Rights Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License A COMPARISON OF THE ARTICULATION OF NOUNS AND VERBS

This study investigated a semantic-phonological interaction in young Cantonese-speaking children. The production of noun and verb by 20 normal Cantonese-speaking children between the age of 2;2 to 3; 11 were examined. The results were found to be different from that in the English-speaking children. There was no significant difference in the percentage of consonants produced correctly between nouns and verbs. Neither age group nor word types affected the production of consonant. There was also no significant difference between nouns and verbs in the distribution of phonological process. It was concluded that semantic complexity of words did not affect the phonological performance of Cantonese-speaking children. The simplicity of Cantonese syllable structure is hypothesized to account for the findings.