Syllable timing as a function of position-in-utterance in infant babbling

Abstract

For several years now it has been known that a number of languages show regular variations of syllable duration as a function of position-in-utterance. The most striking finding has been that final syllable vowels (in English, for instance) are up to 125 msec longer than comparable nonfinal syllable vowels. The present study attempts to determine whether or not the same sorts of patterns of syllable duration obtain in infant utterances. A corpus of reduplicated CVCV—utterances of several infants were tape-recorded and analyzed spectrographically. The durations of the infant consonants and vowels were compared with the durations of adult consonants and vowels as pronounced by adult speakers who were asked to read sequences phonetically like the infant utterances. The results show only a slight tendency toward final syllable lengthening in the infant utterances, a tendency which is demonstrably less than that which occurred in the comparable adult utterances. [Work supported by NIH-NICHD contract HD-3-2793 and Grant 5R01 HD 09906-02.]