Segmentation syllabique chez l'enfant

Two experiments examined children's syllabification of words and pseudowords with single intervocalic consonants. The first study used a pause insertion technique while the second study used a partial repetition task. In the pause insertion task, effects of consonant class, orthography and lexical status of the first syllable were observed only for nine- and twelve-year-old children. In the partial repetition task, five- year-olds showed sensitivity to these three factors, but only for first-part repetition. We discuss the similarity between the present findings and adult data and their implications for psycholinguistic theories of syllabification and lexical access