Biomedical subjects

Joseph Paul Stemberger

Publications and source records attributed to Joseph Paul Stemberger.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMedDate not supplied

Neighbourhood effects on error rates in speech production.

Models of speech production differ on whether phonological neighbourhoods should affect processing, and on whether effects should be facilitatory or inhibitory. Inhibitory effects of large neighbourhoods have been argued to underlie apparent anti-frequency effects, whereby high-frequency default features are more prone to mispronunciation errors than low-frequency nondefault features. Data from the original SLIPs experiments that found apparent anti-frequency effects are analysed for neighbourhood effects. Effects are facilitatory: errors are significantly less likely for words with large numbers of neighbours that share the characteristic that is being primed for error ("friends"). Words in the neighbourhood that do not share the target characteristic ("enemies") have little effect on error rates. Neighbourhood effects do not underlie the apparent anti-frequency effects. Implications for models of speech production are discussed.

Humans↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Forum on intervocalic consonants in phonological development.

Intervocalic consonants have received far less attention in research on first language acquisition than consonants at the edges of words. Theories have predicted that intervocalic consonants may show special properties because they are in a special position in syllable structure (constituting both an onset, or syllable-initial consonant, and a coda, or syllable-final consonant) or because they are in a special environment (between vowels). This editorial provides an overview of the issues, a review of the acquisition literature on the subject, and an introduction to the five papers in this special volume.

Humans↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Intervocalic consonants in the speech of English-speaking Canadian children with phonological disorders.

Acquisition of intervocalic consonants has been insufficiently studied, both in terms of subject numbers, and in terms of differentiating syllabification patterns from those involving vowel feature assimilation. The question has remained: are English intervocalic consonants syllable-initial (onsets), syllable-final (codas) or ambisyllabic? This study addresses these issues in the speech of 44 English-speaking Canadian children with phonological disorders. Intervocalic consonants resembled word-initial onsets in that they were deleted less often than word-final consonants. When there was no deletion, intervocalic consonants were more likely to be segmentally unique (ambisyllabic?) than like onsets or codas. In segmental inventories, segments rarely appeared only in intervocalic position, and showed an equal affinity to onsets and codas, with two exceptions. Sonorant continuants and, to a lesser extent, fricatives showed patterns in intervocalic position that may have reflected assimilation. For children with less severe disorders, velars and fricatives occurred intervocalically only if they also occurred in codas, suggesting a coda-like (ambisyllabic?) status.

Articulation Disorders↗