. & Kabak, B. (eds), Phonological domains: universals and deviations (pp. 221–248). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Macken, M. & Barton, D. (1980). The acquisition of the voicing contrast in English: a study of voice onset time in word-initial stop consonants. Journal of Child Language 7, 41–74.Google Scholar
Markides, A. (1970). The speech of deaf and partially-hearing children with special reference to factors affecting intelligibility. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders 5, 126–40.Google Scholar
McCarthy, J. & Prince, A. (1986). Prosodic morphology. Unpublished manuscript, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Brandeis University, Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Monsen, R. (1976). The production of English stop consonants in the speech of deaf children. Journal of Phonetics 4, 29–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Munson, B., Edwards, J. & Beckman, M. (2005). Phonological knowledge in typical and atypical speech-sound development. Topics in Language Disorders 25, 190–206.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ota, M. (1999). Phonological theory and the acquisition of prosodic structure: evidence from child Japanese. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Georgetown University, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Prieto, P. & Bosch-Baliarda, M. (2006). The development of codas in Catalan. Catalan Journal of Linguistics 5, 237–72.Google Scholar
Salidis, J. & Johnson, J. S. (1997). The production of minimal words: a longitudinal case study of phonological development. Language Acquisition 6, 1–36.Google Scholar
Scobbie, J. (1998). Interactions between the acquisition of phonetics and phonology. In Gruber, M. C., Higgins, D., Olson, K. & Wysocki, T. (eds), Papers from the 34th Annual Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. Vol. II: the panels (pp. 343–358). Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistics Society.Google Scholar
Shattuck-Hufnagel, S., Demuth, K., Hanson, H. & Stevens, K. (2011). Acoustic cues to stop-coda voicing contrasts in the speech of American English 2–3-year-olds. In Clements, G. N. & Ridouane, R. (eds), Where do features come from? The nature and sources of phonological primitives (pp. 327–342) (North Holland Linguistic Series). Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Song, J. & Demuth, K. (2008). Compensatory vowel lengthening for omitted coda consonants: a phonetic investigation of children's early representations of prosodic words. Language & Speech 51, 382–99.Google Scholar
Song, J. Y., Demuth, K., Evans, K. & Shattuck-Hufnagel, S. (2013). Durational cues to fricative codas in 2-year-olds’ American English: voicing and morphemic factors. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 133, 2931–46.Google Scholar
Song, J., Demuth, K. & Shattuck-Hufnagel, S. (2012). The development of acoustic cues to coda contrasts in young children learning American English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 131, 3036–50.Google Scholar
Song, J., Sundara, M. & Demuth, K. (2009). Phonological constraints on children's production of English third person singular -s . Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 52, 623–42.Google Scholar
Stevens, K. (2002). Toward a model for lexical access based on acoustic landmarks and distinctive features. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 111, 1872–91.Google Scholar
Theodore, R., Demuth, K. & Shattuck-Hufnagel, S. (2012). Segmental and positional effects on children's coda production: comparing evidence from perceptual judgments and acoustic analysis. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics 26, 755–73.Google Scholar
Yuen, I., Cox, F. & Demuth, K. (2014). Three-year-olds’ production of Australian English phonemic vowel length as a function of prosodic context. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 135, 1469–79.Google Scholar