Identification of Correct and Misarticulated Semivowels

Abstract

This study examined the identification of correctly produced and misarticulated /w, r, l, j/ in several subject groups: 4 normal children who produced correct /w, r, l, j/, 4 normal children with developmental w/r and w/l substitutions, 4 articulation-impaired children who misarticulated /r/ and /1/, a parent of each child, and two raters who were trained in phonetic transcription. Immediately following a production experiment in which the child subjects had produced minimally contrastive /w, r, l, j/ words in sentences, a selection of each child's utterances was randomly mixed with productions by an adult female speaker and were presented in minimally paired sets to each subject for identification of /w, r, l, j/. The children, parents, and raters were much more successful in identifying correctly produced semivowels than misarticulated ones. Misarticulating children and their parents differed from raters in approach to the task and in success. Analysis of individual subject data found that children who identified self-produced semivowels most successfully were the same children whose semivowels exhibited the most second formant frequency and transition rate differences in the previous production experiment. These results have both theoretical and therapeutic implications.