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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter Mouton February 11, 2021

Relationship between the target word form and children’s productions: place of articulation in Consonant-Vowel-Consonant (C1VC2) words in American English

  • Katsura Aoyama EMAIL logo and Barbara L. Davis
From the journal Phonetica

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to investigate relationships between characteristics of children’s target words and their actual productions during the single-word period in American English. Word productions in spontaneous and functional speech from 18 children acquiring American English were analyzed. Consonant sequences in 3,328 consonant-vowel-consonant (C1VC2) target words were analyzed in terms of global place of articulation (labials, coronals, and dorsals). Children’s actual productions of place sequences were compared between target words containing repeated place sequences (e.g., mom, map, dad, not) and target words containing variegated place sequences (e.g., mat, dog, cat, nap). Overall, when the target word contained two consonants at the same global place of articulation (e.g., labial-labial, map; coronal-coronal, not), approximately 50% of children’s actual productions matched consonant place characteristics. Conversely, when the target word consisted of variegated place sequences (e.g., mat, dog, cat, nap), only about 20% of the productions matched the target consonant sequences. These results suggest that children’s actual productions are influenced by their own production abilities as well as by the phonetic forms of target words.


Corresponding author: Katsura Aoyama, Department of Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology, University of North Texas, 1155 Union Circle #305010, Denton, TX76203-5017, USA, E-mail:

Funding source: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

Award Identifier / Grant number: R-01 HD27733-03

Acknowledgments

The authors sincerely thank Kaitlin Bednarz, Kelsey Robin, Rebekka Cassidy, Sarah Hayes, Taylor Myers, Allison Gajdos, Karen McPhearson, Mackenzie Deaton, and Amy Reynolds for their assistance. We would also like to thank the children and their families for their participation, without which this project would not have been possible.

  1. Statement of ethics: Subjects’ parents or guardians have given their written informed consent.

  2. Funding sources: The data in this study were collected with support from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development R-01 HD27733-03 to the second author. This funding source had no role in the analyses and interpretation of the data and in the preparation of the manuscript.

  3. Author contributions: Katsura Aoyama (KA) and Barbara L. Davis (BLD) conceived of the analysis. BLD and her research assistants at the University of Texas at Austin collected and transcribed the original data that are available on CHILDES and PhonBank. KA and her research assistants at the University of North Texas coded the data for the current study. KA performed the statistical analysis and took the lead in preparing the manuscript. KA and BLD both wrote and prepared the manuscript.

  4. Conflict of interest: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Appendix Examples of target words analyzed

Sequence typeNumber of unique types across children (N = 193)Number of tokens (N = 3,328)Examples
Lab_V_Lab14193mom, move, boom
Lab_V_Cor541,080mat, pat, ball, bath
Lab_V_Dor14363book, bug, pig
Cor_V_Lab2089soup, tape, top
Cor_V_Cor501,030down, juice, nose, sit
Cor_V_Dor15314dog, duck, sock
Dor_V_Lab624cup, keep, gum
Dor_V_Cor18222cat, coat, goat
Dor_V_Dor213cake, Coke
  1. Lab stands for labials (/p/, /b/, /m/, /w/, /f/, /v/); Cor stands for coronals (/θ/, /ð/, /t/, /d/, /s/, /z/, /n/, /l/, /r/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /tʃ/, /dʒ/, /j/); Dor stands for Dorsals (/k/, /g/, /ŋ/).

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Received: 2019-06-06
Accepted: 2020-12-04
Published Online: 2021-02-11
Published in Print: 2021-02-24

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