Effect of speaking style and word length on V-to-V coarticulation in child and adult speech

Abstract

Anticipatory vowel-to-vowel coarticulation indexes both the coherence of adjacent syllables in the speech plan and the relative “segmentalness” of articulation. In this study, speaking style and word length were manipulated to disrupt default production strategies and thereby identify age-related differences in planning and articulation between adults’ and 8-year-old children’s speech. Preliminary results indicate an anticipatory effect on schwa F1 and F2 in adults’ speech across styles. The same effect was also observed on F1 in children’s speech regardless of style, but the effect on schwa F2 was stronger when the target was in focus. There were also systematic effects of word length on F1 and F2 across both groups. For F1, unstressed vowels before one- and two-syllable words were more similar (more closed) than within four-syllable words; whereas, for F2, unstressed vowels were more similar (less fronted) before two-syllable words or within four-syllable words than before one-syllable words. Overall, neither speaking style nor word length appears to significantly disrupt the articulatory coherence of adjacent syllables in child or adult speech, but there is some indication ofgreater underlying coherence between syllables in children’s speech compared to adults’ speech. [Work supported by NICHD grant #R01HD087452.]