Development of the whole-word structure in Russian-speaking children: longitudinal study

Abstract

There are many studies devoted to the segmental level of a phonological development. From this perspective, the phonological development is discussed as a sequence of separate phonemes acquisition. In contrary, following the whole-word analysis [1], the main point is how a child copes with the whole-word acquisition. For the latter approach, a longitudinal corpus of spontaneous speech is the most suitable data. The aims of the current study were: a) to estimate a distribution of word-structure patterns with different phonological and articulation complexity, produced by Russian child (2;04-6;05) during his daily conversations with adults; b) to analyze dynamic changes of this distribution. All the words were analysed according the pattern of their syllable structure by means of specially designed software [2] and classified into 22 basic groups; their percentage distribution was estimated. Statistical analysis revealed the most frequent syllabic structures: CVCVC and CVCCV (9-16%) and CVCVCV (8-10%). To verify an influence of the word-structure complexity on a frequency of the given words, their pMLU index [3] was estimated. The regression statistical analysis evidence a high significant determination of the word-structure complexity on their frequency in daily conversations; however, a force of this determination decreased from the age 2;04 to 6;05.