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In English and many other languages, velar stops are acquired later than stops at other places of articulation, and are frequently misarticulated by children with speech disorders. This may be because velar stops are constrained in a gradient way by the degree of backness or frontness of the following vowel (Wada, et al., 1969). If this explanation is correct, then it is of interest to examine velar stop acquisition cross-linguistically because this context effect is language-specific. For example, Greek /k/ is more palatalized than English /k/ before front vowels. In this study, we examined /k/ productions before the five cardinal vowels in 2- and 5-year-old Greek- and English-speaking children. While the accuracy rate was somewhat lower for the Greek 2-year-olds than for the English 2-year-olds, acoustic analyses showed more front articulations of /ki/ for both Greek- and English-speaking children as compared to adults, and more adult-like spectra for the Greek-speaking children. This result suggests that the gradient nature of velar stop realization is not responsible for its later acquisition.
Funding source: Interdisciplinary research Training in Speech-Language Disorders training grant project |
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