ERIC Number: EJ1151507
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2017-Sep
Pages: 23
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0305-0009
EISSN: N/A
Non-Adjacent Consonant Sequence Patterns in English Target Words during the First-Word Period
Aoyama, Katsura; Davis, Barbara L.
Journal of Child Language, v44 n5 p1065-1087 Sep 2017
The goal of this study was to investigate non-adjacent consonant sequence patterns in target words during the first-word period in infants learning American English. In the spontaneous speech of eighteen participants, target words with a Consonant-Vowel-Consonant (C[subscript 1]VC[subscript 2]) shape were analyzed. Target words were grouped into nine types, categorized by place of articulation (labial, coronal, dorsal) of initial and final consonants (e.g. "mom," labial-labial; "mat," labial-coronal; "dog," coronal-dorsal). The results indicated that some consonant sequences occurred much more frequently than others in early target words. The two most frequent types were coronal-coronal (e.g. "dad") and labial-coronal (e.g. "mat"). The least frequent type was dorsal-dorsal (e.g. "cake"). These patterns are consistent with phonotactic characteristics of English and infants' production capacities reported in previous studies. This study demonstrates that infants' expressive vocabularies reflect both ambient language characteristics and their own production capacities, at least for consonant sequences in C[subscript 1]VC[subscript 2] word forms.
Descriptors: Infants, English, Vocabulary Development, Sequential Learning, Expressive Language, Language Acquisition, Phonemes, Vowels, Articulation (Speech)
Cambridge University Press. 100 Brook Hill Drive, West Nyack, NY 10994-2133. Tel: 800-872-7423; Tel: 845-353-7500; Fax: 845-353-4141; e-mail: subscriptions_newyork@cambridge.org; Web site: http://journals.cambridge.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) (NIH)
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: R01HD2773303