Effects of prosody on acquisition of anticipatory coarticulation by Italian-speaking children

This study investigates patterns of acquisition of anticipatory lingual coarticulation by children in Typical Development (TD) and with Speech Sound Disorders (SSD): contradictory data have detected different degrees of coarticulation in children versus adults. This research brings evidence from Italian-speaking children, and analyzes also effects of prosody on development of coarticulation. 2 Italian-speaking SSD and 2 TD, 6-8 years, pronounced disyllabic non-words of different stress structure ([pV’tV] and [pVtV’]), upon elicitation by 2 adults. Both CV and V-V anticipatory coarticulation were measured, by (1) locus equations on CV sequences, indicative of regular patterns of stop-consonant interaction with different vowels; (2) trajectories (extent and duration) and slope index (extent/duration) of V-V F2 transitions. Preliminary results based on locus equations scatterplot and regression lines slope coefficients, show similar degree of coarticulation in TD and SSD versus adults in unstressed CV condition, but higher slope values (greater anticipatory coarticulation) in SSD, in stressed CV position. These findings suggest that (a) similar patterns of emergence of anticipatory coarticulation appear in TD versus SSD versus adults, in unstressed condition, with a slightly greater degree of coarticulation in SSD versus TD (b) prosodic factors seem to affect acquisition of coarticulation in SSD.