ERIC Number: EJ1035817
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2014
Pages: 20
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1547-5441
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Pronunciation Variation in Infant-Directed Speech: Phonetic Reduction of Two Highly Frequent Words
Lahey, Mybeth; Ernestus, Mirjam
Language Learning and Development, v10 n4 p308-327 2014
In spontaneous conversations between adults, words are often pronounced with fewer segments or syllables than their citation forms. The question arises whether infant-directed speech also contains phonetic reduction. If so, infants would be presented with speech input that enables them to acquire reduced variants from an early age. This study compared speech directed at 11- and 12-month-old infants with adult-directed conversational speech and adult-directed read speech. In an acoustic study, 216 tokens of the Dutch words "allemaal" and "helemaal" from speech corpora were analyzed for duration, number of syllables, and vowel quality. In a perception study, adult participants rated these same materials for reduction and provided phonetic transcriptions. The results show that these two words are frequently reduced in infant-directed speech, and that their degree of reduction is comparable with conversational adult-directed speech. These findings suggest that lexical representations for reduced pronunciation variants can be acquired early in linguistic development.
Descriptors: Pronunciation, Infants, Phonetics, Language Acquisition, Language Variation, Syllables, Comparative Analysis, Indo European Languages, Auditory Perception, Acoustics, Adults, Interpersonal Relationship, Undergraduate Students, Regression (Statistics), Foreign Countries
Psychology Press. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 325 Chestnut Street Suite 800, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Fax: 215-625-2940; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Netherlands
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A