University of Geneva, Switzerland.
Lang Speech. 2022 Jun;65(2):444-471. doi: 10.1177/00238309211030312. Epub 2021 Aug 4.
This study examined the acoustic characteristics of disyllabic words produced by French-speaking monolingual and bilingual children, aged 2;6 to 6;10, and by adults. Specifically, it investigated the influence of age, bilingualism, and vocabulary on final-to-initial syllable duration ratios and on the presence of initial and final accent. Children and adults took part in a word-naming task in which they produced a controlled set of disyllabic words. Duration and maximum pitch were measured for each syllable of the disyllabic word and these values were inserted into mixed-effects statistical models. Results indicated that children as young as 2;6 obtained final-to-initial syllable duration ratios similar to those of adults. Young children realized accent on the initial syllable more often and accent on the final syllable less often than older children and adults. There was no influence of bilingualism on the duration and pitch characteristics of disyllabic words. Children aged 2;6 with smaller vocabularies produced initial accent more often than children with large vocabularies. Our findings suggest that early word productions are constrained by developmental tendencies favouring falling pitch across an utterance.
本研究考察了法语单语和双语儿童（2 岁 6 个月至 6 岁 10 个月）和成人所发出的双音节词的声学特征。具体来说，它调查了年龄、双语和词汇量对最终音节到初始音节时长比以及初始和最终重音的影响。儿童和成人参与了一个单词命名任务，他们用受控的双音节词进行发音。每个双音节词的音节时长和最大音高都进行了测量，并将这些值插入混合效应统计模型中。结果表明，2 岁 6 个月的儿童获得的最终音节到初始音节时长比与成人相似。年幼的儿童比年长的儿童和成人更经常在初始音节上实现重音，而在最终音节上实现重音的频率较低。双语对双音节词的时长和音高特征没有影响。词汇量较小的 2 岁 6 个月的儿童比词汇量较大的儿童更经常产生初始重音。我们的发现表明，早期的单词发音受到了有利于整个话语中音高下降的发展趋势的限制。
