Abstract:

The aim of this study is to analyze the influence of prosody on acquisition of temporal aspects of V-V anticipatory lingual coarticulation in productions by Italian-speaking children. Two twin 7-years old male children, native Italian-speakers, interacted with the same adult, repeating nonsense disyllables containing VtV sequences where V1 = {i, a} and V2 = {a,e,i,o,u}, with different stress patterns (e.g. pi’ta, pi’ta). The durations of the VC F2 transitions and the CV/VC F2 transitions durations ratios, in different V2 contexts and stress conditions, were measured by spectrographic analysis, and compared between pronunciations by each child vs. the adult, to test whether the child was able to imitate the duration of the transitions as produced by the adult in different stress conditions. Results highlighted a significant difference in durations of VC transitions, between children and the adult: longer VC transitions durations, indicating greater amount of coarticulation, were found for one child in every context, and for the other, only in stressed [it] sequences. The data supports the hypothesis of presence of different temporal patterns of anticipatory coarticulation in the adult and the children, and of greater amount of coarticulation in children, with different strategies of implementation across different prosodic conditions.