Anticipatory Coarticulation in the Speech of Adults and Young Children

Abstract

Three experiments investigated anticipatory lingual and labial coarticulation in the [sV] productions of children and adults. Acoustic, perceptual, and video data were used to trace the development of intrasyllabic coarticulation in the speech of adults and children (ages 3, 5, and 8 years). Although children show greater variability in their articulatory patterns than adults, the data do not support claims that young children produce a greater degree of intrasyllabic coarticulation than older children or adults. Rather, the acoustic and video data suggest that young children and adults produce similar patterns of anticipatory coarticulation, and the perceptual data indicate that coarticulatory cues in the speech of 3-year-old children are less perceptible than those of the other age groups.