The current investigation examined the development of voice onset time (VOT) in Standard-Greek (SG) and Cypriot-Greek (CG)-speaking children at age levels 2;0-2;5, 2;6-2;11, 3;0-3;5, and 3;6-4;0 years. SG presents with a two-way voicing contrast (voiced and voiceless unaspirated stops) whereas CG is a three-way contrast dialect containing…

Children's early word productions often differ from the target form, sometimes exhibiting vowel lengthening when word-final coda consonants are omitted (e.g., "dog" /d[open o]g/ [arrow right] [d[open o]:]). It has typically been assumed that such lengthening compensates for a missing prosodic unit (a mora). However, this study raises the…

Vocalizations of two female infants, recorded over a five-week period after the first emergence of cooing were studied. It was found that the features of the more primitive sound types regrouped themselves in comfort sounds. The implications for theories of prespeech development are discussed. (EJS)

A detailed analysis of a six-month period in a child's acquisition of phonetic and phonological capacities indicates that the apparent plateau of the second year is a site of intensive language learning, which is not reflected in the growth of vocabulary or mean length of utterance. (Author/EJS)

Analysis of a complete set of word-forms produced by a one-year-old at the one-word stage found that the data showed little phonetic variability and that phonological development during the period studied (about one year) was qualitatively continuous with subsequent development. (Author/CB)

Using Locke's 1983 model, analyzes one tendency, consonant use in babbling and early words, and phonological word-selection patterns in 10 children, aged 8 to 16 months. Individual differences were found in all three domains analyzed, with some increase in uniformity across subjects with increasing knowledge of language. (Author/SED)

Presents a linguistic analysis of malaproprisms produced by children. (MM)

Compares frequencies of cooccurrences in infant babbling between phonetic and contextual categories to expected frequencies, and considers deviations to be patterns in babbling. Results are provided of an examination of utterances of three Canadian-English and three Parisian-French infants whose babblings were transcribed and categorized according…

A distinction is made between the acquisition of phonetics and of phonology. Their interaction and the ways in which they interfere with each other are discussed. Data on the acquisition of English fricatives for several children are given, and are analyzed separately for the phonological and phonetic aspects of acquisition. (Author/CLK)

This paper reports data for voice onset time (VOT) for /d/ and /t/, from six children at average age 3;0. Values for /d/ clearly achieve the short voicing lag category of adults, reported previously. Values for /t/, however, are much more varied, although falling within the category long voicing lag. (CHK)

Presents the results of an analysis of the acquisition of fricatives in 5 English children between the ages of 24 and 49 months. After giving an overview of the area of articulatory phonetics and citing previous research, data collection, scoring problems, and error analysis are discussed. (CFM)

Compares patterns of cluster realization from 47 children ranging in age from 3;4 to 6;8 with functional (nonorganic) speech disorders with those reported in the literature for normal acquisition and reveals that these patterns are essentially the same for both groups. (33 references) (GLR)

Investigates the utterances of 1 French and 1 U.S. infant at 0; 5,0; 8,0; 11, and 12 by transcribing and acoustically analyzing them for syllable duration and vowel format values. The French-learning infant tended to produce more regularly timed nonfinal syllables and showed significantly more final-syllable lengthening than the English-learning…