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15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-15)Barcelona, Spain |
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15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-15)Barcelona, Spain |
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This study focuses on the acoustic patterns of stop consonants and
adjacent vowels as they develop in young children (ages 2;6-3;3). One
theory of speech development holds that children initially learn to
recognize an entire word or syllable as an approximate pattern, and
try to reproduce this pattern by a series of gestures during speech.
As a child's speech develops, the gestures become more precise and
coordinated, and these patterns are refined. The acoustic properties
that are being measured for stop consonants include spectra of bursts,
frication noise and aspiration noise, formant movements, labeling of
acoustic landmarks, and durations of events determined by these landmarks.
These acoustic measurements are being interpreted in terms of the
supraglottal, laryngeal, and respiratory actions that give rise to
them. Preliminary data on one 2;6-year-old child show that some details
of the child's gestures are still far from achieving the adult pattern.
Bibliographic reference. Imbrie, Annika Karlsson (2003): "Acoustical study of the development of stop consonants in children", In ICPhS-15, 1943-1946.