Vowel Context Effects on Consonant Repetition in Early Words

Purpose Consonant repetitions within words are a well-attested speech error pattern in children's early speech acquisition. We investigated the role of intervening vowel context in understanding speech forms containing consonant repetitions in early words. Intrasyllabic consonant-vowel (CV) sequences within consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) and consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel (CVCV) forms containing consonant repetitions were analyzed to evaluate whether children's lack of independent movement control for the tongue in word-level sequences might contribute to these observed speech patterns. Method Spontaneous speech data produced by 10 typically developing children learning American English were analyzed longitudinally from the onset of word use to 36 months. Overall patterns and word shape effects for nine CV combinations occurring in their CVC and CVCV word shapes that contained repeated nonadjacent consonants and the intervening vowel were analyzed. Results Three CV combinations-coronal-front vowel, labial-central vowel, and dorsal-back vowel-occurred at above-chance levels. Preference for these CV patterns was strong in CVCV but not in CVC word shapes. These CV combinations occurred frequently at all time periods analyzed for CVCV's while decreasing across time for CVC's. Conclusions Analysis of intrasyllabic patterns within word forms containing consonant repetitions revealed that consonant repetitions in many early words occurred at above-chance levels in the context of articulatorily compatible vowels. Results suggest that children's production system capacities are an important contributing principle accounting for vowel context effects within word forms containing consonant repetitions during earliest speech acquisition.