The development of laryngeal coarticulation: Comparison of women, 5-year-olds, and 10-year-olds

Past work has indicated that adult speakers show effects of laryngeal coarticulation in voice source measures taken in vowels flanking voiceless consonants. In a recent pilot study, we presented time-varying voice source measures from 5-year-old girls producing VCV sequences with varying consonants. The results suggested that, on average, the children produced laryngeal coarticulation over a duration at least as long as adults, but extensive token-to-token variability complicated interpretation of the results. The present analysis extends that work by comparing normal women with normally-developing 5-year-old and prepubertal 10-year-old children. Speakers were recorded producing multiple repetitions of intervocalic /b p h/ in simple carrier phrases such as ‘‘Poppa Hopper’’ while oral airflow signals were collected using a Rothenberg mask. After software-inverse filtering, pulse-by-pulse measures of DC airflow, open quotient, and f0 are made from the transition out of the consonant into the following vowel. Results will be intepreted in terms of age effects and, for the children, possible gender differences. These data have implications for our understanding of laryngeal motor control in children and, more generally, for theories of the development of coarticulation. [Work supported by NIH.]