TY - JOUR
T1 - An articulatory phonology account of preferred consonant-vowel combinations
AU - Giulivi, Sara
AU - Whalen, D. H.
AU - Goldstein, Louis M.
AU - Nam, Hosung
AU - Levitt, Andrea G.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by NIH grants DC-000403 and DC-002717 to Haskins Laboratories. Portions of this work appeared in an unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (Giulivi, 2007). We thank Carol A. Fowler, Michael Studdert-Kennedy, Julia Irwin, Aude Noiray, D. Kimbrough Oller, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments. Data for calculating percentages of preferred response from previous studies were kindly provided by Barbara L. Davis and Peter MacNeilage.
PY - 2011/7
Y1 - 2011/7
N2 - Certain consonant/vowel combinations (labial/central, coronal/front, velar/back) are more frequent in babbling as well as, to a lesser extent, in adult language than chance would dictate. The "Frame then Content" (F/C) hypothesis (Davis & MacNeilage, 1994) attributes this pattern to biome-chanical vocal-tract biases that change as infants mature. Articulatory Phonology (AP; Browman & Goldstein, 1989) attributes preferences to demands placed on shared articulators. F/C implies that preferences will diminish as articulatory control increases, while AP does not. Here, babbling from children at 6, 9, and 12 months in English, French, and Mandarin environments was examined. There was no developmental trend in CV preferences, although older ages exhibited greater articulatory control. A perception test showed no evidence of bias toward hearing the preferred combinations. Modeling using articulatory synthesis found limited support for F/C but more for AP, including data not originally encompassed in F/C. AP thus provides an alternative biomechanical explanation.
AB - Certain consonant/vowel combinations (labial/central, coronal/front, velar/back) are more frequent in babbling as well as, to a lesser extent, in adult language than chance would dictate. The "Frame then Content" (F/C) hypothesis (Davis & MacNeilage, 1994) attributes this pattern to biome-chanical vocal-tract biases that change as infants mature. Articulatory Phonology (AP; Browman & Goldstein, 1989) attributes preferences to demands placed on shared articulators. F/C implies that preferences will diminish as articulatory control increases, while AP does not. Here, babbling from children at 6, 9, and 12 months in English, French, and Mandarin environments was examined. There was no developmental trend in CV preferences, although older ages exhibited greater articulatory control. A perception test showed no evidence of bias toward hearing the preferred combinations. Modeling using articulatory synthesis found limited support for F/C but more for AP, including data not originally encompassed in F/C. AP thus provides an alternative biomechanical explanation.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=79960521309&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/15475441.2011.564569
DO - 10.1080/15475441.2011.564569
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:79960521309
VL - 7
SP - 202
EP - 225
JO - Language Learning and Development
JF - Language Learning and Development
SN - 1547-5441
IS - 3
ER -