Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-nr4z6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-07T21:10:51.417Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Revisiting frequencies of phonological sound classes in speech input: Change over time in child-directed speech

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2023

Sue Ann S. LEE Open the ORCID record for Sue Ann S. LEE [Opens in a new window] ,
Jaehoon LEE  and
Barbara L. DAVIS
Sue Ann S. LEE*
Affiliation:
Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, USA
Jaehoon LEE
Affiliation:
Texas Tech University, USA
Barbara L. DAVIS
Affiliation:
University of Texas at Austin, USA
*
Corresponding author: Sue Ann S. Lee; Email: sueann.lee@ttuhsc.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The purpose of the current study was to revisit a controversial topic: whether frequencies of phonological consonant and vowel classes differ in speech directed to children and to adults. In addition, the current study investigated whether the frequency of phonological consonant and vowel classes changes with children’s increasing chronological and/or developmental age. This study analyzed speech input from 44 adults to four different age groups of listeners (i.e., three groups of children at 6, 18, and 36 months of age and one group of adult listeners) in terms of frequency of occurrence of consonant and vowel classes. Results revealed that consonant stop, nasal, fricative and glide manner classes as well as all four consonant place classes were significantly different in speech directed to the four different age groups. A perspective is discussed to better understand the nature of frequency input of phonological sound classes.

