Temporal aspects of English speech production: A developmental perspective

Abstract

Adult speakers of a language exhibit elaborate temporal control systems governing the durations of speech segments. These systems include the effects of inherent, universal properties of the speech production apparatus as well as learned, language-specific manipulations of duration produced to provide perceptual information for the listener. Developmental aspects of several temporal parameters in the speech of 10 212−3-year-old (X¯ = 2, 11) and 10 4−412-year-old (X¯ = 4, 4) English-speaking children were investigated; ten adults served as a control group. Both groups of children revealed word and segment durations which were consistently longer than those of the adults, but speech segment durations of both groups of children reflected intrinsic properties similar in magnitude to those of the adults. Although absolute duration increments due to language-specific variables were greater for the children than for the adults, both groups of children behaved very much like the adults regarding proportional increments of segments. The only extensive departure of the children from adult durational properties was observed in the production of the voiceless stop consonant /t/. Despite various temporal differences observed between the speech of children and that of adults, it was concluded that children possess timing control systems which are more sophisticated than has previously been suggested.