This article investigates the production of the emphatic consonants /?, ?, ?/ by typically developing Jordanian children. Sixty typically developing monolingual Ammani Arabic-speaking children (30 boys and 30 girls) with ages ranging from 2 to 7;11 years were recruited in a production experiment. In the experiment, they were asked to produce 18…

This study explored the initial stages of adult second language (L2) learning with a special focus on the acquisition of the target language sound system. The aim was to analyze the longitudinal development of Spanish stop voicing contrasts in an immersion learning context. Native English-speaking late learners of Spanish provided production data…

Anticipatory coarticulation is an indispensable feature of speech dynamics contributing to spoken language fluency. Research has shown that children speak with greater degrees of vowel anticipatory coarticulation than adults -- that is, greater vocalic influence on previous segments. The present study examined how developmental differences in…

This longitudinal study assessed three acoustic components of maternal infant-directed speech (IDS) -- pitch, affect, and vowel hyperarticulation -- in relation to infants' age and their expressive vocabulary size. These three individual components were measured in IDS addressed to infants at 7, 9, 11, 15, and 19 months (N = 18). All three…

Purpose: The goal of this study was to better understand how and when onset /l/ ("leap") and coda /l/ ("peel") are acquired by children by examining both the articulations involved and adults' perceptions of the produced segments. Method: Twenty-five typically developing Australian English-speaking children aged 3;0…

Purpose: The acquisition of literacy skills influences the perception and production of spoken language. We examined if orthography influences implicit processing in speech production in child readers and in adult readers with low and high reading proficiency. Method: Children (n = 17), adults with typical reading skills (n = 17), and adults…

The aim of this study was to determine, using speech error and articulatory analyses, whether the binary distinction between iambs and trochees should be extended to include additional prosodic subcategories. Adults, children who are normally developing, and children with specific language impairment (SLI) participated. Children with SLI were…

Studies of connected speech have repeatedly shown that the contextual predictability of a word is related to its phonetic duration; more predictable words tend to be produced with shorter duration, when other factors are controlled for (Aylett & Turk, 2004, 2006; Bell et al., 2003; Bell, Brenier, Gregory, Girand, & Jurafsky, 2009; Gahl,…

Morphological systems have been pivotal in exploring cognitive mechanisms of language use and acquisition. Adult English definite article form preference seems to depend non-deterministically on multiple factors. A corpus study of adult spontaneous speech revealed similar patterns of variability. In an experiment, article variant preferences of…

This article discusses 4 types of phonological knowledge: knowledge of the acoustic and perceptual characteristics of speech sounds (perceptual knowledge), knowledge of the articulatory characteristics of speech sounds (articulatory knowledge), higher level knowledge of the ways that words can be divided into sounds and related phonotactic…

Examined the effects of rounded and unrounded vowels on the perception of the voiceless fricatives "s" and "sh" by adults and by young children who could and could not produce both sounds. Concluded that productive mastery is not critically responsible for perception of the distinction between the two phonemes or the…

This review discusses how general principles of brain development have contributed to both human brain plasticity and the acquisition of the human capacity for speech. Specifically, the role played by plastic developmental processes in the evolution and development of articulate control over vocalization in speech is examined. (Contains…

Summarizes a model of phonology acquisition based on child speech development. Suggests that a categorization of the kinds of phonological changes which occur during the acquisition period leads to parallels between the mechanisms of phonological change in children and adults. (PMJ)

Investigation into age-related differences in production of fricative-vowel syllables with 10 adults and 30 children (ages 3, 5, and 7) found that age-related differences in vocal-tract geometry didn't explain age-related differences in vowel effects on fricative noise; children master intersyllabic gestural organization prior to intrasyllabic…

Four adults and 16 five-year-olds were asked to repeat words that differed in voicing of initial and final stop consonants and then to respond to revision requests. Children and adults decreased vowel duration and increased final closure duration in revised speech, regardless of the source of miscomprehension. (Author/JDD)