The development of anticipatory labial coarticulation in French: A pionneering study

International audienceThis article reports an experimental study initiated on labial anticipatory coarticulation in the framework of a description of motor control development. Four French children between 4 and 8 years old have been audiovisually recorded, uttering [iC n y] puppets names, in which C n corresponds to a varying number of intervocalic consonants. A kinetic lip area function has been obtained via the ICP tracking system (Lallouache [1]) in order to describe the anticipatory movements of vocalic targets. As several concurrent models have been evaluated to account for anticipation in adults but very few for children, and since the more robust has proved for French to be the Movement Expansion Mode