Effect of familiarity on word duration in children's speech: a preliminary investigation

Young children's productions of novel words were used to investigate the influence of word familiarity on vowel and word duration. Ten children, 18 to 21 months old, produced tokens of phonologically individualized words (from one to four words) over 12 experimental sessions. Comparisons of means for the individualized words revealed that productions in the second half of the sessions were significantly shorter (both in their vowel and overall duration) than those in the first six sessions. When mean durations of productions were derived for each child, the effect held for word durations. Vowel durations differed in the same direction, but the difference was not statistically significant. Under these controlled conditions, familiarity seemed to influence the duration of early productions of novel words. These findings are discussed as evidence of word-specific motor maturation in early lexical acquisition.