The syllabic status of final consonants in early speech: a case study

Young children's first attempts at CVC words are often realized with the final consonant being heavily aspirated or followed by an epenthetic vowel (e.g. cat /kæt/ realized as [kæt^h] or [kæt^ə]). This has led some to propose that young children represent word-final (coda) consonants as an onset-nucleus sequence (CV.C^v) (e.g. Goad & Brannen, 2003), raising questions about the syllabic status of the final consonant. To address this issue, we conducted an acoustic analysis of a child's early production of CVC, CVC^h, and CVCV words between the ages of 1;3 and 1;5. Aside from aspiration, the results showed that there were no significant acoustic differences between the CVC and CVC^h forms. In contrast, there were systematic acoustic differences in C₂ closure duration between the CVC/CVC^h and CVCV target words, suggesting that at least some children learning English have early coda representations for monosyllabic CVC words, whether heavily aspirated or not.