The ability to process plural marking of nouns is acquired early: at a very young age, children are able to understand if a noun represents one item or more than one. However, little is known about how the segmental characteristics of plural marking are used in this process. Using eye-tracking, we aim at understanding how five to twelve-year old…

Studies of connected speech have repeatedly shown that the contextual predictability of a word is related to its phonetic duration; more predictable words tend to be produced with shorter duration, when other factors are controlled for (Aylett & Turk, 2004, 2006; Bell et al., 2003; Bell, Brenier, Gregory, Girand, & Jurafsky, 2009; Gahl,…

Describes two experiments which examined the way in which kindergarteners, first graders, and adults spell syllables like /spa/,/sta/, and /ska/. The proportion of voiced spellings was found to decrease with reading level. The nonstandard spellings were fairly prevalent among children, but almost nonexistent among adults. (SED)

Assesses the relationship between production deficits and speech perception abilities. A categorical perception paradigm was administered to a group of communication disordered children and to a matched control group. Group results are tentatively interpreted as showing a moderate perceptual deficit in the communication disordered children of this…

This paper reports the results of a preliminary study dealing with the ways in which children between ages 6 and 7 organize spoken language. In particular, aspects of the temporal and segmental structure of polysyllabic English words containing the syllable C/jul/, as in the word "pediculous," are dealt with. This study is based on the assumption…

Research on child language acquisition should distinguish between different possible causes of variation and not just attribute variation to individual variation. An alternative analysis using a different methodology can show that children's patterns of acquisition are actually relatively similar. (Author/CB)

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 34 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) the influence of rhyming verses on young children's ability to repeat rhythmic phrases; (2) schools of thought in linguistics; (3) the great vowel shift in the…