The Role of Stress and Position in Determining First Words

The possibility that perceptual predispositions may assist young language learners in the initial identification of words in speech was investigated in a corpus of early words. The specific predispositions investigated included tendencies to attend to and extract stressed and final syllables. A total of 616 productions with multisyllabic adult targets were collected from three children at the one-word stage of language acquisition. These utterances were phonetically transcribed and coded, in relation to the adult target word, for omissions and accuracy of syllables. Results provided support for two predictions: Syllables that were stressed or final in the adult target word were (a) omitted much less frequently and (b) produced more accurately than were unstressed, nonfinal syllables. These results are consistent with the view that syllables that are stressed or final in adult speech are particularly salient to young children and, consequently, are particularly likely to be extracted and included in first productions.