The Role of Utterance Length and Position in 3-Year-Olds' Production of Third Person Singular -s

Autor/inn/en	Mealings, Kiri T.; Demuth, Katherine
Titel	The Role of Utterance Length and Position in 3-Year-Olds' Production of Third Person Singular -s
Quelle	In: Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 57 (2014) 2, S.484-494 (11 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1092-4388
DOI	10.1044/2013_JSLHR-L-12-0354
Schlagwörter	Young Children; Grammar; English; Foreign Countries; Imitation; Pictorial Stimuli; Repetition; Acoustics; Morphemes; Difficulty Level; Phonology; Australia + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Frühe Kindheit; Grammatik; English language; Englisch; Ausland; Fantasieanregung; Wiederholung; Akustik; Morphem; Schwierigkeitsgrad; Fonologie; Australien
Abstract	Purpose: Evidence from children's spontaneous speech suggests that utterance length and utterance position may help explain why children omit grammatical morphemes in some contexts but not others. This study investigated whether increased utterance length (hence, increased grammatical complexity) adversely affects children's third person singular "-s" production in more controlled experimental conditions. Method: An elicited imitation task with 12 Australian English-speaking children ages 2;9 (years;months) to 3;2 (M[subscript age] = 2;11) was conducted comparing third person singular "-s" production in 3-word and 5-word utterances, both utterance medially (e.g., "He 'sits' back"; "He 'sits' back and swings") and utterance finally (e.g., "There he 'sits'; That's the way he 'sits'") using a within-subjects design. Children were shown pictorial representations of each utterance on a computer and were invited to repeat 16 pseudorandomized prerecorded utterances. Acoustic analysis determined the presence/absence and duration of the third person singular morpheme. Results: Third person singular production was significantly lower utterance medially compared to utterance finally for the 5-word utterances and significantly lower utterance medially in the 5-word compared to 3-word utterances. Conclusion: These results suggest that increased utterance length results in significantly lower third person singular production, but only in the more articulatorily challenging utterance-medial position. Thus, morpheme omission is greatest at the intersection of grammatical and phonological complexity. (As Provided).
Anmerkungen	American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). 10801 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD 20852. Tel: 800-638-8255; Fax: 301-571-0457; e-mail: subscribe@asha.org; Web site: http://jslhr.asha.org
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10