The Development of Canonical Proportion as a Function of Community, Multilingualism, and Target Language’s Syllable Complexity
Date
2026-02-19
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Journal of Child Language
Abstract
This study investigates the development of canonical proportion (CP), an indicator of speech development, across diverse language and environmental contexts. Using the Speech Maturity Dataset (SMD) comprising 366 children, aged 0;2–6;4, across 10 different languages and cultures, we explore the influence of multilingual exposure, language syllable complexity, and community type (industrialised, non-industrialised) on CP. We find that monolingual children display higher CP measures than their multilingual peers. In addition, CP is higher for children learning languages with simple syllable complexity than those with more complex syllables. We also find no significant differences in the CP trajectory of children from industrialised versus non-industrialised communities. Integrating these findings in the broader literature, we highlight the importance of diversifying participant samples to capture the complex relationship between language exposure, social environment, and language development.
Description
This article was originally published in Journal of Child Language. The version of record is available at: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000926100476
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press
Keywords
canonical proportion, language syllable complexity, multilingualism, community, speech development, language development, canonical vocalisations, long-form recordings
Citation
Tey, K. J., Walker, S., Seidl, A., Scaff, C., Peurey, L., Kelleher, B. L., Havard, W., Hamrick, L., Grosjean, P., Cychosz, M., Colleran, H., Casillas, M., Bergelson, E., Hitczenko, K., & Cristia, A. (2026). The Development of Canonical Proportion as a Function of Community, Multilingualism, and Target Language's Syllable Complexity. Journal of child language, 1–21. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000926100476