Contrastive stress, phonetic context, and misarticulation of /r/ in young speakers.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of contrastive stress and phonetic context on misarticulations of consonantal /r/. Subjects were 9 children between the ages of 4:5 (years:months) and 5:7 who exhibited normal articulation development but inconsistently misarticulated /r/. The experimental task was designed to elicit consonantal /r/ in two phonetic contexts ([rV] & [CrV]) and two stress conditions (primary & nonprimary stress). Three listeners who were naive to the experimental hypotheses judged the children's productions for accuracy of /r/ production and for stress. Significant main effects were obtained for context and stress: /r/ productions were more often judged as correct in clusters than in singletons and in words not receiving primary stress than in words receiving primary stress. Results are discussed in terms of the possible effects of production and perceptual variables on listener judgments. Inferences are drawn concerning future research on speaker and listener effects in the study of articulation.