Nissen Shawn L, Fox Robert Allen
Department of Communication Disorders, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602, USA.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2009 Sep;126(3):1369-78. doi: 10.1121/1.3192350.
The aim of this study was to examine the acoustic and spectral patterns of stop articulation in the speech of pre-pubescent children. A set of voiceless stop consonants, /ptk/, produced by a group of adults and typically developing children 3-5 years of age were examined in terms of multiple acoustic and spectral parameters. Findings indicated that, with the exception of spectral kurtosis, the acoustic and spectral characteristics of the stop productions varied significantly as a function of place of articulation and vowel context. Sex-specific differences in spectral slope, mean, and skewness were found for the 5-year-old and adult speakers. Such differences in adult speakers can be explained in part by variation in vocal tract size across the sex of the speaker; however, vocal tract dimorphism is typically not present in pre-pubescent children. Thus, the findings of this study provide some support that sex-specific differences in the speech patterns of young children may be associated with learned or behavioral factors, such as patterns of obstruent articulation that depend in part on a culturally determined male-female archetype.
本研究的目的是考察青春期前儿童言语中塞音发音的声学和频谱模式。一组由成年人以及3至5岁发育正常的儿童发出的清塞音 /ptk/，根据多个声学和频谱参数进行了检测。研究结果表明，除频谱峰度外，塞音发音的声学和频谱特征会因发音部位和元音语境的不同而有显著差异。在5岁儿童和成年说话者中发现了频谱斜率、均值和偏度方面的性别差异。成年说话者中的此类差异部分可由说话者性别之间声道大小的差异来解释；然而，青春期前儿童通常不存在声道二态性。因此，本研究结果提供了一些支持，表明幼儿言语模式中的性别差异可能与习得或行为因素有关，比如部分取决于文化决定的男女原型的阻塞音发音模式。
