A lexical advantage in four-year-old children's word repetition. Issue 1 (13th January 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: CYCHOSZ, Margaret; ERSKINE, Michelle; MUNSON, Benjamin; EDWARDS, Jan
• Is Part Of: Journal of child language. Volume 48:Issue 1(2021)
• Page Start: 31
• Page End: 54
• Publication Date: 2021-01-13
• Subjects: phonology, -- nonword repetition, -- vocabulary size; Children -- Language -- Periodicals; 401.9305
• DOI: 10.1017/S0305000920000094
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0305-0009

Abstract

Abstract: This study examined a potential lexicality advantage in young children's early speech production: do children produce sound sequences less accurately in nonwords than real words? Children aged 3;3-4;4 completed two tasks: a real word repetition task and a corresponding nonword repetition task. Each of the 23 real words had a paired consonant-vowel sequence in the nonword in word-initial position (e.g., 'su' in [ˈsutkes] ' suitcase' and [ˈsudrɑs]). The word-initial consonant-vowel sequences were kept constant between the paired words. Previous work on this topic compared different sequences of paired sounds, making it hard to determine if those results were due to a lexical or phonetic effect. Our results show that children reliably produced consonant-vowel sequences in real words more accurately than nonwords. The effect was most pronounced in children with smaller receptive vocabularies. Together, these results reinforce theories arguing for interactions between vocabulary size and phonology in language development.