Syllable Omission by Two-Year-Old Children

Abstract

An eye-gaze and production probe examined the ability of 2-year-old children to perceive and produce minimal pairs of novel trisyllabic words with primary stress on the first or second syllables. The syllables contained dissimilar or similar vowel contrasts to determine if segments affected omission. The results supported a prosodic model, with the children's bias toward a strong-weak-weak prosodic structure and omission more frequent for the first syllable of the weak-strong-weak word pairs. Syllable omission was less frequent for strong-weak-weak word pairs that contained dissimilar vowels, suggesting that segments play a role in syllable omission.