Theodore Rachel M, Demuth Katherine, Shattuck-Hufnagel Stephanie
Communication Sciences, Communication Disorders Program, University of Connecticut, Storrs, 06269, USA.
Clin Linguist Phon. 2012 Sep;26(9):755-73. doi: 10.3109/02699206.2012.700680.
Children's early productions are highly variable. Findings from children's early productions of grammatical morphemes indicate that some of the variability is systematically related to segmental and phonological factors. Here, we extend these findings by assessing 2-year-olds' production of non-morphemic codas using both listener decisions and acoustic analyses. Results showed that utterance position and coda manner influence perception, in that more stop codas were perceived utterance-finally compared to utterance-medially but fricative codas were perceived equally across utterance positions. Acoustic analyses showed some convergence to listeners' perception in that there were more cues associated with stops utterance-finally compared to utterance-medially. However, there was some divergence between the two methods in that acoustic cues to coda segments were also present in the majority of cases where a coda was not perceived. These findings provide insight into both the nature of children's emerging phonological representations and the effectiveness of coda transcription across segment types.
儿童早期的语言产出具有高度变异性。关于儿童语法语素早期产出的研究结果表明，这种变异性中的一些与音段和音系因素存在系统性关联。在此，我们通过使用听众判断和声学分析来评估两岁儿童非语素尾音的产出，从而扩展了这些研究结果。结果显示，话语位置和尾音方式会影响感知，具体表现为与话语中间位置相比，话语末尾位置能感知到更多的塞音尾音，但擦音尾音在不同话语位置的感知情况相同。声学分析表明，在一定程度上与听众的感知相符，即与话语中间位置相比，话语末尾位置的塞音有更多相关线索。然而，两种方法之间也存在一些差异，因为在大多数未感知到尾音的情况下，也存在尾音段的声学线索。这些发现为儿童新兴音系表征的本质以及跨音段类型的尾音转录有效性提供了见解。
