Flipsen Peter
Department of Audiology and Speech Pathology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA.
Clin Linguist Phon. 2006 Jun;20(4):293-301. doi: 10.1080/02699200400024855.
A number of authors have presented data on the word length (measured in syllables) in the spontaneous speech of children across the developmental period. These data suggest a developmental trend of increasing length with age. The current study sought to examine this possibility in more detail. Conversational speech data from 320 children with normal (or normalized) speech confirmed that the number of syllables per word in conversational speech increases significantly from age 3-8 years. Data from the conversational speech of 202 children with speech delay however showed no such trend. Reasons for the differences between the two groups are discussed.
许多作者已经给出了儿童在整个发育阶段自发言语中单词长度（以音节衡量）的数据。这些数据表明单词长度随年龄增长而增加的发育趋势。本研究试图更详细地考察这种可能性。来自320名言语正常（或经过标准化）儿童的对话言语数据证实，3至8岁儿童对话言语中每个单词的音节数显著增加。然而，来自202名语言发育迟缓儿童的对话言语数据却没有显示出这种趋势。文中讨论了两组之间存在差异的原因。
