2006/12/20

McCune, L. & Vihman, M. M. (2001). Early phonetic and lexical development: A productivity approach. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 44, 670–684.

Presentation: Angela
Summary: Sarah

This paper attempts to study the relationship between children’s early phonetic skills and their lexical developments. In previous studies, many researchers pointed out that children’s use of referential words is a signal for the sound-meaning establishment, but few studies really touched upon the relationship between the two. In this study, a longitudinal research was carried out in order to explore this aspect. Twenty children were followed from 9 to 16 months of age, and their production of consonants was recorded. Results showed that children’s consistent production of one particular sound could predict their subsequent use of referential words containing that sound. In addition, it was found that labial sounds predominated in the speech of early referential children. Finally, although children varied in the consonants they produced consistently, these same consonants, however, constituted most words each child produced in the final 2 months of observation. These results further verified the strong correlation between children’s phonetic and lexical development.