Keywords

child-directed speechfrequency of phonological sound classesfrequency of speech input
Type
Article
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , May 2024 , pp. 550 - 572
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Beckman, M. E., Yoneyama, K., & Edwards, J. (2003). Language-specific and language-universal aspects of lingual obstruent productions in Japanese-acquiring children. Journal of the Phonetic Society of Japan 7, 18–28.Google Scholar
Bernhardt, B. H., & Stemberger, J. P. (1998). Handbook of phonological development. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Boysson-Bardies, B., & Vihman, M. M. (1991). Adaptation to language: Evidence from babbling and first words in four languages. Language 67(2), 297–319.Google Scholar
Boysson-Bardies, B., Halle, P., Sagart, L. & Durand, C. (1989). A cross-linguistic intervention of vowel formants in babbling. Journal of Child Language 16, 1–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buchan, H., & Jones, C. (2014). Phonological reduction in maternal speech in northern Australian English: change over time. Journal of Child Language, 41(4), 725–755. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000913000123CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cross, T. G. (1977). Mothers’ speech adjustment: the contributions of selected child listener variable. In Snow, K. & Ferguson, C. A. (eds), Talking to children: Language input and acquisition, 151–188. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Daland, R. (2012). Variation in the input: a case study of manner class frequencies. Journal of Child Language, 40, 1091–1122. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000912000372CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dinnsen, D. A., Chin, S. B., Elbert, M., & Powell, T. (1990). Some constraints on functionally disordered phonologies: Phonetic inventories and phonotactics. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 33, 28–27. https://doi.org/10.1044/jshr.3301.28CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fernald, A., & Morikawa, H. (1993). Common themes and cultural variations in Japanese and American mothers’ speech to infants. Child Development 64(3), 637–656. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.1993.tb02933.xCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fernald, A., Taeschner, T., Dunn, J., Papousek, M., Boysson-Bardies, B., & Fukui, I. (1989). A cross language study of prosodic modifications in mothers’ and fathers’ speech to preverbal infants. Journal of Child Language 16, 477–501. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000900010679CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gerometta, J., & Shafer, V. (2008). Frequent word analysis of infant directed speech across communication contexts. Poster session presented at the 2008 American Speech Language and Hearing Association Convention, Chicago, IL.Google Scholar
Goldstein, B. A. (2007). Spanish speech acquisition. In McLeod, S. (ed.), The international guide to speech acquisition, 539–53. Clifton Park, NY: Thomson Delmar Learning.Google Scholar
Gougenheim, G., René, M., Paul, R., & Aurélien, S. (1956). L’élaboration du français élémentaire. Paris: Didier.Google Scholar
Howard, S. (2007). English speech acquisition. In McLeod, S. (ed.), The International guide to speech acquisition, 188–203. Clifton Park, NY: Thomson Delmar Learning.Google Scholar
Hox, J. (2010). Multilevel analysis: Techniques and applications (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hur, U. (1985). Korean phonology. Seoul, Korea: Sam Publisher.Google Scholar
Ingram, D. (1989). Frist language acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jin, N.-T. (1993). A quantitative linguistic study on the functional load of phonemes in standard Korean. Speech (in Korean) 25, 65–91.Google Scholar
Jun, S.-A. (2006). Phonological development of Korean: a case study. In Kuno, S., Lee, I.-H., Whitman, J., Maling, J., Kang, Y.-S., Sells, P. & Sohn, H.-S. (eds), Harvard studies in Korean linguistics XI, page 17–33. Seoul, Korea: Hanshin Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Keating, D. P. (2011). Nature and nurture in early child development. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kent, R. D. (1992). The biology of phonological development, in Ferguson, C. A., Menn, L. & Stoel-Gammon, C. (eds), Phonological development: Model, research, implications, 65–90. Timonium, MD: York Press.Google Scholar
Kondauova, M. V., Bergeson, T. R., & Xu, H. (2013). Age-related changes in prosodic features of maternal speech to prelingually deaf infants with cochlear implants. Infancy, 18, 825–848. https://doi.org/10.1111/infa.12010CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, S., Davis, B., & MacNeilage, P. (2008). Segmental properties of input to infants: A study of Korean. Journal of Child Language 35, 591–617. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000908008684CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lee, S.A.S., Davis, B., & MacNeilage, P. (2010). Universal production patterns and ambient language influences in babbling: A cross-linguistic study of Korean and English-learning infants. Manuscript submitted to Journal of Child Language. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000909009532CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, S.A.S., & Davis, B. L. (2010). Segmental distribution pattern of English infant- and adult-directed speech. Journal of Child Language, 37, 767–791. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000909009568CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lee, S., & Nakayama, M. (2000). Characteristics of maternal speech in Korean: do Korean and Japanese maternal speech show similar characteristics? Proceedings of the Annual Boston University Conference of Language Development 24, 486–97.Google Scholar
Levitt, A. G., & Aydelott Utman, J. G. (1992). From babbling towards the sound systems of English and French: A longitudinal two-case studies. Journal of Child Language 19, 19–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liu, H. M., Tsao, F. M., & Kuhl, P. K. (2009). Age-related changes in acoustic modifications of Mandarin maternal speech to preverbal infants and five-year-old children: a longitudinal study. Journal of Child Language, 36(4), 909–922. https://doi.org/10.1017/S030500090800929XCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
MacWhinney, B. (2000). The CHILDES project: Tools for analyzing talk (3rd Eds). Mahwah, NH: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Michell, P. R., & Kent, R. D. (2009). Phonetic variation in multisyllable babbling. Journal of Child Language, 17, 247–265.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mines, M. A., Hanson, B. F., & Shoup, J. E. (1978). Frequency of occurrence of phonemes in conversational English. Language and Speech 21, 221–41.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moerbeek, M. (2004). The consequence of ignoring a level of nesting in multilevel analysis. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 39, 129–149 doi:10.1207/s15327906mbr3901_5CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Oller, D. K., & Delgado, R. E. (1990). Logical international phonetic program (Version 1.4). Miami, FL: Intelligent Hearing Systems.Google Scholar
Phillips, J. (1973). Syntax and vocabulary of mothers’ speech to young children: age and sex comparison. Child Development 44, 182–185. https://doi.org/10.2307/1127699CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pitt, M., Johnson, K., Hume, E., Kiesling, S., & Raymond, W. (2005). The Buckeye corpus of conversational speech: Labeling conventions and a test of transcriber reliability. Speech Communication, 45, 90–95. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.specom.2004.09.001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raudenbush, S. W., & Bryk, A. S. (2002). Hierarchical linear models (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Rose, Y., & Wauquier-Gravelines, S. (2007). French speech acquisition. The international guide to speech acquisition, 364–384.Google Scholar
Rvachew, S., Mattock, K., Polka, L., & Menard, L. (2006). Developmental and cross-linguistic variation in the infants’ vowel space: The case of Canadian-English and Canadian-French. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 120, 2251–59.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Saffran, J. R., Aslin, R. N., & Newport, E. L. (1996). Statistical learning by 8-month-old infants. Science 274, 1926–1928. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.274.5294.1926CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
SAS Institute. (2002–2012). SAS/STAT 9.4 user’s guide. Cary, NC: SAS Institute Inc.Google Scholar
Sloos, M., & Van De Weijer, J. (2015). What can adult speech tell us about child language acquisition? Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue Canadienne De Linguistique, 60, 75–83. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008413100000542Google Scholar
Snow, C. E., & Ferguson, C. A. (1977). Talking to children: Language input and acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University PressGoogle Scholar
Stokes, S., & Wong, I. M. (2002). Vowel and diphthong development in Cantonese-speaking children. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 16, 597–617. https://doi.org/10.1080/0269920021000034967CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Suh, S. (1991). Constituent structure processing in Korean. Proceedings of Eastern States Conference on Linguistics 8, 347–358.Google Scholar
Sundberg, U. (1998). Mother tongue-phonetic aspects of infant-directed speech. Doctoral dissertation, PERILUS XXI, University of Stockholm.Google Scholar
Teixeira, E. R., & Davis, B. L. (2002). Early sound patterns in the speech of two Brazilian Portuguese speakers. Language and Speech 45(2), 179–204.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tsuji, S., Nishikawa, K., & Mazuka, R. (2014). Segmental distributions and consonant-vowel association patterns in Japanese infant- and adult-directed speech. Journal of Child Language 41, 1276–1304. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000913000469CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tsurutani, C. (2007). Early acquisition of palate-alveolar consonants in Japanese: Phonemes frequencies in child-directed speech. Journal of the Phonetic Society of Japan, 11, 102–110. https://doi.org/10.24467/onseikenkyu.11.1_102Google Scholar
Van Severen, L., Gillis, J. J. M., Van Den Berg, I. M. R., De Maeyer, S., & Gillis, S. (2013). The relation between order of acquisition, segmental frequency, and function: The case of word-initial consonants in Dutch. Journal of Child Language, 40, 703–740. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000912000219CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vihman, M. M., Kay, E., Boysson-Bardies, B., Durand, C., & Sundberg, U. (1994). External sources of individual differences? A cross-linguistic analysis of the phonetics of mothers’ speech to one-year-old children. Developmental Psychology 30(5), 651–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vygotsky, L. (1978). Interaction between Learning and Development. In Cole, M., John-Steiner, V., Scribner, S. & Souberman, E. (eds), Mind in Society: The development of higher psychological processes, 79–91. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Wayne, D. W. (1990). Kruskal-Wallis one-way analysis of variance by ranks. Applied Nonparametric Statistics (2nd ed.). Boston: PWS-Kent.Google Scholar
Wheeler, M. P. (1983). Context-related age changes in mothers’ speech: joint book reading. Journal of Child Language, 10, 259–63. doi: 10.1017/s0305000900005304CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zamuner, T. S. (2003). Input-based phonological acquisition. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar