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Development of syllable structure in English-speaking children with particular reference to rhymes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 June 2001

MARGARET M. KEHOE
Affiliation:
Centre for Multilingualism, University of Hamburg
CAROL STOEL-GAMMON
Affiliation:
Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, University of Washington

Abstract

This study investigates acquisition of the rhyme using cross-sectional and longitudinal data from 14 English-speaking children (aged 1;3–2;0). It focuses on 4 questions pertaining to rhyme development, which are motivated from current theories of prosodic acquisition: 1. Do children make vowel length errors in early acquisition?; 2. Do children acquire coda consonants before they learn the vowel length contrast?; 3. What consonants are first acquired as codas?; and 4. Is there a size constraint such that children's productions are minimally and maximally bimoraic? The results indicate that the percentage of vowel length errors across all children was low irrespective of the percentage of codas produced. In particular, two children produced very few coda consonants and made few vowel length errors, suggesting that mastery of vowel length was not secondary to coda acquisition. With respect to coda segments, children produced voiceless obstruents as codas before sonorants supporting generally the claim that obstruents emerge before sonorants in coda position. Children produced coda consonants more frequently after short than long vowels consistent with a bimoraic size constraint in syllable development. The paper concludes by comparing the English findings with cross-linguistic work on vowel length acquisition.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
2001 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

Preparation of this study was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Health (R01 HD32065). We would like to thank Marisa de Santis for her careful assistance in the reliability aspect of this study. Preliminary reports of this investigation were presented at the VIIIth International Congress for the Study of Child Language, San Sebastian – Donostia, July 1999.