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A phonetic analysis of consonantal devoicing in children's speech*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Bruce L. Smith
Bruce L. Smith
Affiliation:
University of Washington
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Abstract

A number of phonologists have observed the frequent occurrence of ‘devoiced’ obstruents in word-final position in children's utterances. Although such transcription-based accounts have provided evidence of the phenomenon, physical phonetic properties of devoiced consonants have not been described. Therefore, characteristics of voicing control for ‘voiced’ and ‘voiceless’ stops produced by five English-speaking children aged 2; 6–3; 0, five aged 4; 0–4; 6, and five adults were investigated in terms of (1) the percentage of all stop productions evidencing ‘devoicing’ during consonant closure, and (2) in the case of devoiced stops, the proportion of consonant closure evidencing voicing. Both groups of children revealed substantial amounts of consonantal devoicing when compared with the adults; in addition, the proportion of stop closure evidencing voicing was considerably less for the children than for the adults. It was also observed, however, that the children's ‘devoiced’ stops revealed significantly more voicing than their phonemically ‘voiceless’ stop productions.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , February 1979 , pp. 19 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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Footnotes

[*]

This research was supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, research Contract NIH-NICHD-NO1-HD-3-2793. The author would like to thank Carol Stoel-Gammon for her Constructive comments on an earlier draft of this paper and Philip Dale for his advice in the area of statistical analyses. Requests for reprints should be sent to the author at CDMRC 393 WJ-10, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.

References

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