Preferential use of full glottal stops in vowel-initial glottalization in child speech: Evidence from novel words

Abstract Vowel-initial glottalization constitutes a cue to prosodic prominence, realized on a strength continuum from creaky phonation to complete glottal stops. While there is considerable research on children’s early utilization of acoustic cues for stress marking, less is understood about the specific implementation of vowel-initial glottalization in American English. Eight sequences of function + novel words were elicited from groups of 5-to-8-year-olds, 8-to-11-year-olds, and adults. Children exhibit a similar rate of prevocalic glottalization to adults but differ in its phonetic implementation, producing a higher rate of glottal stops compared to creaky phonation with respect to adults.