Laura L. Koenig
CUNY Graduate Ctr., New York, NY 10036
Haskins Labs., 270 Crown St., New Haven, CT 06511-6695
Richard S. McGowan
Haskins Labs., New Haven, CT 06511
Phonetic studies of children's speech have shown that many aspects of speech production may continue to develop well past the age at which the basic set of phonological distinctions is established. Until recently, most such investigations have been transcriptional or acoustic. In the present study, a pneumotachograph was used to record airflow during running speech in one child, age 5;8. It is known from work on adults that airflow from the mouth reflects the relative timing of oral and laryngeal movements in /VCV/ sequences. The data from the present subject show extensive variability in the relative timing and magnitude of oral-laryngeal movements for many /VCV/'s. As a result, fully adult-like differences in airflow and f0 as a function of consonant voicing are not evident. In this respect results are consistent with developmental studies of VOT and the effects on f0 of consonant voicing. The aerodynamic data add detail to our understanding of how children acquire laryngeal control of consonants. [Work supported by NIH.]