• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.67-77
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• 2015

The purpose of this study was to investigate how deaf parents influence the speech sounds of their normal-hearing children. Twenty four normal hearing children of deaf adults (CODA) and normal hearing parents (NORMAL) aged 3 to 4 participated in the study. The F1, F2, and the vowel triangle area in 7 vowels and the voice onset times (VOTs) and closure durations in 9 stops were measured. The results of the study are as follows. First, the F1 and F2 for all vowels were higher and the vowel triangle area was larger in CODA than in NORMAL although they were not statistically significant. Second, VOTs in $C_{stop}V$ for $/t^*/$ and in $VC_{stop}V$ for $/t^*/$, $/t^h/$, and $/k^h/$ were longer in CODA than in NORMAL. Most stops in CODA appeared to be longer VOTs for most phonemes. Third, the manner and place of articulation in stops did not make a difference between CODA and NORMAL in VOTs and closed durations. CODA does not demonstrate the speech characteristics of deaf people, however, they seem to speak differently than NORMAL, which means CODA might be influenced by a different linguistic environment created by deaf parents in some way.