Influence of caregiver input and language experience on the production of coda laterals by English-Malay bilingual preschoolers in multi-accent Singapore.

Linguistic input in multi-lingual/-cultural contexts is highly variable. We examined the production of English and Malay laterals by fourteen early bilingual preschoolers in Singapore who were exposed to several allophones of coda laterals: Malay caregivers use predominantly clear-l in English and Malay, but their English coda laterals can also be l-less (vocalised/deleted) and in formal contexts, velarised. Contrastingly, the English coda laterals of the Chinese majority are typically l-less.

Semantic Cues Modulate Children's and Adults' Processing of Audio-Visual Face Mask Speech.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, questions have been raised about the impact of face masks on communication in classroom settings. However, it is unclear to what extent visual obstruction of the speaker's mouth or changes to the acoustic signal lead to speech processing difficulties, and whether these effects can be mitigated by semantic predictability, i.e.

Variation in quality of maternal input and development of coda stops in English-speaking children in Singapore.

This study examines the effects of input quality on early phonological acquisition by investigating whether interadult variation in specific phonetic properties in the input is reflected in the production of their children. We analysed the English coda stop release patterns in the spontaneous speech of fourteen mothers and compared them with the spontaneous production of their preschool children. The analysis revealed a very strong positive input-production relationship; mothers who released coda stops to a lesser degree also had children who tended to not release their stops, and the same was true for mothers who released their stops to a higher degree.