Non-adjacent consonant sequence patterns in English target words during the first-word period

What is it about?

The goal of this study was to investigate nonadjacent consonant sequence patterns in target words during the first-word period in infants learning American English. In spontaneous speech of 18 participants, target words with a Consonant-Vowel-Consonant (C1VC2) shape were analyzed. Target words were grouped into nine types, categorized by place of articulation (labial, coronal, dorsal) of initial and final consonants (e.g., mom, labial-labial; mat, labial-coronal; dog, coronal-dorsal). The results indicated that some consonant sequences occurred much more frequently than others in early target words. The two most frequent types were coronal-coronal (e.g., dad) and labial-coronal (e.g., mat). The least frequent type was dorsal-dorsal (e.g., cake). These patterns are consistent with phonotactic characteristics of English and infants’ production capacities reported in previous studies. This study demonstrates that infants’ expressive vocabularies reflect both ambient language characteristics and their own production capacities, at least for consonant sequences in C1VC2 word forms.

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