Articulation of Vowel Length Contrasts in Australian English

AbstractEnglish has a word-minimality requirement that all open-class lexical items must contain at least two moras of structure, forming a bimoraic foot (Hayes, 1995).Thus, a word with either a long vowel, or a short vowel and a coda consonant, satisfies this requirement. This raises the question of when and how young children might learn this language-specific constraint, and if they would use coda consonants earlier and more reliably after short vowels compared to long vowels. To evaluate this possibility we conducted an elicited imitation experiment with 15 two-year-old Australian English-speaking children, using both perceptual and acoustic analysis. As predicted, the children produced codas more often when preceded by short vowels. The findings suggest that English-speaking two-year-olds are sensitive to language-specific lexical constraints, and are more likely to use coda consonants when prosodically required.

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Non-native Japanese listeners’ perception of vowel length contrasts in Japanese and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA)

Second language Research ◽

10.1177/0267658311435870 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 28 (2) ◽

pp. 151-168 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Kimiko Tsukada

Keyword(s):

First Language ◽

Significant Shift ◽

Vowel Duration ◽

Discrimination Accuracy ◽

Modern Standard Arabic ◽

Vowel Length ◽

Standard Arabic ◽

Australian English ◽

Carry Over ◽

Modern Standard

This study aimed to compare the perception of short vs. long vowel contrasts in Japanese and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) by four groups of listeners differing in their linguistic backgrounds: native Arabic (NA), native Japanese (NJ), non-native Japanese (NNJ) and Australian English (OZ) speakers. The NNJ and OZ groups shared the first language (L1), but differed in their familiarity with Japanese. In both Japanese and MSA, vowel length is phonemic. In contrast, vowel duration plays a more limited (although not insignificant) role in English. Of interest was the discrimination accuracy of NNJ listeners who learned Japanese as a second (L2) or foreign language in adulthood. As expected, the NA and NJ groups discriminated their L1 contrasts more accurately than all the other groups, but the NNJ listeners showed a significant shift in their perceptual behaviour and outperformed the OZ listeners who have no knowledge of Japanese in discriminating the Japanese vowel length contrasts. Furthermore, NNJ was the only group who did not differ in their discrimination accuracy for the Arabic and Japanese stimuli. Taken together, the results obtained in this study suggest that NNJ learned to discriminate Japanese vowel length contrasts to some extent, but the learning did not carry over cross-linguistically to the processing of vowel length contrasts in an unknown language.

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Comparison of native versus nonnative perception of vowel length contrasts in Arabic and Japanese

Applied Psycholinguistics ◽

10.1017/s0142716411000452 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 33 (3) ◽

pp. 501-516 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

KIMIKO TSUKADA

Keyword(s):

First Language ◽

Control Group ◽

Vowel Duration ◽

Discrimination Test ◽

Discrimination Accuracy ◽

Vowel Length ◽

Limited Experience ◽

Phonetic Contrasts ◽

Australian English

ABSTRACTThis study assessed the prediction that individuals are able to use the knowledge from their first language (L1) in processing the comparable sound contrasts in an unknown language. Two languages, Arabic and Japanese, which utilize vowel duration contrastively, were examined. Native Arabic (NA) and native Japanese (NJ) listeners' discrimination accuracy for native (known) and nonnative (unknown) vowel length contrasts was assessed in an AXB discrimination test. A group of Australian English (OZ) speakers who do not know either Arabic or Japanese participated as a control group. Despite the expectation that native listeners positively transfer and generalize the L1 knowledge to process unknown languages with equivalent phonetic characteristics, both the NA and NJ groups were clearly less accurate in discriminating vowel length contrasts in unknown languages. Further, they showed no advantage over the OZ listeners who have limited experience with vowel length contrasts in their L1. These results suggest that, not only for stop place contrasts examined previously, but also for vowel length contrasts, experience with specific phonetic contrasts may not be sufficient for attaining truly nativelike discrimination accuracy.

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Final Consonant Deletion in African American Children Speaking Black English

Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools ◽

10.1044/0161-1461.2403.161 ◽

1993 ◽

Vol 24 (3) ◽

pp. 161-166 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Michael J. Moran

Keyword(s):

African American ◽

Black English ◽

African American Children ◽

Vowel Length ◽

Minimal Pairs ◽

Speech Evaluation ◽

American Children

The purpose of this study was to determine whether African American children who delete final consonants mark the presence of those consonants in a manner that might be overlooked in a typical speech evaluation. Using elicited sentences from 10 African American children from 4 to 9 years of age, two studies were conducted. First, vowel length was determined for minimal pairs in which final consonants were deleted. Second, listeners who identified final consonant deletions in the speech of the children were provided training in narrow transcription and reviewed the elicited sentences a second time. Results indicated that the children produced longer vowels preceding "deleted" voiced final consonants, and listeners perceived fewer deletions following training in narrow transcription. The results suggest that these children had knowledge of the final consonants perceived to be deleted. Implications for assessment and intervention are discussed.

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Snapshots of tellings in interactions between adults and children aged two, three and three and a half in an Australian context

Research on Children and Social Interaction ◽

10.1558/rcsi.37285 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 3 (1-2) ◽

pp. 119-143 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Anna Filipi

Keyword(s):

Social Activity ◽

Second Child ◽

Object A ◽

Birthday Party ◽

Final Sample ◽

The Social ◽

Two Samples ◽

Adults And Children ◽

English Speaking ◽

Australian English

This paper examines how and by whom tellings with two young children are triggered at ages 23, 36 and 42 months. The data for the investigation is derived from a larger Australian English corpus of over 50 hours of interactions in the home, although one of the children is a bilingual Italian/ English-speaking child. The data is derived from two parent/child dyads, and in the case of the child aged 42 months, a triadic interaction between a mother, her own child and a second child. Using the micro-analytic methods of conversation analysis, the study analyses five samples of tellings. The first two describe how a child, Cassandra, aged 23 months, is invited to recount events of her day by her parents. The trigger for these tellings is the social activity of sharing everyday routine events. The next two samples focus on Rosie at 36 months who is also invited to share a telling by her parent about a birthday party celebration and one about a neighbourhood cat, Claude. The first telling is triggered by an object, a balloon from a birthday party from the day before, while the second is triggered by play involving the character of a cat, initially derived from a favourite story, Hairy Maclary. In the final sample, Cassandra, aged 42 months, initiates a telling about an experience at her grandmother’s which is trigged by a picture in a book. The analyses in each case reveal the interactional issues that arise in the action of telling and how these are dealt with by all participants. By focusing on the three ages, key features in the children’s participation in storytelling are uncovered.

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