Cues to post-vocalic voicing in mother-child speech

Abstract

Vowels from eight mothers’ speech to their children and to an adult listener were subjected to durational analysis. It appears that mother-child speech significantly exaggerates the durational distinction that speakers usually make in producing vowels prior to voiced and voiceless final consonants. Overall, the tendency to lengthen vowels preceding voiced final consonants is doubled in the mother-child register. Final consonants themselves, however, are often deleted or glottalized in this register. It is hypothesized that some normal or disordered children might confuse this exaggerated secondary feature of the voicing contrast seen in their input with the need to actually specify final consonants, a phenomenon which has been reported in the literature.