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Phonological reduction in maternal speech in northern Australian English: change over time*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 July 2013

HEATHER BUCHAN  and
CAROLINE JONES
HEATHER BUCHAN*
Affiliation:
Interdisciplinary Educational Research Institute (IERI) and Faculty of Education, University of Wollongong; NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence in Mental Health and Substance Use, National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, University of New South Wales
CAROLINE JONES
Affiliation:
Interdisciplinary Educational Research Institute (IERI) and Faculty of Education, University of Wollongong; The MARCS Institute, University of Western Sydney
*
Address for correspondence: Heather Buchan: e-mail [email protected]
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Abstract

Segmental variation in maternal speech to children changes over time. This study investigated variation in non-citation speech processes in a longitudinal, 26-hour corpus of maternal northern Australian English. Recordings were naturalistic parent–child interactions when children (N=4) were 1;6, 2;0, and 2;6. The mothers' speech was phonetically transcribed and analyzed. Based on previous sociophonetic research showing proportional changes in speech variants in maternal speech as children get older, it was predicted that deletion of word-initial /h/ and word-final /v/, processes common in non-citation speech, would increase over time. Instead results showed a non-linear change in deletion within a stable set of lexical items. Deletion proportionately increased between 1;6 and 2;0 and decreased between 2;0 and 2;6. Further analysis indicated increased deletion was not accounted for by changes in speech rate, which only marginally increased over time. Findings suggest mothers fine-tune differentially over time as children's receptive and productive language knowledge develops.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 41 , Issue 4 , July 2014 , pp. 725 - 755
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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Footnotes

[*]

The authors thank the audience at the 12th International Congress for the Study of Child Language (IASCL 2011) for their feedback on an early version of this paper. We also thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. The authors thank the speakers and their families for participating in the study, and the childcare services in Katherine, NT, in particular Good Beginnings Australia and Little Mangoes childcare centre. The research was supported by Discovery Grant DP0985395 ‘Phonological development in child speakers of mixed language’ (2009–2012, C.I. Caroline Jones) from the Australian Research Council.

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