TY  - JOUR
A1  - Rubertus, Elina
A1  - Noiray, Aude
T1  - Vocalic activation width decreases across childhood
BT  - Evidence from carryover coarticulation
JF  - Laboratory Phonology
N2  - This study is the first to use kinematic data to assess lingual carryover coarticulation in children. We investigated whether the developmental decrease previously attested in anticipatory coarticulation, as well as the relation between coarticulatory degree and the consonantal context, also characterize carryover coarticulation. Sixty-two children and 13 adults, all native speakers of German, were recruited according to five age cohorts: three-year-olds, four-year-olds, five-year-olds, seven-year-olds, and adults. Tongue movements during the production of ə.CV.Cə utterances (C = /b, d, g/, V = /i, y, e, a, o, u/) were recorded with ultrasound. We measured vowel-induced horizontal displacement of the tongue dorsum within the last syllable and compared the resulting coarticulatory patterns between age cohorts and consonantal contexts. Results indicate that the degree of vocalic carryover coarticulation decreases with age. Vocalic prominence within an utterance as well as its change across childhood depended on the postvocalic consonant’s articulatory demands for the tongue dorsum (i.e., its coarticulatory resistance): Low resistant /b/ and /g/ allowed for more vocalic perseveration and a continuous decrease, while the highly resistant /d/ displayed lower coarticulation degrees and discontinuous effects. These findings parallel those in anticipation suggesting a similar organization of anticipatory and carryover coarticulation. Implications for theories of speech production are discussed.
KW  - language acquisition
KW  - coarticulation
KW  - carryover effects
KW  - vowels
KW  - gestural organization
KW  - speech motor control
Y1  - 2020
U6  - https://doi.org/10.5334/labphon.228
SN  - 1868-6346
SN  - 1868-6354
VL  - 11
IS  - 1
PB  - de Gruyter Mouton
CY  - Berlin, New York
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Noiray, Aude
A1  - Popescu, Anisia
A1  - Killmer, Helene
A1  - Rubertus, Elina
A1  - Krüger, Stella
A1  - Hintermeier, Lisa
T1  - Spoken Language Development and the Challenge of Skill Integration
JF  - Frontiers in Psychology
N2  - The development of phonological awareness, the knowledge of the structural combinatoriality of a language, has been widely investigated in relation to reading (dis)ability across languages. However, the extent to which knowledge of phonemic units may interact with spoken language organization in (transparent) alphabetical languages has hardly been investigated. The present study examined whether phonemic awareness correlates with coarticulation degree, commonly used as a metric for estimating the size of children’s production units. A speech production task was designed to test for developmental differences in intra-syllabic coarticulation degree in 41 German children from 4 to 7 years of age. The technique of ultrasound imaging allowed for comparing the articulatory foundations of children’s coarticulatory patterns. Four behavioral tasks assessing various levels of phonological awareness from large to small units and expressive vocabulary were also administered. Generalized additive modeling revealed strong interactions between children’s vocabulary and phonological awareness with coarticulatory patterns. Greater knowledge of sub-lexical units was associated with lower intra-syllabic coarticulation degree and greater differentiation of articulatory gestures for individual segments. This interaction was mostly nonlinear: an increase in children’s phonological proficiency was not systematically associated with an equivalent change in coarticulation degree. Similar findings were drawn between vocabulary and coarticulatory patterns. Overall, results suggest that the process of developing spoken language fluency involves dynamical interactions between cognitive and speech motor domains. Arguments for an integrated-interactive approach to skill development are discussed.
KW  - language acquisition
KW  - coarticulation
KW  - speech motor control
KW  - phonological awareness
KW  - vocabulary
KW  - speech production
Y1  - 2019
U6  - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02777
SN  - 1664-1078
VL  - 10
PB  - Frontiers Research Foundation
CY  - Lausanne
ER  -