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영어

The purpose of this study is to examine and explain truncations of multisyllabic words that frequently occur in early word productions by young children. Gerken (1994) suggested English-speaking young children have a trochaic template SW and they produce syllables that fit the template but omit those syllables that do not fit the template. According to her account, banana is produced as [nænə] in order to fit into the template. We see, however, many examples of truncation where the onset of an unfooted weak syllable is retained: for example, [bænə] for banana and [dɪʃəs] for delicious. Those truncations involve two syllables being conflated into one syllable: the onset of one syllable and the nucleus (or, rhyme) of the other are combined to form a syllable. It implies that truncation does not only take place at the syllabic level, but at the subsyllabic level. We conclude that young children's word productions have subsyllabic conditions that prefer some sounds like /b, d, p/ over others like /r, l, n/ as well as a trochaic template. (Jeju National University)