Jeffry A. Coady|Richard ?. Aslin
Young children’s sensitivity to probabilistic phonotactics in the developing lexicon
University of Rochester|University of Rochester
series three experiments examined childrens sensitivity probabilistic phonotactic structure reflected relative frequencies speech sounds occur cooccur american english children ages 212 312 years participated nonword repetition task examined sensitivity frequency individual phonetic segments frequency combinations segments partialling ease articulation lexical variables groups children repeated higher phonotactic frequency nonwords accurately low phonotactic frequency nonwords suggesting sensitivity phoneme frequency addition sensitivity individual phonetic segments increased age finally older children younger children sensitive frequency larger diphone units results suggest young children sensitive finegrained acousticphonetic information developing lexicon also sensitivity aspects sound structure increases development implications acoustic nature developing mature lexical representations discussed