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The production of /s/-stop clusters by pre-schoolers with hearing loss

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 July 2022

Julien MILLASSEAU Open the ORCID record for Julien MILLASSEAU [Opens in a new window] ,
Laurence BRUGGEMAN ,
Ivan YUEN  and
Katherine DEMUTH
Julien MILLASSEAU*
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University, 16 University Avenue, Australian Hearing Hub, North Ryde, NSW 2109 Australia
Laurence BRUGGEMAN
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University, 16 University Avenue, Australian Hearing Hub, North Ryde, NSW 2109 Australia The MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development & ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, Western Sydney University, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith South, NSW 2751, Australia
Ivan YUEN
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University, 16 University Avenue, Australian Hearing Hub, North Ryde, NSW 2109 Australia Department of Linguistics and Language Technology, Universität des Saarlandes, Campus C7, 66123, Saarbrücken, Germany
Katherine DEMUTH
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University, 16 University Avenue, Australian Hearing Hub, North Ryde, NSW 2109 Australia
*
Corresponding author. Julien Millasseau, Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University, 16 University Avenue, Australian Hearing Hub, North Ryde, NSW 2109 Australia. Email. julien.millasseau@mq.edu.au
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Abstract

Producing word-initial /s/-stop clusters can be a challenge for English-speaking pre-schoolers. For children with hearing loss (HL), fricatives can be also difficult to perceive, raising questions about their production and representation of /s/-stop clusters. The goal of this study was therefore to determine if pre-schoolers with HL can produce and represent the /s/ in word-initial /s/-stop clusters, and to compare this to their normal hearing (NH) peers. Based on both acoustic and perceptual analysis, we found that children with HL had little /s/-omission, suggesting that their phonological representation of these clusters closely aligns with that of their NH peers.

Keywords

/s/-stop clusterschildrenhearing lossspeech production
Type
Brief Research Report
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 50 , Issue 5: Special Issue on Syntactic Bootstrapping , September 2023 , pp. 1274 - 1285
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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