Syllabic Consonants in Child Phonological Development in Akan

Akan arguably has syllabic consonants adjacent to vowels (/r̩/ and the nasals [m̩, n̩, ɲ̩̍, ŋ̍]), which is typologically unusual. The syllabic consonant plus an adjacent vowel are usually viewed as bisyllabic sequences in Akan, as are long vowels and two-vowel sequences, but resemble single-syllable structures in other languages, where such segments are interpreted as (parts of) codas, complex onsets, and complex syllable nuclei. We investigate syllabic consonants in monolingual phonological development, with nine typically developing children aged between 3;0 and 5;3, looking at accuracy and the types of mismatches (errors) that occur, and asking whether they pattern like vowels (also syllabic). Adult variability adds complexity affecting syllabic /r̩/, and we include four adult native speakers of Akan to provide more detailed information. Child accuracy and mismatches for syllabic nasals resemble those of long vowels and vowel sequences. Syllabic /r̩/ shows very low accuracy for all children, with statistical skewing toward variant adult pronunciations with intervocalic /r/ (providing information about the mastery of adult variable input). Syllabic /r̩/ is most subject to deletion, but is also frequently output as a vowel and shows parallelism with long vowels and two-vowel sequences. Our data suggest that these consonants are syllabic.