Token Frequency Effects in Homophone Production: An Elicitation Study.
Erin Conwell
PMID 29096575WHAT IT FOUND
Children and adults both say less common homophone words, like 'flour', longer than common ones, like 'flower'.
They do not change pitch or vowel clarity to tell them apart. This length difference is the only acoustic cue speakers use to distinguish these meanings.
Key findings
01Speakers produce longer durations for the less frequent meaning of a homophone pair compared to the more frequent meaning.
02Children and adults show similar patterns of lengthening for less frequent homophone meanings.
03Pitch and vowel quality measures did not differ based on the frequency of the homophone meaning.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study used only four homophone pairs, which limits the generalizability of the findings to other words. Many children failed to produce the target words, leading to the exclusion of eight participants and high variability in the number of words produced. The experimenter's speaking rate affected the participants' token duration, suggesting that the isolated word production was not entirely free from the context of the story prompt.
Declared interests
None reported.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that all acoustic features of a word change when its meaning is less frequent. Only the overall duration of the word changed; pitch, vowel length, and vowel quality remained the same regardless of how common the word was.