Comparison of syllable fusion in Cantonese child-directed speech and adult-directed speech : a corpus study

Abstract

Syllable fusion occurs frequently and subconsciously in everyday conversation, but only limited studies have investigated its occurrences across registers. The current study examined if syllable fusion also occurs in Cantonese child-directed speech (CDS), a speech register that have been described to be emphasized in articulation clarity. Recordings of 26 mother-child dyads were extracted from a Cantonese corpus which consisted of CDS directed to 20- to 27- month-old children and adult-directed speech produced by the same mothers. Twenty high frequency words, with 5272 tokens in CDS and 3953 tokens in ADS, were selected. Results showed that the percentages of fused forms between CDS and ADS were similar after controlling for speech rate. This indicates that mothers did not significantly alter their speech to increase articulation clarity when conversing with their children, suggesting that hyperarticulation may not be a necessary feature of CDS.