Vowel Context Effects on Consonant Repetition in Early Words

Area of Science:

• Speech Acquisition
• Phonetics
• Developmental Linguistics

Background:

• Consonant repetitions are common in early child speech.
• The influence of vowel context on these repetitions is not fully understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• Investigate the role of intervening vowels in consonant repetitions.
• Examine if motor control limitations contribute to these speech patterns.

Main Methods:

• Analyzed spontaneous speech from 10 children (American English) up to 36 months.
• Focused on consonant-vowel (CV) sequences within CVC and CVCV word shapes.
• Examined nine CV combinations with repeated consonants.

Main Results:

• Three CV combinations (coronal-front, labial-central, dorsal-back vowels) occurred more than expected by chance.
• These patterns were more prevalent in CVCV words than CVC words.
• Frequency of these CV combinations remained high in CVCV words over time but decreased in CVC words.

Conclusions:

• Consonant repetitions in early words often occur with articulatorily compatible vowels.
• Children's motor production system capacities influence vowel context effects in repeated consonants.
• This suggests articulatory compatibility plays a key role in early speech sound patterns.